(June 24th, 1986)

Dr. MacMoran sat down in the chair across the low coffee table from me, smoothing her long skirt and flipping her dark red hair - bound up in a long pony tail - back over her shoulder. "It's been two weeks since the last time we met," she said with a smile. "You're looking well. Being back in London suits you?"

I shifted the new cane Mom and Jonathan had gotten me and carefully stretched out my right leg as I nodded. "Yeah. I didn't realize how much I was looking forward to getting back. It's like a step towards being normal again. And it means you and Trish got to go home too." I still felt guilty about both of them having come so far out their way to treat me…Trish turned out to live in Bath, and Dr. MacMoran usually worked out of London.

Dr. MacMoran smiled warmly. "Alys, let me tell you two things. I think you'll believe one and not the other."

"Go for it."

"First," she said, "I'm a professional colleague of your step-father. When someone like Jonathan Tremane says he needs a personal favor, and that his favorite apprentice needs help, you help, no questions asked. And, of course, I'd do anything for your mother. It had been far too long since we'd had a chance to catch up." She smiled. "Second, you are a delight to work with. You have a quick mind, even when it's injured, a sharp wit and a delightful sense of humor. I do wish it would show through more often, but I think that will come in time as you continue to heal. I've already seen signs of improvement, and we've only been at this for seven weeks, right?"

I was blushing a bit by the time she finished. Someday, I will learn to take personal compliments gracefully. "Right," I replied.

She smiled. "There's a third reason too…a professional one. It's better for you," she reached across the table and gently poked my left leg with her pen, "If you have the same doctors treating you at the hospital and back here in London."

"A good point," I agreed. "So, what's on the agenda for today?"

"Something we discussed during your initial therapy a few weeks ago…focused meditation." She sat back in her chair. "I believe you know something about meditation?"

I huffed out a little laugh. "I'd be a poor excuse for a Mage if I didn't."

She nodded and wrote something in her notebook. "Have you done focused meditation before?"

"Something like it," I said. "When I was training my memory, Jonathan used focused meditation techniques to teach me how to organize and find information more quickly in my mind."

"What do you usually use as a visualization?"

"I like to visualize my mind as a library."

Dr. MacMoran looked up from her notebook and smiled, green eyes twinkling with amusement. "Why doesn't that surprise me?"

I smiled back. There was something about her easy manner that drew me out effortlessly. I suppose it was some professional trick…or maybe she had been serious and genuinely liked me. Either way, I responded to it. "Well, you seem to have pinned me down pretty quickly."

“What I'd like to do today,” she said, “is guide you through a focused meditation using that visualization. Have you done anything like that since you woke up in the hospital in Dublin?"

I shook my head. "I haven't really had any cause to." I thought about it for a moment, then admitted, "I'm a little worried about trying. I've been so messed up lately that I'm worried about how scrambled my memory might be."

She nodded. "I’m sure. Which is why we're going to try today…and you should expect that mental space to look a bit messy. In fact, for our purposes today, I want it to, because we're going to start doing some rebuilding."

I'm sure the look I gave her was as confused as I felt. "Rebuilding?"

"You'll see. For now, sit back and relax." She must have seen some of the hesitation I felt, because she smiled. "You trust me, don't you?"

I nodded. About that at least I felt no hesitation. I did trust her.

"Good. Sit back and relax."

I felt a brief burst of fear. Before Brenna's injuries, my mind had been highly trained for near perfect recall of any piece of information stored in it. Since waking up, there had been a few moments where I'd been unable to put sentences together, or find the right word to go with a concept. The doctors had called it cognitive dissonance and assured me - as Dr. MacMoran had - that it would fade as I healed.

True, it had…but I was still worried about really testing my memory.

From where she was sitting out in the waiting room, Athena said, >

I thought about it for a moment. What was I afraid of? I had spent years training my mind, and having been reassured that no brain damage had been done by Brenna's spell it was amazingly unlikely that I was going to have any long term problems. "I'm afraid of what I might see in there," I said out loud and to Athena at the same time.

Dr. MacMoran tipped her head a little. "You mean Jonathan's theory about Brenna having accidentally left a piece of her mind behind in yours?"

> Athena said at the same time, >

> "Yeah."

> I felt Athena's smile. >

Dr. MacMoran nodded. "It's a sound theory, given what we have to go on, and I don't disagree with it. But if there is a little piece of Brenna's obviously damaged psyche clinging to yours, don't you think we should get rid of it?"

I nodded fervently.

She smiled. "Then sit back, close your eyes, and relax."

I did.

"Good. How quickly can you visualize your mind?"

I took a deep breath and let it out, then turned my attention inward.

When Jonathan had originally taught me to meditate more than ten years ago, he'd suggested visualizing my mind as a huge library. The books represented individual thoughts, ideas and memories, while the bookcases represented organizational categories. Of course, that was too limiting a concept…so I had broadened it out until memories could appear in more than one section, depending on how they were cross-referenced. The book that represented the memory of my fight with Brenna would, for example, show up if I was looking through a section about magic, or a section about personal injuries, or a section about family.

To my intense relief, my mental library was still highly organized when I visualized it. "Done," I said quietly.

There was a brief pause. "My goodness," Dr. MacMoran said in an impressed tone, "It usually takes people several minutes."

I felt a flush of pleasure and pride. "Well…I am training to be a Wizard. My mind has to be very organized."

"Indeed," she said. "So, take a look around. Open yourself up to visualizing your mind as a complete space rather than hunting for a single piece of information like you normally would. Does anything seem out of place?"

I did as she instructed, imagining mental-me turning slowly in the library of my mind. Nothing looked out of place at first, though I saw a few new-looking books lying on the tables between the rows of shelves, which meant that I needed to spend some time sorting new memories for long-term recall. But as I turned I spied a row of bookcases off to one side where it seemed to be darker. Books were lying on the floor and were messily stacked on the shelves rather than being neatly organized. I nodded. "Yes," I said slowly, "There's a new section. It's darker, and a mess."

"Darker how?"

"Like the lights above it are out." I was half in a trance by then, a technique for deeply searching memories that I hadn't had to use very often. My voice sounded distant and a little dreamy even to me.

"All right. I want you to go towards it," Dr. MacMoran said quietly. "You need to look at that section."

I hesitated for a moment, then mental-me moved towards it. As I got closer, I could see the writing on the spines of the books. Normally, the print on my memory-books was neat, typewriter-style print, or my own tidy block handwriting. Some of these books were labeled in a script whose language I didn't understand, but which felt familiar to me somehow. Others were in an untidy scrawl and said things like 'Handling a Fetch' or 'How to Kill Leng Spiders.'

The shelves themselves looked rickety, like they'd been put together inexpertly, or had been untended for a very long time. Some of the books were stained with dark fluids, while others were torn and bent. A bare light bulb swung slowly back and forth above one section, where the shelves were labeled 'Keeping Daddy Happy' and had titles ranging from 'Don't Talk Back' to 'Don't Make the Same Mistake Twice.' Others were about subjects that I didn't want to think about at all, and seemed to indicate that our father had been intimate with the owner of these books in a way that parents weren't supposed to be with their children.

I shuddered a little. These were definitely not mine. "I can see it."

"How do you feel about Brenna?"

"I feel sorry for her," I said quietly, still focused on looking at the shelves. "And I'm angry because of what she did."

"But you don't hate her?"

"No," I breathed out, "I don't hate her." My attention suddenly snapped back to the real world, my eyes opening. "You tricked me!" I noticed that the clock on the wall behind her was a half-hour further along than it had been when I'd closed my eyes. It had taken a while for me to get myself to look at the new section in my mental library.

Dr. MacMoran smiled lopsidedly. "But I got you to talk about Brenna finally. Do you really feel sorry for her?"

I thought about it for a moment, lowering my eyes and settling back in my chair again. "Yeah, I guess I do." From what she and our father had said on the night of our little battle, Brenna's childhood and upbringing had been as dark and devoid of positive experiences as mine had been full of them. I frowned a little. "I'm angry, because she hurt me, Mom and Jonathan, and because her familiars hurt Athena and Artemis. But I don't hate her." I looked up at Dr. MacMoran again. "Why don't I hate her?"

She smiled a bit more. "Because you're a generous person, Alys, just like your mother. I think it'll take a lot for you to ever really hate someone."

I frowned a little. "But…"

She held up a hand. "I can't really answer the question for you, just give you my opinions of you. Tell me what you saw in your mental library, about the darker shelves."

"They definitely weren't mine," I said, "They were about things I don't know anything about, or were written in a language I didn't recognize."

She nodded. "That's what I expected, and it confirms Jonathan's theory about what happened." She pursed her lips. "You have two choices now, and I can only present them to you, not tell you which to choose. First, you can wall off those new shelves and block them away, or destroy them altogether. I expect the latter will be difficult and take time, but I think you can find a way to do it."

My lips twitched into a humorless smile. "Fire cleanses."

"Just be careful if you try that," Dr. MacMoran warned gently.

"Of course. What's the other option?"

"I think you know," she said softly. "I suspect you're already considering it."

I pursed my lips, and realized that she was right. Fragments of Brenna's mind had been copied into or left behind in mine. It was an unprecedented opportunity to get to know my half-sister, or at least to get to know bits and pieces of her. Would I be able to put together a whole picture by doing so? It was certainly an opportunity to learn about things I'd never been exposed to. Part of me was burning to know, for example, just what a Leng Spider was, and how and why they needed to be killed.

The idea scared me more than a little. "It would change me, wouldn't it?"

Dr. MacMoran nodded. "Probably. Though I think the presence of Athena and Artemis would mitigate that to some extent. Or it might have an effect on them as well. There's no way of knowing without trying it."

I looked at her without speaking, trying to sort through my emotions. I was hungry for new knowledge, intellectually fascinated by the opportunity to look at someone else's memories, and objectively knew that learning about her so intimately could give me an advantage over her the next time we met…

The thought sickened me.

"It's wrong," I said finally, feeling absolutely certain of that. "It's a violation…no better than what she did to me. It's like rape."

Dr. MacMoran nodded, and I thought she looked a little relieved. "I agree. Would you like my help cleaning Brenna's memories from your mind?"

I nodded. "Please."

She smiled. "Good. We'll start that when we meet on Thursday. Okay?"

I nodded again. "Okay."

"In the meantime," she said, writing something in her notebook, "I want you to start doing focused meditations every day. Clean up your own mental headspace, and use the time to wall off Brenna's thoughts and memories from yours."

"I will," I said.

Athena, Artemis and I met Ben for lunch, and took fish and chips back to his office. It was becoming something of a tradition with us. I told him about my meeting with Dr. MacMoran as we ate, finally asking, "Have you ever heard of something like that happening?"

He picked up a chip and munched on it as he considered his answer. "I've seen a couple of cases where something similar was done with mortal magic," he said slowly, "Usually by Witches and Warlocks, trying to get information about a person or take revenge on them for something. But the couple of times I've seen that kind of magic, it didn't do what you just described…it didn't leave bits behind."

I sighed and poked at my fish with a plastic fork.

> Artemis said from where she was grooming her whiskers by the door, having finished her own portion of (un-battered) fish. >

Athena hid a smile by taking another bite of her own.

I laughed softly.

Ben tipped his head. "What?"

"Artemis says I shouldn't waste my fish," I explained.

"Practical, as always," he said with a smile. "So what're you going to do?"

I forked up a bite of fish, stuck it in my mouth, and chewed exaggeratedly.

He rolled his eyes. "I mean about Brenna's memories."

"Dr. MacMoran is going to help me get rid of them somehow," I said after swallowing.

He nodded. "I think that's wise." He smiled. "I don't want you to change, I like you the way you are."

"Damaged?"

Athena's tail lashed across the back of my head. Her tail might be soft and kind of fluffy, but the impact was enough to rock my head forward a little and muss my hair a bit.

I winced. "Sorry, it slipped out."

She huffed. "I know. And I told you, I don't want to hear you say that anymore. You're a lot better than you were a month ago, and you're going to keep getting better."

Ben smiled. "Listen to her. She's very wise."

I smiled, plucked a chip from my plate and tossed it back to Artemis, who must've caught it because I never heard it hit the floor. "I know she is, and I try to listen. But really, it's true…I am damaged. Healing, but damaged."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it," Ben said firmly. "I like you. Alys Kinnear, Wizard-in-training. I don't want bits and pieces of Brenna stuck in there."

I chuckled softly, warmed by his words. "Well, I'm glad you agree. Because I like me a lot better when I don't have bits and pieces of Brenna stuck in my head too."

We were finishing up when Ben cleared his throat and said, "Look, I know you're not a hundred percent yet…but I've got a case on my desk that I could really use help with. Murder by magic. Think you're up to lending a hand, or should I contact Wizard Ellister?"

I dropped my empty plate and fork in the trash can and glanced at Athena. She tipped her head towards the desk slightly. >

"I'm sure Hollis is eager for me to get back to work," I said slowly. "I mean, he's still paying my salary even though I haven't really done much since I was hurt…"

Ben grinned and picked up a file, then waved it under my nose and intoned "Look, paying work…" in a teasing tone.

I laughed and took the file from him. "Let's see what you've got."