“Did it have to go on my hand?” I said to Landen as the Skyrail car docked at Clary-Lamarr Travelport, Swindon’s main hub.

“It has to be somewhere you’ll have a chance of seeing it. The constant reminding might help you get over her.”

I stared at it again in order to keep the thoughts in my head as long as possible. Now that we were talking about Jenny’s nonexistence, everything seemed fine, but I knew also that these moments were fleeting. In a few minutes, all knowledge of the mindworm would be gone and I’d be fretting over Jenny again. Where she was, how she was, and why the teachers called Landen when I came to school to pick her up.

“Do you think it will?”

“I’m hoping yes but thinking no,” replied Landen in a typically stoical manner. “The only person who can fix your Jenny problem is the person who infected you with the mindworm: Aornis.”

This might seem strange until you realize that Aornis is a mnemonomorph—someone who can manipulate memories. She could rob a bank and no one would remember she’d been there. Besides, trying to capture someone who can manipulate memories is like trying to sweep a partial vacuum into a bell jar using only a yard broom. But we could make inquiries about her, and that was another reason we were in Swindon.

I grunted resignedly and then, after a short and oddly treacly pause, wondered what I was grunting resignedly about.

We drifted down the escalators from the south entrance of Clary-Lamarr and stepped onto the large concourse outside, which was dominated by the thirty-foot-high bronze statue of Lola Vavoom. We had missed the rush hour, and only latecomers and shoppers were walking out of the travelport.

“What were we just talking about?” I asked.

“Stuff,” replied Landen vaguely, taking a deep breath. “You know, I’m not sure I’m going to get used to living out of town. To me, grass is simply a transitional phase for turning sunlight into milk.”

“You’re changing the subject,” I replied suspiciously.

“I do that sometimes.”

“You do, don’t you?”

But Landen was right. He wasn’t really a country dweller.

“After a few months, you’ll be wondering how you lived anywhere else.”

“Perhaps.”

We’d moved out of Swindon four months before, not long after I’d been discharged from the hospital. The main reason was that our daughter Tuesday needed more room to experiment, but an equally good reason was security. I had more enemies than was considered healthy for the peaceful family life I had half promised myself, and a country home was more easily defended— from enemies on either side of the printed page.

“I think the city council is taking the threat of a smiting a bit lightly, don’t you?” I asked, as aside from a few billboards outlining the possibility that the Almighty would lay the center of Swindon to waste in an all-consuming fire next Friday, little seemed to be going on.