As far as overly ostentatious restaurants went, the Red Mouth lauded itself a cut above the city's other establishments. From the moment Tara left the industrial heart of Verweald and crossed the Agoura River's concrete banks into the commercial district, I regretted not capitalizing on my chance to escape this whole torpid evening. Tara parked her car in one of the district's crowded lots and led us along the busy avenue, passing several diners and eateries until—at last—we came upon our destination.

The sign emblazoned with the place's name glowed against the building's face and the modern windows. "Really?" I said to Tara, my agitation plain.

She flinched with grace but nonetheless nodded. "Rick managed to get a reservation."

"And you thought this would be an excellent choice for me? The most pretentious place in town, and I'm still partly covered in orange juice."

"Actually, I thought it'd be an excellent choice for me, and you've no other option but to come along, brat." She gave my shoulder an affectionate swat. "Besides, maybe the orange juice is an improvement. You're so...sweet now."

"You're the absolute worst, do you know that? I can't afford this, Tara."

"Don't worry about it."

Before I could protest, her arm once more linked through mine and, helpless against my well-meaning but charitably aggressive twin, she squired me through the Red Mouth's steel arch and to the maître d's station. After a brief, hushed exchange between him and Rick, the haughty host escorted us into the dining room, and while we walked my attention ambled over the stuffy interior. The contemporary design clashed with heavier elements of Baroque embellishment; rocaille bolstered the paneled walls and antique lamps hung from a sloped ceiling plastered with Postmodern art and conceptual paintings of red lips.

Overall, the effect was absurd, the kind of absurdity average people squint at while critics cock a brow and say "How interesting."

I ordered a drink as soon as I dropped into my seat. Might as well indulge myself a bit.

Dinner commenced with the standard fanfare one would expect at a place like the Red Mouth, the proportions minuscule but pretty. Mitch helped the snobbish waiter pass around the drinks when they arrived and, in a fit of guilty resignation, I forced a smile more akin to a grimace onto my face and chatted with him. I couldn't blame Mitch for Tara's bungled matchmaking attempts, after all. I imagined being on a date with a woman so painfully disinterested was unpleasant, no matter how contrived the whole experience proved to be.

When the appetizers came, I noticed a plain water set before Tara's own plate, untouched. "You can order something else, if you like," I told her as I tipped my chin toward the glass. "If you're worried about who'll drive home, I can do it. I won't finish my own drink, you know how I am." Already I'd edged the daiquiri aside after two sips, the cloying taste sticking to my tongue like syrup.

An odd expression crossed my sister's face. Almost as if on instinct, she took Rick's hand in her own and held it there atop the table's dark surface. "I can't drink, Sara."

"Why?"

"Because...because I'm pregnant."

Oh. Unbidden, my gaze lowered from her face to her middle hidden below the table's edge, knowing I'd see nothing different, that she looked just as she ever did, warm and genial and clever as a satisfied cat, though she would change in the coming months. An immeasurable sense of age I had no right to feel pressed upon me as I wrung my hands on my lap. There Tara sat, calm and affable, next to the man she would marry one day, carrying a promise of more family to come in her middle. She had, in a word, everything, everything that so many other women would kill to obtain: doted on by our parents, successful, well-off, engaged, and now pregnant.

In contrast, my own life lacked direction or the systematic forethought Tara put into her own routine. I had no prospects, a degree I did nothing with, a dull job, and had been unattached for several years, wholly averse to physical touch and mired in my apathy. Though not old, I was no longer young, and so like a seedling who failed to yield, I withered while my sister took root and flourished. I simply existed, while Tara lived.

"Sara? Are you all right?"

Blinking, I took a breath to clear the haze within my own head and reached again for the daiquiri. "I'm fine. I was just—lost in thought." The sweet liquid soured in my mouth and I lost what appetite I had. "I'm excited for you, but I take it this is a new development? Since you didn't say anything to me before."

"Yeah, we found out the other day. I'm a little over a month along." She patted her flat stomach. "We...we were hoping you might come with us when we told Mother and Dad."

I stiffened, fingers poised over the top of the frosted glass, chilled by the condensation. "We'll see."

"Sara...."

Mitch's phone began to ring.

"Sorry 'bout that," he said, flashing us a quick smile as he disentangled the device from his jacket pocket. He glimpsed the screen. "I gotta take this. 'Scuse me."

He stood and exited the dining room, which gave Tara the opportunity to pounce. "Sara, it's been seven years—."

"No, actually, it hasn't. It's only been three since I last saw Eleanor and less than one since I saw Dad."

"Three?" Her brow furrowed. "Why didn't I know about this?"

"I don't know what they tell you, and I didn't think the occasion worth mentioning." I tossed my napkin onto the table and, though I knew I was being petulant, I crossed my arms. "She came for my first graduation, while you were in school. Needless to say, it didn't go well and she wasn't invited for the second."

We ate in silence after my seething reply, and I wished I could bury my regret as easily as I buried my fork in the smeared pâté. Tara doesn't deserve my attitude, I thought. God, this evening can't be over fast enough.

Dinner finished and the check arrived, at which point Tara looked up from signing her name on the credit receipt and said, "Where is Mitch?"

Mitch hadn't returned; his seat by mine had remained empty for much of the meal. "I think he bailed."

Tara sputtered. "What?! That's so rude!"

I laughed—dry, humorless, and unsurprised.

"It's not funny, Sara. He left his car at my apartment. He could have at least faked an excuse or something."

Shrugging, I eased my chair from the table and picked up my purse, muffled buzzing pressing upon my ears as I swayed. "Mieux vaut être seul," I said. "Que mal accompagné."

Tara scoffed. "'Better alone than in bad company?' If you say so."

"I do say so." We left.

Outside, the full moon seemed to swell in its vantage, bathing the street in a veneer of bleaching light that cut harsh, oblique shadows in the faces of passersby. The city hummed, a baritone trapped in a barrel chest, vibrating under my feet, against my skin. I moved my tongue and it stuck to the dry film coating my teeth.

"Don't lean on me, Rick, come on—."

Rick laid his arm across Tara's shoulders and drew her into his side. I looked about for Mitch, wondering if he'd been sidelined by a long-winded phone call, and the faces of those on the street blurred and oscillated. Purulent halos capped the neon fixtures, bursts of nacreous color in an otherwise featureless landscape.

What is going on?

I staggered and collided with someone walking into the restaurant. "Drunk bitch, watch where you're going—!"

"Sara?" Cool fingers encircled my wrist and I turned my hand. The steady feel gave me a touchstone in the bleary whirl assaulting my eyes.

"Wh—?" The vehicular droning drowned out my small and ineffectual voice. I licked my lips and tried again. "Where did you park?"

"What's wrong?"

"I—I think I stood up too quickly. Drank too much." Did I? How much did I have? I don't even like drinking. What's wrong with me?

Tara cursed. "Let's cut through here, then. We'll reach the parking lot faster."

A tug at my wrist brought me from the main street into one of the many alleyways that ran through the city like veins, pumping Verweald's fetid blood into its rotten heart. Somehow, the air smelled wet and the concrete was underfoot tacky with moisture despite the oppressive, dry heat. A measure of lucidity returned when the avenue faded behind us, and I concentrated on the pitted bricks beneath my free hand as I balanced myself against the wall.

I stumbled and caught myself on a dumpster's edge. My arm came back sticky and I blinked, befuddled, at the resulting smear. "Gross."

Tara spoke low and urgent to Rick—or at least I assumed she addressed him, her words lost somewhere between my ears and the clouds milling through my thoughts. He had his arm still wrapped tight about her shoulders, but what I'd mistaken as an affectionate gesture was tighter than that, his grip on my sister the only reason Rick hadn't fallen to the asphalt. We came upon a service road behind the boutique outlets, a long channel carved into the cement filled by grease, oil, and moldering debris.

Glass popped under my heels.

"Watch out," Tara said in a harried tone as she nudged me aside. "Looks like someone busted the bulbs."

Overhead, the broken fixtures leered, jagged like the smiles of wolves with glass embedded in the old sockets. The moon gave relief to the otherwise black lane and what parts of the sky remained visible above the roofline dipped low, coarse with dust and pollution, fibrous as cotton in my aching throat. The ground shifted, rising to meet my knees, and I caught myself for a second time, scratching my palms on a derelict pickup's rusted bumper.

"I don't know what's wrong with you two. Rick might need to go to a hospital, he's not responding and he's sweating all over me—." Tara panted, bent beneath Rick's limp weight, her eyes blown wide and frightened. I sat on the bumper and tried to rub the spots from my vision.

"What in the hell was in those drinks? You didn't even have that much! Rick did, but of course we can't expect Rick to abstain—oh no, that might be the responsible thing to do—!" Tara took one breath, and then another, before lowering her insentient fiance to the ground next to me. His head lolled on his slumped shoulder, his eyes moving rapidly behind his shut lids. "I think I'm going to call an ambulance. Neither of you look well at all and—where the fuck is my phone?!"

Tara, wrist deep in her purse, dumped its contents with another outraged curse. Being small and roughly the size of a paperback, the clutch didn't have much room; her wallet and stray coins bounced on the asphalt, followed by a compact, a gum packet, a tube of lipstick, and two balled up receipts. No phone. A little orange pill bottle rattled and rolled until it touched my foot, and I plucked it from the ground with dirty fingers.

"What...are these for?" I brought the prescription to my face but couldn't focus. Tara snatched the bottle away before I could ask again.

"Never mind, that doesn't matter. I've lost my phone, Sara, Christ—! Where's yours? Let me try calling mine...."

The buzzing returned full force to my skull and I clutched at my temple, grimacing, nausea crouching heavy and sullen atop my gut as the world refused to stop shifting. A panel van, white and unwashed with painted windows and a rolling door, trundled along the service road. Its headlights pierced the gloom and I squinted in the glare as Tara knelt in front of me and began shuffling through the purse still slung about my arm. The van stopped.

The headlights went out just as Tara exhumed my phone. I glimpsed her profile—washed out by worry, yet familiar, pleasant, determined—before the alley plunged into darkness again. It felt all the thicker for the night's musty heat and the thrumming car engine. The van's door creaked and clattered upon its rail, stopping at a solid thump. Tara paid the vehicle no mind, but I did; I glanced over her shoulder as she used my phone and, when she managed to unlock it, the paltry glow illuminated the hulking outline of a masked man wielding a syringe.

Clarity struck like the first gasp stolen by an emerging diver. "Tara—!"

Too late. He struck with speed, covered arm cinching around her throat and under her shoulder, pinning Tara as the phone slipped between her startled fingers and cracked upon the pavement. The needle plunged into her neck and Tara shrieked.

I couldn't move; trapped between the immobile heap at my back and my own sister, I lunged to the side, scraping my bare legs when they crumpled. Vertigo threatened and weakened my knees—but I threw myself forward, away from the gloved hand reaching out, away from the man now holding my twin's sagging weight.

Tara! Tara, what do I do? I have to—!

A second masked man approached from the alley that led toward the city proper and blocked off any prospective escape, though I'd no intention of leaving Tara behind. He jumped forward and I jerked away, falling hard, pain radiating through my elbow where it connected with the ground. Half-blind and terrified, I lashed out, kicking at the hands fumbling for a grip. My heel connected with his groin and the man lurched, clasping the affected area as air rushed from his lungs.

Scrambling, I flung myself at the first thug hauling Tara toward the waiting van. We collided and I yelled, wordless, his back hitting the van's side with an audible bang. Moments passed, moments stretched taut, seeming to go on forever, yet not long enough. What could I do? What could I do? The second man snatched hold of my hair, jerking my head back, while the first recovered and yanked Tara through the van's open door.

"No—!" A hand gripped my mouth and smothered the rising scream. I bit down.

The man bellowed as the taste of copper poured across my tongue and my teeth scraped against bone. He tore himself free and I threw an elbow into his ribs, feeling his wet breath on the back of my neck, his fingers tearing through my hair and scratching my scalp. A pained sound escaped him. I slipped from his grasp and bolted for the alley, legs unsteady, lungs heaving, ready to scream for someone—anyone—to help us.

A sudden blow to my back thrust me forward and off my feet. My skull hit the brick wall with a terrifying crack!, stars bursting into relief, mouth filled with iron and vision hollowing to mere pinpricks of light. As I sank to the asphalt, the darkness swelled, and it consumed those stars one by one until nothing was left at all.