A montage of images flipped past at hyperspeed, so fast I saw nothing but a blur of color. Then the reel slowed…on darkness. I waited, with growing impatience, like a theatergoer wondering when the curtain is going to rise.

A voice floated past. “I want to hurt him. Hurt him like he hurt me.”

There are many ways to say this line, many shades of emotion to color and twist the words, most of them angry, the flash fire of passion, later repented, or the cold determination of hate. Yet in this recital, there was only the petulant whine of a spoiled child who’d grown into a spoiled adult, never learning that the world didn’t owe her a perfect life.

Another voice answered, a whisper that rose and fell with the cadence of a rowboat rocking on a gentle current. “How would you do that?”

“I—I don’t know.” The pout came through loud and clear, then the demand. “Tell me.”

“No…you tell me.”

“I want to hurt him. Make him pay.” A pause. “He doesn’t love me anymore. He said so.”

“And what do you want to do about it?”

“Take away what he does love.” A trill of smug satisfaction, as if she’d surprised herself with her insight.

“What would that be?”

“The kids.”

“So why don’t you do it?”

I waited, tensed, expecting the obvious reason—the natural reason, mingled with a stab of horror for having thought of such a thing in the first place.

“I’m afraid,” she said.

“Afraid of what?” the voice asked.

“Of getting caught.”

I snarled and threw myself against the confines of the darkness that surrounded me.

The voices vanished, and I found myself in a small room. I was humming, rubbing my hands together. I looked down at my hands. A bar of soap in one, a wash-cloth in the other. A splash and a shriek of delight. I looked up, still humming, to see three small children in the bathtub.

I tried to wrench my consciousness free from Sullivan’s, my mental self kicking and screaming. The scene went mercifully dark.

Hate washed through me. Not my hate for her, but hers for another. I was back inside Amanda Sullivan, in another dark place. Dark and empty. The Nix was gone.

Gone! The bitch! She abandoned me, left me here alone. She promised I wouldn’t get caught. Promised, promised, promised!

The world around me cleared, like a fog lifting. The endless litany of hate and blame and self-pity still looped through my brain. Before me sat a pleasant-looking man in a suit.

“This voice…” the man said, his voice an even baritone. “Tell me more about the voice.”

“She told me to do it. She made me.”

The man’s eyes pierced Sullivan’s, probing, not buying this line of bullshit for one second. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. She told me to do it.”