Fury's Kiss by Karen Chance Page B

usual. “I suppose those are areas you simply didn’t notice.”
    “What?”
    “Well, we don’t, do we?” he asked, a little more forcefully. “Even when we’re on hyper alert, we can’t notice everything.”
    “But my memory doesn’t look like this!” I gestured at the moon, which was visible in the water but noticeably absent from the sky. Or maybe it was just behind some clouds; I wasn’t enthusiastic about looking for it since the sky had the most gaps, with massive areas filled with nothing but boiling black mist.
    “Well, it would,” Radu said. “But your brain usually fills in the blanks.”
    “With what?”
    “With guesswork. That’s why many optical illusions work. Didn’t you know?”
    “No.” And I could have lived without finding out. “Then why aren’t I filling in the blanks now?”
    Radu tilted his head slightly, like he was listening to something I couldn’t hear. “Mircea said you would be, but he’s cutting through all that. We can’t have fantasy or mental manipulation filling in areas when it may fill them in wrong, do you see?”
    “Yeah.” I repressed an urge to hug my arms around myself. “Yeah, I guess.” I sure as hell didn’t want to have to do this again because I’d dreamed up the wrong information. I looked at him. “Why are you here again?”
    “Mircea can’t maintain the connection and also serve as your guide. That’s my job.”
    “Okay, guide,” I said, glancing around. “Where to?”
    “Well, how should I know? It’s your memory. I’m just here to pull you out if anything goes wrong.”
    I had been watching a nearby ship bobbing about on the waves, or should I say half a ship, since I’d apparently never gotten around to noticing the back half. But at that I turned my eyes on ’Du. “What could go wrong? I’m sitting in the living room. Right?”
    “Well, yes, your body is. But it’s your mind we’re concerned with here, Dory.”
    I took a moment to process that. “You’re telling me that something could go wrong with
my mind
?”
    “No, no, not at all. Nothing like.”
    “Good.” For a minute there, I’d been a little worried. I wasn’t exactly the poster child for mental stability as it was. The last thing I needed—
    “Of course, there have been a few incidents.”
    Radu was fiddling with the lace on his sleeve. “Incidents?”
    “Of people who, well, went too far in. You can become lost, you see, wandering about from one old memory to the next, until you forget where you came in and—” He stopped, belatedly noticing my expression. “It almost never happens. And in any case, that’s why I am here. To see that it doesn’t.”
    “And you’ve done this how many times before?”
    …
    “’Du—”
    “I know the theory, Dory,” he said testily. “And I’m related to both of you, which makes me more…in sync…if you will, and a better bridge than anyone else could be. It’s safer to have me do this than some stranger, however experienced. Which is why Mircea brought me along.”
    I stared at him. “That makes me feel so much better.”
    “Yes, I thought it would,” Radu said. “But problems are more frequent when the subject is tired, and this sort of thing is fairly draining. We should get going.”
    Great. So not only was I in Wonderland, I was on a freaking timer. “How long do I have?”
    “I don’t know. That depends on you. A few minutes?”
    “A few
minutes
? How am I supposed to find anything useful in—”
    I stopped, because I’d just caught sight of the fairly odd image of myself, slipping through the shadows of the ships and pilings. I was wearing my usual work uniform of black leather jacket, black jeans and black boots, and managing to be almost invisible against the night. But I wasn’t doing as good a job as whoever was with me.
    Try as I might, I couldn’t get a clear look at him. Icouldn’t even manage to bring him into focus unless he was silhouetted against the ghostly outline of a