I shivered, pulling my knees to my chin again and not caring if it made me look scared. I was. Vulnerable. He’d called me vulnerable. I had proved myself stronger, and therefore somehow become weaker. “You were in my head,” I whispered, remembering how it had hurt—my soul stretched over the entire collective until he lifted me from it. “You separated the tulpa from my thoughts. Thank you.”

He was back at the table before the fireplace, wiping out both the circle and the laundry list in Latin beside it with a red cloth. “You’re welcome.”

His reponse was guarded, and my tension rose. “You saw my thoughts. More than usual.”

“Yes.” Scrubbing, still scrubbing.

“I couldn’t see yours.”

Smiling, he turned, his eyes looking almost normal in the dim light. His teeth glinted. “That’s the nature of it, yes.”

Uneasy, I counted the dirty dishes scattered around, making it look like a frat boy’s dorm. It appeared as if he’d been here for days. Maybe he’d been hungry. I knew I was. “What did you see?” I asked, nervous.

The rag he’d used to clean the table went into the fire behind him. “I saw what you are,” he said, “and I was ashamed. I saw what you expect from a person, and I’d call you a bitch except you demand it from yourself as well. I saw how you see me,” he explained. “It wasn’t anything I didn’t already know, but it made me wonder at what I lack, what isn’t there.”

“Al,” I interrupted, remembering that forced kiss and how it had felt.

But Al was shaking his head, looking ill. “I am not going to be the person who completes you,” he said, glancing at me and turning away. “You are one messed-up bitch.”

“Gee, thanks,” I muttered as I held my cold toes, glad that he wasn’t going to try to change our relationship now that I was stuck here.

Al’s expression shifted, became ugly, angry with himself. “I saw what we had become. Soft, ineffective, laughable,” he said, his hand forming a fist.

“You still scare the hell out of me,” I interrupted.

“Accepting our exile and making it comfortable instead of finding a way to go home. We are a joke.”

Oh, that. I rubbed my feet, trying to warm them. “Sorry.”

Al shook out a silver scarf that hadn’t been there a moment ago and turned back to the table, running it lightly over the new slate as if erasing any electronic charge left behind. “I don’t need your pity.”

No, you need a good psychiatrist. My eyes went to his feet as they scuffed. Slippers? “Where’s Ku’Sox?” I asked, wishing I could wake up again and start over. Having swum in my soul might have given Al the feeling that he could be casual with me, but it made me nervous. I had no idea what he was going to do next.

His shoulders moving slow and steady, Al wiped down the table again until even the last hints of what he’d written were gone. “Don’t worry about Ku’Sox. You proved yourself.” Becoming still, he looked at me, the candle and firelight making his eyes glow. “You have a place here.”