Someone was unlocking the entrance to their street-level apartment.

Raleigh didn’t detect anyone on the other side of the door, so she activated a macro she’d written the day before, which set her scanners to checking the airflow outside. People from alpha universes could hide themselves from her enhancements, but they still had to breathe.

At least, Raleigh thought they still had to breathe. Janni and Third seemed to need oxygen, and the macro had worked the previous day when she’d needed to locate Third’s sister.

Janni was eating, unperturbed, rather than being concerned by the visitor who was letting themselves in. That meant Raleigh could make a reasonable assumption about who it was even before the door opened.

“Third?” Raleigh asked, keeping her gaze locked on the Jenga game. First had warned yesterday that giving the girl a name rather than using her official designation, per her native universe, could get her euthanized.

After a pause, Third’s voice answered, “Second.”

What about Second? Second had been murdered, yesterday.

Janni froze a moment, then resumed chewing, not turning around. She swallowed what was in her mouth, said “There’s a sandwich in the fridge for you, Kitten,” and kept eating.

The girl entered the rental and shut the door behind her, and she abruptly appeared on Raleigh’s scanning software as though she’d been there all along.

Third’s expression was as staid as ever, but she eyed Janni as if she had noticed or was waiting for something, though Janni seemed entirely focused on her food. Maybe Third was picking up something from Janni via resonance, something outside Raleigh’s ability to detect?

The previous evening, Janni had said she thought Third was high. Raleigh activated some more of her enhancements to evaluate what she could scan of Third’s physiology, but she didn’t detect any drugs in the girl’s system, or even anything necessarily indicative that drugs had been there at all. Just a slight elevation in the cortisol, dopamine, and oxytocin.

Janni swallowed her mouthful of food. “Jolt?” she asked, turning to face the girl. “Why’d you take that?”

Raleigh would have to look up jolt and its effects, but she was pretty sure that didn’t affect oxytocin.

Third just stared blandly at Janni, then glanced over the table on her way into the kitchen, which was separated from the dining room by a counter and half a wall. The younger girl was too short for Raleigh to see her through the pass-through, but from the sounds that followed, she opened the fridge and unwrapped a sandwich.

“You’re hungry?” Raleigh asked in surprise. Grief stymied appetite, in her experience, and Third’s sister had murdered Second yesterday, shortly before Raleigh killed that sister, herself. From what had been admitted over the past day about how the Nameless clutches worked, Raleigh had expected to see at least some mourning for Second, even if Third didn’t really have a concept of ‘sister-in-law’ or miss her actual sibling.

Third leaned and peered at her through the doorway for a long moment, then brought her sandwich out to join them in the dining room. She ate it as quickly as usual—before Janni had finished another quarter of hers—then gave Raleigh a pointed glance, the one that said Raleigh was ignoring the obvious.

What, were Nameless not allowed to grieve, either?

Third returned to the kitchen, washed her hands, and rejoined them in the dining room. Her gaze danced between Janni and the floor.

“Yes,” Janni said. “I noticed. If he doses you again, I’ll break his arm.”

Third’s focus snapped up, and she blinked quickly. “Not him.”

Janni gave her a look. “He didn’t give you the jolt?”

“Stole it from his drawer.”

Janni stared. “You took jolt on purpose? Why the hell would you do that?”

Raleigh considered Third and ran her current appearance through her recognition software. The bruising and lack of sweater matched the version of Third that had time-jumped backwards to the previous morning and left her the knife she’d used to kill Third’s sister.

Okay, so it had apparently been at least a little longer for Third than it had been for the rest of them, but that just meant she’d had a little more time to get used to the fact that her clutchmate had died.

But then, come to think of it, Third had known that was going to happen hours before the rest of them did, hadn’t she? She’d alerted her brother, and they’d tried to find Second in time to warn her, to stop it from happening.

Maybe she’d dealt with the loss even before she’d told them it was coming.

Raleigh offered the knife, hilt-first, back to the girl. Third glanced at it, hesitated, then accepted it.

“I killed Nev with that,” Raleigh said outright. Perhaps that would be acceptable—either as a justification that would let her keep the knife, or as a comfort that she would be able and willing to accept.

Third paused only for a moment while sheathing it. “Thank you.”

The girl turned her usual calm, nonchalant watchfulness on Raleigh, then glanced at Janni again.

“What?!” Janni snapped, slamming what remained of her sandwich on the table.

Third gave a pointed look Raleigh’s way.

Janni scowled and waggled a finger at the younger, Nameless version of herself. “You want to get yourself killed, fine, but you leave us out of it!”

Raleigh blinked. What was she talking about?

Janni shoved her chair back and stormed down the hall with their three bedrooms. A door slammed—doubtless the one to her room.

Raleigh looked at Third, who had shifted position to watch Janni’s trip down the hallway. “What was that about?”

Third didn’t so much as flinch or move her gaze. “Jealousy.”

About what, precisely? “…If she wants jolt, I can get her some.”

The edge of Third’s lips twitched, hinting at a sly, wry personality beneath the nonchalant façade that the Nameless girl usually wore. Raleigh suspected that was for her own safety.

“Not about the jolt.” Third grabbed the last bit of Janni’s sandwich from the table, and she finished the food as she headed for her own room.

Raleigh stared after her, having the disconcerting sense that something had changed in the dynamic of her roommates, but unable to pinpoint what that change was.