I gave Alyx the maximum-power raised right eyebrow. The one that makes the nuns renounce their vows. ‘‘No. Not Cassie.’’

Then my mouth got ahead of my brain. ‘‘Girls don’t go onstage.’’ Not good girls. Only girls who have something to market.

‘‘We can if we want!’’ Petulant.

Alyx Weider is as spoiled a kid as ever came up in TunFaire. And that’s all her father’s fault.

Max indulged her not only because she was the baby of the family but because of his failures with her older siblings. Like he thought if he invested enough he could buy one perfect kid.

Why not? He’d been able to buy everything else he’d ever wanted since he’d gotten rich.

Alyx wasn’t half as rotten as she ought to be, the way she’d been raised.

‘‘You’re not being nice!’’

‘‘Alyx, what I am is shutting up and listening.’’ Which I proceeded to do with grand determination and limited success.

‘‘Daddy is building a theater. A big one. He already told us we could be stars. Tinnie knows somebody who can write us a play.’’

I leaned back and turned. My eyebrow query failed to knock Miss Tate down. She must be developing an immunity. ‘‘Jon Salvation,’’ she said.

‘‘The Remora? You’re kidding.’’

‘‘He’s good. He wrote a comedy about the fairy queen Eastern Star.’’

‘‘I was talking!’’ Alyx snapped. ‘‘You told me you’d be quiet and listen.’’

‘‘Being quiet, Alyx. Listening raptly.’’

Miss Weider offered a halfhearted, grotesquely inappropriate head butt that would’ve taken out the lynchpin of my fantasy life if I hadn’t been a trained martial artist-type. Tinnie growled. She cuts Alyx a lot of slack because they’re ancient friends and their families are in business together, but she has her limits.

She snarled, ‘‘Goddamnit, Alyx! Cut the shit! Talk!’’

Bobbi and Lindy were amused—the way bettors around a dogfight pit might be amused by the antics of future combatants.