"Two of them?" Rowena said, concerned.

Metis stood quietly, looking very pale, and never removing her gaze from the pair of boys.

Ginny moved a bit closer. Metis caught the girl's arm. "Don't go near them."

Ginny ignored her and broke gently away. Coming closer, she realized what, or who, she was looking at. "Harry�" Her breath caught. "And Tom." She noticed that each stood with a shadow behind him, slanting unnaturally toward the setting of the sun.

Abruptly, Tom reached out and grabbed Ginny roughly by the wrist. She tried to jerk away, fighting the urge to scream. But he held fast, gazing intently into her eyes.

"Hello, again," he said softly. The air around them erupted violently, engulfing them in flames.

Light and heat surrounded them. Reflexively Ginny squeezed her eyes shut against the flames. Rowena? Metis? This is just a dream. Just a dream...

"Oh, yes. But what are our dreams really?" Tom asked softly, invading her thoughts with ease.

"Get out of my head!" she spat, tears threatening again. Her throat ached from the acrid air, from the effort of holding back tears, from the icy fear that welled up in her chest.

She opened her eyes. Tom looked like a ghoul, the orange-red flames licking and flickering behind him, unholy shadows crouching at the edge of the fire. Tendrils of black smoke twined around him, caressing his handsome face like lover's fingers. He smiled benignly at her, tugging her closer, resting her wrists against his slender chest.

"I never left your head," he purred. "As much as you tell yourself I'm gone, I never will be. Not really. Just ask Metis�"

Heat waves shimmered between them, a rush of air like the heat from a furnace. Her hair floated around her face, she wondered briefly why it didn't burn.

"You are my creature. You exist only to do my will." He shook her by the wrists to emphasize his point. "Why else would we have let you live?"

"We?" Ginny echoed, but Tom cut her off.

"We. Always we. All our fates are entwined - time and death could not separate us. We who die by the flame and rise again from the ashes. An ocean of years is but a teardrop to ones such as we."

He bent and kissed her, holding her in place by the scruff of the neck as though she was an unruly kitten. When he pulled back, he had Harry's face. Oh, God. They could be brothers. Perhaps that was why she'd�

"Harry?"

He smiled oddly, looking down at her. "Sometimes."

The flames drove up between them. He released his grip on her wrists so abruptly that she stumbled backward. Harry's green eyes flickered dark for a moment, then he shattered like a breaking mirror. The fire sputtered and died, as shards of dream-glass pattered to the ground around Ginny's feet.

Ginny looked down at the broken pieces. They reflected different faces from each angle, like funhouse glass. Tom, Harry�Different choices, different reflections, endless possibilities, but not a gleaming sliver of truth to be seen.

What is the truth, Gin? a voice that was equal parts Harry and Tom whispered huskily up against the back of her mind. Are you sure you would know it if you saw it?

A hand settled softly on Ginny's shoulder. "I can see why he wanted you, Virginia," Metis said, a bit dreamily. "We are alike, you and I. He could likely taste the strength of your dreams."

Metis paused. Ginny looked around. Rowena had gone, the two of them were alone. "Did he hurt you, Virginia? I would like to think that he did not."

"When? Just now? Or before?"

"Either. Both."

Anger flashed through Ginny suddenly. "He tried to kill me, Metis. He wanted my soul so he could live again."

Bizarrely, Metis laughed. "He always swore that without me, he would no longer have a soul. He said my soul was what gave him strength, what gave him life. Indeed, you and I are alike. More than even I ever dreamed."