(Inaaya's not, actually, super sorry. Roby is dead but he seemed fine with that and all the things she wasn't thinking yesterday about grieving Joan alone while everyone around her calls them both licentious perverts whose entire relationship was a disease are coming back in full force.)

(She should probably actually process that feeling and not just sit on it and hope it goes away. But consider this: she doesn't want to.)

"I guess not," says Terrence, darkly, resignedly, with the intimation that his inability to have predicted this is a personal failing.

Maybe Sal should read Der Wanderer. Since the future keeps coming at them like this and Oscar sure doesn't seem to want to test its prophetic visions. What exactly does "couldn't have known" mean if some people can clearly sometimes see the future.

"-Um. Is that what you went to talk to Aarons about? Could he tell you anything?"

"No, I was trying to convince him that magic exists because at this point he clearly needs to know, and it didn't work for exactly the reasons you'd expect."

"...Oh dear. Sensible, but oh dear."

"I'm sorry he doubted you."

"Well. Anyone would, really."

She sounds remarkably dispassionate about this for how ready to tear her hair out she was when she walked in.

"We left him a copy of our notes. Just in case. There's something happening at that asylum, and if it doesn't end with Roby he needs to know what's going on."

"If anyone's going to make a good case for magic existing it's going to be you."

Except it doesn't fucking matter how good her case is. It's not about how good her case is.

"I'll... try and think of something to tell him, I suppose. A letter. Maybe it's - he deserves some warning. Though I'm not sure how many more problems there'll be there now that Roby's - gone."

Did they make sure to include the signs of a King in Yellow adherent in their notes. Did they mention at all that they have a friend who shows all these signs. Sal is now wishing they'd put it on the front page in large print.

Inaaya, at least, absolutely included all the information she had about the King in Yellow. Including the Japanese government's experiments, and, for that matter, her observations about Terrence.

"Again, I'm sure Inaaya did an excellent job. He's just set in-- his rational worldview, or whatever it may be."

"I don't think it especially matters how good a job I did. Empirically, it didn't work."

Also, she has a rational worldview, but she can't actually work up the effort to be insulted about the implication that she doesn't.

He did say it in a slightly sarcastic tone! But trying to make Inaaya feel better hasn't worked so he's going to back off.

He feels kind of terrible about how his attempts to reassure his friends are going.

"Well, you were equipped to give it a better shot than any of us would have been, for whatever good that does."

He looks around, and for want of a chair in easy reach, plops down on the bed cover across from where Jing Yi is.

"What now? I can't help but wonder if Parker is at fault for -" he gestures at Jing Yi's whole person.

Or Roby, he thinks, but that's - I mean, even he knows that's a stretch. Roby sounds like he did whatever he did on purpose. Just what purpose, Terrence doesn't quite understand. ...Yet.

"...Are you suggesting that Parker can do things long-distance or that he snuck into our rooms, because I really don't like either thought."

"Why shouldn't he be able to do things at long distance?" Terrence shrugs.

"I don't think we have any idea whose fault this is and saying it must be Parker seems premature at best."

"Someone who isn't me should probably ask if there were whistling noises last night or the nights of the other murders."

"He's got a pretty good motive. But that only puts him a little ahead of any other suspect, if someone else did it at all."

"I also shouldn't ask I expect, since I was with Inaaya."

"I imagine he won't be pleased to see any of us, if it went that poorly, but - do you think we can scour the asylum perimeter for a cat?"

"We can stop at the grocer's and get some trout to sweeten the pot."

The cat says that there were no whistling noises. It also enjoys its trout.

Well. Good to have the information, at any rate.