‘Well, because Nikki doesn’t have any parents,’ Lulu said matter-offactly.

‘I mean, she became an emancipated minor the minute she landed her first modelling contract.’

I quit pacing and stared at her. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Nikki never got along with her parents,’ Lulu said. ‘You know you never — I mean, she never — talked about them much.’

‘Try at all,’ Brandon said drily.

‘Right,’ Lulu said. ‘Nikki didn’t have any family. I mean, none that she spoke to. Or about. I think —’ Lulu dropped her voice to a whisper — ‘I think Nikki’s parents were poor. Like trailer-park poor.’

‘Why are you whispering?’ I asked her.

‘Well,’ Lulu shrugged, ‘I don’t know. I mean… I guess because… Well, it’s not very classy to talk about money. And Nikki never mentioned her family, or where she grew up, or anything that happened before she came to New York and made it big.’

‘Fine,’ I said, beginning to pace again. ‘That still doesn’t explain what my parents are doing in Nikki Howard’s hospital room.’

‘Because they know that’s where your spirit is,’ Lulu explained patiently. ‘Maybe her body is dead, Brandon. But her spirit is still alive. Which, of course, leads us to the real question: where is Nikki Howard’s spirit? Is it just floating around out there? If so, we need to capture it!’

‘What we need to do,’ Brandon said, completely ignoring Lulu, ‘is call Kelly and tell her we have Nikki here in the loft. But that Nikki doesn’t know she’s Nikki. Then we need to ask Kelly where the REAL Nikki is. Nikki’s spirit, I mean.’

I looked back and forth between the two of them. And wondered if I could possibly have been kidnapped by two stupider people.

‘Do you think Kelly did this?’ Lulu asked. ‘I’ve always thought there was something wrong with her. I mean, what kind of publicist is she, when she can’t even get Nikki on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, right? She keeps saying there’s plenty of time and that Nikki shouldn’t worry. But what kind of lame answer is that? I’ll bet you anything Kelly is behind this whole spirit-transfer thing… ’

Only I didn’t hear how Brandon replied. Because I had reached up to scratch my head and felt something.

Something that wasn’t just hair and smooth scalp.

I stopped pacing and stood there in front of one of Nikki Howard’s floor-to-ceiling windows, staring unseeingly at my own reflection — or Nikki Howard’s reflection — and the bright lights of downtown Manhattan beyond it as I felt along my head. Something wasn’t right. Something…

And there it was. All along the base of my — or Nikki’s — skull. A puckered line of skin, hidden by long blonde hair. It didn’t hurt, but it was still tender. Something horrible had happened there. Something that had left a hideous raised scar, about half an inch wide and five or six inches long.

The thing is, I knew what it was. I knew exactly what it was, from all the plastic-surgery shows Christopher and I liked to watch on the Discovery Health Channel. Someone had made an incision at the back of Nikki’s neck, then peeled her skin back, hair and all, until the gleaming white bones of her skull had been revealed.

Only why? Why would someone have done something like that?

Unless…

And then I remembered something that made my blood — Nikki’s blood — run cold. A rainy Sunday afternoon at the apartment Christopher shared with the Commander, a bag of Doritos we’d smuggled in from Gristedes, and a surgery show:

BRAIN TRANSPLANTS: THE SURGERY OF THE FUTURE IS HERE NOW.

No. No way.

What had they said in that documentary? It was all coming back — brain transplants, sounding like the stuff of science fiction.

But scientists in Europe had proved it was possible to transplant the brain as a separate organ into an intact animal, and maintain it in a viable, or living, situation for many days.

‘Sweet,’ Christopher had said. ‘I want one.’

The documentary had gone on to assert that it was only ethical considerations that were keeping the technology from moving forward. Bioethicists argued that it was immoral to harvest a brain-dead body for the use of a living brain.

‘Immoral my ass,’ Christopher had said. ‘They can transplant my brain into the Hulk’s body any time they want.’

Christopher had been disappointed to learn that the technology for whole-body transplants — the correct term for brain transplants — in humans was far off.

But, as he pointed out, a generation ago, human cloning seemed an impossibility as well. So how long would it be until whole-body transplants were as routine as heart transplants?

Was that it? Was I the first ever recipient of a whole-body transplant? Had that plasma screen crushed my body, but spared my brain? Had Dr Holcombe then removed my brain and transplanted it into the nearest convenient brain-dead body on hand… the body of Nikki Howard, who’d apparently suffered from some kind of collapse at or around the same time as my accident?

No. No, that was ridiculous. First of all, it wasn’t even possible. Hadn’t the documentary said scientists were still years from being able to perform this type of surgery in humans?

And second of all… why would anyone use that kind of technology — if indeed it did exist — to save me?

Suddenly some things that had only confused me before now were beginning to make sense though. Frida’s weird reaction to me — asking me if I was really me. Of course she wasn’t sure if I was me… because I was Nikki Howard on the outside, not the sister she knew and (allegedly) loved.

And what about Dr Holcombe’s insistence that I not move or sit up? This would make sense in a post-operative brain-surgery patient.

And his assertion that I’d made more progress than they could have hoped for? They’d transplanted my BRAIN into someone else’s body, and I was already speaking lucidly and (somewhat) in control of my motor functions (although, of course, my surgery had been over a month ago).

And what about the fact that I was the only patient I had seen on the entire floor as Lulu and Brandon had been wheeling me out? Obviously they wanted to keep the whole thing top secret. Why? Because of what the documentary had mentioned, about the ethical controversy over such a procedure?

And what about the fact that suddenly I liked fish?

Or the fact that I, Emerson Watts, was looking out of Nikki Howard’s sapphire blue eyes, instead of my own muddy brown ones?

My God. It all made sense. I hadn’t had a spirit transfer, as Lulu Collins kept insisting. Dr Holcombe had sawed open Nikki Howard’s cranium, removed her brain and slid mine in where hers had been, carefully attaching all the appropriate nerves and arteries and veins, before fusing her skull and finally stitching her skin and hair back into place.

The realization caused my knees to buckle. Next thing I knew I was sprawled out on the white carpet, looking up at Lulu and Brandon’s anxious expressions… and being licked in the face by Nikki Howard’s dog.

‘Nikki?’ Lulu was crying. ‘Nikki, can you hear me? Oh, Brandon, this is all our fault. Maybe we shouldn’t have taken her from the hospital. Maybe she really is sick!’

‘Nikki?’ Brandon was giving my face little smacks. ‘Nikki!’

‘Ow,’ I said irritably. ‘Stop hitting me.’

‘Oh.’ Brandon lowered his hand. ‘You scared us. Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Help me over to the couch.’

Brandon pulled me up, and then chivalrously carried me over to the couch. Once I was settled on to it, Cosabella came running over to jump in my lap and gave me a few more restorative kisses.

‘What happened to you?’ Lulu wanted to know. ‘Was it hypoglycaemia? Do you have low blood sugar? Do you want some TaB energy drink or something? Brandon, go pour her a TaB.’

‘No,’ I said weakly, refraining from pointing out to her that TaB is sugar free, not really useful for hypoglycaemics. ‘I’m fine. Really.’