TamLin snapped awake, which was usual.

A woman was on the edge of his bed, which wasn’t.

He blinked at Second a few times, his mind uncharacteristically sluggish as he processed that she was atop his blankets, fully clothed and between him and the door. Acceptable and even appropriate for a single Nameless out with her keeper…but he wasn’t her keeper. And the position reminded him all too uncomfortably of his parents, even down to the auburn-tinted hair caressing his pillow.

“Second?” he asked, concerned about what could cause his memory to take so long to catch up to the situation. “Why are you in my bed?”

“On, not in.”

Because she was on the sheets. Right.

“Okay,” he said amenably, since Second was similar enough to Janni that her response meant he hadn’t done anything too stupid. “Why are you on my bed?”

“Sins of our parents,” she said.

That meant his lack of memory could mean there wasn’t anything to remember. She might’ve let herself in to take up guard after he went to sleep for the night.

He grimaced. “Yeah, let’s not replicate my parents’ relationship.”

She snorted, and her eyes warmed with the wry smile she usually had to keep off her lips.

She rolled out of the bed, grabbing her equipment belt from his nightstand and buckling it with the swift ease that came from competence. “I was thinking about mine.”

TamLin bit his tongue—Nameless didn’t speak of parentage, for good reason—but what would it really hurt to ask? Thanks to the accident that had left them bondmates, she was already a Breach, someone to be euthanized if her people discovered her, and his apartment was safe from every sort of spy. “You knew your parents?”

“Just my mother.” Second opened his dresser and tossed him a shirt without even having to look at what she’d grabbed, so she’d snooped before taking guard position on his bed last night. “I terminated Janni’s father two days ago.”

…What?

He made himself finish pulling on the shirt, since leaving his chest bare would be both unfair to her and unwise for them both. “I thought Meyon died in a shuttle accident.”

“Infested.”

“How the fuck did he get himself Infested?”

Second shrugged, the line of her back stiff, but her voice stayed bland. “Looking for me, apparently.”

Why would Meyon Waver go jumping to a hellverse? “How the hell did he even know you?”

“There was an…a rippler?”

He grimaced. Ripplers were natural waves between somewhens that were how jumping generally happened, until a time zone figured out how to do it on purpose. Second, being from a post-apocalyptic hellverse, would’ve had little reason to be taught anything unrelated to her duties as expendable zombie killer.

“How old were you?” he asked.

She hesitated before answering “Ten,” so she’d been even younger than that.

He’d never had anything against Janni’s mother, but Second’s… If he ever met the woman, ‘Fuck you’ would be the least of his reactions.

“He never said,” Second continued, still talking about Janni’s father, “but I think he was originally Nameless.”

“Meyon?” TamLin blurted, startled. He paused long enough to get his voice back under control before pointing out, “My universe didn’t really have Nameless.”

“But it was an option.”

He grimaced, reminded yet again of his own father.

“Yeah, but…” But Nameless origins would explain details like Meyon’s calm competence in emergencies and his children’s handicaps—and that Meyon and Ellsi had caught those handicaps early enough to be able to hide them from others.

“Fuck,” he said, more softly. “That explains a lot.”

It even explained Janni’s obsession with the big picture. Might’ve been why she chose to leave their native universe to begin with—she was the most handicapped of her siblings, so living in another somewhen provided the least risk that someone would realize something was fishy with her lineage.

Or maybe Janni’d just chose to leave their native universe because she had a talent for pissing people off, and he’d come along to escape his mother’s efforts to make him inherit her job.

The sound of a sole scuffing against the frick flooring caught his ear, and he glanced over at Second.

She was watching him, her nonchalant façade in place. “What do bondmates do, exactly?”

“What do you mean?”

Second pressed her lips together, then gave a little sigh and moved the tension to her hands, instead. “You and Janni never consummated, so you were never officially married or mated or engaged or whatever. But you were still bondmates.”

“It’s closest to a betrothal, when still unconsummated. Janni and I are…”—not friends—“allies.”

“Depending on the situation,” Second commented. “You don’t always have the same end goal. Nor play the same game board, for that matter.”

Janni’s current vacation from this somewhen was a case in point. She’d gone jumping because he and others were pissed at her—because she’d set up Raleigh, one of her roommates, to get recovered and disassembled by her own captain so the virus she’d planted in Raleigh’s software would damage that universe’s ability to enter this one.

She’d justified it by pointing out how many folks would theoretically be saved by what that other universe now couldn’t do, but it would’ve been a hell of a lot easier to block things from this universe’s end if Janni had just used her abilities to help Raleigh and bothered to let someone else know what was going on.

Considering his own tendency to work alone, did he really have any room to cast stones?

TamLin shrugged. “We keep each other in line, then.”

One of her eyebrows quivered, giving voice to her doubt, but she otherwise seemed her usual sedate self.

“Well,” he said. “I can see how terror of someone uncovering that particular family secret would result in such willingness to sacrifice friends.”

“She doesn’t know.” Second tapped her own head, pointing out that she naturally picked up Janni’s thoughts when they were in proximity with each other—a side effect of two variants of the same psy-positive person sharing a somewhen.

“Maybe she didn’t think about it.” It wasn’t too hard to hide thoughts from telepathy, particularly when the psy-positive was just picking up stray thoughts rather than probing.

Second gave him a flat look that both asked, You seriously think I haven’t accounted for that? and reiterated, She doesn’t. fucking. know.

He shrugged an apology. She dismissed it as unnecessary with a flick of her eyes—an action that reminded him why he liked her so much better than Janni. So much more accepting about the way things were, rather than bitching about how they were supposed to be.

Okay, so that wasn’t entirely fair. Janni didn’t actively seek to sabotage his drug habit. She just bitched about it whenever given half a chance, not caring what his reasons were, whereas Second recognized that self-medicating was all he could do for his particular health issues.

It was a lot easier to show someone respect—or to decide if you even wanted to—when you understood where they were coming from. Easier to communicate with them, too.

Second stretched a little. “Work?”

Right. He checked his console for the time and started about the process of getting dressed and ready for work.

He turned so his back was to Second, and he was efficient about swapping his sleep pants for his work ones, but the action still left him feeling uncomfortable, almost dirty, as if he was sullying something precious.

Not his fault if Second had decided to watch.