Flame Song was getting anxious. Aidan had been in there a long time. Just when she was about ready to go in after him she saw a winged shape headed in her direction. She stood up and waved, calling softly, “Aidan!” He adjusted his course and a moment later he landed next to her.

“What happened?” asked Flame anxiously, acutely aware that this might not be her husband.

“I didn’t see them anywhere. The whole place looked deserted.” Flame’s heart sank. He hadn’t said the password, so this must be the other Aidan. And that meant that her husband had been captured. For one moment she wanted to forget about the plan and go after him, but she knew she would just have to trust him to take care of himself.

“I guess Drago was wrong about where they’re holed up. Maybe we should go back to the monastery and get fresh directions,” she said, hoping this false Aidan would take the bait.

“That sounds like a plan,” he said cheerfully. Flame felt a flash of hatred for this cheerful murderer in the image of her beloved, but she stifled it. She needed to act like there was nothing wrong. “Right. Let’s go then,” she said and, spreading her wings, headed off into the night. The mirror Aidan followed close behind her.

The journey back to Drago’s monastery was a strange one. Flame Song found herself alternately fascinated and repelled by the mirror of her husband. He was so alike! He had all of the same little mannerisms, and he said so many of the same things. There were moments when he showed the same sense of humor, making odd little jokes. And that actually was scarier than if he’d acted blatantly evil. Here was somebody capable of cold-blooded murder, of stalking a completely innocent person and then killing him just for the fun of it, and he acted just like her husband.

The main difference was in his treatment of her. Where Flame and her husband enjoyed an easy friendship and a deep loving commitment, this Aidan treated her with respect tinted with more than a touch of wariness, as though he expected her to somehow mistreat him if given the opportunity. But even though Flame knew he wasn’t her Aidan, and though she knew what kind of monster he was, she couldn’t bring herself to be anything but kind.

The first night as daylight approached, Aidan asked if they would stop and find shelter for the day. Flame was a bit puzzled until she realized that this Aidan didn’t know the purpose of the sun amulet. “No, I’d rather keep going. I want to make good time back to the monastery, and what with your amulet letting you stay out in the sunlight I can’t think of any reason to stop.”

She glanced over at him to see if he had noticed anything false in her acting, but he was obviously too concerned with trying not to give his own game away. As sunrise drew nearer he began to show a touch of nervousness. He was trying to hide it, but Flame Song could see that he didn’t like being out in the open with the sun coming up. She decided to give him a break and said, “I’m feeling a bit tired. Could we land and rest for a few minutes? We can sit under a tree and watch the sun rise.”

With relief the mirror Aidan agreed to land. He immediately found a sheltering tree in whose shadow he could hide if the amulet proved ineffective. Flame Song sat down on a nearby rock and made a little show of stretching and yawning. She watched Aidan out of the corner of her eye as the sky lightened. She knew that even the indirect pre-dawn light could cause a vampire pain, and she smiled a bit to see the expression of wonder that crossed the false Aidan’s face as he realized that he was feeling no discomfort. He stepped away from the tree and stared into the east. The sunrise was a pretty one, clouds of gold and pink caught the first rays, and then the edge of the sun peeped above the horizon, and light flooded over everything. Aidan just stared. In that moment, with the sunlight on him and an almost childlike expression of awe on his face, Flame wondered if he was really such a monster. She remembered the day when her Aidan had gotten his amulet. The look on his face that first time he stood in the sun had been the same look. Perhaps this other had something in common with her husband besides his physical appearance.

After a long time she got up and said, “I’m feeling a bit more rested now, shall we go on?”

Aidan started. “Yes, yes, of course.” Flame smiled inwardly again. He’d been so caught up in the sunlight that he had forgotten she was there. They flew into the brilliant morning light, and all that day the mirror Aidan kept losing himself in the sunlight. Flame would look over at him and find a wondering, dreamy sort of expression on his face. When they stopped for a rest about noon, he chose a spot to sleep in that was out in the open where the sun could shine on him fully. Flame Song kept looking at him and wondering. She wished she could really talk with him, but any of the questions she wanted to ask would give the game away.

She watched him as he watched the sunset with a mixture of fascination and regret. Suddenly she thought of another potential problem. “Aidan, I can’t remember, when was the last time you fed?” She was certain he was used to behaving like the vampires in the stories, going out at night in search of human victims to drain dry, but she wasn’t going to let him do anything of the sort while he was with her.

He looked a bit surprised by the question. “A day or two ago, why?”

“Oh, I was going hunting and I wondered if I should try and catch you anything.”

“Uh, sure, go ahead.”

“All right. You can hang around here for a bit while I go see what I can find.” She shifted back from aerian to firecat form and padded off into the deepening gloom. She put her worries out of her mind for a while and just enjoyed the hunt. She spent a lot of time looking human, but inside she was still the wild predator she’d always been. Nose to the ground she took in the rich, varied scents of the forest. She found the spoor of a rabbit that had passed not long ago and followed it. She reveled in the rush of air over her fur as she ran through the woods. And when she caught the first rabbit she savored the flavor of its blood pouring down her throat. She pulled it to pieces and ate it on the spot. Then she set out on a second, more difficult hunt. She needed to catch something alive.

It was over an hour later when she trotted back into the clearing where she’d left the mirror Aidan. He was still there, and he looked up warily as she emerged from the bushes. A live rabbit, struggling in terror, dangled from her jaws. Wordlessly, she offered it to him. There was an odd expression on his face, something she couldn’t quite pin down, as he took the terrified bunny from her. There was something almost like gratitude and even tenderness in it. But then he lifted the rabbit to his lips and began to feed with none of the reticence or desire to spare her feelings that her husband had always shown, and she dismissed her thoughts. He was a monster, after all. A cold-blooded killer. She turned away until he was finished. “Come on,” she said, “We need to get moving.”