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that."
     
    Doro shrugged. "Then use her methods. Beat the hell out of her. Don't let her near
    anything she can hit or cut you with for a while afterward, though."
     
    MARY
     

 
    I turned twenty just two days before Doro took me to Karl. Later, I decided Vivian
    must have been my birthday present. Somehow, Doro forgot to tell me about her until the
    last minute. Slipped his mind.
     
    So I was not only going to marry a total stranger, a white man, a telepath who
    wouldn't even let me think in private, but I was going to marry a man who intended to
    keep his girl friend right there in the same house with me. Son of a bitch!
     
    I threw a fit. I finally did the yelling and screaming Doro had warned me I would do.
    I couldn't help it, I just went out of control.
     
    The whole thing was so Goddamn humiliating! Doro hit me and I bit a piece out of
    his hand. We sort of stood each other off. He knew that if I hurt him much worse, I would
    force him out of the body he was wearing—into my body. He'd take me, and all his
    efforts to get me this far would be wasted. I knew it myself, but I was past caring. I felt
    like a dog somebody was taking to be bred.
     
    "Now, listen," he began. "This is stupid. You know you're going to—"
     
    We both moved at the same time. He meant to hit me. I meant to dodge and kick him.
    But he moved a lot faster than I expected. He hit me with his fist—not hard enough to
    knock me unconscious, but hard enough to stop me from doing anything to him for a
    while.
     
    He picked me up from where I had fallen, threw me onto the bed, and pinned me
    there. For a minute, he just glared down at me, his face for once looking like the mask it
    was. There's usually nothing frightening about the way he looks—nothing to give him
    away. Now, though, he looked like a corpse some undertaker had done a bad job on. Like
    whatever he really was had withdrawn way down inside the body and wasn't bothering to
    animate anything but the eyes. I had to force myself to stare back at him.
     
    "The one thing I can't do," he said softly, "is prevent my people from committing
    suicide." Whatever there was about his voice that made it recognizable no matter what
    body it came from was much stronger. I felt the way I had once when I was ten years old
    and at a public swimming pool. I couldn't swim and some fool pushed me into twelve feet
    of water. I remember I just held my breath and waited. Somebody had told me to do that
    once, and, scared as I was, I did it. Sure enough, I floated to the surface, where I could
    breathe and where I could reach the edge of the pool. Now I lay still beneath Doro's body,
    waiting.
     
    He reached out to the night table and picked up a switchblade knife. "This came with
    the body I'm wearing," he said. He rolled off me and lay on his back. He pressed a stud
    on the knife and about six inches of blade jumped out.
     
    "As I recall, you like knives," he said. He took my hand and closed my fingers around
    the handle of the knife. "It doesn't really matter where you cut me. Just drive the knife in
    to the hilt anywhere in this body and the shock will force me to jump."
     
    I threw the knife across the room. Broke the dresser mirror. "You could at least make
    him get rid of that damn woman!" I said bitterly.
     
    He just lay there.
     
    "Someday there's going to be a way for me to hurt you, Doro. Don't think I won't do
    it."
     
    He shrugged. He didn't believe it. Neither did I, really. Who the hell could hurt him?
     
    "I loved you. Why are you humiliating me like this?"
     
    "Look," he said, "if he has the woman there to turn to, he's a lot less likely to let you
     

 
    goad him into hurting you."
     
    "I'd be a lot less likely to goad him into anything if you'd get rid of Vivian."
     
    "You underestimate yourself," he said grimly. "Besides, he's in love with Vivian.. If I
    made him get rid of her, I guarantee you he'd take it out on you."
     
    "I just wish I could find a way to take this