“There aren’t many of us out in this neck of the woods, Tristan. If you want to take some time, figure it out, I’ll probably still be here.”

Tristan nodded.

Byron could feel the guilt, the disappointment, surging through a body that wasn’t his. He had little doubt the emotions had absolutely nothing to do with him and his own part in this.

With that, he felt anger.

⊙

“You’re two of my best capes,” Mr. Vaughn said. “It was one mistake. I don’t want this to be a problem.”

“It was not a mistake,” Byron said. “No. If cooler heads hadn’t prevailed, that would have been something much worse than a mistake.”

Mr. Vaughn gestured, fingers extended, moving in a tight circle.

Byron shook his head, pacing across the fancy office with its fancy colored tiles. He switched, forcing himself to dive into the void, to displace Tristan and give Tristan a body.

“He’s making a big deal out of nothing,” Tristan said. “He does this. Gets unreasonable.”

“It doesn’t sound like it’s nothing to him.”

“Not many things are nothing to him. The difference between him and me is that when I have a feeling, I feel it. When he has a feeling, he bottles it up. Then the bottle cracks and it fires off steam in some random direction for some random excuse. He hung out with a girl for hours and hours at a detriment to me. I kissed someone.”

“What were you doing? What was your mindset, Tristan?”

“For just a couple of hours, I wanted to get reasonably drunk, and forget… everything. Forget that I had to worry about my brother, forget the power issue, that I’m living half a life.”

“And did this forgetting extend to forgetting about your brother as you pursued… potential relations with a partner?”

“No.”

Mr. Vaughn gestured. Tristan switched.

Byron was free. “Yes.”

“You can’t know what Tristan thinks or plans, Byron. I think you’re being a little bit unreasonable.”

“I live in his body and look out of his eyes more than a hundred and eighty days a year, Mr. Vaughn. He doesn’t pay much attention to me, but I pay a ton of attention to him. Because I have to.”

“We’ve enforced some loose rules that keep a balance between you. These aren’t sufficient?”

“No! No, not at all. I want—I need something more. That keeps things like last night from happening again. Until this situation between us is fixed, there need to be restrictions.”

Mr. Vaughn gestured. Byron stepped into the void once again.

“We talked to you, we established rules,” Tristan said. “Now he wants to change the rules? No. I am not cool with that.”

Another gesture, another change.

“Is there no room for compromise?”