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Mia.”
    “Oh?” He wrote something down. “Why do you say that?”
    “It’s nothing specific. Just this vague sort of thing. Like, she’s not saying anything to me, but I can tell what she’s thinking.”
    “What she’s thinking, or what you think she’s thinking?”
    I shrugged. “We share the same DNA. Chances are we think alike.”
    “Humans share ninety-eight percent of their DNA with chimpanzees. That doesn’t mean that both species are identical.”
    “I’m a lot like my mother.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    I don’t know. Maybe because my father’s a pureblood demon, and the only genetic trait he passed down to me was a penchant for earth materia?
    “We share a lot of the same neuroses,” I said.
    “Can you give me an example?”
    I sighed. This was such familiar territory. I couldn’t believe the CORE had any interest in learning about the fact that my mother and I both had short tempers and loved to eat salted avocado spread on toast. But they’d recommended these sessions after I was nearly killed by the Iblis. I didn’t doubt for a second that Hinzelmann was sharing everything I said with Selena. Or maybe they just skipped her completely and went straight for her superiors.
    Either way, they weren’t exactly getting their money’s worth. It seemed like the last interesting thing I’d talked about with Hinzelmann was my persistent fear of aromatherapy. I always started perspiring the moment I saw one of those elegant white potpourri diffusers in a store window.
    Still—if the sessions were so boring, why hadn’t I told Derrick or Mia about them? Something in me refused to admit the fact that I was in therapy.
    “Okay.” I steepled my fingers. “On Monday, she came for dinner. I was supposed to make a pot roast, but she ended up cooking the whole thing. She also spent a hundred dollars on groceries. Apparently, I was lacking in condiments.”
    “You weren’t pleased by this?”
    “Sure. I mean, I was grateful. But we didn’t need groceries. And I was the one who was supposed to cook, remember?”
    “Did you want to cook that night?”
    “Not particularly. But it’s the principle, right?”
    “What principle is that?”
    He finally blinked. His eyes had swirls of dark amber in them, like small clouds. I tried to pretend that he was just wearing contacts. As far as demonic species went, goblins were fairly similar to humans. Aside from being mostly nocturnal and living 50 percent longer on average, they were closer to humans than vampires. Many of them could pass for people of small stature with surprisingly little effort, provided they wore the right makeup and contacts. There was even a cosmetic procedure to shave their pointed ears, blunting them down to human proportions.
    Hinzelmann had chosen not to assimilate. His shaggy blond hair did nothing to conceal his graceful, sweeping ears, which had multiple piercings. In a way, I was almost jealous. He probably had incredible hearing.
    “The point,” I said, “is that she’s a guest in my house. She should just relax and let me take care of her when she comes to visit.”
    “Old habits die hard, though. Mothers are always mothers, no matter how old we get. Does her behavior surprise you?”
    I briefly tried to picture Dr. Hinzelmann’s mother, but I had no idea what sort of upbringing a goblin might have. Maybe he was the child of assimilationist parents, and he’d chosen to rebel by keeping his traditional features. Or maybe he’d come from a well-connected family who worked for the CORE. For some reason, I wanted to think of him as being plucky and working-class.
    “Nothing she does really surprises me. But lately, I feel like she’s just being really attentive. Like she’s constantly worried about something.”
    “Being attentive and being worried aren’t the same thing, even if they go hand in hand.” He jotted down something else, then looked up at me. “Is it possible that you’re the one who’s worried