The Flow snapped shut.

Together, they entered the impossible.

V gently picked up her hand and placed it lightly in his own. He spread his fingers and threaded them through hers-finger-flesh, finger-bone, finger-flesh, finger-bone-like piano keys and living things. V lifted their joined hands up to his eyes, trailing their forearms together. It looked as if he waltzed with death.

He held their hands up so that she could see.

"You can do this," he said. "I trust you."

Entranced, Consuela said nothing, but turned her hand within his-still touching-and walked around his body, keeping close and quiet. She tried to think of him like the air, like the water and the flame, like the feathers and b.u.t.terflies, but his smell brought her back to how very alive he was.

He was human-he was V-how could she make him into a skin? What would I be taking? Can I accept what he's offering? Will I be able to give it back when it's done? The questions tumbled in her mind and fed a secret, shameful place that delighted in the awesome power she would have over him if it worked; and the terribly awesome power she'd have-sanctioned murder-if it didn't.

Consuela circled closer, trying to help them get used to each other: a breath away from touching, casually creasing clothes, the kiss of skin on bone. She hovered like a moth flying closer to the flame. But she was the fire coming to consume him, and V, the moth, was letting her happen.

Irresistible, she thought.

* Please, * he thrummed. * Do it. *

Stepping slowly behind him, she dragged her skull against his shoulder, tracing her way to his back, following the curve of his ribs as a guide. His breathing was a forced-down gasping, trying to maintain control in a moment tense with permission, unconditional, unknown, and closer to worship than fear.

V closed his eyes, his head lolled forward. His hair hung down. His black lashes cast long shadows, just touching his cheek.

"I trust you," he said, perhaps more to himself than to her.

* Do it. * Now. *

"Relax," Consuela coaxed. "Let me in."

Consuela lifted her right hand under the weight of his palm, flexing her fingers to match each of his, spreading them wide like a puppeteer. She bent both of them at the wrist and pushed her hand upward into his.

He gasped, but she did not retreat.

She rested her head against his shoulder and felt the charged antic.i.p.ation there. Curiosity, electricity, pain. She tasted it in the air.

"Relax," she said, and placed her left hand against his shoulder blade, a giant albino spider against his shirt. Consuela touched its surface in a clinical way, then pushed her fingers into his back, caressing the inside/underside of his arm, sliding into his left hand like a glove.

V's head whipped back and he groaned once into the dark. He squeezed his eyes against the sensation and she bowed her head reverently as she entered his spine. She felt his body push and part like heavy curtains against her face, and she walked in-warm and welcome-stepping through his calf muscle into the boot of his foot. First one, and then the other, before she opened him fully as skin.

She was surprised to hear an echo of his consciousness as his head covered hers, alive, entombed, a human skin; it was his last gasp of letting go.

"Be in me." It rang inside her, his voice instead of his usual, unusual violin song. It touched her that in that last second, he trusted her to the end.

Consuela stepped into his body, letting it zip closed behind her.

She looked up and out.

Her eyes saw from behind his eyes, like his irises were soft contacts over her own; her nose could smell beneath his nose, and she swallowed, scratching her throat along his Adam's apple. V was still there, spread thinly all over her. He was still alive, but she was the one living him.

She placed his hand upon her chest and wondered whose heartbeat she felt there.

Consuela turned slowly in place. She could feel the larger, callused feet, the odd weight between her legs, the itch of stubble on her face . . . It was a wholly unfamiliar feeling, moving in the suit of him, but she couldn't wonder about it any longer. She/he/they had to go.

She lowered herself gently, not yet trusting her borrowed body. Consuela spread her wide hand over the surface of the blood. She could imagine her bones resting on his hand, now in his hand-together they would get through this. She felt their confidence in each other. These hands, entwined, enmeshed, would see it done.

She flexed her fingers and picked up the lighter, feeling the cool kiss of metal, and smelled the tiny tang of fuel. So human . . . V felt so alive, so virile and vulnerable, it humbled her to be inside him. Yet part of her loved it, l.u.s.ted for it, craved the complete invasion of another's soul-not soul, she reminded herself, just his body. His body. Not mine. She fumbled for the lighter. Knocked it over. It went out. Plunged into darkness and an unfamiliar body, Consuela yelped and hoped that V couldn't hear her panicked thoughts in his head.

It took four tries before she sparked the lighter back to life. Fingers shaking, she held its single flame over the thin pool of blood. She felt the raw sting in his arm where the punctures still bled, but she pushed the pain aside and lowered his face to the floor. She waved the lighter back and forth, trying to catch both his eye and the blood in the weak, gold light. Finally, she saw it: the tiny curve of his iris-a bit of the corner, framed in dark lashes, and a hint of his cheek. She saw the opening in his pupil, felt a tug-it was enough.

Smirking a little, she pushed forward. Even with the vertigo of sight and sound, she was inhumanly proud. Tender could not have expected this.

teNDeR stared down into the pit wondering, watching, what they would do. Which one would go while the other remained? Who would be his sacrifice? Who would try to confront him later when he'd all but won?

He couldn't hear them, but he liked to watch. He gloated at their vain searching. He reveled in their argument. He could almost taste their shadowy pain. He was surprised when V pierced his arm, feeling every bit the Peeping Tom at their intimacy thereafter. It excited him more than he wanted to admit, desire pressing warmly against the inside of his skin. Tender touched the edge of his own arm as she cut and caressed his own chest, imagining the kiss of pain as she entered V's back.

He was horrified, mesmerized, awestruck. It took him many minutes before he comprehended their perfect plan, and by then, it was too late to do anything but admire it.

His next thoughts fell like hammer blows, smashing his brain.

Bones had made a skin of V. V could walk through blood. Bones could not do these things, but had while wearing V. Bones could make a skin of anything. Anyone. Any power could be hers. V could be dead. Could be free. Could be d.a.m.ned. Bones could skin them all like seals and wear their fur like sacred coats. Bones could be . . . V could be . . . He could then be dead/lost/free . . .

Bones, the game changer, could do it all. Anything any one of them could do.

He wouldn't have to do anything, anymore.

Tender sat back, stunned, in a makeshift chair and never even felt the tears fall down his face.

chapter fourteen.

". . . [D]eath revenges us against life, strips it of all its vanities and pretensions and converts it into what it really is: a few neat bones and a dreadful grimace."

-OCTAVIO PAZ SHE swirled into an open darkness. Shapes of light spiraled in all directions, spinning into the distance every which way.

Squares and rectangles and ovals of various sizes shone like bright, gray windows against the black-other shapes, muted, were nearly hidden unless she stared at them out of the corner of his eye. Consuela guessed that the television-bright spots were mirrors; the shadowy ones, merely reflections, like spoons. Or pools of blood. The one behind her slowly shimmered closed as it dried.

There was an eternity of s.p.a.ce; mirrors mounted like glow-in-the-dark stars stuck along invisible subway-tunnel walls. They spun end over end-no up, no down-dizzying in every direction.

The Mirror Realm, she thought. Worlds within worlds within the world of the Flow. Just how many realities are there in here?

In the center of the mirror universe, she felt very small and very alone.

Except, of course, for the skin she wore. V was a living, breathing film spread over her body-stretching in places, bulky in others, but very much a foreign presence and eerily mute.

She took a tentative step with his foot, then another, and a third. Noticing that she did not always travel in a straight line, Consuela pinpointed an oval mirror, and although she walked toward it, the robin's-egg shape corkscrewed until it hung nearly above her head by the time she reached it. She didn't feel upside down. She didn't feel awake.

Consuela swallowed against the fresh panic in V's borrowed chest.

All she had to do was find a way out. She could slip through any of these shapes, but she didn't trust the unblinking stares of the faceless, mundane mirrors. She kept walking, noticing that what she'd taken for scratches on the gla.s.s were really symbols, tick marks, and even initials. One said clearly RGB, another hieroglyph looked suspiciously like a mouse, and another outline was a flat hand with an eye etched into its palm. Consuela wondered how many mirror-walkers had been here before. What tied them to this world or united them in the Flow? Was there something V had in common with them? And, if there were others like V and Sissy and Tender, what about her? Had there been any skin-shaping skeletons before her?

She touched a mirror as she wandered by, pulling his hand back as it slid through with a feeling of microfilament pressure and a Xerox line of light.

V's hand was wet with blood. My blood. No, his blood. And she'd left red fingerprints on the inside of the gla.s.s.

They moved on.

Consuela kept her eyes focused on the left, a wall that slowly rotated as she moved through the spirals of mirror s.p.a.ce. There were hundreds-no, thousands-of mirrors in this world. She began to worry about whether she'd ever find one of V's marks, or if she were lost, would she ever find her way out? The vacuum of sound was like an overplayed song, pressing against V's eardrums with an echo of heavy heartbeats.

His arm stung. His eyes, too. For whatever reason, she was scared to make a sound. Afraid, with some little-girl wild nightmare feeling, of waking something in the dark that would jump out and devour her. This seemed a place for monsters.

She debated whether she should get out of him now, unmake V, and have him lead them both out. She'd have company. She'd know if he was okay. But she didn't know if she could survive in here without V on, didn't feel certain she could undo him safely at all, let alone in the Mirror Realm, and a small, greedy part of her felt powerful and confident knowing that she lay safely tucked behind someone else's skin. The hurt was not her hurt. The heart was not her heart. V was an armor she could wear over herself, a sort of protection realized in the flesh-his flesh-over her bones.

She saw above her a mark drawn in ink; a black letter V just as he'd said.

Consuela dipped her face low to the surface, careful not to touch. She saw a simple bedroom with a matching bed set and neatly tucked linens; a lady's hairbrush, journal, and hair spray adorned the vanity desk. Four layers of decorative pillows artfully filled half the bed and a rolled-weave throw rug splayed over a dark hardwood floor. The lamp was frosted gla.s.s. The fixtures, too. Consuela wondered whose room it was, but no one came in or out and she moved on.

She wondered if these places were part of the Flow or of the world? Could V pa.s.s through anywhere, like Maddy had done in dreams? What were the limits of their powers? Could they somehow escape Tender here, if they had to hide?

A spasm knifed his gut.

She coughed with his lips and his throat voiced the gasp. His hands were huge and automatically pressed deep into his side. She tried to identify the feeling when a flulike rippling flared in his kidneys. She cried out, a deep growl.

What's happening? She stared at his hands, which shook. She felt his face p.r.i.c.kle with sweat. Chattering teeth peppered her ears in a haunting, mariachi shiver that begged her knees to buckle, her feet to jog. She felt like he had to puke.

V's body was rejecting her.

Not here, she thought sharply, wincing. Not now! Consuela had to get them safely out.

She looked wildly with his eyes for that elusive painted V. She'd yank them outside any one of these, if she had to-she would not risk his life by hiding beneath his skin. She felt ashamed for having even thought of it, punished by G.o.d for being arrogant. But she was scared, terrified, of getting lost in this place. She had to find the mirror back to her room.

But there were so many mirrors.

She ran, crablike, hunched and doubled over. The pain stabbed again. Clutching his stomach, biting his cheek, she limped down the corridors of bright geometric s.p.a.ce. A whine escaped his lips. Tears blurred his eyes.

Consuela blinked, unable to lift her arms to wipe the wetness away, afraid that if she let go, the gaseous bubble in their gut would pop and they would both burst, splattered over curved walls that no one would see.

Fear kept her sweating and stumbling, grimacing with his lips and grunting with his throat. She glanced around desperately for one of his marks. A little farther. Just a little bit farther . . .

And there, like a constellation in the agoraphobic black, she saw the doorway speckled in misty dewdrops sporting the all-important V. The droplets were trapped under a sheet of matte black like a million crystal beads held in stasis by the Flow.

Then Consuela remembered: the mirror had been painted over.

She whimpered, beginning to crumple in half, feeling the next wave of nausea, the next push to release. They had to get out or they would die here. Now.

There were no clear mirrors in her bathroom, but there were reflective surfaces-the faucets, the drains, the towel racks-if she could find them. Consuela squinted against the tears in his eyes and the pain spiking in his side.

She searched around her painted-over gateway, nearly crawling from the pain, before she saw it: the sink faucet was a pale, shimmering, oblong glow. She recognized its shape. But it hung upside down, above her head, horrifyingly out of reach.

A sudden lurch and she swallowed back bile. No choice. No time left.

She ran for it, diving their body sideways and up, willing it to somersault without gravity or reason like an astronaut in outer s.p.a.ce, and she was very much surprised when it worked, condensing into a dizzying funnel.

They sheared through on a knife of dull silver light.

SHe fell into her bathroom, borrowed strength bleeding out of her all at once.

Consuela, the skeleton, hit the tile floor with a clatter. V, a heavy, wet thump, landed beside her. She'd expelled him. Or he, her. Self-preservation. Alien meat. Separated, they were wholly apart and miraculously whole. They flopped around spastically like fish without breath.

For a moment, she felt the loss, a frantic need to pull him back onto her-her into him-like a security blanket. But then she realized that he was not part of her. Not really. She forcibly kept herself to herself.

They spent long moments coughing on the floor, using their own lungs, their own air. Thrashing and stumbling on their own hands and feet, learning to be separate and in control once more. Neither of them looked at the other.

"Can I take a shower?" V asked the tile floor.

Consuela waved her skeletal hand toward the closet. "Towels in there," she said as she lurched to standing. Racing to her bundle of self-skin on her bedspread, she pressed it protectively to her chest. Consuela closed the bathroom door and heard the shower's splash-applause.

She shouldered herself over her body, slipping on her raiment of hair, eyes, and skin. The water changed tempo as it drummed against something solid, and Consuela tried not to think too much about V naked in her shower. Dressing quickly, she hooked her birthstone cross around her throat as the water squeaked to silence.

She heard the gla.s.s door of the shower click open and closed, the heavy footfalls on tile and the flump of thick towels. She listened to his every step and move as he dressed. She could picture his feet slipping down pant legs. She could hear his fingers fumble with the b.u.t.tons of his shirt. Consuela heard V approach the door, conscious of her consciousness of him, and how aware she was about where he was, even outside herself. When his hand touched the doork.n.o.b, she felt it on her skin.

He opened the door shyly. V stood, wet and dressed, whole and alive. His hair still dripping, the water turned his tousles to curls. He rubbed at his face and neck.

He tried to smile, but it was weak, unsure. "I told you that you could do it."

Consuela self-consciously combed her hair with her hands.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Well, I've never had anyone 'in' me before."

Consuela grinned. "I think that means you lost your virginity."

"Ha ha. You wish." V laughed. Or tried to laugh. She tried, too. They sounded like crumpled paper.

They were laughing off the nervousness, but the awkwardness remained.

Then they were laughing off the awkwardness, but the nervousness remained.

Ruffling his hair with one of her towels, V spoke first. "It was frightening and * intimate * nice."

Consuela smiled, wondering if he ever heard the thoughts he gave off. She toyed with the cross on her chain.

"We should go," she said.