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“Fine. I promise to lay out all my tangled emotions for you, like some kind of soiled, neurotic duvet. Just tell me one thing about this sister of yours.”
    He hesitates. His expression changes. I can tell that, like me, he’s actually troubled by his own flesh and blood. Then he sighs. His felid pupils float sadly in their liquor of gold. His mouth hardens.
    “My sister is an angry person,” he says. “When we were children, she used to find animals and torture them. She liked it when they screamed. She never killed anything,but I could tell that she wanted to. I was always frightened that she’d have children, but she never did. Now she works in an office. We see each other on holidays. We’re friends on Facebook. But whenever I hear her laugh, all I can think of is how happy it used to make her to pull the whiskers off cats.”
    I stare at him. Dr. Hinzelmann has never said anything even remotely like this before. Somehow, I imagined his family to be normal, or at least as normal as a goblin family could be. Maybe he’s lying just to get a rise out of me. I don’t think so, though. Animal cruelty doesn’t seem like the type of casual lie you’d use to assuage your patient that she isn’t the only one in the world with problems.
    “I’m sorry,” I say.
    He shrugs. “Family. There’s nothing you can do about them.”
    “I guess not.”
    “So tell me about Arcadia.”
    “I don’t really know anything about her, except that she’s one of the Ferid, and she could take me apart just by looking at me.”
    “But she didn’t.”
    “No. She restrained herself.”
    He glances at his notes. “She told you something about your father. What was that, exactly?”
    “She told me that he was a bastard, which I already knew.”
    “That’s not what you said earlier.”
    It’s not fair that he gets to consult notes every time we talk. Maybe I should start taking notes. I tried to use the journal function on my phone once, but I only ended up writing bad poetry.
    “She told me”—I sigh—“that my mother was hiding something. She’s always maintained that my father assaulted her. But Arcadia said that isn’t what happened at all. I’m more inclined to believe my mother than a crazy demon I only just met.”
    “But you suspect that she may be right.”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    He looks at me flatly. “No. You didn’t. But your comportment suggests that you didn’t completely discount what Arcadia had to say.”
    “My comportment? What is this, an eighteenth-century masquerade?”
    “Tess.”
    “Fine. She could be right. My mother’s lied about all kinds of things before. But it just seems—I don’t know—why would she lie about
that
?”
    “When did she first tell you that she had been assaulted?”
    “Years ago. I was fifteen. No. Sixteen.”
    “Tell me about that conversation.”
    “I’d really rather not.”
    “Okay. Just give me a few details. Where did it happen?”
    I feel myself grow slightly cold. “In the car.”
    “Where were you driving?”
    “She was going to work. We were arguing about something. She pulled over to the side of the road. I could tell that she was upset, but I was being a bitch. I didn’t want to apologize. I just wanted to get my own way.”
    “Do you remember what you were arguing about?”
    “A guy that I liked. Terry. He was an asshole, and my mom was trying to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen.”
    “How did she warn you?”
    The cold spreads from my stomach to my arms, then to my fingers. I can’t look at her. I stare out the window as rain gathers on the glass. Her fingers are pale on the steering wheel. She sighs.
    He’s not good for you,
she says.
He has a look. I’ve seen it before
.
    “What do you think she meant by that?”
    You think you know everything,
I tell her.
But we’re not the same. Just because you slept with some stranger and had me doesn’t mean I’m going to do the same thing. I’m not that stupid. I know what I’m