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   It didn't take long before Elena was the backbone of the Storehouse. Being practically invulnerable to harm meant that she was the most fearless of all the wellspring keepers when it came to confronting the bad guys. Plenty of items had fallen into the hands of criminals who were willing to threaten a woman with a knife, and nothing took the wind out of their sales than seeing Elena shrug off a stabbing. And after that, when it came to interrogation methods, Elena found that the average crook tended to get chatty after she'd pulled his arm off and stuck it in a bag. She always gave them back afterwards, though. No need to get nasty.
   When she wasn't out on a job, she kept in practice around the Storehouse to prepare herself for unusual situations. She would take off one of her legs on a Monday and spend the whole week hopping around, just so she would have the coordination to get around with a missing leg if she had to. She also sparred with various combinations of missing parts, including divided in half so she could learn to flank an opponent all by herself. Her favorite challenge was taking off her head and giving it to someone to hide, so she could practice navigating without her head and learn how to decipher the feeling of where her parts were in relation to each other. That was a useful skill to have, especially since she often detached herself in her sleep. Early morning disorientation was bad enough without having to search her room for her own arms.
   Even with her proven skill at retrieving magical items, though, she still felt like she was missing something. She was eating by herself in the cafeteria one day when Lily, the keeper who'd arrived with her, came to join her. She was friendly enough, but with her soothsaying ability, she could be tricky to talk to.
   "Good morning, Elena," said Lily as she set down her tray.
   "Morning, Lily."
   "You're upset. Do you want to talk about it?"
   "Don't take this the wrong way, but if you already know I'm upset, you should know what the problem is, too."
   "Of course I do. I also know that talking about it will help."
   "Well, if you say so." Elena took another mouthful of macaroni to compose her thoughts. "It's just that everyone else has someone, you know? Marty and Vanessa are together. Robby met Alicia here, and they're perfect for each other. I just want to know when it'll be my turn."
   "You know, I'm not in a relationship, either," said Lily.
   "I know, but you seem okay with yourself, and you're not really my type, anyway," said Elena. She gave Lily another look. "Why, are you interested?"
   "No, I was just making a point. It would be difficult for anyone to get to know me, when I can know anything about them I want just by asking myself the question. Besides, like you said, I'm not your type."
   "I don't suppose you could tell me who my perfect match is or something?"
   "I certainly could, but . . . there are risks."
   "What do you mean? Be careful what I wish for?"
   "I don't mean it like that. I only mean that if I give someone information, I am responsible for what they do with it. Also, the nature of truth changes all the time. The things that I know are true at the moment that I know them, but once I tell someone else, they may stop being true. If you know what is true, if you know your own fate, then you can change it, whether or not you want to."
   "You're saying that if you tell me who my perfect match is, I might do something to make them not my soul mate anymore?"
   "Basically, yes. It's why soothsayers are so famous for being vague."
   "Okay, well, what can you tell me that won't spoil everything? Is my perfect match male or female?"
   "Female."
   "That's a relief. Is she another wellspring keeper?"
   "Yes."
   "Well, that makes it easier. Which one?"
   "I'm sorry, but I probably shouldn't go into any more detail. I'll just say that you should keep an open mind." Lily got up from the table, leaving Elena to her meal.
   The problem was that Lily knew exactly who Elena's perfect match was, but neither of them would think so at first. If Elena pushed too hard too fast, it would probably backfire, and the relationship could be ruined. She would have to go slow and just let things happen.
   At that moment, Elena's ideal match was in her office across town, getting some files in order and preparing for a land deal. Keiko was a real estate developer, always on the lookout for a valuable property to acquire and flip for a quick profit, or maybe she could invest some real cash and turn an unremarkable asset into a money tree. She had a talent for growing investments and managing money, which made her highly valued in the world of finance.
   Like Elena, though, she also had trouble with relationships, but she approached the problem from the other direction. She could have had her pick from all the hot night spots she'd been to, but none of them met her lofty standards. She was brilliant, smoking hot, and a witty conversationalist as far as she knew, and she wouldn't settle for anything less in a romantic partner. Unfortunately, all the attractive men she met were either dullards or overconfident in their meager abilities, and the women were either meek and submissive or vapid and brainless. The only time she saw anyone she'd like to be with was when she looked in the mirror. If she'd met herself in a nightclub, she would've taken herself home for the night in a heartbeat.
   A few days ago, she'd discovered a building in a prime location, so she looked into its paperwork to see what could be done with it. It seemed like an old rundown place, ripe for some sprucing up. When she looked into it, she discovered that nobody had done anything with the place for decades. It was owned by some trust or something, and they had just been sitting on the property this whole time. She couldn't see why. It didn't look like anybody actually did any business there. It just sat there paying its property taxes and moldering away.
   Well, this would be easy. There were a dozen businesses that would pay top dollar for a location like that, after an initial investment to update the look of the place for the new millennium. Heck, the building was big enough that she could rent out space to all of them if she wanted to. This would be a steal. All she had to do was find out who managed the place, and then she could write a check and get started.
   She didn't have an appointment set up, since she hadn't been able to find the place in the phone book or on the web and couldn't get in touch with them, so she'd just have to cold-call them. She got all of her paperwork and forms together and headed out the door, taking a second to give herself a kiss in the mirror for luck on the way out.
   When Keiko arrived at the storehouse, the front office was empty, except for the janitor, who was cleaning the pictures on the wall with an old rag. The patch on his jumpsuit said Robby.
   "Excuse me," she said. "I'd like to speak to the manager. Could you go get them for me, please?"
   "And who should I say you are?" he said.
   "My name is Keiko. I'm here to discuss a business transaction. I need to speak to whoever is in charge around here."
   "Oh, well, we don't exactly have a manager," said Robby. "If you want to talk to the person in charge, I suppose that would be me."
   "You? Aren't you the janitor?"
   "Custodian, yes."
   "Why isn't there a manager? No offense, but what kind of place leaves a custodian in charge?"
   Robby smiled at her, as if he had been waiting for her to say that. "Follow me. I'll show you what kind of place."
   He opened a door in the far wall and beckoned her through it. She stepped through, and she saw the main floor of the Storehouse. Shelves of random bric-a-brac extended further than she could see. Alicia was floating around the tops of the shelves with a clipboard, doing some inventory work. When Robby and Keiko came over to her, she descended to the floor and gave Robby a kiss.
   "Hey, Robby," she said. "Did you find another one?"
   "Alicia, this is Keiko," said Robby. "Keiko, this is Alicia, our curator."
   "Pleasure," said Alicia. She extended her hand, which Keiko shook out of habit.
   Keiko's eyes rose to the rafters, looking for any pulleys or cables that might have explained what she just saw, but there was nothing there but dusty beams. She then looked over Alicia for any sign of a harness, but she found nothing.
   "All right, how did you do that?" said Keiko. "Is there a mechanism hidden in the shelves or something?"
   Alicia gave Keiko a smirk. "You haven't told her what we do yet?"
   "I was getting to that," said Robby.
   "I'll let you get back to it, then," said Alicia. She checked her clipboard for the next item on the list, and then she floated back over the shelves to another aisle.
   Keiko strained her eyes trying to see how Alicia was flying. "All right, I give up. I can't figure it out. She's flying, and I can't tell how."
   "Actually, she's levitating. She's able to ignore or redirect gravity as far as it affects her. Flying is about counteracting gravity by exerting an opposing force."
   "Well, whatever you want to call it, how is she doing it?"
   "Magic."
   "What, you don't want to tell me?"
   "No, that's literally how she's doing it. I'm not trying to be evasive."
   "She's literally using magic? Do you expect me to believe that?"
   "Hey, you wanted to know what we do here. That's it."
   "You do magic? What does that mean?"
   "We collect magical items and store them safely until the world is ready for them, and then we release them in a safe and controlled fashion. We also manufacture magical items for public and private use, but we haven't done so much of that lately."
   "What do you mean, until the world is ready for them? What, do you do some kind of magical market research?"
   "Actually, as far as the world being ready is concerned, we only have precedent to go on. There are . . . certain events that we watch for, and once they happen, we move forward."
   "Now you're definitely being evasive."
   "Yes, I am. I need to go slowly for this part. Here, let me show you." Robby led Keiko through the shelves, until one of the items caught Keiko's eye.
   "Hey, what's this?" She walked over to a long, tight-fitting vest sitting on a display dummy.
   "That's an item we made for a sideshow performer back in the day. Go ahead, try it on."
   Keiko took off her suit jacket and draped it over the dummy, and then she slipped on the vest and did up the buttons. It was at least a six-button vest, but it didn't take as long to fasten them all as she had expected. When she looked down to check the fit, she realized why. The vest had given her a second pair of arms. She hadn't even noticed the extra arm holes when she saw it on the dummy.
   "Wow," she said. "This is so weird."
   "Good weird, or bad weird?"
   "Well, it's definitely not bad," she said, rubbing her hands along her new arms. The vest had even duplicated the sleeves of her blouse and the ring on her right hand. "And you think people might not be ready for this? I can't imagine why not."
   "Well, some people don't take to magic as quickly as others," said Robby with a pleased smile on his face. "That's actually what I was leading up to."
   "Robby, is that you?" said a woman from the next aisle over.
   While Keiko reluctantly took the vest off and put her jacket back on, Robby stepped around the corner. "Oh, hi, Elena. I was just showing Keiko here around."
   Keiko followed Robby to greet Elena, but she wasn't prepared for what she saw. There was a pair of legs joined to a pair of hips, and nothing else, leaning against a shelf dressed in hiking boots and short khaki shorts. The rest of Elena was hanging from an overhead crossbar wearing a halter top and elbow-length fingerless gloves, doing chin-ups. Keiko had an uninterrupted view of the oval of skin covering Elena's waist. When Elena was done with her workout, she lowered herself down from the bar using one of the shelf supports and reattached herself, and then she walked over and offered her hand. "Hi, Keiko. Glad to meet you."
   Keiko just stared at Elena's midsection. When Elena looked down, she saw that she'd reattached herself the wrong way round. "Oh, sorry. I get mixed up sometimes." She swung her arms around, and her whole upper half swiveled to face the other way. "There we go. All better." She offered her hand again, and Keiko shook it. "See you around, Keiko." Elena strode away down a neighboring aisle.
   "Okay, I think I get it," said Keiko. "Magic."
   "Yep, pretty much," said Robby.
   "You said you were leading up to something earlier."
   "Yes," said Robby as he started walking again. "You adapted to the vest much more quickly than most people. The reason for that is the same reason that you found yourself here in the first place."
   "What? I came here because I was thinking about buying the property. I'm in real estate. It's what I do."
   "Well, sure, but all of us here have stories like that. Alicia came here because she wanted to rob the place. Elena came here because she was hired to investigate something and we got in her way. The Storehouse draws us all here in different ways."
   "But why me? What makes me so special? Because I liked the vest?"
   "Among the objects we keep here are a few special items called wellsprings. They're basically the source of magic. Whenever we make a magical object, we draw that power from a wellspring. Each one contains the essence of a particular kind of magic, and each of us is attuned to one of the wellsprings. Alicia is the keeper of the levitation wellspring, for instance."
   "And Elena has the one for sawing the lady in half."
   "Among other things."
   "What about you? Which one are you?"
   "I'm the keeper of the clairvoyance wellspring. It allows me to watch over the storehouse and keep it safe, and it also allows me to see inside people's minds, although that's a little harder to do. However, it is how I knew that you were going to be one of the keepers."
   "So which one am I?" said Keiko as they reached the wellspring corridor.
   "That's up to you," said Robby. "I can't tell you that. It's largely intuitive. One of them will just speak to something in you in some way. Just take a look."
   Keiko walked up and down the corridor, peeking into the various rooms. Most of the stuff looked like any of the other things on the shelves, but there was a printing plate that caught her eye. The image on the plate seemed to shift as she moved. She opened the door to get a better look.
   As she got closer, the image on the plate flowed and warped until it became an image of her face. She picked it up to get a better look, and her whole body shook with an abrupt jolt. The printing plate suddenly seemed hazy and out of focus. She couldn't even tell if she was holding it anymore. Her fingers were sending her conflicting signals. She tried to set the plate back down, but as she did, she saw another pair of hands reaching for the pedestal, wearing the same nail polish and the same ring.
   She looked up to see herself looking back at her. She extended her right hand to check if it was some kind of reflection, and the other her raised her right hand also. She reached out to touch her face, and her double did the same. Both of her had the same business suit, the same scented lotion, the same everything. She was standing in front of a perfect duplicate.
   With some concentration, she managed to get both of herself out of the room and back onto the main floor. Robby seemed satisfied.
   "Ah, good," he said. "You found the printing plate, I take it."
   "What. The hell. Just happened," said Keiko, her two mouths taking turns between the pauses.
   "You are the keeper of the duplication wellspring. That's why you were able to use the vest so easily. The vest only duplicates the wearer's arms, but you are capable of duplicating nearly anything, from inanimate objects to body parts to entire bodies. I imagine you're pretty good at multitasking."
   "Of course," she said, with only one head this time. "You have to be in my line of work."
   "There you are, then. Now, if you still want to talk business, we can go back to the office. I think I can make you a compelling offer."
   "Give me a minute," she said. "I need to get myself in order first. You go on ahead."
"Take your time." Robby turned and walked back toward the office. As he rounded the first corner, he stopped next to one of the shelves. "Was there something you needed, Elena?"
Elena stepped out from behind a rack of clothes. "No. Why would you think there was something I needed?"
   "Come on, Elena. I saw what you did before. You get mixed up sometimes? You know how good you are. You never get mixed up."
   "So? I'm allowed to get mixed up from time to time."
   "Were you . . . were you showing off for Keiko?"
   "What? No! I wasn't showing off for her. Look at her. She probably eats showoffs for breakfast."
   Robby took a look inside Elena's mind. "Oh, my. You were nervous. You were nervous about meeting Keiko."
   "I, uh . . . I was talking with Lily earlier. She told me that I would hook up with one of the female wellspring keepers, and I thought it might be her."
   "She told you that you would hook up?"
   "Well, the words she used were 'perfect match.'"
   "Did she give you the lowdown on soothsaying?"
   "Yeah, she told me about all that stuff, how something that's true can stop being true once you tell it to someone. I know."
   "Well, I suppose I can't stop you. Go for it. I won't get in your way." Robby headed back to the office, and Elena took a deep breath and composed herself.
   While Robby and Elena were talking, Keiko was taking a minute to get acquainted with her new abilities. She found a private corner of the warehouse and took a good, long look at herself. It was just like looking into her mirror, except that there wasn't a lip-printed sheet of glass in the way anymore. That, and when she leaned close to her mirror, she couldn't feel warm breath on her cheek.
   She wrapped one arm around her waist, and with the other hand, she undid a few of the buttons on her blouse. She could feel her heart racing in her chest, twice over. She pulled herself close, closed her eyes, and let her lips touch.
   She had made out with plenty of people, and she had tried every combination: male and female, top and bottom, sitting and standing, who was leading and who was following. She had never had the chance to be in both positions at the same time, obviously, but more importantly, she had never made out with someone who knew exactly what she liked. Once she got the hang of putting on two sets of moves at once, she just let herself go out of focus and lost herself in the moment.
   When Elena caught up to her, she saw Keiko wrapped in her own arms with both of her faces buried in her hair, half ready to tear off her own clothes and throw herself to the ground. All she could think to herself was: Well, dammit. How could she possibly form a relationship with someone who was already so clearly in love with herself?
   On the other hand, this Keiko was definitely worth going after. She was just the right size, coming up to eye level with Elena in her heels, and she definitely looked like she knew how to work it.
   Game on.