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were happy, when we were all happy? You, your wife, your daughter, your son? It can all come back. You can feel that way again. She can make you feel that way."

Frank laughed. "You're going to give me my family back?" he said. "Is that what you're telling me?"

"Not me," Myrnin said. "Not really. But I can make it all as it was, for you as well as me. You, of all people, should want that."

Frank's throat worked, as if he were swallowing something unpleasant. His eyes were bright and very, very cold. "So you're God now," he said. "You can bring back the dead."

"I can give you a new family. This girl can be your new daughter. We can find you a wife. I can make you forget. You'll never know the difference, and she'll forget all about who she once was."

"You really think that's tempting," Frank Collins said, very softly. "It's sick. My wife and daughter are dead, and you're not going to make me believe a lie. You're not going to pervert their memories. My son loves that girl, and I'm not letting you take her away from him, too."

Myrnin looked up, as if he'd sensed something. "It's too late," he said. "It's starting."

Claire heard the pitch of the machine's hum changing, shifting to something higher, more urgent. She felt a pulse of power from it, and something went weird in her head. Something she needed.

Something that held her in place in the world, in time, in space.

It hurt. It felt like her brain was being shredded, ripped in half, and memories spilled out in a silvery stream. She couldn't hold on to them; it was all just . . . noise.

The pain stopped, but something worse took over. Panic. Horror. Fear. She was looking at a room full of strangers. Scary people in a scary place. How had she gotten here? What was . . . what was happening? Where was she?

Why wasn't she at home?

No, that wasn't right. She knew them; she knew them all. That was Shane, getting to his feet . . . then everything shifted, and he was a boy she didn't know, dark-haired, dusty. A stranger. He started toward her, but then he wavered and stopped, and put his hands to his head as if it hurt. Hers still hurt, too. There was a sound, a weird sound that wasn't really there, wasn't really a sound at all, and she felt . . .

Lost. She felt so lost, and alone, and terrified.

It was like having mental double vision. She knew these people at some very basic level, but she'd also forgotten them. She didn't/ did know the man with the scarred face, and the boy reaching out to her, and the girl with the dark hair and the pale face, and the other golden-haired boy. She could see them in one way, with names and histories, but it kept fading out. Disappearing.

No. She didn't know anyone here, and she'd never felt so vulnerable and horrible in her life. She wanted to go home.

There was another stranger dressed in funky old Victorian clothes, like some steampunk wannabe, staring at her with big, dark eyes. He reached out for her, and she knew that wasn't right. Knew she had to stumble away from him, into the arms of the boy.

Another older, gray-haired man elbowed her out of the way and slammed the Victorian man into the wall, then dragged him out and down the tunnel. He was yelling at them all to follow. Claire didn't want to; she didn't trust them, any of them.

But the boy took her hand and said, "Trust me, Claire," and she felt something inside that had been howling in fear go quiet.

Another wall of pain slammed into her, and she almost went down. It was all going away, everything she was, everything. . . .

She fell to her knees and realized that she was kneeling next to a man with a scar on his face. He was trapped under a fallen metal pillar, and it looked bad, really bad. She tried to move it, but he reached out and caught her hand in his. "Claire," he said. "Get out of here. Do it now."

He let go and rummaged through a bag that had fallen next to him. He brought out something round and dark green, about the size of an apple.

Grenade. The word floated through her mind and dissolved into mist. There was some reason she should be