IT WASN’T ALL that different from a hospital operating room, or so I imagined, since I’d never been in one. But I’d seen them enough in popular films to recognize all the equipment. Only difference was that the patient was strapped to a table by steel strips of seeming-impossible strength. And Rhoshamandes held me firmly there in place as we both waited for the rising sun.

There had been a battle in the square—desperate, confused, with Cyril and Thorne and the ghost of Magnus vainly assaulting Rhoshamandes. I’d sensed another spirit’s presence, and even the presence of Armand. Others. There had been flashes of fire and howls and curses. I’d cried out, “No more. I surrender. Don’t harm them.” It had ended in a matter of seconds.

And now we were here, in this hospital room, and Rhoshamandes suddenly vanished.

I stared up at the ceiling of white acoustic tiles and at the surrounding wonderland of tanks and glistening plastic sacks of fluid and monitors and things that ticked and wheezed, and wires and cables and broad shining tubes—and dark-haired, dark-skinned Replimoids with beautiful almond-shaped dark eyes above their surgical masks, their entire bodies wrapped so tight in white surgical drapery and plastic that they appeared to be bandaged. A syringe held high in the air. Tap, tap, tap. Tiny squirt of sparkling fluid.

My hands were strapped down. My fingers were strapped down. My neck was strapped down. But a crank suddenly raised the upper half of this deathbed and I was sitting up. Of course. She had to remove the top of my skull! And all the steel straps had been arranged to allow this maneuver which took me further and further from anything that I could conceivably understand.

I wished I had had a glimpse of the other body, the body covered up on the table with all the tubes filled with blood running into it. Was that thing already alive?

Over my eyes, someone put a blindfold, thick and soft. And there perhaps goes your ability to see forever. How can you know?

I was groggy, almost unable to speak. The sun was above the horizon.

Amel was weeping.

Say something, you idiot! At least tell me goodbye.

Lights snapped on, so bright they burned through the blindfold and my eyelids, but the old familiar darkness would take care of that. Scissors cutting. Never really liked this jacket and shirt all that much anyway. Needles piercing. I am extremely…extremely fond of this skin.

It wasn’t a dream. It was a different place. And no sooner had I reached out my hand to open the door, then it was gone.

Just gone.