When She Was Bad

10

“Dr. Irene?”

Irene took off the headphones, paused Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” in the middle of the pizzicato winter ice storm. “Yes, dear?”

“I’ve made up my mind-I’m going with Lyssy.”

“Are you absolutely sure that’s what you want to do?”

“Um, excuse me? Isn’t that what ‘I made up my mind’ usually means?” said Lily, her voice dripping with adolescent sarcasm. In other circumstances, thought Irene, that would have been a healthy sign-in our culture, it was one of the primary tools used by teenagers to effect the inevitable separation from the parent. “Only there’s something you have to do for me first,” Lily added.

“What’s that?”

“I want you to put me under again and bring Lilith back instead.”

“What?” Lyssy yelped. He looked as surprised as Irene felt-obviously this was something they hadn’t discussed beforehand.

“It’s the best thing,” Lily explained to him. “She’ll be a lot more use than I would-and I couldn’t stand it if we got captured again. And maybe Dr. Irene could put in some kind of posthypnotic suggestion, so if we made it to someplace safe…” In her mind’s eye she saw the beach again, the white sand and the palm trees. “…if you still wanted to, you could, you know, bring me back like?”

Lyssy tried to picture how that scenario might play itself out. It sounded like the rescue fantasy of all rescue fantasies, only for real. And of course he did miss Lilith: the memory of their lovemaking was never far from his thoughts. But when he looked over at Dr. Cogan, she was shaking her head.

“Absolutely not. Even if I thought it could work, which is far from likely, reinforcing an alter identity at the expense of the original personality could have far-reaching, potentially disastrous consequences for the system. And it’s unnecessary besides-remember what I’ve been telling you all these years: Lilith is not a separate magical being, Lily-she’s part of you. There’s nothing Lilith is capable of that you’re not: when you’ve finally internalized that, you’ll have come a long way toward integrating.”

Then Irene stood up-she was still wearing Frank’s pajamas-came around from behind the desk, dragged the side chair over to the couch again. “Speaking of alters, there’s one crucial point neither of you seem to have taken into consideration,” she said, sitting opposite the two seated on the couch, her gaze traveling from one to the other, finally resting on Lyssy. “What if Max or Kinch comes back?”

It should have been the clincher; instead, Lyssy grinned.

“What’s so funny?” asked Irene.

“Max already tried,” said Lyssy. “I kicked his butt right back to the dark place.” He put his hand on Lily’s knee, gave it an encouraging squeeze. “What do you say, kiddo? You ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she said. “C’mon, let’s get this show on the road.”