I sat in the kitchen for most of the night after that, checking Tyler’s breathing, Grey’s knife in my hand in case the horned man came back, until finally, at dawn, I crawled into my bed and collapsed.

I rested my cheek on Vivi’s tattooed chest and listened to the beat of her heart, one arm across her stomach. My heart beat in time with hers. The three of us, with the exact same rhythm in our chests. When one was scared, the hearts of the others knocked. If you cut us open and peeled back the skin, I was sure you’d find something strange: one organ shared, somehow, between three girls.

We were puzzle pieces, the three of us. I’d forgotten how good it felt to wake up next to her, curled into her, a whole with three parts. Grey’s absence felt raw and aching this morning. I wanted her more desperately than I ever had before. I wanted to find her and collapse into her and let her stroke my hair the way she had when I was little, until I fell asleep cocooned in her arms.

My sister. My refuge.

A tear slipped from the corner of my eye and hit Vivi’s warm skin.

She stirred when I started to sob. “Hey,” she said groggily, releasing a plume of sour breath. “What’s wrong?”

I nuzzled further into her. “I thought I’d lost you too. I thought you might not come home.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Vivi shook her head against me. “I . . . I shouldn’t have left you here, Iris. After Grey ran away. I should have stayed here and watched out for you, helped you carry the load. I’m not leaving you again.”

Tyler burst into the room then, floral shirt crumpled, eyes wide, hair wild atop his head. “YULIA VASYLYK!” he said, pointing at me. “YES!” Then, as quickly as he’d appeared, he was gone again.

Vivi sat up and stared at the empty doorway, as if trying to make sense of what she’d seen. “Am I still wasted or did I actually just see Tyler Yang in your bedroom?”

“I think he’s hiding from the police,” I said.

“That’s . . . kind of genius. It’s the last place they’d look.”

Tyler appeared again and clapped for us to get up. “Little Hollows. That was a eureka moment. You must come.”

“I am way too hungover to deal with this,” Vivi said as we disentangled ourselves and went downstairs. We found Tyler in the kitchen, his bedding from the night before neatly folded on the bench. He was pacing again. I saw him differently now, this man who carried such tragedy in his heart. Sasha watched him from atop the refrigerator, her tail flicking furiously to show her distaste for this intrusion into her space.

“Yulia Vasylyk,” he said. “That’s where we start.”

“Are you speaking English?” Vivi asked as she sat at the breakfast bar and put her cheek on the kitchen counter, eyes closed.

“It’s a name,” Tyler said. “A woman. Someone Grey has mentioned before.”

I was so hungry, my stomach felt like a black hole expanding up into my rib cage. I pulled out my phone, typed Yulia Vasylyk into Google, and hit return.

The disappearance of Yulia Vasylyk three and a half years ago had not been big news. There were only a handful of short articles, and two of them had referred to her as Julia.

“I don’t get the link,” I said. “Another missing woman?”

“Type Yulia Vasylyk Grey Hollow,” Tyler said.

I was skeptical but did what he said. Google returned only one exact match. I read it out loud.

UKRAINIAN WOMAN FOUND A WEEK AFTER BEING REPORTED MISSING

 Nineteen-year-old Yulia Vasylyk, an aspiring fashion model from Ukraine, has been located one week after her boyfriend reported her missing. Vasylyk was found wandering near her Hackney apartment late Monday night, barefoot and confused. Police took her to a nearby hospital for evaluation. No further details were released.

 In a strange twist of fate, Vasylyk shares hçer small, one-bedroom Hackney apartment with three other girls, among them . . .

I stopped reading and looked up at Tyler.

“Keep going,” he urged.

I took a breath and continued.

. . . among them another famous missing-then-returned person: Grey Hollow. Hollow, now eighteen, was abducted from a street in Scotland when she was a child, but found safe one month later.

 Neither Vasylyk nor Hollow could be reached for comment.

“Holy shit,” Vivi said, lifting her head from the kitchen bench. “It happened again.”

Tyler was grinning. “Bingo, baby,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Someone else came back.”

11

Yulia Vasylyk was easy to track down online. With a hundred thousand Instagram followers, the once aspiring catwalk model had become a makeup artist and hairstylist of some renown. Tyler had even worked with her several times before he started dating Grey. When Yulia found out they were together, she refused to style him anymore, which is when Grey had told Tyler their odd backstory.

Tyler spent the morning calling contacts in the industry to find out where Yulia might be, without much luck: News of his impending arrest had spread quickly, and people were wary of handing over the whereabouts of another young woman, lest he was a budding serial killer hell-bent on murdering her too.

Cate messaged me around the time her shift usually ended to say she was staying late to cover for a sick colleague and did I maybe want to start thinking about going back to school after the weekend?

Routine helps, she wrote. Normalcy helps. I know you think I’m cold, but I’ve done this before, remember?

I didn’t message back.

Eventually, after Vivi and I had showered and changed and fed Sasha and eaten three breakfasts apiece, Tyler started pumping his fist in the air while he was on the phone.