A flash of guilt accompanied that last thought, and then more than a flash. If I was remembering correctly, he had helped me—like a lot. But that was the thing—was I remembering correctly?

My brain felt like it had been forced through a sieve, a couple of times. And what was left was not firing on all cylinders. Physically, I felt better, if alarmingly sore, as if my mind had finally figured out that I wasn’t being tortured anymore.

But mentally?

I wouldn’t trust myself to get my name right just now.

I was definitely not in the headspace to match wits with a demon, much less one with Pritkin’s intellect. But that looked like what we were doing. Which was why I looked up, scowling.

And found him scowling back at me.

Or, at least, I thought so. It was kind of hard to tell now that he was no longer in a body, assuming that he’d been in one before. I was a little hazy on that point, along with a lot of others.

Like what had happened to the empties?

I glanced worriedly at the bed, but didn’t see them, not even back in their original cottony form. The sheets currently in place were pristine and had tiny blue flowers on them, so I assumed that they’d been changed at some point. Probably by whoever had salved me up and put me into this robe.

God, I hoped that had been Rhea!

And then I wasn’t sure that I did, because she was… Rhea. Innocent, sweet, amazingly naïve for one at her power level, and only nineteen. I did not think that she was prepared for… whatever had happened in here.

But then, what was the alternative? Gertie? Agnes? I winced, and then did it again, feeling a migraine start a staccato beat on my already messed up head. The universe could not be that cruel. And what the devil had she seen, anyway? What had been left of those all-too-lifelike bodies that the incubus had made?

Had they still been… colorful? Anatomically correct? And what positions had we been found in after—

No! No, that had not happened. They had fallen to pieces, back into the rumpled sheets that they’d started out as, as soon as the power was all used up. They had, they had, they had, because I couldn’t deal with it if they hadn’t!

And that was assuming that they’d even been here at all, and that I wasn’t just imagining the whole—

My thoughts screeched to a halt, desperately grasping onto the new idea.

I looked it over, and didn’t find any flaws. Yeah, I thought, brightening. That was probably it.

Yeah, that was definitely what had happened!

My head came up.

“That was you, right?” I said to the demon, wanting confirmation.

“What was me?”