"That's not it," Nayra said as she entered the room.
Both of them turned.
She stood in the doorway in sleep shorts, an oversized shirt, and the kind of expression that meant she had either overheard something, solved something, or become a national problem in under ten minutes. At eleven, with black hair and black eyes like Chris and a mind that had begun arranging itself into something far too sharp for anyone's peace, she looked offensively awake for the hour.
Chris narrowed his eyes first. "Why are you not in bed?"
Nayra leaned one shoulder against the frame with infuriating calm. "Because Jax stole Mr. Pepper from my room, and I came to retrieve him, but now I see you're doing conspiracy without me."
Dax glanced down automatically.
Jax, asleep in his lap, had indeed trapped a bedraggled stuffed pepper-shaped toy under one arm like captured territory.
Chris pinched the bridge of his nose. "That is not the point."
"No," Nayra said. "The point is that you're wrong."
