Willow stands up. “I won’t be inside Layla if I move into Leeds. We’ll need to tie her up again.”

There’s a nervous energy between us as we ascend the stairs to the bedroom, because we’re about to do something we’ve never done before. Something we’ve never even thought to do.

Willow sits on the bed and looks up at me as I reach for the rope still tied around the bedpost. “Are you sure about this?”

“I have nothing to hide, Willow. It’s fine. It might even help.” I wrap the rope around her wrists and begin to tie them.

“How could it help?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. But he’s like you. He isn’t like me. He knows more than both of us put together, so we just have to trust him. It’s all we have left.”

She inhales, and when she exhales, she leaves Layla’s body.

Layla just slumps against the headboard. “Not again,” she says, her voice full of defeat. “Why is this happening?” The expression on her face is an agonizing one. I force myself to look away.

“I don’t know,” I say quietly. “But I’m sorry it’s happening.” I walk to the door, and Layla is calling after me, but I can’t stay to listen to her pleas. I lock the door behind me and head back downstairs.

“Where should I sit?” I ask the man.

He motions to the chair I’ve been sitting in this whole time. “Right there will be fine.” He reaches out his hand. “Give me your phone. I’ll record our interaction while she’s inside of you and play it back for you when it’s over.”

I slide my phone to him, and he props it up using his briefcase. He points the camera at me and presses record. I suck in a nervous rush of air. I’m staring at the phone when I say, “I’m ready, Willow.”

I only feel it for a second.

A whoosh, like a rush of wind moving through my head. It’s as quick as the fluttering of an eyelid, but I know time has passed, because when I open my eyes, I’m still looking at my phone, but the minutes on the recording have changed. It went from just a few seconds to over three minutes. It’s like being under anesthesia for a surgery. You’re awake, and then you’re awake again, with no memory of the in-between.

“Did it already happen?” I ask, looking at the man.

He’s staring at me with narrowed eyes, as if he’s working through a difficult equation. He reaches over and hits stop on the cell phone recording.

I bring my hands up to a point against my chin, overwhelmed by the simplicity of what just happened, but also overwhelmed by the magnitude of it. It was a strange sensation, but also not entirely unfamiliar. Someone might pass it off as a dizzy spell.

I think back to all the times Willow has done this to Layla. How terrifying it must have been for Layla to be in the middle of a bite of food, and then one blink later and her plate is suddenly empty.

One second she was upstairs; the next second she was outside.

I run my palms down my face, flooded with guilt for what this has done to Layla’s mental stability. I knew this was affecting her, but now that I’ve put myself in her shoes, I feel even worse.

Not to mention, I still have her tied up like she means nothing to me. I can’t believe I’ve been letting Willow do this to Layla.

“What did Willow say?” I ask him. “I want to watch the video.”

He picks up my phone, but before he hands it to me, he says, “Do you have access to Layla’s medical records?”

I have access because I’ve been to every appointment she’s had since I’ve been with her, but I don’t know why he’d need them. “Why?”

“I’d like to see them.”

“Why?” I say again.

“Because I’d like to see them,” he repeats.

This man has given me absolutely nothing tonight. Just question after question and not a single answer. I sigh, frustrated, and then pull my laptop in front of me. It takes me a couple of minutes to log in to Layla’s medical records, and then I slide the laptop over to him. “You think you’re ever going to give us an explanation, or is this one-sided interview going to go on all night?”

The man stares intently at the computer screen as he responds. “Go get Layla for Willow so I can show you both the video.”

I gladly push back from the table. I walk up the stairs, wondering what the video is going to show. And why does he need Willow in Layla’s body to play it back to me?

I think Willow needs to stay out of Layla from this point forward. There’s not really a reason to take over anymore. We’ve told the man everything. Layla has been through enough.

Part of me wants to untie her and let her leave so she’ll be put out of her misery, but the room is quiet when I open the door. Willow has already taken over Layla again.

It’s probably for the best. I feel too guilty to face Layla right now.

“It isn’t right—what we’ve been doing to Layla,” I say. I untie the knots and loosen the rope.

Willow just nods in agreement. When I’ve released her hands, she wipes at her eyes, and I notice for the first time she’s crying.

“What’s wrong? What did you find out?”

“I don’t know what any of it meant,” she whispers, her voice catching in her throat.

Then she’s off the bed and past me and out the bedroom door. She’s walking with urgency in her steps. I rush down the stairs behind her, and when I get to the kitchen, she grabs my phone from the man. She shoves it into my hands like she doesn’t want another second to pass without me seeing the video.

My hand is shaking, so I lay my phone on the table as the video begins to play.

I see myself on the screen, and right when I say, “I’m ready, Willow,” on camera, there’s an instant change in me. My posture stiffens. My eyes open. I look down at my shirt and then hear the man’s voice when he says, “Willow?”

My head nods up and down.

It’s so strange . . . seeing myself do things I don’t remember doing.

I turn the volume all the way up on my phone so I can hear the conversation he had with Willow while she was inside my head.

“What do you feel?” the man asks Willow.

“Worried.”

“Don’t be,” the man says. “I just want to clear up a few things. I need you to try and see everything from Leeds’s point of view right now. Can you see his thoughts? His memories?”

Willow nods.

“I want you to go back to the day Leeds and Layla were shot. Do you have that memory?”

“Yes.”

“You can see that day from his point of view?”

“This feels wrong,” Willow says. “I shouldn’t be in him. It feels different. I only want to use Layla.”

“Give it one more minute. I just have a few questions,” the man says. “What did Leeds feel when he heard the gun?”

“He was . . . scared.”

“And what did Sable feel?”

Willow doesn’t speak through me for several seconds. She’s silent. Then, “I don’t know. I can’t find that memory.”

“Do you have another memory of that moment?”

“No. Just the memory Leeds has. I remember what happened before he heard the gunshot, but not during.”