Alex struggled, of course. She was used to not fighting back against me, but this was different. I watched as they pinned her down on a prop table, tore at her clothes. Once they had her pants down, Riley moved back and began to open his own.

They were all distracted at that point, and I teleported in. I - he wanted to give Alex a big scare, but she was mine - his - anyway, there was no way I was letting anyone else have her. Not for real.

I went for Riley first, ran up to him and hit him. I'd already cast a spell to enhance my strength and toughness, and he went down like a poleaxed steer. One of the other guys stepped forward and took a swing. I ducked it, hit him in the stomach hard enough to double him over, kneed him in the face. The third one ran, and I let him, calling out, "Touch my sister again and I'll kill you fuckers!"

Riley was still down. He wound up in the hospital, made up some kind of story about being attacked. He might even have believed it himself. Concussions aren't nice things. The other guy ran too, his nose bleeding. They wouldn't remember our little chat from earlier, so all they knew was they'd tried to rape Alex, and I'd shown up and fought them off. They weren't going to be telling anyone about that.

He grabbed Alex by the arm, pulled her up to sitting... and then he tore into her. "Alex! What the hell were you thinking? Don't you know better than to go off alone with somebody you don't know? What would have happened if I hadn't shown up? God!"

He kept that up for another minute or two, until Alex was crying her eyes out, sobbing, saying over and over that she was sorry, like it had been her that did something wrong. Then came the good cop half. He apologized for yelling at her, used a spell to fix her clothes, wiped away her tears and held her, let her cry against his shoulder until she was calmed down enough to take her back home.

Justin shook his head. "That was the way... all the time, that was the way he worked. Knock her down, tear down her trust in other people, tear down her trust in herself, then help her back up. And she loved him for it. She was afraid of him... but she was more afraid of being alone. She kept coming back to him."

He paused, took a deep breath, let it out slowly. "And now I worry. Alex says she loves me... but she said she loved him too. This... this whole thing we have. Did I manipulate her into it? She started it, but... I could have stopped it. And some of what we've done - Alex likes it sometimes, when I'm controlling. Or she says she does. She looks at me sometimes, and... I wonder if she's afraid of me."

"Justin." He looked up again, at Rose as she spoke. "Listen to me. You know the answers to those questions already. You've never forced Alex to stay with you, have you? Have you ever threatened to hurt her if she left, or yourself?"

He shook his head again, swallowed. "No. I haven't. When we first started... she used to worry a lot that I just wanted her for the sex, that I didn't really care about her. I told her then that if she wanted to stop, we would. That I'd always love her, with or without it."

Rose nodded, smiling slightly. "That's the difference. Justin... I don't think you're abusing your sister. I know growing up in the mortal world, you've been taught that what you're doing is wrong. You have feelings of guilt about that, and those are combining with the feelings you're experiencing from these memories to make you worry."

She paused a moment, caught his eyes. "That's perfectly natural. But what you need to do is to talk to Alex about it. You can talk to her alone, or you can come in as a couple, but you need to talk to her. She needs to know about how you're feeling. Real love, lasting love, takes work. You asked earlier about how your double could love Alex, and still treat her like that. I didn't want to answer that question then, because I wanted you to keep going on your memory, and not get sidetracked. But the answer is, he didn't love her, not the way you do. From what you've said, he was fond of her, he lusted after her, he felt possessive of her - but her welfare, her happiness - those things he placed far below his own."

She paused a moment, then went on. "You want to protect Alex - I understand that. But sometimes, the best way to protect someone is to be honest with them, and tell them what's happening. I really think you need to do that with Alex."

It took a moment, but Justin nodded. "You're right. Thank you. I'll talk to her about it."

2: Max

This world is not our home, we're only passing through.

- Gary Johnson, "In A Cafe"

"I'm not sure how this is supposed to work," Max said.

"It's very simple. Here, in a calm, controlled environment, you're going to tell me about your memories. This will let you experience them in a way that won't cause you distress." Rose gave Max an encouraging smile, said, "We can start with an easy one, if you'd like."

"Where does the magic come in?" he asked, frowning a little, and Rose let out a breath that wasn't quite a sigh.

"Not everything is best treated with magic. If some memories are problematic, we may remove them magically. But in general, I prefer less intrusive techniques." She thought for a moment, then said, "You know I've been working with your brother Justin as well, yes?"

"Yeah." Max nodded.

"Good. Normally that would be frowned upon, with the two of you being brothers, and your cases being so involved with each other, but in this case, Professor Crumbs and I both believe that it may be helpful. I already know about several things that Justin's double did to you, so you should feel that you can speak freely."

Max frowned a second, quirked his mouth, then asked, "Are you going to be telling him about what I say about him - about his double, I mean?"

Rose shook her head. "Not without your permission. If I think something that comes up here could be helpful to him, I may ask your permission to share it with him. But I won't do it without your permission. And, of course, the same applies the other way. Everything you say here is confidential, unless you give me permission to share it with someone else."

"Okay." Max nodded, then swallowed. Normally, he'd be saying something funny right now, blowing off the tension in the room, getting people to laugh. But right now, the back of his head was full of dark memories, and he couldn't find a joke in them. "So… how do we start?" he said instead.

I was twelve, the first time I knew something was going on. My magic hadn't come in yet. I woke up hungry, and I got out of bed, put on my dog slippers, then went out into the hall. I didn't turn the light on, because I liked it better dark, when it's night - it just seems like the way the night should be.

Anyway, I started to cross the hall to the bathroom, and then Alex came out of the Justin's room, and we bumped into each other. I asked her why she was coming out of his room, and she said I shouldn't worry about it, and asked me what I was doing up.

I told her I needed to get water for my lizard, because he was thirsty. She rolled her eyes and shook her head, and then I saw that she'd been crying. Or maybe she still was. I started to ask her what was wrong, but she brushed on past me, and went into her room, and locked the door behind her.

The next day, I tried to talk to her about it… but she looked at me funny, and she said she didn't remember it. I thought it was weird, but… weird was normal for our house. But it kind of woke me up, I guess, because I started noticing things after that.

Max paused, licked his lips, took a deep breath. "I guess you know about how he erased my memories, right?"

"Yes," Rose answered, nodding. "But you have all of them now, I understand?"

"Yeah… I - you know how they say that when you die, your whole life flashes in front of your eyes. Well, mine didn't. But I remembered everything. All the blocks came down, in that last second. And then when I came back… it was all still there."

Max lifted his right hand, traced his middle finger along the seam of the chair's upholstery. "I was so mad at Justin. I didn't know what to think, with both sets of memories there, and everything was confused - and then Alex was hugging him, and saying everything was okay, and from the way she acted, I knew she was the Alex here, not my Alex, and -"

Rose didn't say anything to Max's 'my Alex', but she made a note, nodded to him. "Go on."

If he realized that Rose had noted that down, Max gave no sign of it. "And she'd won, and Justin didn't have powers, so even if he was that Justin, he wasn't dangerous any more, I thought. And then she gave me the powers, and then told us about them, and… I kind of snapped a little."

"Tell me about that," Rose said. "When you say you 'snapped a little' - what were you thinking? What were you feeling?"