DAHLIA MUST BE ROYALTY for her family to have been able to afford all of this. Her house is gigantic, several stories all built on stilts, with a shady space beneath it where several mini buses are parked. She parks Bertha in this space, and we climb out. The pavement beneath my feet is cracked and caked in sand.

Ezra and I gravitate towards the other side of the building, where two outdoor baths have been built right up against the beach. Sugary white sand stretches for miles before meeting the crystal clear water. The salty air and crashing of waves reminds me of home.

Dahlia joins us. We stand there for a moment, looking at the view and licking at our cones of vegan ice cream as it melts and runs down our hands. Then we head up up a set of rickety white stairs. We pass several doors before she pushes open the one that she'd been looking for and ushers us all inside, out of the heat. Cold air washes over me, sweet-smelling and enticing.

There's the ck-ck-ck of animal claws against tile floor as two large golden dogs bombard us. They lick at Dahlia, jumping up on their hind legs, and curiously sniff at Ezra and me.

"Oh, hi, babies, hi, my babies," Dahlia croons. "This is Oakley and Dante. You guys aren't allergic, are you?"

"I love dogs," I assure her, giving each of them a good scratch behind the ears. The one she points out as Oakley is smaller than the other, with shorter, coarser, yellower fur. Dante is a bit bigger, his hair longer, softer, and slightly browned.

Dahlia slides her sandals off, placing them inside a wicker bin by the door. "You guys can go ahead and take your shoes off. Or leave them on, if you want. It's your life, who am I to tell you what to do?"

To be polite, I take my own shoes off, and place them inside the bin. Ezra does the same. The floor is cool white squares lined in brown.

The dogs follow us as she shows us around, first showing us her bedroom, which is full of dark jewel tones, the scent of incense lingering on the curtains and bedsheets. She points out a clear tank on her dresser, inside of which is a small-ish snake—a literal snake, I can't make this up—with vibrant red and orange patterns on its skin. Its tongue flicks in and out of its mouth, flashing pink. Lining the outside of the cage are several crystals in varying sizes and colors.

"His name is Malfoy," Dahlia explains, with pride in her voice. "He's so stupid, look at him."

"He has a name?" I ask.

"Of course. Do you guys wanna hold him?"

"Will he bite?"

"Only if you hurt him."

She lifts the top off his tank, and gently reaches inside. Closing her hands around his sides, she offers him to Ezra.

"Yeah, that's a no from me."

"Coward." She rolls her eyes and turns to me instead. "Be gentle," she explains, "and just kinda let him do his thing. He's my little explorer, so he's gonna try to climb all over you. He just wants to check you out."

She rests the snake in my outspread hands. I recoil at the feeling of scales against my skin, but I refuse to do anything that could startle him, like flinching. He climbs up my arms and into my hair, then down my face and around my shoulders, resting around my neck. As he hangs there, his tongue keeps flicking out.

"He likes you!" Dahlia exclaims. "Look at that! That's so cute! He's saying mlem-mlem-mlem, Antigone, I wuvva you!"

His fangs seep into the space between my thumb and forefinger. A jolt of low-level electric pain—like stepping on a thorn—knocks through me.

"I don't think he likes me very much, actually," I say.

He's latched on and is refusing to let go, so I hover my free hand over his head, ready to pull him off.

"Woah there!" Dahlia exclaims. "Don't do that, hun—you'll just make the bite all nasty. Ezra, stay with her. I'll be right back." And then she leaves us there, me with her pet snake's teeth still in my skin.

"We saw snake bites so often at the hospital I used to volunteer at," Ezra tells me. "One time, this guy came in, 'cause a python literally bit his penis. Don't ask me what he was doing near a python with his dick out, but—"

"Pythons literally make me so angry." Dahlia has returned, carrying a large vial of a liquid as otherworldly blue as her hair. "You know they're not even native to Florida, right? They're an invasive species. And yet they're all literally anyone thinks of when they think of snakes and Florida, 'cause so many overconfident white people thought they could handle a python as a pet and released it into the wild when it started gettin' too big for the cage they bought at Petsmart."

As she's speaking, she unscrews the vial, tosses the cap to the floor, and pours it over my hand and Malfoy's head. His jaws spring loose. I shake my hand out. Dahlia grabs hold of him and tenderly puts him back in his cage, tightly closing the lid.

"Naughty, naughty boy," she chastises.

"Y'know, that's what the guy did to get the python off his dick, too. He had some mouthwash laying around and, apparently, had read somewhere on the internet that it'll make snakes leave you alone or whatever." Ezra holds out his hands. "Let mama see the bite."

I place my hand in his outstretched ones. Dahlia leans over us to get a glance for herself. There's a small ring where the snake bit me, a couple pinpricks of blood.

"Ooooh, boy." Dahlia pales. "Oh, boy, there's blood."

The sight of my own blood hadn't phased me. I've seen more of it, much more of it, in much more perilous places. But Dahlia's reaction to the bite shoots panic into my bloodstream, icy as poison. She knows more about the snake than I do. She knows he's venomous. She knows this bite is going to kill me.

"Is he venomous?" I ask. "Dahlia, am I going to die?"

"What? No!" Shakily, she turns away from me. "Corn snakes aren't venomous. You're gonna be fine."

"Then why do you look so freaked out?"

"I'm scared of blood!" she explains. "Jesus, I just—Jesus. That's a lot of blood."

"It's just a little bit of blood," Ezra counters, rolling his eyes at Dahlia. "You'll be fine. You just need to wash it off and get a bandaid. Dahlia, where's the bathroom?"

Already the bite's faded, my skin's healed itself. All that remains are a few dots of blood.

"No, it's fine," I tell him, wiping the blood off on my shirt. "It's already healed. What's a bandaid?"

"Oh, my God, right," says Dahlia, her face clammy. The expression she has on her face—it's like she knows there's a corpse in the room; she just hasn't decided if it's me or her. "She's a—whatever, daddy knocked up some mortal woman, yeah? Hey, I know: how about I show you guys the rest of the place? C'mon."

Next is her bathroom, then her moms' room and their bathroom, then the kitchen and living room, and the guest bedroom, and finally the balcony, overlooking the water. We stand out there for a while, with our arms dangling over the railing. Out on the horizon, a sailboat floats on the water.

I'm still no closer to knowing which of them I need to kill. I'm all the further away from thinking I would actually be able to do it. I went out for vegan ice cream with Dahlia and Ezra; how could I kill someone I got vegan ice cream with? Marisol braided my hair; how could I kill someone that braided my hair, with her fingers so soft and gentle, and her voice like melting sunlight?

How can I not, and let my mother die?

"Can you guys do anything weird?" I ask, to get the conversation going, to try and narrow down the playing field. "Like how I can heal myself and turn things to wine. Or how Marisol thinks she's a little bit psychic."

"I can put both my legs behind my head," Ezra offers.

"How'd you find that out?" Dahlia replies.

"If that was your fish to fry, you would have fried it!"

"What the fuck does that mean?!"

"But, like, seriously," I say. "Wouldn't that be cool?"

"Well, I can do this." Dahlia shows us her right hand, with her forefinger and middle finger pressed together, and her ring finger and pinkie in the same way. "I can also knot a cherry stem with my tongue."

"That is the gayest mother-effing thing I've ever heard," says Ezra.

"Obviously, you've never heard yourself speak," she retorts. "Now show us the leg thing."