Yet the reality was we had lost one another. Again. There was no fixing this, and I should have just said to him there were no answers to be found. Only the truth, which he could never know.

“I’m going to find him, Olivia,” he said, his promise warming my head, ruffling my hair. “I’m going to hunt him down, just as Joanna would have, and this time I’ll kill him. I’ll take away everything and everyone that means something to him. I’m going to annihilate his world so thoroughly he’ll never be able to piece it back together.”

“I have to go now,” I said, pulling away, hating his words. Hating who he reminded me of. Hating, I thought, the scent of rot seeping through each syllable.

“Okay, but you’ll call if you remember anything, anything at all?”

“I’ll call,” I said, practically tripping over myself to get away from him.

“Olivia!” I stopped, closed my eyes and turned back slowly. When I opened them he was standing just as before, but he didn’t look as angry from a distance. He just looked alone. “You know when I first ran into Joanna again I gave her this generic list of attributes, characteristics to tell her how well I knew her…or thought I knew her.”

I folded my arms over my chest. “I bet stubborn was on that list.”

At least he could smile at that. “Yeah, and so was restless. And impatient. But I forgot one.”

“Really? Which?”

“Mine,” he said, his fists bunching at his side. “She was mine.”

And he walked away, leaving me staring, wordlessly, behind.

Leave it to Cher to think a nice pick-me-up after a sister’s death would be a spray-on tan. I was ushered indoors, signed in, and naked in such short order that my head was actually spinning, and the sight of the spray gun had thoughts of comic books, construction workers, and even Ben Traina scuttling to the back of my mind. It looked like a machine from Ghostbusters.

“You want me to spread what?” I dubiously asked the technician for the third time. She was Russian, heavy on the makeup, light on patience, and obviously a great fan of her own product. She muttered something under her breath, sat back on her heels and glanced in Cher’s direction.

“Come on, Livvy,” Cher said. “You’re acting like you’ve never done this before. Now bend over and show Yulyia your talent.”

I grimaced as the two women hooted with laughter, but did as I was told, following Cher’s lead.

“Whoo! Olivia, are you getting dizzy yet?”

Inverted, I looked over at her. “No.”

Red-faced, she turned an accusing gaze upon me. “You’ve been eating again!”

The spray hit my ass before I could reply. Perhaps, I thought desperately, it would help to try and think of something else. Fortunately or not, I had a lot to think about. I wanted to tell Warren about my strange encounter in Master Comics, and ask him what Zane had meant about me being “the one.” I wanted to see if he thought it was all right for me to swing by my old house as Olivia, knowing even if he didn’t, I probably would anyway. I wasn’t the sort of person who took orders easily. Unless, I was discovering, there was a can of tanning solution pointed at my naked ass.

I also needed to figure out what to do about Ben. And how to do it as Olivia. I frowned, thinking of the time I’d spent studying her home. I’d been all over that apartment in the past two days; read every piece of paper, viewed every video diary, even every recipe she had written down in the place. It was possible she had a safety deposit box I didn’t know about, but I’d found no key, and no mention of one. There was also her beloved computer, but that was the one place I couldn’t access, not that I believed any of the above could help me solve this problem.

How to stop him? How to help him? How to keep him from getting killed?

“What’s wrong, Livvy?” Cher said, arms raised so Yulyia could spray beneath her pits. “You’re not talking much.”

What to say? I’d been half listening to the conversation, and so far it had lacked any meaning, direction, or obvious import. These two seemed to pluck topics from the sky and fold them like origami into something with meaning. For instance, I now knew there were eunuchs in Afghanistan who made more money than prostitutes, that Cher’s mother had decided she needed to share with her adult daughter everything she thought about sex—I had to groan with her on that one—and I’d learned that Yulyia’s motto in life was, “No cheaters, no beaters, no little peters.”

Call me crazy, but I had the sneaking suspicion that my concerns over my recently acquired superheroine status weren’t going to score very high in comparison with these eclectic topics.

Or would they?

“I was just wondering,” I started conversationally, as Yulyia tagged my left pit, “if you could be a superhero, what kind would you be?”

“You mean to have save me?”

“Not X-Man and no He-Man,” Yulyia said before I could answer. She motioned expansively with her spray gun. “I want G-Man.”

“G-Man?” We both looked at her.

“To help me find G-spot. That’s my kind of hero.”

“Good point!” Cher exclaimed.

Too much information. I grimaced and tried again. “I meant what kind of superhero would you be?”

“A cute one, definitely!”

“With fur-trimmed cape trailing behind as I fly through the night!”

“Fox fur!” yelled Cher, getting in the spirit.

“Marten,” Yulyia purred, shuddering delightedly.

Did this spray kill brain cells?

“Okay, but other than—you know—cute, what kind of powers would you have? You know, how would you use them to fight evil and save mankind?”

They both looked at me in a moment of profound silence.

“The power to make any man fall in love with me!” Yulyia exclaimed.

“I already have that,” scoffed Cher. “How about the power to have spontaneous orgasms, and never grow old!”

Yulyia squealed and Cher giggled. I sighed and tried not to breathe in too deeply.

Fifteen minutes later we were in the day spa’s lounge area; tanned, dried, and wrapped in short terry-cloth robes. I was reclining in a vibrating massage chair, while Cher poured us fizzy water from a pitcher filled with lemons, ice, and cucumbers. About a half a dozen other women were scattered about the room, like a bunch of seals sunning on a rock. But the melodious chatter of dulcet female tones gradually melted into a sea of serenity. I hadn’t been in this environment before. I’d either shunned it in favor of a sports massage, or all chitchat had ceased when I entered any ultrafeminine domain. I was surprised to find the smell of peppermint, cucumber, and estrogen to be a heady and profoundly relaxing mix.

“Do you want to get French pedicures?” Cher asked, handing me a glass.

I sipped, and considered making up an excuse to leave, something I’d have readily done only one week earlier. I’d never had another woman look to me for companionship. I knew Cher believed I was really Olivia, but it felt good to be the recipient of her open smiles and concerned attentions. I remembered how fondly my sister spoke of Cher on the video diaries, and for that alone I would have said yes. Besides, I reasoned, what would Olivia do?

“Why not?” I said, smiling.

Cher seemed pleased to lead the conversation, and I was content to let her. She started off talking about a new pill that was supposed to shrink the waist, lift the breasts, and put color into your cheeks—being tested on mice as we spoke—then moved on to a story about a lingerie saleswoman who’d copied her phone number from her check and was making threatening phone calls about how many times Cher had sent her back for a different size chemise in magenta rolled silk. At some point, through the rhythm of Cher’s narrative, I began to understand the rhythm of my sister’s life in a way I previously hadn’t. I also began to wonder why I’d never gotten a spa pedicure before. The foot massage alone would have done wonders after a training session with Asaf.