“How long?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“How long have I been here?”

“Today? About five hours. That’s quite a bit longer than most of my patients experience in their sessions. I was starting to get concerned. If it went on much longer, I was debating how to bring you back. But I assume you finally said the escape word.”

“I did,” I said, after a moment of silence.

She sensed my hesitation. “Dylan, it may feel strange, but you really are back where you belong.”

Was I?

Then why did everything feel different?

“I don’t remember any of this,” I told her. “Your office. The sessions we’ve had. I don’t remember the past few weeks at all, other than being in the Many Worlds.”

“That’s not surprising. Short-term memory loss is a common side effect of the treatment.”

“Because of the psychotropic drugs?” I asked.

“Psychotropics?” she replied with surprise. “Where did you get that idea? All I gave you was a simple muscle relaxant to put you in a receptive frame of mind. The rest is hypnotic suggestion, and then . . . well, it’s up to your brain to take it from there. However, the intensity of the experience can leave patients extremely disoriented. Your memory typically comes back after a while. It may take a few hours, or even up to a few days. Given how long you were under, I’m not entirely sure what you can expect.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember my recent past, but the only experiences that were vivid were what I’d been through in the other worlds. I could still remember the violence and death I’d seen there. I could feel it. My hands were raw where I’d squeezed them around Dylan’s neck. I could taste Karly on my lips.

“This hypnotic suggestion you gave me,” I said. “How did that work?”

“Before we began, you picked a place that you wanted to use as your ‘portal.’ The place where the various versions of yourself would intersect.”

“And that was . . . ?”

“The Art Institute,” Eve replied with another curious smile, as if she knew I was testing her. “So that’s where I told you to go.”

I got off the sofa again, feeling restless. Everything she said made sense, but I was having trouble leaving the experiences of my hypnosis behind. “This will sound like a strange question, but are the police looking for me?”

Surprise creased her face. “The police? For what?”

“Murder. Four women were stabbed to death. They’d all attended events at my hotel.”

“Murder? God, no, there’s nothing like that. I’m so sorry, you must have gone through horrific things while you were under. That’s very unusual. Most patients don’t have experiences that are nearly so . . . violent. In fact, most of them never make it out of their portal. But I take it you did.”

“Yes.”