A dizzying set of switchback turns brought them to a dead-end corridor. It terminated in a rounded wall. From this wall protruded a curved crimson door that opened by itself upon an equally curved room. Ebony panels covered the coffered dome ceiling and the rounded walls, the latter of which had shelves built into them. A blood-red rug hid most of the white marble floor. A small sitting area stood before a sleek black desk shaped like a half moon. The streamlined furniture would have been fashionable a decade or so ago, but looked terribly dated nowadays. Yet it suited Gerver, for he was a man ambered in time.

Flesh prickled at the back of Elise's neck. Ambered in time? True, he could be called that; from his very clothes to the style of this room, he seemed of another decade, but what a strange thought to have. An off-putting man like him did not inspire poetic comparisons. It must have been a stray observation that her previous self had made, one strong enough to slip through to the here and now.

"Please make yourselves comfortable," Gerver said, as they had entered his office.

Marek deposited Elise by the fan-shaped coffee table, then settled into one of the armchairs close by. She inspected the chairs with disbelief; the red and white stripes seemed too pleasant for the professor to have chosen them.

Gerver took his place in the black leather chair of his desk, then swiveled around. The lamp shining behind him obscured his face only a little in shadow, not enough for him to be viewed head-on. He tapped the chrome of an armrest with a forefinger, while looking at something located behind his guests — the spotless white mantel of the fireplace, perhaps. "Recount the incident, Miss Ellsworth," he said, and stopped tapping. "Just your side of things, not whatever Mr. Marek may have mentioned to you."

Where could Elise even start? She hadn't even realized she was in the middle of an "incident" until it was almost over. The truth, she would start with that. That was all she had to give him, anyway.

"I remembered something," she said.

Yes, that was how it had started, with a memory of life at the Ellsworth house. She went on, speaking of that long ago evening when she'd been reprimanded by her father for mispronouncing a word. Gerver didn't interrupt or motion for her to hurry along, but the set of his shoulders seemed to have grown rigid. Hearing some old, stupid memory of hers must have been driving him towards impatience. Best to rush through that part of her tale. "Then that man — my father — told me if I knew better, I should do better, and I woke up."

Dull pain shot through her hands. Sometime during her story, she had started clutching the armrests of her wheelchair. She loosened her grip. "There were lights," she continued. "Those fireflies, from before. I tried to touch them, but I couldn't move an inch. And then I saw Marek." Her throat tightened. Talking about what happened made her feel heavy again, as if she were back in that moment. "He talked to me, and I couldn't hear a word of what he said, not until he ..."

Kissed her.

"Until he shocked me out of it," she finished.

Again, Gerver tapped at his chair. He did this for a long time. When he ceased this irritating tic, he said, "Your side, now, Mr. Marek."

The younger man nodded. "We'd just gotten to our Hall, and I was telling Ellsworth how to open the door." He adjusted his glasses; lamplight caught on the rounded lenses. "She turned stiff and started shaking. Her head went back, then her eyes ..." Marek swallowed, making his Adam's apple hop. "Her eyes went back, too, showing the whites. And I —" His impassive expression wavered. He cleared his throat several times, shifting forward in his seat. "I'm ashamed to say that I panicked first, and thought second. But when I calmed down, when I thought, I recognized her symptoms straightaway."

Gerver leaned back, turning his chair fractionally from one side to the other like a top ceasing its revolution on a table. "Is this the first time you've experienced such an attack, Ellsworth?"

"I-I think it is," she said. "But nothing like this happened the last time. If it had, my friends would've told me."

No, there'd been another time, hadn't there? When she had first awoken, a memory of drinking her silvery medicine had come to her. An icy hand plunged inside her chest at the thought of telling Gerver the whole truth. The hand squeezed around her heart, sending tendrils of frigid fear deep into the rest of her. There had to be a cause for that fear somewhere in her past, a reason to keep silent. She reached for her necklace, tracing a fingertip along the chain that lay above the throat of her blouse, and said nothing.

If she couldn't trust others, she had to trust herself. That included her intuition.

He rose, thrusting his hands into his pockets. As expected, he came up with his cigarette case. He started pacing after he got a cigarette out and lit, wasting no time in filling the round room with noxious smoke. "An intact mind," he murmured, "yet fragmented memories." He exhaled, and foggy coils of smoke drifted past the light. "Emotional reactions that don't ring true of an amnesiac. A breathing fit that drew the attention of the fireflies. The need to be shocked into full consciousness ..." The beam of the lamp on his desk cut out each time he swept past it, like a boat surging before a lighthouse. "All of those symptoms fit that particular power." He stopped, then turned on his heel to face Elise. "But the power itself doesn't fit. No one in Valens Valley can manipulate memories in a way that leaves such marks."

"No one in Valens Valley lately," Marek said.

The look Gerver gave him would have made Elise sink straight down through the floor if it had been directed at her. "Had Percival Platt been responsible for this, everyone would've known it."

Although Elise would have sooner jumped off the nearest bridge than let that Platt fellow tinker with her mind, having someone to blame would have offered a small sliver of hope. A known obstacle invited possible solutions. "Then who's done this to me?" she said.

Gerver leaned back against his desk, then flicked a long cinder into the ashtray behind him without looking. "That is the question, isn't it?" He propped the elbow of his dominant arm into his right palm; as he spoke, he drew off the cigarette cradled between his fingers. It seemed too practiced, too casual, that pose of his. A facade of calm control. The slight tremble in his fingers gave it away; had he not been steadying himself, he might have dropped his cigarette to the floor. If half of what Marek had said about Platt were true, it was difficult to blame Gerver for his reaction.

"The likeliest answer is that someone in the Valley has learned to manipulate memories lately," Gerver said. "Whoever has tampered with your mind is hiding a secondary power."

"Or he's just ascended to Extra status," Marek said.

After a pause, Gerver conceded this with a nod. "Yes, that is another theory."

That explanation immediately lost her. "None of that seems very 'likely' to me, I'm afraid."

"Ah, yes," Gerver said, "how remiss of me to forget your forgetfulness. Allow me to explain." He tapped off his ashes again. "New Extraordinaries often have little control over their powers, which makes covering their tracks difficult." He paused, perhaps waiting for another interruption. None came, so he moved on. "That no one else in town has shown symptoms similar to yours suggests that our unknown friend has a degree of restraint more common to experienced freaks of nature."

Marek frowned. "Yeah, a stacker would make more sense than a greenhorn." To Elise, he added, "That means someone who has stacked powers, one on top of another."

Powers were frightening on their own. Now she had to contend with the constant possibility that people could be hiding more of them? Never let anyone say that life was fair. "Are 'stackers' very common?" she said.

"You're looking at one of 'em." He smiled at the little jump she gave, then spoke to Gerver. "How many did you have at last count, teach?"

The professor drew on his cigarette. "Too many," he said, from behind a length of ash. "But perhaps that is my price for surviving what had killed worthier people." He did not fail to see Elise's round-eyed stare. "Your silence dismays me in the extreme, my dear. You used to be led around by your curiosity like a dog on a leash, and yet there you sit without barking any questions."

Elise kept staring at him, but the reason for her shock had changed. Bastard. This complete bastard. Whatever he had survived couldn't excuse his cruelty. She never knew quite where she stood with Marek, yet she knew exactly where she stood with Gerver — a million miles below him, eternally looked down upon. And it wasn't right. He couldn't talk to her that way.

"Sir, you shou —" Marek began.

She cut the boy off. "Do you hate all of your students, or am I a special case?" she said to the professor.

Gerver turned to face his desk. "I'm a great believer in equality," he said, grinding his cigarette into the ashtray. "Everything in existence deserves my contempt."

"I hope that includes you."

Weariness traced his voice. "Rest assured that it does." If that was supposed to make her feel sorry for him, it didn't work. He bowed over his desk, shoulders hunched and head down. When he spoke again, he sounded as dead as he looked. "Keep watch over the girl, Marek. Report any further instabilities to me."

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The last word couldn't belong to this bitter grotesque. She said, "The girl wants to know if she can report her instabilities to the clinic instead."

"There's no reason to do that, for nothing can be done."

She bit her tongue. Not to hold back a reply, but because she didn't have one. What could she say to a tyrant that would make him listen?

"He's right," Marek said, rushing to stand. "The best cure would be finding whoever did this to you and making them undo this whole mess, but we don't have the first clue." He stepped in front of her, blocking Gerver from sight. That couldn't have been by chance. "Waiting is all we have. The power's hold on you will slip away. It already is slipping. That's why you've been remembering things."

People seemed to enjoy interrupting her, ignoring her objections, and letting her questions go unanswered. Her injuries hadn't made her an invalid. "Do you really expect me to wait?" she said, frustration spilled into her words. "Wait for another attack, another fit?"

"They're not dangerous."

"I couldn't breathe!"

His fingers twitched, the only sign of humanity that he gave. The emotion behind it could have been annoyance or worry or any number of things. Or maybe he only wanted to test that his hands still worked. "You would've," he said. "You would have, because that's how it happens. They always start breathing again. Always."

They? Victims, he meant. He thought of her as a victim, some poor creature that could only listen to whatever people told her to. An acidic laugh escaped her. "If that is how it happens, how it always happens, why bother bringing me out of it? I would've been fine without your help, wouldn't I?"

He adjusted his glasses, which were perfectly straight, and didn't look at her. Coward. Both these men were cowards who twisted from her gaze and her questions. "You were afraid," he said, "and you being afraid, I couldn't watch that."

Why? she almost asked. Knew better than to ask, because the icy hand of fear gripped her heart again, warning her off. His true intentions, what could could they be? Why was he so worried for her? What had he gained by bringing her to speak with Gerver? The answer lurked at the forefront of her mind like an itch she couldn't scratch, but if she stretched just a little ...

"Do I know you?" she said.

"No." He gave a thin smile. How could a smile look so unhappy? "No, I can't say that you do, Ellsworth." He paused, which seemed unlike him. "We know of each other, but we don't know each other. I told you something like that before in the clinic."

Yes, he had told her that before, an answer that hadn't been a real answer. It's hard for us to escape each other in a town like Valens Valley. Hard for anyone. Lies. God, she hadn't see it then, how he had lied. She saw it now. A stranger wouldn't have just happened to check on her in the clinic in the middle of the night. A stranger wouldn't have insisted on helping her over and over. A stranger wouldn't have smiled the sad way that he had just smiled.

"You told me a lot of things," she said. "Maybe I've forgotten some."

No one could have missed an insinuation that obvious, and Marek certainly didn't. He gave a frown so slight that it could have been the work of her imagination. But, as always, he smoothed out his ruffled feathers mighty quick. "If we were friends, I wouldn't have let you forget me," he said, but his eyes didn't meet hers.

Another lie, one that proved she knew him and he knew her. But how?

"If you've quite finished your row," Gerver said, in a low words that might have been forced through his teeth, "I'd like you both to leave."

Elise jumped at this; she had forgotten the professor's existence for a few blissful moments. She scowled at his back, then at the rest of him as she wheeled for the exit.

* * *

Marek took over her chair partway through their journey, for her anger, and the burst of speed it had given her, had dropped away once they left Gerver's office behind. He opened the way to Hall Seven by leaning over her and tapping the silver door.

The room behind it looked like a lot of other places in Rambling, with wall hangings over wainscoting. The similarities ended there. Cuir de Cordoue poppies covered the walls and ceiling, their gilding offset by claret-colored backing. The rich chocolate wood paneling the bottoms of walls in the Refectory and so many of the corridors was over-glazed here by fanciful columns of gold. Larger poppies constructed of golden wire canopied the ceiling in decorative mock panels; gaslights hung like pearl pendants from where those thick wires met. Delicate recessed shelves lined the walls, their wood traced by gilding. A massive painting of a woman in flowing silver and white robes hung over the low fireplace of polished malachite, both bordered by yet more gold. The black-veined white marble floor peeped like a picture frame from beneath a sizable rug that seemed inspired by mantelpiece in both pattern and color.

In the center of all this richness rested hardwood furniture, inlaid and sinuous, separated into different sitting areas by folding screens.

More revealed itself as Marek pushed her along. At the farthest end of the room, an open doorway led into a small library occupied by many tall shelves, along with tables and chairs suitable for the studious-minded and readers.

People from fifty or sixty years ago must have found this place utterly luxurious, if it had existed then. Its beauty assaulted the senses so thoroughly that Elise could only stare as Marek brought her deeper into the Hall. Barring some of the fellow Hall Seven students who spoiled the grand sight, she recognized nothing of what she saw.

"It sure is something, isn't it?" he said.

She tugged at her sleeves, fidgeting with sudden unease. He had noticed her gawking, and the weight of his attention gave her a frightful, yet wonderful thrill. "Yes," she said, "it certainly is something."

Something she didn't remember, but what else was new? What she could recall about herself amounted to a handful of minutes. Everything else about her life had been told to her by others like secondhand fairy tales. The previous Elise Ellsworth might as well have been a heroine from a storybook, all broad sketches and faint outlines: she had dark hair and a red mouth and a sweet soul.

That girl must have been an accomplished liar if people imagined such nonsense to be true. Not all of her recovered memories had been pleasant. Who had she really been? What had she really known? Who had she known? Willow and the rest of the Herald staff had told her very little, all things considered. Everyone else had told her even less. But there had to be one person who would tell the truth, if only accidentally. A young man who kept insisting on helping her, for instance.

"Your first name is Tarian, isn't it?" she said. It wasn't the most profound way to start a conversation.

"Regrettably," he said, as he brought her to rest by a round table. It was surrounded by a trio of empty armchairs. He lowered himself into the tallest of the lot. "My middle name's worse."

She glanced from their table to those of the other students. The distance between them was considerable. If anyone wanted to listen in, they would be spotted before they reached the cozy corner where she sat with Marek. Without any further excuses left to distract her, she lined up her first shot and fired. "Why do you pretend?"

A stoic mask fanned over his cheerful one like a ripple waving through a pond. "I don't know what you mean," he said, his pronunciation shifting into the clear, careful precision that made him sound high class. Another act. How many of them did he have in his repertoire?

"You're not like you'd been before." The second shot hit its target the same as the first had. The tightening edges of his mask said as much. Good, she might finally get some answers out of him. He seemed prone to confession when his emotions came to the surface. "The night that you found me, the night that I'd awoken, you acted like a human being."

He crossed his legs in a careless fashion, yet the rest of him tensed. "There's something I haven't been accused of before."

"You've been like that just now, making jokes and being kind." Here came the third shot, and the trickiest. "Why aren't you always like that to me?"

His posture relaxed. Amusement suffused his face; the cheerful mask had returned. Her guaranteed bull's-eye had sailed past him somehow. "Don't try to needle me, Ellsworth," he said. "You'll always be outclassed."

"You're avoiding my question."

"There's nothing to avoid — or there shouldn't be. Didn't your friends tell you that I've got two faces?"

No one at the Herald had said much about him, as far as she could remember. Willow had mentioned him being weird beneath his smiles and politeness, then remarked that he hadn't cared for anyone, male or female. At the time, it had seemed a comment on his love life, or lack thereof. Those words had a new cast to them after what he had just told her.

She started to ask another unwise question, then stopped when her gaze snagged on a new sight. There, the muscles tensing in his cheek. That meant something. But what, exactly? Anger, certainly. Had she brought that out? No, he wasn't looking at her. He was looking at —

A witch-like cackle pierced the quiet atmosphere, and he gave a minute twitch. She traced the high-pitched sound straight to its source: in front of the empty fireplace where Abriana Adesso sat. That crane-like girl noticed the attention coming her way, then said something to the flunkies seated around her. They laughed and flashed smirks at Elise.

Marek's jaw tightened so much that he must have been grinding his teeth together.

That was it, that was her answer for why he acted so different one moment and the next. Adesso, that Romilly fellow, and the rest of the hateful people in this Hall had pounced on Elise at the breakfast table for having the audacity to be alive. They hadn't treated Marek much better when he had spoken up to tell Adesso she was wrong. He hadn't been surprised by it, either, so insults from those quarters must have been a common event. What had Adesso told him?

Please, you're only saying that to defend yourself.

Right. But why had Adesso said that? Elise frowned, trying to remember. Oh, yes, Adesso had been saying that people who felt sorry for Addies were trash, and insinuated that Elise had such sympathies. But Marek, he didn't seem the sympathetic sort. He had to have been defending himself for another reason, and there was only one. His eyes, the unusual color of his eyes. He was an Addy. Charlotte had been one, and so was Ian. And they were reviled because of it.

The way Marek acted, it was only self-defense. "Those two faces," she said, "maybe you need them in a place like this."

His mask fell away entirely, revealing surprise. He pushed his disguise back into place. "Maybe," he said.

Elise slumped against her chair in relief. One small mystery had been solved, that of his double-edged personality. How they knew one another would have to wait. Not for the first time today, her body seemed to have been filled with lead. She covered a yawn with the back of a hand. Her eyes burned with every blink she took. If she stayed awake any longer, she might fall asleep right where her wheelchair had been parked. "How do I get to the Persephone dorm?"

"With that." He nodded to a golden-gated elevator by open archway; the second led into a stairwell. "Take it to the top, then find Room Twenty-Seven. That's yours."

What sort of stranger knew her room number? One who lied about being a stranger, that who. But now was not the time to argue about that topic again. "Thank you." She started to roll away from their table. Paused. "Marek?"

His gaze alone questioned her. Light spilled from the library highlighted the slight, almost unnoticeable cleft of his chin. It looked like the perfect place to rest her thumb while tilting his face down to hers — down, for even when they were both seated he had the advantage of height. Then she could lean in and ...

And not think about crazy things like this. Charlotte, she couldn't forget Charlotte, the girl that she loved.

But maybe she couldn't forget Marek, either. Her body might remember what her brain couldn't, might be reminding of the truth her through quickening pulse and fluttering breath. The possibility stoked a dangerous interest that had been smoldering inside her since ... Well, she couldn't be sure when it had really started, but she couldn't feed that interest. Trust wasn't something she could afford. Not now.

"Goodnight," she said.

His smile, soft and real, broke her heart just a little. "Goodnight, Ellsworth."

That name sounded pleasant for once. Mood lightened a sliver, she left him behind. If he saw her looking back more times than she should have, he hid his notice quite well.