"Host, you have wrecked six worlds!" the white cat snarled as Holly opened her eyes.
"Comforting," Holly said, blinking against fluorescent light. "Did you bring flowers with that lecture?"
"There are no flowers. There are penalties," Myrtle said. Her voice was small and clinical. It sounded like a cat and a filing clerk arguing.
Holly pushed the filthy blanket down and sat up. Her wrist screamed when she flexed. The skin was purple, the bruise mapped to a pattern that belonged to someone who had learned to hit the same place every time.
"Where am I? Who owned this body?" Holly asked, scanning the room in one quick sweep. Room 14 smelled of antiseptic and old fear.
"Summit Psychiatric. Occupant: Lindgren, Holly—no, correction. Occupant recorded as Marianne Osborne, twenty-three, declared non-responsive by West Park patrol three days ago," Myrtle recited. "You are hosted in a corpse that was claimed as dead."
"Corpse," Holly said, tasting the word. She tested her jaw. The mouth felt wrong, the tongue foreign. "Great. I wake up in a dead girl's motel with a cat lecturing me. Tell me the best-case scenario."
"Best case: you comply, retrieve an object of value, and return to your proper trajectory. Worst case: you fail and remain bound here, vulnerable to rewrite penalties and memory erosion," Myrtle said. Her tone had a clinical click now, like a judge.
"Rewrite penalties," Holly repeated. "Does that include forced cheerfulness?"
"No. Penalties are literal," Myrtle said. "You want
