I surfaced slowly. I was lying on a hard surface. Something was buzzing. Someone was bending over me. Focusing was a struggle. Annoying. I turned my face away. The floor was pleasantly cool and solid. My arms and legs felt heavy, immobile. There was a touch. Someone was touching me. I didn’t want to be touched anymore. No more invasion, no more pain. I pushed away, whimpering. I felt myself held and began to struggle.

Suddenly, my head cleared. A strange man was bending over me, touching my face. He was the single most arresting person I’d ever seen. He had a languid, almost bored expression, but I also got the sense of tremendous energy running beneath the surface.

He was astonishingly beautiful — to the point of unreality. He was more like a work of art. Every lock of glossy black hair hung just so around his face. His mouth looked sculpted with light in mind, so that shadows would offset its shape. His nose was bold, faintly aquiline.

I looked into his eyes. Each brown iris contained a tawny starburst pattern, which shifted as his pupils contracted. His complexion was olive and completely even, like he’d not only never aged, but never had a pimple, never scratched a bug bite, never gotten razor burn.

He was no more human than the green man.

This must be Cordus.

I stared up at him, awestruck.

He held my gaze for several long seconds, then looked away, releasing me.

“Have you stolen her capacity?” he asked.

That was definitely the super-sexy voice I’d heard on the phone. His tone reminded me of the one Graham had used when he confronted Williams and Kara in my living room — barely interested, yet menacing. So this was what Graham had been imitating. Palely.

“No, My Lord,” Kara said from behind me. “She consented, but she didn’t know how to share. It was hurting her, so I sedated her. She consented to that, too.”

You couldn’t mistake the fear in her voice.

There was one of those long pauses I remembered from talking to him on the phone. Then he looked back down at me.

“Is this true?”

I nodded.

I couldn’t have spoken for the world. He terrified me in a way Williams didn’t. With Williams, I was frightened of getting hurt, getting killed. Those were terrible things, but at least I could conceive of them. Cordus made me aware that I could suffer the unimaginable.

“Very well,” he said.

Kara let out a shaky breath.

He straightened and moved away from me. I stood up and did a quick survey. I was in the grand entryway of what seemed to be a large, opulent house. Everything was white marble shot with pale gray. The central space was at least sixty feet across. Matching staircases swept up either side. A massive silver chandelier sparkled above us, its tiny lights irregularly spaced. It was a beautiful room, but cold and impersonal.

Kara and Zion were standing behind me. Williams and Graham were standing behind them. Neither man looked happy to be there, but the similarity stopped there. Graham was trembling and looking down, clearly terrified. Williams, in contrast, was tracking Cordus like a wolf watching its prey for weakness.

Boy, talk about getting things mixed up — like a wolf stalking a T. rex.

The deer, still wearing the green man, was standing behind everyone, as though it had bolted for the door. It was clearly immobilized.

Cordus walked over to it. “A green man, hunting one of my people, within my territory. How singular. Your ambassador will have much to explain.”

He gripped the loose skin at the deer’s throat and tore the green man off of it. The deer collapsed and lay still. For a few seconds, the green man hung there like a flayed deerskin. Then it shivered into its familiar shape. Cordus had it by the neck. It dangled from his fist, for a moment, then began squirming and snapping and hissing.

Its talons caught Cordus in the side.

He flinched, then smiled and said, “That was ill-advised, young one.”

The green man brought its right hand up and flexed its clawed fingers. They were tipped with Cordus’s blood.

Then the creature reached across its body and, screeching, dug a chunk of flesh out of its own left arm. It dropped the tissue on the floor with a wet plop and dug out another piece.

I watched, horrified.

“Why is Lord Limu hunting this individual?” Cordus asked, drawing the green man’s face close.

It continued mutilating its own arm, writhing and screaming as it did so. With a terrible shock, I realized Cordus was forcing the creature to injure itself. I swallowed convulsively, struggling not to throw up on that nice marble floor.

Cordus gazed into the green man’s crazed eyes for several long minutes as it tore away chunk after chunk of its arm, until only bones and ligaments remained. He seemed wholly unbothered by its agony.

Then it started in on its belly. Cordus set it down on the floor, and we all stood there, watching it kill itself. It ripped away almost its entire abdomen before it finally died, its hoarse screams fading into whimpers, then gurgling breaths, then silence.

The stench of blood and feces was overpowering. I couldn’t believe what I’d just witnessed.

Cordus said, “Mr. Williams.”

Williams’s fingers twitched, and the green man’s remains drew together into a ball. He bent and picked the mass up by whatever invisible netting was holding it together, and headed outside with it.

Cordus turned to us. If he’d found something out from the creature, he didn’t share it.

“You may refresh yourselves and rest in your quarters. I shall speak with you in the morning.”

Just as I was about to breathe a sigh of relief, he turned to me.

“Miss Ryder, you will attend me now.”

I stood watching Cordus examine the deer. He’d had it carried to what looked like a guest bedroom and laid on the bed. He’d spent some minutes passing his hands over its body without actually touching it.

I found myself mesmerized by his fingers, which were long and graceful, like a pianist’s. I was terrified of him but couldn’t stop looking. My eyes strayed to his side, where his shirt was ripped and a little bloody. I wanted to touch him.

“She is alive, but weakened,” he said, jolting me back to attention. “I assume her trip here was neither easy nor pleasant.”

He turned to me.

“Miss Ryder, do you believe this animal to be your sister-in-law, Justine Jenson Ryder?”

God, I was going to have to talk to him.

“Um, I don’t know.” I searched for something else to say. “Zion was sure it was her.”

“I sense only an animal. Odocoileus virginianus, to be exact.” He tilted his head to one side and studied me. “Why was Zion so certain?”

Haltingly, I told him about taking Zion to Ben’s house, and about her inability to sense anything other than a human woman there until I passed on the advice from Ghosteater.

Cordus observed me again in silence. Finally he said, “‘Unfinished’ and ‘fragment’? The beast used those words, specifically?”

“I think so. That’s what I remember, anyway.”

“Fascinating,” he murmured, turning back to the deer.

He passed his hands over it once more without touching it and then reached down and cupped its nose in his palm.

The reaction was sudden and violent. The deer’s eyes shot open and it took a great, shuddering breath. Then it exploded into hundreds of small blue spheres that looked soft, almost fluid, like globules of paint. A few more spheres popped into existence, then all of them regrouped and became Justine. She lay naked on the bed, moaning groggily. The entire transformation took maybe three seconds and made no sound whatsoever.

Slowly, I got up off the floor. I didn’t feel too bad about my reaction. Even Cordus had taken a quick step back when the deer exploded. He stood there, looking down and rubbing his chin. No more bored look — I could see his eyes tracking back and forth. He was thinking furiously.

After a few seconds, he went to Justine and touched her arm. She relaxed into unconsciousness. Then he turned to me.

“Elizabeth Joy Ryder, I charge you to reveal nothing of what you have seen here. You will not speak or sing of it or depict it in a work of art. You will not encourage another to guess at it. You will not allude to it indirectly through the use of analogy or any other figure of speech. You will take no action that you suspect might violate this charge, even if I have not specifically forbade that action herein.”

All that seemed to call for a formal response, so I said, “I understand.”

He stared at me. “You must not only understand the charge, Miss Ryder, but agree to abide by it.”

“Right. Yes, I agree,” I said, flustered.

He looked around. “I shall have a second bed brought to this room. I am certain Mrs. Ryder will be confused and frightened when she wakes. Perhaps it will help if she is greeted by a familiar face.”

“Okay,” I said, “but she doesn’t like me. I don’t know how helpful it’ll be to have me here.”

I flushed and looked down, annoyed with myself. Why had I told him that? I didn’t want him to know any more about me than he already did.

“Why does she dislike you?”

I shrugged. “Jealous of the time her husband spends with me? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

He did the head-tilt thing again. “Perhaps she recognized you for what you are and feared you would reveal her.”

That hadn’t occurred to me. Huh.

“I shall leave you for the night. Members of my household will see to your needs. Until tomorrow.”

He inclined his head, then turned and walked out.

I let out a long breath. That hadn’t been nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

Then again, the green man probably would have disagreed.

Cordus wasn’t entirely right about Justine. She was confused when she woke up, all right, but “angry” would have been more accurate than “frightened.” She basically just sat up in bed and started screaming at me — since I was right there, clearly the whole thing was my fault. The central points of her tirade were that I was going to jail for kidnapping and that she was going to sue me.

I wasn’t surprised. I also wasn’t upset — with what I’d seen in the last week and a half, Justine in full threat display just wasn’t disturbing anymore.

“So,” I said, when I could finally get a word in, “you don’t remember turning into a deer and running off into the woods, abandoning your husband and children?”

She stared at me, seemingly speechless.

“You’re crazy. Oh my god. You’ve gone crazy.”

She bunched a bed sheet around herself and backed toward the door, feeling around behind herself for the knob. The door swung open, and she darted down the hall, yelling for help.

Too bad I couldn’t scare everyone else off that effectively. It’d be nice to be feared instead of fearful, for a change.

I didn’t bother going after her. I had a feeling people didn’t leave Cordus’s home without permission. For the moment, Justine wasn’t my problem. Thank god.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed but jerked my feet up when they touched cold marble. I looked around the room, which I’d been too tired to take in the night before. It was large — big enough to hold two queen-sized beds, a large sitting area, a standing mirror, a desk, and several bookcases without feeling cramped. Daylight streamed through three tall, sheer-draped windows, giving the pale carpets and bedding a soft glow and making the quartz veins in the floor glitter. The dark woods of the furniture stood out richly against the pale fabrics.

In addition to the exit, the room had two doors. Padding over to one, I found a spacious walk-in closet. The other revealed a bathroom with two sinks and a tub separate from the shower. It also had something I guessed was a bidet. The floors, counters, and walls were marble.

I stood in the entrance to the bathroom, looking around and feeling uncomfortable. The place was luxurious, yes, but it felt impersonal, like a hotel. I noticed a thermostat on the wall and went over to kick it up a few degrees, but it was already set above room temperature.

A hot bath or shower would do the trick. And since Justine was busy running around shrieking, I got first use of the bathroom. I guess there are some benefits to having people think you’re nuts.

I locked myself in, then drew a bath and eased in. The water was hot and the shape of the tub was perfect. Slowly, I warmed up. I can’t say I totally relaxed, but it did feel nice.

My mind bounced around and settled on Graham. He’d been so scared the night before, standing in Cordus’s foyer. I remembered the look on his face. He didn’t think Cordus was going to give him a true second chance. You could see it.

But he’d really helped us on the way here. Without his weird luck, the green man would’ve caught Justine north of Stevens Point, maybe killing one or more of us, too. If it’d gotten her then, Williams never would’ve been able to keep a shield on her long enough to reach Cordus. Apparently I could give him enough power for an hour or two, but for twelve? Surely not.

And Graham had nearly let Williams drain him, too. Well, maybe he didn’t have a choice. Kara had said it was hard to limit what someone took, once you let them in.

I sighed and shifted in the tub. I felt bad about Graham. Yeah, he’d been up to something, but after what I’d seen Cordus do to the green man the night before, I wasn’t sure I blamed him. If you worked for a monster, betraying your boss was understandable — maybe even laudable.

But the way Graham went about the betrayal had endangered others. That was profoundly selfish. I shouldn’t make him out to be some noble freedom-fighter.

Then again, he hadn’t intended to endanger anyone. He’d assumed no one would find out about the strait.

But what about lying to me and trying to seduce me? If he’d been on the up-and-up with me, the thing with the strait might seem more like a one-time lapse, less like a larger pattern of deceitfulness.

Damn.

The bath had relaxed me too much — it had let some stuff come up that I really would rather not have thought about. After all, what could I do?

There was a fluffy white robe hanging on the door. I got out and put it on. The fresh scent was comforting. I wondered if Graham had a fresh, fluffy robe in his room.

Jesus, my brain needs an “Escape” button.

When I came out, Justine was sitting on her bed, looking scared. A tall, muscular white woman was guarding the door. She looked to be in her late thirties, and I could see she’d lived through some serious injuries. One particularly nasty scar ran from her jaw up into her hairline, pulling her left eye a little askew. She was almost as tough-looking as Williams. Maybe she did the same kind of work. No wonder Justine looked scared.

When she spoke, though, she sounded calm and rational — not exactly friendly, but certainly not psychotic.

“I’m Gwen. You’re Elizabeth?”

“Yeah. Hi.”

She nodded civilly. “The staff brought both of you some breakfast and some clothes that should fit. Lord Cordus will visit you soon, so you’d both better eat and get dressed.”

She gestured at the untouched breakfast tray on Justine’s lap. A similar one was waiting on my bed.

“Cordus?” Justine said in a strange tone.

Gwen and I both turned to look at her. She’d visibly relaxed, and the expression on her face was sort of vacant.

“You know Lord Cordus?” I asked.

She frowned. “I don’t know.” Her eyes roved around, as though searching for some lost thing. “No,” she decided, “but he sounds trustworthy.”

She started tucking into her breakfast.

“Mmm, this is good.”

I looked back at Gwen. “Did you tell her anything about Lord Cordus?”

She shook her head, looking a little perplexed.

Well, whatever. Cordus could work it out.

As it turned out, he couldn’t. Justine seemed perfectly relaxed in his presence, even happy to see him, yet maintained that she’d never laid eyes on him. She claimed to have no memory of running away or of turning into a deer. The very idea clearly struck her as ludicrous. Such things were simply impossible, and even if they weren’t, she was a normal woman — they were impossible for her.

And yet, when Cordus mentioned returning to Dorf, she blanched and said she couldn’t.

But she couldn’t come up with a reason why not.

“I just can’t,” she said, shaking her head and trembling.

The three of us were perched in the suite’s sitting area. Cordus had shown up about half an hour after I came out of the bathroom. Gwen had opened the door for him, then left. He’d questioned Justine extensively, while politely declining to answer any of her questions or to let her call Ben.

“Would you feel safer,” Cordus said slowly, “if I were to tell you that the green man is dead?”

Justine again visibly relaxed but at the same time said, “Who’s the green man?” A second later she said, “I still can’t go home.”

Then she accused me again of having kidnapped her and flirtatiously asked Cordus to have me arrested.

He sighed, then reached over and casually brushed his fingers over the back of Justine’s hand. Instantly, she slumped over, asleep.

Okay, that’s unnerving.

He sat back, legs crossed, and gently bounced his foot, thinking.

Finally he said, “I do not know what to make of Mrs. Ryder. When she denies any knowledge of me or of what she calls the ‘supernatural,’ she is telling the truth, yet her own body gives signs of the very knowledge she denies.” He looked up at me. “What are your thoughts?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Miss Ryder,” he said with patience, “you are the only other person who witnessed Mrs. Ryder’s transformation early this morning. Thus, you are uniquely positioned to help.”

He leaned back again, waiting for my response.

I didn’t think the transformation had told me anything except that Justine really was a Second, but I tried to put on my thinking cap. It was either that or sit there staring at him, and if I did that any longer, I was going to have to start thinking about why I was staring.

“Well, it sort of seems like someone erased her memory but didn’t get everything. Is that possible?”

He steepled his fingers and watched me. Suddenly I felt like I was being tested.

“There are those who can manipulate memory,” he said, “but none I know would do so incomplete a job. Furthermore, her mind bears no sign of meddling.”

I thought again.

“Well, she seems to be made of those blue ball things. What if they got put back together in the wrong order, and it messed up her memory?”

“An intriguing possibility,” he said. He kept bouncing his foot, though. Apparently, I was expected to come up with a third idea.

“Maybe she’s hypnotized herself not to remember certain things.”

That sounded pretty lame, even to me, but Cordus looked thoughtful. He tapped his index fingers together in time with his bouncing foot for a while.

The way he used his body was striking. He seemed to cycle between rhythmic motions and intense, pointed stillness. The motion hypnotized me. Then I’d get pinned by the sudden, unexpected focusing of his attention.

Even as I had that thought, he uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, freezing me in place.

“None of your suggestions account for all the facets of the situation, Miss Ryder, but they are useful nonetheless.”

I shifted uneasily under his gaze. Talk about lukewarm praise.

“So,” I said, taking the bull by the horns, “what sort of being is she, exactly? I mean, the green man could spread itself all over someone like a second skin, but even it had flesh and blood inside when you … um …”

I stopped, unable to come up with a phrase that didn’t sound judgmental.

He looked at me for quite a while. I started to worry.

Finally he said, “Miss Ryder, you will need to learn that it is considered impolite to ask ‘what sort of being’ a Second might be. We are, each of us, what we are. Some of us are unique in our persons and abilities, while others, such as the green men, breed true and have produced a group of similar individuals.”

I must have looked chastened, because he dismissed my faux pas with a wave.

“I know that you do not yet understand such issues of etiquette. I sought to educate, not to criticize. To answer your question — which is, of course, quite relevant — Mrs. Ryder is likely among the unique. I have never encountered another like her. That said, I am not old, even among human-derived Seconds, so there may be much I have not yet encountered.”

I was surprised by his candor.

“Is it rude to ask someone’s age, too?”

“Yes. Extremely.”

An uncomfortable silence ensued.

After some time, he said, “Do you have cause to believe Mrs. Ryder is the biological mother of her children?”

“Definitely. I mean, my brother was in the room when she gave birth to them. Plus, I think her youngest might be one of us,” I said, remembering how Ghosteater had sought out Madisyn.

“By ‘one of us,’ do you mean the child is a Nolander?”

I nodded and tried to suppress a grimace. No-lander. Kara hadn’t made it up — they really did think of us as homeless floaters. The realization immediately shifted the dynamic between Cordus and me, reminding me that this was not a conversation between equals, or between teacher and student, or even between employer and employee. He was the master, and I had no rights.

“Nolanders account for slightly more than one in one hundred thousand human births,” he continued, “so for another to appear in your small town is statistically unlikely. That said, the potential can run in families, so perhaps your brother is the source of your niece’s ability.”

“I guess.”

I doubted it, though. I was pretty sure Ben couldn’t do anything out of the ordinary. If he could, he’d sure kept it quiet. But maybe the curse could skip a generation or only appeared in the family’s women. Who knows?

After another bout of quiet thought, Cordus stood and told me he expected me to make a court appearance that evening. At first my mind jumped to the idea of legal proceedings, but then I remembered Zion mentioning he had a court, like a monarch. It would be hard to imagine something less up my alley.

“That sounds great, but I don’t have anything to wear,” I said, hoping for an easy out.

“My staff will prepare you appropriately.”

I nodded, trying not to look grim.

“What about Justine?”

“She will be moved to another room and will remain there, under guard, until I understand why she prompted the green man’s incursion into my lands.”

What about Graham? I thought to myself, but I didn’t say it.

Cordus touched Justine to awaken her, then inclined his head politely to me and left.

Surprisingly, I only had to listen to Justine’s accusations and complaints for fifteen minutes before Cordus’s staffers showed up to move her out and get me ready. That didn’t strike me as a good sign — he’d said I’d be going to court in the “evening,” and it wasn’t quite 2:00 in the afternoon. How much preparation did I need?

The answer: a lot. Cordus’s staff was more like an army. At least five people had been working on me, and it had been hours. They wove around one another like needles, darting in and out, stitching together a new me.

Six hours later, I had been given another bath. My hair had been cut, styled, and pinned in a loose up-do. My brows had been plucked. My fingernails, toenails, and cuticles had been shaped and, oddly, oiled lightly rather than polished. Every inch of my skin had been gone over with tweezers, exfoliators, and moisturizers.

I had been made up meticulously. My pale skin was completely even. Every blemish had been eradicated, not with makeup but by an actual healer — I guess Kara wasn’t the only one with that gift. My lips were a muted pink, only a little different from their actual color. What at first seemed like an odd combination of smoky and light pink eye shadow made my gray eyes look arrestingly pale and strange, instead of boring.

The dress they put on me was like nothing I’d ever seen, much less worn. It was made mostly of muted black silk that hugged my upper torso, was belted loosely with a ribbon, then fell in a soft sheath to the floor. A high side slit showed a substantial amount of leg. The thin shoulder straps and the breast were a creamy silver color and were finely detailed with delicate crystal-and-pearl florets. The unadorned black body of the dress made the decorative top stand out beautifully. The top, in turn, made me stand out quite nicely, pressing up my modest breasts and making the most of them with a tastefully small V-shaped central slit. It didn’t so much show cleavage as suggest it.

The dress was matched with a pair of open-back black satin pumps with a slender T-strap. Small leaves created from tiny white gems were scattered down the central strap and across the tops of the toes. The shoes put me within a couple inches of six feet, which was cool. So long as I didn’t fall down.

Despite the obvious expense of everything else, the sheer black thigh-highs were somehow the biggest shock. I’d never worn that kind of stocking before. They felt perverse — like they’d been invented for the sole purpose of letting you have sex without taking off a scrap of clothing.

The stockings exemplified how strange I felt as I stood in front of the mirror, ogling myself. If I’d seen yesterday, hanging on a wall somewhere, a framed picture of what I was seeing now, I truly wouldn’t have recognized myself.

It was disconcerting.

In the last few days, I’d found out that I was someone different on the inside than I thought I was — potentially powerful but flawed, not free, maybe not mentally ill but maybe not quite human. Now, who I thought I was on the outside had vanished as well. I mean, even if I came back t