She was suddenly full of focused intensity, like a magnifying glass held up to the sun. “His mind?” she asked Mick gently. “Or the body? You and I, we’ve learned to consider them separately.”

“Do you think he’s Tom? God damn it, Fran, I’ve been in there. I would have known—”

“Two things: I have only your word for that; and if it’s not Tom,” she said in a voice like a breeze off an icefield, “why do you call it ‘he’?”

Mick opened his mouth, and closed it.

“Because if you’ve ridden this body,” said Fran, with horrible satisfaction, “you must know it’s not male.”

“Or female,” Mick said faintly. “It’s — oh. Oh, my God.”

“Christ, Mick, if you really were surprised, I’d think you were a drooling idiot. Non-sex-specific bodies aren’t exactly thick on the ground.”

“It’s a cheval,” said Mick, huge-eyed.

“Very good, class.” She brushed loose hair back from my forehead and studied my face. “A mindless, soulless, sexless shell, genderless as a baby doll,” she said to me — at me — whoever she was talking to, it wasn’t me. She didn’t believe I existed. Oh, tricky Legba, she was going to kill me, and she didn’t even know I was there. I stepped back, and she matched me as if she’d read my mind. She probably had. “A crisp new brain without a tenant. A bottle made to be filled by one of us, empty brass waiting to be turned into a bullet. A shiny new horse to be offered to the desperate Horseman, in the vain hope that he or she will prefer it over the nearest infantry grunt. A domestic animal bred and broken for one of us to ride. And that means one of us is riding it. If his intentions were good, why the charming masquerade?” Her eyes were strange and wild, and I couldn’t look away from them.

“What if he — she — doesn’t know?” Mick said desperately. “What if it’s one of us, but messed up, so he doesn’t remember?” Her fingers twisted in my shirtfront, and she thumped me back against the kitchen wall.

“Run for it, Tom,” she said softly. “Or plead a bit, or try to kill me. Do anything you like, except move to skip off this body. That, I won’t allow.”

My vision wavered with tears, and my knees were buckling. I wanted to reach out and grab her shoulders, to hold myself up, to beg, but I was afraid to raise my hands for fear she’d pull the trigger. She was going to pull it anyway. My knees hit the floor, and the tears spilled over. What a horrible, shameful, pointless way to die. “Please,” I babbled wetly, “I’m not who you think I am. I’m not anybody.”

Mick Skinner said fiercely, “Fran, if you don’t stop, I’m gonna hit you. And you’re gonna have to weigh whatever’s kept you from shooting me against that.”

“Maybe I just wanted an audience,” she replied. There was a distance in her voice at odds with the violence in her eyes. “Shall I tell you how many people’s bodies I’ve ridden and lost, or used up? I can’t remember. But I took them all to get Mad Tom Worecski. I’ll kill that many again before I let him get away from me.”