He grins wide. His teeth are each little skulls.

"One thing I do know, though. We've got so much more for you to do."

"We?" she asks, her heart frozen –

FORTY-ONE

Fate's Foe

She gasps awake, feeling like she's tangled in seaweed. She starts tugging off the choking weeds – the ones that wormed their way down her throat, the ones that have burrowed into her arm and chest – and suddenly there's all this beeping, some fast, some slow, some a steady drone, and the world swims into view just as an antiseptic stink crawls into her nose, nests there, and has babies.

Louis is on her, holding her down.

"Whoa," he says, "Hold on, bucking bronco, hold on. You're okay. You're okay."

A white cotton pad sits over his left eye, held there by a yellow elastic band.

"Fuck you," she hisses. "You go to hell. Answer my question. Who are you? What do you mean, we? Get out of my head. I want to die or wake up. I want to die or wake up!"

"You are awake," he says, and strokes her hair. "Shhh."

She blinks.

This Louis smells of soap.

And he has one working eye.

And her chest hurts like someone just stabbed her there. Which, last time she checked, is exactly what happened.

"I'm not asleep?" she asks in a small voice.

"Nope."

"This isn't a dream?"

"I don't think so, though I can say it still sometimes feels like one."

Miriam doesn't know what to say. She blurts, "I'm sorry."

"Sorry?"

"This situation is… complex. And it's my fault."

He sits down in the chair next to the bed. "It's complex, all right. Not too sure it's your fault, though."

"You can't really understand, and you wouldn't believe me if I told you–"

"I read your diary," he says.

She stares.

"What?"

He pulls it out from the back of his waistband and rests it on her lap. "I'm sorry. I know that's not a real nice thing to do, but you left me needing some answers. I hope you understand that. I thought you were just trying to rip me off – and maybe, once upon a time, you were – but next thing I know, I'm in a lighthouse and some bald weirdo is trying to cut out my eyes, and then you're there, and you're half-dead at the bottom of the lighthouse and the bald weirdo is all dead in the middle, and… I needed to know what was going on. You were gone from this world, so I couldn't ask you anything. All I had was this book – it had fallen out when you took your tumble."

Miriam draws a deep breath, and it hurts like hell. "So you know. You know what I am. What I see."

"I do."

"Do you believe it?"

"I reckon I do. Either that, or you just performed the longest, weirdest con in the history of con-jobs."

"Do I see a hint of a smile?"