The time Grey was supposed to meet us came and went. It felt almost strange to spend time alone with my middle sister, just the two of us. All our lives, even after Vivi and Grey had moved out, whenever we met up, it was almost always the three of us together. Always a set, never a pair. Without Grey, I felt unanchored somehow, like the internal hierarchy of our sisterhood had collapsed into chaos. We all knew our roles: Grey was the boss, the leader, the captain, the one who took charge and made decisions and forged ahead. Vivi was the fun assistant, the suggester of mischief, the teller of jokes, the wild one—but even with her penchant for anarchy and dislike of authority, she always fell in line behind Grey. I half suspected the reason Vivi had set off on her own at fifteen was to escape Grey’s iron rule. My role was to be the youngest, the baby, a thing to be protected. My sisters were kinder and gentler to me than they were to each other. Grey rarely pulled me into line the way she did Vivi. Vivi rarely snapped and yelled at me the way she did Grey.
As afternoon turned into evening, we sent her pictures on WhatsApp of us hanging out without her, of all the fun she was missing. It was a special kind of sisterly punishment: Grey hated being left out, hated us embarking on plans that had not been sanctioned by her in advance. She was a general and we were her small but fiercely loyal army. “If Grey jumped off a bridge, would you?” my mother had asked me once as she splinted my broken pinkie finger. Grey had broken her pinkie hours before, so I had found a hammer in my father’s pottery shed and used it to shatter my own.
It was a question without answer. It was not a question at all.
I didn’t follow my sister. I was my sister. I breathed when she breathed. I blinked when she blinked. I felt pain when she felt pain. If Grey was going to jump off a bridge, I was going to be there with her, holding her hand.
Of course, of course, of course.
In the evening, we met up with Vivi’s bandmates for dinner before the gig: Candace, a hard-drinking German with a voice like Janis Joplin, and Laura, the Danish drummer, who looked like a pixie and played drums like a banshee. I’d had something of a crush on her since I’d first seen her play, on a weekend trip to Prague six months ago. Grey had met us there and we’d spent two nights wandering the labyrinthine stone alleys of the Old Town, eating nothing but trdelník and drinking nothing but absinthe.
When we’d watched the band play at a red-lit basement bar, Grey had mouthed the words to each of their songs. It was one of the things I loved most about her: you might not see her for months, and then she’d show up and know every word to every song you’d written and recite them back to you like they were Shakespearean poetry. Grey didn’t just know I got good grades; she contacted my teachers and requested to read every essay I handed in, then commented on their merits the next time we met up.
So where was she now?
For dinner, we ate bowls of spicy chicken karaage at Vivi’s favorite pub, the Lady Hamilton, named after the famous eighteenth-century muse and mistress Emma Hart. Vivi’s first ever tattoo had been George Romney’s painting Emma Hart as Circe, a soft beauty with round eyes, pouting lips, and hair whipped around by the wind. I wasn’t sure if Vivi had discovered the pub or the woman first, but either way, whenever she came to London, we inevitably ended up eating here. Inside, the pub was warm and cozy, the walls and furniture all dark wood, the roof a lattice of Bordeaux cornice and ceiling roses. Candles dripped white wax onto our table as we ate. Vivi slipped me a sneaky glass of house red wine. Another difference between my sisters: the budgets. If Grey were here, we’d likely be eating the tasting menu at Sketch and knocking back twenty-pound cocktails like they were candy.
I thought about the classes I had the next day, all the prep work I was missing out on by taking a night off. I thought about the skin of Laura’s neck, what it might taste like if I kissed her. I thought about how young I looked in my uniform. I thought about the horned man, and how Vivi couldn’t be in town for ten minutes before weird shit started happening.
After dinner, we wandered down Kentish Town Road toward Camden, past convenience stores and late-night barbers and the hot-oil smell that lingered around the doorways of chicken shops. Even on a weeknight in winter, the streets around Camden Town Station were humming with people: a punk in a leather jacket and a fluorescent-orange Mohawk was charging tourists a pound for photographs; a vape company handed out free tester kits to the crowds coming home from work or heading to the nearby market for food; revelers spilled out of honey-lit bars; couples held hands on their way to the Odeon cinema; shoppers carried bags of groceries from M&S and Sainsbury’s and Whole Foods.
Vivi’s band, Sisters of the Sacred, had been booked to play at the Jazz Café, which, contrary to what its name would suggest, was not actually a jazz café but rather a nightclub/live music venue in an old Barclays Bank. Its white columns and arched windows gave it a faux Grecian vibe, and blue neon letters loudly declared it LONDONS FAMOUS JAZZ VENUE. There was a line out the front already, despite the cold, which made Vivi and her bandmates stop.
“Oh my,” Laura said. “Are we famous now?”
Sisters of the Sacred was semi well known in the underground scenes of the mainland’s coolest, grungiest cities, but they certainly weren’t famous. Not in the way that Grey was famous.
Vivi stared at the line and lit a cigarette. “I may have told the venue manager that my sister and a gaggle of scantily dressed supermodels would come and watch our show if they booked us.”
“This is the correct term for a multitude of supermodels?” Candace asked. “Gaggle?”
“It is indeed, Candace.”
“Pimping out your own sister for exposure is a bit morally bankrupt,” I said.
“Supermodels were invented to sell shit to people,” Vivi said. “What’s the point of being a direct blood relative of one if I don’t occasionally utilize her for profit?”
“Oh my God, Iris!” A hand waved frantically from the line. “Here!”
Jennifer Weir and Justine Khan were standing close to the front. Jennifer was the one waving at me. Justine had her arms crossed and was staring straight ahead, her jaw set tight.
“Friends of yours?” Vivi muttered as Jennifer ducked out of the line and tugged Justine after her.
“Mortal enemies, actually,” I muttered back.
“Oh my God, I hoped we’d run into you!” Jennifer said. “We got here early and have been waiting in line for, like, an hour.”
“Big fans of the band?” Vivi asked.
“Oh, sure, yeah,” Jennifer said.
Vivi’s gaze slid to Justine. “You look familiar.” My sister clicked her fingers and pointed at her. “I know! You’re the girl who shaved her head in front of the whole school! That was so metal.” Vivi reached out and curled a lock of Justine’s long hair around her finger. “It’s a shame you let it grow out. I much preferred it short.”