"Minting is self-perpetuating - a six pointed coin, a hex, will turn somebody into a mint. Enchanting is from Rose's world Rêverie, and people are born with the power there, but it can be hexed on too."

"I see."

"And before Jane is installed in a world - or when she's not working - the way to get there is via an interworld bar called Milliways, so if a door ever leads to a bar instead of where you thought it was going, that's where you are."

"Good to know."

"Also if that ever happens to you I'd like to be informed so I can go check on the Belltower."

"I'll let you know," she promises. "What's the range on that communication system of yours?"

"The current version will work anywhere within the worldsheaf - uh, that means all the dimensions that are part of this world. Used to be it wouldn't work between subworlds but Amariah fixed it and upgrades to the brainphone propagate virally."

"I might have to ask you for a list of all your alternates," she says, amused.

"I go by Aurora when there are lots of me in the room. The others are Stella, Shell Bell, Amariah, Golden, Angela, Juliet, Aegis, Pattern, Rose, Cam, Sarion, and Glass. A few of us went to visit a new one who made her way to the Belltower, but then they got cut off - something in that world apparently affected Aegis in a way that broke Jane. Jane is mostly a computer network but she kind of lives in Aegis."

"Got it," says Matilda.

"Stella's the one from the world with minting, Shell Bell's from a nonmagical dystopia who started finding Milliways when she was six, Amariah is a witch from a world where that's a species and everybody's soul is a talking animal except there are talking polar bears who don't have those, Golden's a vampire, Angela's an angel - a biological angel, not a spiritual angel, although the lines are a little culturally blurred - Juliet is a vampire slayer but her vampires aren't Golden's kind, Aegis is a space admiral, Pattern has no distinguishing characteristics except for her aura, Rose is the native enchantress, Cam is the wizard and also the only boy so far, Sarion's an elf and has special elf magic, and Glass is a magician and also got the coolest aura features, she can see magic and also stuff about templates."

"Does your Device do that? Like Cam's notebook?"

"Yes, she's very handy that way."

"Notetaking is a Bell thing until we get perfect recall, but before Cam met the peal he had already wizarded up all his past notebooks into one, and on Syntropy, things that don't talk, talk. So he was pretty attached to her and routed his version of perfect recall through her. Also since then he went to Amariah's world and got her turned into one of the external-animal-souls and now she can be a hawk, although she's still usually a notebook."

"Our history is not nearly so complicated," laughs Matilda. "We found each other when I was just about seven and we've been together ever since."

"Are you going to introduce me?" asks Bella.

"Her name is Adularia, but she doesn't like talking to most people."

"Neither does Cam's book-bird. Her name's Grace, but I've never spoken directly to her."

"I'm sensing some similarities."

"Apparently it's a thing with a lot of daemons - that's the name for external animal souls, which she is now - that they only talk to other daemons and their people. Although Amariah's owl Pathalan is perfectly talkative when he has something to say. I don't know enough about Shell Bell's smew Neptune to say. And the Joker daemons, where applicable, are all very friendly."

"Well, as much as I'd love to keep chatting about your alternate universe adventures, I have pirates to deal with," says Matilda. "I'll drop by next time I'm in the neighbourhood."

"Sure. Brainphone me anytime, I don't sleep."

Bella devotes all of her attention to snuggling Brilliance.