Raleigh would have been the first to admit that she wasn’t all that good a friend to her housemates. Good friends knew about allergies and families and origin stories. Good friends didn’t steal contact lists when the opportunity arose.

But in Raleigh’s universe, taking precautions even with those she trusted was standard procedure—though her continuance of that procedure into this universe was, perhaps, influenced by the knowledge Janni and Kitten would be forgiving of such stemming-from-native-universe habits.

Sitting at the dining room table, she paged through her console’s copy of Janni’s contact list, trying to figure out whom the woman had considered calling. It was probably one that had been on there awhile, for Janni had grimaced like that before.

Someone was breathing behind her.

Raleigh’s enhancements analyzed the height, temperature, and other details about the body suddenly behind her before she turned. “How do you do that?”

Kitten stood…stoically, Raleigh thought, now that she knew of the girl’s namelessness. The ice blue eyes observed without revealing what thoughts or emotions went on behind them. The circles under her eyes were too dark to be explained by the few hours she’d been away, and she was even more unkempt than usual. Dirt smudged her right cheek, and her sweater was gone, leaving a sleeveless summer shirt that matched her eyes, and the wire bracelet was missing from her left wrist.

“How’s your brother?” Raleigh didn’t expect any more answer to that question, but she figured it was polite to ask. “I’m sorry about his wife.”

Kitten blinked twice, quickly—as if hiding emotion, rather than as if startled.

“Janni told me about…” She wasn’t sure how to broach the topic of the two of them being alternate versions of the same person. “About Lysacarly.”

After a long moment, Kitten pivoted toward the Jenga game, which Raleigh had picked up and re-stacked in its tower. The girl paused, then plucked out a wooden block two levels from the bottom. Raleigh suspected it wasn’t a coincidence that the action conveniently put Kitten’s back to her.

“So ‘prime’ is what you call someone with biological modifications?” she asked—again, not expecting an answer, but she wanted to let the girl know that she’d followed some of her conversation with her brother. “And ‘null’ is someone without?”

Kitten turned her head enough to look over her shoulder at Raleigh, which was enough of an affirmative for her.

“You said Janni had a ‘bondmate’. I didn’t know she was married.” Raleigh was fishing, and she knew Kitten would recognize that.

But Kitten let Raleigh notice when she relaxed—insomuch as she ever relaxed—so might just be willing to let enough slip for her to put things together. After all, Kitten was an alternate version of Janni, and if Raleigh knew anything about the woman, it was that she loved dropping cryptic hints.

The girl picked another brick from the tower, then put it down on the table beside Raleigh’s console. She turned her hand palm up, as if asking for the device.

“Do you know how to use it?” Raleigh asked.

Kitten didn’t flinch, didn’t move, didn’t so much as glance Raleigh’s way. Just kept her palm up for the console.

Raleigh gave it.

The girl looked the device over for a moment, then started tapping buttons as if she owned one. She didn’t. Raleigh had tried giving her one, a few times, but it always ended up returned, with the money back in her account. She now wondered if that was another facet of Kitten’s namelessness. No name, so no property, maybe? That would explain why Kitten only ever wore hand-me-downs and castoffs—except for her weapons and the first aid kit. Those, Kitten would buy new, if necessary, and she kept them in excellent condition.

Raleigh remembered Janni’s ‘I suspect she’s met herself more often than I have.’ “See a console in one universe, you’ve seen them all?”

Her tapping continued without pause. “Tablet,” she said, voice soft and flat. “Usually.”

“It’s usually called a tablet?”

Kitten nodded once and offered the console back.

Raleigh took it and saw a specific address book entry open on the screen. No name was listed, but the entry had a photo, so Janni had chatted with him before—and the photo was the man she’d seen that morning, who’d spoken up when she encountered the would-have-been mugger.

She was sure Kitten had noticed her startlement already, so she asked the first thing that she could think of: “Is that a beard?”

The girl gave a little huff that was her equivalent of a snort. “Four o’clock shadow. It’s…” Kitten glanced away, as if evaluating if she should continue, then gave her infinitesimal shrug. “Some people naturally mix well with others, genetically.”

She’d called the man a ‘natural’ when speaking to her brother, Raleigh remembered.

“That…isn’t common. So they usually have…abilities, to help them adjust or freeze their appearance more easily than most, to help them hide. He likes looking a little scruffy, in clean-cut universes. Makes people underestimate him.”

Kitten spoke as if she knew Janni’s husband, and the paragraph was more words than Raleigh could ever remember hearing the girl string together at once, even when speaking to her brother.

“He exists in your universe?”

She looked away. “Dead.”

Raleigh realized that if Janni loved one version of him enough to marry him—well, Kitten had probably cared for her universe’s version of him, too. “I’m sorry.”

Kitten met her gaze for a long moment, faintly puzzled, before she focused back on the Jenga game. “We escaped our universe. He was…unable to acclimate.”

Raleigh winced. Acclimation to another universe—where people didn’t sound, look, or maybe even move like they did in your own universe—had been tough for her, and her universe had been a lot less apocalyptic than Kitten’s seemed to have been.

Her forefinger hovered over the Call button. If she dialed, she’d be announcing that she’d taken Janni’s contact list—and she’d also be officially ignoring Janni’s request to be called once Kitten turned up.

But First was still out there, somewhere. If Kitten’s appearance was anything to go by, her Nameless brother could use some help.

Raleigh hit the button. The call was answered a few seconds later. “Yes?” the man asked, his face filling the screen.

“I’m Raleigh,” she said, feeling awkward. The man was Janni’s husband. So why did he live elsewhere? And why did Janni grimace whenever she considered calling him?

“I’m sorry?”

The man didn’t even know who she was. She lived with his wife, and he didn’t know.

He’d left before she’d walked in, that morning. Maybe he didn’t recognize her.

Raleigh itched to hang up and call Janni, as she should have done from the get-go.

Kitten drew a sharp breath and stepped toward the console, reaching out as if to enter the call, then quickly caught herself and stepped even further back out of range, taking up her usual stance, though it seemed…tense…and she stared at the far wall rather than at her surroundings in general.

That was enough acceptance for Raleigh to say, “I live with Janni.”

The man blinked, frowning. “What’s the matter?”

So the man, whoever he was, didn’t expect her to know about him unless there was a problem.

That was probably a valid assumption. “First is missing,” Raleigh guessed, suspecting she was right when Kitten locked her ice-blue stare on her. “Second is dead. Third is…”—she glanced at Kitten—“damaged.” ‘This body is undamaged’—an odd turn of phrase she heard Janni use—and knowing what she did now, she suspected ‘this body’ was how Janni distinguished herself from Kitten.

The man still looked puzzled.

Raleigh let out a long breath. “Look, I don’t know how much I can say. I don’t want to get these Nameless people killed.”

His expression blanked into the stoicism she usually associated with Kitten. It looked far less creepy on him. “Where are you?”

“At the apartment.” She paused. “Your wife went out looking for them, I think.”

From the way the visuals blurred, the man had picked up his console and started running. “Bondmate, not wife,” he corrected casually. “We’re bonded, not consummated.”

If he was able and willing to converse while running, Raleigh would accept all the knowledge she could get. “I thought bonded meant married.”

He shrugged and ducked around something. “In some universes. In ours…it’s more ‘betrothed’.”

“Then why don’t you marry?”

“Various reasons.”

“Resonance,” Kitten said, even more softly than she was wont, as if making certain she wouldn’t be heard by the man on the other end of the call.

Raleigh looked at the girl, her face warming. Janni had called Kitten better at keeping her thoughts to herself. Being unable to keep another, younger version of herself from hopping into her mind while she was…occupied…would be rather problematic.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Raleigh said quickly, not wanting to get Kitten—or Third, or whatever she was supposed to be called, since she didn’t have an actual name—in trouble.

From his expression, he wasn’t fooled, but he also was willing to let it slide.

“I’m sorry, but what’s your name?” Raleigh asked. “I mean, if you have one.”

He gave a wry half-smile, and she found herself liking him. “Call me Lin.”

Kitten swiftly left the table, heading down the hall, and Raleigh couldn’t help thinking the man’s feminine-sounding name was particularly ill-fitting.