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CHAPTER TEN

Amanda-Abbey "woke" to find herself playing Barbie dolls in the den with Sharon. Daddy was in the other room—she could just barely see him in the kitchen corner with his long legs stretched out under the table, while he sat and watched her. She had no memory of where she had been, or of how she came to be playing with Sharon—and the dolls in her hands were doing something that made her stomach twist, although she didn't know why. It looked naughty and felt naughty. She moved the dolls apart and stared at her hands with dismay.

What happens, she wondered, when I'm not here? Why doesn't Sharon notice that I just woke up? What, she thought with a shudder, has my body been doing without me? 

She busily started putting clothes on her dolls, so that Sharon wouldn't interrupt her while she was thinking. She thought about Stranger.

Stranger had always seemed to be just a funny voice in her head, one that talked oddly and used a lot of words she didn't recognize, but Amanda-Abbey had always assumed Stranger was part of her imagination—like the elf had been. She had to wonder about the elf, however. Amanda-Abbey looked at the gold bracelet on her wrist and at her real mother's glass bead, and she wondered—

Maybe the elf was real. And if the elf was real, maybe Stranger was real, too.

Amanda-Abbey put down her dolls and dug her fingers into the cool, deep carpet. She stared at her hands, her odd, unpredictable hands, now pulling little bits of fiber out of the rug and rolling them into pills. Suppose—just suppose—Stranger is real. Then the place where she took me, the place where that awful girl with the flying knives and whips and stuff was hiding behind her walls, was real, too. 

Stranger is inside of me. Is the awful girl? Is that what happens to me when I'm not here? The awful girl comes out? 

"Don't pick at the carpet," her step-mother said, walking into the room. "That's destructive."

Amanda-Abbey stopped and began to put her dolls away. She needed to get away, to think. There were things going on that she didn't understand, but she wanted to find Stranger and talk to her if she could. She wanted to be alone when she started looking for her. For some reason, it seemed important to be alone for that.

"You said you'd play with me," Sharon whined.

"I already did play with you," Amanda-Abbey said, hoping this was true.

Now the whine was joined by a pout. "Not long enough."

Amanda-Abbey decided that it was time to be firm. "Yes, long enough. I have stuff to do." When the pout continued, she tried coaxing instead of ordering. "Why don't you watch Turtles, now? I bet they're on."

The pout turned scornful. "I already watched Turtles—they were on this mornin', dummy butthead. They're not on in the afternoon."

Amanda-Abbey shrugged and finished shoving her dolls and doll clothes back into their storage case. "Watch something else. I gotta go clean my room." She got up and started for the stairs.

"I want someone to play with me," Sharon wailed.

From the kitchen, Daddy leaned around the corner and looked past Amanda-Abbey to Sharon. He said, "I'll play with you, honey. Just give me a minute to finish my coffee."

Something about Daddy wanting to play with Sharon all of a sudden worried Amanda-Abbey, but she didn't know what it was. Her stomach twisted, as it had when she saw what she was doing with the Barbie dolls. Confused, she walked to the stairs and up them, trailing her doll case. The stairs, too, made her feel a little funny. It seemed that today everything in the house made her feel a little funny. Amanda-Abbey decided that she was probably getting the flu like Bobby Smithers in her art class, and next she'd have a fever and be puking on everybody.

She'd worry about that when it happened. Right now, she wanted to find Stranger if she could. She wanted to see if Stranger was real.

In her room, she stretched out on her bed and looked out her windows. The clouds outside were low and dark, and for a moment she expected to see rain—but there was none. She didn't know why, but this surprised her.

She lay very still. If she were someone else hiding in her body, where would she hide? She watched the clouds scudding by and wiggled her fingers tentatively. :Stranger?: she asked.

There was no answer.

:Stranger?: She closed her eyes and tried to hear the voice with its funny accent. :Stranger? Are you there?: 

:Aye, lass, I'm here. What are ye' huntin', then?: 

:I was looking for you—: Her thought faltered. It occurred to Amanda-Abbey that it was probably rude to ask someone to prove that they were real. Still, if she didn't ask, she wouldn't know. :Are you just my imagination, Stranger?: she asked.

:Nay, I'm not that. I'm as real as you are—how real that is, I've no more way of knowin' than you.: 

With her eyes still tightly closed, Amanda-Abbey tried to see where the voice was coming from. She got impressions of a shadow, the outline of a woman—

:If you're wantin' to see me, I'll give you a light, child. Before this, you nay wanted to look at me.: 

Amanda-Abbey considered that. It was, she realized, quite true. She never had wanted to see the face that went with the odd voice—not even the time she had seen that horrifying other girl, the frightening child behind all those walls. She had not looked into Stranger's eyes even when they had escaped, not even when the woman's arms had been around her, comforting her.

White fire cascaded in waves from the darkness, until she saw Stranger clearly. Amanda-Abbey stared at her, devoured the woman's features with her eyes—and suddenly knew why she had been afraid to see her.

Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she had been afraid that Stranger would look just like her, and that this would prove what she had suspected when she first started hearing the voice—it would prove that she was crazy. Amanda-Abbey knew stories of people who heard voices and were locked up.

Like my real mama. That's what Father said. 

But there had been another fear, equally deep, equally bad. She had also been afraid that, even though the voice belonged to a stranger, the face would belong to her mother—her real mother, who was dead—and that this would mean she was seeing ghosts. She wanted her real mother back, but did not want her back as a ghost.

Stranger looked like no one she had ever seen. The woman was short and extraordinarily pale, with a long dark braid and a pointed, pixielike face; her clothes were funny, too, like they were made out of kitchen towels or horse blankets pinned together. She smiled, and Amanda-Abbey nervously smiled back.

:Hi. I'm Abbey.: 

The woman nodded politely. :I know you. Merry meet,: she added. :I am named Cethlenn.: 

Cethlenn. Not Stranger, Amanda-Abbey thought. She rolled the name on her tongue a few times. The woman looked real enough standing there in that short cape that was nothing more than a horsehide with round pins holding it on, with her boots looking like something she'd made herself. Yes, she does look real enough, Amanda-Abbey thought, At least while my eyes are closed. Experimentally, she opened her eyes. The woman vanished. She closed her eyes. Cethlenn still stood there.

:Prove you're real,: Amanda-Abbey demanded. Inside, what she was hoping was that Cethlenn would prove she was not crazy.

The woman nodded. :Fair enough. Get up and walk to your mirror. Look at yoursel' in't, an' say what ye see.: 

Amanda-Abbey followed these directions—and found herself staring at her reflection. :I see me, of course.: 

From over her shoulder, it seemed, Cethlenn said, :Quite right. Now, close your eyes and imagine that ye stand behind my shoulder, and let me look in the mirror.: 

Amanda-Abbey found this difficult to accomplish. Several times, right when she was sure she had it right, she opened her eyes just at the wrong moment and found that nothing had changed. When finally she got it right, she didn't even know it until Cethlenn said, :There. See?: 

She opened her eyes and discovered, to her surprise, that the eyes had opened already. She had the feeling that she was standing behind Cethlenn. When she moved her arms, they felt just fine, but the arms, the ones attached to the body which she could see quite plainly in the mirror, did nothing.

:Oh!: she cried out, and no sound came out of the mouth. The face that was and was not hers said, "See? I'm real."

She looked on in fascination as the arms moved without her will, as the lips smiled, as the eyes—brown eyes—blinked in a rhythm different from her own. The face in the mirror looked unaccountably fierce, and though the hair was still blond, and the skin still had a little of last summer's tan to it, she could see that the person inside was Cethlenn.

:Oh, Cethlenn, you are real!: she said, with a rush of joyous relief. And, suddenly bewildered, she asked, :But why are you here?: 

The face in the mirror looked back at her, and the uncertainty reflected there matched her own. "Och, child," Cethlenn whispered, "I have na' the faintest idea to that. I dinna even remember how I got here. I only wish I knew what I was supposed to do now that I'm here."

The trip back to Lianne's apartment was mostly silent. Maclyn stared at the road that unfolded ahead of them—Lianne leaned back on Rhellen's soft gold upholstery with her eyes closed and pretended to sleep. Maclyn didn't expose her pretense for what it was—he didn't particularly want to talk anyway.

Old Gwaryon was dead—weird old Gwaryon, with his fascination for ancient human cultures and his reputedly bizarre personal habits—who had been a part of Maclyn's life since his birth. Dierdre had liked Gwaryon, had seen some value in his tedious memorization of long-dead human languages and his eccentric love of human books and his freakish emulation of long-outdated human fashions. She'd thought the old elf bright and funny and clever, and so Maclyn had grown up surrounded by his elvish imitations of human worlds that—Mac suspected—bore only a faint resemblance to the long-gone realities. Dierdre had lent these suspicions some truth when, to young Maclyn's unending questions, she would admit nothing but that Gwaryon preferred to see only the good in every human culture and work.

Old Gwaryon had, in his way, been a friend. He had died bravely—but not well. In Maclyn's estimation, there was no way to die well. Dead was dead, and the longer one put that state off, the better.

And that brought him to Felouen. What of Felouen?

The image of his mother dragging Felouen's unmoving body through the temporary Gate he'd made into the Grove of Elfhame Outremer left a queasy hollow in his stomach and made every breath painful. What of Felouen? He felt she was still alive—he thought that surely her death would have left a bigger ache in him than the one he carried right then. She had said that she had been waiting for the one she loved for hundreds of years and had implied that she loved him. He glanced anxiously over at Lianne, whose eyes were still closed—and he allowed himself to acknowledge the deep and painful yearning for Felouen he intentionally ignored, the one that came roaring back to life every time he saw her.

It was a yearning, he had to admit, that invariably and promptly got quenched by Felouen's stiff-necked, hard-headed, do-it-or-die approach to every damn thing. Witness her insistence on dumping him with a Ring.

Unconsciously, his fingers made their own way into his jeans' pocket and pulled out the scrap of silk in which the Ring resided. Felouen was wounded, maybe dying—he didn't know if she would survive. She had wanted him to wear the Ring, had wanted him to be her knight.

He started feeling a little guilty. It hadn't been that much to ask of him—just that he accept the role of one sworn to uphold the Seleighe Court's edicts. It wasn't as if he had to start walking perimeter on guard duty if he wore the damn thing. It would, he thought, have made her happy if he had worn the Ring. Hell, Korindel, over in Misthold—California—wore his Knight's Ring openly and constantly, and he spent most of his time in the human world.

Against his better judgment, he slipped the carved gold band on.

Nothing happened. There, he thought, that wasn't so bloody difficult, was it? Show a bit of respect for your own folk, show a bit of backbone, stand up against the Unseleighe things—you'll still survive it. Plenty have before you—that's how they earned their high places in the Council. 

It isn't driving race cars—but then, what is? It's probably less dangerous to be one of the Ring-wearers than it is to drive race cars. 

The dull gleam of the gold ring on his right index finger mocked that last assertion.

Rhellen pulled into the apartment parking lot.

"Wake up, baby," Mac said, in deference to her act.

She barely stirred. "Mmmph."

He shook her, gently. "We're home. Time to get moving."

One slit eye glowered at him. "I'll wake up in a minute."

"Okay." He paused, on the brink of delicate negotiations. "Lianne, I know you have some classwork you need to finish. And we didn't find out anything that we can use to get Amanda out of that house a minute sooner—but maybe Felouen did. She was out there at Amanda's tree before we got there, and somehow all of this feels tied together. While you grade papers or whatever it is you have to do, I'm going home to check on Mother and Felouen. If I find out anything useful, I'll stop by later and let you know."

Instead of looking disappointed, Lianne looked relieved. "That sounds fine, Mac. Tell you what—unless you find out something earth-shattering, why don't you just stop by tomorrow morning. I feel like making an early night of it."

Perversely, Maclyn's feelings were hurt. "I'll be happy to spend the night—" he started.

She waved him off with one slender hand. "Actually, Mac, the idea of having the bed to myself for a night sounds appealing. I want peace and absolute quiet. I want to think for a while—and I also want to scrounge around the house and not have to worry about how I look or how I act or what I do. I'm a bit too tired to be social."

"Well," he pouted, ignoring for the moment the fact that the outcome was exactly what he had hoped to accomplish, "if that's really what you want . . ."

She nodded. "Yeah, I think so. Gimme a kiss and I'll see you tomorrow."

When Maclyn drove off, he noticed that she hadn't even stayed outside long enough to wave good-bye—something she almost always did. Maybe, he thought, she's mad at me for something. He pondered that notion while he and Rhellen drove toward the permanent Gate the elves had hidden in the center of the Grove on 15-401, out back of the Beauty Spot Missionary Baptist Church.

Maybe, he decided at last, she's pissed off at me because I didn't thank her for saving my ass out there in the woods today—and neither did Mother. That, he thought, was a good possibility. He would have been pissed if the situations had been reversed and no one had thanked him.

It was just that elves didn't often have occasion to think of frail human women in the role of rescuer. Ah, well—he supposed in this case, he'd better show up with an apology offering first thing in the morning.

The Grove spread in front of him. Rhellen drove off-road, carefully picking his way. As soon as the car was well into the trees, Rhellen shifted, and the two of them charged through the Gate into Elfhame Outremer.

Even though the on-again-off-again rain might be annoying if one had to be out there in it, it made ideal sleeping weather, Belinda decided. Too much of a good thing, though, would get her in trouble. She rolled over and stared at her clock.

It was a bit past two in the afternoon, and she had just finished a well-earned nap that had left her feeling better than she had anticipated, by a long shot. Her head still ached, but less than it had when she went to sleep. Still, she was going to have to get all her hair chopped off, which was damned depressing.

And Mel wasn't happy with her, which depressed her more. An unhappy Mel was a dangerous Mel. She couldn't spend a great deal of time worrying about him, however. She had her afternoon plans mapped out. Worry wasn't on her list.

Screw Mel, she finally decided. Then she laughed. It would probably solve a few of my problems if I did. I'll bet the little bastard is kinky as hell, though; that's one of those personal details about my employer I'd rather not discover firsthand. Belinda's personal sexual preference was abstention—a fact that would have surprised any number of people. Including, no doubt, her employer.

Ah, well. She stretched, then lay under the covers a few minutes longer, lazing. She had to spend some time with her modem and laptop computer. She needed to access files on the Kendricks and see what bounced. Then she needed to get herself looking good again. There was a salon out by the mall that was open nearly all the time. She could go there without an appointment and get her hair clipped and styled in some fashion that hid her new bald spot. Then she could get the kind of clothes that would make her look like a well-heeled member of the horsey set, and she could visit the Kendrick stables—get a close-up look at her target and the obstacles she would be facing.

Let's see: to do this right, you gotta walk the walk and talk the talk. Belinda had spent some time on a job pretending to be a rich woman who wanted to be part of California's moneyed crew, and that meant an interest in horses. And not just any horses, either. She rehearsed vocabulary. Breeding terms: broodmare, stallion. Buying terms: colt, filly, yearling. Good on those. How about words for things to look for when buying. Ah, good legs . . . hmm. Yeah, that includes fetlocks and hocks, pasterns, withers—no, the withers is that hump on the back up near the neck. Riding things: good gaits—brisk walk, comfortable trot, springy gallop, and . . . easy canter. Performing things—uh—dressage training, jumper, cross-country— 

She carried on mentally in that mode for several more minutes, then called up an online encyclopedia from her laptop computer. She searched by keywords—horse, Arabian, Andalusian, stud, all things she'd need with an Arabian breeder—and scrutinized the entries until she was sure she could pass herself off in that unused persona again.

Then she stretched and crawled out of bed.

Out of habit, she scanned the room, and her attention fixed on the door. It bothered her that Mel had broken in with so little difficulty, had caught her off guard so easily. While she showered, she wondered if she was losing her skills. God knew, she hadn't managed to pull in the racecar driver, whose IQ had to be on a par with that of a Boston fern or cold mashed potatoes. She didn't give herself any breaks because of the extenuating circumstances. There were always extenuating circumstances.

While she dried herself off, she entertained herself with the television. A news teaser caught her attention with the "bizarre drug-related death" of "two gay men" whose bodies had been found in a roadside motel—details at six. She cheered up again. After all, she decided, for every one wrong thing she did, she also accomplished a multitude of right ones.

Once she was dry and dressed, she hacked around the Fayetteville school system's computer setup, running one up and one down from the long list of phone numbers, until she got in. Security was weak, and very forgiving of errors—for that, she grinned. It was so much easier to break into schools than into, oh, police departments, say, or restricted installations.

Once she was into the system, she ran a search for any Kendrick files, cross-reffing with the Bal-A-Shar Stables address. In a moment, she had a match.

Kendrick, Amanda, was the name of the kid she'd seen. She was on the verge of adolescence; her records indicated plenty of personality disturbances, some of them pretty odd, her grades and teachers' comments marked her with all the stigmata of the erratic genius. And she was part of a "blended family"—a term Belinda considered a euphemistic hype.

Blended family. Right. Mom has one, Dad has one, and now we are four. Sure we are. More stress, which, according to Mel, made for psi-powers popping out.

Plus you made my little black box happy, kid.

The information she had turned up was good enough for Belinda. She disconnected her modem and reconnected the hotel room's phone, then picked up the Fayetteville phone directory and located "Kendrick's Bal-A-Shar Stables" in the Yellow Pages. "By Appointment Only," the ad announced clearly. Belinda called.

A clipped, feminine voice answered on the other end after the third ring. "Bal-A-Shar Arabians, Merryl Kendrick speaking."

Belinda affected her persona from the old California job. "Mrs. Kendrick, this is Alessandra Whitchurch-Snowdon," she said in the upper-class Brit accent that could only be obtained by speaking without moving the lips. "I've recently moved to the States, and I'm looking for a yearling filly, probably green-broken, with good conformation and potential as a dressage contender. Your stables were highly recommended to me, but I'd like to come have a look, informally, before I go any further. Even if you don't have fillies suitable now, if your establishment impresses me, I'm willing to wait to look at the new crop in the fall." Belinda grinned at the phone. Come on, snob appeal, she thought. The Brit accent had never failed to get her access among the wealthy yet—something, she suspected, to do with making the local upper-class feel like provincials who needed to prove themselves.

It didn't let her down this time, either. "Yes, certainly, Ms.—ah?"

"Alessandra Whitchurch-Snowdon. But it's Lady Rivers."

"I see." 

Belinda saw, too. She could see the dollar signs clicking merrily in the other woman's eyes, but more, she could see the other woman sampling the prestige factor possibly offered by her name. "Oh, yes, Lady Rivers rides Bal-A-Shar Arabians," she pictured Mrs. Kendrick imagining telling her other clients.

The woman came very close to concealing her eagerness—but not close enough for Belinda. "When would you like to see the horses?"

A little more pressure. "Have you an indoor theatre?" Implying that anyone who didn't wasn't worth visiting.

Eagerness became avarice at the hot prospect. "An indoor arena? Certainly."

"Splendid," Belinda replied. "Then would tonight be too much of a bother—say, nine?"

Avarice became anticipation. "That would be fine."

Belinda allowed her voice to warm. "Lovely, then. I'll be off."

Anticipation swelled. "Ah, yes. I'll look for you at nine."

Belinda hung up the phone and laughed merrily. One every minute—and, boy, did she know how to jump 'em through the hoops. P.T. Barnum would have loved her.

She slipped into some dressy clothes—for shopping later in the "right" stores—and trotted off for the hairdresser's, happy as a blacksnake in a nest of baby rabbits. We're back in business, now, babe, she thought. Oh, yeah. 

As soon as Mac was out of sight, Lianne darted out of the apartment and took off for the discount bookstore that was hidden away in one of the town's indoor malls. When she got there, she hunted down Jimmy, her favorite bookseller. She found him crouched down inside the cash wrap, sorting special orders.

"Lianne McCormick!" His eyes lit up when he saw her, and he gave her a warm smile. "Nice to see you again. Dare I hope that you have given up dating car jockeys?"

She flushed. "I'm still dating, uh, Mac Lynn."

He sighed. "So the answer to my question is `no.' What a waste of a woman with brains." He stood and leaned against the counter, his expression mock-wistful. "You ought to give some of us bright guys a chance."

Lianne glared up at him. "I've seen those creatures you date. All big bleached hair and legs up to their ears—so don't you feed me that line about looking for `women with brains.' Now, I want everything you have on child abuse."

"Change the subject, why don't you?" Jimmy stroked his goatee and stared off into space. "Well . . . child abuse? Ugh! That's a nasty subject." He propped his elbows on the cash wrap. "Not thinking of taking up another new hobby, are you?"

Her glare became truly vicious, and he backed down.

"Just a joke," he said, and tried a placating waggle of the eyebrows. "Really. I don't normally make jokes about that subject, but you looked so—ah—threatening."

"The books."

"Foot-in-mouth, huh? Sorry. I won't joke anymore." He headed back toward the psychology section. "I think we actually might have a few. They'll either be in Psychology, or True-Crime, or—um, Biography. I just remembered one that's pretty highly recommended."

He pulled a thick paperback off a shelf and handed it to Lianne.

"When Rabbit Howls," she read aloud. "By the Troops for Truddi Chase?"

He made a "you've got me," gesture. "Abuse, a woman with multiple personalities—all kinds of stuff. I haven't read it, but several of my customers have. They told me I ought to, but I wasn't into getting depressed right then. It's apparently all true. And pretty awful."

Lianne nodded. "I'll take it. Anything else?"

He pursed his lips and thought. "We have a couple on adult children of abusive parents, one on alcohol and abuse—and a few novels have started dealing with the subject, even fantasy stuff from Baen." He pulled the books that the store stocked and handed them to her with a sigh. "There isn't a great deal on that subject available yet outside of special order or hardbound." He jammed his hands into his pants pockets and rocked back on his heels. "Why the sudden interest?"

She decided it was better not to let the cat out of the bag yet. Kendrick was a lawyer—and there was such a thing as "defamation of character." "There's a kid in one of my classes—I'm just suspicious, you know?"

He nodded. "I hope you find what you need."

"Thanks." She paid for her small stack of books and got ready to leave.

Books in hand, Lianne felt a sense of relief related to the feeling that she was beginning to accomplish something. She looked at the bookseller with her sense of humor renewed. "By the way, that pinstriped suit makes you look like a gangster," she remarked.

Jimmy grinned and bowed with mock-gallantry. "Wanna see my violin case?"

Lianne returned his grin and headed out the door.

Maclyn found Dierdre just behind the Gate of a Thousand Voices, sitting next to the singing water-flames and staring into their depths.

"How are you, Mother?" he asked, resting a hand on her shoulder.

She kept her eyes turned to the blazes that darted through the fountain in their ever-changing dance. "I'm better than I was, but feeling my age."

"You aren't looking it."

Maclyn was rewarded by the soft half-curve of her smile, seen in profile. "Ask what you're wantin' to ask, laddie, and spare me your silver-tongued flatteries."

He came straight to the point. "How's Felouen?"

Dierdre—he couldn't think of her as D.D., not when she looked like this—sighed. "In pain—more of the spirit than of the body now, I suspect—but pain hurts no less when it stabs the soul."

Maclyn recalled seeing Gwaryon with Felouen a time or two and remembered the infatuated expression the older elf had worn on those occasions. "She and Gwaryon were—?" Maclyn couldn't bring himself to finish the question.

His mother understood him anyway. "No. Gwaryon loved her; she was his friend. But his death hurts her more than her own remaining wounds."

He rubbed his temple, wondering which would do the most good—leaving her alone, or going to her. "Where could I find her?"

Dierdre nodded to her left. "She was still resting in the Grove when I left."

Maclyn swung onto Rhellen's back with a fluid motion. "I'll find you later, Mother. We need to talk—but I want to see Felouen before then."

He found her where Dierdre had said she would be. She was alone. She knelt with her forehead pressed against the base of the Grove's heart-tree, still dressed in the tattered remains of the clothes she'd worn earlier. He saw her shoulders heave and realized she was crying soundlessly. His chest tightened and he felt a lump in his throat. He wanted, at that moment, to put his arms around her and hold her.

The cynical voice at the back of his brain commented that this was most likely because this was the first time in his life that he had seen her looking like anything but the seamless and indomitable warrior-maiden.

He quelled his doubts and knelt beside her. Hesitantly, he rested a hand on the small of her back. Felouen froze. Maclyn had seen the same response in deer caught in Rhellen's headlights. "It's only me," he said.

She looked over at him quickly, not relaxing even slightly, and he saw that her eyes were red and swollen. "I—I—" she started, and her voice faltered. "G-g-gwaryon—" she choked out, and fresh tears streamed down her cheeks.

Aw, hell, Maclyn thought, and pulled her against his chest. "I know," he whispered, holding her and rocking her against him.

She cried against him like that for a long time. When finally the tears were all wrung out of her, she started to talk, still keeping herself pressed firmly against him.

"We felt the summons together," she said. "He was watching at the Pool with me." She gave him the details, what she and Gwaryon were talking about, the things Gwaryon had said. Maclyn let her ramble.

"This child called us," she said, and abruptly he found himself listening with complete interest again. "She looked like a child, but she wasn't really—she said she was Cethlenn, a witch who had lived back when the elves were still only on the other side of the sea, back when someone named MacLurrie was a leader of the Celts."

"I don't know that I've heard of him," Maclyn waffled. History had never been one of his strengths.

A single faint flicker of a smile crossed Felouen's lips. "Don't feel too bad. I didn't remember hearing of him, either. He was, according to Gwaryon, a pompous, overblown human warlord who died long before we were born—in the days when you could call yourself a king if you commanded more than a dozen men."

"Ah," Maclyn said. "That explains it." But her choice of words in describing Amanda puzzled him. "What about the child, though? You said she was . . . a witch?"

Felouen looked just as puzzled and confused. "Her body was a child's body, that was what was so strange. She was very young, even by human standards. Very thin and frail-looking, with pale hair and brown eyes. But she knew the old magics, and her speech was from the Old Country. She talked about people that Gwaryon recognized. I did not feel that she intended us any harm. Truly."

If Felouen hadn't sensed any intended harm, there hadn't been any. "Then what happened?"

"That was the strangest thing of all." Felouen pulled away and leaned against the heart-tree, gathering strength. "She started to tell us why she had called us—but something stopped her. There were two voices warring in her, and a sort of awful battle that I saw going on in her face. It was frightening. Her face seemed to change as I watched, so that one instant she was one person, the next, someone else entirely. The closest I can describe, is that it was as if we were watching a possession, a war for control between the witch and something else. And in the end, the witch lost the battle. When the child looked at us again, she looked like someone completely different—completely mad—and her eyes had become a green so pale they were almost white. That mad creature summoned the golems from a bead she wore around her wrist—from the Unformed."

"That was Amanda," Maclyn whispered, his uneasy feeling confirmed.

Felouen turned to stare at him. "You know her—or them?"

Maclyn pulled at a tuft of grass near his knee. "Them . . . yes. That explains the day at the racetrack. That explains everything—" He hugged Felouen again, this time in relief. "There really is more than one person in that child's body. I've met several of them, but I don't know if they've met each other."

Felouen put a hand on his cheek, then hugged him back. "I'm glad you came here," she whispered.

"I was worried about you," Maclyn admitted, serious again. "I was afraid you were going to die."

She shuddered convulsively. "I almost did, Mac. I was standing with the Abyss in front of me, and I started to step onto the glowing bridge—but the singing called me back." She started crying again. "I wasn't going to come—but somehow, standing there, I remembered you. I suppose it wasn't time for me yet."

Mac found his voice suddenly hoarse. "Don't leave again. If you face the edge of the Abyss, walk away." He held her tighter.

She pressed her face into his chest, trembling. "I will, Maclyn. I promise."

Amanda-Abbey lay on her bed with her eyes closed and talked silently to Cethlenn. :The other one, the crazy one—is she one of us, really?: 

:Aye,: came the grim reply. :She's real enough.: 

Amanda-Abbey shuddered. :She's so—bad.: 

:She is that, too. But she has been through things you canna' imagine, child—she has taken all the pain in your life so that you wouldna' have any. Fear and pain are all she knows, and if she has learned to fight, she's paid, and plenty, for the knowledge.: 

Amanda-Abbey remembered the sick feelings she'd had earlier. :I don't know what you mean,: she said.

Cethlenn's expression darkened. :There are times when you have bruises—when you hurt and don't know why—when things that you don't understand scare you—: the witch began slowly.

Amanda knew what the witch meant now. :Like the Father.: 

Cethlenn nodded agreement. :Exactly like the Father. You don't know how you got those bruises, or why you hurt, or why the Father scares you—but she knows. Her name is Anne, and she is very frightened, and very brave. And in her own confused way, she loves you.: 

Amanda-Abbey wrinkled her nose. :I didn't like her. She scares me.: 

:You ought to be scared. She's very dangerous, and sometimes she doesn't know who is trying to hurt her and who is trying to help her. The only person she trusts is herself, because that is the only person she knows won't hurt her.: Cethlenn sat closer to Amanda-Abbey and whispered, :She scares me, too.: 

Amanda-Abbey sighed. That was an uncomfortable revelation. :Is she the only other one?: 

Cethlenn shook her head. :No. There are others.: 

That was even more uncomfortable. :Are they all like her?: 

:They are as different as you and I,: Cethlenn assured her.

Amanda-Abbey thought about that for a while. At last she said, :Are there any I could meet?: 

Cethlenn considered the question. :Those of you who I know are Anne, Alice, you—and Amanda. There may be others who are hiding. Anne hid from me for a long time, until she realized that she was stronger than I am.: Cethlenn seemed to think of something, and she frowned abruptly. :You can't meet Amanda, I'm afraid.: 

There was something ominous in Cethlenn's expression. She was afraid to ask, but she did anyway. :Why not?: 

Cethlenn answered, after a reluctant pause. :Amanda stays in a very cold place, and she never moves, and she never speaks—I'm not sure that she's really still alive. She is—or was—very young. Something terrible happened to her when she was three, and that was when she went away, and you and Anne were born.: 

Amanda-Abbey's body tensed. :What about—um, Alice?: 

Cethlenn seemed relieved that she didn't ask anything else. :Alice goes to church with Them on Sundays, and keeps your room all cleaned up, and makes sure you don't get your clothes very dirty. There are many things that she, too, has done to protect you. But I don't know that you will like her. Still, I think that you must meet her. If you can work together, I think we can beat Them.: 

A thought niggled at the back of Amanda-Abbey's mind, which grew larger and uglier and began to worry her deeply. :Cethlenn,: she whispered, :if they have these things they do to protect me, what do I do for them?: 

Cethlenn smiled sadly. :You're the one, child, who learns her school lessons, plays with her friends, and makes everyone outside of your family believe everything is all right. Anne decided that you couldna' tell what you didna' know, and protected you, so that you could protect them.: A tear formed at the corner of the witch's eye, and she wiped it away with a preoccupied swipe. :Alice protects you by believing things you might ask questions about, so that you don't get into trouble there—and by keeping your room and your things exactly the way the Step-Mother wants them so that there are fewer reasons to punish you. They have no life except for keeping you from the ugliness and the brutality and the pain that they know. You keep up the disguise tha' keeps them alive. Even so, they want to live.: 

Cethlenn's voice grew hoarse, and her expression grew far away. :It's the only thing any of us wants, at the end.: 

The red-haired woman who stepped out of the late-model Thunderbird and strode across the gravel to the Bal-A-Shar barn bore little resemblance to the somewhat battered woman who had left a cheap hotel room for the beauty salon only a few hours earlier. "Alessandra Whitchurch-Snowdon, Lady Rivers," complete with expensive-looking business cards, wore her shoulder-length hair in a neat french braid, and affected riding boots, jodhpurs, a lean tweedy jacket with leather patches on the elbows, and a high-necked silk blouse. She carried herself with the effortless confidence that access to unlimited funds and a high social standing seem to confer. She managed to convey, in her cool, clipped accent, wry amusement at American cars which had their steering wheels on the wrong side, American roads which were positively rampant with insane drivers and impossible rules, and American restaurants, which didn't know how the hell to serve tea ("they serve it over ice, my dear, and sweet!"), or what went with it ("everything over here tastes like it's been bathed in sugar"). She saved her compliments for the horses.

Within ten minutes, Merryl and "Alessandra" were on a first nickname basis, ("Dear, I'm only Lady Rivers to the poor—my closest friends call me Bits,") and were comparing points on the three two-year-old fillies Merryl was offering. "Alessandra" narrowed the choices down to two, and then it became a matter of pedigree.

They returned the horses to their stalls, "Alessandra" making sure she watched gait and conformation even as they were led away, and then headed back to the house to flip through the pedigrees that Merryl kept up with on her computer.

After a thorough study of the pedigrees, for both of which the delighted "Lady Rivers" received laser-printed hard copies—"Want to see what both of the girls could offer to my breeding program before I settle on one, don't I?"—Merryl gave her a guided tour of the house.

"Cozier than the ancestral pile back home, don't you know?" the ersatz noblewoman offered about halfway through the tour. "You wouldn't believe the chilling effect suits of armor have on one if one happens to be wandering about the place in the wee hours. But nobody will let me change the bloody decorating scheme. National Trust, don't you know."

Prices for each of the two horses were discussed and agreed upon in between rooms—there was no dickering. This appeared to hearten the seller greatly.

The two women parted with "Bits" promising to make up her mind in the next day or so, and ring back with her decision. Both women were smiling as they went their separate ways.

Lianne skimmed the abuse texts first, and was surprised to find that they were more help than she'd anticipated. They outlined signs and symptoms of abuse that went farther than just noting bruises with regular outlines, or a high incidence of broken bones, E.R. visits, or days absent from school. They also outlined personality traits—from constant timidity, clinging behavior, or a desperate search for anyone's approval, to erratic school performances.

One book focused almost exclusively on child sexual abuse, and Lianne was surprised to find that sexual abuse of children did not have to include intercourse. Inappropriate touching or kissing, verbal abuse with sexual overtones, and some forms of humiliation were all forms of sexual abuse. She was appalled to find that a shocking number of children were sexually abused—statistics varied slightly, but according to her books, by the time they reached adulthood, roughly one out of every five girls and one out of every nine boys would have encountered sexual abuse. Most sexual abusers were also alcoholics, and almost all of them were men.

Abuse of all kinds ran in families, with a high percentage of abused children growing up to be abusers. It was agreed in all of her sources that the biggest hope for eliminating child abuse of any kind was to treat the children who had been abused, soon, so that they in turn would not continue the cycle.

Lianne curled on the couch, lost in the horror of the raw numbers. The odds were that Amanda was being sexually abused—she fit many of the characteristics of abused kids, though not all at the same time. Even worse, the odds were incredibly high that Amanda not only wasn't the first abused child Lianne had in her class, but that she wasn't the only abused kid in her class right then.

I didn't know, Lianne thought. She felt sick. Dammit, I just didn't know.

There had to be something she could do. Maybe I could lobby to have some sort of abuse-detection program added to our curriculum. Let the kids who are being abused know that abuse is not their fault—never their fault—and find some way to tell them that they aren't alone. The books had said that children felt—or were told until they believed it—that they had somehow caused the abuse. It also said kids thought such things had never happened to anyone but them. And sometimes—this made her gorge rise—they thought it was normal. That things like this did happen to everyone else, and that there would be no reason why anyone would help them. They were often told no one would believe what the children said. Those were apparently the biggest reasons why kids didn't go to someone for help.

Another was that they were afraid that something bad would happen to their parents. They didn't realize that the abuse was as bad for their parents as it was for them—that their parents needed help, too.

They could come to me, Lianne thought. And there are always a few teachers in any school that the kids know they can trust. Those are the people they should tell. 

Lianne stretched out on the couch, staring out the glass doors of her apartment at the quad and the faintly greening trees, and the few bits of dull gray sky that showed around the other apartment buildings. Someone would listen—someone would believe them. And then they would get help. 

She felt emotionally depleted, but she picked up the Truddi Chase biography anyway, and was drawn into it almost immediately.

When she finally put it down, hours later, it was dark outside, and the wind had picked up again. She shuddered and drew the curtains across the glass doors.

That Truddi Chase had managed to survive her ordeal in any form whatsoever spoke for the strength of the human spirit. That she had gone on to make a life for herself left Lianne feeling very weak and insignificant in comparison. I feel almost guilty that I had such an easy life. 

Lianne had a bad moment when she realized she could see similarities in things she read about Truddi Chase and things she saw in Amanda. Changes in personality, in abilities, in attitudes toward her and other teachers and the girl's classmates—she'd seen all of them.

Could Amanda be a multiple personality case? It seemed more than a little farfetched. But if she was, what sort of life could have fractured her into those multiples?

The door rang, and Lianne sighed with relief. He's found something, then. Good. After reading When Rabbit Howls, she wasn't as eager to spend the night by herself as she had been.

She opened the door with a grateful smile on her face.

"Hi!" a masked stranger said, and wedged her riding boot into the door. "I saw your boyfriend wasn't here, so I thought I'd pay you a visit."

She shoved her way inside with her gun aimed at Lianne's midsection the whole time, and closed the door before Lianne had any time to react.

"Just us girls together," the intruder said cheerfully, and pulled back the hammer with an ominous click.

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Framed