"You tell me."

"I can only produce sourceless truth on an unreliable basis."

"Fine," says the boy. "So what now?"

"Well," says Elspeth, "you can live with me. I'm not sure where yet. I brought Harley up in a village in Québec, but your alts think you're going to be really obnoxious for a while, and the werewolves can be kind of volatile, so that doesn't seem like a good idea at least to start. Vampires aren't necessarily any better if you decide you want to push their buttons. I'd consider Denali, but I don't think you'd get along with Irina, and maybe not Kate either. So right now it's mostly between Nebraska and Isle Esme, but I'll have to ask my grandfather if I can have the latter for the next four-ish years. And of course maybe you don't want to live with me and would rather be dropped off in a randomly selected not-world-number-twelve's-Chicago location with some money and the local language. That can be arranged too."

"Probably depends on how fit for company you are and how soon, but at minimum there will be me, and my wolf Jacob, around, so probably no pickup soccer but we can occupy ourselves. I'm not sure what hobbies you've picked up at this point. Cooking and sewing are popular, though."

"What's your stake, anyway?"

"My stake?"

"What do you care, why are you the one kidnapping me?"

"I'm a good candidate for it. Particularly since there was Harley. And you needed help."

"What's the deal with Harley?"

"What do you mean? He's grown up, now, he won't need me around as much."

He gives her an impatient look. "If the reason you're so perfect for me is 'cause of him, why were you so perfect for him? Where is he?"

"I last saw him twenty minutes ago in the backyard of the interdimensional hub, in the tower that my mother and her alts maintain, but he could be anywhere by now. I think he left his external shapeshifting soul with his wolf in Québec, though. I volunteered to fetch him and look after him when Jane found him when he was a baby. There weren't any other obvious candidates, I had the wherewithal to do it, and the existing group of Jokers okayed me."

"What's their stake?" he mutters.

"The Jokers?" says Elspeth, bewildered. "They're versions of you. Alternate selves."

"So? They're all grown up, aren't they?"

"Yes. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Well... if I got to never think about Reggie again, I wouldn't ever."

He peers suspicously at her. "What do you mean, atypical history? What's the typical one, then?"

"Well, typically you guys are born in New York City when born on Earths at all, for one, so the fact that when I went looking for you I landed in Chicago was already a clue. You also don't look like them - they all mostly look like -" She sends a picture of Harley as he is now, grown-up, smiling. "Or -" Nona's face. "One born like that so far but she's not from an Earth, the others get that way by magic on whim. They're initially named after their fathers, who are rich, also physically and verbally abusive, and if left to their own devices long enough they blow up their houses with both parents inside and wander away and, where a Gotham exists, do the unrequited-love-with-costumed-superheroine thing, that's played out in its entirety three times now."

"Jane was able to send a blank brainphone message to 'the local Joker' in your world, and I was able to teleport to you with 'the local Joker' as my target, but if you're not sure enough yet, we can ask Glass; she's an alt of my mother's and she can tell by looking."

"Tell how?"