Hardly any time passed before a new commotion started by the doors, one that was too quiet for Elise to hear much of. Even if she could have made out the words, she couldn't have listened — she was busy going over all the things she'd been told this night. Of course, even her cluttered thoughts couldn't tune things out forever.

"Food?" Marek said. "At this hour? Planning on having a picnic at midnight?"

"I've never been been fond of repeating myself," came the reply from the white-haired man. She couldn't see him, not with the privacy screen in the way, but his voice was unmistakable. "And it isn't as if you've never found yourself in the kitchens at an ungodly hour before. In this case, you'll have a good reason for it, not to mention permission."

A brief pause followed that. "All right, your wish is my command, professor."

Professor? Could that half-dead man really be a professor at this university? Wasn't he a security chief? Maybe it was just a nickname. But who could be crazy enough to give a nickname to someone like him? "None of your cheek, I'm in no mood for it."

"I guess not." Marek sounded as if he were holding back his amusement. "No one ever does when they've got a visit with our illustrious president looming large in their immediate future. Good luck with that, by the way."

It was all too easy to imagine the so-called professor giving Marek a look that could knock Medusa down dead. "Go."

If the lack of wisecracks meant anything, Marek had left at once. The professor might've left, too, because he'd stopped ordering people around. Elise occupied herself by trying to get back into bed. Just sitting on it wouldn't be nearly as comfortable as sleeping in it would be. She shucked the covers aside, then spent a long while afterward shifting her legs onto the mattress. It proved a decent way to pass the time, if boring. She had the covers looking somewhat presentable when a new arrival soon drew her attention — two sets of footsteps coming fast in her direction. Her nervous hands smoothed at the top blanket as she waited for these visitors to show themselves. Had the professor already returned with the president?

A woman in a dark, stiff-looking uniform and cap hooked around the end of the bed. In her tow drifted a girl clutching a huge book. The tears streaming down the girl's deep brown face said everything. This was one of the people that the white-haired professor had wanted to be brought to Elise. She knew that without asking.

The book thumped to the floor. Two warm arms circled Elise's neck. "Oh, Ellie," the girl cried, "we've been so worried about you. Everybody said you'd wake up, I knew you'd wake up, but it was bad this time, real bad. They were mopping up blood for hours ... and the place that you fell, it made things worse knowing you'd been there." She sniffled, then pulled back a little so she could wipe at her eyes. "Well, go on, say you're sorry for making my heart ache."

"I'm sorry?" Elise had no idea what else to say, she really didn't. If she'd been friends with this girl, she certainly didn't remember it. The Elise Ellsworth of yesteryear was no more, and in her place sat an interloper. "I really am sorry, for a lot of things, Miss ..." What names had the Andrews woman been given? "Um, are you Miss Travere or Miss Addens? The chief or professor or whoever he is asked for one of you to be brought, but I don't know who is who."

"What are you talking about?"

Elise took in a deep breath. "My memories, they've been damaged, I think, or lost," she said. "I had to be told my own name, so I don't kn —"

The girl's dark eyes widened. Her hand clapped over her mouth, covering a gasp. She stared and stared at Elise for the longest time.

"I'm sorry," Elise said. "I really am. I wish I knew who you are or where I am or what's happened to this head of mine." No one had to tell her that similar apologies lined her future. She'd probably be giving them for years. "No one's brought a doctor around either, so I can't tell you what's gone wrong."

Arms wrapped around Elise a second time. "Oh, Ellie, you stupid little fool!"

Andrews retreated a respectful distance away, standing sentinel in the shadows.

It was a very long embrace. The girl let go after an eternity. She wiped at her eyes again. "No wonder Professor Gerver wanted me to bring photos." Her shoulders bunched together, and she looked as if she might start sobbing. "I'm Willow Travere," she said. "We've been pals since high school. You, me, Stella — Stella Addens, that is — and ..." Her voice faltered. "And, well, I'll tell you about everyone else later, and yourself, too." She gave a smile that didn't reach the rest of her face. "But for now, you ought to know where you are."

She clasped Elise's hands in her own. The clinic disappeared so suddenly that Elise cried out in surprise.

Willow held her firmly. "Don't be afraid."

Regardless of that advice, fear and curiosity twined together in Elise as she marveled at the sight around them. Blue sky and clouds above, earth close below. The bed hadn't gone anywhere beneath them, thank goodness. "Are we flying? Is that your power?"

A smile both gentle and amused curled the edges of Willow's lips. "No, nothing like that," she said. "I can make people see things that aren't there — illusions, if you want to be fancy about it."

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That made sense; if they had been flying above the University, it the sky would have been dark, not bright blue. Elise certainly hadn't been clever enough to notice that. The clouds floated by and She reached out to touch one. Her fingers met only air. Pity, she'd always wanted to see what a cloud felt like, if one could be felt at all. "It looks so real."

"Thanks; I've been working on it. Sometimes I can get things to do more than just look real, though today's not one of those times."

The two girls sat over an estate perched on a sunlit greensward. Its many wings and stories were so immense that it could only be called one thing: rambling. They drew closer to it at a speed that made Elise's stomach drop, as if she'd just taken a sudden plunge in an elevator. The University had earned its name well — viewed from a slight angle, it had three stories. Three main wings branched off the large building to the left; each of those wings had two smaller spurs poking out from their middles that made them look like plus signs. The wing in the middle had a third smaller spur that poked from its farthest end. The whole thing resembled a E-shape, with some flourishes.

"That's our college, as you've probably guessed," Willow said. She pointed to the main section, which also happened to be the largest and the thickest. "The clinic where we're at is right there." Then her finger traced through the air to point at the seven tiny spurs. "Those are where students stay." She stopped on the middle wing, and circled the third spur at the farthest end. "That one pointing east is Hall Seven." The greensward and the building on it drew closer to the girls, as if the earth itself was rising up to meet them. "Your room's there, in the Persephone Dorm."

That name rang like a silver bell deep inside Elise. "Persephone?"

"Yeah, all the dorms have these nutty names. Gods for boys and goddesses for girls." Willow shrugged. "They don't really mean anything. They're just names to keep everyone from getting confused. The Dormitory Halls already have numbers, and boring old letters wouldn't be as memorable as Persephone or Dionysus or Apollo."

"Oh," Elise said, unable to think of anything more important to say. She kept her gaze on the University as it swam closer, letting her pick out more details. A clock tower stood at the very center of the ivy-covered main building, brooding over the entrance. Half-windows glinted below the first story, ones that might've belonged to a basement. She jolted when something patted her arm.

Willow said, "It's okay, you'll remember everything soon enough."

Don't make promises you can't keep, Elise wanted to tell her. That would've been too cruel, so she left it unsaid. The campus dissolved, returning them to the dark clinic. She almost asked Willow to bring it back simply so she could see the sun shining on the grass and the trees around Rambling.

"Here, there's more." Willow leaned down from where she sat on the bed, grabbing up the book she'd dropped. Only it wasn't a book, but a photograph album. "Pictures," she said, tapping one of the big pages. She turned it over to reveal a large book tucked inside. "And a yearbook. I got them from your room, but I couldn't find your album with the photos of everyone: you and me and the rest of our friends. Just this." Her fingers traced over the opposite page where several photographs of the same family were pasted — a light-haired man and woman posing with two girls, one dark of hair and one pale. They seemed to all have similarly fair skin tones, though it was difficult to tell in black and white. "There's you."

Elise reached up for her loose, dark hair, and curled a lock of it around a finger. She peered down at the solemn, little girl in the photographs. Such sad eyes. "That's me?"

"You, and your family." Willow pointed at the other girl. "That's Meliora. She's a year younger than you are. Your parents are Edwina and Charles."

The fairness of skin seemed to be the only thing that Elise and the other Ellsworths had in common. Out of the four of them, only Elise had attempted a smile. And as the photographs charted the time, that smile grew dimmer. It faded entirely by the time she'd reached what looked like nine or ten. She picked up the yearbook and set it aside so she could look at the other page of the album, tracing the way these strangers had changed. Was that really her face? "We don't look very much alike."

"You wouldn't. They took you in when you were six."

"They must be kind people, then, to take in an orphan."

A strange look passed over Willow's face, full of feelings that disappeared too quickly for Elise to identify them. "You really have forgotten everything, haven't you?" she said.

"Not everything. I can still walk and talk."

The poor attempt at a joke only made Willow's eyes glimmer with tears. She kissed the smaller girl on the cheek. "Don't worry, someone can fix you, I just know it. Your father, maybe."

"He can fix me?" For the first time since she'd woken, Elise had a glimmer of hope. "How can he do that? Does he have the power to fix people?"

"Power? You mean like ours?" Willow shook her head. "No, he's an Ord, the same as your mother." She paused. "That's a nickname for ordinary folks, ones who don't have any powers at all."

Elise's shoulders sank. There'd be no easy fix for her broken mind. She'd been stupid to expect one to come along. So much for being clever.

"But Dr. Ellsworth, he's a scientist," Willow went on. "Working with Exes like us, that's his job, so he'll have some idea of what to do. That has to be where Gerver went, to go tell your dad what's happened."

That'd been the second time she'd heard that name. "Gerver," Elise said, "is that the name of the white-haired man?"

"It sure is, every ugly syllable of it." Willow wrinkled her nose. "Halston Gerver, Combat Professor, Chief of Security, and all around pain in the neck." She offered Elise a consoling smile. "He's also the Overseer of your Hall, which is almost exactly what it sounds like — he oversees all the students in Hall Seven, getting reports and things from the other professors about any troublemakers."

"He's very ..." Awful, inhuman, monstrous. Everything that came to mind would've worked as an insult, some of them deserved. But she couldn't say those things. Unlikeable though he was, he was still a professor and she his student. Respect was due to his station, if nothing else. She rummaged up a word that seemed neutral. "... different."

"Yeah," Willow said. "You have my sincere condolences, darling." She had no fear in her voice, absolutely none, which offered a hint about Gerver, or, at least, the way that people perceived him.

But Elise needed to confirm that suspicion. "His condition," she said, "the way that he looks, is that normal?"

The question didn't seem to bother Willow. "It's not common, but you see it sometimes, mostly with Addies." She caught the way that Elise frowned after that new word was introduced, and followed up with an explanation. "An Addy is someone who got their powers added to them instead of being born with them."

"I see." It was a simple enough concept. "Does that make them any different from" — what had Marek called them? — "Extraordinaries?"

Willow's dark gaze slid away from Elise. "You've never thought so." She started to say something else, but an interruption came from the very man they'd been talking about.