I landed on a dark street with little tendrils of fog curling up everywhere and immediately dropped into a defensive crouch. I looked around wildly for a second, breathing hard and feeling very confused. Maybe because, a second ago, I’d been plummeting through the middle of a huge forest, headed toward my death.
          The forest had been on Faerie and like nothing I’d ever seen. A cathedral of wood instead of stone, it had boasted trunks as big around as apartment buildings, as well as crazed fey, flying spells, and a dangerously flimsy path of forest gunk and prayer that had stretched between the branches and offered a fragile lifeline. One that I’d managed to miss.
          But there was no forest here, or screaming allies, or murderous fey. Or much of anything else except for cold fog, mildewed bricks and mucky cobblestones. The latter had sent something squelching up through my toes that might have come from the back end of a horse, but I was too freaked out to worry about it.
          I told myself to calm down, but my brain was stuck in fight or flight mode and ignored me. The only thing it suggested involved running down the street screaming, which showed what it was good for. So, I just stayed in my crouch, trying not to hyperventilate, and waited for an attack that didn’t come.
          After a while, I started to feel a little silly. And even more confused, because I wasn’t dripping in blood or covered in ashes. I should have been both, considering that I’d just helped to rescue a master vampire and a war mage from an army of fey, while dual wielding sabers and dressed like a pirate.
          It had been a strange day, even for me.
          I was still dressed the part, in knee-length, frilly bloomers meant to be worn as underthings in the Edwardian era, which was where I’d picked them up. And a lace shirt that had seen better days since it used to be the top half of a dress. And a fey sword belt, only the swords were missing.
          I must have dropped them in the fall, which left me with no weapons. And it wasn’t like I could kick someone to death, since I was barefoot. Probably just as well since all the grime on my feet and legs kept me from seeing how bruised and scratched-up they were.
          Otherwise, I seemed fine.
          Yeah, sure.
          Because that was how my life went, right?
          My name is Cassie Palmer, and I have the dubious honor of being Pythia, AKA time’s bitch. My official title is Chief Seer of the Supernatural World, but thanks to the current war, I do less Seeing and more running around the timeline like a crazed chicken, trying to keep it from making forays into unchartered territory thanks to our enemies. Only this time, I had been the one venturing through time, trying to help a friend.
          It hadn’t gone well.
          It had started out simply enough: retrieve a little goat-like creature—some weird sort of fey—from a castle in Romania, where he was being held against his will. And considering that I’d been taking a master vampire and a next-level war mage, two powerhouses of the magical world, along with me, you’d think that would be fairly easy, right?
          No.
          No, it would not.
          The castle was in the eighteenth century, a difficult time jump on its own, which meant that I couldn’t take along additional back up. And the tumbled down structure had turned out to be stuffed to the rafters with time traveling fey, under the command of a king whose capitol we’d recently helped to destroy. And the king himself, a gigantic prick named Aeslinn, was currently possessed by the spirit of an elder god and looking for some payback.
          So, yeah.
          The usual, then.
          What had followed was a whirlwind of activity: a desperate escape from the enemy-filled castle into the time stream, a mad flight back to modern day Las Vegas, and then something like a hand, reaching out of nothing, to snatch me right back in again. It hadn’t snatched Mircea, the vampire in question, or the odd little fey that we’d somehow succeeded in rescuing. It also hadn’t grabbed John Pritkin, my lover and the best war mage I knew. But it had gotten me, and had almost caused me to become unstuck in time.
          Since that would have resulted in a perpetual free-fall through the centuries—essentially a death sentence—I had been a little concerned. Fortunately, I’d been caught by a member of my court before that happened. Being Pythia had its drawbacks, but the savvy women I worked with weren’t among them.
          This one’s name was Hilde, and she’d forgotten more about this job than I’d ever known. That wasn’t surprising since she was pushing two hundred, while I’d barely managed to survive twenty-four years and wasn’t looking likely to see twenty-five. And she’d needed every bit of her knowledge and experience to wrestle me back from a vengeful god.
          Even then, she couldn’t hold onto me, but she could change my direction, sending me screaming through time at her sister, the Edwardian Pythia named Gertie. Who had caught and grounded me, because Gertie was awesome like that. And thus, she’d thwarted godly attack number one.
          Attacks number two and three had quickly followed, but I’d survived those, too, thanks to Gertie and her court—and to Pritkin and Mircea. The latter two weren’t there, or even in Vegas anymore, having followed the goat through the city to a hidden portal. Apparently, the crazed little thing had not viewed what we’d done as a rescue, but as just another kidnapping.
          I guessed Mircea hadn’t had time to explain that he didn’t want to hurt him. He just wanted to ask some questions about his long-lost wife, who the goat guy had apparently been friends with. Mircea was trying to find out what had happened to her, and the little creature was his only lead.
          So, when it ran, he and Pritkin followed—all the way to Faerie.
          Yet, despite being a hundred years and a world away, they had managed to save me. Or we’d saved each other, I guessed, since we were currently in a spell together—called Lover’s Knot—which allowed us to share power. But nothing in magic is free, and this spell came with a major caveat: if one of us died, we all did.
          So, that had been a close one.
          But shortly thereafter, I’d been on my way again, looking for answers. Not because I wanted to be, and not just because I had a vengeful god on my ass. But because he was three hundred years back in time with a damned army.
          The god in question—crafty old Zeus—had been joy riding around the timeline, having hitchhiked on my shift to allow him abilities he shouldn’t have had. But once our fight was over, he’d been pulled back to his starting point—AKA eighteenth century Romania. Which was where another time traveler had dropped him off before I’d stumbled across him.
          I’d killed the bastard in question, a necromancer named Jonathan, a while ago, but now it looked like I had to clean up his mess. I didn’t know how he’d managed to transport an army three hundred years back in time, but I needed to find out. And to decide what to do about it—and about Zeus, and about Aeslinn, and about whatever the hell they’d managed to screw up in the past.
          Only that was proving to be a real bitch.
          Pythias were the guardians of time, but that usually meant chasing down individual time jumpers—dark mages up to no good, cultists out to change the world, or reckless grifters trying to make a buck. That was bad enough, as you never knew what small change could send the timeline veering madly off course. Like a spark on dry tinder, it could quickly turn into a conflagration.
          But a possessed fey king with hundreds of soldiers, three hundred years back in time?
          That was already a five-alarm fire.
          And it was my fire, whether I liked it or not. So, my first stop had been old Romania, for some sleuthing into what Zeus had been doing there. What I’d found had posed more questions than answers, but it had led me to stop number two: medieval Ireland. Where I’d discovered Aeslinn, the possessed fey king and Zeus’s current best buddy, up to no good. And then . . .
          Well, then it got weird.
          Because I hadn’t traveled through time to Ireland. I’d traveled through the mind. More specifically, I’d traveled through something called an imprint.
          Imprints were someone’s memories which had been carved into a physical item by trauma, like grooves being etched onto a record. And like a record, they could be replayed by someone with the talent. But my talent hadn’t extended far enough to control all the imprints that had been left on the arrow that I’d picked up at that damned castle, so Gertie had brought in an expert, a part-fey named Guinn, to help me out.
          Guinn and I had entered the imprint to view what had happened in the past as if we were watching a movie. Only imprints were usually less movie-quality and more like bad surveillance camera footage—a few seconds of lousy video and maybe a scratchy sound track. Often, it was hard to tell what was going on.
          Not this time.
          This time, I’d gotten full-color and Dolby surround sound. The memory had also been in 3-D, allowing Guinn and I to walk around as if we were really there. We hadn’t been able to interact with anyone or to change anything, but it had seemed completely real.
          Kind of like this place.
          I glanced around again. A line of dark houses hedged the street on either side, with soot-stained bricks, crumbling steps, and cracked windows. One hazy, gas-type streetlamp was valiantly battling the gloom—and losing. As a result, I couldn’t make out much else, even when the dark, low-lying clouds overhead parted a little, leaving things momentarily less murky. But I knew one thing: this wasn’t Faerie.
          A breeze came by, making me shiver, but I didn’t move. I didn’t understand what was going on, and I needed to. I needed to badly!
          Because I hadn’t stayed in Ireland.
          I’d had some fairly pressing questions about what Guinn and I had witnessed, leading me to try to access Pritkin’s mind to ask him about it. A younger version of the war mage I knew had featured prominently in the imprint, so I’d thought he might be able to help me out. And since he and I were currently able to use Mircea’s gift for mind-to-mind communication, it hadn’t seemed like that big of a deal.
          But I’d forgotten something: Lover’s Knot was a soul bond. Pritkin, Mircea and I were able to share abilities since, as far as our magic was concerned, we weren’t three people anymore. We were one.
          The spell essentially melded our spirits for as long as we were under its power, ensuring that, when I tried to visit Pritkin’s mind, I didn’t just contact him mentally. My soul reached out through the spell, maybe part of it, maybe all of it—the jury was still out. But some aspect of my spirit had entered Faerie—
          And then so had the rest of me. Because Faerie doesn’t have spirits. Their universe works under different rules than ours, and any souls who venture in, as my one-time ghostly companion Billy Joe once discovered, end up being clothed in flesh.
          And so had I. My body had abruptly landed in the world of the fey, leaving me seriously confused since it was supposed to be snoozing in front of a fireplace at Gertie’s. And because I didn’t know the damned rules anymore!
          I didn’t know if I had two bodies now, or if Faerie had pulled in my old one along with my spirit. I didn’t know if I had half a soul or a whole. And, more importantly, I didn’t know if I could die like this, and if I did, whether it would doom Mircea and Pritkin as well.
          So, yeah, I had some freaking questions!
          The dark street, however, was not forthcoming. It was clammy and uncomfortable, with waves of fog that curled about my limbs like sodden silk. They felt entirely real, as did the cold stones under my feet. But then, so did everything in what was called the Common.
          Which, unless I was very much mistaken, was where I was.
          The Common, as Guinn had explained it, was the reason that fey imprints were so much more impressive than human ones—because it wasn’t just one mind making them. The fey had some kind of collective consciousness that I didn’t understand. Or maybe subconsciousness would be a better term, since even they were often unaware of it.
          Guinn had said that fey souls were tied to their bodies in a way that human ones simply weren’t, which was why they didn’t leave ghosts. Their souls could not survive without a body, and were only freed from that union once their physical form melted back into the soil of their home world. Then they rejoined some kind of uber soul, that of Faerie itself, where they stayed until their world felt like putting them into another body and pushing them back out again.
          It was very odd.
          But the result was that, sometimes, living fey received brief flashes of past lives: from their own former selves, from ancestors, even from friends. They were all part of the same soul, and linked on some level. These flashes, however, were usually pretty minor—a snippet of a song they’d never heard, a taste of a food they’d never eaten, or the memory of what lay down a path they’d never walked. It was the sort of thing that brought a wistful smile to the face, or prompted a feeling of wonder and joy at how connected everything was.
          Only I wasn’t feeling so joyful.
          I’d been getting flashes of this group consciousness ever since I landed in Faerie. And it hadn’t been the usual quick snippets about a flower or something. I’d been going on panoramic adventures, which had started out fun and then gotten really scary, really fast. I wanted off this ride, particularly now, when I didn’t know where my body was or what was happening to it while my mind was off in La-La Land, or maybe I’d finally had a psychotic break.
          Let’s face it, I was due.
          So, I was fifty-fifty on what I was looking at here, particularly since my previous visions had mostly been of places and people inside of Faerie. Which was what you’d expect, since they were supposedly the memories of millions of dead fey. So, what was a street straight out of Charles Dickens doing in there?
          I didn’t know, and it was creeping me out.
          I told myself to get a grip and strained my ears, hoping for a little extra information. But all I heard was what might have been a ship’s horn sounding in the distance. There was no other noise, with the fog muffling any city clamor as if a fuzzy blanket had been draped over the world. And nothing moved except for the surface of a nearby puddle, shivering in the breeze.
          Until a horse-drawn carriage came racing down the street, and almost ran me down.
          I managed to stumble back at the last second, but it caused my already overloaded adrenal system to start screaming internally. Not one more thing! Not one more goddamned—
          Wait.
          Was that Pritkin?
          I’d ended up on the sidewalk, where the streetlamp was shedding a hazy circle of light. It blinded me for a moment, dim though it was, and made me wonder if I was seeing things. But that sure looked like him, stumbling out of an alley at the end of the road.
          I moved out of the light and there was just no doubt at all. I felt my heart leap in my chest as I started running toward him, almost dizzy with relief. Only to stop in confusion after barely a couple of steps.
          Because there were two of him.
          I hadn’t noticed the second man until then, who had been hidden by the shadow of a building. Which he’d just been thrown into, I assumed, since he peeled himself off the sooty bricks, leaving a slightly paler outline behind. And launched himself . . . at himself.
          The two Pritkins staggered back into the street, kicking, punching and spell throwing. Meanwhile, a cloud of magical weapons circled overhead, occasionally glinting in a spare beam of light. They weren’t taking part in this, having been enchanted to never harm their owner.
          And they didn’t seem to know who that was, any more than I did.
          Both men were blond, green-eyed and muscular, with fair skin that had a slight tan from the Vegas sun, and probably more than a slight flush from anger. I couldn’t tell for sure about the latter, since the dim light leeched them of color, leaving them looking almost black and white. And their clothes didn’t help me tell them apart, either.
          They were both wearing dirty, sweat-stained, eighteenth-century shirts, gray breeches and worn vests. In other words, the same thing that Pritkin had had on at that castle, where this whole thing started. And where he’d been playing the part of my and Mircea’s coachman.
          And, sure enough, right on cue, I spotted a couple of old, blue coachman’s coats flung over some nearby steps, probably to allow their owners to pummel each other more effectively.
          So, what was this?
          “Pritkin?” I said cautiously, and both men’s heads jerked up.
          One of them slammed an elbow savagely into the other’s face, causing him to stagger back. And before he could recover, a coat went flying off the steps, and it didn’t seem to have the same reservations about entering the fight that the weapons had. It wrapped around the wounded man like a strait jacket, including his head, and sent him stumbling about blindly.
          Meanwhile, the victor came running—straight at me.
          Considering everything that had happened lately, I decided that backing up was justified. I didn’t know what I was dealing with; I didn’t know who I was dealing with. And the Jack the Ripper ambiance wasn’t helping!
          But then the familiar face changed as the man came closer, and it was filled with such surprise, such relief, such joy . . . that I found myself stopping my retreat and even starting toward him instead.
          That was stupid, but I didn’t care. I’d been so worried, and he’d looked so lifeless, back at the fey camp. To see him up and moving around and happy—it was everything I’d dared to hope for.
          He caught me and spun me around, like some ridiculous scene in a movie, and I didn’t care about that, either. “We made it? We actually made it?” I asked, gripping his head with my hands.
          And then I kissed him before he could answer.
          It was Pritkin; I’d know that kiss anywhere. He had a two-day old beard that was rough and bristly against my palms, his breath wasn’t the best, and he smelled like sweat and spent magic. And I’d never been happier to see anyone in my life!
          We didn’t break apart until a second coach came rumbling by, causing us to run further onto the sidewalk. And it was then that I caught sight of another familiar face, only this one wasn’t quite so pretty. Nigel, the hulking part-fey I’d seen in one of the visions from the Common, was standing in front of a house down the street. I recognized him by his clothes, having never seen his face.
          It wasn’t a particularly attractive face, now that I did get a look at it, nor did it show any signs of his fey heritage. It was almost flat—nose, chin and forehead—as if he’d run into a wall a few times, and was attached to a tall, stoop shouldered body that looked like it was accustomed to having to bend to fit through doorways. It was topped off with dark, greasy-looking hair, which didn’t appear to have been washed any more often than his clothes.
          But him being there confirmed where I was, at least.
          “We’re in the Common?” I asked Pritkin. “Why? What happened?”
          He took my face between his hands and kissed me again before answering. Which already told me that I wasn’t going to like what I heard. Green eyes met mine when we broke apart, and there was grief in them, but also fire.
          “We made it,” he said, answering my previous question. “Mircea and I. You didn’t. The vines caught you, but the Svarestri reached you before we could. You’re with Aeslinn now.”




          I took a moment to absorb that, but it didn’t work. The pavement felt like it had just been jerked out from under me, like a rug. Pritkin caught me when I stumbled, and then summoned the other coat and put it around me.
          “Why am I alive, then?” It came out harsh, but I couldn’t help it. Going from relief and elation one second, to terror and dread the next had restricted my vocal cords, as if my throat had been caught in a mailed fist. I was just glad that my voice hadn’t broken halfway through.
          If Pritkin noticed, he didn’t comment, and he also didn’t sugarcoat his answer. Most people would have played for time, or struggled with what to say, or downplayed the danger to make me feel better. Pritkin was not one of those people.
          He believed in having all possible information in order to deal with a crisis, even if it wasn’t information you liked. Which is why he just told me. “He’s offered a trade. Blasted it through the forest. You for me.”
          I stared at him for a second, unsure that I’d heard right. “What? Why? If he strips my soul, he can bring back the gods—right now. He can have everything he wants—right now.”
          That was my prevailing theory: that Zeus wanted to get the old gods back to Earth and needed my power to help him. Or, to be more precise, he needed the Pythian power, a store of godly energy once gifted to the Pythias by the god Apollo, which had since become rather independent-minded. It allied with the Pythias; it didn’t obey us. But I assumed that it would obey Zeus, that it would have to after he drained my soul, giving him my access to Apollo’s power.
          Why he needed it I didn’t know, since he was a god himself. But since he hadn’t yet torn down the barrier that my mother, better known as the goddess Artemis, had put up to cut off Earth and Faerie from the realm of the gods, I assumed that he did. It all made sense.
          Except for his weird obsession with Pritkin. Aeslinn, Zeus’s current ride, had been hunting him in Ireland long before meeting me or any other Pythia. And Aeslinn’s people had just captured him in Faerie and put a crap ton of guards around him, ones who’d obviously had the fear of God—or a god, at least—put into them.
          So, what did a fey king and the king of the gods want so badly with a war mage?
          I had no idea, and Pritkin didn’t look like it made any more sense to him.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s obviously a trap of some kind, but I can’t figure out Aeslinn’s play. If the gods return, he doesn’t need to worry about the rest of us. There won’t be anything that I, or anyone else, can do to stop him. And he has you, meaning that he has the power he needs in his grip. Yet he’s given us until dawn—”
          “Dawn?”
          “—so we have time.”
          “How much time?”
          He did hesitate then. “Perhaps three hours.” I stared at him. “We’ve worked with less,” he said fiercely.
          Yeah.
          Yeah.
          I felt sick again, and must have looked it, too. Because he led me over to the steps in front of a house. It was good to sit; my head felt swimmy and my stomach was making unhappy churning motions.
          Maybe the gods were used to this kind of breakneck pace, but I wasn’t one of them. I was a freaked out little demigoddess and I wanted a bath. And a meal. And a stiff drink, but I wasn’t likely to get any of them.
          I settled for dragging Pritkin’s coat closer about me. “And Rhea?” I said, asking about my heir, who had gotten pulled into this along with me. “Guinn?”
          “Safe. While you were freeing us, they encountered a dark fey refugee group. They have a hidden base not far away from the camp, which they’ve been using to raid the Svarestri. When they saw us attempting to escape, they pitched in to help.”
          “You’re sure you can trust them?” I didn’t trust anyone in Faerie right now.
          “Guinn seems to think so, and they have a contingent of trolls with them.”
          I blinked at him. “Is that . . . good?”
          “If you wish to know which side a group is on, yes. To the Svarestri, trolls are the most corrupted form of life. They don’t even consider them sentient, merely beasts of burden. They would not be working with them.”
          I felt my spine unclench slightly. At least something had gone right tonight. “And Mircea?”
          Pritkin hesitated again. “He’s . . . unhappy.”
          “Meaning?” I asked, since that word didn’t sound like Mircea. Master vampires didn’t do unhappy—or any other tepid emotion. Especially that one, and especially after the last few days.
          “When I left, there were six large trolls sitting on top of him,” Pritkin admitted. “The pallet they put him on looked like a boat on the high seas—”
          “A boat?”
          “He would rage and buck and almost throw them off, and they would ride it out. Trolls are, for the most part, stoic creatures, but it looked like he was making an impression. I do not believe they had met a master vampire before.”
          I frowned. “What in the world was he trying to do?”
          “Go back to the fey camp—”
          “What?”
          “He was . . . fairly insistent,” Pritkin said dryly. “Which was obviously absurd. He has a heart wound and is half exsanguinated. If they took his head or sliced through his jugular—”
          “It would kill him.” I felt a shiver go through me.
          “As I pointed out. But he is stubborn—”
          “Always was.”
          “—and I could travel faster on my own in any case.”
          “I—what?” It took me a second. “Wait. You weren’t planning to give yourself up—”
          “Oh, no. It was far dumber than that,” someone said.
          I looked up to find the other Pritkin, with a swelling jaw and a nose that looked slightly off-kilter, standing just out of reach. Which turned out to be a good thing, since my Pritkin immediately launched himself at him. But the second man had expected that and disappeared, only to rematerialize a second later on the steps beside me.
          He reached down and pulled me up in front of him, while my Pritkin picked himself off the road.
          “Don’t you hurt her,” my Pritkin seethed. “Don’t you dare.”
          “Hurt her? I saved her—”
          “You’ve never saved anyone in your life! You selfish, self-centered, narcissistic prick—”
          “Narcissistic? Brother, that hurts.”
          The comment had been lightly mocking, perhaps intended to soften the mood. But if so, it was a serious miscalculation. My Pritkin gave what could only be described as a roar and hurled himself at us, at magically enhanced speed.
          But the other man was even quicker, shifting us to the opposite side of the street as easily as if he’d had Pythian powers. Which, if he was who I suspected, maybe he did. Or maybe—
          “This is all in our heads,” he confirmed, before I could ask.
          “So, we are in the Common.”
          “Mentally, yes. Physically, we don’t know where you are.”
          “And you kidnapped her mind, dragging us in here, before we could find out!” my Pritkin said, appearing out of nowhere.
          I had a sudden wash of sympathy for my vampire bodyguards, who tended to freak out whenever anyone shifted in beside them. The Pythian power allowed for spatial movements as well as ones through time, but they could be a little startling. Some of the guys had gotten used to it, at least enough not to shriek whenever it happened, but others never had, even after all these months.
          Maybe because it wasn’t just the visual shock of seeing someone appear out of thin air. It was also the air itself, which was displaced by abruptly having a body in it, and blew over you in a wave. And the fact that Pritkin didn’t give proper space like Gertie and others I’d had flash in beside me, but appeared all of a few inches away.
          It made me want to run screaming again, and I wasn’t even the one he was threatening.
          “You weren’t going to find out,” his doppelganger replied, dodging behind me. “You were going to get us both killed—”
          “Typical!” It was biting. “With what we’re facing, that’s what has you worried—”
          “Yes! Yes, it is. Excuse me for not wanting to die like a simpleton!” The doppelganger looked at me. “He was planning to sneak around the fey camp, to discover where they’re holding you. Which would have resulted in them capturing us and keeping you to boot. We’d have lost our lives and gained nothing—”
          “As opposed to sitting on the sidelines and also gaining nothing, whilst the gods return and slaughter us all!” My Pritkin said furiously.
          “I am not sitting on the sidelines! I have a plan—”
          “Yes, to keep yourself safe at her expense. You’d rather see her die than risk—”
          “Careful brother.” It was low that time, and menacing, with none of the Puckish good humor that this Pritkin had shown before.
          “I am not your brother!”
          “Wait!” I said, getting an arm on each man’s chest and pushing them apart. “Wait.”
          To my surprise, they waited.
          I had about a thousand questions, but went with the easiest first. “Who are you?” I asked the other Pritkin. I thought I knew, but wanted to be sure.
          “You know who I am,” he said impatiently. “Or did you forget all our times together? Almost dying in Wales, almost dying in London, almost dying in Faerie . . . all right, I can see your point—”
          “Don’t believe anything he says,” my Pritkin cut in. “He’s a lying bastard!”
          “I have never lied to Cassie!” the other man said. I looked at him. “All right, I might have exaggerated a few things, in a good cause—”
          “But who are you?”
          “For pity’s sake! I’m him! The incubus part of him, at any—”
          “I know that!” I cut him off. “But how does this work?”
          I looked back and forth between the two men, and just the visuals made my head hurt. Things were happening too fast, and I was feeling more and more like my brain might have had the right idea from the start. Running screaming was starting to look like a plan.
          “Have you ever heard of someone being of two minds about something?” the incubus asked.
          “I—yes,” I said, trying to focus. “I guess so.”
          “Well, it’s like that, only worse. Infinitely worse.”
          “I don’t understand,” I said, because I really, really didn’t.
          “We can discuss this later—” my Pritkin said. And then cut off when his coat, which was around my shoulders, suddenly flew up into the air like a wooly bat. He looked at the incubus with furious, narrowed eyes. “Don’t even think—”
          And then he was staggering into the street, the blue assailant wrapped around his head and pummeling him with its flat, empty arms.
          That would have been fine, and even vaguely funny—if a horse drawn bus hadn’t taken that moment to come thundering toward us.
          “Pritkin!” I screamed, and tried to shift him. But the incubus knocked my hand aside and the spell went wild, carving a chunk out of a nearby building and sending it smashing against the sidewalk on the other side of the road. And Pritkin—my Pritkin—stared at me through a rent in the coat from the back window of the crowded bus, which had somehow picked him up.
          And which was now taking him away.
          “What—” I began, only to be cut off by the incubus.
          “I shifted him on board, but none of this is real, remember? He’ll be fine.”
That had looked pretty real to me. “Bring him back!”
          “He’ll bring himself back soon enough. Look, we don’t have much time, so I’ll make this brief. I have a different point of view from my dear brother about how we should proceed—”
          “No,” I said flatly.
          “What?”
          “I said no. I’m not listening until you answer my question.”
          He looked confused. “What question?”
          “Who are you? Why should I believe anything you have to say if I don’t know anything about—”
          “I’m him. I’m me. I saved your life—”
          “You saved your life!” It was vicious, but I was past caring. “We’re linked—as you reminded me yourself. If you hadn’t saved me back in London, you’d have died, too. You’re going to have to do better than—”
          “All right, all right,” he said quickly, casting a worried look down the street, in the direction taken by the bus. “It isn’t all that difficult. You have two lungs, yes? Two eyes, two ears, two kidneys?”
          “What does that have to do with—”
          “Just answer the question!”
          “Yes!”
          “All right, would it be surprising, then, to learn that you have two brains, as well? The body tends to duplicate important organs whenever possible in case of injury. One kidney may not be optimal, but it will keep you alive. One eye might be vexing, at least for seeing three dimensionally, but you can still see.”
          “But we don’t have two minds—or two hearts,” I pointed out, struggling to see where he was going with this.
          “I’ll grant you the heart, although with the way the human venous system is set up, two hearts might do more harm than good. But you do have two minds—or two lobes which act quite independently—”
          “I do not,” I said, and crossed my arms, not buying any of this.
          “Everyone does!” the incubus said, running a hand through his spikey hair cut. “Haven’t you ever heard of Phineas Gage?”
          “Who?”
          “A construction foreman for the railroad in the nineteenth century. One day, his crew was blasting rock in Vermont to clear a path for a new line. Unfortunately for Gage, rock wasn’t the only thing that ended up being blasted. An iron rod was sent hurtling through his skull, obliterating much of his left frontal lobe in the process. He afterward became famous for having a complete change of personality.”
          I waited, but the incubus just looked at me. “And?” I finally said.
          “Do you not see? Destroying much of one side of his brain allowed the other to take over. And they had very different natures.”
          “That’s absurd. The poor man probably just had brain damage—”
          “Well, yes, he had a metal rod through his head, but that’s not the point.”
          “And do you have a—”
          “Yes! I have a point!”
          I waited.
          “All right,” he said, licking his lips nervously. Which was so weird to see from Pritkin that I almost did a double take. “What about this? When the corpus collosum—the bundle of nerves connecting the two halves of your brain—is severed, whether by an accident or on purpose—”
          “Why would anyone—”
          “To help with epileptic fits, and don’t interrupt me!” he said, a little shrilly.
          “Fine.”
          “When it is severed, the two brains—which is what your two lobes essentially are; we know this thanks to Gage and others who lived quite well with one or most of one destroyed—can no longer talk to each other directly. As a result, in experiments where a split-brain patient was asked to choose a colored block, the hand controlled by the left brain would often make a different choice than the hand controlled by the right. They had their own opinions, their own preferences, their own personalities, you see?”
          I frowned.
          “The two sides also can and often do argue with each other,” he continued. “One split-brain patient grabbed his wife in an argument and shook her aggressively with one hand, only to be fought off, not by his wife herself, but by his other hand. And even in people with the corpus collosum attached, research has suggested that hesitancy when making decisions may come from the two sides of the brain having different opinions—literally being of two minds.”
          “So, you’re saying that you and Pritkin . . . are two sides of the same mind?”
          “Yes! Yes, good girl!” He grabbed my shoulders and squeezed. “You have it now. Which is why you can trust me!”
          I just looked at him.
          He made an exasperated noise which, I had to admit, sounded a lot like Pritkin.
          “What else do you need to believe me?” he demanded.
          “I don’t know. More than that.”
          He looked around the street as if searching for inspiration—or for his other half. “All right, you know that the man you call Pritkin has had trouble with his magic, yes?”
          “No. He’s one of the most powerful mages I’ve ever—”
          “But not what he could be—not even what he used to be. He’s told you that himself; I know he has!”
          “Okay.”
          “Well, this is why. Separating the two parts of his nature caused problems, just as it does in split-brain patients. For example, the right lobe of the brain is important for understanding object and facial recognition, whereas the left specializes in math and logic. They can each do both of these things, of course, as they must when one lobe is damaged and the other has to compensate. But that part of the brain will struggle with what it isn’t good at, and the whole person will therefore be weakened.”
          “Like Pritkin is without you,” I said, since that was obviously what he was getting at.
          “Exactly! It isn’t a perfect analogy—we aren’t human, after all—and the two halves of the mind in our case is really more like two halves of a soul, but you get the idea. ‘Pritkin’ severed the connection between us after that unfortunate incident with his wife—”
          “His wife?”
          “Yes,” the incubus frowned. “I never liked her. But as with humans, one side predominates, and between the two of us—”
          “It’s me,” Pritkin said, reappearing with the shredded coat in hand, and breathing heavily. And then slugged his counterpart in the mouth, so hard that I flinched just from the echo off the buildings.