"Please make sure she knows not to let me hear her name."

"I don't suppose we could do something radical like drop a note in her lap first?"

"If I'm shadewalking to drop a note in her lap I'm still shadewalking into some mage's house by myself," says Shadow.

"I'll come with you, I'm just saying we don't have to loiter on the first pass."

She's sitting in a bedroom, on a bed, reading a book.

And now Shadow and Revelation are in the darkest corner of the room.

And now there is a note tucked behind the next page of her book. Revelation squeezes Shadow's hand in case he doesn't spot it.

Shadow spots it. He takes them back into the shadow places to ask, "Should we wait here until she reads it? What does it say?"

"You want a copy or a summary? It should take her about ten minutes to get to that page and read it, then I wanna give her a couple to process it and then go back again."

"A summary, I guess. Where should we wait? I think I heard something about the bar place pausing time, so I guess not there...?"

"Well, we could go there and do things that involved at least ten minutes' worth of holding the door, but here is fine. Note explains the alternate universe selves thing, has a quick rundown of me and Promise's features including a warning about her name, repeats the explanation I got about the bar's mechanisms, and says me and a Shadow will be along to pick her up and answer more detailed questions soon, does she want to consult on slash contribute to our exciting projects."

"Okay. I hope she doesn't try to capture me," says Shadow. "Did the note say anything about all the free elementals...?"

"I didn't give her enough to go on about that unless it's the sort of thing she could predict from the 'alternate versions of you' thing, which, if it is, you have nothing to worry about."

Shadow takes a moment to think this through, and then murmurs, "I guess so..."

"She'll just think you're mine, right? If she couldn't guess otherwise?"

"Probably yes. It's the obvious thing to assume. That I'm yours or that you're borrowing me from someone or somewhere."

"So on no account is she liable to try to capture you."

"I guess not."

"And if she does I'll steal the amulet and... you know what we should have is walkie-talkies - anyway I'll steal the amulet and figure out how to get back to the door and I will drop it in my black hole, if anything can destroy it that should."

"You could just give it to Kisonde again," he murmurs. "What's a black hole?"

"Kisonde would probably have occurred to me once I was done being generally outraged or when I walked past her, whichever. A black hole is - well, I'm not sure how similar our laws of physics are, actually. Is this planet spherical?"