“We were told our services would no longer be required,” he said. “My apologies. We’re not ready for you.”

  “That’s cool because they’re not,” I said. “We’re just going to see the man in charge, and then we’re out of here.”

  “If you’re sure . . .” he said uncertainly.

  Thomas looked at him, expression cold, and the artist backed away.

  “My apologies,” he repeated, turned around, and fled.

  “You’re cute when you’re terrifying,” I said, and resumed walking.

  “Am I?” asked Thomas.

  “Why do you think I’m so into you?”

  “Well, I did marry you, and I understand many people like that sort of thing . . .”

  The door to Naga’s office was blessedly ajar. I pushed it open and there he was, behind his desk as he so often was, bent over a scroll. Thomas and I stepped inside, stopping just past the threshold.

  “Office hours end in fifteen minutes,” said Naga, not looking up. “I hope your matter is a quick one.”

  “Good thing we’re not here for office hours,” I said.

  He glanced up, eyes wide and, inexplicably, terrified. That terror only grew as he looked to the man standing next to me, and I finally knew something for certain, not just through the power of conjecture:

  Everything I didn’t want to think about the snake man who had been my helper and guide to the universe for fifty years was true. He had been lying to me, intentionally steering me away from the only thing I had ever been trying to find. Whether he’d done it for the sake of the pneuma I carried back to him or out of genuine concern that I’d be trapped in the bottle and die with Thomas, I didn’t know. I also didn’t care, because he could have allowed me to make my own choices, and he hadn’t.

  He never had.

  “Alice,” he breathed. Then: “What’s happened to you? You’re older—”

  “Wiser, too, I hope,” I said. “Learned a lot of stuff out there. Did you know that I was carrying enough pneuma to blow a hole in the side of a bottle world after I finished a run? Or that it could be removed without cutting me open if someone actually cared about leaving my skin intact? Or that my husband was actually alive out there for me to find, and I hadn’t been wasting my life for the last fifty years?”

  He didn’t quite recoil, but his eyes widened, very slightly, confirming my suspicions. I narrowed my own eyes, glaring at him.

  “I had a family to get back to,” I said, voice low. “I had a life. You took that away by withholding information. I’m still the one who chose to go after him, but you’re the one who decided I didn’t need to know when I was going in the wrong direction. The one who decided I didn’t need to know how the universe worked.”

  “She trusted you,” said Thomas, voice perfectly calm and cold as a frozen lake in February, after the thaw had weakened the ice without breaking it. “She came to you because she trusted you, and you led her astray over and over again to keep her . . . what? Gathering pneuma for you?”

  From the way Naga glanced to the side, I knew that was the answer. “I was just livestock to you,” I said, horrified. “You took care of me, you made sure I was fed and healthy, and you sent me out to make you richer. You did it on purpose.”

  “What would you have had me do?” Naga demanded, with a faint air of desperation. “No one escaped Lemure after the world soul died! I was protecting you from being trapped forever and allowing you to hold to some measure of hope that you might one day be reunited with your mate! I gave you a longer lifespan than your species is heir to, and I kept you safe.”

  “You lied to me. You hurt me and you used me and you lied to me.”

  “I gave you everything you asked for.”

  “You never gave me the one thing I needed!”

  “I gave you time.”

  “You fucked with my memories!” Naga’s expression, already panicked and desperate, turned terrified. I ignored it. Stopping to acknowledge his fear would just have taken away from the momentum I was building. It’s easier to bite the hand that’s been feeding you when you’re too mad to see straight.

  I took a step forward. Thomas’ hand on my wrist kept me from taking another one. I settled for glaring.

  “I never gave you permission to edit what I knew,” I said. “And if I did, when I was hurt and desperate, if you asked, ‘Can I take away the things that might slow you down,’ and I agreed, it doesn’t count because you took that memory, too.” My voice dropped, going low and dangerous. “Consent has to be remembered to exist.”

  “You did, though,” said Naga desperately. “You told me you wanted to be a better weapon. You said my surgeons could remove whatever they deemed necessary.”

  That didn’t sound like me. Forgetting something that might make me flinch when I didn’t need to was one thing; giving carte blanche to mess with my mind was another. I started to open my mouth, to argue. Thomas squeezed my wrist, and I stilled.

  “That dead, rotting world was yours before I was cast there,” said Thomas, tone still frozen. “Whose world was this?”

  “The Empusai. We didn’t steal it. The original owners are still here,” said Naga. “They serve us, and we protect them.”

  “Seems like you’ve been doing that a lot,” I said. “Protecting people. Did you even ask them?”

  “We did.”

  “And they serve the giant snake people who came out of nowhere and took over their world anyway?” I asked. “Because that doesn’t seem like it’s in their best interests.”

  “They do it of their own free will,” said Naga.

  “Is it the sort of free will that comes with forgetting they agreed to it?” I snapped. “Because it sounds like that’s your favorite tactic.”

  “We’re not Johrlac!” said Naga. “You were a special case.”

  “Gosh, it’s great to be special,” I said. “Fuck you.”

  “Taking this world for your own was an act of violence,” said Thomas. “You transgress against my wife, and against this world.” He released my wrist, starting to step forward.

  Naga slithered behind his desk, eyes bright with desperation. “I wasn’t there when Lemure fell! It happened centuries ago, and I was born here, on this world. This is my home. I stole nothing.”

  “Sounds like the Empusai might disagree with that,” I said.

  But Naga was focusing on Thomas now, seeing him as the greater threat. “Please,” he begged. “Please, understand. The loss of Lemure . . . we had no warning. The dark pneuma of another world assaulted our own, tearing it away. The invader took its place for a time, tricking our people into terrible bargains that served it and never us. Until the day came when it had exhausted our resources. It could benefit no more, and it left us, moving through the dimensions in search of a fresher host. Most of us died in the cataclysm. Those who survived fled, wandering as exiles through the universe until they found another dimension that could sustain us, another world that would serve as our home, where the native life was less advanced than we were, and willing to share in exchange for the benefit of our wisdom.”

  “So this whole time you knew that the crossroads had a connection to your original dimension, and that they might be using it as some sort of deep freeze for the people they took, and you didn’t tell me? You didn’t help me?”

  “Until you found that book, there would have been no way to get you back once you crossed the border. I was keeping you safe.”

  “You didn’t get to make that choice!”

  Thomas interjected before Naga could answer. “Tell me about the method you used for removing the accumulated pneuma from my wife.”

  Naga seized onto the opportunity to explain himself like it was a lifeline, which technically, I suppose it was. “The damage to her physicality tells me that you did a more ad hoc removal of your own. Surely you can see the efficacy of stripping it all away at once, leaving the subject clean and free of outside influences. We were careful to reduce trauma to the host as much as possible, we—”

  “Is there any means of removal that wouldn’t have damaged her? Physically, mentally, or chronologically?”

  “Pneuma can be unwound at a more reasonable pace, but it takes time,” said Naga. “Alice has always been an impatient girl. She wouldn’t have been willing to sit for the time required. We needed to get her in and out as quickly as we could. The method we used with her was the method we use with our own explorers.”

  I couldn’t argue with that, even as I turned away from him.

  “Humans aren’t meant to shed their skins,” said Thomas. “What have you been doing with them, all this time?”

  “They sell very well,” said Naga, still with an air of desperation, still clearly thinking he could talk his way out of this. “More than enough to pay for the cost of her care. If you were looking for a portion of the profits, we could—”

  “Stop,” I said, putting a hand on Thomas’ arm. I glanced to Naga. “Both of you, stop. You’re right that I was impatient, and you’re right that if you had asked me, I would have taken the faster, more painful option. But that’s if you had asked me. You never asked, not without taking the memory of it away. You never gave me the chance to remember consenting. So it doesn’t matter how right you were . . . or weren’t. It doesn’t matter. I’m not working for you anymore. We’re going home.”

  “No, I don’t think you are,” said Naga, and grabbed a glass sphere from his desk, hurling it at the floor.

  I threw my arm across my eyes even as Thomas was diving for the sphere, shielding me from the bright light that erupted when the glass exploded against stone. It smelled like peppermint. That would have been funny, under other circumstances.

  Thomas covered his eyes, too late to prevent the flash from dazzling them, and staggered backward even as I lowered my arm and glared at Naga. He was still behind the desk, foolish enough to open hostilities, too much the comfortable academic to have thought to move.

  “I never agreed to let you go,” he said. “This will be easy enough to edit away. What’s one more tragedy? You might have a few nightmares—even the best psychic surgery never takes a weed all the way down to the root—but you’ll be able to function, able to keep doing your job.”

  “Like fuck I will,” I said, and grabbed one of the guns from my belt, dropping into a steady shooting position.

  Naga still hadn’t moved. He just stayed exactly where he was, smiling at me. That made me anxious. People who don’t dodge usually think they have the upper hand. If they don’t, it’s best to demonstrate that quickly. I pulled the trigger.

  Or tried to, anyway. My finger refused to move. I tried again and failed again. Looking desperately from my gun to Naga, I tried a third time. Still nothing.

  “You’re a dangerous pet to keep, Alice Healy,” he said, finally slithering out from behind the desk. Thomas was still staggering around, unable to see anything around him—unable to see Naga approaching me. “Did you really think I hadn’t taken steps toward domestication at some point? One doesn’t keep a wild animal on a chain without certain precautions. One doesn’t allow a rabid creature its freedom without a muzzle.”

  “What did you do?” I demanded.

  “You willingly allowed my Johrlac into your head for years,” he said. “You didn’t fight them. Surely you must remember that.”

  “I agreed to let them take the pain away,” I said.

  “And you thought you were getting that comforting release for nothing? You’re more the fool than I thought you were, when you came to me with breasts still dripping foul mammalian fluids, begging for a way to do the impossible. I told you then that nothing came free. I told you it would come with costs and challenges. You still agreed. You said you’d do whatever I required. You told me that you would be my tool for as long as I wanted you to be, and you were grateful.”

  None of what he was saying sounded familiar, but then again, why should it? He’d been stealing from me for years. There was no reason to think that he hadn’t stolen some agreement along the way, something to salve his conscience. If he had a conscience where foul mammals were concerned.

  “What,” I said again, “did you do?”

  “You can’t hurt me. You belong to me.” Naga slithered closer still, reaching for the gun in my hands.

  “I’m afraid she doesn’t,” said Thomas. He didn’t sound like someone who’d just had the light of a small sun poured directly into his eyes, and when I glanced at him, he wasn’t staggering anymore, just standing straight and calm, looking at Naga with unflinching eyes.

  Naga turned to glare at him. “What?”

  “I said, she doesn’t belong to you. She belongs to me, and I belong to her, and that agreement predates any agreements she may have made with you in my absence.” Thomas shook his head. “We came to verify the extent of what you’d done. You’ve crossed quite a few lines that can’t be forgiven.”

  “I don’t care for your forgiveness,” said Naga. He hissed, fangs fully extended. Then he lunged at Thomas.

  Thomas, again, didn’t move, except to raise one hand and hold it, palm out, toward Naga. It wouldn’t do anything to stop the charging snake man—until it did. Naga froze, fangs retracting as he swayed in place, eyes going wide with surprise.

  Thomas stayed exactly where he was, hand still raised. “I wanted to take you apart piece by piece,” he said. “I wanted to hear you scream, and that was before I knew the damage you had done to her mind. Be grateful that in all the time my wife’s fate was in your keeping, she never forgot how to be merciful. My own time was nowhere near so kind.”

  I lowered my gun, still unfired, and slid it back into its holster as I walked back to join Thomas, looking unflinchingly at Naga. “Not that it’s going to matter much for you, but our association is at an end, and if I guess correctly, Ithaca’s going to be severing a few ties. No more deliveries for whoever comes after you. No more sheep to shear. Your university is going to curse your name for centuries—if it stands that long once word gets out about how much you knew, how many citizens of how many worlds your people left to rot in what should have been a private grave.”

  Naga still hadn’t moved. A look of faint perplexity crossed his face, overshadowed by the blood trickling from the corners of his eyes.

  “I suppose that since I was gone for so long, you forgot that I was a sorcerer,” said Thomas. “I’m an elementalist, to be specific. Fire. Oxygen burns. Every cell in your body contains it. They’re all remembering what it is to burn right now. Take comfort, however; you’ll be dead of heat stroke before you actually catch fire.”

  Naga made a small sound, but still didn’t move.

  “Goodbye, Naga,” I said, taking Thomas’ free hand. “I’d say ‘see you later,’ but that isn’t going to happen, and you won’t be here to see. So this is goodbye.”

  Naga stayed where he was, frozen and burning alive at the same time. I can’t say he watched us go. I can’t say he was watching anything by that point.

  His body hit the ground as we let ourselves out of the room. The sound of dry wood igniting followed a moment later as his dehydrated body finally stopped fighting the fire and burst into flame.

  Office hours were technically still going on.

  I shut the door behind us anyway.

  Epilogue

  “I think, if we just give her the space she needs, if we just stand beside her and keep her from falling down, I think . . . she’s going to be okay.”

  —Laura Campbell

  The kitchen of a large family compound in Portland, Oregon

  We stepped out of the transit circle and were home, or close enough to home as to make no real difference, the three of us standing in the kitchen of the compound Kevin had designed and constructed after he and his sister decided to settle in Portland, Oregon, with their families. Sally looked around, gripping her spear tightly for security, before her eyes fell on the toaster. From there, she shifted her gaze to the fridge and made a sound of wordless delight, surging toward it like it was the only goal in the world worth pursuing.

  I raised my eyebrows, watching as she opened the door, rooted quickly through the freezer contents, and produced a box of frozen blueberry waffles. “Sally, how the hell did you know those were in there?” I asked.

  “You said James was here,” said Sally. “James would never stay in a house for more than about a week before there were blueberry Eggos on hand. It just wouldn’t happen.”

  “So you believe me now.”

  “I’m coming around to the idea that maybe you’re not completely dishonest,” said Sally, dropping two of the waffles into the toaster.

  “Huh,” I said. “But good on you, remembering how to use the toaster. That’s the fastest non-yelling way I can think of.”

  “Way to do what, cook waffles?” she asked. “Do you normally cook waffles by yelling at them?”

  “No,” I said. “To attract company.”

  Three tiny heads poked out of one of the doorways cut into the wall behind the counter, whiskers bobbing as they sniffed the air. I saw their eyes widen, and I pulled my hand out of Thomas’, stepping quickly forward.

  “I invoke the Holy Ritual of If You Wake The House I Swear To God, Thomas, I Will Revoke Your Femurs,” I said, voice firm but low. “I need my clergy. Do any of you represent me, on either side of the divide?”

  The mice simply stared, struck silent by the scene in front of them.

  “I need you to find my clergy—doesn’t matter which mysteries—and bring them here,” I said. “We can’t stay long.”

  “Okay, boss, the lady’s clearly off her gourd,” said Sally. “Those are mice.”