“We want to talk to this guy.” I showed the hostess a picture of Grey’s boyfriend. “Tyler Yang. Is he here?”

“Yes, but it’s a private event tonight,” she said hesitantly. “If you’re not on the guest list, I can’t let—”

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Vivi said, practically purring. She put a finger against the woman’s lips—and that was all it took. The woman closed her eyes at Vivi’s touch, dazed and drunk on the heady smell of my sister’s skin. With her eyes still shut, she opened her mouth and sucked on Vivi’s finger.

I had seen my sisters do this thing before. I had done this thing before too, a couple of times, though the power of it terrified me. The things I could make people do when they were high on me.

When the woman opened her eyes, her pupils were huge and her breath smelled like honey and rotten wood. Vivi stroked her cheek, then leaned in to whisper, “You want to let us in.” The hostess opened the door, giddy, a dumb smile on her face. Her gaze was fixed on Vivi. In the purple light of the vestibule, I saw what she saw: how frighteningly beautiful my sister was, sharper and skinnier than Grey, like a rapier where Grey was a broadsword.

“You shouldn’t do that to people,” I said as we headed down a hall toward the source of the music. A thick bass jumped in my chest.

“Do what?” Vivi asked.

“Whatever the hell that is.”

The club—Grey’s favorite, if her Instagram was to be believed—was lit from all angles by screaming pink neon. For the private event, the ceiling had been laced with a forest of cherry blossoms that dripped down over the dance floor. Oversize buckets of Dom Pérignon with glow-in-the-dark labels gave every table a soft green phosphorescence. The bar was gold and glass and framed by a set of sumptuous purple velvet curtains. Drinks were served in tall, impossibly elegant glasses that looked remarkably similar to the tall, impossibly elegant women who drank from them. The crowd was made up mostly of people in the fashion industry—models, designers, photographers—but I also spotted a famous rapper, an actor couple from an American cult teen TV show, the socialite daughter of an old British rock legend. Many did a double take when they saw us, then leaned together to speak in hushed tones.

“Keep your eyes peeled for him,” I told Vivi.

“How did you know he’d be here?”

“Grey’s here all the time. Tyler is always in her pictures.”

Tyler Yang was a heavily tattooed Korean British model who’d gained a reputation in the fashion world for the ease with which his style blurred gender boundaries. Rarely was he seen in something that wasn’t daring: Gucci floral suits, bespoke lace blouses, strings of antique pearls, pussybow shirts, heeled loafers. His eyes were always lined, his lids and lips slicked with a candy shop of bright pop colors.

Grey’s sexuality was a much discussed but ultimately unconfirmed topic of gossip. Was she dating this Victoria’s Secret Angel or that new Hollywood leading man? Vivi and I both knew that Grey was straight. It had always been men for her, the same way it had always been women for Vivi.

For me, it had always been both. My very first kiss had been with Justine Khan in the game of spin the bottle at Jennifer Weir’s sleepover. Her mouth had been soft and her perfume had smelled like lip gloss and vanilla frosting. It was supposed to be a bit of giggling fun, but it lit something inside me. A disco ball in my chest, an insistent hunger somewhere within me that made me want to thread my fingers through her then-short hair and press my hips against hers. It confirmed something about myself that I had suspected for a while. The kiss did something to Justine too—something strange and ugly. She kissed me again and again, hungry and insistent, until I tried to push her away and she forced me down, until she bit my lip so hard it burst and bled, until her fingernails raked claw marks into my arms and I had to start fighting her off, until all the girls who were watching us realized it wasn’t a game anymore and had to wrestle her, keening and frothing at the mouth, off me. The story had twisted over time, so now girls at school said I was the one who bit her; I was the one who wouldn’t let her go; I was the mad witch who’d tried to bite her face off.

It remained the less terrifying of the two kisses I had endured.

“There,” Vivi said, nodding toward the back wall.

Tyler was in a pink velvet booth wedged between a pop star and a supermodel. An ex–Disney teen star hovered nearby, trying to find her way into the conversation.

I could see why Grey liked Tyler: the bouffant of black hair tied in a knot at the crown of his skull, the strong line of his jaw, the muscles that moved beneath his tattoo sleeves. Tonight his brown eyes were rimmed with kohl, his lips shellacked with green lipstick. He wore a sheer lilac blouse and high waisted trousers, the kind men favored in the 1920s. The glowing Dom Pérignon label gave his skin an absinthine quality. The women were beautiful, but Tyler Yang was—like Grey—utterly striking. I licked my lips.

“Damn, is that who I think it is?” Vivi said, eyeing the supermodel. “The Victoria’s Secret Angel, right? I think she just broke up with her girlfriend.”

“Keep it in your pants,” I said. “We’re investigating our sister’s mysterious disappearance. This is no time for fraternizing.”

“Says the girl salivating over Tyler Yang. Said missing sister’s boyfriend.”

“I’m not salivating.”

“At least not with your mouth.”

“Gross.”

“Yet true.”

Tyler spotted us then. We made and held eye contact across the room.

“Uh . . . He does not look super pleased to see us,” Vivi said.

Tyler’s expression had fermented into vinegar. He was staring now, his eyes dark and jaw set. He raised a thin finger, curled it toward himself. Come.

“It appears we are being beckoned,” I said.