“How many sparks did you have to fling to extend visiting hours this late?” Across the table, Yana smiles in the most exhausted way imaginable as she curls a finger slowly around the same blonde lock of hair over and over. She looks a lot better than when I made sure she was sent here. Her eyes aren’t puffy from crying herself to sleep every night. The dark circles under them are gone, too.

She looks great for someone who has spent over a year being quite heavily rehabilitated. I’ve come in a few times to help. Without her . . . drippings getting in the way, my sparks have actually been able to get through. I haven’t done it much, but it’s helped.

Of course, it’s fairly amusing that the free woman sitting across from her no doubt looks more exhausted and sleep deprived than she does is fairly amusing. “None, actually. Well . . . once I got here anyway. I told them if I didn’t visit it would break up your routine. They took to that excuse pretty well. Plus, lets face it, you’ve made a lot of progress, especially in the past six months. I’ll be honest, I wanted you to get better, but I only had distant hopes that you could. Right now, I’d have to say parts of you are better adjusted than I am . . .”

“Just parts . . . but they said my next psych evaluation might lead to an early parole, or even just a release. My circumstances aren’t exactly like most, and with all your help to corroborate the Nesatealia, to . . . everything.” She sighs, staring down at the table. She’s so tall, but when she sinks forward like this, all bunched up, she looks three feet tall in seven inch heels.

“Yeah, you can understand how most doctors won’t immediately believe anything you have to say about an evil family of witches, even in a city like Midas. I’m just glad you tried that here, or that Quillspawn tried that here, instead of somewhere else . . .” My words must have touched on something, because she tenses tighter than the fake snakes inside a can o’ mixed nuts. Of course, it could be nervousness over the possibility of being free.

I’ve been inside of her mind. My sparks can’t let me see inside of her like Mystic’s power can, and I can’t even get a real empathic link, but I can feel the honesty in her words, and the helpless shudder to her lips accentuates it perfectly. Quillspawn did a lot of things she didn’t even want to do at the time.

So, she’s been a prisoner for at least six years, likely more. The thought of being wholly free again must seem terrifying. I know that’s part of the reason I didn’t want Chronos to be disassembled.

Yana’s hand drops away from her hair, as the other resumes its work only on the other side. “Yeah . . . With all of the mental manipulation, they’re likely to believe it less! . . . and I’m glad too. I’m glad you broke her mirror. I’m glad that you burned the book, I’m glad . . . I’m glad that my mother . . . that my mother gave you back your powers to stop me . . .”

The one thing she really hasn’t been able to cope with is anything involving Yanuka. I can’t say that I blame her. My witch-mom has been on my mind a lot lately, too. I wonder if there’s a reason for that.

“Hey, relax a little. Everything’s okay. I had a little bit of a rough day . . . almost forgot it was time to pay you a visit, but with how things went I had to make sure that you were okay and here I find out that you’re doing better than okay. In fact, you’re doing excellent. I guess I’m doing really damned good for everything that’s happened . . .” I realize, in a rare moment of self-consciousness, that my smile has deteriorated Yana’s along with it, and I force myself to grin while shaking my head. “In the end, we’re both doing great. Let’s focus on that, huh?”

She starts to nod, head raising, lips smiling . . . before she shakes her head with a sigh. “I’m not all right. Silver . . . Sarah . . . I’ve felt her. On the edge of my senses, I can still feel her. She’s still out there. Some part of her still exists, and she is happy. She is excited-squealing-like-a-little-girl, overjoyed. It scares me. It scares me a lot.”

In all of the time she’s been hospitalized, Yana has definitely not been one for exaggerations. She doesn’t say she’s feeling something when she’s not. If anything, she’ll hide her emotions and pretend everything is fine while her eyes scream otherwise. She’s been scared before, but not like this.

“Who do you mean? There are a lot of ‘hers’. Some of them I know are alive because I saved their life by jumping out of a building.” Only one possibility comes to mind, but I don’t want to hear it.

“Quillspawn. I don’t know how she did it. She must have somehow . . . distracted a part of me? She is me, but she isn’t, wasn’t . . . It confuses me still, even after all of the counseling. Parts of her I made when I started to use my power on myself, when I decided that if I wasn’t able to be normal I shouldn’t let myself be bound by the same rules, that I had to make myself better, twisted, perfected . .. Parts of Quillspawn stopped being me, and started being a construct built over me, to protect me, to . . . bolster me.”

She sounds so ashamed, which is a relief compared to how I could imagine the black haired Yana describing this. “I can feel those parts. Not connected to me, distant, like . . . they were removed, and there’s still a weak tether holding us together . . .”

Great. Finally, The Lady was stopped. Pink was stopped. Mind Bore is dead. Emerald is going to be in police custody. Most of my enemies are accounted for, and in an inactive status. I really don’t want the Nesatealia to give me more trouble. We had our bargains, our deals, and Yanuka probably came out on top. I got my sparks back. Quillspawn didn’t go out to take revenge on the witches.

Doesn’t that mean everyone should be happy? No one got hurt! Why can no one be happy with the fact that everything is good as long as everything wrong stops? No! They have no more reason to bother me!

Then again, Quillspawn didn’t have a good reason to bother me. She wanted to make the world into a novel, but her process demanded that she have a nemesis to make that a good story in itself. Could there be something Quillspawn needs again? Is it a ploy of Yanuka’s? Goddess this is just too much.

“Hun, Quillspawn is dead. Your powers are gone. There’s nothing for you to have a link to, or with. Your inklings were de-inked. Olivia, my mom, Silhouette . . . Valerie . . . Everyone is back to normal. None of your ink is waiting around for you to find a way to get out of here. You’re Yana Ritter again. That means you don’t have to worry about things like this. The Nesatealia? They’re my job to worry about.” Saying it out loud makes me feel worse than I imagined. I don’t want it to be true at all. “But if you know anything, I would appreciate you sharing it with me.”

“One of the inklings . . . The authorities don’t want to tell me, but they still haven’t found her. The middle child? Damn I was such an egotistical woman, thinking I could take a short woman, a tall woman, and one in between to tweak them however I . . .” She pauses, then shakes her head. “First drafts. Always speaking in first drafts these days. I didn’t used to. Anyway, Gabriella is missing . . . And . . .”

It’s been over a year! Couldn’t they have found one ink-filled girl by now? Yanuka took her ink out of everyone, even Mystic. Why wouldn’t she do it to her? Quillspawn seemed to be a legitimate threat to her. Was I being manipulated?

Staring down at the table, the famous authoress shudders and closes her eyes. Her hands grab tightly over her temples as she starts to groan, shaking her head over and over. “I can feel it! I can feel her . . . Quillspawn, she . . . Get . . . get out of my mind . . . It’s like how I could reach inside of your friends’ minds, how I could use the Poetess, the Pen, like simple puppets, just reaching in, moving them with ink, only . . . Nnnn . . . stop! Only, I can feel the ink reaching out for me . . . trying to get into my mind, trying to . . . Nnnnn . . . Don’t know! But I know what I’m feeling . . . I’m not insane, not anymore!”

“Fight it!” I lean over the table //to put// and put my hands over hers. “Fight it, Yana! You’re stronger than this . . .! Even if that flower stole your ink, it didn’t steal you, it didn’t do anything to Yana Ritter! If there’s any way you can draw on my strength, I’m right here!” If the white light could be made external, if I could fill her up with sparks grown of that light, I know I could help her. Trying that now sounds dangerous.

Her eyelids flutter madly as her eyes struggle not to roll up into her head. The whites of her eyes seem to pulse, fluttering between wholly white to a wet, inky black. That can’t be real, though; I saw the effect it had, I know that she can’t still be Quillspawn. She’s come so far! She has to be able to recover!

Not everyone with witch blood should be forced to be helpless to it, trapped, controlled by it, turned into some sort of helpless witch slave . . . it’s just not right! “Can’t . . . It’s a part of me . . . It doesn’t want to be back, it just wants . . . control . . . one last time . . .”

Yana doesn’t sound like she’s struggling against a psychic attack so much as the affections of a spurned lover who doesn’t want to be let go. Her lips shake as she whimpers and pitifully moans. Tremors shake through her body and one of her knees hits up into the table after a particularly loud groan. Her fingers tense, quaking under mine, and I can feel them starting to turn limp.

“Don’t let it! We both know why you gave into your power before! We both know why you used it to turn yourself into something, someone that you’re not! You don’t need to be that again, you never, ever have to be anything like that again! You can be Yana!” I start to summon sparks to my fingertips. Maybe the link will fry if I can spark her enough to send her into a light trance state, or it might intensify. It’s all that I have, and Yana needs someone to do something!

“Stop!” The room was private, sealed off, so I can understand why it took a minute for the guards to rush in. What I don’t understand is why they’re grabbing me by my arms to tear me away as if I’m doing something wrong! “Get your hands off of her!”

As soon as my hands are torn away, her eyes turn black. There’s no time for me to explain to them that Yana Ritter is in danger. To hell with the law. My job is to serve and protect, not to serve and obey. I close my eyes, sending the strongest sparks I can into the guards. They fall to the ground with a pair of nearly identical moans, but it’s already too late.

Her lips turn from helplessly shuddering to an arrogantly crooked grin. Their pink shade is dyed a deep, rich black a mere moment later. Quillspawn must still be around, after all. “Hello Sarah.”

“Get the hell out of her body! She’s worked hard to undo the damage she did to herself, and that you did once she put enough into you to make you your own entity . . . You shouldn’t even exist anymore.” I hold out a hand, making the entire surface spark. “I seem to remember you didn’t enjoy these much.”

“Now, now! If you discharge those, and I’ll just have to leave. I only desired to gift you with a . . . message.” She sighs, smoothing her hands along her hair while squirming to get comfortable. “Then, I’ll be off even more quickly than I arrived. Truly, this is a courtesy that I am not required, nor do I find necessary, to give. This is a gift from me, to you. After all, if it weren’t for you I would still be fighting for dominance against the last of Yana’s mind. You helped me break free. I thank you for that every day.”

Today is really not my day.

Nodding approvingly, Quillspawn stands before turning her back to me. “You see, Sarah . . . Yana and I were one, but now, we are two. She created me from her own power because she was too weak and pitiful to deal with her life . . . but she always held back. Her goals were still too . . . pedestrian. I no longer share those weaknesses. In addition, I no longer share her feelings. If you knew as I did, then you would see Yana as a pitiful little girl afraid to face a life where she was heralded as a genius, where she had no limits on what she could do . . .

“I digress, and I have no time for such digressions. My time for delivering speeches to you on the human condition has passed. You didn’t grow from them then and you will surely fail to do so now. As I said, I have come to deliver to you a message. Gone are my wishes to bring revenge to my mother’s doorstep. Gone, too, are my wishes to drown Midas in a torrent of ink. It was a nice thought, but truly . . . too cliché. Yana always was quite the literary hack.” She laughs. It’s a chilling laugh that makes the room feel as if absolute zero is dangerously close at hand.

“But I do have desires. It is a Nesatealia’s right, you know, to have cravings . . . and to fulfill them. Yana was a horrific Nesatealia. It wasn’t her hair that made Yanuka shun her. It wasn’t her heritage. It was her. And if poor little Yana Ritter couldn’t be normal, and couldn’t have someone to be there for her, she would just have to make herself perfect.

“Which made me. The perfect Nesatealia. I have my needs though; I intend to achieve them. I came to warn you, that while currently we find you uninteresting . . . That could change at any time. Do not interfere. Although do what you will with Yana. All she is now . . . is normal.” She turns to face me again, blowing me a kiss. “If you ignore this warning, and proceed against all sense and reason to get in our way? It will be directly back to square one. If you think that a metal rod is the worst that can be shoved into your ear, then you’re as sad a case as your silver eyed mother.”

Unceremoniously, the black simply melts away from Yana. It doesn’t pool off like it did with The Poetess. It doesn’t go inside of her. It just vaporizes, and she falls onto her back with a thud. I dash over to help her sit up, but she’s already managing it well enough on her own.

The look in her eyes hurts to see. A dark side of her just poured her heart out, and called her a failure. It used her own voice, and her own body to do it. The worst part is that Yana likely enjoyed it.

I push some hair out of her face, forcing a smile when she looks up to me. “Sarah . . . I told you. She’s out there, and I don’t have control anymore . . . The rules I gave myself to stop what I would become from going too far, they aren’t there. Quillspawn is out there . . . inking it up. If I’d never gotten this chance to heal, to become a real person again, at least . . . at least this wouldn’t be happening. At least no minds would be in danger of being rewritten . . .”

“No. Yana, no . . .” Sighing, I wrap my arms around her to hug her as tightly as I can. “You didn’t do this. All you did was try to live. You fucked up. You fucked up bad. But you can’t be upset with yourself for something that you think happened because you tried to get better. You didn’t make her come back. I didn’t make The Lady come back with a vengeance. All you can control is yourself . . .”

I leave off “and sometimes, not even that,” because I think I would start crying if I said it.

She nods, and I can feel her crying against me. I shake my head and hold her close as more guards enter the room. “Call up her doctor . . . I’ll hold her till she gets here . . . Sorry about the guards, was a matter of well . . . justice.”

They don’t get closer, so I guess that means either they trust me or don’t want to push their luck. The security cameras will help me prove my innocence, should the need arise. Until then . . .

“It’s going to be okay, Yana . . . It’s going to be okay.”