Archive of Our Own

It begins when Rayne kills you.

The impact of the knife – once, twice, more times than you can count – is searing agony. With each stab you can already feel yourself losing consciousness, the edges of reality beginning to fade. Rayne’s face is close to yours, and he is biting his lip, brows furrowed. He does not look angry. He looks like he is on the verge of tears.

You blink. Your body is agony. You can feel yourself losing control over the shift; your features slide, no longer quite resembling Rayne’s. It’s dark, though, and he won’t notice until you are dead. The thought comes to you with a cold certainty: that you are about to die.

He stops stabbing you, then, after your front is a mess of blood and pain. He stands back. There is blood on his shirt and hands – your blood, you think hazily. It’s hard to focus, like Rayne is a single frame on blurry camera film that slides back and forth before your eyes.

Then you black out.

--

When you wake, you are in a taxi.

You blink, your hands reflexively going to your chest. There is no blood on your white shirt. Your tie is perfectly aligned. You check your hands; covered in smooth skin, no distortion or loss of form. So you didn’t die. Or you’ve been healed. Or…you dreamed the whole thing?

You frown and look out the window as the cab’s wheels grind over gravel and it slows to a stop. Outside is a manor house, dark and tall in afternoon light. Four windows look out of its front like eyes.

A shiver runs down your spine. You don’t know why, but this place means something to you.

Operating on autopilot, still not quite feeling tethered to reality, you step out of the cab and rummage in your pockets for the fare, handing it to the driver.

You have to wipe your hands on your trousers afterward; your palms are sweaty. You take a deep breath. Then you walk up to the house.

From that moment on, it feels like you are drowning in déja vu. You walk into the house like a man asleep on his feet, staring at the walls and the carpet and even listening to the distant drone of the radio as if you’ve experienced it all before. The sensation is so strong, it almost makes you sick to your stomach. But you think hard about the briefing Agent X just gave you – did he? some traitorous portion of your brain asks, or was that hours, days ago, in another world? – and you grit your teeth like a professional, and you make it through the opening interviews.

First you talk to Violet, who has red hair, owns the guesthouse, and speaks to you sometimes cordially, sometimes like a pest to be ground beneath her foot. Then it’s off to see Chief Dupont, and again the sense of having done this before rises within you like an illness as he goes over the facts of the case.

He taps his finger on a picture of Dorota Shaw that you’re sure you’ve seen before, and it’s all you can do to stay quiet and nod. You receive the rest of your briefing, the assignment, and a thinly-veiled allusion to your past. Thanks, Dupont. And then you leave.

Each time you’re in the cab, you feel a sense of relief, like you’re finally away from all the sameness, all the people who don’t know you but whose names are on the tip of your tongue just before they introduce themselves.

You get out of the cab, you pay the fee, you conduct preliminary interviews with Bronwyn Castle and Lexie Taylor, the tarot readers. While their words are somewhat strange, you at least feel slightly more relaxed around them – though that strange déja vu remains.

Then you go to interview Rayne.

You don’t know him, of course, but when you walk into the room at the end of the hall to greet the third tarot reader, his name springs to your lips. You freeze in the doorway, looking at the figure sitting on a drab blue couch inside the room. The lighting is stark and casts half his face in shadow as he pores, cross-legged, over a book.

You don’t know him, but you see him and you think of desperation, of forced smiles, of a stabbing in the dark.

Who the hell are you?

 Hello, Rayne. 

“Hello, Rayne,” you say, as calmly as you can. Like a detective who has been told his suspect’s name. Not like a shapeshifter who is going mad, who has memories of an alternate past embedded in his head and maybe woke up dead fifteen minutes ago.

Rayne looks up from his book and blanches. You see the emotions as they flicker across his face: fear, surprise, confusion. His eyebrows shoot up and the book, forgotten, flops closed in his lap. The two of you lock eyes and you are certain that you are feeling the same strange connection, the same false memories.

It doesn’t make sense, though, you tell yourself. Something went wrong with your last augmentation, that’s all. Or the debriefing left false thoughts in your mind. It’s nothing to be worried about – you can still do the investigation. And afterwards, Agent X will fix you.

So you walk in, calmly, and take a seat in the chair across from Rayne as he schools his face and sets his book aside. By the time you’ve settled yourself, he looks completely normal again, and so do you. As if nothing strange happened at all.

“You must be our new guest, Sam,” he says. “Or you’re burgling us.” He chuckles slightly at his own joke, then leans forward, extending a hand to shake yours. “I’m Rayne, by the way.”

I know.

[Say Nothing]

You shake his hand and nod, but one thing sticks in your mind, even more than the false memories you’ve been doubting since you arrived.

He called you by name.

>How do you know my name?

>Did you know Dorota Shaw?

>What were you doing last night?

[Leave]

“How do you know my name?” you ask, keeping your voice calm and level.

Rayne leans back against the couch cushions, cocking his head. “Ms. Gallacher must have mentioned it when she told us you were coming,” he muses. “Detective Sam, working for…the Shaws, was it? Guess the name stuck in my mind.”

You didn’t kill me last night, in a dream?

[Say Nothing]

You wisely decide to keep your mouth shut. Rayne continues to smile evenly at you, although you get the feeling it isn’t quite reaching his eyes. He doesn’t trust you.

>Did you know Dorota Shaw?

>What were you doing last night?

[Leave]

You take a deep breath and steady yourself. Rayne gave you a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why he already knew your name. Now it’s time for you to be rational as well. Just because you had a bad dream, or some sort of augmentation error, it doesn’t mean that you stop being a detective. You’ve had to deal with far worse – and you’ve had to lie about far more. After all, there are many, many things you know to be true that you can’t go around telling civilians.

Most importantly: that you’re a shapeshifter.

You fold your hands in your lap.

So. The actual investigation. Stay focused this time, you tell yourself.

“Did you know Dorota Shaw?” you ask Rayne, scanning his face for any signs of a reaction. There are none, besides a slight narrowing of his eyes as he dredges up detail.

“Dorota Shaw, right,” he says, looking thoughtful. “Redhead, talented musician…” He purses his lips. “Sorry. I’m repeating myself, aren’t I?”

He isn’t. But you know how he feels.

“The short version is, no, I didn’t know her. Not before she died, anyway.” He refocuses his gaze on you.

And after she died?

What does that mean?

"And after she died?" you ask.

“Well, we all heard about her death, didn’t we? Even you, Sam.” He gives you another mirthless smile. “After all, why else are you here?”

>What were you doing last night?

[Leave]

As the words rise to your lips, you fight against flashes of memory. A knife in your chest. Your blood on Rayne’s hands. The ceiling of a dark room.

“What were you doing last night?” you ask. You don’t flinch as the question cuts its way out of your mouth.

This time, though, Rayne doesn’t falter. “I was in my room all night. Praying, actually. I don’t believe in God, but I was praying.” He pauses, and an unreadable expression crosses his face. “It didn’t work.”

What do you believe in?

What didn’t work?

"What didn't work?" you ask.

“The prayer. For the girl to live.” He says it shortly, vaguely. As if he isn’t referring to Dorota alone.

You nod. Something tells you not to press him on this front.

[Leave]

You stand, turning to face the door. Behind you, Rayne stands as well, straightening his shirt cuffs. He’s taller than you – not by a lot, but enough to make your skin prickle. If you had to fight him, that’s one advantage he would have.

Stop, you tell yourself. He’s just a suspect.

What are you doing?

“What are you doing?” you ask, forcing yourself to face him again. “You’re supposed to stay in your room and remain available for questioning.”

Rayne gives you a slight shrug. “I was just going to see Bronwyn. I need to talk to her about something.”

Like what, your alibi?

Sure, seems reasonable.

You already know you sound defensive as you say it: “Like what, your alibi?”

“I already gave you my alibi, Detective Sam,” Rayne retorts, layering sarcasm onto your title. “I was in my room praying. No one can verify that, but it’s the truth. You’re not actually a police officer, as far as I know, so I don’t think you can stop me from going to talk to my friend.”

I can call the Chief.

Please, Rayne.

You look him in the eye. “Please, Rayne. Stay here.”

There is no reason for this to work. You don’t know each other.

Rayne blinks several times, then looks away. He shoves his hands into his pockets.

“Fine. But tell her I need to talk to her, alright? It’s important.”

A wary, weighted silence passes between the two of you. You want to take it in your hands and choke it, to ask Rayne what he really remembers of last night, what all of this means, whether any of it is real. Why it feels like you’re caught in the groove of a stuck record, and Rayne’s face is all that’s left of the recording.

Instead, you turn on your heel and leave without looking back. You don’t want to see whether his eyes reflect the same questions as yours.

The door closes with a click. In the hallway, you lean against the wall. Your nerves feel like a plucked string. It’s been an hour and you’re already losing track of the pieces of the mystery. Lexie and Bronwyn told you they were in the same room last night, but they each gave different stories. Rayne’s alibi is unverifiable. The hostess, Violet Gallacher, doesn’t even know what she was doing at the time of Dorota’s death. And these are only the occupants of the guesthouse. You sense that farther from here, there are other suspects like spools of red string, and every thread leads directly to the body of Dorota Shaw.

You push off the wall and rub a hand over your face. It’s a decent face – one you haven’t been wearing too long, but it fits better than some. You can be Detective Sam. You can solve this.

But maybe, for now, it would be better to be someone else.

Rayne wants to talk to Bronwyn, you think. I can do that.

Then again, the thought of speaking to Rayne again so soon is exhausting. When you left his room, you felt like you had just run an emotional marathon. Maybe you could talk to Lexie or Bronwyn again; the other two tarot readers are personable, even if Bronwyn is a bit prickly, and they don’t make you feel like you’re fighting against a current. Shift into one, talk to the other? Sure, that should be doable – you’ve spoken to each of them for long enough that you feel like you’ve gotten a grasp on their personalities.

Lexie first, you think as you head down the hall toward your room. She seems bubbly and…no offense intended…a bit ditzy. I could use a little less thinking while I’m trying to recover my wits.

The plush carpet muffles your footsteps so that the drone of the radio floats loud and clear over their noise. The voice of one of the town’s radio hosts grates against your ears.

“She gasped in horror as the figure from the darkness drew ever nearer,” whispers the voice on the radio. “It was a form she’d seen many times before, but never awake…Only in her nightmares had that creature imposed itself upon her.”

The words drip with ominous intent, and you grimace. What kind of background noise for a guesthouse is this?

You reach the door to your own room and fumble in your pocket for the key. Once inside, you can turn off that infernal radio and focus on changing into Lexie. You’re already shaping her voice in your mouth as you think about it. Your whispers sound similar enough to her that you don’t realize she’s calling for you until she pokes her head, wild-eyed and with blonde curls bouncing everywhere, around the corner.

“Sam!” she repeats, sounding breathless. She steps fully into view, one hand on the edge of the wall. She doesn’t have shoes on, so she must have run here from her own room.

You suspect, sickly, that this isn’t going to be good news.

What, Lexie?

“Oh, Sam, it’s the strangest thing,” she says, wringing her hands. You note that her nails are not painted – another strike against the alibi she gave you earlier. Is there any one of the tarot readers that isn’t lying to you?

“What, Lexie?” you ask. You drop your room key back into your pocket and step away from the door.

“Well, I know we didn’t explain to you yet exactly how we do the readings, but – well, I use a Ouija board to get the victim’s name. And for lots of other things, really, but that’s an important one. Anyway, I was talking to a spirit just now, and – ”

She pauses, her red-painted lips pulling down in a frown.

“Well, it said your name.”

I’m the next victim?

Ghosts aren’t real.

You frown at her as a waterfall of information pours from her mouth. Ouija boards? Ghosts? You knew the tarot readers had predicted Dorota’s murder, but this is a lot to take in all at once. Of course, as a shapeshifter, you can never discount the supernatural. Which is why you manage to keep the incredulity out of your voice as you ask:

“I’m the next victim?”

Lexie shakes her head, her eyes shining with worry.

“No, Sam. You were the spirit.”

Your stomach drops. You look at Lexie in shock and confusion, disbelief warring with a deep, stormy feeling that things are going south, very quickly. It’s like you have your toes on the line of where the plot is supposed to go, and you’re being dragged away from the path and into the dark. Your chest feels cold.

“Sam, are you alright?” asks Lexie, approaching you. It’s not just worry in her gaze, you realize – unshed tears glaze the surface of her eyes. What were the spirits telling her?

She takes your hand and stares up at you. “I know it’s all probably quite shocking, and I get it if you don’t want to believe in spirits and Ouija boards and such, but it’s really, really important. You must come with me, Sam, you have to see it. Then you’ll understand.”

Lexie’s fingers are cold and soft against yours. She bites her painted lip and takes in your shell-shocked gaze. Then, gently but quickly, she leads you down the hall, keeping up a patter of conversation the entire time.

“Really, it doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never talked to the spirit of someone who’s alive before – well, obviously.” She laughs nervously, tossing her hair out of reflex. “Rayne’s got this weird theory that it has something to do with time travel, the Ouija board I mean, and I thought it was quite silly when he told me to be honest, but now I’m wondering if maybe he was right all along, because here you are, alive obviously, and well…There you are, in the spirit world, talking to me.”

She laughs again, seems to realize that she is still holding you by the hand, and lets go, allowing you to follow her down the hallway of your own accord. “Sorry, I’m being a bit weird I guess, but I talk a lot when I get nervous. You’ve probably by noticed by now, oh what am I saying…”

It’s okay, Lexie.

Tell me more about Rayne’s theory.

You wait for Lexie to trail off completely, then prod her with a gentle encouragement: “Tell me more about Rayne’s theory.”

Lexie blinks and seems to pull herself together, forcing a bright smile back onto her face. “Right! Well, Rayne always says it doesn’t make sense that the spirits I talk to know the future, just because they’re dead and all. Like, being dead doesn’t give you the ability to know everything, yeah? He thinks it’s ghosts of people who haven’t died yet, they died in the future, and that’s how they know things that are going to happen. So basically, it’s time travel.” She giggles at the thought before sobering up. “I guess if it was, it would mean that…you die in the future, and that’s how I’m able to talk to you on the Ouija board even though you’re here now. Although that’s never happened to me before, and we’ve seen quite a lot of people die.”

You recover enough from the flood of words to raise an eyebrow.

“Not like that!” she rushes to reassure you. “I just mean, well…Oh, Bron said not to tell you why we were here, but it’s all going to come out anyway, isn’t it? Basically, we go around the world trying to stop murders from happening and – Bronwyn!” she squeaks, clapping her hands over her mouth.

In the hallway ahead of you, Bronwyn is standing with her arms crossed, the door to her room open behind her. She regards you and Lexie with a bemused smile.

“What’s all this ruckus about?” Bronwyn asks.

“Bron, I can’t explain, really, but you have to come into my room and see what’s happening, it’s intense,” Lexie blurts with wide eyes. “And Sam has to come too.”

“Why does Sam need to come?” Bronwyn looks you up and down, taking your measure.

“Trust me, Bron!” Lexie says. You can tell it comes out more loudly than she means it to, but it has the intended effect: Bronwyn looks at her, considers for a moment, and then nods.

“Alright, Lexie. I trust you.”

Together, the three of you file into Lexie’s room.

It’s dark inside; Lexie has drawn the curtains and the only lighting in the room comes from several precariously balanced candles. (You get the feeling Violet wouldn’t like to know about the potential fire hazards so close to her precious carpet.) As you close the door behind you, the candles gutter momentarily, then flare up again. Only after your eyes adjust to the blackness can you see the rest of the room.

The bed is neatly made, the pillows fluffed and lined up by the headboard, but in the center of the bedspread rests a Ouija board. It doesn’t look like the toy ones you see in stores; it is plain, unassuming, and you wouldn’t look twice at it except for one unusual feature: the planchette is spinning lightly, as if someone just took their hands off it.

But no one did. Lexie has been out of her room for at least five minutes.

You glance around the dark space, half-expecting someone to step out from behind a curtain. Your heart beats hard in your chest. The shadows seem to constrict, trapping you like black rope, leaving you unable to escape as the knife pierces your chest again and again and again –

Lexie puts her hand on your arm and you gasp, audibly. Both she and Bronwyn turn to look at you.

“What is it, Sam?” Bronwyn asks gently.

I’m fine.

[Say Nothing]

You take another deep breath and hold it for a moment, trying to slow the pulse that pounds in your chest. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

Neither of them looks like they believe you, but Lexie’s sense of urgency takes over and she climbs onto the bed, settling herself cross-legged before the Ouija board. Her fancy skirt rides up over her knees, but she pays it no mind as she extends trembling hands to hover just above the planchette in the center of the board.

You and Bronwyn step to either side of the bed, as if assigned places.

“Sam,” says Lexie, “You can ask me any questions you want, and I’ll pose them to the spirits. But I can’t really say much for what kind of answers I’ll get. A lot of the time it’s not useful at all, and…I don’t want you to worry too much. Who knows, this could even be a different Sam!” She tries to say it with confidence, but the distressed slant of her eyebrows implies that she doesn’t believe it.

“We’re here for you, Lexie,” says Bronwyn, who seems to have grasped the gravity of the moment much more quickly than you. She leans forward and sets her hands on the bedspread. “This is a safe place.”

Lexie glances at you one more time. Her eyes, hazel and piercing, seem to see right through you to your confused and tumultuous core. You blink, feeling exposed. Then Lexie squeezes her eyes shut and places her hands on the planchette.

“Tell me your name,” she says.

You glance at Bronwyn, who looks serious and focused on Lexie, as the planchette slides to hover over the letters S-A-M. It sends a chill down your spine, yes, but Lexie could be moving it of her own accord, you remind yourself. If the tarot readers are guilty, it serves their purpose to scare and confuse you.

“Sam, if you want to ask any questions, now’s your chance,” whispers Bronwyn. “It’s usually hard for spirits to stay focused – they only have a few answers in them.”

>Who is the killer?

>Are you really me?

>What’s happening?

You rub your hands together and glance around the room again, unsure where to look as you ask your question. You feel a little bit silly saying it out loud, but Bronwyn and Lexie look so serious that you can’t ignore them.

“Are you really me?” you ask – but before you even finish the sentence you hear Lexie let out a quiet gasp as the planchette in her hands shoots directly to YES.

If she’s faking it, she’s a good actor, you think uneasily. And she knows exactly where everything on the board is, even with her eyes closed.

“So, it is you, Sam,” murmurs Bronwyn. “That’s…worrying, to say the least.”

>Who is the killer?

>What’s happening?

Your uneasiness is like a physical thing now, standing behind you with its hands planted on your shoulders. The candles in the room flicker.

“What’s happening?” you ask vaguely, hoping for some sort of explanation.

Bronwyn reads out the letters as the planchette glides over them: “W-A-R-N-I-N-G.”

You shiver.

“That’s also not good,” says Bronwyn, shaking her head. Lexie’s head is tilted back, her arms straight, fingertips barely touching the planchette.

A warning about what?

What’s going to happen?

“A warning about what?” you ask.

“R-I-T-E,” Bronwyn reads out, and you see shock flash across her face. “V-I-C-T-I-M-S,” she reads next, and finally, “T-R-A-V-E-L-L-E-R.” By the end of this, her face has gone pale with fear.

Who’s the next victim?

What’s a rite?

What do you mean, traveller?

“Who’s the next victim?” you ask quickly, slipping your hand into your pocket for a notebook. You don’t find it before Bronwyn reads out the next set of letters, the planchette flashing across the board at almost unreadable speed:

“S-O-O-N.” A pause. “R-E-A-D-I-N-G.” Another pause. “N-O-T-W-H-A-T-Y-O-U-T-H-I-N-K.”

You frown, but you don’t get the chance to speak again: the letters keep coming.

“S-A-V-E-T-H-E-M-B-O-T-H.”

“S-T-O-P-T-H-E-R-I-T-E.”

“L-A-S-T-C-H-A-N-C-E.”

Bronwyn’s soft Irish brogue reads the letters into the darkness of the room. When it seems like they have stopped coming, she looks at you with deep concern. She is biting her lip.

“I’m going to be honest with you, Sam,” Bronwyn says, “This has never happened before. I don’t know what it means. And that worries me.”

Lexie grits her teeth. “It’s strong, Bronwyn. I don’t think I’m in danger, but…the presence is powerful. Sam, I don’t know how much longer I can hold the connection.”

You look at her, arms straining, the straight pale line of her neck illuminated by candlelight. She looks like a ghost herself.

>Who is the killer?

You open your mouth to ask your final question, then hesitate. Is this really the way? Are you going to believe these tarot readers and whatever they say, give credence to this spirit that is supposedly you from the future? Even though your own existence is supernatural, you still find it hard to stretch your mind this far. If only you could remember more of what Agent X told you before you came here, maybe you could figure out what to believe and what not to believe. But your more useful memories are hidden beneath the shadow of Rayne’s face in the dark.

Your hesitation stretches longer. Bronwyn looks at you, her brows drawn together over dark eyes. Lexie breathes heavily on the bed, as if it takes physical effort to keep her hands on the Ouija board. And slowly, so gently you don’t notice it at first, a cold wind begins to blow around the room.

The candles gutter. You glance away from Lexie for a moment, shivering, and see the edges of the curtains fluttering in a breeze. But there is no way for a draught to get into the room, you’re sure of it. Then you hear Lexie gasp, and you look back at her.

She is struggling to hold the planchette down as it rises, slowly, into the air. Her hands push at the top of it, but its motion is inexorable. Her eyes are wide with fear. It is about a foot above the Ouija board, and you watch it continue to climb, as if someone stronger than Lexie is lifting it from below.

You gulp down your fear and decide.

“Who is the killer?” you shout as the wind intensifies, rushing around the room, blowing Bronwyn’s and Lexie’s hair into their faces and making your tie flap away from your body. “Who is it? Who killed Dorota Shaw?”

The door to the room opens abruptly, and all three of you whip around in shock, the wind dying about you.

Rayne is standing in the doorway, holding a book in front of him as if he intends to hit someone with it. As he sees the three of you, he relaxes somewhat, but his eyes still dart around the room with obvious worry.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, frowning. “I heard shouting.”

The planchette falls from Lexie’s hands and clatters, inert, onto the Ouija board.

You stare at Rayne. You’re trying not to, you’re trying to look anywhere else, but it’s not working. The otherworldly fear that filled the room a moment ago is gone, stomped into a flat tension.

“A paperback, Ray?” Bronwyn asks wryly, breaking the silence. The relief is palpable; you and Lexie take a breath, and Rayne looks down at the book in his hands as if just now noticing it.

“It was all I had on hand,” he admits, then smiles ruefully. “I guess I could’ve given some criminal a good papercut.”

Lexie laughs and slides off the bed. Her laugh is a bit breathless, as if she’s still chasing fear from her system, but she doesn’t look as deathly pale anymore. She tucks one curl behind her ear as she says, “Good thing there aren’t any criminals in here, then. I’m not sure they’d be able to withstand it.”

“Our knight in shining armor,” Bronwyn sighs, but it’s good-natured. Rayne rolls his eyes and sets the book down on a side table.

“Well, I’m glad to see nothing’s wrong. What on earth were you all yelling about in here, then? I thought someone was being killed.”

Lexie looks at Bronwyn, who glances at you before saying, “Something’s happened, Ray. Lexie contacted a spirit on the Ouija board, and…”

Rayne’s expression turns serious. “Another victim already? Christ, that’s fast.”

“Not exactly,” she says. “The spirit…well, it was Sam.”

Rayne meets your gaze at last. You regard each other across the room. “Sam’s standing right here, Bron,” Rayne says with a faint smile. “How can it have been him?”

“You’re the one with the time travel theory,” says Lexie.

He blinks, but still holds your gaze. You drop your eyes, no longer able to reciprocate.

“You’re saying Sam’s in danger, then.” Rayne’s voice is low and grave.

“There’s no other explanation,” says Bronwyn. “Mercury may not have named another victim yet, but we have to consider that Sam’s safety is at stake here. I think it’s worth telling him.”

Lexie nods, but Rayne is shaking his head, annoyed. He finally shifts his eyes off you, and you feel like a weight has been lifted. “It’s been an hour since we met him, Bron. And you want to tell him everything? When has that worked well before?”

“It’s our only option,” she argues, but he crosses his arms.

“He’s working with Chief Dupont.” He says the name like it’s French. “The one who wants to arrest you, remember? You tell him anything weird now and he’s going to say you did it out of insanity. Which, as we very well know, is not a good enough defense.”

Lexie ducks her head, inspecting her cuticles, as Rayne and Bronwyn stare at each other across the bed. The door is still open to the hall, and light seeps in to wash out the room, making the candlelit atmosphere from just a few minutes ago feel tawdry and cheap.

What do you mean, tell me everything?

I’m a detective. I have a right to know.

You realize how suspicious this sounds, right?

“What do you mean, tell me everything?”

Your words drop into the tense silence and suddenly everyone is looking at you. You fidget slightly, still not quite sure what to make of this group dynamic. It feels weird to think that you only met them an hour ago; it feels much longer than that.

Rayne opens his mouth to speak again, but Bronwyn shakes her head at him. To your surprise, he closes his mouth and uncrosses his arms. For a moment his shoulders drop, and his posture looks defeated.

“Fine,” he says. “Tell him. But if he throws you in prison after, I get one free ‘I told you so.’” His smile looks forced, but you can tell he’s trying not to be angry. Your eyes meet for a moment, and this time he’s the one who blinks and looks away.

“I’ll be outside if you need me,” he says, stepping back towards the door. “This time, try not to scream unless it’s urgent.”

He leaves, closing the door behind him. The click is quiet and final.

“Sorry,” says Bronwyn. “He worries. He doesn’t seem to trust you. What have you been asking him, Sam?” Her words are playful, but there’s a serious question behind them.

What I’ve been asking everyone.

I think I know why he’s acting like this.

You shrug, attempting to look nonchalant. “What I’ve been asking everyone.”

Lexie nods, but Bronwyn seems unconvinced.

“He’s got a good eye, our Ray,” she tells you. “People he doesn’t trust, he’s usually right about.”

It’s not distrust, you think, It’s something deeper. But you don’t say anything. Instead you take a seat in the chair Bronwyn pulls up to the side of the bed for you, and over the next twenty minutes, she and Lexie tell you all about Mercury.

--

You blink, leaning back in your chair. Lexie and Bronwyn’s faces have softened, as if telling you their true purpose has made them more friendly towards you. Or it’s sympathy for the sheer amount of unbelievable information you’ve just had to internalize. Even having witnessed what you did with the Ouija board, and already knowing that the supernatural is real – again, shapeshifter – it’s a lot.

You people are crazy.

So…I’m looking for a traveller.

You take a deep breath, steady your mind, and commit.

“So…I’m looking for a traveller,” you say.

“Right,” says Bronwyn, clearly relieved that you’re taking it well. “And we have to find them fast, before the next victim is taken. Once they’re at two murders, it will be all too easy to complete the rite with a third.”

You nod and stand.

I should continue the investigation, then.

“I should continue the investigation, then,” you say, displaying a resolve that you don’t quite feel.

“Oh, good luck, Sam!” says Lexie, standing as well. All at once, she steps forward and wraps you in a tight hug. “I know it’s all a bit scary, but I’m sure you’ll be okay. You’re a detective, after all. You can help us.”

I’ll do my best.

[Smile and nod.]

“I’ll do my best,” you say. Lexie claps her hands together in joy.

“I know you will,” she says, beaming.

“Let us know if you need anything,” adds Bronwyn. “And…” She winces. “Don’t tell the Chief, alright? Rayne’s probably right, he’d just take it as more evidence against me.”

I have to tell him.

Okay.

“Okay,” you concede. It’s true, Chief Dupont has it out for Bronwyn. Telling him this information will just muddy the waters further.

She smiles in relief, and you step out into the hall.

About five feet from you, Violet is standing with her hands behind her back, looking intently at the door to the room. She tilts her head at you when you step out.

“Sam, what was all that noise about? You’re not torturing people for information in my guesthouse, are you?”

Yes, I am.

No.

“No,” you say.

“Then what was happening in there?” she asks. There is a faint hint of mockery in her voice.

A séance.

None of your business.

You look her straight in the eye. “A séance.”

She laughs, a high and lilting sound. “Really! A séance, in the middle of the afternoon. How quaint.” She shifts her feet on the carpet, sliding one behind the other. “The police are using such unique methods these days. Tell me, did you find anything out?”

Bluff - It told us you were at Dorota’s house last night.

Not really.

In a moment of boldness, you hold her gaze and say, “It told us you were at Dorota’s house last night.” You allow a smile to tug at one corner of your mouth to make her doubt whether you are serious or not.

“Hm,” Violet says. The single syllable carries a world of disdain – in other words, your gambit has failed. “You should ask Zak Weston about that. If you’re using the spirit world as a reliable source of advice.” She stares at you for a long moment. “And do tell those tarot readers you’ve become so chummy with that they need to keep the noise down.” She smiles. “I may have other guests, after all.”

Violet turns and walks slowly away, across the thick carpet. You can see that her right hand is clasping her left wrist behind her back, and in her left hand is a pair of scissors. The sight sends a shiver of déja vu down your spine again.

Once Violet is gone, you take a second to collect yourself. You’ve just received a lot of new information, but it shouldn’t change the course of the investigation. It sounds like your next step is to track down this Zak Weston and get a preliminary statement out of him – that, and talk to Dorota’s boyfriend, Oscar. Then you can return to your room and pick the shift you think will yield the most information. You sigh just thinking about it. You haven’t even shifted yet and this investigation has already become a tangled web.

You walk out the front door of the guesthouse and are halfway down the steps when you notice a silhouette sitting on the edge of the porch. It’s Rayne; he is sitting with his elbows on his thighs, staring off into the middle distance, his fingers knotted together. He looks like someone who came outside to smoke before realizing they don’t have any cigarettes, and who now doesn’t know what to do with their hands.

As you stop, he doesn’t look in your direction, but you see by the tilt of his head that he’s noticed you.

“Sam,” he says.

Rayne.

What are you doing out here?

You don’t know if you can say his name again. Every time you do, it’s like it scorches your tongue. “What are you doing out here?” you ask instead.

He sighs and spreads his hands. “I wanted some fresh air. I know you asked me to stay in my room, but after…” He raises his eyebrows. “…All that, I needed to get out of there for a minute.”

Why didn’t you want me to know about travellers?

[Sit down beside him.]

You take a seat on the cold cement of the porch. Rayne stiffens slightly as you sit down, then sighs, reaching up and rubbing his hands over his face.

“Sorry. I’ve been a jerk,” he says abruptly. “When you walked in the first time, I thought…Well, I thought I knew you. And I’ve been letting that color my opinions of you.” He rubs one palm with the thumb of his other hand as he speaks, his eyes slightly unfocused, all his attention on his words. “I know you’re just trying to do the best job you can. But…I’ve met a lot of people who couldn’t stretch their minds enough to understand things as they are. We’ve pretty much given up on telling the truth.”

He chuckles quietly. “That’s a sad thing to say, I suppose. What I mean is, it’s complicated. But you know now, and you don’t seem to have arrested Bron yet, so that’s a point in your favor.”

Rayne straightens his back and turns to look at you. His blue eyes shine like fire in the light of the setting sun. “Thanks, by the way,” he adds. “For being willing to listen.”

You look back at him, feeling caught in the molasses slide of the sunlight, the way it reflects off his bangs and the buttons at his collar. He blinks once, then again. His face looks open, like he’s waiting for an answer.

Of course.

[Kiss Him]

Oh, you think, your eyes widening at the thought that enters your head. Rayne must think that your shock is directed at him, because he winces slightly and begins to turn away. Panicked and confused, you blurt, “Of course.”

Rayne shakes his head lightly as he looks back at you. “You’re an odd one, Sam,” he remarks.

>Have you ever met a traveller?

>Do you know Zak Weston?

>You thought you knew me?

[Leave]

Desperate to gain some semblance of professionalism, you shake off the strange, intense thoughts that just possessed you and wrack your mind for more productive questions. Several occur, but sitting next to Rayne, you can’t help but remember the last time you were in such close proximity. Or the last time you thought you were.

“You thought you knew me?” you ask, quietly.

He is taken aback by the question – you see it in the quick jump of his eyebrows – but he laughs it off, exhaling and leaning back. He tilts his head back as well; the sun glints off the chain of a necklace that is momentarily visible above his collar.

“You know, it feels quite silly now. In the daylight, knowing you’re not some boogeyman sent by Chief Dupont to lock us all away.” He shifts his shoulders back and forth and smiles as he says it, clearly more relaxed. “It’s…nothing, really. You’re going to think it’s weird.”

Forget it, then.

Please?

“Please?”

Again, he blinks, seemingly taken by surprise. He has long eyelashes, you note.

“Alright, fine,” Rayne says, “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He leans forward again and fixes his eyes on you. There is a warmth to them now that was missing before, but his expression is serious, belying how lightly he just spoke.

“Last night, before we met,” he says, “I dreamed that I killed you, Sam.”

Your mind has just been racing down a very different track, and Rayne’s words jerk you back to harsh reality.

Rayne looks down at his hands. “It was terrible,” he says. “I had a knife, and I was…quite violently stabbing you to death. I remember there was this overpowering sense of necessity, like it was the only thing I could do, but at the same time…” He shakes his head. His mouth tightens. “It was a bad dream.”

>I’m sorry.

>How could you have dreamed about me before we’d met?

>I dreamed the same thing.

[Continue]

“I’m sorry,” you say. It’s the only thing you can say.

Rayne shakes his head once more. “It’s fine. Again, just a bad dream.”

Unconsciously, his hand goes to his neck, and he pulls a fine length of chain from beneath his collar. A cross hangs from it, which he begins to roll between his fingers, an anxious expression on his face.

>How could you have dreamed about me before we’d met?

>I dreamed the same thing.

[Continue]

Although the thought of rehashing what happened to you in that dark room makes your heart starts to pound again, you feel like this is your only chance to say it. Rayne has been open with you; it’s your turn to return the favor.

“Sam?” Rayne asks, his eyes boring into yours. “What’s the matter?”

You realize that you are biting your lip, hard. You force yourself to stop and breathe evenly.

“I dreamed the same thing,” you admit. You squeeze your eyes shut after speaking, but that only makes the fear worse – it is abruptly overwhelming, the vision of the knife, Rayne’s face inches from yours. Goodbye, Sam, you think, and you feel sick.

There is a hand on your shoulder, shaking you lightly. “Sam. Sam,” says Rayne. The urgency in his voice makes you open your eyes at last. The sun paints the porch orange with its dying rays.

You blink at Rayne, whose eyebrows are furrowed in concern.

I’m fine.

Sorry, I don’t know what came over me.

“Sorry, I don’t know what came over me,” you manage.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” says Rayne. Then he considers his words and adds, “Well, besides your own spirit that you talked to a few minutes ago.” He smirks.

You manage a laugh at that. Rayne’s hand is heavy and warm on your shoulder. He looks at you for a few moments longer, pursing his lips, then removes his hand and leans back, apparently satisfied that you’re not going to faint.

“I can’t imagine why we would have the same dream,” he muses, fiddling with the cross again. “In fact, it’s so unlikely that I’m apt to put it down to some shared psychosis, a folie a deux, if you will. We hadn’t met before today, so how could we possibly have dreamed of each other?”

You look at Rayne. He is wearing the same black collared shirt and light blue jeans as in your dream, you realize. But you are more and more regarding it as a dream – in the sunlight, with Rayne smiling at you, it no longer seems so threatening.

“Then again, there is the whole…dead Sam thing,” Rayne says, and you feel as if a bucket of cold water has been thrown in your face. “Lexie mentioned that she told you about my time travel theory, and it is the only thing I can think of that would make sense in this instance. And if we’re going with time travel, well, the basis of quantum physics is an infinity of multiverses. So, let’s say there is some kind of psychic bleedover between another multiverse – just hypothetically, of course – where I killed you.”

He is looking at you analytically, now, and you feel uncomfortable beneath his flat, impartial gaze. Hearing him give credence to the whole situation is not reassuring.

“Let’s theorize from there,” Rayne continues, gesturing with one hand, “And say that our multiverses are slightly misaligned in time – or time isn’t relevant between universes. Or, the event is traumatic enough to cut through timelines, and you somehow experience a memory from an alternate version of yourself. It would therefore make sense for me to experience the same memory from an alternate version of me. Assuming the same level of trauma applied,” he says, tilting his head, “Which it obviously did, since I certainly didn’t feel good about killing you.”

You look at him.

“Hypothetically,” he adds, and smiles at you. “It’s not a pleasant scenario, but one could rationalize it. We certainly deal with strange enough circumstances already. Science can explain a lot more than most people think.”

[Continue]

As your silence stretches out, Rayne sighs and looks away. “It’s just a theory,” he mutters.

>Have you ever met a traveller?

>Do you know Zak Weston?

[Leave]

“Have you ever met a traveller?” you ask after a pause.

Rayne frowns. He folds his hands between his knees.

“Yes,” he says shortly.

What happened?

[Say Nothing]

“What happened?” you ask. You hate to push him, but you need to know what you can expect to be up against. Bronwyn and Lexie gave you only general descriptions. Personal knowledge would help you prepare.

Rayne looks up, as if the roof over the guesthouse porch will give him the answers. “Nothing good.”

A long pause elapses before, still staring skyward, he says, “I’ve met multiple travellers. Never really been able to stop them before. We do our best, but it’s beginning to feel like we can’t save anyone.”

He clenches one hand into a fist. “Sometimes you can get so close, though. Close enough to feel them slip through your fingers.”

You begin to nod, but before you finish the motion Rayne switches his gaze to you, intense and abrupt.

“Please, Sam,” he says. “Stop whoever’s doing this. Before they kill anyone else.”

>Do you know Zak Weston?

[Leave]

“Do you know Zak Weston?” you ask next.

Rayne shakes his head. “Not personally. I met him once, but…oh, no.” He looks off into the middle distance. “He did mention Dorota. He said her family goes to the cinema every Monday night, and ‘you know what that means.’” He makes air quotations around Zak’s words before refocusing on you. “He’s a photographer in town. That’s all I know.”

[Leave]

As you stand up, you reflect on how quickly your attitude has changed towards Rayne. The same strange pull between the two of you remains, but, although terror still lurks in the recesses of your mind, it is no longer directed at him. Instead you find yourself able to smile back as he smiles at you, raising one hand to wave goodbye.

“Good luck with your investigation, Detective Sam,” Rayne says, again with that distinctive shoulder shuffle. “Let me know if you have any more strange dreams.” He widens his eyes at you in mock fear, then laughs, leaning back. “Sorry, too soon.”

Thanks.

“Thanks,” you say, and are rewarded with a more genuine smile. As you walk down the driveway to the waiting cab, you feel like the image of Rayne smiling at you, lit by the sunset, is already seared into your mind.

Your thoughts are scrambled, so you use the cab ride over to Dorota’s boyfriend’s house to reorder them. A certain line of thinking, one that centers around the sunlight on Rayne’s face and the gentle tilt of his head, is firmly shoved beneath more serious thoughts of the investigation. You do not have the time or the emotional strength right now to deal with that can of worms. Not to mention that getting involved with one of your suspects would be a terrible, terrible idea.

Fortunately, the interview with Oscar Wainwright goes smoothly. He was playing football at the time of Dorota’s death, as Chief Dupont told you earlier – a rock-solid alibi. You leave the Wainwright residence with at least one set of facts concrete in your mind: Oscar definitely didn’t do this.

Zak Weston, however, is a different problem altogether.

From your first moment in his studio, the man exudes sleaziness. His smiles seem as if they have been limned with sludge, he has a row of volumes about serial killers on his bookshelf, and when you mention Dorota Shaw to him, he practically drools at the mouth.

“Oh, yeah, I took some pictures of her for her scholarship to Julliard,” Zak says, grinning creepily. “She liked them so much she came back for a private session. Would you like to see?”

Your protests manage to stop him from showing you the boudoir photos of Dorota, but he still holds up a picture of her with her cello, the bow drawn – somewhat ominously, you think – across her throat.

“See anything in this photo?” Zak asks you.

A girl and her cello.

What do you see?

“What do you see?” you ask nervously, worried that he’s going to start waxing lecherous about her body.

“Just a very pretty girl,” Zak says after a brief pause, then puts the photo away.

He is equally creepy when you ask about Violet. He laughs at the idea that she sent you to him, then explains that she would never suggest he’d committed the murder – “We’re very close, after all, me and Violet. Sometimes we share a drink…Other times, a bed.”

He looks at you, his eyebrows raised suggestively. You keep your face schooled so as not to engage, but it proves fruitless: “We have sex,” Zak explains, while you quietly die inside.

When you’re finally able to leave the photography studio, it’s dark outside. You stand on the sidewalk and heave a sigh of relief. You don’t have anything concrete against Zak – except Violet’s vague implication that he was at Dorota’s house on the night of the murder, which he denied when you brought it up – but you hate being around the guy. He’s definitely creepy. Extremely creepy. Disgustingly creepy.

After a few minutes spent trying to wring the slimy feeling of talking to Zak out of your mind, you head back to the guesthouse.

The empty porch is lit by a single yellow lamp when you arrive; Rayne has vanished. You feel a sense of unease at the thought. Stop worrying, you tell yourself. He’s probably just back in his room.

Inside, the halls are quiet – no one is about, and even the radio seems to be taking a break. Relieved that no one is going to interrupt you, you finally unlock the door to your own room and step inside.

You spare a few moments to check the room. It is dimly lit, and the bed seems comfortable. Most importantly, the door has a secure lock, and no one is hiding in the closet. (You didn’t expect anyone to be, but after hearing from Oscar about what may have happened to Dorota, you can’t be too sure.) At last, satisfied with the safety of the place, you settle at the foot of the bed and close your eyes.

You see everyone you’ve interacted with so far flash before you in your mind’s eye. Bronwyn’s stern face, the Chief’s exasperated one, Violet’s raised eyebrow. The moment before shifting is always a moment of freedom for you; you feel the connection to your current identity begin to fade, and a world of possibility opens up in the space between atoms.

Bronwyn, you decide, focusing on her. She seems to appear before you, regarding you with a steady gaze, her brown hair carefully restrained by her headband. She’s an authority figure to Lexie, she may be able to probe Violet more casually, and Oscar said he spoke with her earlier. Plus, Rayne wants to talk to her. You feel a brief pang at the thought of fooling Rayne, but you squash it. This is your job. Anyway, Bronwyn’s the perfect first shift.

You breathe in, then out, and the world begins to shake around you.

Normally this process takes only a few seconds. You feel the world compress, your senses momentarily shut off as your body twists and reforms, and when you open your eyes again the shift has solidified. You shape the subject’s voice in your mouth, test out a few phrases, just to be sure. Then you’re ready to go.

This time, the process does not go so smoothly.

When you begin to shift into Bronwyn, the world seems to go sideways. All at once, instead of your eyes being closed, they are open, and a succession of different people pass in front of you. Rayne, Lexie, Violet, Oscar, the Chief – even you. You see yourself saying words you’ve never said to Bronwyn, asking her to do a reading – and then you see Lexie, worried, asking about her alibi. Bronwyn reassures her, but you feel a current of worry, of protectiveness, of overwhelming love burning within Bronwyn-you’s chest.

What’s happening? you think, overwhelmed. You are bewildered and in danger of being subsumed beneath the rush of other selves. As Bronwyn, you watch Lexie leave your room, and then you go to your bed and pull out Mercury, and you think about Rayne and do reading after reading. The cards flip up the same result every time, and you cry.

Then the vision wrenches again, and you are in the dark, Rayne standing over you, a wild and desperate smile on his face –

You open your eyes on the floor of your room. You’ve bitten your tongue; there is blood in your mouth. Slowly, you push yourself up from the carpet.

“Hi, I’m Bronwyn,” you hear yourself say aloud, and your voice comes out just right. “I’m…Bronwyn.”

What just happened to me?

You sit with your back against the bed and look at your hands. They’re Bronwyn’s hands, pale with neatly manicured nails. The legs sticking out in front of you are Bronwyn’s legs. So, the shift worked, despite everything. That’s some small reassurance.

But you’ve never lost control over your own body like this before, and it scares you. It can’t be coincidence. Not after everything strange that’s already happened. It feels like your world is falling apart.

Deep breaths, you tell yourself. Stay in control. Consider the facts.

The only real theory you have to go off of is Rayne’s, but sitting here shaking on the floor of your room, you can see a lot of holes in it. His entire thought process is predicated on the idea that you both experienced some sort of hallucination from an alternate timeline. But that doesn’t explain the nauseous sense of déja vu that has permeated all your actions today. It can’t be that the whole timeline is bleeding over, because you haven’t had any more…dreams? Visions?

Then again, what else would you call what just happened?

You rub your eyes. Your head hurts. Your hands are still shaking.

What, then? You actually experienced that alternate timeline? This is some kind of loop? But that doesn’t make sense, either – you have no idea how or why something like that would happen. And besides, the spirit in the Oujia board – your spirit, supposedly – said this was your last chance. Why would it be your last chance if you were stuck in a loop?

No, you can’t process this right now. You’re going to have a panic attack if you keep probing at it. Not to mention that the longer you spend in Bronwyn’s form, the more you risk someone coming to your room and finding her, and not Sam, inside.

You get up and brush your hands down your dress. You straighten your shoulders and school your face. Then, as Bronwyn, you walk into the hall and toward Lexie’s room.

Lexie looks up as you enter and beams. She is sitting on the edge of her bed, and as you approach, she puts her phone face down on the bedspread. You take a seat in the chair across from her.

“Oh, Bronwyn,” she says, frowning, “I’m so glad you’re here. Everything’s been so topsy-turvy today, I don’t even know what to think. I’m sure you know what to do, though.”

She peers at you. Maybe there is still some pallor to your face, or you’re not hiding your confusion as well as you think, because she doesn’t look reassured by what she sees there.

“Are you alright, Bronwyn?” she asks, folding her hands in her lap.

Yeah, I’m okay.

No, I’m not okay.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” you say. Bronwyn’s voice flows out of your mouth, and Lexie smiles in relief.

“That’s great,” she says. “I don’t know what I’d do if you were falling apart. We all know you’re the rock of the group.”

She’s looking at you like you have all the answers, you realize. Even as you think this, she asks, “What do we do now, Bron? Everything’s gotten so mixed up. I don’t know if I’m still supposed to be worried about Sam arresting us, or if he’s going to help us catch the traveller – and I have no idea who that could be, either.” She shakes her head. “It’s a huge mess.”

You can trust Sam.

We have to be on our guard.

“You can trust Sam,” you say with a nod.

Lexie heaves a sigh. “That’s a relief,” she says, eyebrows raised. “I was worried you’d be angry with me for showing him the Ouija board earlier. But it was his spirit, after all.”

She thinks for a moment, and you see a light flush rise to her cheeks. “Plus, he’s pretty cute,” she says. Then her eyes widen, and she points a finger at you. “Wait, don’t you dare tell him that! I didn’t say it. You heard nothing.”

You wince internally. Sorry, Lexie, I can’t exactly do that… But you just nod again, and Lexie subsides, appeased.

>Did you learn anything else from the Ouija board?

>How are you holding up?

[Leave]

“How are you holding up?” you ask, shaping your expression into one of friendly concern. Lexie sighs and looks at her nails.

“I’m alright,” she says in a forlorn voice. “It was just a really weird experience, earlier. I’m used to dealing with dead people, but talking to someone’s spirit while they’re in the room…That’s not right. And I don’t want Sam to die. The whole time I was communicating with his spirit, I just kept thinking it: that I didn’t want him to die.” Lexie looks up at you, and her hazel eyes are shining with tears. “I know that doesn’t mean anything, but I want to save someone for once.”

>Did you learn anything else from the Ouija board?

[Leave]

You give Lexie a moment to wipe the tears from her eyes. You feel bad pressing the subject, but you need to know: “Did you learn anything else from the Ouija board?”

“I didn’t want to use it anymore after you left,” Lexie admits. “It felt scary. It’s never felt scary before. It made me think…that maybe if I hadn’t reached out to Sam’s spirit, he wouldn’t be doomed to die.” Her eyebrows pull together. “Does that make any sense? I hope not. But I can’t help thinking it…”

Lexie takes a deep breath and clutches her hands together more tightly. “I did hear more from it before I went to go get him, though. I was asking the usual questions: do you have any unfinished business, who’s going to die, that sort of thing.”

She is pointedly not meeting your gaze. You get the feeling she may have been asking a few less pertinent questions, as well.

“Well, when I asked about unfinished business, the spirit spelled Rayne’s name.” Lexie looks at you again. “His real name, Bronwyn. It freaked me out.”

His real name?

What does that mean?

“His real name?” you ask.

Lexie glances around the room nervously. “You’re right, we should keep it quiet. I wouldn’t put it past Violet to have cameras in here. I’ve been changing in the bathroom, just in case.”

She leans forward, and you take your cue from her and do the same. When your faces are just inches apart, she whispers into your ear:

“He spelled the whole thing, first and last, no mistake. I don’t get it. How could he know? And why would he say…you know…instead of Rayne? It’s like he was trying to communicate that he knew more than alive-Sam does now.” Lexie shivers. “Or maybe Sam already knows. If that’s true, we should be worried, shouldn’t we? He might be trying to get Rayne.”

Get him for what?

[Say Nothing]

You look at her for a moment longer. Curiosity tears at you from the inside, but you know you can’t ask what Rayne’s real name is; Lexie will spot you as a fake in an instant. So instead you keep quiet and allow her to continue.

“That’s all I got out of the board before I panicked and went to get Sam,” Lexie says. “That, and it kept saying ‘knife’. Which doesn’t make any sense, does it? Since Dorota was strangled and all.” She sighs. “I don’t know, Bron, it was all so confusing.”

[Leave]

You thank her, say goodbye, and step out of the room. You’re reeling slightly as you enter the hall. Every time you think you’re beginning to grasp this case, another thread unravels at your tug, unspooling information you have no idea what to do with.

You sigh and draw yourself up. It’s always odd inhabiting a shorter body than your own; everything in the hallway is at the wrong height. You still have work to do as Bronwyn, though, so you keep your posture straight and walk down the hall to Rayne’s room.

The response to your knock is a casual, “Come in,” so you push open the door and step inside. You slip into the same chair that you occupied as Sam, a couple of hours ago.

Rayne closes his book. “Ah, Bron,” he says, smiling at you. “Welcome to my luxurious chambers.” His voice drips sarcasm. “I was just having the unpleasant realization that it’ll be another cold shower for me tonight. All the excitement earlier made me forget to take one in time.” He shakes his head. “Still really bugs me.”

>What’s your real name?

>Sam said you wanted to talk to me?

>What do you think of Sam?

[Leave]

As soon as the thought of asking Rayne’s real name occurs to you, you dismiss it. If Lexie would have been suspicious at the question, you can’t imagine how Rayne would react. Poorly, you’re sure.

You settle for carrying out your earlier plan: “Sam said you wanted to talk to me?” you ask.

Rayne sighs. “Ah, that. It’s kind of irrelevant now. Don’t worry about it.”

It’s not irrelevant, Ray.

Why not?

“It’s not irrelevant, Ray,” you say in Bronwyn’s voice. It feels a little weird to be addressing him like this, but you’re good at inhabiting a character once you’ve shifted into them, so you’re able to brush the thought away. “Whatever you had to say matters.”

He laughs, clearly a little uncomfortable at the upwelling of emotion. “Thanks, Bron. I’ll come to you first next time I need counselling.”

You raise your eyebrows at him.

“Really, it was just a weird dream. I talked to him about it, and…it seems like we figured it out. Nothing to be worried about after all.”

What kind of weird dream?

Rayne frowns. “Honestly, it was more like a vision. I was in my room praying, and then all of a sudden I was in this…visceral, real-feeling scene, somewhere else, with someone I’d never met. When that person walked into my room the next morning to question me about a murder, you can imagine my shock.”

He crosses one of his legs over the other and slings an elbow up on the back of the couch. “It was disconcerting, to say the least. I thought Sam might be a traveller messing with my head. But it doesn’t seem like that’s the case anymore, does it? He’s with us, and he needs to be protected from whatever comes next.” A cloud crosses his face. “Whatever puts him in the position to talk to Lexie via spirit board.”

You nod, and he continues: “But I digress. I think we can chalk the whole thing up to quantum anomalies and all try to forget about it.” Rayne smiles. “I know I certainly don’t want to dwell on it any longer.”

>Really, what was the dream about?

>What do you think of Sam?

[Leave]

You already know what Rayne’s dream was about, and you’re not sure having Bronwyn push him on that point will help, so in a moment of immaturity, you go ahead and ask: “What do you think of Sam?” You keep your face carefully neutral as the words leave your mouth.

Rayne laughs nonetheless, shifting his shoulders back into the sofa. “Are we forming primary school playground friendships?” he asks with a further chuckle. “What does it matter what I think of him? I’m relieved he’s not arresting us or throwing us in the looney bin, that’s what’s important.”

He pauses for a moment, then looks off to the side. “He’s nice,” he says, shrugging. “He didn’t mock my theories. Makes me more likely to trust him. But I know we have to be careful, Bron. Don’t worry. I will be.” The smile that follows is wistful and a bit bitter. You want to look through it and into Rayne’s mind, to see what made him so cautious, so cynical. What made him change his name.

But you can’t do that. So you wait as the expression fades from his face and is replaced with his normal sarcastic veneer.

“Why, are you looking to write him a thank you note?” he asks.

>Really, what was the dream about?

[Leave]

“Really, what was the dream about?” you decide to ask after all. This way you won’t have to pretend later that you don’t know, if you return as Bronwyn – and maybe he’ll be willing to tell her more than he did you.

Instead of a friendly response, though, Rayne narrows his eyes at you. “What’s with all the questions, Bron?” he asks. “You’re acting weird. Is this a conversation or an interrogation?”

You start to shake your head, but he leans forward, pointing at you with the hand he just removed from the back of the sofa. “I see what this is. Sam asked you to get more out of me. I knew he was being too nice.” Rayne frowns, his mouth forming an upside-down V. “Well, I already told him everything I know. I was praying in my room all night, I had the dream, and then I woke up in bed. That’s it.”

He looks at you, gaze full of mixed parts hope and annoyance. “Is that good enough, Bron? Or am I a suspect in your eyes, too?”

Of course not, Ray. I just worry about you.

Everyone’s a suspect until we catch the killer.

You try to backpedal: “Of course not, Ray. I just worry about you.”

He regards you suspiciously for a moment longer, then slumps back into the cushions. “Sorry, Bron,” he sighs. “I’ve been on edge since last night. It seemed so real, killing Sam. It’s hard not to feel like I’m going to be dragged off to jail any minute now.”

He looks at his palms. “I keep washing my hands. Like I can still see the blood on them.”

I’m sorry.

“I’m sorry,” you say. At the concern in your voice, Rayne looks up and shakes his head, a quick smile sliding over his face like a mask.

“Don’t worry about me,” he says, “I’m fine. Focus on catching the killer. I’m sure I’ll feel normal again once we find out who the next victim is and can actually plan for eventualities. Right now, it feels like we’re just sitting on our hands, waiting for something to go wrong.” He sighs and changes the subject: “Do you think Violet killed Dorota? I don’t want to imagine I’m staying in a murderer’s guesthouse, but I heard her mention to Dupont that she doesn’t remember last night. That’s trademark traveller behavior. Should we tell Sam about it?”

You should tell him.

I’ll tell him.

“I’ll tell him,” you say. Rayne nods.

“You two are quite good friends already, aren’t you?” he asks, tilting his head. “Thick as thieves.”

[Leave]

“I should get going,” you say. “I need to be in my room in case Sam or – god forbid – the Chief comes by to interview me again.”

Rayne nods. “Can’t keep them waiting, I suppose. Thanks for stopping by, though, Bron.”

You nod at him.

He picks up his book again as you head out, but when you pause in the doorway, you notice that his eyes aren’t moving along the page. Instead, a melancholy expression has drifted over his face. You follow his gaze. He is staring at his hands.

You remember seeing those hands in the dark, slick with your blood. One was on your shoulder, holding you in place while the other gripped the handle of the knife.

You slip out of the room before Rayne can look up again.

A wave of exhaustion passes over you as you step through the doorway. You sway and put a hand to your head. It feels like you’ve been awake for days; your vision is swimming.

To be fair, you don’t really know the last time that you slept. Your memory is a sheet of white paper ripped at the top; before being killed, everything is a void.

Funny, it’s usually the other way around, you think with dry humor.

These blanks, holes in your memory, are not uncommon for you. You still don’t know what happens between briefing and redeployment. You’ve never woken up during the augmentation process, and after each conversation with Agent X, your past cases grow hazier. You latch onto the new identity you are handed with each investigation and you play it out. It’s your job; more than that, it’s your life. You’re okay with that.

This, though? It feels unnatural. Instead of a clean cut, the hole in your memory has ragged edges. It’s like something punched through the fabric of your world and took part of you with it.

But standing around probing at the wound won’t do you any good. You have more suspects to talk to.

As you work your way through conversations with people who think you are Bronwyn, a small part of your mind reflects on an earlier thought. Namely, augmentation. You think of the weird fit you had when transforming into Bronwyn: could this be a new ability you’ve been given to help with your investigation? The traumatic nature of the visions could just be a malfunction, one that will be fixed in future augmentations.

Although you have no evidence to back it up, the thought calms you. This could all have been planned in order to increase your efficacy. You tell yourself everything will be fine.

By the time you wrap up your interviews as Bronwyn (having learned only a few more things, including that Zak doesn’t want to talk to you and Violet seems rather reserved in your presence), you’ve almost convinced yourself the visions are a new tool Agent X has given you. Without warning, yes, but then you’ve never had a briefing that wasn’t cryptic. And if this is a new tool, you’d better treat it like one – approach it as something to be used to your advantage in solving this case, just like you do your shifting abilities.

You get a small notebook out of your suitcase, where you left it when you shifted into Bronwyn. Inside are a few preliminary notes about the case, followed by a summary of each suspect. You don’t usually write much on paper; you keep most of your thoughts in your head, where no one can read them and get suspicious about you knowing things you shouldn’t. (You’ve had that experience before, and don’t want to repeat it.) But paper can be helpful, and considering the confused state you were in after your last shift, you may not be able to hold onto coherent thoughts long enough to parse them. By jotting them down, you may be able to capture pieces of the visions that would otherwise be lost.

Over the course of the next two hours, you shift five more times, each time into a new suspect. Every time you do, you set your handy notebook on the floor, sit down on the carpet, and focus on the shift.

And every time is complete agony.

You shift into Lexie. You see Bronwyn flash before your eyes, and Zak gets close to you, too close, and your face hurts from smiling, and you see Rayne on the sofa, face contorted with sadness. You slump to the ground. You feel Lexie’s long, blonde curls sprout from your scalp. Rayne says, My hands hurt.

You finish the shift. Your breath rasps in your chest. How many more times can you do this?

As many times as I have to, you think.

Slowly, your little notebook fills up. When you shift into Oscar, you get flashes of red hair and pale skin through the slats of a closet. A wedding dress looms over you like a bone-white monstrosity. You hear of Dorota’s death all over again and you sob dryly into your pillow. Afterwards, your eyes feel full of sand.

When you shift into Violet, you see flashes of an alien room, of red heads. You feel sick. You swallow pills and you still feel sick, but exhaustion comes down over you like a veil, and you tip into bed. A little paper doll on a pale pillow, the fear of dying due to your red hair pressed to the back of your mind. You hear another woman’s name as the next victim and relax. You are spinning like a top and can barely bring yourself back to earth to answer questions.

The Chief’s shift fills you with frustration and twitching, a burning certainty that Bronwyn is the killer. Peering through his eyes, you snatch desperately at the cloud of a thought as it whirls by – a case file with Rayne’s name on it. You squint at the letters, but already the scene has shifted, and you are swept sideways into a dark house, bursting through the front door with desperation. You see Violet, dead on the sofa – and you see another woman, dead on the floor – and you see a strange thing that is not quite a body, in a dark room in the guesthouse, cut full of holes. You know that it is you. Dead.

You wake clawing at your throat. And then you are Claude Dupont, and you go ask more questions, accumulate more knowledge.

Violet is turning out to be the most suspicious, what with the blank spot in her memory. But Zak is incredibly creepy, and – you have to admit – Rayne is the only other person with a completely uncorroborated alibi for last night. The three of them seem to mix together in your mind as you choke on the floor of your room, forcing yourself to shift into Zak, feeling your arms thicken from twigs into branches, seeing yourself peering into photos and then stepping into them, the contents shifting around you into scenes of death and despair.

This final time, it takes you a minute to wake from your shift. When you glance at the clock, you are bleary-eyed and distressed. Agent X has warned you before about running out of power to shift, but this is the first time it’s ever come close to happening. You take a few minutes to breathe deeply and try to center yourself, but you still feel alarmingly weak as you stand up on Zak’s legs. And no one even really wants to talk to you as Zak – although you do glean from a conversation with Violet that both she and Zak were at Dorota’s house last night. She claims not to have gone inside, but the information is damning for both of them. You mull it over as you return to your room.

You’ve been putting this off, but you need to shift into Rayne.

You’ve been everyone else by now, and you want to know what the other tarot readers have to say to him. Despite the supernatural elements at play here and everything they’ve shared with you, you have to treat them as suspects in the investigation until you have overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

So you settle yourself on the floor, take a deep breath, and close your eyes. You conjure what remaining energy you have and focus on Rayne. He appears in your mind’s eye, sharp and clear, shoulders set and blue eyes fixed on you.

When you reach out to shift into him, a lot happens at once.

You feel anger flow through your body. It is a clean, unnatural anger, unclouded by personal motivations. There is a black cloud over your mind and your hands hurt and they are closed around Dorota Shaw’s throat.

You gasp even as you slump against the bed – you didn’t expect it to be this visceral.

You watch the life fade from Dorota’s eyes, and then with a blink you are waking up, and your mind feels as empty as a snowy field. The day slides past you – and the record skips, and you are looking at your hands again in the dark, wrapped around another throat. Life fading from eyes. Record skip. And you wake up in bed again.

At the same time, however, more normal scenes flash before your vision like loose scraps of film. You see yourself at a table with Lexie and Bronwyn, doing a reading. Exchanging barbs with Zak. Sipping coffee.

You see a dark room and no knife, and the shadow filling your limbs is gone, and you don’t kill anyone.

In some vaguely Sam-shaped part of your brain you recognize that this is more than you’ve seen before. You aren’t peering into one other universe – you’re seeing many, spreading out before you like the branches of a twisted tree. But the branches bend and cross each other, and the scenes splice together on the film. Hands around a throat blur with a smile on your face. The projector speeds up, the scenes skip, and you keep waking up with your mind empty and your hands hurting.

Please, you beg, Don’t tell me it’s always like this.

And it isn’t. Shining through the flicker-flash of death and clenched fists, hunched shoulders and a few, spattered tears, you see one moment that replicates itself.

It’s your own face, shining with relief. Tired, but happy. And you feel a wave of emotion –

Sam, you’re alive! Thank Christ –

Your mind scatters in the confusion of the moment, unable to track whether you are Sam or Rayne. Hazily, as if through a fogged window, you watch from the outside as Rayne hugs you – and then you kiss him.

You open your eyes. You are lying on your back on the floor of your room, and you taste iron. When you put your hand up to your face, you find that your nose is bleeding. You cough, and your throat hurts.

“Hi, I’m Rayne,” you say, testing, and the voice comes out right.

“I’m Rayne,” you mutter again, thinking of Rayne’s hands around Dorota’s throat, around the handle of the knife that killed you.

“I’m Rayne,” and you think of one single, glorious moment, his mouth on yours – or another moment on the porch, with sunlight caught in his hair and a warm smile on his face, just for you.

“Okay.”

You are tired. You want nothing more than to remain here, the soft carpet brushing the hair at the back of your neck, and close your eyes. Relax. Sleep.

You’ve never given up on a case before, but this one is pushing you to your limits. You are more than weary; you are bone-exhausted. You feel like all your reserves of energy have been spent.

Your eyelashes flutter against your cheeks. It would be so easy to rest. To sleep for a few hours, or a whole day, the time reeling away from you like a kite on a loose spool.

Deprecation can’t be worse than Rayne killing you.

The thought sends a pang shooting through you – not of phantom pain, for once, but of sadness. If you give up on this case, what will happen? The Chief will arrest Bronwyn, more likely than not. Two more young women will die. The tarot readers will chalk another failure on their board. The rite will be carried out, with whatever connotations that carries.

You shove yourself up into a sitting position.

Your name is Sam. You are a shapeshifting detective. You are going to save the day.

You haul yourself to your feet, your muscles fighting you with each movement, and walk with a determined step out into the hall.

Unfortunately, the universe has more to throw at you. As you close your door behind you, you hear a voice from farther down the hall – a distinctive, peppy voice.

“Rayne! There you are, I’ve been looking for you!”

You turn around and see Lexie bounding toward you. You flash her a smile and try to move away from the door, but you’re not quick enough; her eyebrows pull together into an expression of mild puzzlement.

“Rayne,” she asks, “Why are you coming out of Sam’s room?”

You wince. This is exactly what you were hoping to avoid. Shouldn’t have given in to lying on the floor…

I…forgot something.

I was snooping.

None of your business, Lex.

[Say Nothing]

You rummage frantically in your mind for plausible excuses and come up empty. Damn it, you can be such an idiot sometimes. It’s like your exhaustion is slowing down the cogs of your brain.

You blink at Lexie, mouth slightly open, and say nothing at all.

She squints at you. “Being mysterious, are we? It’s a dangerous game, going in other people’s rooms. Especially detectives who are investigating us for murder, even if they are as nice and handsome as Sam. Which you didn’t hear from me,” she says, and giggles. “You didn’t steal from him, did you? Bron and I have enough coming in from Tarotasm for the week, you don’t need to start taking things again. Not now, anyway.”

Yes, I was stealing.

I steal?

What’s Tarotasm?

[Say Nothing]

You squeeze your eyes closed, your body frozen in place, your mouth clamped shut like a steel trap to prevent any of your stupid ideas from emerging from it. You curse your brain for its lack of functioning. You’re pretty sure you can feel your face turning red from distress. This is not going well.

To make it worse, when you open your eyes Lexie is looking at you with an expression of dawning realization.

“Oh my god, Rayne,” she says, that realization beginning to turn into a smile.

Oh, no.

No no.

Lex, it’s not what you think –

“No,” you start to say, backing further down the hall, holding up one finger as if it will stop Lexie’s inexorable advance. Her smile is positively devilish by now; you swear she’s about to start rubbing her hands together. “No, no. No,” you add, for good measure.

“Rayne, you devil!” she exclaims. She seems half put out and half gleeful. You glance around, worried that someone will hear, but all the other doors are closed. “You little – oh, you never do things like this!” Her mouth is open wide as her eyes dart to the door, then back to you.

“Is he in there right now?” she asks in an overexaggerated whisper.

If you weren’t about to shrivel up and die of embarrassment, you have to admit this would be funny.

“You knew I liked him!” she whispers, taking your silence for assent. She slaps your arm and you flinch away. “Rayne! You bastard!” But she’s grinning as she says it, and you get the feeling she’s just using this as more of an excuse to tease you.

I didn’t do anything!

Stop hitting me.

“I didn’t do anything!” you try to argue, but it’s too late now; you’ve damned yourself with your earlier silence. The irony of this situation is truly off the charts, you think as Lexie chases you past the room where the real Rayne is probably sitting and reading a book. You’re being accused of fraternizing with yourself.

“I can’t believe you!” Lexie squeals as she runs down the hall after you in her stockinged feet. You find yourself skidding on the carpet as you round the corner. Ahead, Bronwyn’s door is slightly ajar, and offers refuge.

You put on a last burst of speed just as Lexie’s grabbing fingers brush your shoulder blades, and then you’re inside, slamming the door shut behind you and putting your back up against it. You hear a thump and wince; evidently Lexie wasn’t able to stop her motion in time.

There is a plaintive “Rayne!” from the hall, and the doorknob rattles, but you turn the lock and breathe a sigh of relief.

Before you, Bronwyn closes her laptop and looks up at you with mixed concern and amusement.

“Is something wrong, Ray?” she asks.

Lex is trying to kill me.

Nothing’s wrong, everything is absolutely fine.

“Nothing’s wrong, everything is absolutely fine,” you say, smiling the fakest smile you’ve ever smiled in your life. The door thumps again, and then you hear a growl of frustration and departing footsteps. You wince once more. This situation is going to be hell to untangle without implicating yourself.

“Did you and Lexie have a fight?” Bronwyn asks. Her eyebrows rise.

No.

What do you think?

“No,” you say, drawing out the ‘o’.

“Really, Rayne? I can hear her fuming from here.” Bronwyn looks pointedly at your hand, still resting on the doorknob. “And you’ve locked my door.”

There was a misunderstanding.

You know what, let’s not worry about that now.

“There was a misunderstanding,” you say, taking your hand off the doorknob and going to sit down. “Let’s leave it at that. She’ll cool off eventually.”

Bronwyn sighs. “Of course she will, she’s got the grudge-holding ability of a butterfly. You’ve got to stop prodding at her, though. She’s doing her best.” She pauses, then crosses her arms. “Did you hide her makeup again?”

No.

It’s not even my fault!

“It’s not even my fault!” you start to protest, but Bronwyn clucks her tongue and you feel your mouth close as if on its own accord.

“I swear, sometimes the two of you act like children,” she says, but you can see the laughter in her eyes. “I’m sorry for helping her prank you last week, but really, Rayne.”

You’re not fooled by her stern demeanor. She’s barely suppressing a laugh at the image of Lexie on the warpath, chasing you down the hallway. Or whatever prank she and Lexie pulled on the real Rayne a week ago.

“Anyway, what did you need?” she asks, relenting. “The reading’s not for thirty minutes.”

>Why did you and Lexie lie about your alibis?

>Have you learned anything more from Mercury?

>Who do you think is the killer?

[Leave]

You decide that your first question isn’t too dangerous, as long as you put a spin on it: “Why did you and Lexie lie about your alibis?” you ask, furrowing your brow in concern. “Chief Dupont keeps asking me about it. I think Sam told him before we got him on our side.”

Bronwyn sighs and rests her hands on the bedspread. “I know, it was a bad idea. After Chief Dupont laughed us out of his office for predicting Dorota Shaw’s death, we should have all stuck together for the night so that we’d have good alibis. But we didn’t, and then Lexie got worried that we’d be in trouble…” She sighs again, deeply. “I thought it would be simpler if we said we were together. Now I see that it wasn’t.”

You nod. This does, in fact, seem like a reasonable explanation. And why would she lie to Rayne? You have almost no lingering doubts about one of the tarot readers being the killer.

>Have you learned anything more from Mercury?

>Who do you think is the killer?

[Leave]

“Have you learned anything more from Mercury?” you ask next.

Bronwyn shakes her head in frustration. “I had a shift on Tarotasm for a while, so I wasn’t able to do anything with it then. Afterward, Mercury seemed almost…reluctant. It’s like it doesn’t want to talk to me.” She throws up her hands. “And after everything we’ve done! We follow it where it wants to go, we listen to its portents, we try to save the people it points to – and then it shuts up on us. Goes silent like an angry child.”

She glances at the tarot deck, which is sitting out on her bedside table. One card lies face up next to the rest; it is the Nine of Wands. A blue and red design like a paint spatter seems to shift over the surface as you stare at it. You feel like you could reach out and dip your hand into the card, and it would come away wet.

Bronwyn looks back at you, shaking her head, and you meet her gaze. “I’m hoping it’ll be more helpful at the group reading,” she says with a wistful smile. “You’re the one who figured out it wanted us to come here, Ray – maybe you can wrangle it.”

I’m the one who led us to August?

I’ll do my best.

“I’ll do my best,” you say, clasping your hands in front of you, and Bronwyn chuckles.

“Sure, if the tension between you and Lexie doesn’t ruin the reading entirely,” she retorts. “You know we need calm emotions to read Mercury accurately.”

>Who do you think is the killer?

[Leave]

“Who do you think is the killer?” you ask in a musing tone of voice.

Bronwyn glances down, her face looking drawn and tired for a moment. Her fingers clutch the bedspread, wrinkling it.

“I’m not sure,” she admits. “I wish I knew, Ray. It could be Violet – she doesn’t remember what she was doing last night – but she also keeps coming ‘round and asking me questions. I don’t think she’d be looking into the murder like this if she knew she’d done it.” She purses her lips. “Then again, she might not know. Traveller memory loss being what it is…”

She continues listing the options: “It could be that creepy Zak. I don’t think it’s the Chief, he seems too invested in keeping law and order – too bad his idea of order is locking me in a jail cell. And Dorota’s boyfriend Oscar seems sweet. He asked me this morning if I could contact her spirit.” Bronwyn’s gaze unfocuses for a moment, as if she is looking back through the hours. “He seemed sad. In a quiet, desperate way. Even if he didn’t have an alibi, I don’t think he could have done it.”

Suddenly she snaps back, and she is herself again. She tilts her head, dark hair falling in a cascade over one shoulder and down her back. “What do you think, Ray? Who do you think did it?”

Lexie.

Chief Dupont.

Zak.

Violet.

Sam.

Oscar.

You did it.

It was me.

You hesitate, wondering who you want to point Bronwyn’s suspicion at, before you say, “Violet. She doesn’t remember last night, and she says strange things sometimes. Do you think you could keep an eye on her, Bron?”

She regards you for a moment, then nods. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. She doesn’t seem particularly concerned for someone who could be in danger. You did suggest earlier that the traveller’s thing might be redheads.”

She brushes a strand of hair back over her shoulder. “I’ll check in on her from time to time.” Then she smiles at you. “Thanks, Ray. I was beginning to feel a bit lost in here.”

[Leave]

You stand to leave, but Bronwyn raises one hand.

“If you run into Lexie again, assuming she doesn’t tear your head off, please remind her that the reading is in twenty minutes?” She says it with fond exasperation; you get the sense Lexie must have missed a lot of readings in the past.

You nod, and Bronwyn waves you out with a smile, returning to her computer. There is no sign of Lexie in the hall, so you are able to head for your own room unaccosted.

However, just as you near your door, you hear footsteps approaching from the other direction. Afraid of another encounter, you duck into your room and close the door most of the way.

In a moment you are relieved that you did so, because you see Rayne walk down the hall, coming from the direction you just did. His footsteps are a quiet shuffle on carpet in the loafers he wears, and you count yourself lucky to have heard them at all. His hands are in his pockets and he has an introspective expression on his face.

Just as he is about to pass your room, he slows, then stops. You sink back a bit into the shadows, grateful that you didn’t turn on the light in your room; from this angle, if you were illuminated he would easily be able to see his own face peering back at him. But it’s too late to close the door, because he’s looking right at it. So you stand still and wait.

Rayne’s gaze lingers on the door for a long moment. He takes one hand out of his pocket and lifts it as if to knock; it hangs in the air, an unspoken question, before he sighs and lowers it, shaking his head. He sticks his hand back in his pocket and shuffles away, toward the front door of the guesthouse.

You watch him go, your heart pounding at the near discovery. All the same, you want to call out to him, to ask him why he was going to knock. What he was about to say.

Can you shift into Sam fast enough to go after him? Not in your state, and in any case it would be weird that you saw him standing there and didn’t open the door. You exhale, then slide the door shut the rest of the way. You lock it for good measure.

Inside, the room sways around you. The edges of your vision are beginning to grey. Surely there is no harm in a quick nap – Rayne, Lexie and Bronwyn won’t be doing their next reading for twenty minutes, and you’ve asked all the questions you can think to for the moment.

You feel your shift slipping even as you lurch towards the bed – you don’t so much change back into Sam as lose the shape of Rayne, his features sliding from your grip like wet grass. There are flash bulbs of visions popping behind your eyes – the knife a smile red hair a kiss – but you are too exhausted to pay attention to them. By the time you collapse onto the bed, the head that hits the pillow is Sam’s, and your spiky hair is flattened on one side by the soft white pillowcase.

Your eyes flutter closed, and you sleep.

-

You sleep like the dead. All you know is blackness and stillness, your mind quiet for the first time since you started this case. Yet despite your exhaustion, you hear your own name echo faintly around the barren plains of sleep: Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam…

Goodbye, Sam.

“Sam!”

You jolt awake to someone shaking you. You instinctively try to shove away, terror rising within you – you were drugged you’re going to wake up tied to a chair – but you tangle in the blankets of your own bed, and only manage to thrash yourself a couple of feet away. Still, the hands remove themselves from your shoulders, and a concerned voice asks again, “Sam?”

You still. You’re in bed. You’re safe.

Slowly you roll over and see Rayne looking down at you. He has stepped a pace or so back from the bed, and his hands are slightly raised, palms outward.

“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he says. “You weren’t answering your door and, well, everyone got a bit worried. Lexie insisted that I be the one to come get you for some reason.” He smiles faintly. “When I tried your door, it opened…but I did also notice that you’d locked it from the inside, so you might want to talk to Violet about that. A broken lock can’t be safe, with a killer on the loose,” he says, raising his eyebrows. Then he seems to take in your disheveled state, your hair pointing out in all directions and the fact that you’re sleeping in your collared shirt and tie – your dress shoes are even still on.

“Sorry, I should go,” he says. “Just…glad you’re okay.”

Wait.

Sorry I look like an absolute disaster.

You broke into my room?

“Wait,” you say, the word already leaving your throat before you think it.

Rayne stops and looks at you. You utterly fail to read his gaze – worried? annoyed? tender? – and end up tangling yourself even more in the blankets as you try to get out of bed. You attempt to swing your legs free, to stand up and not look like such a mess, but both your legs are trapped in a particularly insistent sheet, and you overbalance. You start to slide off the edge of the bed, your legs still trapped in the blankets, about to meet the floor skull-first.

You emit a strangled, undignified yelp. Rayne steps forward as if he’s going to catch you, but you’re too low to the ground already – all he does is get his hands under your shoulder blades, and then you fall onto his feet, your head hitting his shins and knocking them out from under him. Rayne thuds onto the floor next to you on his hands just as you get one of your arms free of the blankets and nearly smack him in the side of the face.

For a moment you are silent, blood rushing to your face. You are such an idiot.

Then Rayne starts laughing. He pushes himself up from his hands and knees and sits back on his heels, and a toothy smile splits his face as he laughs.

“Did you lay some sort of trap for me?” he asks between bouts of wheezing laughter. “I’m pretty sure I’ve just been the victim of some sort of human Rube Goldberg machine. I mean, what was that with the blankets –” He gestures vaguely towards the twisted bedsheets. “And your legs –”

As he falls into laughter again, one hand rubbing the side of his face in disbelief, you feel yourself begin to laugh as well. It feels good to relax for a second, to not feel an undercurrent of fear and tension running beneath your every move. Plus, you’re still mostly upside down with your feet on the bed, so you feel absolutely ridiculous.

A couple of seconds pass, and Rayne wipes at his eyes as if he’s about to start tearing up. “Do you…want a hand?” he asks.

I can get up on my own.

I’m in dire straits here.

“I’m in dire straits here, yeah,” you croak. Rayne laughs again and gets up, moving to the bed. You expect him to untangle you from the blankets, but instead he reaches down and hauls you to your feet, blankets and all, with surprising strength. For a moment the two of you are standing incredibly close together, and you feel your face flush even further. Then Rayne steps back, looking down and away, a sheepish smile forming on his face.

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head. “Um…Bron and Lex are waiting in the dining room if you want to meet us there. We did another reading.”

He shifts from foot to foot, looking suddenly awkward. You look away as well, willing your face to stop burning so violently. If he looks at you, you’re going to be as red as a tomato, and then he’ll know.

Know what, exactly? you ask yourself.

You think of the moment in your vision, of his arms around you, of pulling him in for a kiss, your hand at his collar, fingers winding through the hair at the nape of his neck.

Ah. That answers your own question.

[Kiss Him]

[Stop Thinking About Kissing Him]

I’ll be right there.

“I’ll be right there,” you say in a strangled voice, failing entirely both at committing to your traitorous thoughts, and at managing to stop thinking them.

“Sure,” Rayne says, his head still ducked, thankfully not looking at you. His voice sounds tight as well. “I’ll see you there, then,” he adds.

You nod, but he isn’t looking at you.

Thanks again for coming to get me.

[Say Nothing]

Your words catch in your throat and you stay quiet as you watch him step out of the room. However, he pauses in the doorway and turns back to look at you. His blue eyes are like searchlights; you feel intensely aware of your rumpled white shirt, crumpled tie, and messy hair. You’re sure that there are bags of exhaustion beneath your eyes and you can feel your fingers twitch at your sides from stress. One of your pant legs is rucked up from the blanket debacle, and the thin edge of a purple-and-green argyle sock pokes out above your shoe.

In short, you look like a mess. And Rayne…Rayne is looking at you like you’re a beam of pure sunlight.

His smile is soft and genuine. His bangs are mussed from his fall, and they stick out to one side; you want to reach out and brush them out of his eyes. One hand fiddles with the cuff of his shirt.

“Really, Sam, I’m glad you’re okay,” he says, smiling in a way that reaches into your chest and touches your heart. “You looked like hell when I came in. Your face was so pale I thought you might be dead. And I’m only half joking about that,” he adds.

You stare at him, caught in his gaze like a fly on flypaper.

“Let me know if you need anything, okay?” he says.

You nod mutely.

“Alright. Good talk,” he says. “Definitely didn’t hit any deep emotional chords that are going to be awkward when I see you again in five minutes.” He chuckles, clearly trying to cover his embarrassment with a joke.

You smile back, and he leaves the room.

Once he does, you sag back onto the bed, your heart pounding.

Oh, you are in it deep, you think at yourself, half-furious with your unprofessional thoughts. What are you, in secondary school again? This is a murder case and someone has died. You absolutely have to stop thinking about snogging one of your suspects. It’s distracting you, it’s playing havoc with your emotions, and you’re wasting valuable brain space on the appearance of his eyes in sunlight instead of the details of the investigation.

You make a firm resolution to stop thinking about kissing Rayne. Then you straighten your shirt and tie, pull the cuff of your pants back down over your sock, and head for the dining room.

Inside, Bronwyn greets you with a grim expression. Lexie looks somber, too, but as you take your seat (the one next to Rayne is empty) you see a smile shoot across her face. She winks at Rayne, who squints at her, clearly confused.

Ah, this is not going to go well, you think for the second time today.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, for the next murder victim), there is more pressing news. Bronwyn explains how the three of them have done a reading to reveal the name of the next victim. It’s another redhead, a young woman who works on the local radio – Ellis Munro.

You think back to the radio that has been on practically all day in the guesthouse. Alongside the deeper voice spouting nonstop horror stories and eldritch tales, there was occasionally a higher pitched one dipping in with pieces of news or jokes. That must have been Ellis Munro.

“Even though we know the next victim now, you still need to be careful, Sam,” says Bronwyn, laying a hand palm-down on the table. “We know you’re in danger because of Lexie’s Ouija board. That doesn’t change just because we have a name for the next victim. This is who the traveller is oriented on currently, but it could change in a heartbeat.”

Lexie and Rayne nod gravely along with her words. You notice that Rayne is not quite meeting your eyes.

“Now, you have my phone number,” says Bronwyn. “I’ll call you if there are any developments, but Mercury isn’t an instant messaging app. We won’t necessarily know right away if the traveller’s target changes. That disparity could put you in danger if the target switches to you.”

I understand.

Wait, I don’t have your phone number.

As serious as her warning is, you can’t help but get hung up on something she said earlier. “Wait,” you say, frowning, “I don’t have your phone number.”

Bronwyn smiles and folds her hands together. “Yes, you do, Sam. You need to stop leaving your phone lying around while you’re off interviewing people.”

You definitely did not leave your phone lying around at any point. You get it out, looking at her with mild suspicion, and open your contacts. Your contact list is normally blank, save for a single number – saved under ‘X’ and only to be used in emergencies (you’ve fortunately never had to dial it before) – but now there is a second contact above that one: Bronwyn Castle.

You look up at Bronwyn, baffled, but she simply shrugs and smiles at you.

Alright, sticky fingers, you think, slipping your phone back into your pocket. I’ll remember that. And didn’t Lexie say Rayne stole things, too? I’ve got to keep an eye on my possessions around here.

You listen to the rest of Bronwyn’s instructions before standing up with a nod. You’ve got to go check on Ellis Munro and tell the Chief as well that you suspect she may be the next victim. The tarot readers emphasized the cunning of travellers, but surely having the police aware of her predicament is worth something.

Ellis opens her door at the first knock – she was warned of your coming by Chief Dupont, who called her as soon as you left the station. She welcomes you inside and sits you down on one of two black sofas that face each other in her living room.

As soon as you take a seat, you are hit with another overwhelming wave of déja vu. For a moment the room seems to recede, leaving you tiny and exposed in the center of it. An infinite line of Ellis Munros stretches out from you in both directions. At first, they stand still in their white dresses, looking at you with perfect pouts, red hair falling in immaculate bobs around their faces. Then, one by one, they begin to fall. In a thousand instances, shadowy hands seize Ellis Munro by the throat and she dies, gasping for air that will never come. Sometimes she tries to run, but more often than not the hands catch her on her way, and she is dragged to the ground, choking and screaming.

The room extends to the horizon and it is full of Ellis Munro’s death.

Amidst the chaos you pick out a few Ellises still standing. Some are cowering in fear, some are running, but they do seem to escape. Her loss isn’t inevitable, you think, but it is likely.

“Detective Sam, right?” Ellis asks, her voice as sweet as curdled honey, and you snap back to the moment. She sits before you with big, doe-like eyes, her hands folded delicately over one exposed knee.

You feel as though you are caught in the center of a spiderweb, possibilities radiating out from you, trembling with your every move.

You hold Ellis Munro’s life in your hands.

You pray that you don’t mess this up.

You spend some time talking to Ellis, trying to get all the information out of her that you can. Unfortunately, it’s still not very much. She claims not to know of anyone who would want to hurt her, says she’s not famous enough to have any stalker fans, and isn’t close to Zak Weston or Violet Gallacher, your two prime suspects. In fact, the main thing you come away from the conversation with is a feeling of sickly sweetness. Ellis Munro’s candy exterior is so sugary as to make you wonder if it’s fake. But she never slipped once during your interview, so for now you just have to believe it.

You go talk to John Pope (or Poe, as he’s known on the radio), Ellis’s partner on their evening talk show. He has a flair for the dramatic and enjoys talking your ear off about the history of August. He also makes a couple of worrying allusions to past events. Ellis says no one hates her enough to kill her, but clearly, she’s been put in danger by her fans before, you note.

Even Poe, however, can’t talk forever. Before too long, he begs off, saying that he has to get back on the radio. Ellis will be staying off for the rest of the evening in the hope that she will be safer at her home. You say goodbye to Poe and head for the station, your head spinning with new information.

Sitting in the back of the cab, watching the night blur past outside your window, you wonder if you have the fortitude to shift into Ellis or Poe. You try to summon energy within you, attempting to change just your pinky finger as a test. As soon as you close your eyes to picture Ellis, however, you feel another surge of exhaustion, and you nearly black out. You grip the cushions beneath you and manage to hold on, but once your breathing steadies, you have to admit that you’re not up to another shift right now.

The thought makes you uneasy. Not only for your own diminishing abilities, but for the investigation. You’re not used to not being able to shift – it’s your number one tool for finding out information about suspects. Somewhere in the back of your head there is an uncomfortable thought: without your supernatural abilities, are you even a detective at all?

You walk into the Chief’s office with these thoughts whirling around the inside of your skull, and the serious look on his face does not reassure you. He points one long finger at the chair in front of his desk and says, “Sit.”

You sit.

“I know you’ve just met with Ellis Munro,” Chief Dupont says, holding up a hand, “But before you tell me how that went, I have some heavy Rayne news.”

Is he okay?

What happened?

[Say Nothing]

“Did something happen? Is he okay?” you ask, leaning forward in your chair.

Chief Dupont gives you an odd look, one of his eyebrows spidering its way up his forehead in a trademark expression of skepticism. “Nothing happened, Sam,” he says, shaking his head. “Not now, anyway. And I don’t know why you’re so worried about him – he is a murder suspect, remember.”

The Chief opens one of the drawers of his desk, retrieves a manila folder, and slides it across the desk to you. Tentatively, you open it, and he reaches over to tap a finger on the newspaper clipping inside.

“Lawrence Petrovsky,” he says, reading the words aloud. “Turns out Rayne isn’t telling the truth about his identity. That’s his real name. And no, he’s not some kind of Russian spy.”

The Chief’s mouth keeps moving, but you are staring at the newspaper clipping.

The article comes from an English edition of a Hong Kong newspaper. TOURIST DROPS GIRL TO HER DEATH, shouts the headline. There is a blurry vertical photo underneath, obviously taken in great haste on a mobile camera. Most of the picture is occupied by the metal girders of a massive skyscraper. Far above, you can barely make out two tiny figures on the roof. One appears to be holding the other over the edge. You can’t recognize either of them at this distance, but your heart lurches in your chest.

English traveler Lawrence Petrovsky taken into custody, says the subheading. You don’t read further; you can’t.

“Seems like he has quite the dark past,” the Chief is saying, finishing his spiel. “I wouldn’t recommend asking him about it. Might be a flight risk. But,” and he leans forward, raising both eyebrows now, “I would keep this very strongly in mind when carrying out your investigation. Ellis Munro is in danger now, and I’d hate to overlook anything that might help protect her. Capiche?”

Got it.

[Say Nothing]

You blink at him, unable to push the image of the skyscraper from your mind. Chief Dupont looks at you for a few moments longer, then sighs and rolls his eyes, resting one elbow on his desk and gesturing vaguely.

“Well, get out of here, then,” he says. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot of investigating to do.”

You stand, your chair scraping back across the floor.

“And remember,” says the Chief, pointing at you, “Lawrence Petrovsky.”

How could you forget?

--

You aren’t quite able to conjure up the memories, but they seem to be hovering there, barely out of reach. It’s as if reality is the surface of a pond, and you can see vast depths beneath it, only inches away, but when you go to dip in your fingers, the pond becomes clear glass. And you can see all the way down to the bottom, past endless bubbles of memories that are not quite yours, and yet not quite others’ – but you can’t reach them. You are doomed to sit on the shore, your fingers pressed against the surface.

You enter the guesthouse. You don’t bother stopping at your room, or at anyone else’s. You head for Rayne’s.

This isn’t responsible, you think. I have a murder to be solving.

I have to know, the other half of you thinks. The urge to pound your fist, to shatter the glass of the pond until you’re bleeding and you finally have all the facts in your hands, is overwhelming. I won’t be able to continue until I know.

You ignore the emptiness in your chest that tells you without the shifting, there is nothing more you can do anyway. No more evidence to collect. You have to protect Ellis Munro, and you have no idea how.

You knock on Rayne’s door.

A few seconds pass before he opens it. He smiles at the sight of you and says, “Sam,” before he sees how blank your gaze is. The smile trails off along with his sentence.

“Is something wrong?” he asks.

You push past him and walk to the chair positioned across from the couch. After a moment of hesitation, Rayne closes the door and goes to sit on the sofa.

He crosses one leg over the other, resting both hands on his calf.

“Sam,” he says, slowly, “What can I do for you?”

>How can I save Ellis Munro?

>I think I’m losing my mind.

>Who is Lawrence Petrovsky?

[Leave]

Suddenly, facing him, you can’t do it. Your resolve falters.

“How can I save Ellis Munro?” you ask, hating how small your voice sounds leaving your mouth.

Rayne sighs. “I don’t know, Sam. I really don’t know. I just hope that you can.”

Can you catch a traveller?

Can you kill a traveller?

“Can you kill a traveller?” you ask, desperate.

Rayne purses his lips. “Ye-es,” he says, the word long and drawn-out, “But it kills the host as well. We try to avoid it, for obvious reasons.”

Have you ever killed a traveller?

“Have you ever killed a traveller?”

He looks at you. His eyes remind you of the glass pond.

“Let’s hope so, Sam,” he says shortly.

>I think I’m losing my mind.

>Who is Lawrence Petrovsky?

[Leave]

Your options narrowing, you blurt out the next thing that comes to you: “I think I’m losing my mind.”

Rayne looks at you. You run one nervous hand through your spiky brown hair. That was a stupid thing to say, but now it’s out there.

“It’s a lot to process,” Rayne says, nodding. “When Bronwyn told me, I hardly believed it. One moment we were sharing thoughts on the significance of the tarot, and two seconds later,” he waves his hand, “’Did you know the earth is overrun by trans-dimensional evil? Want to help fix it?’” He chuckles. “Of course, she was several drinks in at the time, so I’m sure to her it sounded like a perfectly reasonable segue.”

Rayne pauses to look at you, a bit more seriously. “Still, I was already coming from a background of believing in the supernatural. I can’t imagine how confusing this all is for you. But although it might feel like it, you’re not losing your mind.” He smirks. “You’re just expanding it.”

Oh, you have no idea what my background in the supernatural is, you think wryly. But it does make you feel better to hear him say it.

“Was that what was worrying you?” Rayne asks, folding his hands over his knee. “You looked distraught when you came in.”

>Who is Lawrence Petrovsky?

[Leave]

Your breath catches in your throat. For a moment, you are the host to two warring forces: one that needs to know, has to know; and one that shies away from it. After a brief struggle, however, the former wins out. You finally ask the question.

“Who is Lawrence Petrovsky?”

Rayne’s face goes blank. It’s almost frightening, how quickly he shifts from friendly openness to an expression like a stone wall. His eyes shutter and his mouth flattens itself into a line.

“Ah,” he says through gritted teeth.

You already want to apologize, but Rayne takes a deep breath in through his nose, then exhales, air hissing out from between his teeth.

“I presume Chief Dupont dug up my history, then,” he says, smiling sarcastically. “What a hero. I’m sure he’s proud of himself.”

He drops his knee, puts both feet flat on the floor, and looks at you. His hands lie loosely in his lap, but at the same time there is tension in every line of his body.

“I am Lawrence Petrovsky,” he tells you.

You feel like you are heading down a tunnel from which there is no return, and maybe no light on the other side. Your feet sink into footprints already walked before you, but you keep going, because it’s too late to turn back.

What happened in Hong Kong?

“What happened in Hong Kong?” you ask.

And he tells you.

--

Rayne is standing on the rooftop of one of the highest buildings in Hong Kong. He is wearing a black overcoat and a white button-up, and the wind tears at him, whipping his coat around his body and his hair around his face. He stands with both legs braced against the onslaught, staring at a figure ten feet away from him.

She has straight, dark hair. It streams out behind her. Her fists are clenched. She is staring straight at him with fury in her eyes, but her face is otherwise blank.

Rayne puts his hands up.

“Wait,” he says, shouting over the wind. “Be rational. It doesn’t have to end like this.”

She stares at him. Her fists are trembling.

Rayne takes a single step forward. The cold of the concrete rooftop seems to leach up through his shoes and into his bones. Or maybe that’s the fear, he thinks in a detached corner of his mind.

His hands are still up. “We can discuss this,” he shouts, just for something to say, knowing it’s not true. Hoping to distract her from his approach.

“There is nothing to discuss,” she retorts. The cold fury in her voice is not her own.

“Sure, there is,” Rayne says, desperately, throwing the words at her as if they’ll do something. As if they’ll stop this. “We can give you what you want – no one else needs to die –”

“Death is what I want,” she snaps, and a powerful gust of wind blows all of her hair out of her face, revealing the set of her jaw and her two blazing black eyes. “The rite has already failed. There is nothing more to be gained.”

She begins to turn.

“Please,” shouts Rayne, wondering where the others are, what’s taking them so long, didn’t they get his message, and then the girl leaps for the edge of the roof.

He throws himself after her, lunging with both arms out, heedless of the danger of going over the edge. And he does catch her – for one glorious moment he thinks he has her in his arms, the girl is saved, the day is won – and then her weight pulls him sideways, off balance, and he falls onto the concrete balustrade that guards the edge of the roof.

He still has one hand around her ankle, and the torque of her fall slams him against the barrier. Rayne feels a flash of white-hot pain up his side as he cracks a rib on the concrete. Still, he grits his teeth and holds on.

They are hundreds of feet up. There is no way for her to survive the fall.

Even now, that distant part of his brain is tallying the tourists on the pavement below, their phones out and cameras flashing. That damned part of him that only cares about self-preservation is intruding, presenting its compiled evidence: This does not look good for you.

Bugger looking good. He’s going to save her.

He can’t seem to get the strength to haul his arm up, though, and the girl isn’t helping. She thrashes and twists at the end of his grip, shooting pain up his wrist and into his shoulder. Her hair is a wild tangle and her arms slam against the side of the building. Her eyes spit fire at him when he gets a glimpse of them.

“Stop,” Rayne shouts, trying desperately not to slip. “Help me pull you up.”

“No!” screams the girl. Always analyzing, part of Rayne flinches at that – he’s sure the people below heard it.

“You’ll die,” he yells. “You may be a traveller, but you’ll die too, smashed on the pavement with your vessel. Is that what you want?”

“I have already failed,” the traveller shouts from a mouth that is not theirs. “My life no longer matters. I need only to be erased.”

“No – Christ –”

With a final twist, the traveller kicks off the building, and suddenly Rayne’s fingers are grasping at thin air. He falls back against the balustrade, gasping with vertigo.

A small, limp figure falls hundreds of feet to the ground.

He tries, and fails, to look away.

--

Rayne has stopped talking. His account was sparse, nearly emotionless but for the strained expression on his face. But you see through it. You see the high-rise building that he keeps tucked inside his heart, the one that he’s never going to forget. The cold wind and the long drop. His fingers clench, unknowingly, into fists. Grasping at the air.

I’m so sorry, Rayne.

[Hug Him]

You rise from your chair and move forward, wrapping your arms around Rayne. He resists for a moment, then gives in, relaxing in your grasp. It’s an awkward way to hug someone – you have one knee planted on the sofa and the other extended straight behind you, toes barely touching the floor, your ankle brushing Rayne’s – but you don’t care. You are desperate to hold him here, to communicate in some wordless way that he is safe in this moment.

Neither of you speaks another word, but after a long pause, one of Rayne’s hands comes up to rest on your back. His chin is against your shoulder, and his hair brushes your ear. His breathing is even – it would take a very perceptive person to notice the tiniest of hitches, the faint shakiness that implies a conscious reining-in, an effort made to remain outwardly calm. It would take a detective.

Rayne puts his other arm around you. The silence is somber, but it is the slightest bit less cold.

You stay like that for a very long time.

Then there is a knock at the door, and the two of you spring apart guiltily. You slide to the opposite end of the couch and stay there, while Rayne reaches for his book, then decides against it, putting his hands awkwardly in his lap instead.

“Come in,” he says, with a flickering glance in your direction.

The door swings open, and Bronwyn pokes her head inside. She is clearly surprised to see you, but she stifles her reaction and gives you a weak smile. The skin around her eyes is slightly reddened, as if she’s been crying. Yet she gives no indication of upset as she comes in and takes your usual seat, the chair across from the sofa.

“Sam, I’d like to talk to Rayne for a moment. If you don’t mind,” she says.

You are slightly taken aback, but nod. You rise from the sofa, trying hard to look casual, and leave the room. You are tempted to hesitate outside and try to hear what they’re saying, but resist the urge, closing the door behind you instead.

Then there is nothing left to do but make a final round of inquiries before you have to decide what is to be done with Ellis Munro.

Oscar has left August, you discover, knocking on the door of the Wainwrights’ residence only to be greeted by his parents. You suppose it’s fair; he was cleared of the murder and he didn’t need to be here anymore. Still, you feel a sense of discomfort at the members of your investigation scattering to the wind.

Zak is still in his studio. He greets you casually when you come in, and you spend an unfortunate ten minutes trying to get information out of him about how he knows Ellis.

“Oh, Miss Munro,” he says with a tight grin when you mention her. “I’ve been trying to get her to model for me for ages. She refuses, but I’ll win her over someday.”

The conversation goes downhill from there. You’re pretty sure you have almost enough evidence to arrest Zak for harassment and vaguely stalkerish behavior, but you can’t be sure about the murders. He is being intentionally polite and cordial to you. His kind demeanor makes the things he says about Ellis, Violet, and Dorota even worse. You leave his studio feeling sicker than ever.

By the time you return to the guesthouse, Bronwyn is back in her room. You’re dying to ask what she and Rayne talked about, but you don’t – you find yourself too busy trying to comfort her as she wipes tears from her eyes and admits to being in despair about Mercury. Your heart breaks at seeing behind the façade of confidence she puts up. Leaving her room, you feel worse and worse about your odds of saving Ellis.

You go to see Lexie, who keeps smiling at you conspiratorially in between bouts of telling you how sure she is that you’re going to save the day. You see how she wrings her hands, though, and her nervous glances around the room. She’s worried.

Violet, on the other hand, does not seem particularly concerned. She tells you she’s waiting for Zak, which makes your heart sink – you can’t transform into him, so you’re never going to get that information out of her. After that realization, the rest of your conversation produces nothing much of interest. Violet stares at you, twirling a curl of red hair around her finger, and answers glibly, almost flippantly.

You ask her if she’s afraid. “Of course, I am,” she says, tilting her head, “But there’s not much I can do about it, is there? I simply have to place my trust in you.” The faint smile she gives you carries a weight of sarcasm; you’re not sure she trusts you at all.

The hour flies by and then suddenly it is time. You have run out of leads to pursue; your hands are empty of questions to ask. The clock has struck the hour of Ellis Munro’s death.

You pause outside Rayne’s room on your way out of the guesthouse, then shake your head. You don’t know what you would accomplish by knocking. There’s no point. With Ellis’s life on the line, everything you could say to him will fall flat. Not that you’re sure what you’d say, anyway.

That you see his eyes shining in your dreams. That you want to hold his hands and make everything okay. That you want to kiss him.

But the thought of dreams just makes you sick. You shake the thought away like scattering cobwebs. It would only be a mistake.

You get in the cab.

When you step into Chief Dupont’s office, for once he doesn’t have any jokes or sarcastic quips to offer. He rests both arms on his desk and looks at you as you drop into the chair in front of him. Clearly what he sees does not encourage him, because he gives you a faint frown.

“I hope you’re up to this,” Chief Dupont says, “Because it’s time to decide what to do with Ellis Munro.”

You look at him, seeing the infinite line of Ellises again, the deaths and the deaths and the scant chances for her to live.

Send Danny to her house.

I’ll go to her house.

“I’ll go to her house,” you decide, wondering as you say it if you’re up to the task. You feel a bit stronger after not having shifted for some time, but you can still feel the exhaustion hovering around you like a curtain ready to fall. Dupont must see it as well, because his frown deepens.

“You’re sure?” he asks, looking at you sidelong. When you nod, he sighs.

“Very well. I’ll keep Danny at the guesthouse in case anything happens there. Be careful, Sam. And please protect Ellis. She’s a local treasure.”

That’s how you find yourself in Ellis’s dark house with her standing in front of you, a statue of anxiety in her white dress. She has been pacing back and forth for minutes; you can’t get her to sit down.

Now that you’re at her home, the whole situation seems much more real. You can’t blame her for pacing; you can’t relax, either. Am I up to this? Can I save her?

“Are you sure we’re safe here, Sam?” Ellis asks for the third time in five minutes. “There are so many windows in this house. I’ve locked them all, but I’m sure a determined killer could get in.” She looks you up and down, her lips pursed in fear. “And you look…tired.”

I am tired.

We should call the police.

You should leave town.

Her observation is the final straw. Your misgivings and doubts come crashing down around you, and you sink into a chair, putting your head in your hands. What were you thinking? You can’t protect her. The killer will simply break in and kill you both.

“Sam?” Ellis asks, swooping to your side. “Are you alright?”

“You should leave town,” you say, your voice muffled by your hands.

“What?” she demands in shock. “You were the one who said you would come protect me here! It can’t be safer for me to leave on my own!’

She pauses, and you can feel the weight of her gaze on you, but you don’t move. You feel like you are carved out of stone. Her anxiety pings against you but can do nothing to match up to the well of desperation that is your own heart.

“Where would I even go?” Ellis asks plaintively.

Anywhere. Just don’t tell me where.

Get in the car and drive.

You raise your head from your hands and look at her. She is staring back at you, her eyes shiny with unshed tears. Her red lips tremble.

“Anywhere. Just don’t tell me where,” you say.

“You’re serious,” she says in shock. “You really are. Why…why wouldn’t I tell you? Are you worried you’re going to be tortured to give up my location? Or do you think the killer is already here, listening?” She looks around the room as if expecting a shadowy figure to step out from a corner.

“Oh, god, Sam,” says Ellis. She smooths down her dress and shoots you another terrified look, which you return silently.

“I’ll go, I guess.” She shakes her head. “Just…please stay safe, Sam. And I’ll try to stay safe too.”

You are still sitting stock-still in the chair as she bends forward and pecks your cheek, then runs out of the room.

Abruptly, the house is quiet and empty. You hear the sound of an engine fading into the distance. Good – so she got out. Some part of you worried that the killer might already be waiting outside.

You lean back in the chair. Your heart is still pounding so loudly you can hear it. You’ve gotten Ellis out of the picture, but the killer could still be on their way here.

Wait.

Change into Ellis.

You ponder the two options before you, turning them over and over in your mind. Neither seems particularly good. If the killer sees you here, waiting, they’re likely to leave and go after Ellis. But if you shift into her…Well, you’re not sure if you have enough energy to do it in the first place. And the words of Agent X echo in your mind: Never, ever get caught shapeshifting.

But Ellis’s house is as silent as the grave. You look around the room, barely daring to breathe, straining your ears for any footfall, any exhale of breath – and there is nothing.

It’s as safe as it’ll ever be, then.

You close your eyes.

Ellis Munro floats in the blackness before you, her white dress shining like the moon. Her eyes are full of terror.

You reach out to her, summoning every vestige of strength you have left.

And you see.

You drive across the countryside, desperate, your pulse pounding. You pull into a gravel parking lot under threat of violence, and you are choked out on the side of the road. There is no safety when the killer is already inside your car.

You sit on your sofa, unable to take your eyes off the window where a policeman paces past every so often. After a while, Danny does not reappear. You are seized from behind and your breath runs out.

You hit the floor. You slump over the sofa. You collapse across the dashboard of your car.

You die, and you die, and you die, and then you wake up.

The house is a dusty tomb. You are sitting in the same chair that you were in before, and your hands and legs are Ellis’s, and you can see the hem of her white dress stretching out before you. Your vision is not shaking at all, which means you’ve been in the shift for a long time, which means you were unconscious. Worrying, but you’re awake now. You touch one hand to your face and there is no blood, but there are tears. You’ve been crying.

You sit up, glancing to one side at the clock on the side table, which indicates you’ve been out for almost twenty minutes. It’s late, and outside the windows is nothing but darkness. Your breathing is loud in the emptiness of the house.

You wonder how the real Ellis is doing. If she’s reached her destination by now, whatever it is. You hope not – twenty minutes outside of town is not as far as you hoped she’d go. She needs to keep driving until Bronwyn calls and tells you it’s safe. You forcibly push the images of her strangled in her car out of your mind. How were you to know that was a possibility?

You would have known if you’d shifted into her before, says a traitorous voice in your head. If you’d had this vision earlier. But no, you’re too worn out by your new skill, something that should be helping you. What will Agent X say when he finds out? His shapeshifter, too weak to use his new abilities.

You ignore the uncomfortable thought that these visions still might not be the result of augmentation. They have to be, you tell yourself. They must be.

The clock ticks. You watch it with half-lidded eyes, tapping your fingers on the arm of the chair, waiting for the phone to ring.

And then two hands wrap around your throat.

You instinctively struggle, kicking away from the chair, attempting to wrench yourself free. The pressure around your throat intensifies and stars flash in front of your vision. It’s not working. You’re going to die like this.

Scream for help.

Turn into Sam.

Your lungs cry out for air. Your mouth is already half-open, gasping at nothing. If you try to scream, there is no way you’re going to get a sound out.

The terror of someone else seeing you shift is innate. The thought of it makes you freeze up, your muscles locked by fear and Agent X’s warnings. Every molecule in your body cries out against the idea.

But your vision is already starting to fade. Your only hope is that shifting back into Sam will scare your attacker away and allow you to escape. You brace all your muscles, ready to try to leap away if the grip on you slackens.

You drop Ellis’s shift.

The reaction is not as strong as you’d hoped, but you feel the grip on your neck relax for one instant and hear a startled intake of breath. With all of your remaining energy, you push yourself up, and for a moment you achieve freedom.

You stagger forward, but the killer is not as dissuaded as you’d hoped, and barrels into you from behind, shoving you into the wall. You fight, flailing and shoving, yet strong arms pin you in place. It’s all you can do to twist yourself around to face your attacker.

Close your eyes, comes a sick thought as you turn around, and you reflexively squeeze them shut. You don’t want to see this. You don’t want to know.

But that’s ridiculous. You have to know. It’s your job – and more than that, it’s your life on the line.

You open your eyes.

For a moment you think you’ve blacked out, you’re back in the dark room, you’re about to die again.

But of course, you’re not. You’re in Ellis Munro’s house.

You’re in Ellis Munro’s house, and Rayne is strangling you.

He is silhouetted against the lamp, but you recognize him immediately. His expression is carved out of blank anger as his hands find their way to your throat again and begin to press. Yet at the same moment, the light hits your upturned face. You see his eyes widen, and he freezes.

You are pressed hard against the wall, unable to move.

Although he doesn’t let up the pressure on your neck, you see Rayne’s expression begin to shift. From beneath the mask of cold fury comes a hint of confusion; then his eyebrows slant upwards, his eyes squint, and he seems to recognize you. His lips move silently. It takes you several seconds, struggling for breath, to realize that he is mouthing your name.

You try desperately to reach him through your gaze alone, but he seems locked in place, his hands like a vice around your throat, his face cracked into equal parts distress and bewilderment.

He recognizes you. He recognizes you.

Please, Rayne, you beg mentally. Your hands begin to slip from his wrists, your will to struggle failing.

Then you hear a crash from the front of the house.

Rayne’s head jerks around and his hands loosen on you again. With the last of your strength you manage to stand up fully, yanking them away from your throat and gasping air into your lungs. You wheeze, staring at Rayne, whose gaze snaps back to you at your movement, but he doesn’t grab you again. He still appears bewildered and lost.

“Ellis! Sam! Are you in here?” shouts a voice from the entry hall. It’s Chief Dupont.

Rayne doesn’t appear to recognize Dupont, however; he is fixated on you, his eyes wide. With your vision still swimming in stars, it takes you several moments to realize that Rayne is beginning to sway on his feet.

You can hear footfalls coming from the hallway. Dupont is inside the house. He will burst into the living room any second now, see the position you and Rayne are in, and know what Rayne has done. You’ll be safe and the case will be solved.

But Rayne will go to prison for the rest of his life.

You think of his earlier, bitter words, spoken in anger to Bronwyn when she suggested telling you everything – We very well know that insanity isn’t a good enough defense.

You can’t leave him like this. It’s not his fault. He didn’t do this. (You forcibly push all thoughts of the dark room from your head, and the sinking feeling that comes with it.) You know one thing for certain: if Rayne is here when the Chief arrives, he will take the blame. You have to get him out of this house if you don’t want him going to prison.

You take another desperate breath, the oxygen finally clearing the last of the clouds from your vision, and you decide: you are going to save Rayne.

Two things happen at the same instant that you make up your mind: the Chief calls out again in the hall (“Sam? Ellis? Are you safe?”), and Rayne slumps against you, his eyes rolling up into his head.

You stagger back against the wall again. Rayne is heavy and has gone almost entirely limp – it’s like the life has left him abruptly. You grit your teeth and manage to shove him back up, hauling one of his arms around your shoulders, and somehow, he keeps his feet under him. It seems automatic, though – when you look at his face, his eyelids are fluttering, and he’s gone pale.

So much for getting him out of the house. You’re not moving him more than twenty feet in this state, especially when you’re still weak from lack of air. You look around the room desperately, eyes flicking from object to object, searching for your only remaining option: somewhere to hide.

Hide in the pantry.

Hide behind the sofa.

It’s a little bit farther away, but the pantry is really your only bet. If you try to lie behind the sofa, you’ll be noticed near-instantly; the cushions aren’t very tall, and the space behind them can be seen from almost anywhere in the room.

You begin attempting to guide Rayne toward the kitchen. His feet shuffle at your urging, but most of his weight is still on you, and it’s hard to be as fast as you’d like. Your pulse is racing in your ears and your breath is labored. Yet you force yourself to put one foot in front of the other, and the two of you make it through the doorway into the kitchen just as you hear the door to the living room slam open.

“Ellis!” comes Dupont’s voice, followed by frantic, quick footsteps circling the room. You can picture him anxiously running a hand over his scalp. “Oh, hell, where are you?”

A few more hurried steps drag you and Rayne into the pantry. You haul the door shut after you and fall inside as quietly as you can. Your elbows bump the shelves, but you manage to slide the two of you to the floor without knocking anything over.

The space is small and cramped. Rayne’s face is close to yours, and you peer anxiously at him, afraid that any moment he may wake up and attack you again. But he doesn’t; his breath is even, and his head slowly drops until his forehead is resting on your shoulder. Is he asleep? you wonder wildly. How is that even possible? Then again, the tarot readers never told you the specifics of how possession works, so you suppose you don’t have anything to go off of.

One of Rayne’s arms is pinned behind you, and the other drops to rest on your wrist as the tension melts out of his body. You’re not sure what to do with this, but it makes it a lot easier to stay quiet, and he’s not trying to kill you, so you suppose you can’t complain. The two of you stay curled around each other in the bottom of the pantry, Rayne breathing quietly, you with your ears straining for noise from outside, one hand over your own mouth so you don’t make noise.

The Chief’s footsteps have slowed; you can still hear him making laps of the living room, but he seems less desperate now and more methodical. When he comes closer to the kitchen door you can hear him muttering: “Where can they have gone? This could be sign of a struggle… Ellis’s car is gone, can she have left town? But why wouldn’t she tell me?”

At one point you hear him approach the kitchen, and you stiffen, every muscle in your body screaming not to be discovered. His shoes shift from the muffled thump of carpet to the smooth tap of kitchen tile. He takes a couple of steps back and forth, opens a cupboard and closes it. A cursory kind of search.

You think at him, hard: Not the pantry not the pantry not the pantry not the pantry. Not that it helps, of course, but it keeps you from biting down on your own hand out of stress.

Two more short taps of his shoes. They are approaching the pantry door. You give up on breathing quietly and stop entirely, your recently deprived lungs crying out at the sensation, but terrified of giving away your location.

Another tap. He’s going to open it, you think, and your grip tightens on one of Rayne’s shoulders.

Then there is a faint buzzing sound. For a second you think it’s your phone, and your heart leaps into your throat, but then you hear the Chief’s voice on the other side of the pantry door:

“Hello?” There is a pause, and then he says with audible relief: “Ellis? Oh, thank god. I thought you were dead.” Still speaking into the phone, you hear him move away, and his footsteps and voice slowly fade until they are cut off by the opening and closing of the front door once again.

Your breath comes out of you in a long rush. You take deep, gasping breaths, your throat on fire, your body bruised and sore. Rayne is still slumped across your legs, seemingly fast asleep. You breathe until you don’t feel dizzy anymore, and then, sure at last that no one is coming back into the house, you break down and cry.

You don’t realize you’re sobbing until you feel your tears spatter the back of your hand, dripping onto Rayne’s shirt. It’s hard to stop. Everything is crashing down around you – you have broken through the surface of the glass pond and now you are drowning, plummeting into the depths. You wanted to know everything. Well, now you know. And what are you going to do with it?

Eventually you trail off, drained emotionally as well as physically, your breath coming in rasping hiccups. You don’t know how long you’ve been in the pantry – ten minutes? Thirty? But you’re brought back to your senses by a feeling of motion; Rayne has begun to stir.

Not wanting him to wake up in the dark and panic, you extricate your legs from beneath him and open the pantry door, light slicing into the blackness with an intensity that makes you wince. Then you get your arms beneath his and haul him into the kitchen, propping him up with his back against a cabinet, his legs stretched out in front of him. Finally, you settle on the floor across from him, folding your hands in your lap. You yank at your tie, relieving its pressure from around your neck, and leave it hanging loosely, halfway down your chest.

You watch Rayne slowly wake up.

He appears completely disoriented at first, his eyes wandering around the white kitchen as if he is in a dream. Then his gaze lands on you and he blinks, taking in your disheveled state.

“Sam?” he asks, puzzled.

Rayne.

You tried to kill me.

[Say Nothing]

Your throat hurts. You don’t speak, but Rayne reads the pain in your eyes and you see the cogs of his mind begin to turn.

He blinks again, several times, and when he speaks once more there is a note of panic under his words: “Sam? What’s happening?” He looks around the room. “I don’t know this place. How did I get here? Sam?”

You tried to kill me.

Even as you open your mouth to speak, you can see him putting it together. He stares down at his hands, flexes the fingers, and looks back at you. You know the skin around your neck must already be reddening where he gripped you.

“You tried to kill me,” you croak. It’s the only thing left to say.

“No, no,” says Rayne. He flexes his hands again, then stares at you, a wild panic rising behind his eyes. “There’s no way. I remember last night. I didn’t kill Dorota Shaw. I didn’t. I couldn’t.”

Abruptly he scrambles to his feet, pushing himself back against the cabinets. You haul yourself upright as well, still watching him. You’re waiting for him to pull himself together, to tell you what to do. He’ll know, right? You’re new to all this, you’ve already hidden him from the Chief, and you’re tired.

“I remember last night,” Rayne is saying, running a hand through his hair. “I was in my room. Praying for Dorota not to die. I…I fell asleep. I had the dream about killing you. I woke up in bed.” He looks up. “Christ, I woke up in bed.”

Rayne turns his back to you, and you see him bow his head over the counter, his hands braced against the edge. His shoulders are shaking slightly.

Are you okay?

What should we do?

Bluff – I called Bronwyn while you were asleep.

“Are you okay?” you ask. Your voice is rough.

Rayne laughs bitterly. “Am I okay? Am I okay?”

“That’s not what I mean,” you start to say, but Rayne whirls on you. There is the sound of metal sliding against metal, and when he faces you, you feel your stomach drop.

He is holding a kitchen knife.

“I remember the dream, Sam,” he says. He has crushed the panic, but his eyes are wild and bright. “I remember waking up.”

He points the knife at you, and a tense smile tugs at one corner of his mouth.

“What I don’t remember, Sam, is falling asleep.”

Your eyes scan the kitchen frantically, but Rayne is between you and the door, and the only possible weapons are the other knives in the knife block, which is behind him as well. Rayne takes a step toward you, his left hand coming up to gently touch the blade of the knife clutched in his right.

“And if I don’t remember falling asleep,” he says, his voice still taut, “Then I didn’t, did I? The traveller took control. Rode me all the way to Dorota Shaw’s house, and killed her with my hands. And then I woke up, and my hands hurt, Sam – but I told myself it meant nothing, because there was no hole in my memory, because I’d dreamed of killing you instead. I’d simply fallen asleep while praying and somehow climbed into my bed during the night. I’d clenched my fists too hard in the terror of my dream, that was why they were sore.” He snorts. “We all believe what we want to, don’t we? I had myself absolutely convinced.”

Rayne takes another step toward you, tipping his head to one side. You want to make a run for it, but you’re rooted to the spot, afraid of provoking him.

“I don’t get it,” Rayne says, staring at you. His eyes shine in the incandescent light. “You had the same dream, and yet you didn’t catch me. Was my own disbelief so powerful?” He exhales.

Yes, and my own, you want to say. I saw something there that wasn’t. Lingering glances and sun on hair and your hand on mine.

I saw something that could still be there, another part of you wants to say.

Rayne moves his hand, and the knife hovers near your throat. You eye it, not moving; you can see his hand shaking. He is biting his lip, his eyebrows drawn down over his eyes, which continue to shine with desperate light.

“I have to do this,” he whispers, as much to you as to himself. “I can’t go to jail. This isn’t my fault. I didn’t know.” He pauses, then continues, the words spilling from him even faster: “I’ll leave. I’ll get the hell out of August. I can save everyone, now that I know.” A beat. “Everyone except you, Sam.”

The metal of the blade brushes the edge of your throat.

“It’s you or me,” says Rayne, but his voice cracks. He can’t take his eyes off yours. In his gaze, you see the weight of his suffering, the terror of being trapped behind bars for a lifetime. That part of him, separate and terrified, that is willing to throw everything away if it means his freedom. And the rest, which screams to take the knife away from your throat, which begs you to give him a reason, any reason, not to do this.

[Change into Bronwyn]

I can help you, Rayne.

You swallow, feeling the knife against your skin.

“I can help you, Rayne,” you say, your voice cracked and raw, pouring every ounce of your unsaid emotions into it: your hope and fear and terror and whatever there is between you, fragile and new, balanced on the blade of the knife. Rayne is looking at you like you are his enemy and his salvation at the same time. You see the war happening in his eyes.

“Please,” you add. “Let me help you.”

Gently, slowly, you reach up one hand. You rest it on Rayne’s wrist, and he lets you, his mouth twisted to one side. You can feel his hand shaking beneath yours as you (just as gently, just as slowly), push the blade away from your throat. He lets you, and once the knife is down at his side, he drops it with a clatter on the floor.

“Oh, Christ, Sam,” he says, and crumples to his knees. “Oh, god.”

He puts his head in his hands and his shoulders begin to shake.

[Kick the knife away]

[Kneel down next to him]

Something flares in your chest, looking at him on the ground like that, but you tamp it down and reach out instead with your foot, shoving the knife away. It spins across the room on the tiles and slides to a stop against the wall, far out of reach.

“Sam,” Rayne says, muffled, “I’m so sorry. Christ, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to – I didn’t think – oh, god.”

He heaves a shaking breath. “I didn’t know – but that doesn’t mean anything, does it? That was me, just now. I don’t remember…I can’t remember. But that’s no excuse. I was willing to kill you to get away. The antithesis of everything I’ve ever stood for.” His breath wheezes out of him again. “I’m a killer, Sam. Not the traveller. Me. I would’ve done that.”

But you didn’t.

“But you didn’t,” you say.

He turns his face up to you, and you see the tracks of tears down his cheeks. “Because of you, Sam. Not because of anything I chose. I just didn’t – I couldn’t – not you.” He pauses, and in a tiny, shattered voice adds: “Not again.”

You stare down at him. Where is that second creature within him, the dark fury that could seize hold any moment? He’s threatened you three times now. Isn’t that enough for you to call the Chief and have him hauled off to jail? The alternative is uncertain and so, so risky.

But you remember what the spirit board – what you, in some broken future – said earlier: This is your last chance. Save them both.

What does that mean, if not both Ellis and Rayne?

Bronwyn and Lexie said that travellers get bored easily. If you can keep Rayne from killing anyone for long enough, it might let go of him. That’s your only hope, the only lifeline you can reach for in the black depths of your despair. The only rope that will let you claw your way back up to that golden hour in the sun.

You sink to your knees next to Rayne. He instinctively shies away from you as you reach out a hand: “No,” he says. “Don’t forgive me, Sam. I don’t deserve it.”

You take a deep breath. You shove all your pain, both emotional and physical, to the back of your mind. You are a serious detective. Rayne needs you. You can handle this.

[Tell him]

“Forgiveness can wait,” you say. “First, we have to save you.”

He blinks at you, his eyelashes wet with tears.

“We’re going back to the guesthouse,” you tell Rayne. “And if you try to kill me again on the way, I’m throwing you out of the cab.”

The humor is unexpected and wrenches a laugh out of him before he realizes. His expression falls again afterwards, but the laugh is enough to make your chest seize up. You don’t want to lose that. You want Rayne to be safe, to be able to laugh again.

And with that, a sense of fury rises within you, cold and clean and righteous.

You’re going to save him, and no traveller is going to get in your way.

You offer Rayne your hand, and when he takes it, you pull him to his feet.

“Sam, I’m so sorry,” he says again. “And…thank you.”

You nod. The two of you limp out of the kitchen and toward the door, the knife lying forgotten on the floor. A relic of a past timeline, you hope. And you feel a matching sense of optimism rise within you, even though you are still shaky from the adrenaline, even though Rayne is possessed and Ellis is on the run and everything is messed up and twisted before you.

As you step out of Ellis Munro’s front door and into the night, there are two things still keeping that flame of optimism alive.

One is your hope that this time it will turn out different.

The other is Rayne’s hand, still held tightly in yours.

When you reach the front curb, you sadly have to slip your hand free in order to dial for a cab on your phone. As you’re punching in the numbers, Rayne looks sidelong at you.

“You realize the best course of action is for me to leave August,” he says. “That way I won’t be around to hurt anyone. The traveller will get bored eventually – I just have to stay away until it does.”

It’s his fight-or-flight instinct, you think. He’s still afraid. He wants to run.

“I…I don’t want Bron and Lex to see me like this,” he adds. “I don’t want them to know, if possible. It’s better if they think I just gave up and skipped town.”

You really think they’ll believe that?

Sure, if you think it’s best.

“You really think they’ll believe that?” you ask. Your phone buzzes in your hands – the cab is on its way.

Rayne locks eyes with you. Then his mouth twitches to one side and he looks away.

“No,” he admits, “They won’t. They’ll want to go after me. And I can’t have that.”

He looks down at his palms. “But what else can I do, Sam?”

Bluff – They won’t know why you left town.

You can turn yourself in.

We have to talk to Bronwyn.

“We have to talk to Bronwyn,” you say. As soon as her name leaves your mouth, Rayne’s shoulders sag.

“You’re right,” he says, “But I wish you weren’t. I don’t want to put her through this. After everything she’s done for us, she doesn’t deserve this.”

The cab pulls up next to the curb in a crunch of tires. You climb in first, Rayne after you, and although you can’t help but cast glances at him throughout the drive, he remains silent and still. Like a statue.

By the time you arrive at the guesthouse, your throat is beginning to throb. You suspect it was the remaining adrenaline in your system that kept you from fully feeling the pain earlier. Now, however, you cough dryly several times as you get out of the cab. Rayne glances at you, and you see remorse flash across his face.

He doesn’t say anything, but he reaches out to take your hand again as you walk inside. You’re not sure if the grip is for comfort, encouragement, or just to stabilize himself – he still seems slightly wobbly from the whole experience – but whatever his reasons, you feel yourself begin blushing furiously. His hand fits perfectly into yours, warm and sturdy.

You mentally berate yourself as the two of you walk down the hallway toward Bronwyn’s room: This is literally the worst possible time to be freaking out over holding Rayne’s hand, what is wrong with you? Unfortunately, this does nothing to chase the flames from your face, and by the time you reach Bronwyn’s door you’re certain that you are the color of a chili pepper.

The two of you pause, looking at the blank façade of the door. You feel Rayne’s eyes on you, but don’t turn to meet his gaze, instead trying frantically to calm yourself down and make your heart stop racing. Probably leftover jitters from almost dying, you tell yourself, and ignore how tightly you are clutching onto Rayne’s hand.

“What are we going to tell her?” asks Rayne.

You’re startled by the question; you honestly didn’t think this far ahead. You just had to tell Rayne something in the moment, to convince him things would be okay. To be honest, you were kind of imagining a situation where Bronwyn already knew and was able to solve all your problems in one efficient swoop.

Then again, you have to admit that outcome isn’t incredibly likely.

Rayne lets go of your hand. This doesn’t make you feel any better, but it does allow you to gain some modicum of control over the rapidly spreading wildfire happening on your face. You take a few breaths, as deep as your strained lungs will allow, and then turn to face him.

We have to tell her the truth.

There’s really only one thing that makes sense: “We have to tell her the truth,” you say.

Rayne sighs, folding one arm across his chest and bringing the other hand up to rub his temple.

“I was afraid you’d say that,” he admits, a hint of a smile ghosting across his face. “But how does one go about it, Sam? I can’t just walk in and say, ‘Hi, Bron! I’m a traveller! Also, I killed Dorota Shaw, and I would like to not go to jail for it, thanks.’” He puts on a mocking expression as he says the words, raising his eyebrows and tilting his head from one side to the other, but as soon as he finishes speaking his expression falls.

“Sorry. Far, far too soon.” He sighs. “I just don’t see any way of broaching this without it being a complete disaster.”

That sounds good, actually.

We’ll have to take it as it comes.

You’re right, we shouldn’t tell her.

You look at Rayne. His hair is mussed from your struggle and he hasn’t straightened it. You want to reach up and brush his bangs out of his eyes.

Instead, you say, “We’ll have to take it as it comes.”

He nods, still frowning. “Another entirely reasonable stratagem. I was hoping you’d come up with a terrible plan, so I’d have an excuse for chickening out.” He keeps scrunching his mouth to one side of his face, like he’s trying to prevent himself from joking but can’t stop the sarcasm until it’s too late.

“Sorry again,” Rayne says sheepishly, shaking his head. “I know this isn’t the time for humor. It just kind of…comes out.”

It’s fine.

You need to stop, it’s not funny.

“It’s fine,” you say, and gratitude flashes across Rayne’s face.

“Thanks,” he says. “I know it’s a bad habit. It drives Bron mad. But sometimes there’s not much you can do with a terrible situation but joke, right?” He smiles vaguely. “Unfortunately for the people around you in said situation.”

He shakes the thought away. “Anyway. Let’s get this over with.”

He pushes open the door.

Inside, Bronwyn and Lexie are sitting cross-legged on Bronwyn’s bed. The Mercury tarot is spread out between them – Bronwyn seems to be in the middle of reaching out to pick up the cards when you enter. She looks up in surprise, then shock registers on her face as she takes in your appearance. Lexie looks up as well, mirroring Bronwyn’s expression.

“Sam? Rayne? What’s wrong?” Bronwyn asks, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. She stands and approaches the two of you; you stand still, letting her take in your half-undone tie, the bruising around your neck, Rayne’s mussed hair and rumpled shirt. She reaches out, her hand hovering inches from Rayne’s cheek, where you can see a nasty bruise beginning to blossom. You didn’t notice it before, but you must have hit him in the face with the back of your head during the struggle.

“What happened?” Bronwyn repeats, her eyes darting between the two of you.

Bluff – Nothing happened.

We have some bad news.

[Look at Rayne]

“We…have some bad news,” you say. It’s hard not to fidget under Bronwyn’s piercing gaze. All at once it’s like the breath is catching in your throat again; you can’t get any more words out. You can’t turn their lives upside down like this.

Fortunately, Rayne speaks from beside you, saving you from the vortex of doubt that has opened at your feet.

“Um, Bron. Lex,” he says.

Bronwyn’s eyes focus on him. You can see the concern in the lines of her face.

Behind her, Lexie stands as well, coming forward with her hands clasped anxiously. “Rayne? What is it?” she asks.

Rayne sucks in a breath. He looks unsteady, his jaw tight, his eyes full of anguish.

“I was…I’m the traveller. I killed Dorota Shaw.”

A silence falls over the room.

Bronwyn regards Rayne with total focus, her mouth a gash across her face. “If you’re joking, Rayne,” she says in a voice like chipped stone, “It’s not a good joke.”

“I’m not joking,” says Rayne, the words wrenched out of him. He looks like he may be about to cry. His face crumples and his shoulders begin to shake; he is barely keeping it together.

“Oh, Rayne,” says Lexie. Her eyes are welling with tears. “It can’t be true.”

“Rayne,” says Bronwyn, reaching for his shoulder, but Rayne flinches away.

“Stop – stop looking at me like that,” he says. “Please. I can’t take it.”

“Okay, Rayne,” says Bronwyn, her voice as gentle as she can make it. She is treating him like a skittish deer.

Giving him a moment, she looks to you instead, her eyes dark and whirling.

“I see that you came to us, Sam,” she says, tilting her head to one side. “You could have gone to the police. Does this mean you haven’t told the Chief?”

She shoots a glance at Rayne, not giving you time to respond before she continues: “This is…a lot. I need to know right now if you’re with us or against us.”

Of course, I’m with you.

I can’t be with you on this, I’m sorry.

You barely hesitate. “Of course, I’m with you,” you say.

You see Lexie’s expression collapse in relief where she stands, behind Bronwyn. “Oh, Sam, I’m so glad,” she says, clasping her hands together.

Bronwyn is more serious: “That’s good to hear,” she says, “Because we’re going to need your help.”

Rayne has put one hand over his face, and his shoulders are still shaking.

“We’ve never had a traveller…actually within our grasp before,” Bronwyn says. “This is new territory. Rayne, I’m so sorry it had to be you.”

Rayne makes a muffled sound somewhere between assent and a sob.

Bronwyn turns to you. “You know as much as we do at this point, Sam. What do you think we should do?”

Get out of town.

Keep an eye on him.

Tie him up.

You hesitate, looking between the three tarot readers. Bronwyn is carved out of tension, the angles of her stance humming with stress. Lexie’s face is as serious as you’ve ever seen it, her fingers knitted together in front of her. Rayne is still covering his face, half-turned away from you.

The words perch on your tongue. You don’t want to say them, but you feel Rayne’s hands around your throat, see the knife in his hand, and you know you have to.

“We should restrain him somehow,” you say. The statement leaves your mouth with a bitter feeling. “He’s…dangerous.”

Rayne does not respond, but you see his shoulders fall a bit further.

“Do you have anything we could tie him up with?” you ask Bronwyn and Lexie. “Anything that could conceivably be used as a rope?”

“I have some long stockings,” says Lexie, frowning. “Would those work?”

“Hold on,” says Bronwyn. She marches over to the heavy curtains that cover the window and yanks them to one side, exposing the long, woven curtain cord. She looks at you. “This strong enough?”

No.

Yes.

I hope so.

“I hope so,” you say.

Bronwyn smiles tightly. “Me too,” she replies, “Because it’s all we’ve got.”

Rayne is scrubbing at his face, trying to hide the redness around his eyes from crying. “Um,” he says in a strangled voice, “Should we really stay here for this? Chief Dupont is bound to come check the guesthouse.”

Bronwyn pauses. “That’s a good question,” she says. “I can’t see how travel would be safe at this point. But we do have to consider the Chief. Sam, you’re the one who would have to keep him off our backs if we stayed here. What’s your opinion?”

We should leave town.

We should stay here.

An image of Ellis strangled on a back road comes unbidden to your mind. No, car travel doesn’t sound especially safe right now.

“We should stay here,” you decide, hoping fervently that you’ll be able to keep Chief Dupont at bay.

“Bron,” says Lexie, tugging at the curtain cord, “How are we supposed to get these things down? They’re attached to the rod.”

Bronwyn opens her mouth to respond when there is a knock at the door.

All four of you freeze. You stare at each other. Then everyone turns to Rayne, who bites his lip.

“What?” he snaps in a low voice. “I’m not going to attack whoever is at the door.”

I’ll get it.

Bronwyn, you get it.

“I’ll get it,” you say. The tarot readers visibly relax, but still watch you tensely as you approach the door. You unlock it, put your hand on the doorknob, and slowly open the door.

On the other side stands Violet, smiling at you. Even knowing that she isn’t the killer, you find her a bit creepy. The hallway is dark, and her indigo dress blends in.

“Hi, Sam,” says Violet in a sing-song voice. “I was trying to bring you the scissors you asked for earlier, but you weren’t in your room. I heard voices, so I thought you might be in here.” She tilts her head. “You’ve all become quite good friends, haven’t you? For a detective and his murder suspects.”

Yeah, we have.

I’m doing my job, don’t worry.

“I’m doing my job, don’t worry,” you tell Violet. Her gaze scans you up and down, taking in the loosened tie and rumpled clothes.

“Hm,” she says, “If I didn’t hear more than two voices in there, I’d suspect you of doing something very unprofessional indeed.” She pauses, letting her statement sink in, then smiles again. “Fortunately, I know that’s not the case. Here you are, Sam.”

She presents you with a pair of scissors, which you take awkwardly. Violet then tucks her hands behind her back and nods at you.

“Good luck,” she says. “You’ll need it.”

Before you can process that cryptic statement, Violet is already walking away, her steps slow and measured as she moves off down the hallway. You feel a vague sense of unease, as if you are expecting someone to jump out at you. Of course, no one does, and you close the door.

Lexie sees the scissors in your hand and cries out, “Perfect!” She grabs them from you and runs to the curtain cord, while Bronwyn looks mildly amused.

“What a fortuitous coincidence,” says Rayne, and then frowns. “Wait, did she say you asked for those scissors earlier?”

You nod.

“And did you?”

When you shake your head, Rayne rubs one hand across his chin in thought. It would feel like a completely normal gesture if his face wasn’t still tearstained. “I asked Violet for a pair of scissors earlier so that I could cut some thread, and she never got back to me. Weird that she’d give them to you instead.”

Bronwyn interrupts before the line of thinking can continue. To Lexie, she says, “We’ve all got curtains in our rooms. Lex, will you go collect the cords? Sam and Rayne can give you their keys.”

Lexie nods, and in a matter of moments has collected the keys from the two of you and rushed out of the room with the scissors.

“While she’s doing that, I’d like you and I to do a reading, Ray,” Bronwyn continues. “Maybe we can get something useful out of Mercury.”

“You’d trust me with that?” asks Rayne with dead eyes.

“You’re possessed, Ray, you’re not an idiot. Stop thinking we blame you for this,” says Bronwyn. She smiles at him to take the sting out of her rough words, and even puts a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it briefly. “Chin up. We’ll get through this.”

Rayne’s expression cracks and for a moment you think he’s about to cry again, but instead he takes a deep breath in through his nose and pulls himself up straighter.

“Well, then,” he says, clearly making an effort to be cheery, “We’d better find out what Mercury thinks. Maybe I can give it a stern talking to for not warning me earlier.”

Bronwyn pats his shoulder. “That’s the spirit,” she says, and steps away, toward the bed where the cards are still laid out. She looks at you and seems about to add something when a loud buzzing sound interrupts her.

It’s your phone ringing. You pull it from your pocket and step out of the room, closing the door behind you. As soon as you answer, you hear the Chief’s voice in your ear: “Oh, thank god you’re alright, Sam. Where the hell are you?”

He doesn’t wait for a response before continuing: “Ellis is safe. She called me from a motel a few towns away. She’s going to stay there until all of this blows over. Meanwhile, I’m eager to hear where you got to after you sent her away, and whether you have any more leads. We need to lock someone up soon, Sam. We got lucky with Ellis, but things are only going to get worse if the killer stays on the loose. Come to my office as soon as you can. We need to talk.”

He hangs up without you having spoken a word. You frown at the phone, then glance at the clock on the wall.

It is almost midnight. You wonder how long you can put Chief Dupont off before he starts wondering why you haven’t showed. Should you go there now? Should you stay and help the tarot readers?

You think of how defenseless Rayne was when he collapsed. How dangerous he was when he had his hands on your throat.

You have to stay. You have to help.

You return to the room, sliding your phone back into your pocket as you do so. You’re tempted to put it on silent, but dodging Dupont’s calls is bound to bring more trouble than it’s worth. When you step inside, Rayne and Bronwyn look up from the bed, where they are both sitting. Between them, Mercury is laid out in the shape of a familiar tarot spread.

You can’t see the words on the cards, but you see their splashes of color against the dull bedspread. Bronwyn and Rayne have already done the reading.

“What happened?” asks Bronwyn as you come in. “Who was on the phone?”

Chief Dupont. He wants me to come in as soon as possible.

Bluff – No one important.

“Chief Dupont,” you say. “He wants me to come in as soon as possible.”

“You can’t,” Rayne says quickly, almost before you’re finished speaking. His face is still composed, but he sounds alarmed at the idea of you leaving. “We need you here,” he says, then adds: “Strength in numbers, I mean. Besides, Dupont will probably bite your head off for…whatever you did with Ellis Munro.” He frowns, his face clouding.

“What did happen with Ellis Munro?” he asks. “I don’t remember anything until I woke up in her kitchen with you there.”

Tell him.

Tell him but omit the shapeshifting.

Through ingrained habit, you can’t bring yourself to tell Rayne about your abilities. If he doesn’t remember, all the better.

“I sent Ellis away,” you explain, and a look of relief crosses Rayne’s face. You realize that until now he had no absolute confirmation that he hadn’t killed her. “She’s safe,” you add, and he nods gratefully.

“I stayed at the house. You attacked me, we fought…” You think of the shock crossing Rayne’s furious face, the comatose state he fell into upon recognizing you. “Fortunately, you passed out partway through, and I was able to hide you from Chief Dupont when he arrived. Then you woke up, and…you know the rest,” you say.

Bronwyn looks between the two of you. She does not know the rest, and it’s obvious that she wants to ask, but she visibly represses the urge.

“We have important news,” she says instead, once it’s clear that you’re finished speaking. Rayne has gone drawn and silent after your words.

You approach the bed and the two of them shift to fully face you.

“We did another reading,” says Bronwyn, gesturing at the cards on the bed. “Mercury wasn’t cooperative at first, but it eventually gave us something we can work with. The good news is that Ellis is safe. She shouldn’t be in any more danger.”

“Thank Christ,” adds Rayne. Bronwyn doesn’t seem to mind the interruption.

“Unfortunately, there is another person who is now at risk.” Bronwyn looks at you with a grave expression.

You sigh. This reminds you of when Lexie came running up to you in the hall and told you that you were dead.

Is it me?

“Is it me?” you ask, rubbing at your sore throat with one hand. You’re weary and in pain, but you’ll take on more challenges if you have to. You’ll do anything if it means you can save the rest of them.

To your surprise, Bronwyn is shaking her head. “No,” she says, placing her hands flat on the bedspread in front of her. She frowns and looks up at you. Then her gaze shifts away, to Rayne, who is biting his lip again.

No, you think.

“It’s Rayne,” says Bronwyn.

You feel as if a bucket of cold water has been dumped on you.

It’s Rayne. Of course it is.

You look at him and his eyes are like the edge of a high-rise building. His hand outstretched. The wind, cold.

You blink and he is not falling. You are in the guesthouse, in Bronwyn’s room.

“Like Hong Kong,” says Rayne, holding your gaze.

Bronwyn follows the look between the two of you with some surprise. “You told him,” she says to Rayne. It is more of a statement than a question, and he merely nods in response.

“This won’t be like that,” Bronwyn says. She takes Rayne by the forearms. “We’re here, this time.”

He manages a faint smile, but you can’t help feeling like the mood in the room has dropped. The three of you maintain an awkward silence, tidying up the tarot deck, until Lexie returns.

She flops down a pile of curtain cords on the now-clean bed. Bronwyn looks at her, then back at the pile, then back at her.

“Lexie, where did you get all of these?”

Lexie has the decency to blush as she puts the scissors down on the bed as well. “I wasn’t sure how many we’d need, so I just took all the cords in the hallways as well. Violet can sue us later if she wants.”

Rayne laughs. “Lex. Really?”

“Yes, really!” she says, whirling on him in mock anger. “I’m looking out for your safety here!”

He picks up one of the curtain cords and lets it slide through his fingers. “Lex, there are enough of these to tie up an elephant.”

“I don’t know, maybe you’re going to hulk out or something!”

“Hulk out,” Rayne repeats, disbelief writ large across his face.

“I don’t know! Better safe than sorry!”

Rayne bites his lip and squints, looking as if he is only holding in a torrent of words through sheer willpower. Lexie pouts, putting her fists on her hips. You rub one hand over your face, a smile threatening despite everything.

Unfortunately or fortunately, Bronwyn steps in and stops the two of them.

“We have more serious things to think about,” she says, but she is smiling.

Lexie makes a face at Rayne over Bronwyn’s shoulder. Rayne raises his eyebrows.

“Seriously,” Bronwyn says, and the two of them split apart, still smiling.

The mood shifts back to somber, however, as Rayne pulls one of the chairs out from the small table in one corner and gestures at it.

“Is this good? Should I be…tied to a chair?” He frowns. “This is such a weird thing to ask about.”

No, it might be harder that way.

It’s better than hogtying you.

“It’s better than hogtying you,” you point out with a wry smile, and Rayne chuckles weakly.

“You’re right about that,” he says. He puts the chair down in the middle of the room and sits down in it, then spreads his hands, crossing one leg over the other. “I suppose if I’m going to be restrained for my own good, we might as well get it over with.” There is a bitter note beneath the forced joviality.

The other three of you look at each other and nod, then pick up the curtain cords and begin typing them around him and through the rungs of the chair. Lexie folds Rayne’s hands behind his back and begins to loop a length of cord around his wrists as well.

“Don’t worry, Rayne,” says Bronwyn softly. “It won’t be for long.”

“We don’t know that,” Rayne retorts, but it’s not angry – just resigned. “Maybe I’ll have to live in this chair forever.”

“I’ll read your books to you, Rayne,” says Lexie.

He smiles. “Thanks, Lex.”

You work in silence for a bit longer. The more time passes, the more worried you are about not meeting the Chief, but your phone remains silent, so you try to put your concern out of your mind and continue to tie knots. Rayne dutifully moves his limbs when asked, so that you can loop cord around them more easily, but mostly he seems to grow more and more dejected. It feels as if he is moving away from you, down a long tunnel where you cannot follow.

You finish tying off the final knot. As Lexie and Bronwyn turn their backs, you place one hand on Rayne’s tied ones and, for a moment, intertwine your fingers between his. He turns to look at you, blinking several times, startled – and then you pull away. Something wordless moves between the two of you as you hold his gaze for a moment longer.

Then you step away. The distance between you immediately feels vast, although it is only a couple of meters.

You, Lexie, and Bronwyn find other seats to watch Rayne. Lexie perches on the edge of the bed, her phone in her hands, her nails clicking slightly on the screen. Bronwyn pulls up the remaining chair and her laptop, setting it in front of her and beginning a quiet tapping rhythm on the keyboard. You decide to sit on the ground, legs out in front of you and with your back against the base of the bed. You’re tired and sore, and the temptation to lean your head against the mattress and go to sleep is strong. But you keep your eyes on Rayne, who glances uncomfortably around the room.

“Well, anyone got any good jokes?” he asks, smiling in a way that doesn’t reach his eyes. “We might be here for a while.”

Then his eyes roll up in his head and he slumps forward, limp.

You feel your breath hiss between your teeth as you lean forward in shock. The noise startles Lexie and Bronwyn into paying attention. Their eyes shift from you to Rayne, and that’s when fear starts to show on their faces.

“What – ” Lexie begins.

You hold up a hand, stopping her. You’re not entirely sure why you do it, but the gesture is instinctual, and her mouth snaps shut. The three of you look at Rayne and try to breathe quietly.

Perhaps a minute passes. You can feel the tension heavy in the air. Finally, just as it becomes too much to bear, Rayne moves.

He lifts his head slowly, steadily.

“Well,” he says.

It is Rayne’s voice, but it is not Rayne speaking.

“Here we are.”

Get out of him.

[Say Nothing]

“Get out of him,” you hiss, anger welling up in you at the sight of Rayne’s eyes regarding you coolly, cruelly, with none of the personality present that was there before. You place one hand on the carpet, bracing yourself, the other arm resting on your knee. You are ready to spring into motion if you need to.

Rayne smirks. He shifts slightly in his seat, testing his bonds, and you tense. But the curtain cords stay put, and after a moment he relaxes, looking at you again with that flat, shark-eyed gaze.

“I’d rather not,” the traveller says.

“See, I’m having a lot of fun here. It’s a familiar story, but there’s nothing wrong with replaying the classics, is there?” Rayne smiles suddenly, toothy and sharp, and it is such an uncharacteristic expression on his face that you shiver.

>What do you mean, the classics?

>We’re keeping you here until you let him go.

>Why are you doing this?

“What do you mean, the classics?” you ask. You are still tired, and your body aches, but your voice and mind are clearer than they’ve been all day. Somehow the veil of déja vu that hung over you has parted. One thought rings in your head: This has not happened before.

The traveller tilts its head at your question, a lazy gesture that says Rayne in so many volumes it pierces your heart. “Oh, you know. The same old story.” It speaks slowly and enunciates: “Lawrence Petrovsky and his friends. Sam the interloper, come to save the day. Picking the little group apart, breaking their lives into pieces…and leaving Lawrence with the consequences. It’s my favorite game.”

You blink. What is he talking about?

“You don’t get it, do you?” asks Rayne. “Such a small mind. Pity that Lawrence here is probably the only one who’d understand me, and well, he’s out of the office at the moment.”

It makes you sick to your stomach to watch this; the traveller wears all Rayne’s tics like a mask, making you feel like it’s really him. He taps his feet on the floor, tilts his head, shifts his shoulders. He eyes you with a sardonic smile and raised eyebrows. It’s him, you think every time. It’s him, it is, it’s him.

It’s enough to make you wonder if there is no supernatural element here. If Rayne is simply a killer.

No. You shake the thought off. The traveller thrives on uncertainty. It’s going to try to drive you apart, and that’s how it will win.

You’re right, I don’t get it. Explain.

Bronwyn, what is he talking about?

“Bronwyn, what is he talking about?” you ask.

She looks pale and afraid. “I don’t know. Rayne was the one with the time travel theories.” She catches herself with a wince: “Is the one. What he’s saying…it sounds like he’s implying that he’s done this before. But I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“What, trans-dimensional evil can’t do a bit of universe hopping?” Rayne tilts his head to the side and smiles smugly. “It’s right there in the name, Bron.”

“Don’t call me that,” she snaps.

“What, Bron? Sorry, should I call you Bronwyn Castle instead? Are we going back to formalities? You know, I thought that once you sat with me after I watched that girl die in Hong Kong, we’d be able to move onto first names.”

“Stop it,” Bronwyn says, standing.

Her fists are clenched. You bite your lip, trying to think of a way to defuse the situation, but come up empty. The tension holds, dangerous and buzzing.

“You’re right about a few things,” says Rayne. “This is a rite of passage for us, and yes, we’re only required to do it once. But I just couldn’t get enough of you all. It wasn’t even killing Dorota Shaw that was the fun part. It was watching you suffer, seeing you dance at the end of my rope. And killing Sam was always a terrific bonus.” His eyes linger on you. “Although, of course, that wasn’t me. Good old Lawrence decided to step up and take care of that one himself, didn’t he?”

“What are you talking about?” Lexie demands. Her voice is piercing in its anger. “Sam’s right here, he didn’t die. Even though you and the Ouija board both seem to think he did.”

“Oh, he did,” Rayne retorts. “Plenty of times. In universe after universe, Sam made some bad, bad decisions and ended up on the wrong end of a knife. Again, though, that wasn’t me. You can blame your friend for that. Turns out he’s willing to do just about anything if it will keep him out of jail. So much for the goody two-shoes act, hm?”

Lexie frowns in confusion. You, however, are finally putting the pieces together.

You’ve possessed Rayne in multiple timelines?

“You’ve possessed Rayne in multiple timelines?” you interject, and he looks at you.

“There you go. Finally came around, did you?”

Why? And…how?

“Why?” you ask, aware that you’re repeating yourself but utterly lost in the traveller’s narrative. “And…how?” you add.

“Because it’s fun. And because I’m better than you. Those are the two answers,” Rayne says. Then, for the first moment since this conversation started, a frown crosses his face. “Unfortunately, the fun can’t last forever. Stepping from timeline to timeline…It’s confusing things. Think of it as poking a hole with a sewing needle through the same piece of fabric, over and over. It gets…ragged.”

His scowl deepens. “This is my last one, in fact. The last timeline where I can play with Lawrence Petrovsky’s life. I’m causing too much damage already, cutting through like this – I know there was some bleedover this time. Like Lawrence’s dream. And you, Sam.” His eyes lift and fix on yours. “You remember, don’t you?”

Yes.

“Yes,” you say, unwillingly. Because you do remember. You remember being killed, and dying, but you also remember other worlds. Other stories. Ones with happy endings and ones where Rayne left you in the dark. Again, you see the accordion folds of the timeline, and they stretch out to either side, into infinity.

“Hm,” says the traveller, with pursed lips. “Yes, you do. That’s problematic. It’s how I ended up in this situation, isn’t it? You got a little too much foreknowledge.”

He looks at Lexie. “The Ouija board, too. That’s not supposed to happen – spirits should stay in their own timelines. I didn’t predict this, to be quite honest.”

Then, all at once, the morose attitude leaves him and he smiles again, shrugging as much as he can in his bonds. “But that’s all part of the fun, isn’t it?”

Bronwyn is still seething with rage. “What kind of sick creature could have fun like this?” she demands. “You’re ruining lives. You’re killing people.”

Again, you are afraid that she’s going to lash out, maybe even hurt him. You clench your fingers on your knee.

>We’re keeping you here until you let him go.

>Why are you doing this?

“Why are you doing this?” you ask, hoping at least to change the subject, or distract the traveller from Bronwyn.

Rayne turns his head, squinting at you. “I just told you. I enjoy it.”                                                    

The worlds fall flatly into the room. There’s not much you can say against them.

>We’re keeping you here until you let him go.

“We’re keeping you here until you let him go,” you say. Determination makes your voice ring out in the small room. You catch Lexie nodding at you out of the corner of your eye. “You might as well give up now,” you continue, “Since you won’t be killing anyone else. I don’t see how this can be fun for you anymore.”

Rayne looks thoughtful and clucks his tongue. “I suppose you’re right about that. But it is fun watching you all stare at me with your angry little faces. I have complete control over this person you love so much, you realize that? What if I decide to stay forever? What will you do then?”

“Wait.” Bronwyn says it with finality.

“Hm,” says Rayne. “Maybe you will.”

“We will!” Lexie cries out. “You don’t get it. We’re going to stand by Rayne no matter what it takes!”

The conviction in her words makes your heart twinge. You can only imagine someone caring about you as much as these two care about Rayne. You’ve lived a transitory life, constantly shifting from person to person and case to case. There is no one out there who would do this for you, and that knowledge briefly sends a chill through you to the core.

“Sure,” says Rayne, conversationally, almost companionably. “What about this, then?”

And he flings himself backwards in his chair.

You scramble to your feet but are too slow to stop him from hitting the wall and then the floor. Lying on his side, cheek pressed into the carpet, Rayne is laughing when you reach him. The bruise from your fight is dark against the pale skin of his face.

Stop.

“Stop,” you say, grabbing at him. “What do you want? What do you get out of this?”

“Oh, nothing,” says the traveller. “I just wanted to see your reaction.” And then Rayne goes limp again.

You blink. Bronwyn and Lexie cluster behind you, leaning over your shoulders to see Rayne where he lies on the floor. Once it becomes clear that he isn’t waking up, the three of you haul him back upright. His head lolls on his chest, hair falling into his face. This time, you can’t remove yourself from his side, and neither do Bronwyn or Lexie. It’s like you need to be close to him, to make sure he’s not leaving you. His breathing is even, but there is still the fear that he somehow won’t wake up.

He does, though, and when he raises his head, he looks confused and upset. Although it hurts you to see him like this, you feel relief rising within you like a wave at the sign of emotion on his face.

It’s him, right? It’s him?

Rayne exhales, long and shaky. “So…did I lose it again?” he asks.

You nod solemnly, and he winces, looking to the side. “Ah,” he says.

“How are you feeling?” asks Bronwyn.

“It’s weird, Bron,” Rayne says. “Everything we’ve ever learned tells us that no one knows if they’re possessed or not. But…I feel like something’s lifted. Like my limbs are lighter.”

He looks up, and the glint of hope in the depths of his eyes makes your knees weak.

“I think it’s gone.”

You are uneasy about letting Rayne go, but for once emotion seems to override Brownyn’s strict sense of logic, and she and Lexie set about untying him at once, dropping the curtain cords in a heap around him. Once he is free, they hug him tightly, their words overlapping in a babble you can’t make sense of. For you, it feels as though everything is moving much too quickly, like the bright and joyous atmosphere of the room is closing in on you, constricting your world to a single dark point.

Rayne stretches out his limbs, making a quip about being sore. The chaos in the room dies down. Lexie begins picking up the curtain cords.

Then Rayne bolts for the door.

You lunge at him as he goes by, but barely manage to grab his sleeve. There is a popping sound as the button at his cuff flies off, but he wrenches free and yanks the door open, flying out into the corridor. You feel panic descend on you again, your pulse leaping into high gear.

Behind you, Bronwyn and Lexie are frozen in shock. You turn to them, only able to spare an instant before chasing after Rayne.

Stop him!

Stay here!

“Stay here!” you shout, your legs already moving. “Watch Mercury! It’s the only way we’ll know if the traveller has really left him.”

And then you are out the door, knees pumping, hearing a shout from behind you, Bronwyn’s voice: “We’ll call you!”

Then you are in the chase.

Ahead of you, you see Rayne round the corner like a shadow. He is still wearing his loafers, so his feet skid on the carpet, but he’s fast and he has a lead on you. Still, you have regained some ground by the time you reach the front door.

Rayne bursts through it, leaving it swinging behind him in his hurry, and that saves you another couple of seconds. Your breath is heaving, your throat burning, your lungs struggling as if they are about to give out. You’ve been knocked around today, and your body knows it.

Keep going, you tell yourself. Just once more. For him.

It’s raining outside, and the cold hits you like a brick wall. You are immediately drenched, the water sluicing down your face and slicking your hair into your eyes, making you waste precious moments shoving it back so that you can see through the downpour. Fortunately, you can hear Rayne splashing through puddles ahead of you, and even in the dark and the storm this lets you reorient on him. You take off again.

You don’t waste breath shouting; you know it’s the traveller who is trying to escape you, and there will be no response. It is a silent chase, save for your gulping breaths and the pounding of your feet. Rayne’s back, ahead of you between sheets of water, is all you are able to focus on.

You have to catch him. You have to.

Somehow, despite everything, you manage to push harder through your heels. You lift your knees higher. You gain on him, slowly, inch by inch.

Rayne has been leading you on a long chase up the road. You’re not sure why, at first, and then you see the flash of headlights in the distance and you know why.

The traveller wants out. The traveller wants revenge.

A horn blares as a car swerves by, barely avoiding the two of you. Up ahead is the mouth of this smaller road, opening onto the much larger highway where you can see the lights of cars flying past.

The traveller wants to kill Rayne.

You see Rayne glance over his shoulder as he runs, as if gauging the distance between the two of you. The flow of traffic on the highway is thick, but not constant, and through sheer luck as he arrives there is a gap in the vehicles. He skids to a halt, looks wildly to either side, and then takes off running again. But the pause is enough; you force air into your aching lungs and put on a final boost of speed, and just as Rayne is about to lunge into the highway you tackle him, the two of you tumbling down into a ditch at the side of the road, gravel and nettles scratching at you on your way down. A mere meter away, a lorry lays on the horn as it flies by, barely missing the two of you. You can feel the wind of its passage, and then you are in the muddy water at the bottom of the ditch, Rayne’s elbow in your stomach, your face pressed into his chest.

Desperately, before he can recover himself, you scramble for his wrists. Now you are astride him, pinning him down, and although he struggles you manage to hold his hands above his head and keep his legs in place with your knees.

Give up.

Rayne.

“Rayne,” you gasp, giving up on addressing the traveller. You have already learned there is no mercy to be had from this being; only lies, manipulation, and deceit. “Rayne,” you say instead, through heaving breaths, “I know you’re in there. I know you woke up once before. I need you to do it again.”

In the dark, you can’t tell if the expression that crosses Rayne’s face is recognition or anger. Another car roars by, illuminating your struggle briefly. The light shines off of Rayne’s wild eyes.

“Never,” hisses the traveller. “Let me have this. It’s all I have left.”

Rayne.

“Rayne,” you say again, your wrists beginning to hurt at the constant pressure of holding his hands down. He is stronger than you, less worn out. He is going to win.

“You’re all I have left,” you say. “Wake up. I need you. Wake up.”

The traveller snarls, “You idiot. He’s not in here. I’m in control. Let me go!” It surges upward against you with so much force that you are almost knocked on your back. Rayne gets one hand free and the two of you scramble in the muck for a moment. His fist deals you a glancing blow, and your head snaps back, pain shooting up your chin.

“Let me go!” the traveller bellows, and pulls back Rayne’s fist to punch you again.

In the headlights of another passing vehicle, you see your chance. Ignoring the fist that is about to hit you, you plunge your elbow into Rayne’s sternum and hear the breath exit his lungs in a startled wheeze. He chokes for a moment, going limp with the effort needed to cough, and you snatch at his hands again, pinning them back where they were. Your face throbs steadily.

The traveller lies still for a moment, regaining its breath. The rain continues to pour over both of you.

“It’s been a long journey,” Rayne says at last. “From Birmingham to now. I guess I got carried away.” He smiles and spits mud. “I was having too much fun. But death is nothing to me – not what it is to your friend here. Or to you. If that’s how this has to end, so be it.”

His voice and face shift, the timbre of his words going low, menacing. His eyes are boring into yours with such force that you can’t look away.

“Let me go,” says Rayne.

[Let Him Go]

Rayne!

For a moment you are held in the traveller’s dreadful thrall, and then you see the expression crack, just a hint. Allowing you a glimpse at the terror and pain behind the mask.

There he is, you think, and you push his hands farther into the mud, even though his nails dig into your skin, and you plead, “Rayne!”

He blinks. There is a moment of stillness.

“Rayne,” you beg, nearly sobbing, “I am so tired. I need your help. I’m trying to save you, but it’s not – it’s not enough. I can’t lose you like this. Not so soon.”

His eyebrows begin to draw together, a thin line appearing between them.

“No,” the traveller says with Rayne’s mouth, “I’m in control. You’re not accomplishing anything with this soap opera.” But Rayne is frowning, and you know something is there.

“I’ve lost you too many times already,” you say.

The dark room. The knife. The blood. The ropes. Stabbing. A missed connection. An accepted key. The Ouija board. The dark room. Over and over, the cycle, the hands reaching out and not quite touching, a moment in the sunlight that will be snuffed out as quickly as blowing out a match. A case closed, and a body buried, and another shift assumed. Back in the briefing chamber. Back to being no one.

“It doesn’t end like this.” You don’t realize you’ve said it out loud until you do, the words barely audible above the storm and the highway. The sentence drops from your mouth and you feel it for what it is: the last rung in a ladder that falls away into nothing. Beneath you there is no more footing.

The energy begins to drain from your muscles. You are so tired.

You can even feel your features beginning to blur; you’re not sure how much you look like Sam anymore. All your focus is on keeping Rayne in place, keeping him safe. You don’t realize that your shift is fading around the edges until you hear a soft gasp from beneath you.

“Shapeshifter?” Rayne/the traveller asks. You’re not sure which. There is shock in his eyes.

Yes.

No.

“Yes,” you say, bitterly. You are crying now, and the tears mix with the rain on your face. “Yes, I’m a shapeshifter.”

“Oh,” says the traveller/Rayne.

Another car goes by.

“I’m tired too, Sam,” says Rayne, and there is a note in his voice that makes you look at him. His face seems to have somewhat cleared; the anger has eased, but his eyes are unfocused, as if he is not quite lucid. “I’m so tired,” he repeats.

Wake up.

“Wake up, Rayne,” you say.

He pushes against your hands one more time, and you are so weary that you are unable to resist him. You topple into the water at the bottom of the ditch with a splash. Rayne sits up, his clothing soaked, and begins to haul himself to his feet, grabbing handfuls of stinging nettles to pull himself up as if they are nothing.

“Idiot,” says the traveller. “This isn’t some storybook. You can’t win with love.”

Love?

“Love?” you ask in a small voice.

The traveller looks at you, its face contorting into a smile. “Yes, Detective Sam. It makes me sick, all the thoughts about you swirling around in here. But it’s not to be, is it? You can pour out your heart to him and he’ll never hear you. Lawrence is gone. It’s just me now.”

[Shift Into Sam]

[Drop the Shift]

You close your eyes. In the blackness, you face yourself. Sam, the persona you have worn like a mask for the last day, stands before you. His eyes are open, and his hair is slicked by rain. You see the exhaustion there, cut in by sorrow. You feel the features beginning to slide from your own face.

No, you think, and you force yourself back.

The world shakes, and when it stabilizes Rayne is already climbing out of the ditch. The mud hinders him, but he is making progress, almost out of your reach.

You drag yourself forward and get a hand around his ankle.

Please.

“Please,” you say simply, and Rayne turns to face you, and when you make eye contact there is a feeling of something shattering.

“Sam,” he says.

Anger flashes across his face like lightning. “No,” says the traveller, “This isn’t how it works. The timeline must be coming apart – my jump – ”

“Sam,” says Rayne, “Sam.” And he folds like a paper doll.

You don’t catch him so much as he falls on top of you, but he’s not unconscious this time, just weak and unsteady. He manages to shove himself up on his elbows so as not to crush you. His gaze is unfocused again, his limbs shaking.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket.

God only knows how it hasn’t been ruined by the water you’re lying in, but you fish it out of the wet fabric of your slacks, swiping up and holding it to your ear. You keep a wary eye on Rayne, who is on his hands and knees in the mud.

“Sam,” says Bronwyn’s breathless voice, “It’s over. For real this time. Mercury says the traveller has gone – there’s no next victim anymore.”

There is a pause. You feel complete and utter relief flood you in a wave.

“Sam?” asks Bronwyn, “Are you there? Please tell me you’re safe. Do you have Rayne?”

Yes.

He’s safe.

“Yes,” you say, and then you tell her where you are, and she sobs with relief.

“We’re coming to get you,” Bronwyn tells you, and hangs up.

You let the phone slip from your numb hands. You are half-propped against the wall of the ditch, while Rayne has sat back on his knees in the mud, looking drained and confused. He focuses on you, however, as you end the call, and something like a smile flickers at the corners of his mouth.

“Sam,” he says, “I have no idea what just happened, but did you save my life again?”

I did.

[Kiss Him]

Your limbs move almost without you knowing. You lean forward, slowly, deliberately, and reach out to Rayne. Your hand slides along his jawline, finding the back of his head, and he doesn’t stop you. His eyes are huge as he blinks at you.

You kiss him.

He tastes like mud and iron, but you pull him closer anyway, pressing his lips against yours. He seems frozen in surprise for a moment, but then he kisses back, his hand landing on your shoulder. You feel his eyelashes flutter against your cheek as his eyes close. The skin at his jaw is rough against your palm.

Then you shudder, a shiver of cold running through your entire body, and Rayne pulls away. His mouth is still slightly open, and his eyebrows have climbed halfway up his forehead.

“Sam,” he says. “I didn’t think…Well, this changes things.”

You laugh. As if things haven’t changed enough already. As if the world hasn’t turned upside down and back for both of you.

“You look…terrible,” says Rayne, and then a sheepish smile crosses his face. “Sorry, I didn’t mean – just, you’re all beat up and pale and covered in mud. And I think your lip is bleeding.”

You touch it gently and it stings, but you’re still laughing, a giddiness swirling within you from the kiss.

It’s okay.

Everything will be okay now.

“Everything will be okay now,” you tell Rayne, lying in the mud while cars whiz by overhead, and for the first time since this case began you really, really mean it.

--

The morning sunlight slants across the guesthouse’s kitchen as you shuffle in, hunting for the scent of coffee that began to waft beneath your door a few minutes ago. It’s much later than you would normally get up; after you got back last night (and after the Chief gave you a long, long talking to about not having a suspect chosen for him and the dangers of letting the killer get away), you slept for ten dreamless hours, exhaustion dropping you into slumber as soon as you managed to shower the mud off.

Now, however, you’re awake. Everything feels sharp-edged and new, like the world has been remade while you slept.

You didn’t realize the guesthouse had a communal kitchen, but it makes sense since the dining room is shared between all the rooms. As you walk in, noticing the switch from plush carpet to tile beneath your bare feet, you see that there is only one other person in the kitchen: Rayne, sitting at the table with a book and a cup of tea.

He glances up at you as you come in and nods, somewhat awkwardly.

“Sam,” he says, with a faint smile.

It’s hard not to address everything that happened yesterday, but considering how out of it you both were when Bronwyn and Lexie picked you up, and how certain all three tarot readers are that the danger has passed, you decide it’s not worth rehashing everything.

Let the past lie. Look to the future instead.

You pour yourself a cup of coffee and sit down at the table. Rayne glances your way, raising one eyebrow.

“Coffee rather than tea?” he asks. “I won’t judge, just…good to know.” Belying his words, his expression makes it clear that he is judging you, at least slightly.

“Lexie made the pot,” he continues. “She likes coffee and tea equally; god only knows why. It’s a die roll every day as to what she’ll be having.”

You chuckle and sip at the coffee. It’s hot, and you nearly burn your tongue, but the flavor is good.

A few moments pass in companionable silence. Rayne turns a page in his book, then slides a bookmark into it and closes the cover. He folds his hands around his mug.

“So, Sam,” he says, looking at you sidelong.

What?

Yes, Rayne?

“Yes, Rayne?” you ask, mock serious. Humor glints in his eyes in response, but then he sobers up.

“I have to ask you something,” he says. “My memories from last night are admittedly garbled, and I don’t have a good way of knowing what was real. Bron and Lex tried to explain some things to me after you left, but…well, there was a lot of confusion and they weren’t there when we were at the highway.”

You nod.

“It’s…going to sound weird,” he admits. “Really weird.”

Maybe don’t ask me, then.

Go ahead.

“Go ahead,” you say. “It can’t be weirder than what we’ve already been through.”

You expect Rayne to laugh, but instead he tilts his head, considering, before finally saying, “Maybe.”

You blink. That’s ominous.

“Sam,” Rayne asks, leaning forward, “Are you a shapeshifter?”

All of the alarms in your brain go off at once. It is a symphony of ingrained fear, a panic response trained to activate when you hear that question. Your nerves scream at you to jump out of your chair and run. You can get out before anyone catches you; you’ll call Agent X from the curb, the emergency number, and he can pick you up somewhere in town. You can still escape from this. No one will believe Rayne if he tells them.

You force yourself to take a deep breath. You drag your eyes back to Rayne’s face, terrified of what you will see there – but he’s not looking at you with hatred or revulsion. He is looking at you with curiosity.

He sees your hesitation. “Listen,” he says, “I thought I remembered something odd from last night. It’s all hazy, but…When we were fighting, it didn’t seem like you were entirely you. It was like your face was a mask that kept almost coming off. I’ve always thought shapeshifters were dangerous, and wasn’t entirely sure they were real – in fact, I thought shapeshifting might be a sign someone was a traveller – but I stayed up thinking most of the night and that can’t be true, can it? I mean, you risked your life to save me. How would that make sense if you were a traveller?”

You blink.

“Sam, you can tell me if I’m wrong, or if it’s true. But a lot of crazy things have happened in the last couple of days. None of us would turn on you. And I haven’t told Lex or Bron. I won’t if you don’t want me to.”

He looks at you, one elbow on the table, his eyes bright, and waits.

I’m not a shapeshifter.

I am a shapeshifter.

“I am a shapeshifter,” you say, and despite the fact that he seemed pretty sure of himself a second ago, you see shock flash across Rayne’s face. He sits back in his chair with a sharp exhale of surprise.

“Wow, Sam,” he says, nodding and staring off across the room. “Wow. I didn’t really think that would be true. This is…”

He looks at you. You wince under his gaze, expecting anger or fear.

“…Incredible,” Rayne finishes. “This is really incredible. I have so many questions.”

Questions?

You don’t hate me?

“Questions?” you ask, squinting in disbelief.

“Of course,” says Rayne, beginning to smile. “I never thought I’d be sitting across the table from a shapeshifter. I mean, where do I even start? How does it work? Can you turn into anyone? How long can you maintain it?” He starts to ask another question, then bites it off with a wry laugh.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, shaking his head. “That’s probably a lot for you right now. I don’t need answers right away. Just…wow. A real shapeshifter, and you’re not a traveller, and you’re not trying to kill us. Wow.”

>You can ask me about shapeshifting later.

>What did you and Bronwyn talk about before I left to guard Ellis?

>Rayne, how are you?

[Leave]

“You can ask me about shapeshifting later,” you say, and Rayne laughs.

“Don’t promise me that, Sam,” he says, pointing a finger at you. “I will talk your ear off. I’m warning you now. This is an untapped font of knowledge, and you can’t expect me to restrain myself.”

He takes a sip of tea, then laughs again. “Honestly, I can’t quite wrap my head around it. I thought I remembered it, but it was dark, and the light was shifting, and I wasn’t fully lucid. I’d half convinced myself last night that I was wrong.” He frowns briefly before the smile returns to his face. “But I wasn’t, was I? Wait until Bron hears about this. That’ll teach her not to laugh at my theories.”

He darts a glance at you. “If you’re okay with telling her, I mean. We don’t have to.”

What will she think?

You can’t tell her.

You nervously drink another swallow of coffee before replying. “What will she think?” you ask, tapping your nails on the side of your coffee mug. Maybe Rayne can be forgiving after everything he’s just been through, but this is a big revelation to dump on anyone.

Rayne takes your question seriously, considering for a long moment before he says, “I think if we explain it to her, she’ll understand. We’ve never seen a shapeshifter, mind you, we didn’t know they were real. It’s just something that’s talked about in some of the old books, and, well, we thought it might be a part of the traveller mythos. If you’d revealed yourself as a shapeshifter in the middle of the investigation, that might have been one thing. But she and Lex know you and trust you now, Sam. I don’t think you could tell them anything that would change that.”

Relief washes over you. You sigh, feeling yourself relax as you do so, as if a weight has been removed from your shoulders. Is it possible for people to know about you and not hate you? Agent X always told you that letting anyone know you were a shapeshifter would be a death sentence, but suddenly, in the soft morning light of the kitchen with Rayne smiling at you and a cup of hot coffee in your hands, it doesn’t seem so bad.

We should wait.

Okay, if you think it’ll be alright.

“Okay,” you say. “If you think it’ll be alright.”

“It will,” says Rayne.

Slowly, as if it is a foreign gesture, he reaches out and sets a hand on yours in reassurance. You look up at him in surprise, and he smiles at you, gently. You would do anything in the world to keep him smiling like that.

>What did you and Bronwyn talk about before I left to guard Ellis?

>Rayne, how are you?

[Leave]

You can’t, however, express that thought out loud. And even if everyone is safe now, you still have unresolved questions about the case. You allow Rayne’s hand to remain on top of yours, but you raise your eyebrows at him.

“I have some questions of my own,” you say.

Rayne raises his eyebrows back. “Oh, has serious Detective Sam returned to the scene so soon?” he asks in a mocking voice. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware that another crime had been committed.”

You refuse to let him distract you. “What did you and Bronwyn talk about before I left to guard Ellis?” you ask, narrowing your eyes.

To your surprise, Rayne flushes a furious red. He withdraws his hand and scrubs it over his face as if trying to hide his eyes from you. “Oh, nothing,” he says in a strangled voice.

Rayne.

What was it?

“Rayne,” you say threateningly, and he raises his hands in a defensive gesture.

“All right, all right! She came to ask me some personal questions about what I thought about you. She said she’d been considering asking you to come with us after all this was said and done – if it turned out well, that is. I said sure, that would be fine with me.”

He glances to the side, crossing his arms. Although a surge of joy rises in your chest at the thought of going with them, you crush it down to follow up your line of questioning. You know he isn’t telling the full truth.

And?

“And?” you probe.

Rayne throws his hands up. “Christ, nothing gets past you, does it?” he asks, but he is smiling. “Apparently, Lex told Bron she’d seen me coming out of your room earlier. Bron wanted to ask me what that was all about and gave me a bit of a lecture, saying that it was my choice but ‘Really, Ray, is it the smartest thing to do right now? In our situation?’” He tips his head back and forth as he mimics her. “I don’t know where on earth Lex got the idea from, but it was the most mortifying fifteen minutes of my life. She didn’t believe a word I said in my defense, of course.” He huffs.

[Try Not To Laugh]

You clap a hand over your mouth in an attempt to restrain your laughter, but it escapes anyway, bouncing off of the walls of the kitchen. Rayne glares at you and takes an angry sip of his tea, but when he puts the mug down his eyes widen abruptly.

“Wait,” he says, and looks sharply at you.

Oh no, you think, and try to stop laughing.

“You,” says Rayne, pointing one finger. “It was you. You shapeshifted into me, didn’t you?”

No.

Maybe.

“No,” you choke, but you can’t manage to stop laughing, and Rayne slaps one palm on the table.

“You did!” he exclaims. “And you got me in trouble for it!”

[Explain]

[Say Nothing]

“Well, if it makes you feel any better,” you say, “I got in trouble for it too.” And then you tell the whole tale, from the moment you left your bedroom to when you slammed Bronwyn’s door behind you, having escaped into her bedroom. It feels incredibly freeing to tell a story where you shapeshift without having to lie, and Rayne is wheezing with laughter by the end, nearly doubled over in his seat.

“I can’t believe this,” he exclaims. “This is the real reason to tell Lex about you – so that I can redeem myself.” He brushes at his eyes as if wiping tears away and has to take several long swallows of tea before he is fully composed again.

You don’t forget what he just told you about going with them. Your heart leaps nearly out of your chest at the thought. But he hasn’t officially asked you yet, so you take deep breaths and try to remain calm.

>Rayne, how are you?

[Leave]

“Rayne, how are you?” you ask.

“I wonder if Chief Dupont is going to arrest anyone,” he muses. “I mean, he shouldn’t, but considering he doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing, it’s a possibility.”

Ah, you forgot. Rayne never answers questions about how he is.

No, I’m asking about you.

He might arrest someone, yeah.

“No, I’m asking about you,” you say, leaning forward. The space between you shrinks, and he looks up, paying attention.

“Oh,” he says. “Sorry.”

He takes a deep breath. “I’ll be fine eventually. Everything’s a bit rocky right now – it’s hard to have whole patches of your memory missing. And when the memories you do have are as disturbing as mine, well. It’ll take some time. But we’re getting there. I’m relieved that no one else has to die – not in August, anyway.”

You nod.

“How are you, Sam?” he asks.

I’m okay.

I’m not okay.

You consider the question for a moment. “I’m okay,” you decide finally.

Rayne smiles. “That’s good to hear,” he says.

You have been leaning closer to him without realizing it, and now your faces are very close together. Gently, you reach out a hand toward him, and he touches the side of your face in return.

“Is this okay?” he asks. “I know you were under a lot of stress last night, and I didn’t want anything to be – ”

[Kiss Him]

You kiss him.

“Well, that’s an answer, I suppose,” he says with a breathy laugh, and then you kiss him again. He is warm and tastes like green tea. His hair is soft against your fingertips.

Another moment to save forever, you think, and then you hear a yelp at the door.

You and Rayne rocket apart, nearly knocking over the mugs on the table, but it’s too late. Lexie is standing in the doorframe with a hand over her eyes.

“Tell me when you’re done!” she says loudly and clearly. “I don’t want to see any more of this than is necessary!”

“You’re okay, Lex,” says Rayne in a voice dripping with embarrassment, and Lexie opens her eyes and pouts at the two of you.

“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” she says, “Necking in a public place like this. I was just trying to get a cuppa and look what you’ve done to me now.” She can’t hold back her smile for long, though, and it breaks through like a beam of sunlight.

“Oh, I’m kidding,” she says, clapping her hands. “I’m so happy for you two!”

She walks past you, heading for the cupboard. “Did you ask him yet, Rayne?” she tosses over her shoulder.

“Not really,” says Rayne, and Lexie whirls on him, dealing a light punch to his shoulder, which he winces at.

“Rayne!” she exclaims. “Don’t be rude! Can’t you wait to start snogging until the important questions are out of the way?”

“Lex, Lex, I’m sore,” he protests, but she punches him again before going to pour herself some coffee. She passes you again on her way out and makes a face at Rayne over your head.

“Bron said it was totally fine if you asked, by the way,” she says. “So, get it over with already! I can’t stand the suspense.” Then, without waiting for a response, she turns on her heel and walks out.

You and Rayne blink at each other in the wake of Hurricane Lexie.

Finally, Rayne breaks the pause, reaching up to scratch sheepishly at his head.

“She’s right, I’m sorry,” he says. “I got distracted.”

He takes a deep breath. “It’s what I was talking about before. It’s great that we stopped this rite and all, but there’s tens if not hundreds going on all the time, so we’ve got to keep moving. Bron and Lex and I were wondering if you’d want to come with us. We could really use your help, and…well, I’d like having you around, too.” He is unable to hold your gaze as he says it, and looks away, clearly embarrassed.

Of course.

Are you sure?

“Of course,” you say, almost as soon Rayne is finished speaking, and the hope that flashes in his eyes is a reward in itself.

“Really?” he asks, and you nod.

“That’s great, Sam. That’s fantastic.” He grins at you.

You can see the future again, but this time it’s not a splintered mess of timelines, overflowing with scenes of blood and darkness. Instead it is a single path, paved by sunlight, stretching out to the horizon. There will be difficult times ahead, you’re sure. But for the first time you can remember, you have friends. You have people you care about, and who care about you as well. And…you have Rayne.

You smile at him, and he smiles back, the sunlight catching in his blue eyes, making them into brimming pools. There is no glass pond here, you realize. No dangerous, hidden depths of knowledge. Just a promise, and a hope.

That’s the best you can ask for, you think, and you take his hand and go to tell the other tarot readers your decision.