"Vy, have you tried this? Try this. It's the chewiest thing I've ever had, like ever."

I glance down at Jamie, who's waving something around in my face: a shish kebab looking thing, except instead of vegetables it's what looks like three rice balls in soothing pastel colors. I take it from him, only because I know he won't stop pestering me until I do. "Where did you—" I sigh, casting a glance around the street. It's swarming with people, a moving collage of feet and a symphony of voices. It's hard to focus on any one thing in particular. "Where did you get this?"

"Lucci bought it," Jamie says, and jabs a thumb over his shoulder. I move out of the way of the foot traffic, and turn around. Sure enough, Lucci's stopped at a street stall, his shoulders almost comically bent to fit beneath its awning.

"Why is Lucci buying food right now? He does realize we have things to do, right?"

"I don't know. He saw it and asked me if I wanted some, so I said yeah," Jamie says, blinking at me. "Did you try it yet? Isn't it chewy?"

Hesitantly I take a bite. It's not awful. "Yeah, actually," I tell him. "It's very chewy."

Lucci jogs up to meet us then, his own serving of the rice ball shish kebab in his hand. He nods at me. "Dango," he says before I can ask. "A rice flour dumpling, with sugar. Do you like it?"

"I don't hate it," I say, but hand the rest back to Jamie. It almost feels wrong to eat something sweet right now, like I'm celebrating too early. After all, if the address on that man's business card was right, Sakura Studios is less than two blocks away. Our mother could be there, waiting.

Lucci must read the look on my face, because he frowns. "Violet."

"What?"

"It's go—"

"Don't tell me it's going to be okay, please," I say, shaking my head. A brief look of hurt flashes across his face, and the guilt is palpable, like a stone sinking to the base of my stomach. "I'm sorry. I know you mean well. But you just...don't know that."

He doesn't stop frowning, and I raise an eyebrow at him. One of us should say something, but neither of us know what to say after that, so for an awkward moment we just stand there in complete silence.

Jamie looks between the two of us, utterly perplexed. He finishes off his dango in one bite and asks around it, "Should we go now?"

"Yes," Lucci says suddenly, jerking his head down the street, in the direction we're supposed to be headed. "Let's do that."

It's surprisingly underwhelming.

I'm not sure why I'd expected Sakura Studios to be more...intimidating, a place with barbed wire and ominously stoic guards outside it, or something—but it's not. It's just an office building, glass and concrete stretching tens of floors up, two revolving doors marking its entrance. The cherry blossom logo sits at the very top, glinting black under the sun. So we're definitely in the right place.

I pull Jamie and Lucci slightly around the corner, out of the view of the doors. "How dense is the security? Are the doors alarmed? Did either of you research that?"

"Violet," Lucci says, looking at me tiredly. "It's an office building, not a military base."

"Lucci," I say. "It's a shady office building for a company who does shady things. They must have security. Otherwise anyone could just walk in and..."

Jamie tugs on my arm, silently pointing back towards the entrance. As we watch, a woman and her child, the child happily skipping along at her mother's side, walk right up to the doors and vanish inside. No alarm goes off, no guards appear, no massive metal shutters come down over all the windows.

Turning back to me, Lucci chuckles under his breath. "You were saying?"

"That doesn't prove anything. Maybe they work there."

"The kid, too?" Jamie asks.

"Yeah!" I argue. "Maybe."

At that point Lucci is done with me, as he rolls his eyes and steps out around the corner, straightening the collar of his shirt. "If you won't go in," he says, glimpsing me over his shoulder, "then I will. Jamie, you coming?"

He beams, offering Lucci a flimsy salute and jumping to follow him. "Sir, yes sir!"

"Jamie!" I hiss, but he ignores me, and after a brief internal war with myself (This is so stupid, Violet, why are you doing this, there's a bajillion different ways this could go wrong and you know this) I follow after the boys, slumping my shoulders.

Inside, I expect it to look shadier—it just has to—but once again, I'm wrong. It's typical office building stuff. A young man in a newsboy cap operating a snack and beverage bar in one corner, a massive, glistening reception desk in the other, elevators and a grand glass staircase directly ahead of us. It's relatively hush, the voices muffled, the loudest noise the occasional hiss of steam from the coffee machine.

I don't immediately sense the impact of our arrival, but as Lucci heads to the reception desk, his shoulders back and his strides long, I notice the stolen glances in our direction. Regular voices dip towards whispers, shoulders formerly slack going square instead. They've noticed us.

Good.

The receptionist is busy with a phone call, the phone squished between her ear and her shoulder as she types something into the computer in front of her. Her eyes skirt up, landing on Lucci and the rest of us. Alarm settles into her face, but she suppresses it, muttering a quick goodbye into the phone and setting it down again.

"Hello," she says, switching to almost spotless English. "What can we help you with today?"

Before Lucci can speak, Jamie answers instead. "Does my mom work here?" he asks. "Her name is Claire Donahue. We think maybe she was sold here."

I grimace. "Okay," I say, tugging him backwards by the sleeve of his shirt. "That's enough out of you."

Jamie seems confused, but gratefully doesn't argue. "You can disregard most of that," I continue, resting an elbow on the counter. "But it is true we're looking for Claire. Could you maybe point us in the right direction?"

Around us, it's gone almost entirely silent. I ignore the discomfort starting its steady ascent in my chest. Lucci glances at me, notices the unrest probably seeping into my face, and narrows the gap of space between us. I don't have the guts to tell him he just made my nerves worse.

Something in the receptionist's face has gone chilly all of a sudden, as if something I said has drawn a wall up over her features. Her eyes are dark, utterly inscrutable. "I'm sorry," she says, her tone clipped. "I don't know of any Claire Donahue who's employed here."

Jamie starts up again, but Lucci interrupts. "Is that so?" he says. "Strange then, that we have a record of this company receiving her from a circus in Granada, Spain. It's on paper. Would you like to see it?"

The receptionist says nothing, just purses her lips.

"Right," Lucci says. The smile on his face is devilish; I don't know whether to be pleased or terrified. "Why would you? You already know."

"Perhaps you'd like to speak with our director about this?" The receptionist fires back after a tense beat of silence, lifting the phone back to her ear.

Lucci glances at me, and I nod my head. If she won't tell us what we want to know, maybe this director person will. "Sure," I say. "We'd love to."

The receptionist's eyes rake each one of us, lingering on Jamie for a moment, before she clears her throat and mutters something into the phone. When she's done, she slams the receiver back down on the landline with a loud clack and waves us off, telling us the director will be down in a moment.

"The director," Jamie repeats with exaggerated reverence, as if he's speaking of some sort of king. He's shifting his weight from foot to foot, shrugging his shoulders, his body a bundle of constant, frenetic motion. That, too, hasn't changed since we were kids. "He'll tell us where Mom is, right?"

"I'm beginning to think it won't be that easy, Jamie," I say, pushing out a long sigh. I cast a glance around the lobby—people are talking again, but quietly, and now seem to be averting their eyes rather than staring. Even if Mom isn't here, she must have been at some point. What else could explain the timorous, eerie atmosphere around this place, as if everyone's putting on an act?

"They do know something, and for whatever reason—probably because they're not proud of what they're doing—they don't want it to get out," I explain, and Lucci nods his head in silent agreement. "They're not going to give it to us easy."

"Fine," says Jamie, lifting a hand, the nails sharpened into glistening claws. "Then we'll do it the hard way."

"What! No! Put those away!"

Jamie looks at me, pleading. "But—"

"No," I say, tearing a hand through my hair. "I mean, maybe. But no."

"Guys." Lucci bumps my shoulder. I look up, and a man who I can only assume is the director is standing right before us.

There's a strained smile on his face, like it's straining all of his muscles to keep it there. He's bulky, but not exactly fat, wearing a tailored ash gray suit with his hair in an atrocious combover. I'm not sure what it is—maybe I can smell it on him—but he and Guillermo are no doubt of the same breed.

"I was told I had visitors," he starts, with a polite bow that the three of us awkwardly mirror. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Claire Donahue," I say, without a beat of hesitation. I'm tired. I don't want to tiptoe anymore; I want to find my mother and get the hell out of here. "Where is she?"

"Donahue," says the director, and shakes his head. The combover doesn't move. "I'm sorry. I don't know an employee by that name."

"Do you consider werewolves your employees?" I say, and Lucci looks at me sharply, but I ignore him. "Or are they—what? Property?"

Now the room is dead silent.

It dawns on me that maybe I should've held my tongue a bit. Jamie must be rubbing off on me.

"Miss," says the director, his eye starting to twitch. "We employ werewolves here; they're invaluable assets in certain films and television productions. And I assure you, there has been no werewolf here by that name."

"You're lying. Lucci, the receipt, show him the—"

"But if you'd like," says the director, and now his eyes shift, slowly, hungrily, towards Jamie. "We do have an open position on that front."

The energy floods from Jamie's body; I see it, the way his shoulders drop, the frightened, uneasy steps he takes as he half-staggers away.

If the director notices the terror he's struck into Jamie's small frame, he doesn't care. "A young one like him," he says, and nods his head, as if confirming with himself. "And those eyes...they are so unique. Our audiences would love him."

He takes a step toward Jamie, lifting his hand to touch him, but I'm already there, swatting the director's hand away. "Don't you dare." The words leave my mouth as a hiss. "Don't even think about it. Try it again and you'll be without a limb, do you understand?"

"I don't, actually," says the director. "He'd be well-paid, of course."

Behind me, Jamie's breath has gotten shallow. I flutter a hand back, searching around until I find his fingers, and interlacing them with mine. His pulse is fierce and fast against my palm. "Exploited, you mean."

The director blinks. "Well, that's not—"

"Enough!"

To my surprise, it's not me, but Lucci who says it. His face is flushed red, and though the line of his mouth is neutral, his eyes are ablaze, fire trapped within his irises. "You people are sick," Lucci says, practically spitting. "All of you. You're afraid of nonhumans until they're useful to you. Then they're an invaluable asset. Don't you see something wrong with that? God, don't you hear yourselves?"

"Lucci," I start, quietly, but he doesn't seem to hear me.

"You have no idea," he goes on, his eyebrows knitting. "No idea the kind of shit these people have been through just to find each other again. Like hell he's gonna come work for you, like anyone is. Jesus Christ. Violet!'

He swings around, facing me, the rage not yet drained from his face. I sputter, "Yes?"

"They're obviously wasting our time. Let's get the hell out of here."

I stare at him for a second, all words momentarily lost on my tongue. It's strange, jarring, like discovering an old but never-before-seen picture of someone you thought you knew everything about. I just didn't know he had it in him.

It takes me a second, but eventually I remember where the hell I am, and that Jamie's still shuddering and out of it, and that Lucci's now looking at me like I've lost my mind.

"Yes," I say. "Sorry, yes. Let's go."

He harrumphs, leading us out back the way we came. Not, however, without turning around to flip two vicious middle fingers at the director.

Once we're outside again, where I swear it's at least five degrees hotter than it was when we went in, we find a city bench. I park Jamie down on it, and sit beside him, gently shaking his shoulders till he looks up at me. Thank God, the horrified expression on his face has cleared, and slowly his breathing normalizes, as if he's returning from a nightmare.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I just—my brain went places. I thought...I thought he was gonna put me in a cage again and I started panicking."

I glance up at Lucci, who's frowning at us. The look on his face is hard to read. I can't tell if he's more enraged or sorrowful, or precisely at what all of that emotion is focused. He catches my eye, though, and dutifully turns away.

"Jamie," I say, taking his hands. "I would never—never—let them do that to you, okay? Didn't I tell you? I'm here now, and I'm not going anywhere. I promise. I promise you."

He looks at me, sniffling, before he pulls his hands from mine and slaps them against either side of his face instead. I blink, alarmed, but before I can ask if he's okay, he's already smiling at me again, so widely that his eyes crease.

"Me too," Jamie says, with a final sniffle. "I promise, too."