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  “Yes. For a time.” Her heart cracked. “But things change.”

  Edward shook his head again, negating her. “You weren’t supposed to change.”

  She had nothing to say to that. Another apology would sound patronizing and insincere. She had no more explanation.

  “Is it because of my face?” His features blurred and shifted. “Because I never look the same to you? That matters so much?”

  Once it had mattered quite a bit, but now it didn’t seem like it should have.

  Tovah stepped away from him. “No. Not that. I got sort of used to that.”

  “Then what?” He sounded so sincerely confused that she hated herself for being so full of doubt. “What did I do? Was it the mountain? It was the mountain. I pushed you too hard, didn’t I? But I did it to help you, sweetheart. Don’t you understand? To help.”

  He moved fast, grabbing her wrists. The blood from her hands had dried and caked, painting her skin like an abstract tattoo. She hadn’t yet shaped away the wounds, and at his touch she hissed in pain. He didn’t let go. Edward smoothed his thumbs over her palms, sealing the slices with his touch.

  “Let me go.”

  “But I just wanted to help you,” he insisted. “Didn’t I help you?”

  Tovah looked into his face, which had shifted again, so slightly she might not have noticed. Something was different in the shape of the brow, the width of the mouth. Edward’s lips parted slightly, showing teeth that gleamed.

  “Didn’t I?” he asked her again, softly.

  Tovah nodded slowly, her heart twisting. “Yes. You did.”

  His hands linked with hers in a lover’s grasp. “I told you when you climbed this mountain you’d find something real, didn’t I?”

  “Something that would last. Yes.”

  His smile would have charmed her, before, but now it left her cold. “And here I am. Wasn’t this what you’ve been looking for?”

  Tovah shook her head once, twice, slowly. “No.”

  Edward dropped her hand and stepped back. “No? You tell me no?”

  “That’s what I said.” Tovah looked at her once-upon-a-time lover. He turned his back to her, his shoulders slumped.

  “But why?”

  Tovah was used to strange things happening in the Ephemeros. She hadn’t before experienced the ability to taste colors or smell sounds…but now Edward’s voice smelled like rain. It tasted like rain, too, the sort that falls between lightning and turns the earth to mud.

  She looked at her feet, still resting on grass. The left was still there, but still fake. It had no toes, just a smooth, curved edge that usually didn’t matter because it disappeared inside shoes. She shaped it to match the right and felt it shift and blur, but the shaping took more effort than she’d anticipated and left her sweating.

  “Why?”

  Edward had turned to face her while she concentrated on her foot. His eyes had gone dark, though his face still played. The few familiar pieces blended with new features. He was still handsome, but bleak.

  “Edward. Some things have been happening here. Bad things.”

  Edward frowned. “Bad things happen. If they didn’t, nobody would need a guide. But good things happen, too, Tovah. I thought we were a good thing.”

  “I thought so too.”

  “But you don’t anymore.”

  She shook her head. “No, Edward. I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Why not!” His shout thudded around her like stones hitting the earth.

  The force of it thundered in the soles of her feet. It smelled like lavender and burning leaves, and her throat closed against an uprush of emotion. She said, “What do you want instead?”

  He faced her, his mouth working and fists clenching. Tovah wanted to back up again, wary, but the cliff was still behind her and she knew too well how high she’d climbed. She could jump, maybe fly, but she didn’t want to run.

  His will pressed around her on all sides, then did something unexpected. It reached inside her and pulled on hers. Threads of desire, memory, wishful thinking, unspooled like thread and were swallowed up by his. It was a violation worse than rape.

  “This?” Edward became Ben. “Your helpful, faithful Eagle Scout?”

  “Or this?” Edward became Kevin. “Your bastard ex-husband?”

  “Stop!” Tovah gathered the tendrils of her will around her, tight, ripping them from Edward’s phantom touch. “You’re crazy!”

  “I’m not crazy!” Edward’s cry echoed all around them.

  A pain that had nothing to do with the glass on the mountain sliced her. “I’m sorry, Edward.”

  “I’m not crazy. I was trying to help you. What’s so wrong with that?” He paced, each step leaving the imprint of his feet in the grass. The wind came up, whipping around her face. Edward didn’t notice.

  The Ephemeros shifted around her. “Edward. Listen to me. There’s something you should know.”

  He looked up, gone a total stranger. There was no part of him left she recognized. Nothing left of the lover who’d given her body such pleasure and her soul such ease. His fists clenched and opened at his sides while fury and sorrow bent his mouth.

  “There’s someone…”

  “Tovah?”

  Tovah whirled. “Kevin?”

  It was Kevin, representing as his college self, but recognizable. He probably always represented like that. Still stuck in his past. She wasn’t surprised. He wore the shirt she’d bought him for their first Valentine’s Day. It flapped open over a T-shirt she also knew. His hair, longer than he’d worn it for years, hung in smooth black waves to his shoulders. She’d loved his hair like that.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Kevin looked around, hands on his hips. “I was just with Monica Godsey. We were getting ready to go waterskiing.”

  It wasn’t the most bizarre dream she’d ever heard, so she didn’t even bother trying to explain. There could be no good reason for him to be there now. “You should get back there, then.”

  “Don’t send him away on my account,” said Edward. “Since it seems you two are so cozy, and all.”

  His words made that true. Kevin’s embrace felt like coming home to her parents’ house after living away—like she’d once never been able to imagine living anyplace else while simultaneously unable to imagine how it had been to reside there. Tovah had been pushed before, against her will and with it. This was an odd combination of both. Edward was guiding Kevin, who didn’t know it, and shaping Tovah, who did.

  She didn’t fight Kevin’s arms around her, or Edward’s desire they be there. “Edward. Don’t do this.”

  “Who’s Edward?” Kevin, belligerent, jerked his chin toward the other man. “How does he know you?”

  He was college Kevin but she was still early-thirties Tovah, and this bit of posturing that might have seemed romantic back when his jealousy had meant something no longer appealed. She pushed out of his arms, standing between the two men. Edward, tall and broad, advanced. Kevin stood his ground.

  Edward sneered. “I’m the guy who’s been fucking her, that’s who I am.”

  Kevin put up his fists. “I’m her boyfriend, asshole!”

  “Stop it! Stop this right now!” Tovah put her hands up, holding them apart. “This is ridiculous!”

  “This is your ideal man?” Edward spit on the ground next to Tovah. “This is the best your will could dredge up?”

  “What the hell’s he talking about?” Kevin, still posturing, lowered his hands a little.

  “Kevin. You want to be waterskiing with Monica right now. Go back there. Find her.”

  “Not until I figure out what you’ve been doing with this jerk!”

  This dance would have been more absurd if she hadn’t felt the shifting shudder of the Ephemeros begin. Fear and anger, she thought. Fear and anger did this.

  “Edward. Don’t.”

  “Don’t what? Don’t let him try and get into it with me? I’ll take him down, no problem!” Kevin bounced