'Keep going!' shouted the soldier. 'And don't stop until I say!' He let go another burst of fire, took out the spent clip, knocked the new magazine on his helmet, reloaded and fired again.

'That wasn't how it happened—!' I muttered aloud, the soldier having gone way over his allotted time and word count. I looked at the bloodied hand that had fallen against me. A feeling of dread began to gnaw slowly inside me. The fuel gauge was still intact – shouldn't it have been shattered when the soldier was shot? Then I realised. The soldier had survived and the officer was dead.

I sat bolt upright in bed, covered in sweat and breathing hard. The strength of the memories had lessened with the years but here was something new, something unexpected. I replayed the images in my head, watching the bloodstained hand fall again and again. It all felt so horribly real. But there was something, just there outside my grasp, something that I should know but didn't – a loss that I couldn't explain, an absence of some sort I couldn't place—

'Landen,' said a soft voice in the darkness, 'his name was Landen.'

'Landen—!' I cried. 'Yes, yes, his name was Landen.'

'And he didn't die in the Crimea. The soldier did.'

'No, no, I just remembered him dying—!'

'You remembered wrong.'

It was Gran, sitting beside me in her gingham nightie. She held my hand tightly and gazed at me through her spectacles, her grey hair adrift and hanging down in wispy strands. And with her words, I began to remember. Landen had survived – he must have done in order to call up the air strike. But even now, awake, I could remember him lying dead beside me. It didn't make sense.

'He didn't die?'

'No.'

I picked up the picture I had sketched of him from the bedside table.

'Did I ever see him again?' I asked, studying the unfamiliar face.

'Oh, yes,' replied Gran. 'Lots and lots. In fact, you married him.'

'I did, didn't I?' I cried, tears coming to my eyes as the memories returned. 'At the Blessed Lady of the Lobster in Swindon! Were you there?'

'Yes,' said Gran, 'wouldn't have missed it for the world.'

I was still confused.

'What happened to him? Why isn't he with me now?'

'He was eradicated,' replied Gran in a low voice, 'by Lavoisier – and Goliath.'

'I remember,' I answered, the darkness in my mind made light as a curtain seemed to draw back and everything that had happened flooded in. 'Jack Schitt. Goliath. They eradicated Landen to blackmail me. But I failed. I didn't get him back – and that's why I'm here.'

I stopped.

'But … but how could I possibly forget him? I was only thinking about him yesterday! What's happening to me?'

'It's Aornis, my dear,' explained Gran, 'she is a mnemonomorph. A memory-changer. Remember the trouble you had with her back home?'

I did, now she mentioned it. Gran's prompting broke the delicate veil of forgetfulness that cloaked her presence in my mind – and everything about Hades' little sister returned to me as though hidden from my conscious memory. Aornis, who had sworn revenge for her brother's death at my hands; Aornis, who could manipulate memories as she chose; Aornis, who had nearly brought about a gooey Dream Topping armageddon. But Aornis wasn't from here. She lived in—