“I kind of thought she was very…capable. Which is a form of insanity, I suppose,” I mused.

“Your insanity or hers?” Matana asked, seriously.

“Both, certainly. If you think that your limits magically are at least somewhat drawn by your perception of your talents. Mind over antimatter. Those perceptions are influenced by the observers as well. I might just be crazy because we dated so long. What does a big Mover want from someone who barely shows up as a blip on the radar?”

“The course of true love, and all that?” Matana teased.

“It was never true love. It was mutual lust for a while, and then mutual control struggles, and sometimes it was just mutual availability. I’m not complaining, but to categorize it as love would be inaccurate.”

“Who do you love?” Matana made it sound important.

“A ridiculous question, and I wonder why everyone keeps wanting me to answer it. Heck, I love Ed in his own way, well, in my own way because his own way isn’t the way I sway. Or swing. Or whatever. I love long walks on the beach in moonlight, or I did before I saw the projected numbers for kelpies in the San Francisco Bay area. I love chocolate ice cream, but in a way I love vanilla, too. I’d go out with strawberry, but I’d go down on Rocky Road, if you know what I mean.”

“Has the question come up before?” she asked.

“So it is all about me,” I finally grinned at Matana, daring her to say it wasn’t.

“The pieces of the puzzle with your touch on them, yes. I think there are bigger pictures you cannot see from your perspective. It is, as you say, a small fish’s view.” She granted it to me with the backhand. “But who you love is your own business. Do not let anyone take it as a vote for a faction, or even a vote against.”

“The witch war?” I asked.

“I refuse to participate. I should be granted the exemption given what I am.”

“Why are they after any of us? Isn’t this something Big Fish Mover Mags should be handling?”

“Whether or not you or I have any opinion in the matter, Magdalene may have chosen to include us in her resources. We are, of course, witnesses to the arrangement made about Sylvia.”

“Wait, about her?”

“She was the fulcrum to the event, and we but pieces on the game board. Once marked as a pawn, it is a long journey to become anything like a Queen.”

“I hate chess metaphors. Although, if it’s a checkers metaphor I jumped the wrong piece for sure.” I grinned.

“I am not at liberty to make judgments on your social life, am I?” she asked, but her smile belied the truth of her question. She was a woman, and a witch, and therefore she’d gossip without my permission if need be. She was also polite and ushered in the social illusion that she wouldn’t. Yeah, it sounds sexist, but I had only my own anecdotal evidence to prove it. Of course, I started it.

“What, you want a potshot-free zone?” I asked, making it sound like the entire thought was ridiculous.

“I cannot expect seriousness from you,” she said, as if it were a law of nature. I thought I heard a snigger from Ed’s mom in the kitchen, but I had been aware she’d been listening in, so I guess I was lucky I wasn’t getting her thirty-two cents.

“Probably true,” I pointed out. “Which is why I’m going to come back to the point. So, you’re alive and kicking, if still evil, because I am convinced that your predatory tendencies were artificially, in this case magically, enhanced in order to get you and Ed both in trouble. You’re too smooth an operator to just lose control.”

“Thank you, I think,” she said crisply.

I continued. “What do you know about the dead Sylvie situation?”

“I am afraid I don’t follow.”

“Afraid is fine. Sylvia’s body was last seen in a coroner’s van heading from my place, where she had fallen from a great height onto my rental car. I spoke with some mind-numbed police for a long time, and if it hadn’t been for,” I paused, “a friend, I probably would have had a bad time of it. I’ve been since told that it wasn’t really her, but someone’s knocking pins down and I don’t think we’re using bowling metaphors now.”

She sat there, looking at me, with one hand propping up her chin. She was watching me for who knows what reactions, or scents, or whatever it was the parasite gave her in the way of perception. She went very still, as if communing with her inner leech, then nodded, abruptly.

“A simulacrum could do it,” she said.

I sighed and banged my forehead against the table a few times. “Yeah, that’s what I got. So they’ve moved suspicion to me but managed to move Sylvia somewhere. Do you know what arrangement was made about her?”

“She’s become…” she pauses. “Do you understand the terminology when I say ‘Avatar’?”

“I have a feeling that if I say I saw it in 3-D you’re going to lose that vaunted self-control,” I grinned. “You meant more like an incarnation, right?”

Matana nodded.

“But not for a deity. I know the Shadow King is on the level of a deposed god, but the rule of thumb is the more powerful the more rules. So if you incarnate a deity into mortality, you’re gaining a lot of rules and a lot of power and a lot of fragility. That’s why they don’t do it unless they have a back-up plan.” I frowned. “What’s the back-up plan?”

“You’re ahead of me,” she admitted. “I haven’t gone that direction.”

“I have to think of it from the little fish’s perspective. For me, it’s a matter of what doors are opening and closing. The Shadow King closed his door into Peredur’s realm in exchange for marking me. He infused my shadow and made trouble with the -cubi because his realm is wrath, and lust and wrath work well together. That’s all conjecture. He helped the -cubi intersect somehow to this realm without opening a door, exactly, but if my guess is right, the bargain with Sylvie is to pull a Messenger through without actually opening anything except…her.”

“You aren’t asking, ‘Why her?'” Matana noticed.

“It’s not particularly relevant. I knew she had a certain weakness to the -cubi when I met her, and found out she was powerful. But I know this is just a me-oriented perspective. What am I leaving out and what’s the real goal here?”

“Would you like some more lemonade? Coffee?” Ed’s mom interrupted