Her words holding no meaning for me, I stared at the ghost tent. “Sarah’s down here,” I got out past the thickness of my tongue. “He buried her there. Ghost Sarah in her ghost house. Ghost gifts.”

“Shit. Take him in.” Neri was already turning away. “I’ll tell Regan he’s not fit to be interviewed.”

I went to ask her something, tell her something, but my tongue was too fat and my head full of blackness.

62

Beep. Beep. Beep.

I lifted heavy lids, my lips so dry and cracked that they felt alien.

“Here.” A sliver of ice cold against my mouth, droplets of water seeping in. I sucked desperately at one piece, then the next, until at last, I could swallow, could focus, could see again.

Lily’s dark eyes looked down at me, her hair framing her face in strands of black silk.

“What?”

Somehow, she understood. “Ambulance brought you to the hospital two days ago,” she told me, the comforting scents of sugar and coffee in her every movement. “How much do you remember?”

Shovels, fighting, a woman made of fluid silver. “Calvin,” I croaked.

“Yup. No one saw that coming—except you, apparently.” She brushed my hair off my forehead. “He’s in police custody.”

The curtains parted before I could ask her anything else, and I saw Neri and Regan. Lily scowled. “He’s barely awake. Go away.”

“No.” I coughed. “I want to speak to them.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Lily said to the cops with steely authority. “I’ll tell the nurses so they know to come kick you out.”

“Did you find Sarah?” I asked as she left, the curtain swinging behind her.

“Yes.” Detective Regan sat down in the chair Lily had vacated, while Neri moved around a second chair so I could see them both.

“We need to take your statement,” Regan continued, purple shadows under his eyes and his skin even paler than usual. “After that, you can ask us more questions and we’ll tell you what we know.”

I had no reason to hold back now. I told them all I knew. All I remembered.

“My head isn’t right,” I admitted again afterward. “My memories are patchy and there’s a film or fog over everything. My neurosurgeon was right to worry.”

The two cops exchanged a look before Regan gave a small nod. Neri shifted her attention to me. “There are indications someone tampered with your food. Labs are still working on exactly what was added, but it’s nothing you should’ve been consuming alongside your prescribed painkillers and other medications.”

Nausea battled with relief. “Who? Shanti? No, it can’t have been her.”

“It was in the fudge. Possibly also in some of the other sweets.”

Staring at them, I waited for the punchline. But neither of them laughed. “Diana makes the fudge.”

“Yes, and since it’s your favorite, Mrs. Liu’s been making extra just for you. According to her, Calvin not only volunteered to drop off the bags, he added chocolates to the package because”—she looked down at her notes, then quoted—“‘he felt so helpless, and he wanted to do something for Aarav, and Aarav’s always had a sweet tooth.’”

She glanced up. “We discovered a doctored bag of fudge in his office at work. We believe he was taking fresh bags, adulterating them with drugs, then swapping them out with the bags Diana prepared for you.”

I’d known that Calvin had dropped off that one bag, but it had meant nothing to me. Calvin did stuff like that for Diana all the time. “Dr. Binchy thought I was doing drugs. Why did you even check the food?”

“Because Dr. Binchy is an excellent physician,” Neri responded. “He took another look at your results in light of Calvin’s arrest, had the hospital run more blood panels, and came to the conclusion that the mix of drugs just didn’t make sense.”

A small smile from Regan. “Honestly? The two of us still thought you were doing some designer drug, but then we interviewed your sister—don’t worry, we were very gentle, and her mother was with her throughout.”

I scowled, lifting my head a little from the bed. “Why would you interview her anyway?”

“Because children notice things, and they remember more than people realize,” Neri said.

“We asked her if she’d seen you eat anything strange,” Regan began, and I got it—they’d wanted to see if Pari had unknowingly spotted me taking drugs. “You know what she said? That you mostly just eat candy and drink Coke, but she took a little of your favorite fudge to school one time and it made her sick, so she didn’t know why you liked it so much.”

I sucked in a breath, remembering that day she’d come home sick from school. “I always told her she could take whatever she wanted from my drawer.” Guilt twisted up my insides. “Is she—”

“No serious effects,” Regan said. “She had only a minor dose.”

“My doctor told me I shouldn’t be having so much sugar,” I said on an exhale. “Guess I should’ve listened.”

No smile on her face, Neri said, “We also found your notebook in your pocket. One page has writing noticeably dissimilar to yours, referring to your father’s secretary—is it possible Dr. Liu had access to it?”

Pain stabbed my head. “I don’t know. The memories are erratic.” Flashes of a glove box, of a hospital, of Diana’s worried face. “Why did Calvin come after me anyway?”

“He’s not talking, so we don’t know.”

Regan leaned forward. “How did you come to suspect him?”