Then I turned and left her there on her own.

* * *

My breath snagged when I saw my sister’s face staring up at me from the floor.

Even when rendered as a tattoo, Grey’s fine, hook-shaped scar was still the first thing you noticed about her, followed by how achingly beautiful she was. The Vogue magazine must have arrived in the mail and landed faceup on the hall rug, smack bang, which is where I found it in the silver ghostlight of the morning.

It was not my sister on the cover this time, though, but Tyler. The tattoos on his arms and chest were exposed: Grey’s portrait stood out in a sea of ink. I turned on the hall light and picked the magazine up and studied it—him—more closely.

In the photograph they’d chosen of him, he sat in a chair wearing nothing but fishnets and patent red loafers, his legs crossed, his black hair spilling around his face to his shoulders. There was no text, only the picture and the years of Tyler’s birth and death. He was twenty. A year younger than Grey.

“You ready?” Vivi said as she made her way down the stairs, dressed in plum lipstick and the most un-Vivi outfit I’d seen her in since she’d stopped letting Cate dress her a decade ago: a dark, conservative dress that covered her arm tattoos and skirted her knees.

“Who are you and what have you done with my sister?” I asked.

“That’s way dark, Iris.”

“What, too soon for changeling jokes?”

Vivi looped her arm around my waist and rested her head on my shoulder. “I liked him,” she said as she studied the Vogue cover. “He deserved better than what he got.”

“Everyone we come into contact with deserves better than what they end up getting.”

“We should go,” Cate said from the top of the staircase as she tugged on a pair of low pumps, Sasha looping around her feet. “Iris, come here, I’ll braid your hair.”

Vivi looked at me but said nothing.

“Cate . . . ,” I said as my mother made her way down the stairs. “Do you mind if I don’t have my hair braided anymore?” It was a ritual she shared with her dead daughter, something to keep them tethered. It felt cruel to snatch it from her, but Vivi was right. I couldn’t be everything for her all the time. I could only be myself, whatever that was. “It’s just . . . I prefer it out.”

Cate paused, one arm threaded through her coat. “Of course I don’t mind.” She shrugged her coat all the way on and took my chin in her hand. “Of course I don’t mind. I do mind, however, that we’re going to be disgracefully late. Come on, come on.”

It was raining outside, not the usual drizzle of London, but a cold and swollen day that drove rain into our faces as we slipped into my mother’s red Mini and drove toward the cemetery.

Tyler Yang’s funeral was, much like the man himself, extravagant and highly Instagrammable. It was held in a church that had clearly been styled by some celebrity event planner: thousands of candles cast dim light in the shadowy space, rich floral arrangements curled up the columns and trailed down from the ceiling, and a string ensemble played mournful songs as the pews filled. We found seats at the back as a steady stream of increasingly famous celebrities filed in, most wearing dark House of Hollow creations. A British actress whose TV show had recently become an international sensation was there, as was a famous ex–pop star with her famous footballer husband. There were models, actors, directors, designers—even a few lesser-known members of the royal family. Many people were crying already.

Tyler’s coffin was at the front, engulfed in an explosion of white roses and baby’s breath—and closed, obviously, because it was empty. I wondered how many people Grey had had to bewitch to sell her extravagant new lie. How many careful threads of silk she’d had to weave, just so, to convince the world that Tyler Yang had been murdered by her stalker when the police would never find any evidence to corroborate her tale.

Tyler’s family came in last, along with Grey.

A collective hush befell the crowd when they saw her. My sister was dressed in an elegant House of Hollow dress with a sheer black veil draped over her face. The portrait of a weeping widow from a fairy tale. Through the veil, I could tell that her eyes and nose were raw red, as though she’d been crying and had only managed to compose herself moments before. Her jaw shook as she walked down the aisle grasping the arm of a tall woman I assumed was Tyler’s mother. Grey’s sadness spilled out of her, rushing over the room like a wave, curling up the walls, drowning everyone. It was terrible to see something so beautiful in so much pain. Hands reached out to her as she went by, hundreds of hands jostling to touch her, hands that trailed over her veiled shoulders, her arms, soaking up some of her grief. It appeared, as she moved, as though she were a magnet moving through a field of iron filings that stood rigid and then sighed as she past.

Everyone. She would bewitch everyone to make her lie the truth.

The rest of Tyler’s family followed. His father, tall and handsome like him. His two living sisters and their partners, one with a newborn slung across her chest: Rosie’s namesake.

How unbearable, I thought, to lose two of your children. Then I looked at my mother, who had lost three on the same night. Who had had the living ghosts of her murdered daughters haunting her house, eating her food, siphoning her life, for a decade. I slipped my hand into hers and threaded our fingers together.

The service wasn’t long. A priest led a prayer and conducted a blessing. Tyler’s father gave a reading. His sisters Camilla and Selena delivered his eulogy. There was a slideshow of photographs and videos of him throughout his life. Pictures of a baby with chubby cheeks and arms that looked like bread rolls. First day of school pictures of a tiny boy in an oversized uniform. Pictures of four siblings always together, and then, after a time, only three. Pictures of him as a teenager, skinny and cute but not yet handsome and stylish. Pictures of him as I knew him, tall and angular and striking, his body decidedly masculine but his fashion sense and makeup gender nonconforming. The last photograph was of Rosie holding him on the day he was born, staring down at him while he stared right back up at her.