So often she’d heard the term ‘out-of-body experience’ and thought it so much mumbo-jumbo. She knew what it meant now: a defence mechanism, detaching you from your present circumstances because you couldn’t bear the view from within. She had been drugged, she was sure. Something in her tea, most likely. Everything was slightly out of focus, but this effect wasn’t merely chemical. She wasn’t seeing herself, not her face, but she could see a woman there and she knew the woman was her. She could see what was being done to the woman. She knew the woman’s name was Tessa Garrion, but something inside wouldn’t let her connect Tessa Garrion to herself. It wasn’t happening to someone else, it was happening to someone she once was, and someone she would have to be again, but not someone she was right now. She had been so many women. Lysistrata, Katherina, Miranda, Clytemnestra. She knew how to step in and out of all of them. Now she had stepped out of Tessa, because it was the only place to go to.
