Dat she do, Detta mused. She ack like a Mommy, she wrapped around it root and branch, you right bout dat much.

But maybe, Susannah thought, that was just her nature. Maybe once you got beyond the mothering instinct, there was no Mia.

A cold hand reached out and seized Susannah’s wrist. “Who is it? Is it that nasty-talking one? If it is, banish her. She scares me.”

She still scared Susannah a little, in all truth, but not as much as when she’d first come to accept that Detta was real. They hadn’t become friends and probably never would, but it was clear that Detta Walker could be a powerful ally. She was more than mean. Once you got past the idiotic Butterfly McQueen accent, she was shrewd.

Dis Mia make a mighty pow’ful ally her ownself, if you c’d get her on yo’ side. Ain’t hardly nothin in the world as pow’ful as a pissed-off Mommy.

“We’re going back,” Mia said. “I’ve answered your questions, the cold’s bad for the baby, and the mean one’s here. Palaver’s done.”

But Susannah shook off her grip and moved back a little, out of Mia’s immediate reach. In the gap between the merlons the cold wind knifed through her light shirt, but it also seemed to clear her mind and refresh her thinking.

Part of her is me, because she has access to my memories. Eddie’s ring, the people of River Crossing, Blaine the Mono. But she’s got to be more than me as well, because … because …

Go on, girl, you ain’t doin bad, but you slow.

Because she knows all this other stuff, as well. She knows about the demons, both the little ones and the elementals. She knows how the Beams came into being—sort of—and about this magical soup of creation, the Prim. As far as I ever knew, prim’s a word you use for girls who are always yanking their skirts down over their knees. She didn’t get that other meaning from me.

It occurred to her what this conversation was like: parents studying their new baby. Their new chap. He’s got your nose, Yes but he’s got your eyes, and But my goodness, where did he get that hair?

Detta said: And she also got friens back in New York, don’t forget dat. Least she want to think they her friens.

So she’s someone or something else, as well. Someone from the invisible world of house demons and ill-sicks. But who? Is she really one of the elementals?

Detta laughed. She say so, but she lyin bout dat, sugar! I know she is!

Then what is she? What was she, before she was Mia?

All at once a phone, amplified to almost ear-splitting shrillness, began to ring. It was so out of place on this abandoned castle tower that at first Susannah didn’t know what it was. The things out there in the Discordia—jackals, hyenas, whatever they were—had been subsiding, but with the advent of this sound they began to cackle and shriek again.