Layla

Leeds has a hard time processing the idea that Willow could be Sable because he enjoys time with her. He continues to call her Willow because Sable has so many negative associations attached to it. He contacts UndercoverInc and tells him that they need his help. Then, they go to bed, with Willow inside Layla’s body so that she won’t go anywhere. Leeds doesn’t know how he can explain this to Layla.

He is awakened in the middle of the night by Layla, who is scared. Willow has left her body, and she senses that something is wrong in the house. She wants to leave immediately. Leeds tries to convince her that she had a bad dream, but she continues to demand that they leave. She even goes to the kitchen and threatens him with a knife, but Leeds refuses to let her go. Suddenly, the knife in Layla’s hand clatters to the ground and she screams, understanding that something invisible seems to have knocked it out of her hand. Just as suddenly, she stops screaming because Willow has entered her body. They try to decide what to do about Layla while they wait for UndercoverInc to arrive. They decide to tie her to the bed. Willow suggests that Leeds tell her what is going on, so she won’t be as afraid of and angry with Leeds for tying her up. Leeds knows that there’s a chance Layla will never forgive him, and he might even go to prison for holding her against her will, but he does it anyway.

Leeds and Willow decide that the best way to explain the situation to Layla is to record a video. Leeds uses his phone to record Willow inside Layla’s body. He asks her questions like, “Are you a danger to Layla?” (231). Willow assures her that she is not, and she also asks Layla to not be angry at Leeds and just wait calmly until they can get help. After they record the video, Leeds tells her to get some rest and that he will deal with Layla when she wakes up. When she does, she screams in panic because she notices that she’s tied to the bed. He tries to comfort her by holding her close. Then he shows Layla the video to explain why she is tied to the bed. When Layla sees herself on the screen, saying things that she doesn’t remember saying, she screams again.

Layla has been tied up and screaming constantly for more than a day after Leeds shows her the video. Her voice is hoarse, and she is aggressive toward Leeds. She accuses him of drugging her and forcing her to say the things she said in the video, but he insists that it was a spirit who sometimes uses her body. He explains that they are waiting for a man who thinks he can help. He promises that he will let her go once he gets the information he needs.

Finally, UndercoverInc arrives. He smells like oil and is wearing a Jiffy Lube shirt. He explains, “[I]t’s the only body I could find when I got into town” (237), meaning that he is also a loose spirit that can slip in and out of bodies, like Willow.

When he enters the house, he can hear Layla screaming in the bedroom upstairs. Leeds assures him that she won’t get in their way. He wants to talk to him before they bring Willow out. UndercoverInc sets up his tape recorder and gets ready to begin the interview.

After listening to their story, UndercoverInc suggests that Willow try to inhabit Leeds’s body instead of Layla’s. He and Willow are unsure about this, but they agree to try. Leeds brings Layla back up to the bedroom and reties her to the bed; when Willow slips into Leeds’s body she will leave Layla’s.

They go back downstairs, and Leeds sits down. UndercoverInc plans to record him with his phone while Willow is inside of him. When it happens, he feels a strange whoosh; then he blinks, and he sees that three minutes have passed. He feels guilty that he put Layla through the strange and disorienting experience. He asks to see the video, but UndercoverInc wants to look at Layla’s medical records first. Leeds is annoyed but pulls up the records on his laptop.

UndercoverInc tells Willow to slip back into Layla’s body so that both Willow and Leeds can watch the video. Back inside Layla, she begins crying; she tells Leeds that she didn’t understand anything about her experience inside of him. They watch the video together and see that UndercoverInc was coaxing her to try to access Leeds’s memories of the night Sable shot him. She says she remembers what happened before Sable shot the gun, but not during. UndercoverInc asks what Leeds thought of Layla the night they met. She replies, “He thought I was a terrible dancer” (244). With that question, UndercoverInc ends the interview and Willow leaves Leeds’s body.

UndercoverInc notices that Willow responded to his questions with “I” instead of “she” when he asked about the night Leeds and Layla met. He concludes that when Sable shot Layla and Leeds shot Sable, both women were technically dead for a few minutes before Layla was revived. During those minutes, both of their spirits left their bodies, and when the paramedics revived Layla, Sable’s spirit entered her.

At first, Leeds has a hard time believing this theory, but slowly he realizes that the woman he lived with after Layla came home from the hospital behaved more like Sable than Layla. Willow is Layla. That is why Willow and Leeds were happy and attracted to each other when Willow was in Layla’s body. He kisses Layla with Willow inside her and realizes that this is the real Layla.

They ask UndercoverInc what they should do to switch the souls back. He has no solution. He suggests that Leeds lets Sable leave the house in Layla’s body, and he can just stay here in the house with Layla’s spirit. That night, Leeds holds the real Layla and whispers her name. He doesn’t know how he will keep her body and spirit intact in the future, but he’s grateful he has her for now.

Leeds and Layla celebrate the fact that they’ve been united and don’t have to feel guilty about taking advantage of Layla to be together. Soon, though, their conversation shifts to how they can solve the problem of Sable’s spirit residing in Layla’s body.

Layla urges Leeds to try to talk to Sable to help her understand what has been going on, but he is angry with Sable now that he knows she has been in Layla’s body all this time, causing him to think he wasn’t in love with her anymore.

Eventually, he talks to her while she is tied to the bed. He asks her to remember the night of the shooting, but she says she doesn’t like to talk about it. He prods her to get to the root of the problem: She has memories as both Layla and Sable. He tells her, “Your memories are confusing because you’re in the wrong body” (259).

Sable-within-Layla is angry at Leeds and doesn’t believe him at first, but he proves it to her by asking her questions about his and Layla’s relationship that Willow knew but that she can’t remember. Leeds then asks Willow, whom he now calls Layla, to come back into the body, and he promises to help her figure out a way to remove Sable from her body.

Leeds washes Layla’s hair in the shower and they stand together quietly, tired and sad. They stayed up all night trying to find a way to switch the spirits back but found nothing. Layla is scared to go back to being a lonely, disembodied soul, and Leeds can’t live with Sable in Layla’s body anymore. He wonders if there are more spirits like Layla’s and UndercoverInc’s that are floating around without a body.

Finally, Layla tells him that the only solution would be for her to die again, in the brief way she did after she was shot, just long enough for the right spirit to reenter her body. Leeds refuses at first, worried that they won’t get the timing right and she’ll die forever. He’s also concerned about how they could make it happen and what they would tell her family.

Layla tells him not to worry; she’ll figure it out—she is determined to try it, and eventually Leeds believes that if they found each other when they met and then after her spirit left her body, maybe they can do it again.