Nod. “Zoë and I watched Donovan’s house for a time. Nothing particularly interesting—she has various staff that lives on site—she has a lot of guards. Military-trained. And her car is distinctive, we could recognize it if we saw it again. She left for—something—and then had a lunch meeting at a restaurant. We couldn’t learn anything there but I asked around at some nearby restaurants as well; she sometimes gets coffee at one of the cafes, I could point it out. I think she used to go with Portia, the barista mentioned her friend who used to come and stopped. —Oh, and the stonework of her house has the same markings on it as the warding stone.”

"Ah. Donovan was at the hospital with eight armed guards.

And Tereza has apparently been having dreams where a blonde woman who I'm guessing is Portia says she's been eaten and is in a stomach and is being digested and the stomach will open on the New Moon, in case we needed things to be more ominous than they already were."

...when is the next new moon?

“—I suppose the hospital was the thing she left for in the morning, then.”

"I do too. — I don't know that we have reason to believe it's the next new moon, one of the books we have talks about something called the Maw opening at the Rift of the New Moon like it's a proper noun?"

"I guess. Just seems like the obvious thing to check, you know?

Not that I know how we'd do it. Not like I particularly want to try to break into wherever that giant mouth is, if that's even related to whatever's going to happen at all."

"I think we need someone in that warehouse but I am concerned they are drugging their workers."

“With the—nectar? Or something else?”

"Probably. Only a couple of us who could claim to be looking for work in a warehouse anyway."

"Probably not Nectar, I don't think Nectar has that effect."

"I'm not sure if it being Nectar makes total sense, but -- the girls are spending most of their time asleep, and it's administered differently at the hospital, and maybe there's different -- I don't know."

" - do we actually know anything about the people working in the warehouse? I thought we were just guessing from other locations. The sailors are on nectar. The people at the factory are... I dunno, I thought it was supposed to make you happy.

The girls could be on other stuff, too, I guess."

"The girls are also on four other medications including anti anxiety drugs."

“If they are drugging their workers, it has to be with something; if it’s not Nectar, we should try to figure out what it is.”

"I don't know that we know anything about whoever works at the warehouse. None of us have been inside except maybe the monkey."

“That’s true.” Sigh.

He sighs. "Maybe it's just... working under people who are on a power high. What that does to you." They even have matching evidence of what that does to a person. Right there. Being sad and brainfogged and nervous.

"I dunno, it was pretty uniform."

"New idea, maybe it's mind control." He is 60% joking.

"I'm still willing to check it out if we think there's something important going on there. Not actually sure that it's related to the core nectar operation, though."

Araari sits down, back straight, pressed against the wall of the hotel room. “...Do we have any better of an idea what we can do for the children? Especially if Tereza isn’t even sick...”

"Well, we could try kidnapping 'em, but that's a bit complicated from a hospital. And of course you'd have the cops on you right away, high-profile target and all. Easier for us to get out of Malta than it would be for someone else, with the private jet and all. But you probably would have to leave right away once you did it."

"Lela's a high profile case. Tereza might only be if Donovan makes it one. ...Which she might."

"You should also consider that if you think Lela's sick, and you don't know what with, kidnapping her could just as easily kill her as make her better."

“I suppose. I just... Don’t like leaving them there.”