“Only because it’s true. Believe me, dear, if I thought anything you might do would help Danny, I’d send you off to do it even if it killed you.”

“That’s rather heartless of you,” said Pat, “but—”

“It’s not because I love Danny and don’t give a rat’s petoot about you,” said Veevee, “because Danny cares for you very much, and that means that the one thing I can do to help him is try to keep you safe. For him. In case he ever gets out of this.”

“Which you don’t think he can do.”

“Well, not without dying,” said Veevee. “Or having the Belmage find somebody else who is more useful to him. But compared to the greatest gatemage who ever lived, who would that be?”

“Loki?” asked Pat.

“Loki is no fool,” said Veevee. “All this stuff he did with gates—he did it from Westil. That’s quite incredible—to manipulate gates, make and unmake them, on another world—what a mage he is. But no, he’ll never get anywhere near Danny while the Belmage has him.”

“So the Belmage, Set, he wouldn’t want a windmage?”

“Oh, how noble of you,” said Veevee. “I’m not mocking you, it really is noble. But you’re an untrained novice at this, and there are some highly trained windmages who went through the Great Gate. There are about five hundred people on Mittlegard who are likelier targets for the Belmage than you. But it doesn’t matter. Even if the Belmage decides to abandon Danny, he’s a spiteful bastard, and he’ll probably kill Danny as he leaves.”

“What’s the point?” asked Pat in despair.

“To punish him for getting rid of his gates. To the Belmage, that must seem like the ultimate perfidy. ‘I took over a gatemage, and now he has no gates? Somebody’s got to pay!’”

“Danny can’t go through this alone!”

“He got into it alone, didn’t he?” asked Veevee. “He didn’t phone you up and ask if it was a good idea for him to do the bouncing bedcovers with the coach’s daughter, did he?”

Pat shook her head. “But he did keep the Belmage from using his body to … sleep with my friends.”

Veevee made her explain it all. Pat hated going over it again, but she made herself remember what the other girls had said.

“Oh, this is splendid,” said Veevee. “This is unprecedented. In all the cases of possession by the Belmage himself—at least the ones we’re pretty sure were him—nobody was ever able to resist him to the slightest degree.”

“So Danny’s doing well,” said Pat.

“And no doubt pissing off the Belmage even more.”

“Well, that goes without saying,” said Pat. “Are you saying that Danny’s as good as dead?”