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Both Noa and Cipher look my way at the same time. “They’re trying to add another two weeks to Cave’s hold. Vincent thinks it won’t happen, but we won’t know for a bit.”

“What? That’s fucking ridiculous! How can they do that? He needs to come home.” Noa paces while rambling about how unfair it is, and though I agree, our hands are tied. “Maybe we should send the Jester in, or Vero. Cave would look sane then.”

“Absolutely not,” Cipher says. “Cave would kill Vero and end up in prison. Let’s give Vincent a chance.”

Cipher and Noa bicker, and Leni turns to me. “You look terrible.”

“Life has kicked me in the ass recently. With everything that went down with Rowan, and now Cave, I’m soul-deep tired.”

Leni takes my hands. “I’m here for a while now, so let me help you. I wish you’d told me about Rowan sooner, because I knew it was bad, just not that bad.”

“It wasn’t your burden to bear—one of us needed to live a normal life. He’s gone now, and I don’t think he will be stupid enough to come back.”

“Good, because if he does, I will kick him in the balls.”

I laugh, and so does she.

“Oh damn, little sis, that’s brutal. Even I can feel the pain,” Noa jokes. “But it would be totally deserved. Who’s hungry? Let’s give Leni a tour and get some food.”

“I’m starving,” Leni says, and we all head toward the door.

Even Cipher takes my hand, and Noa links his arm with Leni’s and talks her ear off as we walk toward Ares’s Bar. Everything feels a little better with her here. Noa points at things as we walk and tells her what is where. He even invites her to dig holes later, and she agrees, which makes me smirk, as she is not a dirt kind of girl.

Leni stops and turns in a circle once we get close enough to see the tent top and the cornfield. “It’s really beautiful here. I thought it would be, I don’t know, more remote.”

“It is remote,” Noa says, standing beside her. “That’s what makes it perfect. You can’t accidentally end up here—you have to actually want to come.”

“Or be brought here in the middle of the night against your will,” I mutter.

Leni turns to me. “Is that what happened to you?”

I shrug. “More or less. Yet another Rowan-inspired incident.”

“You must like it here, though.”

I smile. “I love it here. Someone smart once told me that there is a gravitational pull on the island, and when you feel it, you stay.”

“I can see why.”

Noa links his arm with Leni’s again, and we keep walking. Cipher stays beside me, his fingers entwined with mine. This is way out of his comfort zone, and he would no doubt prefer to be at his workbench tinkering, so it means a lot that he is here. He knows how much Leni means to me.

“Thank you,” I whisper to him.

“For what?”

“Coming with us. I know you’re doing it for me.”

He smiles at me and squeezes my hand. “I would do anything for you, and she is your sister. At least Noa is here to hold the conversation.”

I chuckle and watch as Noa squats down in front of Leni, and she gets on his back. As soon as she is holding on, Noa takes off running while Leni screams.

“I appreciate it. She is my favorite person in the world, but don’t tell Noa.”

He smirks. “Never.”

We reach Banks’s freaky museum, and Noa goes inside with Leni. They are in there for five minutes, and when they come out, Leni is no longer on his back and has a tub of cream in her hands.

I hurry to snatch the pot away from her.