She moved her head in a way that was more of a twitch than a nod. “Yes.”

The two fingers tightened around her, encircling her neck like a noose, then he removed them, and she felt him stand up to his full height. Ampersand finally moved, pulling his head back in a half-antagonistic stance, the crown on the back of his head flaring like splayed fingers, his hands steepled like he was about to use his telekinesis.

Cora hesitated before toddling the ten-odd feet between the two of them, braced the whole time for some horrible alien act of destruction—a fireball from Enola, a memory wipe from Ampersand, being turned to dust by some unseen third party. Was Obelus here, too? Hell, probably.

As soon as she was within arm’s length, Ampersand grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her toward him and staring her down as if she were a child who had run across the street and had nearly been hit by a car. “What have you done? I cannot protect you from him. He means to kill me, kill us both, and you’ll die out here.”

“Please, calm down!” she said, trying to compartmentalize the terror that was trying to infect her through the other side of the wall. “Just listen to him. I don’t think he means to go through with it right this second.”

“Don’t you understand? He came here to die, he came here to kill us, I cannot overpower him, we are bound, he will kill both of us!” His eyes were wild, unfocused, filled with fire in a way she’d never seen before. Then the swaying started.

She looked back at Enola, who simply watched, his hands curled up in a mantid, neutral stance, the crown on the back of his head folded down like a flower that had not yet bloomed. He seemed perfectly nonplussed, not particularly bothered by this.

She turned, grabbed Ampersand by the arms to try to steady him, and he stumbled. It didn’t even seem to enter into his equations that Enola could be reasoned with, only overpowered, and she finally had to acknowledge that Ampersand had not been exaggerating about his “diseased mind.” Not six hours earlier, he had nearly killed Kaveh for the crime of triggering a panic through no fault of his own, and now this.

“He thinks you’re going to hurt us,” she said to Enola.

“I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO ASSURE HIM I MEAN NO HARM. HE DOES NOT BELIEVE ME.”