And as quickly, the image disintegrated . . . and he was back in the dim bedroom, looking up at Talina. His stomach twisted and gurgled.

“Food?” he asked, still tasting peppermint and raw chamois despite the fact that any memory of eating the creature had to be illusion.

“Baked squash. I stuffed it with poblanos, apples, and purple sweet potatoes, put it in the oven last night, and miracle of miracles, it’s ready to eat this morning.”

“Beats the hell out of raw chamois,” he whispered to himself, throwing back the inflated blanket and swinging his legs out. The swelling in his left was down to the point that the wrapping Raya Turnienko had put on it hung loose. And the tingling pain was gone.

Standing, it felt normal. Taking a step, it was as if he’d never been injured.

“You all right to attend yourself in the toilet?” Talina asked.

“Yeah, I . . .” He fought his way through the haze that packed his skull like thick fog. “Two Falls Gap, right? I don’t remember anything after the couch in the front room. It was starting to rain. And now you tell me it’s morning?”

“The very same. Figures you don’t remember me getting you to bed. If I didn’t know what was going on in your brain, I’d have called you psychotic.”

“What was going on in my brain?”

Her level stare almost unnerved him. “Um, not that I’ve got a good psychiatric term for it, but I’d call it image chaos. If we’d had a scan of your neural function, I’m betting it would have shown every part of your brain was active. One minute you’d be crying, the next enraged, then paralyzed with terror, back to crying, then aggressive as hell, just to get maudlin, scream for a bit, and back to crying, and all the while talking about your father, Miko, some relative named Fango, and a whole bunch of people I never heard of. Like, who was Kalay? You kept telling her you were sorry.”

Kalay. He shook his head, pulling on his shirt from where it lay on the nightstand and walking for the doorway. He didn’t have to tell Talina about Kalay. She was too many years gone, though he could picture her face so clearly. That gorgeous olive-toned skin, her almond eyes, the perfection of her cheeks and high forehead.

He closed the bathroom door behind him to symbolically shut Talina out. At the first of the sinks, he stopped, braced himself stiff-armed, and stared at his image in the mold-spotted mirror. What was it with his eyes, the hollow look to his face, as if the cheeks were thinning? Was that really him?