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when he didn’t speak. “Yesterday I received a phone call from this hospital. A young man had been found unconscious in the middle of Glasgow. This city sadly has its share of homeless people, and one of them called an ambulance for you; I wish I could have thanked him, but he was long gone. You had no identification on you. You were wet through, dressed in rags and a stinking old jacket. At first the doctors thought you’d been attacked, but they found no injuries, no drugs or alcohol in your blood. They concluded you’d collapsed with hypothermia. You were a mystery. However, while you were half-conscious, you kept saying my name and mentioning Cairndonan House. So the hospital staff found my number and telephoned me. It took me half the night to get here, but here I am.”
    “You should not have come,” he whispered.
    “Why not? Who else would have come to look after you?”
    “I don’t need looking after.”
    She gave a short laugh. “You were brought in half-dead! And I’ve spent all this time thinking you were genuinely dead! How could I not come?”
    He shifted in the bed, trying to prop himself upright. They’d dressed him in a hospital gown and there was a silvery blanket over him. Juliana plumped up the pillows to help him. He had a flashback to Cairndonan House, of Adam lying in bed because—confused—he’d tried to hurl himself through a window. Mist looked down at his palms, which had been badly cut. There were no scars now. The skin had healed smooth.
    “You look as if you need food,” she said. There was an awkward pause. “This is beyond strange—but then, so many strange things happened at Cairndonan, I shouldn’t be surprised. You do remember me, and what happened there?”
    “As if through a veil, yes.”
    “Good. That’s a relief. So, the tide washed you up and you walked away…?”
    “Something like that.” The understatement made him smile.
    “How long have you been sleeping rough?’
    He was puzzled. “I wasn’t sleeping rough. I was walking. I don’t remember collapsing.”
    “Well, I’m extremely curious to know how you’re even still alive. Oh, my dear boy. You were shot through the chest by a raving madman who was actually aiming at Rufus. For good measure, you fell a hundred feet onto rocks and were swept away into a stormy sea. And yet you survived?”
    It was time to tell her.
    “No. Adam died. I am Mistangamesh.” The last word was a whisper. “Mist.”
    “Ah.” She released a long, quiet sigh. “That was the name of Rufus’s long-lost brother.”
    “Yes. That’s who I am.”
    Juliana looked keenly at him, her head tilted, as if trying to work out if he was telling the truth or plain mad. “Are you saying that Rufus was right about you?”
    “He didn’t understand that Adam had to die before Mist could wake up. Or realize that he had to let me go before I could return. I was deep in the ocean but I swam back to shore. Then I climbed up the cliffs and began to walk southwards.”
    “How long were you walking?’
    “I’m not sure. Two or three days.”
    “Without stopping to rest or eat?”
    “A truck driver gave me a lift and shared his food. When he dropped me at the edge of the city, I began to walk again.”
    “Where were you going?”
    “Towards London.”
    She was staring at him, aghast. “Do you realize how far— You set out to walk several hundred miles from the wilds of Scotland with no help, no money, nothing? What were you thinking? Oh, dear god, Adam. Mist, I mean. Has rebirth made you insane?”
    “I am Aelyr. I thought I’d left behind all human needs.”
    “Obviously not. Are Aetherials, excuse the pun, superhuman? Are you a god of some sort, who never gets tired or hungry, never needs to sleep?”
    Her questions threw him. He considered his answer. “I never claimed we were gods. We change between different states … but when we’re in physical form, yes, we need food and rest eventually.”
    “Yet you somehow forgot