Nick stood outside the bathroom door while Lene took a shower to clear her head. Now that she was older, he hoped she might be able to explain some of the questions that puzzled him, but this morning had already presented a whole slew of new riddles to be solved. Lene said that her parents were murdered just recently, and yet she had been with him for over a week now. When Nick found her abandoned as a baby, maybe around a year old, he'd thought that her parents had abandoned her there in that house. But according to Lene, she'd been raised by them for the past nine years. And then there was that whole business with Günter; what exactly was the relationship between those two? Why would that guy have saved Lene and when could it have happened? None of this made any sense.

When she got out of the shower, Nick took over the bathroom. Lene had opened the medicine cabinet, which contained a man's razor and some shaving gel among other things. Appreciatively, he rubbed his chin; it had become prickly with beard stubble and was in desperate need of a shave. Nick wet and lathered his face and then applied the razor.

"Ow!" he jumped as he nicked himself and blood welled up from the cut. "Guess I'm out of practice," Nick muttered and went back to shaving his chin, this time taking more care. Then he rinsed his face, showered, and dressed in his boxer shorts and jeans. He still didn't have a shirt because his old one was torn, so he went back to the bedroom and ruffled through the bureau for a shirt that would fit him.

Lene watched him from the bed where she was sitting. "You have a lot of tattoos," she commented. "There's some on your legs and your arms and your back. Why do people get tattoos, Nick?"

"I don't know, because they look good, I guess. I think they're kind of cool..." He found a striped polo shirt in the dresser and tried it on. The cotton material stretched and fit him better than the button-up had and, satisfied, Nick turned to Lene. "Okay, should we go eat something?"

They went into the kitchen, but there wasn't much in the refrigerator that was already pre-cooked. Nick pulled out a carton of eggs, remembering how he would make breakfast on the weekends with his siblings. "I can make some pretty good scrambled eggs, but the stoves don't turn on. Do you think you can get it working?" he asked. "I know you couldn't when you were little 'cause you weren't allowed to touch the stove, but how about now?"

Lene looked at the unit with an intense look that Nick recognized as the one she used when trying to fix things or fill them with their contents. "I can fix it," she said and put her hands on the knob for one of the burners. After a second, the girl turned it and with a click the range produced a blue flame. She let it burn for a couple of seconds and then switched it off.

"Awesome." Nick looked at the stove. "So what do your powers do, exactly? I've already seen you load fridges with food and dressers with clothes, and now you've fixed toilets, stoves, the TV – though it didn't completely work out – showers..." he marveled. "And you unlocked the front door yesterday. What kind of powers are those? What other kind of things can you do?"

She shrugged. "I don't really know what I can or can't do until I try it. I mean, I know I can't fly, but I do know that I'm good at unlocking things. And if I try hard enough, sometimes I can even make things move."

"Move? What do you mean?"

The girl reached out one hand – Nick noticed for the first time that she was left-handed – and held it up towards the carton of eggs he'd placed on the counter. Her eyes narrowed slightly, and the long cardboard box began to slide across the tiled surface towards her, albeit very slowly. Lene dropped her hand. "Pappa said I would get better at it as I got older and in the meantime to keep practicing."

Nick stared at the egg carton; he was getting used to weird things, but this still felt pretty weird. "So your dad showed you how to use your powers?"

She blinked rapidly, and Nick could tell that she was thinking about her family again. Lene shook her head. "No. I just used them on my own," she told him, wiping her watery eyes. "Pappa and Mamma helped me out once in a while, but most of it they let me learn by myself."

"How do you know how to do all these things?" he asked in amazement.

Lene shrugged, her dark curls bouncing across her shoulder as she did so. "I dunno," she said. "Something inside me just tells me these things, and then I do them. Don't they ever tell you?"

"No, never," Nick admitted. "To tell you the truth, most of the time I feel like my mind is completely bank inside. I only remember things in bits and snatches."

"That's weird." Fixing her glistening eyes on him, Lene told Nick, "Hold still." He felt a little self-conscious under the scrutiny of a nine-year-old. Her amber eyes were focused intently on him, but after a moment she shook her head.

"Sorry... your memories are being locked away from you," she told him. "Even I can't open it. It's because we're here in this place," the little girl motioned to the world around them. "This entire world is trying to keep you from knowing who you are and I don't know why. You're a lot harder to open than a fridge or a door."

"So this place is causing my amnesia?"

"Amnesia?" Lene asked. "Like when you get a bump on your head?"

"Right, or when something terrible happens. Your brain subconsciously shuts memories away from you," Nick told her.

She shook her head. "No, like I said, it's not your brain that's keeping information from you, it's Other World."

"Other World," Nick breathed. "That's the name of this place, isn't it?"

"Yes. I'm not sure how I knew that, maybe you told me when I was little, but anyway – it's Other World's fault."

"Why would it do that?"

"I dunno, but everything is closed here. That's why I have to keep opening the empty fridges and drawers, they're all locked."

"Wait..." he tried to wrap his mind around what the kid was telling him. "You're saying everything here is 'locked,' what does that mean?"

"Well, like, the fridge didn't have anything in it because all the stuff was locked up, almost like a gate that's closed, so I had to unlock it. The food's already in there, we just can't see it because Other World is keeping it locked away. It's the same story for your memories." Lene walked up to the fridge.

"What are you doing?" Nick wondered. "Can you make all the stuff disappear again and show me how you opened it?"

"No, silly," the nine-year-old said, "I can't lock stuff away – at least I dunno how to yet – but Other World does that for us anyway! But I'm gonna show you the freezer since I haven't unlocked it yet." She opened the upper compartment of the fridge that was reserved for frozen foods, and showed him that it was still empty. "Okay, so this is locked right now, see?"

"Right," he nodded.

"Well," she said, shutting the freezer door, "first I put my hand on the door or whatever part needs to be unlocked. I look at it and try to 'hear' it. You can get in tune with whatever you're working with so you can find the gate that's keeping it shut. And then you kind of reach out and your magic just unlocks it." Lene worked as she spoke, and when she opened it again, the freezer was filled with frozen dinner boxes with labels that revealed them to be Salisbury Steak and Potatoes, Chicken Pot Pie, and Beef Stew.

"And you said that you just know how to do this automatically?" Nick asked in wonder.

"Yup," Lene shut the freezer door. "I kind of get the feeling inside of me to do something, and so I try it out and it usually works. You should give it a shot!"

"Wait, what are you talking about?" Nick said. "I don't have any powers."

She gave him a funny look. "Of course, you do. I can feel the magic coming off of you... No one's ever shown you how to cover it up? That's one of the things Mamma actually taught me how to do."

"Are you trying to say that I can use magic? Like you?" he was dumbfounded.

"Duh. Come on, try it out." The nine-year-old skipped across the room to a cabinet on the other side, oblivious to the fact that Nick was utterly bowled over by her news. Bracing her hands on the counter top, she hoisted herself up and sat on top of it so that she could reach the cabinet door's handle. "Here, I haven't opened this one yet," Lene told him. "I think it has..." she narrowed her eyes, examining it, "pots in it. Yeah, feels like pots. Come here, Nick, I'll show you how."

Still stunned, he crossed the room. "What do I do?" he asked uncertainly.

"Gimme your hand," she instructed and placed it on the handle of the cabinet. "Now, listen."

Nick stood there, feeling dumb. Nothing happened. "Uh, I don't hear anything."

"You have to really concentrate," she told him. "It's not a regular sound. It's almost in your head, normal people can't hear it."

"I hate to burst your bubble, kid, but I think I am just a normal person. I don't remember anything about having powers."

"But you do have them," she insisted. "I can tell! Just keep listening."

"Fine," Nick sighed and focused again. Slowly, softly, a humming sound reached his ears; its pitch was somehow both high and low at the same time. "I hear it!" he exclaimed.

"Good, now there's a gate there. Just reach out and open it."

"What?" he said confused. His concentration broke and the humming went away. "I lost it," Nick told her.

"It's okay. Just try again. It's not gonna be easy on your first try," Lene assured him.

"Yeah, says the kid who's been doing this since she was in diapers," he scoffed.

"Try it again," she repeated.

"Allright, allright." Nick took hold of the cupboard handle and focused until the sound returned. "Okay, what do I do now?" he asked. "I can't find this gate you're talking about."

"Here, I'll show you." The nine-year-old placed her hand on top of his, and the humming became even clearer. "Now, find the gate. You kinda have to look around for it," she told him. Nick concentrated and found that he could sense some sort of obstruction that wasn't letting the sound come through to him completely. "Good," Lene whispered. "Now just unlock it."

He opened it and at the same time pulled on the cabinet door, revealing shelves full of pots and a couple of pans. Nick reached in for a pot and looked at it. The nine-year-old clapped her hands, "Yay! You did it! I knew you could do it!"

"Did I really?" he asked in wonder. He couldn't believe her. "No, that couldn't have been me. I mean, you helped me. You must have been doing all the work..."

"Nope! That was all you, I just helped you focus a little bit." She patted him on the shoulder. "Good job!"

Nick set the pot down on the counter, the full weight of what had happened almost knocking him over. "I did this? ...I can use magic?" Insane. "What else can I open?" he wondered. He had to test out more of his powers.

Looking around the room for other things he could try to "unlock," Nick spotted a telephone set into the opposite wall. "How about that phone? Can I make that work?"

"Try it!" Lene encouraged.

Crossing the room, he placed his hand over it and focused, as she had instructed him, on finding the gate that kept the phone "closed." Lene hopped down from the counter and joined him, watching. He could hear a faint humming somewhere beyond his ears, and when it was loud enough, Nick reached out mentally and released the gate. When he picked up the handset again, he could hear the steady drone of a dial tone. Nick tried to contain the warm sense of achievement that spread through him, but he still couldn't resist grinning.

He held the phone out to Lene. "Look, I did it! By myself this time!" he exclaimed.

"If you keep practicing, then pretty soon you'll be able to do it a lot faster and it gets really easy," she told him.

Nick looked at the handset in his hand. "Too bad I don't know any phone numbers to call. How about you?"

She shook her head and made a sad face. "I forgot my phone number."

"Because of Other World? Is it affecting your memory, too?"

"Maybe..." she said. "But we just moved into our new house, too, so I didn't memorize the phone number yet."

"I guess I could just try dialing random numbers," Nick decided. He punched at the keypad indiscriminately and then waited as the phone rang. There was no answer. "Hmm... guess there's no one to pick up the phones around here, anyway." Just for the heck of it, he tried another random phone number, but that didn't work as well. When he set the phone down, Nick noticed that Lene was looking at him with a thoughtful expression on her face. "What?" he asked.

"You've really never used magic before, huh?"

"No, or at least not as far as I can tell. That's why I didn't believe you when you said I had powers. But now that I know I can, I want to practice like you said so I can get better! This is so cool."

Lene smiled at his infectious enthusiasm. "Well, I've pretty much unlocked everything in this house now, so we should probably go somewhere else."

"Yeah, that sounds good, I'll just go get my—"

"But first," she interrupted, "food!" The girl pointed at the carton of eggs on the counter. "You said you make good scrambled eggs."

"Oh, right," Nick grinned. "I was so caught up that I forgot about eating..." And for some reason, that felt like a first for him.