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male I knew millennia ago. Odysseus. He too suffered because he would not bow to a greater fate. The orders of his commanders were not enough to persuade him. He refused to accompany the Greeks to Troy, feigning madness by sowing his fields with salt.”
    Even imaginary friends could be a little insulting. “Is that what I’m doing? Feigning madness?”
    “He eventually complied and, the greatest of all heroes, was cast out upon the ocean. He spent decades on the water with his men, hurled away from Troy by typhoons. I did what I could to help, but my magic failed. It wasn’t possible to alter the thread of his destiny. I fear I cannot amend yours.”
    “Odysseus wouldn’t show proper deference to Poseidon,” Pace said. “That’s why the gods wouldn’t let him return home. I have no home to go back to.”
    “You would if you set aside your blood oath.”
    “If I could set it aside, it wouldn’t be a blood oath.”
    Eirrin leaned in closer, and he saw himself reflected in the black, prehistoric eyes. “Your vengeance has already been fulfilled.”
    “Not entirely, Princess.”
    Crumble barked and licked Pace’s face happily. He petted the dog and said, “Good boy, that’s a boy.” He knew what was really happening—that Hayden was on the bed with his tongue hanging out, grunting and slobbering. But Pace patted the dog’s head and felt only fur, the wet cold nose, the fleshy pug wrinkles.
    That was his talent, the real genius of his madness. He not only saw the other alternates, he could interact with them. They were as real to him as anyone else in the world.
    The door opened again.
    Daedalus, with his wings folded, entered. The father who knew not to fly too close to the sun when wearing wax. What your humanities teacher would call a “masculine solar deity” even though Daedalus wasn’t a god. Just a poor architect in ancient Greece trying to pay homage to his mad king who saw treason in every act of grandeur.
    He said nothing, only wept for his dead son smashed into the sea. The leather straps crossing his muscular chest creaked as he came closer to the bed, the tears running into his knotted beard. The lost father was an alternate of Faust’s.
    The three of them ringing Pace on the mattress.
    This hallowed ceremony meant solely for lunatics, shared only by the damned.
    ~ * ~
    Dr. Maureen Brandt sat on the couch smoking a cigarette. Pace stepped into the small living room and the three faceless figures followed. He sat in the leather chair. She glanced at him once with shamed eyes.
    “I’m sorry, Will.”
    “Don’t be.
    “You’re my patient. Your health and well-being are paramount to me. At least they should be.”
    “You just got tangled up with us. You can’t straighten out our kind of sick.”
    “With your meds you’ll be—”
    “They just hold back the storm for a while. But they can’t stop it.”
    A voice from above said, “Do you remember us?”
    Pace looked up.
    Stuck to the ceiling were three faces staring down at him.
    Pia, only twenty, a pale blue-eyed next-door cutie-pie. You took one look at her and you wanted her to care for your fevers when the rains came, cuddle with you under an afghan while the snow piled high against the windows. Elfin, that might be the right word, and she tugged at every heart. Lower lip cocked in a half-grin. Like she knew something you didn’t, and she was never going to tell you.
    Hayden, always with that expression you just wanted to smack. Sharp nose, chin, and lips, the thrust of thinning black hair knifing down to a widow’s peak, everything on the man like a razor, especially his teeth. Only the eyes were misleading, set about a half-inch too far apart. It was understandable why the doctors thought he might be mentally impaired. He was, just not the way they thought.
    Faust with the blazing glare of a holy man who wills himself to see God everywhere. Like somebody who’d gone into the desert and eaten honeyed locusts for forty nights,