"Excuse me, Mr. Latz?" the secretary says.

"Yes?" Oscar responds. He feels a pang of conscience but hey, Sano is a rich man, he can afford more drugs.

"Is there something you need?"

And at that moment Inaaya emerges.

"No, thanks, just waiting on my friend. Oh, here!" The man gives you tea and you do this. Moral questions are for future Oscar to address. Preferably with socialist theory.

She doesn't look particularly seduced, for whatever that's worth. Precisely her usual amount of sheveled.

Thank God. Not that he's a prude, it's just that Inaaya is a kid for Christ's sake. "Time to get going, I think," he says. "So. You know I like the guy, but uh, Sano lied to us."

Well, yes, of course he did. "Oh?"

"I, um," says Oscar. "Happened to see some of his things. Wanted to be thorough about it." (And it's not like he-- okay, that defense doesn't work here. But he found out information! Inaaya likes information.) "He has the King in Yellow in his backroom, like fifteen copies in different editions. And Der Wanderer!"

".......huh."

Please don't ask how he got into the backroom. "Yeah, he said he'd never heard of Roby, right?"

"Yes, he did." Except he was, clearly, deflecting.

If he has fifteen copies of the King in Yellow in his backroom that implies buying them up, which Inaaya's glad someone is doing since she sure doesn't have the resources. Maybe she should give him Terrence's copy. ...at some point when Terrence won't connect the disappearance to her and Sal.

"He's a collector of traditional work, not exactly the avant-grade type-- why is he buying that stuff? And why lie to us about it? I bet that's more copies than Terrence owns!"

Well, it could be that it's extremely cursed and he wants to stop us from poking at it. You can't say that to Oscar. "I could come up with guesses, probably, but they'd be guesses. Weird."

"Now, with someone like Roby or Terrence I understand. But Sano is-- staid. Not swept up in enthusiasms. Immaculate taste, some might say, if kinda conservative. But-- here's the King in Yellow, once again. You know, sometimes I wish I'd never heard of that play." He makes a gesture like "What can you do?"-- "Oh, one more thing."

"Oh?"

"I don't know if this has anything to do with anything, and this is confidential, but Sano had drugs in there. Black liao, specifically. Probably none of our business."

Not only was the door ajar, the drawer to the desk was totally open.

A memory pops up from Inaaya's time in the Dreamlands. (This happens, sometimes. Rarely. Almost never, except when she forces it.)

Black liao allows the person who takes it to cross over to the Dreamlands. Only for a few hours, and if they don't know the Dreamlands is real their memories will be blurry afterward. It is rare and valuable; the only people who have it are the tcho tcho. Inaaya had dismissed it. She wouldn't be able to travel to Tibet.

--it's only for a few hours. It's not a real solution to Joan's problem, even. Much less Valentine's. But oh god she wants that.

Inaaya seems zoned out. "You know black liao, right?"

"I know of it. I-- have a friend who gets horrible nightmares and it's the only thing that's ever let her sleep."

This is not a true statement but in a different sense it sort of is?

"I hadn't heard of it being used for that. I associate it more with creative inspiration. Like the Romantics and opium, I guess." He's not going to tell Inaaya he has stolen black liao on him right now because he is a good role model. "I wonder if Sano's using it. Didn't seem like he had a ton so he's probably not selling."

"Well, plenty of people use opium for pain relief, it's not that surprising it goes both ways." It wouldn't actually solve her problem anyway. Any of her problems. She's supposed to be more practical than this.

"Right." Maybe he should be more concerned that Inaaya has a friend who's dependent on drugs, especially one comparable to opium, but ehh, none of his business. "By the way, you guys chatted a while in there." (That sounds a bit petulant.)

"Yeah! He had this book of botanical illustrations and--" and Inaaya is fully capable of bouncing about lilies until she is stopped.

He is relieved that it was a single entendre offer to show Inaaya a special book. But also, what, he's not sensitive enough to get shown pictures of lilies? Weird, especially because Sano is so perceptive of people's tastes. But maybe Sano just wants to support a smart kid's interest in science. "That sounds nice," says Oscar. "Did you learn anything or just catch up?"