She’d said no, and he wasn’t happy about it. He was less happy about Hunter, given the parallels to Victoria.

Which meant the stakes were higher.

Hard, to glance at Mark, to see Hunter in her peripheral vision, and imagine it was Victoria. It made her heart leap, and that was dangerous given how cell-level precise some of this work was.

She gave Hunter her hearing back.

“My father was a physician, you know,” Marquis said. “When he was practicing, they were only just introducing anesthesia for surgery. One in ten died on the table—”

Amy gave her father a hard look.

“Raises the question,” Chris said, from behind Amy. He’d seated himself at the end of the room furthest from Mark. “Would you rather have no anesthesia or roll those dice?”

Amy deafened Hunter, made her close her eyes, and kept Hunter’s eyes closed, calmed her, and forced a lingering sensation of Amy’s hands against her own while Amy stood up and stepped away. “If you’re not going to be helpful, you need to leave. This matters.”

Chris was all shaggy hair, a vaguely yeti-shape. All of his forms had long hair now. Which boded ill, as far as she was concerned. Either he knew she knew what he was doing, which suggested he was trying to intimidate her, or he didn’t, in which case he was being overly defensive. Her power didn’t work past hair, fur, and body hair.

“It’s so interesting though,” Chris said, his voice low, too deep. “He can’t raise a topic like that and not expect me to say something.”

“And you,” Amy turned on her father. “Death? Really?”

“The most interesting stories, unfortunately, have death and violence in them. I gravitate toward them like your father gravitates toward the funnier, more human stories.”

“I should have known better,” Amy said. “Would you take Dot, go find her something fun to eat?”

“Yay!” Dot exclaimed.

“My apologies, dear Amelia,” Marquis said, bending down to kiss the top of her head. Then he left, closing the door.

Amy sat back down, setting her hands in place, and removed the phantom sensations, calm, the forced closure of the eyes, and the deafness.

“A bit scary,” Hunter breathed.

“Sorry. We’re almost done.”

Mark approached, stopping by a table, which he leaned against. “I remember, Amy, you hated to sit still for haircuts.”

“I was a terrible child. I get it,” Amy muttered.

“No, you were a wonder of a child next to the unholy terror that was Victoria,” Mark told her. “And you’re a fine woman now. I wish it wasn’t such a hard journey to get from there to here, but I’m glad to be here with you in the present moment.”

The words seemed to calm Hunter more than they affected Amy.

“You’re trying to butter me up.”