THEN WAD WATCHED as Danny North sent all the other mages of Mittlegard to Westil, making sure they immediately went back again. The boy learned well. He was careful. If Wad was fated to lose his gates to a greater Gatefather, then fate was kind to let it be a responsible, intelligent, persuasible lad like Danny North.

Throughout the day, Wad checked on Bexoi many times, but she never spoke or did anything that seemed volitional, though she breathed and took in food when it was given to her. If she was putting on an act, she was astonishingly consistent; someone less clever would have feigned a coma, and then it would have been easy to discover that she was really awake. By pretending this sort of catatonia, her eyes could be left open by someone else so she might see; her breathing could show responses to what went on around her without provoking suspicion that she was faking all of it.

There was also the possibility that it was real. Though with Bexoi, to have something really be exactly what it seemed was so unlikely.

At last, late in the day, Wad allowed himself the luxury of sleep.

He was wakened by an urgent stirring of his outself. It was the gates that he had given to Danny North. They no longer obeyed him, but they were still part of him, and their agitation, their panic, filled him with fear as well. Immediately he tried to make sense of what they were perceiving from Danny’s mind.

The boy thought he was dreaming, but he was not dreaming. There was a woman in his bed, a woman that he did not love and did not want. He knew that he did not want her, and yet his body wanted her, and so he continued to believe it was a dream, or to pretend to himself that he believed it.

But it was this very dreamstate that had alerted Wad’s outself to the danger. For Wad had seen possession many times and his ba remembered it. A dozen of the Sutahites were in and out of Danny North, possessing him only lightly, only enough to whisper reassurance to him. This is safe, they were saying wordlessly. What harm can it do. It’s a dream. Nothing is real.

Wad joined with his given-away gates in shouting their panic to the boy. Someone as strong-willed as Danny North, the Sutahites would never bother with. They could never own him; he would drive them out. What could they possibly gain by encouraging him to be intimate with this girl? And why was she there, uninvited?

Wad came quickly to the conclusion that there was something in the girl, something that wanted very, very much to have her body intimate with Danny North’s. Something that hungered for a clear pathway from one body to the other.