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There was the slightest pause before Priya laughed. Her hand went automatically to her phone, which lay face down. I refilled her glass before she decided to reach for it.

“Kai is insanely attentive,” Callie said, almost squirming in the pleasure of it.

Jess was quiet. She moved the bracelet around her wrist. Priya’s thumb found the black stone at her throat and stayed there. “Tourmaline,” she said. “Adrian says it’s for other people’s energy.” I was noticing everything in horrible detail.

“They’re intense, though, right?” I said. “All of them. Very… focused.”

“Yeah,” Priya said, some of the brightness drained from her voice.

Across the table, Jess looked down at her wine.

“Marlowe, you have a look,” Priya said.

“What look?”

“An I’ve-decided-not-to-say-it look.”

I smiled. It felt like my pulse was crawling up my neck. “Oh, it was more of a question, actually.”

“What’s that?” Priya said.

The string lights shivered in the breeze. Across the fence, my neighbor’s pool filter hummed. The music had stopped.

I put my glass down.

“Is anyone still feeling like something’s…off?” I said lightly, still giving them room to laugh about it.

Callie’s smile faded first.

Jess’s fingers tightened around the stem of her glass.

Priya looked at her phone again, reflexively moving to a man who waited to explain everything away.

I had to move faster now.

“Not necessarily bad,” I said. “Just strange. Like it’s all moving too fast.”

Callie went very still.

“Kind of,” Priya said, still glancing at her phone.

“There is one thing,” Jess said.

We all looked at her.

“Sometimes it’s like he already knows what I’m going to say, and he’s always got the perfect answer ready.”

“Yes,” Callie said. Something moved across her face.

That was my inroad.

“When you drank that tea, did any of you have nightmares?”

I looked around the table.

“Yeah,” Callie said. She shivered like she was suddenly cold.

“Yeah,” Priya said, looking at Callie, then me.