“Don’t talk about her,” Rachel said, her voice low and dangerous.
“What, painful memory? That’s your problem, not mine. Anyway, like I was saying, it took me a while to realise that you were basically doing the same thing to me. You were the one person I could count on to be completely honest, because you hated me so much.”
“You’re welcome. Now get out of my head!”
“Why? We’re getting to the good part.” I leant forward, looking at Rachel intently. “You spent all that time telling me all the ways in which I was a loser and a hypocrite. You know the funny thing? I’m pretty sure you never considered I might decide you were right.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m congratulating you, Rachel. You’ve won. All these years, and you’ve finally convinced me that you were right and I was wrong. Except I don’t think you’re going to enjoy it very much, because the next thing I’m going to do is come after you and Richard. And you know what I’m going to do then? I’m going to take Richard up on his offer.”
“Bullshit.”
“He’s been wanting both Anne and me for a long time. Now he gets the complete set.”
“Too late,” Rachel said. “You already said no.”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“You don’t get to change your mind!”
“Why?”
“You betrayed Richard. He’s not giving you another chance.”
“Richard didn’t become the most powerful Dark mage in the country by being inflexible.”
“He doesn’t need you anymore.”
“You really don’t understand, do you?” I said. “Now that Richard’s got Anne, he wants me twice as badly. He can control Anne with his dreamstone, but having me around will make everything so much easier.”
“You can’t do this!” I could see the anger on Rachel’s face. Good. “You stopped being a Dark mage! You can’t just turn around and come back!”
“But that’s what it means to be a Dark mage,” I said. “I can do whatever I want. The fact that you never got that is why you’ve been left behind while Richard’s promoted everyone else over your head. And soon, he’ll be promoting me over your head as well.”
Rachel’s face was drawn and white. “I’ll kill you first.”
“You’re welcome to try. I’m a lot more powerful now.” I gave Rachel a smile. “But even if I wasn’t, Richard would still choose me over you. You know why? Because as far as Richard is concerned, this has always been about Anne. He’s put up with your screwups and general insanity for this long because he’s needed you. But the last couple of years he’s needed you less and less. And once he has Anne fully under his control? He won’t need you at all.”
Rachel snapped. Green light flashed out and I leapt backwards, alighting on the floor as the sofa turned to dust. Rachel screamed in anger and went for me, but I slipped away, flitting with the speed of thought from cover to cover as disintegration rays exploded chunks of the palace hall. A final blast took out the floor at my feet as I flew through the door I’d entered from and back into Elsewhere.
I alighted and turned to face Rachel. She was striding towards the door, face set in fury. Rachel aimed another green ray at me: it reached the doorway and fizzled. She came to a halt.
Only a few steps separated Rachel from the doorway. Once she crossed that line, she’d be out of her dreams and into Elsewhere. I spread my hands invitingly. “Coming?”
Rachel stared murder at me but didn’t move.
“Didn’t think so.” I let my hands fall to my side. “I want you to tell Richard. Let him know that I’m coming to take up my old place. Tell him, Rachel. Because if you don’t, I will.” I turned and walked away.
Rachel didn’t follow. I could sense her eyes on me, but she stayed, safe in her own dreams, watching until I disappeared behind a building and vanished from her sight.
I heard a voice calling from behind me. Not Rachel, Shireen. “Alex! Wait!”
I didn’t want to talk to Shireen. I stepped out of Elsewhere, Shireen’s voice fading away as I slipped back into my own dreams.
“I do not even know where to start,” Klara said.
It was the next day. The Hollow was peaceful, birds singing in the trees and the midday sun shining down from above. Klara had come to check up on me as promised, and the visit was going a little differently from last time. For one thing, instead of being sprawled out on my mattress, I was sitting at my desk, my right arm laid out. Klara was leaning over it, frowning in concentration, her hair tied up out of the way of her eyes. Luna was leaning against the wall, staying quiet but obviously anxious. Landis wasn’t here, which concerned me slightly, but I had bigger problems to worry about.
“Are there any problems?” I asked.
“Problems would imply solutions,” Klara said. “I have no idea what I am looking at. The last I saw of you, your hand had been severed from your pattern. Now you have replaced it. How did this happen?”
“It’s complicated.”
“So I see. The thing on your arm is not a hand. It looks like a hand, it functions like a hand, but it clearly is not. It is an imbued item of some design I do not recognise at all, and whatever it was designed for, it was not to be a body part. Except that something has changed it into a body part, and now it has formed a symbiotic bond.”
“So what does that mean?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Klara said. “For now, at least, it is functioning. The item has linked into your nervous system and even your circulation. But it has done so by overwriting your body’s pattern in the respective areas. It was clearly never designed for anything such as this, and I would not expect it to be stable.”
“Can you stabilise it?”
“Are you listening to me?” Klara said. “I have no idea how this works or what to expect. It could remain exactly like this for years. It could continue overwriting your pattern until you turn into a construct. It could feed off your blood until you drop dead from desiccation. I would not be surprised by any of these things.”
“Okay,” I said. “What do you recommend?”
“If I was only concerned with preserving your life, the recommended course of action would be amputation,” Klara said. “That would of course kill the item. A less hasty approach would be to study it, and you, in intensive care. That still runs the risk of exposing you to negative consequences, but we would have the chance to study the nature of the bond under controlled conditions, and determine whether it was developing, degenerating, or remaining stable.”
“I’m afraid neither of those are options.”
Klara looked frustrated but not surprised. “Very well. Then at the very least you must refrain from using the imbued item’s powers.”
“Why?”
“The item is tied into your body’s pattern. Each time you use it, it will adapt. The longer this goes on, the more difficult it will be to reverse.”
I nodded. “Unfortunately, I need to keep using it.”
“There is a good chance that doing so will kill you.”
“I’ll just have to see how it turns out.”
Klara threw up her hands and muttered something in German, then switched back to English. “I cannot help you if you will not cooperate. I will come back to check on you in three days, assuming you haven’t killed yourself by then.”