
Tovah Connelly would rather be asleep than awake. Since her accident, she's become a shaper in the dream world, the Ephemeros, where she can manipulate places and people with just a thought. Tovah's friends there, Ben and Spider, encourage Tovah to develop her skills, but the one ability she doesn't want is to control the dreams of others---it's a power she's wary of, and a responsibility she's not ready for.
Nobody can sleep all the time, though---not if they want a waking life that bears a semblance of normalcy. And Tovah's waking life is vastly different from her dream life: she's rebuilding and regaining her sanity after nearly losing it in the accident's aftermath.
But when nightmares begin rocking the Ephemeros, Tovah's two worlds begin to collide. As those she cares about are threatened, Tovah may discover that the one responsibility she doesn't want is the only defense she has.
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This book could not have been written without the support of my family, friends and critique partners. Thanks to everyone who believed in it, and me.In dreams, anything is possible.
Contents
A crowd ripples just like the ocean, if it's got a force pushing against it. Tonight, here and now, Tovah Connelly intended to be that force. She concentrated, drawing strength from the myriad individual consciousnesses surrounding her. From one she plucked the beat of a song while another provided the taste of a tropical drink, sharp in the back of her throat. From yet another she drew the feeling of silk, a dress, hanging short upon her thighs.
Around her, the club grew brick by brick, created from the mingled desires of many but woven together from the force of her will. That was the way things worked here in the Ephemeros, the land of dreams. The landscape bent to the individual will of those who knew how to shape it. Some were skilled with it. Others, like Tovah, had only just discovered their abilities to move and shape the world they entered when they slept. And still others, less fortunate, would never know how to shift their bodies or mold the terrain to suit them. They would never know that in dreams, they could control the world.
Now she pushed outward with her will, seeking what she needed from the sleepers around her who wanted, needed, but couldn't shape this for themselves. The walls formed, and the floor. A bar. A DJ, spinning tunes she didn't need to know to enjoy. Tovah opened herself to the ever-constant push and pull of desire and, like a conductor, took the jumbled mass of notes and made them into a symphony.
It would be easy to lose herself in it. Even now she felt the tug of another's will upon her, urging her body to shift and change to fit someone else's vision. She shielded herself from it, turning the tug into a push of her own and using it to create another slew of small details to bring realism to this scene.
"Hey, hey." The voice pricked her ears even above the writhing, pounding music surrounding her, and Tovah turned.
She didn't see him at first, shrouded as he was in shadow. The darkness rippled the same way the crowd had when she teased it with her will. Spider, the size of a large cat and striped with bands of crimson and gold, flicked his mandibles at her. He pulled the darkness back around him, his will stronger than hers, and she moved forward so as not to lose sight of him.
"Spider, how do you expect me to learn if you keep balking me?"
"How do you expect to learn if you're never pushed?" Spider's feet clicked on the tile floor. The crowd parted around them as he backed up, and Tovah followed.
The current of mingled desires flowed around her, tendrils reaching out to caress as she passed, but she ignored them. She followed Spider out of the club and onto the grass, a place where even an arachnid the size of a household pet would feel more comfortable. She didn't want to lose the club and so kept the doorway fixed behind her. The Ephemeros never stayed the same unless it was held in place by desire. She could talk to Spider and hold the door, but she had to be careful not to get distracted or else anything could shift. It was a balancing act, one she was only slowly learning how to perform.
Spider squatted in a tuft of purple grass. His coloring had changed, now banding his round, hairy abdomen with green and silver. A lamppost of filigreed iron slid out of the mist and highlighted a circle of earth around him. Tovah didn't think spiders could preen, but this one did.
"Very nice," she said.
"Thanks." Spider smoothed one jointed leg over his head and set of eight wee ruby eyes. "How you doing?"
A Goodfellas spider. Tovah laughed. "I'm fine, Spider. How are you?"
He bounced lightly on eight legs, his colors swirling again before settling into a pattern of mottled blues and greens. "Fine. Fine. You been practicing?"
Tovah looked at the lamppost, which became an old-fashioned gaslight under the subtle pressure of her will. "A little."
It wasn't a lie. She did, sometimes, spend her time in the Ephemeros practicing the complicated task of building and destroying worlds. Just not as often as Spider thought she should.
"You should practice more." Spider didn't look with even one of his eyes at the post, and it changed back. "You're too easy to push. Almost as bad as a sleeper."
She frowned. "Hey."
Spider managed a shrug without shoulders. "I'm just saying. You take too much from them instead of making it yourself. You rely too much on them. Anyone can come along and push you, that's all. Not all of them are as nice as me."
Taking from sleepers was different. They couldn't do it for themselves, and yet they still needed whatever it was their minds were trying to create. Tovah knew there were shapers who didn't play by the rules, those who used their skills to force their will on those weaker than they. But most shapers she'd encountered were careful not to use their will on other shapers without permission. It would have been rude, like peeking at someone in the shower. They might be sharing the same dream space, but they weren't necessarily sharing the same dreams. She'd met a few rude sons of bitches who'd tried to convince her she wanted bigger breasts or blonder hair, but she'd been able to put them off without any trouble.
"You know, Spider, there are assholes in the waking world who think they have the right to push other people around, too. I get by." She looked over her shoulder at the doorway of the club. It had been a plain wooden doorframe a moment before; now it arched and featured a bolted door padded with crimson satin. Someone had done that, not her, but as long as there was a door, she didn't care what it looked like.
"This ain't the waking world, Tovahleh. I'm just looking out for you."
Tovah looked back at Spider, who'd become her dear friend in a time when she'd desperately needed one. "I know. You've taught me a lot, and I appreciate it. Really."
"But you want me to back off."
"A little, yeah."
Spider made a low noise but didn't argue further. From behind Tovah the door flew open and a woman stumbled out. She was represented as having blond hair and a slim form. Barefoot, clad in a long white nightgown, she was the epitome of a gothic heroine, complete with a rose clutched in one hand.
Spotting Spider, she shrieked. Again and again she cried out, hysterical, sobbing. She cowered against the doorway, her fingers scrabbling at the wood but never letting go of the flower. Though the air and earth rippled around her, nothing changed. She wasn't a shaper.
Tovah remembered how it felt to be powerless against fear. The first time she'd met Spider, Tovah had been as terrified as this woman. She looked at him. He'd grown larger. No help, there. "Spider, c'mon."
Spider did nothing. With a disgruntled sigh, Tovah turned back to the blonde woman. "Shh. You're having a dream."
The woman screamed again and covered her face, though Spider hadn't moved toward her. Tovah bent and put a hand on her shoulder, shaking gently. The woman stopped screaming and looked up, eyes wide and mouth lax with fear.
"You're having a dream," Tovah repeated. "What's your name?"
"Princess Pennywhistle."
Tovah laughed, though she knew she shouldn't. The woman might be representing as a gothic heroine but she thought she was in a fairy tale. "Princess. This is a dream, okay? That spider isn't real. This is all a dream."
Strands of midnight suddenly streaked the sunshine of Pennywhistle's hair. Her nightgown shortened over a body fuller in the hips and breasts than it had been a moment before. She dropped the rose.
"A dream?"
"Yes. It's just a dream."
The woman looked around, eyes still wide. "Are you sure?"
Tovah nodded and gave her a confident smile. "Absolutely."
The other woman closed her eyes briefly. "I'm not here."
"Well..." Tovah shot Spider a look, but he was no help. She fudged her answer a bit, not wanting to get into a deep philosophical discussion about the technicalities of being "here." "You're dreaming. Which means you can go anyplace you like. Wouldn't you like to dream of something nicer than a big, ugly, hairy spider?"
"Hey!" Spider complained. "I'm not ugly!"
The woman flinched when he spoke and turned her face away. "I would love to dream of something nice."
"Then all you have to do is do it. What do you want to dream about?"
The now-dark-haired woman didn't answer in words. She stood, her body changing once again. The front of her nightgown swelled. Her hair grew lush and long, swirling around her. She ran her hands over the bump of her belly and smiled with an uncertainty that made Tovah's throat close with emotion. She'd had the same dreams, once.
Spider had been the one to teach Tovah how to escape a nightmare. Now she painted letters with her finger in the air above the door. They became a blinking neon sign, familiar to most people.
"See? Look there. It's an exit light. Just go back through that door," Tovah prompted. "You'll be all right. And remember, you control your dreams. They don't control you."
The woman nodded, already losing sight of Tovah and Spider as she turned and went through the door. It closed behind her with a snap. Tovah looked back to her friend. It was impossible to read his expression, since he had no mouth or nose and was an arachnid, but she guessed at his mood anyway.
"She was terrified. What was I supposed to do? Just let you scare her into apoplexy?"
Spider chuffed. "She needed to be scared."
"Spider," Tovah sighed. "Who really ever needs to be scared?"
"Lots of people. Why does anyone need anything? I dunno how it works, Tovahleh, just that's how it is. In here, everything that happens to you is because you need it for some reason."
"Who decides that?" She threw out her arms, wide, and turned in a circle with her face turned up to the night sky her will had shaped and Spider's had pricked with stars. "God? Who?"
"I don't know." Spider sounded sad. "Believe you me, kiddo, I wish I did."
Tovah shot him a sharp look. "I couldn't just let her scream herself sick because of you. What harm does it do to tell her she can control what happens here? She can, you know. We all can, if we try."
"She wasn't a shaper."
"She shaped."
"You guided her."
"You guided me," she reminded. "Maybe she'll learn."
Despite what she'd just said, Tovah knew that was unlikely. Dreams arose from individual experience, thoughts, memories. Fears. But it took desire to shape the dream world to one's own purpose. Conscious desire. And remaining conscious in the land of unconsciousness wasn't a talent granted to everyone.
Spider got a little bigger, his front legs rubbing against each other. Another chuff, this one sounding like a laugh. "You done good with her. Helped her out. You're a good guide."
Now she knew where this was going. She waggled a finger. "Ah, ah, ah. No. We're not going there. I don't want to be a guide. I don't want to be responsible for anyone else but me. That's too much pressure, Spider."
"Too much work, you mean."
"That, too." She reached behind her to touch the wood of the door, making sure it hadn't gone away while Spider distracted her with discourse. "I'm going back to the club."
Spider sighed, a sound so human and so at odds with his inhuman features Tovah stopped. "So much to do here and all you wanna do is play."
Good friends can get away with saying things like that, and Spider had become a very good friend. Still, Tovah's back stiffened and she clenched her jaw. "I'm a grownup, Spider. I know the rules. I'm not the only person who wants to play."
He snorted, his body turning completely black. "That don't make it good."
Exasperated, she snapped, "Why does it make it bad?"
Spider said nothing for a moment. This wasn't their first argument. She knew him. He was thinking of a way to zing her.
"It's dangerous," he said, surprising her.
His concern touched and irritated her. She didn't miss the irony of him warning her against danger and urging her to become a guide---which would mean deliberately opening herself to the shaping of others. Talk about dangerous.
"I can take care of myself, Spider." She softened. "Really. I promise. You taught me, remember?"
Spider sighed. "How could I forget?"
Tovah blew him a whimsical kiss, the pair of red lips like a butterfly fluttering from her fingertips toward him. "I'll see you later."
Spider grunted, low, and scuttled forward. "I haven't seen you in a while. You been avoiding us?"
"Of course I haven't." Guilt pinged her. She had, maybe a little. She turned the handle of the door but didn't open it. "I saw Ben just a few days ago. And look, I'm here with you, now. Besides. You know you can always find me if you want. It's not so easy to find you."
"Ben does."
Geographically, the Ephemeros had no boundaries. It was as likely for her to meet someone who lived in China as it was for her to bump into a man she'd passed that day on the street, or her neighbor, or a friend. It didn't matter where their physical bodies existed. The only requirement was that the other person be dreaming too.
Add to that the ability to shape your surrounding reality, and the Ephemeros offered limitless opportunities for interaction. Shaping your reality meant shaping your companions, too. Creating a past lover's face on someone didn't always mean that lover was really there.
That's what guides did. Filled in all the empty places, the roles in others' dreams. A good guide was also a good shaper, able to mold a cast of thousands from nothing but the gray mist of the Ephemeros, and all based upon the desire of the person they guided. Guides helped sleepers finish what they started.
It was too much work. Easier to...not steal, exactly. Tovah didn't consider what she did as theft. Nipping was a better word. She nipped bits and pieces of what others wanted or needed and used that to create what she did. If that meant there were sleepers out there haphazardly populating their dreams with half-formed figures and uncompleted tasks, well...that wasn't her problem.
Tovah forced her gritted jaw to relax before she answered. "Ben's a better shaper. I get it, Spider. Ben works hard. Ben's a good guide. Ben can make the Eiffel Tower out of a couple of toothpicks. Yeah, I know."
"You could do it too. If you wanted."
"Well, I don't want!" she shouted. "I don't want to be a guide. I don't want what Ben wants, or you want, okay? I don't go to sleep at night with dreams of helping the world finds its way, all right? I just want to find my own!"
She glared at him, but it was next to impossible to determine Spider's expression. He rubbed a leg over his head. She'd seen him do the same in the waking world, run a hand over and over his hair, rumpling it.
"I just worry about you, that's all. If you're wandering around and things go wonky---"
Tovah waved a hand. "It's no different than anything else here. Yes, sometimes things get scary here. But I know they're not real. I know it's a nightmare. And I get out of it. I'm not a sleeper."
"Sleepers have nightmares. Shapers don't."
She sighed. "Fine. So sometimes things get...out of control. Sometimes someone with a little too much desire makes it ugly for the rest of us. Just like in the waking world. The difference is, in here, I can control what happens to me. It's not real."
The light around him went out. All she saw were the glinting rubies of his eyes. "Dreams are just as real as anything else, girlie. When're you gonna learn that?"
A smart retort rose to her lips, but too late. Spider had vanished. He'd been in the Ephemeros a long, long time. Tovah didn't have the skill to find him if he didn't want to be found.
Dreams were as real as anything else. Four years ago she'd have laughed at that. She'd been married to her college sweetheart and trying to have a baby. She hadn't known the Ephemeros existed. Spider had been the one to introduce her to this second reality, and now guilt singed her for snapping at him.
Tovah pushed through the door and the club laid itself out before her. The edges were blurry, formed by the desires of those closer to it than she, or those with stronger shaping skills. That didn't matter. She wasn't here to build a world, nor destroy one. She was only here to enjoy it.
The music was loud, the lights flashing. While there were oddities here and there---a clock that ran backwards, a sign upon which the letters kept changing---those were common quirks of the dream world and as comforting in their own way as proof she really was in the Ephemeros and not something darker, like insanity. The patrons here seemed more interested in manipulating themselves than the environment, which was fine with her. Tovah preferred a setting that mirrored her normal reality more closely than, say, a dance floor set above a volcanic pit.
Not that it couldn't shift at any time, depending on the whim of one strong shaper, or the collective desire of many lesser ones. But for now it looked like any other club, albeit with a few patrons whose unusual appearances were not merely cosmetic.
One of the first things most people learned to do in the Ephemeros was represent themselves as something different than their natural appearance. After all, what was the fun in looking the way you did in real life when you could be taller, thinner or sexier? Representation was about how you felt, not necessarily what you were. She passed a woman with gleaming red eyes and a set of onyx wings cascading to the floor. The woman gave her a once-over, sliding a red tongue along glistening lips, but didn't approach. She was probably a middle-aged man in her waking life, Tovah thought with a small grin. Ah, well. To each his or her gender-bending own.
Tovah had always represented pretty close to her true appearance, with one small exception. Compared to the people around her, some who sprouted fangs or wings or fur, she felt it wasn't dishonest to represent as whole when in reality she'd been damaged. And yes, that was an issue her therapist would've spent hours on, back before she'd discovered the Ephemeros and still needed therapy. Tovah didn't care.
Here, in this world, she didn't have to put on a face for anyone. She didn't have to do what anyone else wanted or expected her to do. She answered to nobody. In the Ephemeros, Tovah could be sexy and free and selfish.
She could dance.
Someone had shaped an oasis in the center of the club. A small fountain. Some trees. Soft white sand. Tovah recognized the shaper's touch and moved toward it.
Ben sat on the fountain's tiled rim, dabbling his fingers in the water until he caught a shimmering goldfish and pulled it from the water where it wriggled and splashed. It mustn't have pleased him, because he tossed it back and looked up as she approached. The water he flicked toward her became diamonds in midair and fell, clinking, to the sand. There they became rivulets, like mercury, flashing silver until they disappeared.
"Tovah," Ben greeted her with a nod. "Did Spider find you?"
"Yes."
Behind her, the club pulsed and flashed, tempting her to move her body to the music. In front of her the oasis was a study in peace and calm. Tovah stayed on the edge, in between both and part of neither.
Ben glanced over her shoulder and smiled slowly. "The club scene? That's challenging."
It was actually much easier than what he'd done, since in the club she had only to shape her own space and leave the rest to the collective will of those who sought the same nightscape she had. Here in Ben's oasis, he was both creator and sovereign. The club could encroach, but not overtake, what he'd done.
"This is nice," she told him. Her boots touched the edges of sand shading into the club's concrete floor.
"You can say it. Nice, but boring."
"Depends on what you're planning on doing in it." Tovah lifted a brow.
Ben laughed and looked around. "Not what you're planning on doing out there."
Ben didn't need to dream the same sorts of things Tovah did. She didn't ask why he needed to create an oasis, or water, or the fish he was always looking to catch. She wished he had as much consideration for her privacy.
She looked over her shoulder at the club, which had gotten very far away. She pulled it closer with an effort that shouldn't have taken as much will, but did. Ben's oasis was stronger than her dance club. Ben was stronger.
"I like to dance," she said simply and left "What's it to you?" unspoken.
Ben apparently heard it in her voice, because he smiled and stood. He represented as he always did, a tall man with sandy hair and regular features, eyes the color of sun-faded denim and a long-legged, lumbering gait. He wore the same pair of worn brown cords and blue button-down shirt every time she saw him and, like his need to shape a space of quiet in the midst of chaos, Tovah never asked why.
"I like the sound of flowing water," he said as though she'd spoken aloud. The fountain tinkled a little louder. "I find it very soothing."
"Dancing is a great tension reliever." She drew a line in the sand with her toe. "Dare you to try it, Ben."
Eight months ago Ben had shown up on the edge of a meadow Spider had been encouraging her to shape for practice. At first she'd thought he was a sleeper, so befuddled had he looked. In moments it had become clear he was a shaper when he turned her meadow into the seashore, Spider into a sand-crab and Tovah into a mermaid. He had a lot of power right away and clearly no knowledge of how to use it. Or of etiquette. She'd been the same way the first time she realized the Ephemeros was a real place, not just a part of her sleeping mind.
Eight months ago he'd been brand new to shaping, but he'd passed Tovah's skill and now rivaled Spider. Ben worked hard at shaping. At making details. And he wanted, as she did not, to be a guide.
"I don't dance." His words were easy enough, without sting.
Tovah let them bounce off her without flinching. "That's too bad."
She'd never asked him why he wanted a mermaid so badly, or what that had meant to him. Or if he'd been disappointed to discover that the woman in his arms that first night, the mouth he'd kissed, belonged to someone who wasn't a figment of his imagination. Who wasn't a fulfillment of his desire. They never mentioned the way he'd literally swept her off her feet and into his embrace within moments of seeing her for the first time.
Tovah thought about it, though.
"Sure you won't join me, instead?" Ben waved a hand at the fountain, the sand, the trees.
She tilted her head and gave him a smile. "Only if you'll dance with me."
He opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head and laughed. "Tovah..."
Impulsively, stupidly, she reached for his hand and snagged his sleeve. She pulled him a little, knowing all he had to do was want to resist her and he wouldn't budge a step. But he moved, reluctantly closer. She put his hand on her hip and put hers on his shoulder, then held up the other for him to take.
"I don't dance," Ben repeated.
"It's easy. I'll show you."
Despite his protests, they started moving at the same time. One, two, three, four. A simple box step, set to the music Tovah pulled from the air around them as prettily as from a music box.
"See?" she told him, tipping her head back to look into his face. "You're a natural."
Ben stopped. His hand tightened on her hip while the other squeezed her fingers. "I didn't say I couldn't dance. Just that I don't."
His mouth had tasted sweet, his lips warm. His breath had filled her, creature of the sea though he'd willed her to be, and she'd taken him deep inside her. The kiss, that first and only kiss, had lasted a second and a lifetime. They'd become closer since then, both students of Spider, and they'd shared jokes and laughter and more than a bit of not-always-so-friendly rivalry...but they'd never spoken of that kiss or what it had meant.
Or what it hadn't.
She shook her head, backing away. "Right. I get it."
"Tovah---"
She held up a hand. "No, no, Ben. Don't worry about it. I just thought...never mind. I'll catch you another night."
He scraped a hand over his hair, standing it on end, that small detail she knew he hadn't shaped on purpose but which told her so much about how he was representing just then. Ben was always full of details like that, every tiny piece of him and what he made around him perfect and natural. What she struggled with, he simply did.
She waited for him to take her in his arms again, or at least to call her back, but Ben didn't. "Right. See you, Tovah."
She took another step back, letting go of the oasis and again shaping the club, and Ben let her do it. She felt the release of his will on hers like the slow unwinding of thread from a spool, bit by bit until he'd gone. Flashing lights and pulsing beats filled in around her, and her heart leaped to the thud of the bass that also pounded in the floor beneath her feet.
She had come to dance, after all. It was time to get to it.
Tovah wasn't the only person looking for a partner. Shapers and nonshapers alike moved to the ever-changing music. A man approached her, his eyes narrowed with desire, smile practiced and charming.
"How about it?"
Waves of desire hovered around him. Though easily brushed aside, they tugged her, and when she extended a tendril of desire toward him, he responded at once. His brown eyes shifted briefly toward green. She relaxed the shield protecting her from the push and pull of the collective will. Still, he did nothing. He wasn't a shaper. She could feel what he wanted, but he couldn't make it happen.
He needed her, for that.
"How about what?" She leaned closer, checking him out. Laughter burst from her throat. Colors brightened and dimmed around them as her focus at keeping her surroundings in place got fuzzy for a moment. She looked back at her would-be wooer.
He was cute. Probably representing taller and broader than he was in the waking world, but so what? Unless he suddenly grew tentacles, she wasn't about to complain.
Her snappy answer set him back a little bit. He was probably used to his dream women slavering all over him. His teeth were very, very white and clean. "Come with me, and I'll show you."
Fooling around with a sleeper was tricky. Wanting something and knowing how to get it were two separate things in the Ephemeros, as in the waking world. Sleepers could influence shapers but because they lacked control, things could easily go awry. Sleepers were generally too easily distracted. Keeping them focused was too much like guiding for her tastes.
Still, the offer was appealing. She nodded, reaching out her hand. He took it with fingers soft and warm, the small and somehow intimate detail of the calluses telling her more than anything else probably would.
He knew how to dance. Each step landed with perfection. The hand on the small of her back led her with gentle pressure. They moved effortlessly through a crowd that parted to make way for them. He didn't know how to waltz, but she did, and that was enough.
"Like music-box dolls," he said suddenly.
"Is that what we are?" Tovah laughed as he dipped her so low her hair swept the floor.
The people around them became music-box dolls, and she did nothing to change them. If that was what her partner wanted, well, so long as he kept dancing, she didn't care. She just wanted to dance.
His breath, hot in her ear, got heavier. She closed her eyes, pleasure already spiking through her. She felt a whisper of breath, the tentative touch of a tongue. She opened her eyes to look at him.
And then he disappeared.
"Dammit," Tovah murmured as she was left holding nothing but vaguely shimmering air.
So much for taking a chance on a sleeper. He hadn't left so much as a scent behind. He'd woken.
The boy held his red-and-white striped ball tight in his fist, knowing once it fell from his fingers it would be lost to him. He'd watched from the corner as the pretty lady with the curly hair talked to the man by the fountain, but she hadn't seen him. She'd been busy out there beyond the shadows, and he was too afraid to leave them. She'd been distracted while she was dancing. The boy had felt her concentration falter. He'd watched her partner vanish. He watched her, now, as she looked at what had formed around her.
The club had become a dungeon. Music without words hammered, muted through thick stone walls studded with dusty, flickering bulbs bare of any shades. The boy hung back in shadows. Watching.
He wanted to ask her why, if she could shape anything she wanted, she was letting herself be put into a place like this. He didn't want to be here. He'd get out, if he weren't so afraid of stepping beyond the doorway. He'd get out and run away from this bad place, from the bad people who'd put him there. Maybe she didn't know how much power she really had, he thought, watching her face wrinkle in disgust at the new scene.
She seemed nice. Maybe, he thought with a spark of hope he hadn't felt in a very long time, this lady would help him. He stepped forward, ball clutched so tight in his fingers the rubber dented.
"Mrs.?"
She turned, mouth opening in silent surprise.
He was too late to greet her, though. Two figures moved out of the shadows. The bad people. The witchwoman with the long fingernails and the man who was always with her, his belt heavy with tools and slung low over dirty denim-covered hips.
"Looky, looky," said the witchwoman.
The lady from the club didn't hesitate. "Fuck off."
"That's not very nice."
Next to the witchwoman, the man's teeth flashed. They'd grown longer. All of them sharp, not just the canines. A tongue fluttered briefly in the curve of a nasty smile before vanishing into the darkness of his mouth.
Fear flooded the narrow hall around them. It came from the lady and shot through the boy's veins like ice. It set him back until he scraped cold stone. She couldn't help him. She was too afraid.
She'd stopped trying to move against the floor into which she'd now sunk up to her ankles. The stone behind the man with the tools shimmered, then solidified. "This isn't what I was looking for!"
The man growled, low in his throat, the warning of a dog getting ready to attack.
The boy cried out and dropped the ball, which rolled across the stone floor and landed at the lady's feet. She looked at it, then him, and her eyes softened. She reached for him, but he was too far away. He could reach her if he ran across the room, if he could get to her, but the bad people were between them.
The witchwoman would hurt him again, pinch him with her long nails and pull his hair. And the man...oh, the man...was something else. The boy shrank back, hands outflung, pushing.
Pushing.
The witchwoman hissed into his ear. "Don't do that!"
But he did it, again and again, pushing with all his might to keep them from getting to him. They could take the lady, instead, hurt her, hurt anyone but him. He pushed.
The fear in the air became terror when the man's face began to change. In seconds the features had blurred, shifted. Become feral. A dogman. A wolfish muzzle, a dog's pointed ears, but the bright intelligent eyes of a man. Coarse black fur tipped with silver gleamed in the torchlight.
Tongue lolling, silver drool glistening, it snapped its jaws. Foam curdled in the corners of the dogman's jaws, and torchlight reflected green inside its eyes.
"She won't help you," the witchwoman said, but didn't touch him.
The lady pulled her feet free of the muck into which she'd sunk and stepped back automatically when the dogman moved toward her. The boy could smell it now, the stink of raw meat and blood, and something underneath, like earth.
"You don't scare me!" the lady yelled.
"No?" The witchwoman laughed.
The jaws snapped again, the teeth flashing, but the voice came from deep inside the dogman's throat. It sounded strangled and faintly amused.
The lady's voice stayed calm. "I'm not afraid of dogs."
"You would be," the witchwoman said, "if one bit you."
The fear surrounding them shifted and dipped. It became fury, instead, and it pushed away the advancing dogman. The stone wall behind the dogman shimmered again. One at a time, glowing red letters appeared. EXIT. A sign, and beneath it a doorway in the stone. The woman pushed off with both feet, launched herself in a smooth, whirling circle of limbs over his head, and shot through it. She disappeared.
She'd left him behind.
He ran out of the shadows, out of the dungeon, out into the world beyond, but he couldn't find her.
"I told you," said the witchwoman and turned to face the boy. "Didn't I tell you?"
The dogman snarled and slashed the air with his sharp teeth.
And no matter how the boy tried, he couldn't push them hard enough to keep them away.
Tovah had too many papers to sign. Multiple copies of the same forms, reports, affidavits. Medical release forms, HIPAA information. It was never-ending. Her pen would run out of ink before she was through. Her fingers would fall off. Why couldn't she just rubber-stamp everything, or better yet, push a button and have it all sucked into outer space?
But no, this was the waking world, where she had to actually deal with crap like this. She sighed, scribbling on the last set of papers her lawyer had pushed across the desk toward her. Then her pen, indeed, ran out of ink.
He had another. "Here, use mine."
Tovah smiled a little, taking it. "You must go through dozens every week. Well. Not like this one, I guess. This is gorgeous."
The pen in her hands was solid, smooth, an expensive Mont Blanc inscribed with his name. Reginald Perry. It probably cost as much as she'd spend on a month's groceries.
Mr. Perry's laugh was as large and solid as his mahogany desk. "If we finally get this settlement, you'll be able to get one of your own."
She didn't have the heart to tell him she'd rather spend her money on something more worthwhile than a fancy pen. "I just want all this settled so I can get on with my life. It's been three years since the accident. More than two since the separation. I'm ready to move on."
"Of course. Of course." His look of sympathy was well practiced and probably mostly sincere.
Tovah liked Mr. Perry, who knew his work and had made the process of suing the insurance company as easy as possible. She trusted Mr. Perry, but she was ready to be finished with this. It no longer even mattered about the money.
"It's a matter of being fair," she said aloud.
If Mr. Perry found her comment to be a non sequitur, he didn't look confused. "Absolutely. That's what we're working for here."
She nodded and returned his pen, then stood to shake his hand. His grip was firm. She liked that he shook her hand without holding back, even though he was the sort to insist on opening doors and pulling out chairs for women. He was respectful, not condescending.
"Thank you, Mr. Perry."
Mr. Perry smiled. "I believe in being fair."
He also believed in vacationing in the tropics, but though the first two lawyers Tovah'd spoken to had urged her to go after the throat of the insurance company and seek blood, Mr. Perry had been reasonable about what damages she should seek. Enough to cover her medical costs and compensate for future medical care. His fee might buy him airfare and a few weeks' worth of drinks, but he hadn't made this all about the money. He'd made it about justice.
"I know you do," Tovah said. "Thanks again."
The appointment had taken less time than she'd expected, but even so she faced rush-hour traffic, and on a Friday. TGIF. Most of the single people she knew would be heading out to the bars and clubs tonight, but Tovah relished Friday nights for the specific reason that she never went anywhere but home.
It had been easier, during their marriage, to say her own prayers on Fridays and go to the movies or out to dinner, like "the rest of our friends," as Kevin had said. In December Kevin put up a tree and she lit a menorah. They'd never discussed what would happen when they had kids, though she'd thought about it more frequently as the years passed.
Now on her own, Tovah had returned to the customs of her childhood. She hadn't seen the face of God or anything like that, and she didn't consider herself particularly religious, but she looked forward to Friday nights, the lighting of the candles, the simple traditional words over bread and wine. If she ever regretted staying home, it was because preparing dinner only for herself sometimes seemed a waste of effort when cereal was easier and filled her stomach as well.
By the time she got home, she was more than ready for a glass of wine and some time alone. Traffic had been horrible, the grocery store crowded. Everyone seemed frantic to be someplace else, and she was even happier to be going home to her dog, a good meal and maybe a funny movie. She'd developed a much lower tolerance for humanity's rudeness since discovering the Ephemeros, where nothing had to be inconvenient.
Someone was looking at the house next door. This wasn't unusual. It had been on the market for a few months, the last occupants moving out to follow the husband's promotion. The Realtor always had a faintly desperate smile now when she waved at Tovah as she led prospective buyers to the front door.
Tovah glanced at the small knot of people on the front porch as she shouldered her bag and reached for the paper sack of groceries in her trunk. A man, a woman, a teenage boy and two smaller boys clustered around the Realtor, who seemed to be having trouble with the lockbox. The sound of their voices dismantling the neighborhood, the landscaping, the school system, drifted to her on the late September air. The mother thought the houses were set too close to the street. The children wanted to know if they could bring their jungle gym. The father and the teenager gave each other challenging, sullen glares, broken at last when, with an "eep" of triumph, the Realtor got the key and opened the front door.
Tovah caught sight of the family a half hour later as she scrubbed the final stubborn feathers from the chicken she intended to cook for Shabbat dinner. They marched out of the sliding glass doors to the back deck, looked around en masse, then trooped away and out of sight to the front of the house. They hadn't looked excited. Seasoning the chicken and putting it inside a large roasting pan along with a few small red potatoes, Tovah couldn't blame them, really. The neighborhood was old, the houses not much like the new, fancy developments springing up all over. The houses were inexpensive by comparison to be sure, but you got what you paid for.
"What do you think, Max? Think they'll buy it?"
Max perked up one floppy ear and rolled on his back for a belly scratch. Tovah rubbed his soft tawny fur. The dog grinned, tongue lolling.
"Me neither. C'mon. Let's get you dinner."
Dinner. Max was all about dinner. He leaped to his feet, tail wagging hard enough to whap Tovah's legs as she filled his bowl. In his eagerness to get to the food, Max stepped all over her feet, his nails digging in.
"Ouch, Max!" She limped out of the way, but the damage wasn't permanent. He hadn't even scratched her. "Crazy mutt, watch what you're doing."
Tovah couldn't compete with food. Stepping around the dog, she took from the freezer one of the challahs she baked eight or ten at a time and laid it out to thaw. She was just getting ready to head upstairs for a quick shower when the doorbell rang.
It was the Realtor from next door. She smiled brightly when Tovah cracked open the door. She looked tired, despite the wide grin. "Ms. Connelly?"
"Yes?" It shouldn't be a surprise she knew Tovah's name. Realtors made it their business to know neighborhoods. Still, Tovah was wary.
"Beth Richards." The Realtor held out a hand that Tovah reached to take automatically.
Max nudged open the door and tried to make an escape, but Tovah grabbed his collar. Max, spotting freedom, pulled. She braced herself against his weight. The rubber-backed mat beneath her moved. She stepped down, hard, and had to reach for the doorframe to catch herself before she could trip. The whole debacle took only a few seconds, but it felt like forever until she could say, "Can I help you with something?"
Beth Richards handed Tovah a card with her picture and information on it. "I'm the agent for the house next door."
Tovah smiled politely. Max wouldn't be deterred. She released his collar to let him into the yard. He wouldn't run past the invisible fence. With a yelp, he surged past the Realtor, almost knocking her over, too.
"Sorry," Tovah said. "He's a big puppy."
Beth Richards blinked. "Yes. St. Bernard?"
"Yep." Tovah looked at the card in her hand. "The Smiths moved out three months ago. I guess you're having some trouble?"
"It's only a matter of finding the right family for the property, that's all." The Realtor sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than anyone.
"And...is there something I can help you with?" Tovah looked past her to the yard, where Max had flopped happily into the grass and was woofing at a squirrel. "If it's about the dog, he stays in my yard. I know he can be intimidating, but---"
"Oh, no. The dog's fine." Richards smoothed a hank of fur off her skirt. "Really. It's just that I was wondering if you'd mind keeping my card handy. In case you meet someone who's in the market for a house like the property next door."
"Oh, sure. Of course." Tovah hadn't expected that. "I don't know anyone looking right now, but of course I'll keep you in mind."
"Thanks." Richards had pasted her smile back on. She glanced over Tovah's shoulder, down the hall. "You've done some nice things to your place."
"Thanks. A matter of necessity, really."
The Realtor looked at the wheelchair ramp on the side of the front porch. "Ah. The door was replaced to accommodate a chair?"
She was good. Tovah could practically hear the gears turning inside her head as she assessed the "upgrades." "Yes."
"Did you do extensive work inside, too? Properties with accommodations for the disabled are quite valuable." Richards nodded firmly. "If you're ever looking to sell---"
"I'll keep you in mind." Tovah's smile wasn't as bright as Richards's. "But I don't plan on moving any time soon. Really."
"Right. Of course." The Realtor backed up, looking at the new doorframe, which, with its glass side panels, was much nicer than the original had been. "Well, thanks for keeping me in mind. If you come across anyone looking, please pass my card along."
"I'll do that. Max!" Tovah gestured. "Come inside!"
Max lumbered to his feet and up the ramp. Both women moved aside to let him pass. The Realtor scraped another palmful of hair off her skirt but seemed unsure what to do with it. Tovah held out her hand for the fur. Maybe someday she'd be able to stuff a mattress with it.
"Take care," said Richards with a little wave. "See you."
Inside, Tovah tacked the Realtor's card on the bulletin board with everything else. "Wonder how long it will take me to lose that?"
Max woofed. She laughed. "Yeah, yeah. I know. Queen of Disorganization. That's me."
She stuck another pin into the card to make sure it didn't fall, but it would be covered in a day by something else, she was sure of it. The bulletin board was her repository for anything that didn't fit in her junk drawer.
"Don't give me that look," she told the dog, and waited for an answer.
But of course, since this was the waking world, there was none.
The boy had been listening to the sound of screams for a long time. When they stopped this time, he cocked his head to listen for more. And, in a moment, fresh cries echoed around him from the walls.
He didn't know how he'd arrived here, or how long ago, or why. He knew days passed like a string of beads, each the same and without end. He knew he was safe only from moment to moment, but he'd stopped worrying about being the next to scream.
After a while, even terror must fade.
Still, he was only a boy, and when he heard the sound of footsteps on the stone floor outside his door, he stood. Waited. When the shadow fell across the threshold, he shrank away from it. Away from the stink and the sound of panting, that short, sharp snorting of the dogman.
"Go away!"
Growling laughter greeted that command, but the dogman didn't enter the room. The boy watched the shadow grow, stretching across the floor toward him. He took another step back, his hands flung out as though to thrust away the shadow. But he couldn't, could he? Shove away something like that? Hadn't he learned that already?
"You know what you have to do," said the witchwoman in the doorway. She wore dark denim jeans and a blue T-shirt. Her gray-streaked hair fell over her shoulders in messy waves. Her long nails clicked against each other.
His mother had long hair, but she was not his mother. This was...someone else, someone he knew but wished he didn't. She detached herself from her own patch of darkness and looked out into the hall.
"Go ahead," she urged. "Try it. See what happens."
The boy shook his head. Bad things happened when he tried to keep the witchwoman and the dogman away. Bad things happened to other people. "No."
The dogman growled again. The shadow stretched. Once, a long time ago, the boy had seen a movie about a vampire whose shadow moved when it did not. Gnarled, clutching fingers had sought to throttle a victim and pulled back before they could reach. But one day, he thought, stepping back, pushing the shadow away with his will, the dogman wouldn't pull back.
"He's never going to stop or go away." The witchwoman said this matter-of-factly.
His teacher had spoken that way about homework and tests. But this woman wasn't his teacher, Mrs. Bellestead, who'd kept him after class to work on multiplication, reciting the numbers over and over until at last they'd clicked. This woman moved toward him and he put out a hand to keep her at bay, too, though this effort made his arms tremble with the effort.
"You stop," he told her. "You stop."
She shook her head. Light crossed her face. Dark eyes. Red smear of a mouth. She'd been eating berries or jam. Something sticky and red. It coated her lips and teeth when she grinned.
"I can't stop. Neither can he. And we don't want to."
"No!" cried the boy. "That's not fair!"
"It might not be fair," the witchwoman said. "But it's the truth, and you know it. So do it. Do it now! He's coming. And he will bite you this time. I will let him bite you!"
Her voice got high and excited. Her eyes went wide and she danced back from the doorway, hands clutched to the center of her blue T-shirt and denting the fabric. The shadow in the doorway grew. Stretched. The growling got louder.
And the boy closed his eyes, flung out his hands and pushed.
He pushed hard.
He pushed for a long time, until his stomach got sick and he had to bend over to gag and choke. He fell to hands and knees on soft black sand. No more walls around him. No screams, not even his own. He wept fat, hot tears that sizzled when they hit the ground.
"Very nice," the woman purred. "Do it again."
And though it hurt him deep inside, the boy did.
Henry Tuckens wasn't doing any better, at least not according to the chart at the foot of his bed. Tovah wasn't supposed to be reading the thick sheaf of papers clipped to the splintered clipboard, but after two years of visiting Henry in the same room at Sisters of Mercy Hospital, she no longer bothered with protocol.
Catatonic schizophrenia. Whatever that meant. The doctors couldn't seem to figure out what was going on with Henry, who swung between the extremes of mania and depression with regularity---and ever-lengthening bouts of catatonia in between.
Tovah set the book she'd brought him on the nightstand. "Hey, Spider. I brought you something special. Maybe you'll wake up and check it out."
Henry stared straight ahead, eyes wide but unseeing. Tovah knew he could hear her, maybe even see her, but he was locked inside his head. She tucked the blankets around him more firmly, noting the places where his limbs felt thinner. His face looked more wasted, too, the cheeks hollow and lips pale. His hair had receded, leaving his forehead high and bare and vulnerable.
"C'mon, buddy. You can't sleep your life away. You need to get up, get out of bed." She took his hand, feeling the warmth there that told her he was alive, despite all appearances to the contrary. "Stop living in your dreams."
She turned at the sound of the scrape of soft-soled shoes in the doorway. Ava, Henry's favorite nurse, stood with a needle in her hand.
"Does he really need that?" Tovah asked, knowing the answer was inevitably yes. "I mean, look at him."
Ava grunted and moved toward the bed. She was smaller than Tovah's five feet six inches but wiry with muscle. She could take down a patient twice her size without blinking. Tovah had seen her do it.
"You weren't here the last time he woke up." Ava's no-nonsense tone brooked no argument. "He took out three interns and broke the TV before we could wrestle him down. The interns I couldn't give a shit about, but the TV was bitching hard to replace."
Tovah looked down at the man in the bed. "He doesn't mean to. He just gets confused."
Ava swabbed the patch of skin on the back of Henry's hand and slipped the drug into his veins. He barely twitched. Ava pulled the sheets tighter around him and turned to Tovah. "You staying for a while?"
"I thought I would."
"We've got bingo going on in the rec room in about twenty minutes, if you want to join us."
"Thanks." Tovah smiled. "I think I'll pass."
Ava tossed up her hands. "Suit yourself. You used to love bingo, as I recall."
"Yeah, well, that was then." Tovah focused on Henry's wan face. There was no point in pretending she didn't remember those days, when bingo was the highlight of the week and she had to be forced to wash her hair and brush her teeth.
"You know something, Connelly? You're the only patient I ever had who came back. Lots of 'em say they will, but you're the only one who ever did."
Tovah looked at the nurse who at one time had known her more intimately than any lover. "He doesn't have anyone else."
"Lots of them don't," said Ava as she left the room.
"That doesn't make it right," Tovah whispered to Henry, so Ava couldn't hear.
She wasn't, in fact, certain Henry could hear her. Sometimes he could. Sometimes he didn't, it just depended on how far he was from his waking self. Tovah watched him sleep for a moment or two, then busied herself with making sure his room was clean and nothing was missing. The pajamas she'd bought for him were folded neatly in his drawer, which was good. Someone had nicked the last pair. The stack of books on the nightstand didn't look as though they'd been touched. The bottles of shampoo and bars of soap lined up on his dresser were barely used.
"Spider," she said. "You've got to get up. C'mon."
His only response was the snort-whistle of his breath. This wasn't surprising, but it was frustrating. Henry had been a patient in this hospital, on and off, for more than ten years.
Tovah settled into the chair next to his bed, picked up the copy of The Pickwick Papers and began to read. Doctors had told her it didn't matter so much what was read to him, just that somehow, someway, some stimulus reached Henry's mind while he shut himself away from the world. The doctors---most of them overworked and frazzled, this floor one last stop before they moved on to something bigger and brighter---didn't know that Henry wasn't lacking in stimulation. Yet Tovah was sure the reading didn't hurt. He never admitted to listening to her, but she was convinced the time she spent reading aloud to him somehow anchored him to the waking world in a way none of their drugs or psychotherapies could.
The book served another purpose. It was so boring it usually put her to sleep within twenty minutes. It worked this time, too, her eyes drooping, and she slid a finger between the pages to mark her place. It helped, too, that last night she'd dreamed hard and strangely, that it had been almost too difficult to shape the club and the music. Last night's dreams had worn her out.
Tovah wasn't quite asleep yet. She was aware of the chair beneath her, the hiss of the hot air pouring out of the vents, and the muffled sound of shouting coming from the hall. Aware, too, of the way her hair feathered over her face as it tipped forward and the feeling of dry paper on her fingers. A gray mist swirled around her, softening the edges of these sensations. Colors muted.
And then, with a subtle shift, she lost sight of the hospital room and stepped forward, moving as though through water. She was there. The Ephemeros, land of dreams. Everything was bright and clear and fresh, and she tipped her face to a yellow sky with dancing pink clouds.
"I wondered when you were finally going to show up." Spider crouched on a large boulder.
Today he represented in shades of gold and red, a spider in formal dress. His legs were longer today, his body less the squat, rounded shape of a tarantula and more like a garden spider. He held a small silk-wrapped package between his two front legs.
"You're not going to eat that now, are you?" Tovah grimaced, stretching, feeling her limbs work the way they were all meant to. She loved this part, the first few moments when she arrived. It was like magic, the small changes her body went through as she shaped herself. She controlled how she represented, but in those first few moments after she crossed over, sometimes she surprised herself.
"It's pastrami on rye!" Spider sounded offended. "What, you think I eat flies?"
"You are a spider," she pointed out.
"And you're a brunette," Spider shot back. "Usually."
This was true. Tovah ran fingers through her hair, longer here where it didn't matter if it got tangled. "Huh. Look at that."
She'd arrived with a definite auburn tinge to her tresses. She liked it. Where it had come from, she wasn't sure, but she didn't bother changing it. Everything else seemed the same. She did a few deep knee-bends, enjoying the way her muscles worked.
"You're with me, ain't ya? Over there?"
Despite his claim he wasn't consuming insects, Tovah turned her attention away when Spider brought the package to his mouth and began to eat. "Yes. Ava sends her regards."
Spider snorted. "She forgive me for the television yet?"
"No."
Soft grass, each individual blade a different shade of green, brushed Tovah's fingertips as she did a slow, even cartwheel. Then a split, something she couldn't do in the waking world, no matter how hard she tried. She laughed, feeling lighter.
It was good to have people who loved her, even if they were a St. Bernard and a man who represented as an arachnid. Spider scuttled forward, the earth shaping with his every step to leave a trail of flowers behind him. It was a nice effect, though what purpose he meant for it to serve she had no idea.
"Just to be pretty." He couldn't read her mind, but he had no problem reading her face. "Flowers are pretty. You should try it."
"Leaving a trail of flowers behind me? What's next, jewels falling from my lips with every word?"
"You could do that, too, but flowers smell good."
As he said it, the scent of roses and lavender filled the air. Tovah took a deep, hungry sniff. "They do. Thanks, Spider."
"Anything for my girl. You know that."
"Anything?" Tovah bent to scoop up a handful of flowers. The details were amazing, if not entirely correct. Spider was skilled, but even he needed to know what something really looked like in order to shape it accurately. He'd taken liberties with the petals, shaping them like hearts. Or maybe he'd done that on purpose. "Will you wake up for a while?"
His only answer was the turning of his back.
"Spider..."
No answer. Tovah looked around the meadow. To please him, she shaped a bird or two. Some butterflies. When she looked back at him, he'd shrunk from the size of a midsized dog to a large rat. The vibrant reds and golds had gone to muted browns and greens.
"So you're going to abandon me? Is that it? Just walk away because you don't like something I had to say? I don't like a lot of the stuff you say to me, but I don't ever run away." She took a few running steps toward him, but he'd shaped the air to a thickness that made moving difficult. She concentrated and managed to thin it, but the birds and the butterflies disappeared, winking out in her field of vision like candles being snuffed. "Spider, dammit! You can't sleep all the damn time! If you don't wake up you're going to---"
All at once he was huge, the size of a compact car, then bigger. He loomed over her. Fangs the size of her arm dripped venom that hissed and burned the ground where it struck.
"Don't you say it!" The words shot from Spider's mouth with the force of bullets.
Tovah flinched but stood her ground, even though her pulse thudded in her ears and wrists and her body tensed to flee. Spider wouldn't hurt her.
"Don't you say it," he repeated.
Tovah held out her hands to him. "I don't want to lose you, that's all."
His laughter echoed around them. The grass leaped up beneath her feet, thick and strong. The scent of flowers filled the air. Spider returned to his normal size.
"You won't ever lose me, kiddo. I'll be around for-fucking-ever."
"Nobody can be around forever," she told him. "Not even you."
For one rare instant, the spider flickered and vanished, replaced by Henry representing as the man he must have been before his stint in the hospital. Tall, strong, with powerful arms and legs. All his hair. A man who looked like he could rule the world.
The Ephemeros shuddered.
As though a door somewhere had slammed hard enough to shake the pictures on the walls, or something fragile had been dropped and shattered, the world rippled around them. Henry gasped, and Tovah went to one knee, on her good leg. The other had changed and she cried out, not only disturbed at how someone had shifted her representation, but with true grief at experiencing her loss all over again.
Henry helped her up and held her arm to give her balance. "Tovahleh, are you okay?"
She nodded and gripped Henry's arm. "What the hell is that?"
The sky went dark. The ground turned to black sand. Cold. Lightning split the sky in flashes of blue and white and angry red. God's fire, her grandfather had called it.
This had nothing to do with any god. Tovah slipped her hand into Henry's. She'd encountered nightmares aplenty, but since meeting him and learning she could shape, she'd always been able to flee, escape, shift to something better. Or wake. But now they clung to each other as the earth rumbled beneath them and lightning made glass of the sand.
"What's going on, Spider?"
It felt odd to call him that, when he was still Henry. He looked at her. He squeezed her hand.
"It will pass."
"But what is it?" She'd experienced shifts in the Ephemeros before, when someone wanted something badly enough. But nothing ever like this.
"Shape it away, Tovah," Henry said, looking into the distance. "Shape us a haven."
"I don't know how!"
"We'll do it together. Shape with me."
She concentrated. She'd felt Spider's power many times before. The first time she'd woken in a dream and realized she was no longer powerless, he'd been there. The first time she understood she wasn't merely imagining herself in a place, but was actually inside it, Spider had been holding her hand. He'd led her then. He would lead her now, too.
"Are we fighting something?" she whispered. "Something bad?"
"No. We're trying not to be noticed, that's all. Fighting's not for us."
"I didn't know you were a pacifist," she said.
"I'm not. I'm a coward."
He grinned at her. He looked so much like the Henry she'd first met almost three years ago, the one who'd convinced her to play bingo and start eating again, that she wanted to cry. She leaned up quickly to kiss his cheek. Stubble scratched her lips.
Then he was gone and Spider was back, slightly less gaudily colored but still recognizable. She missed the touch of his hand. "Spider?"
"Time to go," he told her.
"How do you always know---" she began, and then the Ephemeros faded as someone shook her awake.
"Miss?"
Tovah looked at Henry, so still beneath his shield of blankets. The hands of the clock told her she'd only been asleep for about half an hour. She hadn't even dropped the book, though her finger had cramped from the pressure of holding it on her lap.
She'd have known the tall man standing over her was a doctor even without the white badge and clipboard. He had that disheveled, not-enough-sleep, too-much-coffee physique. In a pair of dark dress trousers and a deep blue button-down shirt, he was better dressed than a lot of the docs she'd seen. Better looking, too, despite the furrow in his brow as he stared at her. He had dark hair cropped short and eyes that matched his shirt.
"Sorry." She sat up straight, immediately self-conscious. "Must've dozed off."
"Careful. You don't want to end up like him." The doctor looked over at Henry, so silent. When he looked back at Tovah, the frown had disappeared. "Are you Henry's case worker?"
It wasn't a stupid assumption. Henry had no family to visit him. None that acknowledged him, at any rate. "I'm a friend, actually. Tovah Connelly."
She carefully tested her sound foot to make sure it hadn't fallen asleep while she was dreamwalking. It had only taken her one embarrassing incident in which she'd tried to stand on two numbed feet and fallen before she'd learned her lesson. She wiggled her toes, no problem, and got up. She offered her hand, which he took and dropped immediately after a bare hesitation she noticed but couldn't figure out. Germ-a-phobe? Some doctors were.
"Martin Goodfellow," he said. "I've been assigned to Henry."
"You're new?"
He nodded. "Started last week."
"Well, he's no different than he was last week," Tovah said. "Vitals are steady, but no change, otherwise."
He seemed taken aback at her knowledge, but rallied. "Are you a doctor?"
"No, but she's played one on TV." Ava pushed past them both and checked Henry's chart. She gave Tovah a look. "Visiting hours are over. We'll see you next week?"
"Next Sunday." Tovah settled the book on Henry's nightstand. "Tell him not to read ahead."
"As if," said Ava.
"It was nice to meet you, Dr. Goodfellow." Tovah didn't look at Henry. There was no point. He wasn't really there.
Dr. Goodfellow stared at her but said nothing, and under the intense scrutiny Tovah had to fight not to look at her reflection in Henry's mirror. Was he staring because of the way she'd lurched out of her chair like something from a horror movie? She'd tried to be more subtle than that. Or maybe she'd drooled while sleeping---
"Nice meeting you, too, Miss Connelly." Dr. Goodfellow nodded sharply, leaving doubt about the veracity of his statement. "Take care."
Tovah glanced at Ava, who was steadfastly ignoring the new doctor as she fussed with Henry. No help there, not even an eye roll. The nurse hadn't yet formed an opinion about the new doc. Tovah smiled a little and let herself out of Henry's room.
She shouldn't take Dr. Goodfellow's lack of enthusiasm personally. Some people just didn't have the same set of social skills as others. Or maybe she'd caught him on a bad day.
Dr. Goodfellow caught her at the end of the hall. "Miss Connelly!"
She turned. He was smiling. He looked less tired than he had on first glance and a whole lot friendlier.
"Yes?"
"I was wondering if you'd be able to talk to me a little bit. About Henry," he added hastily, as though she might assume he was asking her to chat about hemlines or the state of world affairs. "His file's got a lot of notes but says very little, if you know what I mean."
Tovah was a sucker for smiles, and Dr. Goodfellow had a great warm, buttery one, now that it had appeared. He slipped his pen into his breast pocket and put his hands on his hips.
"I've read it."
"Have you?" He looked like she'd admitted to a felony, but only for a second. "Then you know what I mean."
"I do." Tovah studied him. She'd never passed more than a word or two with Henry's previous docs, and then only because she'd forced them to talk to her about his treatment. Henry needed her to speak for him, since he refused to do it for himself. She couldn't do much, but she tried. "I'll be happy to talk to you about Henry."
"Thanks, I appreciate it." In sharp contrast to his original greeting, Dr. Goodfellow flashed her that warm smile again.
She liked the way it crinkled the corners of his eyes. "I can tell you're new," she said, gesturing at his clothes. "Nobody around here dresses like that."
He looked down, then quickly up at her. For an instant, cerulean eyes flashed. His smile tipped on one side. "No?"
She was no way, no how, going to flirt with Henry's new doctor. No matter how cute he was, or how nicely dressed, or...oh, hell, how good he smelled. Which was good, she discovered when he moved closer.
"Can I buy you a coffee? Or maybe you don't have time now. You're probably heading out somewhere. Of course." He shook his head before she even had time to answer. "I'm sure you've got something else to do. Another time?"
This swift exchange took her aback, just a little. "I come to see Henry every week, Dr. Goodfellow. If you really want to talk to me about him---"
"I do!"
She gave him a curious look.
"If I'm going to understand him, it will help to talk to someone who knows him."
Tovah nodded slowly. His enthusiasm was obvious. Despite the crinkles, he still looked young. Maybe he hadn't had time to become jaded about his work like most of the other docs she'd met here.
"Sure. I'll be happy to help. And I don't have anyplace I have to be just now, so..."
"Now? I've got time for a break." He looked hopeful but a bit wary, as though he still didn't expect her to say yes.
Tovah expected a man, a doctor, who looked like him to be more self-assured. Maybe even a little arrogant. His hesitance was utterly charming. She smiled. "Sure. Okay."
"Great!"
She followed him to the cafeteria for a cup of very bad coffee and a piece of very good blueberry coffee cake. They sat at a table so small their knees touched with every shift, and she couldn't bring herself to suggest they move to a bigger one. Nor did he seem bothered, though his legs were far longer and he must have wanted to stretch them.
"I've moved around a lot," he told her. "Decided to see the world before I settled down. Worked in Alaska for a bit, then did a stint in Hawaii. I went from wearing a fur-lined parka to a bathing suit in less than twenty-four hours. If I ever find a house, I've got some great souvenirs."
"You don't have a house?" Tovah laughed, imagining him living in a tent or the back of his car.
"No. Just a really small, really lousy apartment that smells like cold pizza. I've never stayed in one place long enough to bother buying a house."
Tovah lifted a crumb from her plate to her mouth. "Think you'll stay around here long enough?"
It wasn't until he looked up at her that Tovah realized how bold a question it sounded.
"Sisters of Mercy offered me a full-time position. So...maybe. Yes."
A beat of silence, one she didn't want to analyze, hovered between them. "What sort of house are you looking for?"
"Something I can afford." He laughed. "I've got med school bills to pay."
The image of Richards's card, tacked onto Tovah's bulletin board, rose in her mind. She thought about plucking it down and offering it to him. She said nothing. Coincidence didn't exist in the Ephemeros. You dreamed what you were meant to, or you shaped what you desired. In the waking world meeting a man wanting to buy a house mere days after meeting a Realtor trying to sell one was simple serendipity, nothing more. She shouldn't read into it. She wouldn't.
"What brought you to Pennsylvania?" Tovah stirred sweetener into her coffee, though she knew it wouldn't help. How a facility whose staff relied so heavily on caffeine could consistently ruin coffee, she didn't know.
"A chance to work in one of the premier long-term psychiatric facilities in a tri-state area."
She laughed, thinking he was joking, but stopped at the look on his face. "You're kidding."
Dr. Goodfellow smiled. "Nope."
She looked around at the dimly lit room. "This place?"
He nodded. "When the Harrisburg State Hospital shut down, there were fewer options for patients like Henry. Private facilities can't or don't want to handle an indigent population. Hospital programs are designed for short-term treatment, and beds are limited. Sisters of Mercy is one of the last long-term-care facilities that take patients on a pro-bono basis."
"You mean people who can't pay and have no other place to go."
He nodded. "Yes."
"And those are the sorts of patients you want to treat?"
He smiled slightly. "Someone has to."
His answer was true, but she wasn't sure she liked the way he'd said it. "Where were you before you came here?"
"In a twenty-bed private facility in New Hampshire. Full of wealthy bulimics and casual drug addicts with the money to rest for a little while. Tennis and golf were considered therapy."
Tovah watched him as he described the place to her. "Sounds like a dream job, actually."
"Not my kind of dream." His gaze caught hers. Held it. The moment broke a second later. "Tell me about Henry."
"He used to be lucid more often than not. The meds were working. He wasn't hallucinating. He was coherent." When she'd met him, Henry had spent hours talking to her. It had taken her weeks to realize that most of those conversations were happening in the Ephemeros. The lines between the waking and dream worlds had blurred so much for her she hadn't been able to distinguish them until Henry helped her. She owed him a lot. Maybe even her life.
She watched Dr. Goodfellow stir sugar and cream into his third cup of coffee. "Aside from the fact that stuff is foul, how can you stand the caffeine?"
He looked up with a smile. "I guess I've built up a tolerance."
"I'd be afraid I wouldn't be able to fall asleep." She indicated her cup. "I can't have any caffeine after about three in the afternoon."
His smile faltered, just a bit. "I'd be more concerned if, like your friend, I had trouble staying awake."
Another moment passed between them before he spoke again. "His records are sporadic, but show he's spent a lot of time in shelters or on the streets."
"From what I understand, his parents tossed him out when he was fifteen or so. He lived with grandparents, on and off. When they died..." Tovah shrugged. Henry didn't talk much about his past. Once, while putting away his pajamas, she'd found a sheaf of letters rubber-banded together. The return address had all been from the same place in New Jersey. She thought they might have been from a sister, but had never asked.
"His situation isn't uncommon. He's lucky to have a friend like you."
Tovah shook her head, demurring. Her own coffee was growing cold, but she couldn't stomach the bitterness. "Spider is---I mean, Henry is a great guy when he's awake."
"And not bashing in television sets."
The doctor's smile tempted her own. He didn't seem to have noticed she'd called Henry by his Ephemeros name, not that it would've mattered. Sitting with him felt comfortable in a way she hadn't expected. It was his apologetic manner. He was a good-looking man who didn't act like he knew it. She wondered if he liked to dance.
Of course, since this was the waking world---and she'd checked, to make sure, by looking again and again at the clock to be certain the numbers didn't change---she didn't ask him.
"It's the meds," she said abruptly. "The pills and shots mess with his brain. When he wakes up, he's disoriented and confused, that's all."
"Disoriented, confused and violent." Dr. Goodfellow studied the inside of his coffee cup, then tossed back the rest of its contents and put the empty mug back on the table. "Which means he needs to be medicated for his protection and the staff's."
"Well, what do I know? I'm not a doctor."
Dr. Goodfellow sighed. "I want to help your friend. I really do."
"Really? You'd be one of the first, I think." She sipped cold coffee to cover the bitterness in her tone. "Most of the doctors who come through here see him as a case in a textbook. He doesn't fit the profiles or the protocols, so they don't know what to do with him. They want to pump him full of drugs and free up a bed, that's all."
His silence filled the space between them, but she didn't regret what she'd said. Spider was a person, not just a patient, and she was as equally frustrated with him for his unwillingness to function in the waking world as she was with the medical professionals, family and friends who'd given up on him.
"Miss Connelly," he said softly. "I'm different."
Tovah looked up, into his eyes, expecting now to see a hint of smarmy smugness. A doctor's arrogance. Or maybe even condescending pity. But as she studied Martin Goodfellow's face, she saw only sincerity.
"I believe you," she said.
Television didn't interest her, and she'd finished all her library books. She'd fed Max, completed all she could stand to do on her latest assignment for work, and folded all her laundry. Tovah thought with longing of her bed and darkness, the sweet temptation of slipping into a world where she could put aside the problems of her waking life. Where she could run and dance, or fly if she chose. She wanted to be asleep.
It was only 8:00 p.m.
She would force herself to wait until at least nine and try not to count the minutes. She'd take a long shower and deep condition her hair. Maybe change the sheets. Surely those tasks would make the time go faster.
She stopped herself.
She would not allow herself to be like an alcoholic counting the minutes until she could have another drink, or an anorexic measuring every bite. She would not allow this craving to become an addiction. Not again. Yet even as she tried to convince herself, she knew it was too late. Denying herself the pleasures of sleep was as much, if not more, a sign of her unhealthy dependence on the Ephemeros. She'd told Henry he couldn't sleep all the time, but she knew too well how tempting it would be to do just that.
She would stay awake until ten, now, to prove she could. She would organize her computer files, or scrub her toilets. She would---
The phone rang, and she jerked at the sudden shrill. Caller ID showed a familiar number, and though normally she'd have let the machine pick up, she was grateful for the distraction now. She answered, bracing herself for the leap of her heart that refused to go away, no matter how many times she remembered she was supposed to hate him. Her throat had closed a bit, but he spoke before she could, giving her time to ease herself into speech.
"Tovah? It's me. Kevin," he added, as though once upon a time his voice hadn't been the first thing she'd heard every morning and the last she'd heard at night. "How are you?"
"Great. Fine. You?"
Casual chatter that said nothing. She closed her eyes, listening to the sound of Max's snores. They centered her, reminded her of where she was. No matter how she wished it, this was the waking world.
"I'm good, too." He paused.
She waited. He hadn't called just to chat. She wasn't going to waste time with inanities.
"I saw the house next to you for sale in the real estate magazine."
This wasn't what she'd been expecting, exactly. "And?"
"If they can get that sort of price for it, maybe you want to think about selling."
Tovah looked around at the house she'd kept along with her grandmother's silver and the dog. "Why would I want to do that?"
"You could get a nice ground-floor apartment. Or a rancher."
"Kevin," she said evenly, "I can manage stairs, okay? Why did you really call?"
She strained to hear the sound of another voice in the background, the bubble of feminine laughter, perhaps, or a baby crying. How old was the baby now, anyway?
"I just wanted to make sure you're okay."
Tovah put a hand to her forehead to ward off the headache trying to stab her between the eyes. She cradled the phone against her shoulder and covered her eyes with her palm.
"Why wouldn't I be okay, Kevin?"
She had a list of answers to that, none of them useful.
"I got a letter from the insurance company about the settlement."
"I've had about two dozen."
He sighed. "Tovah, don't be like that."
"I'm not being like anything, Kevin." She stopped herself from saying more.
Once there had never been silence between them. Even when they weren't speaking, there had never been a void like this, unfillable. It made her heart hurt, and she hated herself for not hating him more.
She wanted to draw up her knees and press her face to them, the way she used to. Unable to do that, she settled for burying her face into the cushions of the couch. They smelled of dog, though Max wasn't supposed to lie there.
"So, they're close to settling, then?"
"I think so, yes. The lawyer says so."
Friends and family had counseled her to fight for more, but at the time all she'd wanted was to cut him free. Let him go. She'd loved him too much to fight for pennies. The divorce mediation hadn't taken long. She'd agreed to take on the medical bills and fighting with the insurance company in exchange for whatever payout they might deign to give her. Kevin had taken half their savings, the car and the furniture, moving on with his life and new partner without even looking back.
More silence that he wasn't content to keep. "So...I guess we should talk about filing those papers."
Though Tovah'd been the one to tell him to go, she'd never actually filed for divorce. Her reasons had started out complicated and then eased into simplicity. She didn't have the money right now to file for divorce, and Kevin, despite his new girlfriend and life, had never bothered. Tovah didn't want to guess at his reasons.
"If that's what you want." Instant regret took over at those words. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction of thinking she wanted him back.
"Yeah...well..." Kevin cleared his throat. "Here's the thing. My lawyer also got a letter from yours about the settlement. And my lawyer says the mediation agreement we signed needs to be revisited."
Her breath burned in her lungs until she let it out. "Revisited?"
The soft huff of his breath tickled her eardrums. "He says the amount we originally agreed on was equitable, but with the new arrangements from the insurance company...and...we could use the extra cash."
We.
It still stung, even now.
"I'm sure you can."
"Because..."
The hesitation in his voice set off alarms in her head, and she lifted her face from the pillows. She didn't want to hear this. Not this, the inevitable, the news she'd been waiting to hear since the first time a woman had answered his phone.
"We're getting married."
"It's about time." Each word, a nail hammered into her, no matter how lightly she said it. "I'm sure Dalia will appreciate it."
Three months old, she remembered now. The baby, Kevin's daughter, was three months old. Tovah had never seen her, though she imagined she'd have Kevin's eyes.
"Yeah. I guess she will." Oh, how she remembered that rueful chuckle. "But listen, Tov---"
"You're telling me you want to revisit the divorce agreement because you think I'm going to get more money?" Each word, a thorn ripped from her flesh.
She took no enjoyment in how miserable he sounded, or from knowing he'd probably been urged into this by his new fiancée and his lawyer. "Yeah."
"But you're calling to see if I'm okay." She layered the word with grief masquerading as disdain. "Wow. Well, really, Kevin, if that's how you show concern, I'd much rather you didn't worry about me."
"I still do," Kevin said in a low voice.
Tovah imagined him cutting his gaze to the side to make sure he wasn't being overheard. "Don't."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't do that, either."
Silence again, a space between them that could never close. Not with all the sorries in the world. She put her finger on the disconnect button.
Then she hung up.
Max woke up and, whining, licked away her tears as she clung to his neck. When her sobs had ceased he squatted on his haunches, head tilted, and watched her. The curve of his mouth and lolling tongue was the same, but there was no question his expression was perplexed sorrow, not a smile. Tovah wiped her face and patted the couch beside her until he jumped up and put his head in her lap.
Sitting that way, she looked down at her legs, stretched out. The right, nicked and scarred from a lifetime of activity, reached all the way to the tufted ottoman. The left ended in a smoothly scarred cap of tissue just above the knee.
"He says he's sorry," she said. "Well, guess what. I'm sorry, too."
The problem was, sorry didn't buy beans, as her grandma had been fond of saying. Nor would it take them back in time to the night of the accident, when slick roads and a sleepy driver had ended in tragedy. If asked what she could've saved that night, her leg or her marriage, Tovah would have chosen her marriage. Unfortunately, she hadn't been given a choice. She had to live without both.
Sorry couldn't turn back time. There was only one place she could go where things would be the same as they were, at least as far as her body was concerned.
"I'm going to bed," she told Max, and went upstairs to seek the land of dreams.
She was cautious this time. Spider's warning had been merited, and though she'd managed to get away from the shaper who'd tried to do...whatever he'd meant to do, Tovah was not about to let herself get into a situation like that again.
She entered the Ephemeros on edge, wary, shaping nothing at first until she could make certain she knew what she wanted and certain to always know where to find her exit light. No club this time, though she ached to dance and flirt and drink to wash the taste of Kevin's conversation from her tongue. She stretched her body arm by arm and leg by leg and let her will surround her, seeing what came up.
One by one, the details appeared. Grass. Trees. One small patch, the borders blurry with the hint of mountains in the distance. But for now, just this one small place where she could sit in the sunlight.
She'd encountered bad things in the Ephemeros before, even since she'd learned it was a real place, not just fantasy. Nightmares still existed. Spider claimed they did for a reason. Bad dreams were usually limited to the sleeper having them, or the guide who decided to help them through. She'd encountered bold shapers who didn't understand or didn't care about the etiquette of forcing their will upon others, but they were rare. The Ephemeros never unshaped around her the way it had during her last visit with Spider. Parts shifted and moved, sometimes startlingly, but nothing had ever shaken the fabric of the dream realm before.
Spider had been scared, reason enough for her to be wary, too. Yet now, tipping her face to sunlight she'd created to have perfect brightness and heat, Tovah found it hard to concentrate on anything bad. Surely this place would always be this good and perfect and sweet, so filled with glory?
"Tovah."
Startled, she opened her eyes. "Ben!"
He gestured around him. "Nice place."
"Yes." A running brook appeared not too far from where she sat. His touch, not hers. She patted the grass beside her. "Have a seat?"
Ben sat, his long legs stretching out beside hers. He had a rod in one hand and cast at once, line whirring before settling into the water with a small plink. "How are you?"
"Fine. You?"
He also tipped his face to sunlight. "Fine."
"What are you trying to catch?"
Ben reeled in the line, cast it again. "I should be able to catch whatever I want, right? Isn't that the way it works?"
She'd never heard Ben sound so bitter. "Spider would say you'll catch what you need to catch. Maybe not what you want."
Ben tossed the rod to the grass. "I know what Spider would say."
Tovah reached to pluck a flower, watching him. "Have you seen Spider recently?"
"Yes." Ben squinted at her. "He told me what happened."
"What do you think it was?" She turned toward him and pulled her knees to her chest to rest her chin on them both.
"I'm an expert?" Ben shook his head. "I don't know."
She studied him. She wondered if she'd ever be able to put aside the memory of how his mouth had felt, and his arms, and how safe he'd made her feel for those brief moments before he'd realized he was dreaming and let her go. Probably not, and she wasn't sure she wanted to.
"Spider's never been afraid of anything before. Not that I've seen. But that was different." Tovah shrugged and picked a blade of grass. She put it between her thumbs and blew, making it bleat. She looked up at Ben. "Were you here when it happened?"
He hesitated, then nodded. "Yes."
"Was it the same for you?"
"Black sand? Black sky?" He reached for his own blade of grass and whistled with it. His worked better.
"Yes. Lightning. And the ground shook."
Ben looked away from her. "It was the same for everyone I've talked to, no matter what they were doing."
Of course he spoke with others. There were plenty of times she entered the Ephemeros and didn't see Ben or Spider. There was no reason for her to believe they weren't here when she wasn't. The sudden flare of jealousy surprised her.
"Was it something from a shaper, do you think? Or something bigger?"
Ben shot her a frown. "How should I know?"
Though Spider had explained the Ephemeros to Tovah and she'd seen firsthand how it worked, she didn't exactly understand it. She didn't think Spider fully did, either, nor had she expected Ben to hold the key to its secrets. Even so, she frowned at his reaction.
"Sorry. I thought you might have a theory or something, that's all. Spider's told me a lot. I figured he'd told you the same things he's told me."
"What things?" Ben had shredded his grass whistle, but didn't pick another.
"That the Ephemeros is shaped by the collective unconscious. That we all enter it, but not everyone can manipulate it. Not even sleepers who know they're dreaming are always shapers. That some people think it's Heaven, or Hell---"
"Yeah, he told me that, too." Ben got up and strode away from the patch of grass he'd shared with her. Pacing, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his worn tan cords. He turned to look at her. "Do you believe him?"
"I don't believe he was lying to me, if that's what you mean."
Ben shook his head. "I didn't say he was lying. He believes it. I asked if you do."
She took a moment to ponder that. "I saw Jim Morrison in the club, once."
Ben laughed. "That's not proof. Besides, Morrison's not really dead. Just like Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. What was Mr. Mojo Rising doing?"
"Nothing. I mean, we didn't speak. He was at the bar, just watching everyone around him."
"Was he old and fat?"
Tovah smiled. "No. He was young and lean and gorgeous."
"That's not proof of anything. If you're going to represent as a famous rock star, you're not going to do the bloated version."
Tovah raised a brow. "It's not proof. You're right. It could have been someone shaping to look like him. Is this a philosophical discussion about whether or not Jim Morrison really died or are you arguing with me for kicks?"
"I'm just saying that you know as well as I do the face anyone wears here isn't necessarily his own, and seeing someone who died---supposedly or otherwise---means nothing. I mean, really, do you think the Ephemeros is Heaven?"
She ignored his deliberately taunting tone. "I'm not convinced it isn't."
"Because you saw Jim Morrison in a club."
"Because I think Heaven has to be somewhere," she told him. "And this is as good a place as any."
"So you think what happened the other day...the ground shaking...was what? God?" Ben didn't sound taunting now, he sounded downright scathing.
"I didn't say that. And no. I don't think it was a god."
Ben stared at her. More tension crackled between them. Tovah took a slow breath and let her eyes wander over his face, the planes and lines and curves of which had become so familiar to her in so short a time.
"Maybe it was Jim Morrison, then."
Tovah shrugged. "It didn't feel shaped. He felt like he was representing true."
"You can't tell that."
The way he scoffed got under her skin like a sliver. "C'mon, Ben, you can tell sometimes, can't you? When someone's representing true or not?"
He stopped pacing to pierce her with his gaze. "I can tell when someone isn't."
Now he was deliberately trying to get on her nerves, and Tovah put her hands on her hips. "Oh, really?"
"Yes." Ben moved two steps closer as though daring her to move away.
Tovah didn't move. He got to his knees in front of her and traced her eyebrows with the pad of his thumb while she shivered at his touch. His fingertips whispered over her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, the curve of her jaw and down her throat.
She swallowed hard. He wasn't looking into her eyes. His gaze followed the path his fingers made as they mapped her. His hands stopped briefly on her hips, and one moved across her thigh.
Tovah, trembling, closed her eyes. She thought he'd kiss her again. She wanted him to kiss her.
"Almost everything about you is real," Ben whispered into her ear. "Almost."
Tovah opened her eyes, breaking at Ben's words not because he meant them to be cruel but because she thought he meant to be kind. "What are you looking for in the water, Ben? What's so important about those fish you're always catching and throwing back? What do you want to pull out of there?"
Now he looked into her eyes. Inches apart, his hand still on her thigh just above where her scars began in the waking world. There, but not here.
"It doesn't matter, Tovah."
"It does to me."
That first time he'd crashed into their space and shaped her and Spider within moments. Now Tovah relaxed, opening herself to the tendrils of Ben's desire. The grass beneath them became soft white sand and the stream turned into the immortal and inexorable push-pull of the sea.
But though Tovah waited for him to change her, she stayed the same.
Ben turned his face when she leaned to kiss him. She stopped herself a breath from brushing her lips against his cheek. Stunned by the rejection, she watched as Ben got to his feet to pace again.
"I'm not like you, Tovah."
Embarrassed, ashamed, she got up too. "What's that supposed to mean?"
He wouldn't even look at her. They'd known each other for months, and now he was making her a stranger. Tovah swallowed bitterness and thought about simply willing all this away. Running away.
"I can't afford to jerk around in here, that's all," Ben said. "I don't spend all my time in here avoiding the real world."
"Is that what you think I do?"
He sighed. "Isn't it?"
Stung again, Tovah stepped back. "Why do you always do this?"
"Do what?"
"Pick a fight with me." She crossed to him.
He still had his hands in his pockets, but he took them out when she moved toward him. She stopped. Did he think she was going to hit him?
"I don't, Tovah."
She didn't believe that for a second. "I don't avoid the real world, Ben. But there's not a damned thing wrong with enjoying this one. I've been given a gift in here, and so have you. I don't know if it's Heaven or Hell, but I'm glad I'm here."
"Tell that to all the people who've been having nightmares they can't get away from."
"I can't help that!"
"You could help them," he pointed out.
"What were you doing when it happened?" She'd meant to ask only for basis of comparison, to get him to admit he hadn't done a lot of guiding either, but his expression made it clear he didn't want to tell her.
"I was doing the same thing I'm always doing in here."
"Which is what?"
Ben looked grim. He backed up a step or two, and the Ephemeros blurred around him, going gray. "Trying to wake up."
Then he left her alone in the meadow.
Sometimes the week passed fast. Sometimes, as this one had, slow. But now it was Sunday again, and Tovah was going to see Henry. The fact Henry had a new doctor who was good-looking and seemed sincere in his desire to help shouldn't have mattered as much as it did. Even so, Tovah took an extra five minutes to apply fresh lipstick and chew a few breath mints before she got out of her car.
Fall was definitely on its way out, she thought, pulling her sweater closed tighter around her. Though it was only early October, the wind already had a wintry chill. The dark sky didn't help. It was too early in the season for it, but as she pulled her tote bag from the back seat, Tovah sniffed the air and swore she smelled snow.
It would be warm inside the hospital. It was always too warm. Once she'd joked to Ava that the administration was trying to sweat out the crazy. Ava hadn't laughed.
She braced herself for the smell as she always did. No matter how many times she came back, the pungent odor of antiseptic, human waste and stale food never failed to wrinkle her nose. Today the elevator smelled so strongly of sauerkraut her eyes watered. She put her sleeve over her nose, not taking it away even when the elevator stopped on the second floor and a pair of nuns in black habits got on.
They smiled and nodded at her, and she returned the silent greeting. These were not the Sisters of Mercy, though their mission here might have been merciful. There was no actual Sisters of Mercy convent, and the hospital itself was no longer affiliated with any church. It had kept the name when it became a privately funded institution. Nondenominational, Sisters of Mercy Hospital was a place open to all faiths and therefore providing none to anyone.
The sisters got off on the third floor and Tovah on the fifth. The smell abated the instant she got out of the elevator, though the odor replacing it wasn't much better. Someone had spilled something, and the sharp scent of ammonia stabbed her nostrils.
The fifth floor was quiet but for the murmur of the television coming from the common room at the end of the hall. Her footsteps sounded too loud as she crossed to the nurses' station. Ava wasn't there. Nobody was, actually, though an off-white cardigan hung on the back of the chair. Even though Ava often complained about the floor being understaffed, there was always someone around. The desk was certainly never supposed to be left unattended. Tovah signed in anyway with Ava's purple pen.
The nurses' station and elevator sat at the head of a T formed by three long corridors. Straight ahead was the meds room, staff lounge and common room. Down the left and right were patient rooms. She looked down both corridors but saw nobody.
This was strange.
Tovah waited, listening, hesitant to call out and draw attention to herself if nothing was out of order. She hitched her bag higher. Still nothing but the murmur of the television. It sounded like a game show.
Henry's room was at the end of the right-hand corridor. She should just go there and visit him. Read the book she'd brought, check to see if he needed anything, make sure he was all right.
The empty nurses' station bothered her. Five was for long-timers, but even though they fretted about Henry being violent, the ward had light security. She'd never seen the nurses' station empty unless there was an emergency that needed all the staff, like an attempted suicide. Those weren't supposed to happen on Five, where the patients were mostly shuffling zombies wearing necklaces of drool, but sometimes they did.
She followed the noise of the television down to the common room, which had been divided into several smaller sections. Laminate tables and plastic chairs bore the remains of the glue and glitter left over from projects. Several worn couches made three sides of a square, the fourth completed by the TV.
She knew the names of Five's other residents, but didn't know the residents themselves. It wasn't unusual to see them staring into nothing, or repeatedly putting the same peg into the same hole in the board, over and over, or laughing at The Weather Channel.
Today, two men and a woman sat watching a game show Tovah didn't recognize. Another man and two women sat together at one of the tables, putting together a puzzle that seemed to have a great many pieces, all of them the same shape. Nobody looked up when she came in. It was the quietest she'd ever seen the common room.
She saw Dr. Goodfellow right away. He leaned over the puzzle-makers, a hand on one woman's shoulder, and spoke into her ear. He moved to the couch, pausing to speak briefly to each of the patients sitting there. They acknowledged him with smiles and nodding heads, which told her a lot. They liked Dr. Goodfellow. They trusted him, she thought, watching one of the men pat the hand Dr. Goodfellow had put on his shoulder. In a ward for paranoid schizophrenics, trust was hard to come by, yet all these patients smiled and looked serene in his presence.
"Dr. Goodfellow."
"Miss Connelly." He looked up, smile arrested by surprise. "How did you get here?"
"I...drove?" Tovah laughed a little to show she was being silly.
Dr. Goodfellow didn't laugh. He smiled after a long moment and moved toward her. "Of course. That was a stupid question. Hi."
He was dressed as neatly as the first time she'd seen him, again in dark trousers and a deep blue shirt. He had a clipboard in one hand and, remembering his previous hesitation at shaking her hand, she didn't offer it.
"Hi," she said. "Nice to see you again."
"You too. I was just finishing some rounds."
"I'm here to visit Henry."
"I know," he said.
Duh. Of course she was. They stared at each other until heat crept into her cheeks. Dr. Goodfellow stuck his pen into the clipboard's metal clip and tucked his free hand into a pocket. The sound of a laugh track punctuated the too-warm silence.
She shrugged off her embarrassment. "How's he been this week? Any changes?"
Dr. Goodfellow shook his head, the corners of his mouth turning down a little. "No. I'm sorry. But I've been looking into some new treatments for him. Old treatments, really. Just not used so much any longer."
"Really? You're not going to give him shock treatment or anything, are you?" She hadn't meant to sound so suspicious, but Henry'd had it all before. Shock, cold water, restraints. Some of the things he'd told her about were barbaric but had once been considered cutting-edge psychiatric care. She counted herself lucky that when she'd done her time it had only been drugs and therapy sessions.
Dr. Goodfellow blinked, then shook his head. "No. Of course not."
He said it so mildly she felt silly for jumping to a conclusion like that. "Sorry. It's just---"
"I know." He took his hand from his pocket and hooked the fingers into claws. "Shrinks are the big, bad bogeymen."
"That's not what I meant."
"Witch doctors?" He grinned, bouncing a little on his toes.
"Not that, either."
From down the hall came the soft, muted sound of talking and the thud of a door closing. Dr. Goodfellow turned to look over his shoulder. When he looked back at her, his confident smile had become a little strained and he passed a hand over his forehead, brow crinkling.
"You okay?" Tovah asked.
"Fine. Just a little headache. It'll pass."
The blare of the television became suddenly loud enough to make her jump. One of the people at the puzzle table muttered an invective and tossed the box lid to the ground, earning complaints from her companions. One of men who'd been watching TV got up and began to pace in front of the windows.
"So much for the peace," Tovah said with a small smile.
Dr. Goodfellow looked around the room and gave a somewhat weary shrug. "I can't make it last. Nothing ever does."
The people at the puzzle table erupted into a frenzy of squabbling and throwing puzzle pieces. Tovah took that as her cue to leave as Dr. Goodfellow went to deal with the problem. She found Ava at the nurses' station and stopped, though she'd already signed in.
"Dr. Goodfellow might need a hand," Tovah said.
Ava looked up with an expression Tovah'd never seen on her before. Confusion. "Tovah? When did you get here?"
"Fifteen minutes ago, I guess. Nobody was here."
"What do you mean, nobody was here?" Ava frowned. "You know someone's always at the desk." She tilted her chair to call back into the meds room. "Marco? Did you go somewhere?"
Marco, a tall bald man who liked to play solitaire and kept his pockets full of peppermints, stuck his head around the corner. "No."
Ava looked back at Tovah. "You still need to sign in."
"But I---" Tovah looked at the clipboard Ava was pushing toward her. The last signature had been written with the same memorable purple ink she'd used, but it wasn't her name. "I thought I signed in already."
Ava sniffed. "Well, you didn't. C'mon, don't give me a hard time. You know the rules."
Tovah thought about making a smart comment about the rules saying someone had to be at the station at all times, too, but she didn't. She just signed her name, making sure each letter stayed in its place, and handed the clipboard back to Ava. "See you."
"He could use some new air fresheners, next time you come," called Ava after her as she headed down the hall to Henry's room. "And take away some of those books today. They're gathering dust, that's all they're doing."
Tovah nodded and moved toward the hall to Henry's room. She looked over her shoulder, hoping for another glance at Dr. Goodfellow. She had a clear view into the lounge, but he must have left it because she didn't see him anywhere.
"Did you see the paper?"
Tovah's sister meant well, but that didn't make Tovah feel any better about the article she had, indeed, seen. "I saw it."
The real question was how Adina had seen an article from the Harrisburg Patriot-News from her home in Syracuse. "Tessie's cousin's sister-in-law sent it to Ma. Ma said we shouldn't call you about it, but I told her you'd have seen it."
Tovah smiled into the phone. Her mother was a big fan of avoiding uncomfortable situations. She routinely ignored Tovah's prosthetic leg and referred to her daughter's hospital stay as the time Tovah had "been away."
"Yeah. I did."
Adina snorted. "You okay? It's pretty ballsy of him to put his engagement announcement in the paper, considering you two aren't even divorced yet."
"He wants to sign the papers."
"It's about time, the mamzer!" Adina had never liked Kevin.
Adina next launched into a long discussion about men and their failings. It was an old speech and required only that Tovah murmur in the right places.
"But so, what about you?" Adina said at last. "How are you doing, aside from Kevin-the-bastard?"
"I'm fine."
Adina snorted. "Really?"
Tovah laughed at her sister's blatant disbelief. "Yes, Dina. Really."
"Do you need anything?"
"No." Tovah waited, knowing that answer wouldn't suffice.
"Just checking. You know, if you lived closer---"
"I know." It was an old argument. Tovah had been the one to move away from the family. To break away. And look what had happened to her?
"We miss you, that's all." Adina sounded sincere, and though Tovah knew her sister wasn't deliberately trying to make her feel guilty, she did anyway. "Maybe you'll come home for Thanksgiving, no?"
"Sure." It was easier to agree than flat-out say no, and the answer satisfied Adina enough for her to end the call.
The truth was, Tovah didn't want to go home. Returning to her parents' house, her childhood home, trying to ignore the way her mother glossed over her injuries and what she'd been through---it was too much. She loved her family better from afar, that was all. It was easier that way. For all of them.
She pulled the paper closer, still folded open to the announcements page. Kevin Connelly and Jennifer Petrucci looked happy in their photo, and why shouldn't they? Tovah wanted to cough out the senseless bitterness choking her. Her mother wanted to pretend nothing had happened. Her ex-husband wanted to put it all behind him.
Why was she the only one who thought it all shouldn't matter?
"Hello, sweetheart. Looking for something in particular?"
A voice like honey caressed Tovah from behind, and her stomach twisted in delight. She turned. She'd seen him tonight in many forms. A dark angel, a pan-pipe playing satyr, a rock star. He'd moved through the club, shifting subtly and blending into whichever group he passed. He'd been looking for something in particular himself.
Now he was a tall man with blond hair and regular features. He inclined his head, his clothes shimmering and changing from the jeans and light T-shirt he'd been wearing into a pair of dark trousers and a form-fitting black sweater.
"Like I said, sweetheart. Looking for something in particular?"
Heat flushed her cheeks at his subtle response to the pull of her will. She could feel he was strong enough to shield himself from anything she projected, yet he'd responded. It was flattering. It was a little disconcerting.
"I am, actually."
Tovah let her gaze travel over him. With her concentration divided by her attention on him, some of the club's details should have gone blurry. They didn't because he could juggle a conversation with her and an entire scene at the same time.
That kind of power made her shiver. She thought of what Ben had accused her of and then put him firmly from her mind. Ben had made it perfectly clear he wasn't interested in getting to know her any better than he thought he already did.
The blond hair darkened and the hairline shifted a bit higher on this new man's forehead. His chest broadened, waist narrowed, legs grew longer. His features shifted with nary a blur, without hesitation.
"Something like this, maybe?" His sly grin told her he knew what she wanted, perhaps better than she did.
"Very nice." The purr in her tone wasn't out of place here in the Ephemeros, where she had confidence. Tovah reached a finger to stroke along the buttons of his shirt. "I like it."
She'd shaped others before, picking up on what sleepers wanted or needed and providing it for them. And of course before she'd learned about the power she held here she'd sent out her own desires for other shapers to fulfill. This was different, somehow. The push and pull of desire, his mingling with hers and making something new for both of them. He was so much stronger, all she had to do was send out the tiniest tendril of will and he picked up on it. Her body tensed in anticipation of what would happen next.
"Do you?" Something flashed across the face he'd shaped to please her, an emotion so fleeting she couldn't discern it. "Let's go."
She was already tilting her head to accept his mouth. There was no need to really go anywhere. All they had to do was will it, and desire shaped their surroundings. His mouth closed on hers, hungry, and his hands pulled her close. His body was hot, the lines of it matching hers. His leg nudged hers apart and she gasped into his kiss as his thigh rocked against her.
"Shape it," he murmured against her lips.
"I don't know how," she whispered, clinging to his shirt as the world swirled around them. "I can't do both."
His deep laughter rumbled around them and the faint hint of walls hung with silk closed off around them. "Can't fuck and shape at the same time?"
He didn't sound like he was mocking her. Tovah slid a hand beneath his shirt to find rock-hard abs and higher up, a chest smattered with hair. She wanted his shirt to open at the buttons, and it did.
"See?" He dipped to mouth her neck, biting gently. Tovah arched herself to give him access. "You've got more skill than you realize. You just need practice."
It was the same thing Spider always said, and Ben, and Tovah fought a frown. "I know," she murmured, winding her fingers into his hair. "I've only been able to shape for a few years."
Strong hands gripped her ass. "What happened?"
Small details were appearing, one by one like stars in a twilit sky. A bed, covered in smooth sheets and clusters of pillows. A fireplace with crackling flames that danced with hues of blue and green. A table laden with plates of clustered grapes, wedges of cheese, glasses brimming with wine. This man was good. Very, very good.
Tovah smoothed the shirt from his shoulders, preferring to do the work herself rather than willing it to go. A package unwrapped slowly was so much more fun to open.
"I was in an accident," she answered after a moment.
"A bad one?"
"Bad enough." She stopped to look at him. He'd grown better looking, his features sharper and hinting at a famous movie star she admired. "How about you?"
"Always been a shaper," he breathed, and asked no more questions.
Oh, how much easier it was without the courtship dance. Anyone who said women didn't treat sex the way men did was full of shit, she thought as she pushed her partner back toward the bed he'd shaped for them. Right now, all she wanted was to touch and be touched.
And it would be good, because she could shape it that way. She could have anything she wanted, a dozen lovers in as many minutes. They could screw upside down in the air, if they were talented enough. They could come a hundred times, over and over, without having to stop.
It wasn't real, after all. Her body was safe at home in bed, faithful pooch Max beside her. In a few hours the alarm would go off and she'd wake and live her life. For now, all she had to do was be.
"Lie down," she said. "I want to look at you."
Obediently, he lay back against the cushions, one leg cocked to give her an unobstructed view of his crotch. The dark pants tented as he put his hands behind his head. Watching her.
"Gorgeous," the man murmured.
Warmth trickled through her. She felt beautiful. Tovah eased her palms down her stomach, only a little flatter here than in the waking world, and into the waist of her jeans. She undid the zipper and hooked her fingers to slide down the faded denim. Her hesitation was brief and unnecessary, but she had to remind herself of that before she could push the jeans all the way down two smooth, perfect thighs and over two finely formed shins. It was only a moment's hesitation, but she hated it anyway.
The man either hadn't noticed or he'd ignored it. He shifted on the pillows, inviting her closer with a glance and the slide of his tongue along lips that had become fuller. Tovah crawled toward him to ease the button on his pants open and nudge down his zipper. His pants came off without an effort, no catching or pulling, and she followed their path with her mouth as she pushed them down past his feet.
She ran her hands over his calves, feeling muscles tense below her fingertips. Up over his thighs, covered with crisp hair. His hips, jutting just enough to provide a sweet edge for her to stroke. The flat plane of his belly.
She stopped when she got there. "Very nice."
He lifted his hips a little at her approval. "I'm glad you like it."
"Most men put more effort into representing that than anything else." Tovah closed her fingers around his length.
"Sweetheart, are you saying I should've put more effort into my prick?"
She laughed at his amused tone and stroked him until he groaned. "I'm saying I appreciate your attention to detail and realism."
"In other words---" his voice had taken on a rough rasp, "---I haven't given myself a porn star's cock."
"Mmm. I'd say not." Her breath quickened a bit as she touched him.
"I happen to enjoy that my dick isn't the only part of me that matters," he told her even as he thrust into her hand.
Tovah looked at him. "Is that so?"
He sat up suddenly, swiftly, with a grace that seemed so natural she knew instinctively he'd move that way in the waking world, too. She shivered, thinking of that. His hand slid into the hair at the back of her neck and curled around it. He pulled her closer until his breath painted her face.
"Yes. That's so."
He kissed her slowly. He nudged her mouth to open without urgency. His tongue smoothed along hers. He tasted of mint and smelled faintly like burning leaves and lavender, a combination that should've pushed her away but instead somehow dove straight to the pleasure center of her brain and left her gasping.
When his hands came up to caress her sides, fingers trailing along bare skin, Tovah sighed. Her fingers slid through his hair, getting darker as she watched. His hands anchored her hips as his mouth worked against her flesh.
"Good?" He looked up at her with a grin that said he knew well enough how good it was.
"Very."
Tovah was no stranger to pleasure. She'd always had a strong libido. Sex was as necessary to a healthy lifestyle as exercise and eating right, and she'd never lacked for it...until a few years ago. Then things had changed, all of everything.
The man's hand drifted to her left knee and squeezed. Tovah jerked in surprise, looking down at him kneeling on the bed, between her legs. Both of them.
His mouth glistened. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing." She ran her hands over his hair again. "Come up here."
If he had any objections to being told what to do, he didn't show them. He stretched out on his back again, and she crawled up his body to settle herself on his hips. She stroked him a couple times, drawing out the anticipation.
He let her do what she wanted, his eyes dark and slightly almond-shaped now. The flicker of candles caught her eye, then the flutter of sheer curtains blowing in an unfelt breeze. Every detail was crisp, layers of reality so perfect she had to stop for a second to be certain this was, in fact, not the waking world. She looked around, then down at her partner, but could find no anomaly. He kept everything still.
"You're very good," she told him.
He grinned and gripped her hip. "It gets better."
"Nothing weird," she warned as she lifted her body to guide him inside her.
"No."
They both groaned when he slid inside her. She rested briefly, eyes closed, accustoming herself to being filled. When she opened them, he was smiling.
"What?" she asked.
"You're beautiful."
Tovah bent to put her mouth close to his. This close she could see green flecks in the deep brown of his eyes, could count each hair in his finely combed brows. His breath gusted over her face.
"Every woman is beautiful when she's making love," she whispered.
His hand nudged between them to press against her. "This is true."
Their bodies thrust and moved together without the awkwardness of gravity or misplaced timing. Her body tensed, pleasure like sparks jittering through every nerve as her climax filled her. Every time she moved, his hand rubbed her until all she wanted to do, all she could do, was moan and rub and thrust and grind.
She cried out, rocking on him, and the bed became a boat. The ocean swirled around them. Waves crashed but didn't wet them. Cradled by the sea, they swam in the depths of their orgasms. His came moments after hers. She laughed again, feeling free and glorious and sated.
Afterward, as she lay with her head on his chest while the boat he'd shaped rocked gently beneath them, she asked, "What's your name?"
His hand moved over the length of her hair. "What's yours?"
She looked up at him but saw no point in lying. "Tovah."
His only answer was a half-tilted grin.
Time tugged at her. It passed differently here, but her body's needs still tied her to the waking world. A silk-covered wall had reappeared, and on it the exit light had begun blinking. She was waking up, probably just a minute or two before her alarm blared as seemed to be her habit lately.
"I've got to go," she said.
He leaned up to kiss her mouth, then one bare shoulder. "I'll see you again."
"Will you?" Pleasure sparked through her. "How?"
"I'll find you," he promised.
This time, she was the one who disappeared.
The witchwoman was angry. She was angry a lot. Sometimes at the dogman, more often at the boy, but often she was just...angry. Her fury got bigger and smaller but never really went away.
She was angry now because he'd run away from the dungeon. He'd escaped. He'd thrown his ball and it had bounced. He'd followed it. But he hadn't really gotten away.
Unlike the dogman that snorted and snuffled and bit, the witchwoman could be quiet. Sneaky, even. She could stalk and find the boy no matter where he went or what he tried to do. He could tell it made her feel good to make him afraid. She liked it.
The boy moved along the edge of a black sea that smelled of burning leaves and the prickery plants in his mommy's garden. The water curled around his toes. It was cold. Kicking at it, he made foam. His steps left imprints on the black sand behind him. He looked in front of him. The witchwoman was there, the dogman at her side.
A guy wearing brown corduroy pants hiked up to his shins stood on the beach between them and the boy, staring out to sea. Every now and then he plucked a rock from his palm and tossed it into the water, where it disappeared. The waves were gentler around his ankles than they'd been to the boy's.
They were alone, no gulls or fish or crabs around them. The wind smelled of salt. The water wasn't black now, nor the sand. The man had made this beach for himself. The boy could tell this made the witchwoman mad too, but she covered it with a smile as she greeted the man.
He showed no surprise when he turned to look at her. The salt-smelling wind pushed his hair back from his brow. He didn't smile. He threw another rock into the water, where it sank without a splash.
"Hello, stranger," the witchwoman said.
She slipped toward him with soft feet that barely creased the sand beneath, the dogman on all fours at her side. The man noticed this, looking at the ground and then at her. His arm cocked to throw another rock but stopped. He lowered his arm and put the rocks into the pocket of his pants. If he saw the boy he didn't show it.
"Hi." He didn't sound friendly.
"Hi." She gestured at the water, then the sky. "Lovely place, isn't it?"
"Yes. It was."
The boy's stomach twisted, waiting for her to rage, to scratch and pinch. Instead, she kept the smile. "That's not very nice."
The man watched her without moving. His eyes flickered. The boy heard his pulse throb and saw it beat at the base of his throat. The witchwoman laughed. The man was afraid. She'd lick that fear like melted butter from the tips of her fingers.
She wasn't like the dogman. No snapping teeth for her. Yet when she stepped toward him, the man stepped back.
"Are you afraid of me?"
He nodded without hesitation. "I think you want me to be, don't you?"
"You're smart." She stepped closer. "I like that."
"No," he answered. "I don't think you do. Not really."
"Come closer to me, sweetheart, and let me hold you." She gestured, still smiling. "Let me give you something pretty."
The boy had heard that many times and had believed her, too, but the man here was older and smarter.
"I don't want it."
She took this as an insult, and the smile became a grimace. She hissed through bared teeth. The wind whipped dark strands of hair about her face, and the hissing grew louder. She clapped her hands to her head. When she pulled them away, dozens of tiny twin dots marked the flesh. The snakes that had been her hair had bitten her.
"You think you're clever?" she cried, moving closer as the man moved away. "You think this is smart?"
Eyes fixed on the serpents wreathing her hair, the man shook his head. "No. But you want to scare me. I must need to be scared. Don't I get to choose how?"
"No!" Her shout echoed around them.
Black sand sprang up beneath her toes and under the boy's feet, though the man still stood on golden. The water lashed at her, rising in its tide as her anger rose from her gut. She reached for him, but he danced out of her way too easily.
"You think because you can change things here, you have power?"
She advanced. He retreated. She got him on his knees in a second with one hand on his wrist and the other bending his hand back. No tricks, just speed and strength and desire.
"I don't need tricks," she sneered, pushing him harder.
He cried out in pain. His head bent, and she used her knee to nudge his face none-too-gently upward. He wasn't crying, the way the boy would've been. Her hair hung around her shoulders again.
"You think this is yours?" She bent his arm harder, until he squirmed. "It's not. This is mine. My place. My time. And you are just a player in it for my pleasure."
Incredibly, though she bent his wrist so far the bones creaked, he shook his head. "It's not real. This isn't real."
"It's real, sweetheart." The witchwoman's voice dipped low and hard.
He shook his head again. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead, and his lips skinned back from his teeth, but he still tried to deny her. She leaned over him, driving him back onto his heels.
"I need to dream this," he said under his breath. "I don't know why, but I do."
"Who told you that?"
He looked up at her, face creased. "Spider."
She broke his wrist. And then his arm. He screamed and dropped to the sand when she let him go. He held his injured arm close to his body, curled like a shrimp. She kicked him in the kidneys, just for fun.
The boy stepped forward and, growling, the dogman got between him and the man curled on the sand.
"Who the hell is Spider?" The witchwoman's voice rose and her hands moved, nails growing, getting ready to pinch and claw.
The man only shook his head, moaning into the sand, heedless of the way it filled his mouth. He pushed with his feet to get away from her and even managed a few inches before she reached to grab his hair and yank his head upright.
"Answer me," the witchwoman said. "Or this gets nasty."
"Spider is a guide." He moaned. Sweat had broken out on his face. He cradled his wrist and turned his head to heave.
A guide? The witchwoman bent to spit into his face, but a figure in the edge of her vision stopped her. She looked up.
The boy.
"Don't do that," he said, swallowing his own fear. "Don't do that anymore."
She dropped the man's head into the sand and stepped over him to walk toward the boy. "Hello, sweetheart."
The boy shook his head. He carried the red-and-white ball. "You shouldn't hurt people like that."
She moved closer. "I'm not hurting anyone, sweetheart. It isn't me."
"Stop." The boy backed up a step. The ball grew smaller and he put it in his pocket.
From behind her stepped the dogman, growling. The dogman stank of meat and blood and earth, all overlaid with the same sour stench of burning leaves. She shrank from it in disgust.
"Look what you've done," she said to the boy. "Hurry, hurry, run and scurry. I can't hide you now."
The dogman growled louder. Saliva dripped from its muzzle to stain the worn denim jeans, the grotty work shirt. Its hands were dark with grime. The witchwoman pointed at the rope coiled on its belt, and the hammer.
"Look, sweetheart. It's got its tools."
The boy stared without moving. He felt her wanting him to do it, to make the chaos, to bring the world to its knees around them, but he didn't do it. He would not give her what she wanted, though the dogman snapped and snarled. Even though she pinched and grabbed.
"Don't I always take care of you?" she asked again as the dogman moved toward the boy. "Don't you trust me?"
The boy's mouth tilted on one side. Too late, she realized he'd tricked her. She looked to the sand, fully black. Her plaything had vanished.
"Get him," she muttered to the dogman. "Bite him. Make him bleed."
The dogman moved forward. The boy held up his hands. He cried out. He covered his face.
The earth shook, and this time, the witchwoman smiled.
The gym, as always, smelled of sweat and effort with an undertang of sexual frustration. Tovah had been there for half an hour, working in the small back room where she could punch and kick away on a bag without attracting too much attention. Where if she fell on her ass when she tried to kick, nobody would see. The mirrors reflected her stance and posture without hiding any details. Red face, messy hair, sweat-stained T-shirt. She'd stopped wearing shorts a long time ago, hating herself for giving in to vanity and societal pressure but unable to bear the constant scrutiny on her as she worked out. Or the questions, usually well-meaning but annoying and invasive all the same.
How'd you lose it? How can you work out without a leg? Can you still feel it, sometimes?
Usually women just looked and whispered to their girlfriends behind their hands. Men asked, straight up and blunt. At first she'd been glad for the questions, but then she quickly realized they weren't listening to the answer. They asked, but they never really wanted to hear it. They wanted to ogle her prosthetic leg. She might not have minded if they'd also wanted to ogle the rest of her.
She hated being reduced to a single limb.
Now she worked out in sweatpants even though she got too hot and sweated twice as much. Kick. Kick. Punch-punch-punch. Take a breath. The empty room echoed with the sound of her blows and the rasp of her breath, and she worked until she had to admit defeat against the bag, which swung placidly on its heavy chain as though it wanted to mock her for giving up so soon.
Grabbing her water bottle, Tovah headed out into the main gym for the row of treadmills lined up along the back wall. They all pointed toward an equal row of televisions tuned to the same station. Nodding at a woman whose name she didn't know but whom she saw almost every time she came to the gym, Tovah hopped up on the end unit and fiddled with the controls until she had them set just right. A slight incline, a pace that wouldn't kill her. She stuck her bottle in the holder, hung up her small towel and started walking.
She'd always hated exercise, preferring instead the pleasures of the couch and an afghan and regulating her weight by food intake rather than physical activity. She'd rather have curled up with a good book and a glass of wine than gone for a walk. Kevin had been the active one, the sports fan, the golfer, the racquetball/basketball/softball player who spent most of his free time running around with some piece of sports equipment in his hands.
The accident changed everything, her interest in working out included. It had been twelve kinds of pain in the ass to get back on her feet...both the original and the new-and-improved. But that wasn't the reason why she had made the gym her second home.
The doctors and physical therapists and nurses, hell, even the staff psychologists, had all told her there was nothing she couldn't do with her new leg that she couldn't have done with the old. And Tovah, stubborn about that sort of thing, had set out to make that so. Running. Kickboxing. She did all of it, mastering each new skill as a challenge she'd set herself. They'd told her she could do all of it, and she was going to.
A groan from the treadmill next to hers caught her ear, and Tovah looked over. Briefly, she thought the woman there might be having some trouble, but then she shot Tovah a grin.
"Sorry. Got carried away. But really, c'mon, can you blame me?" She jerked her chin toward the bank of televisions, now showing the close-up of a somewhat familiar face.
Tovah wasn't sure of the actor's name. "Is that the guy from Runner?"
"Yep. Justin Ross." The woman fanned her face with a little sigh. "Otherwise known as Hotty McHottenstuff."
Tovah laughed and grabbed tighter to the handles as the treadmill started going a bit faster. "I don't watch that show."
This seemed tantamount to declaring she didn't bathe or brush her teeth, based on the look the other woman gave her. "What? How can you miss it? The eye candy alone is worth tuning in for! And besides that," she added with a conspiratorial look around, though the only other person who might possibly be listening was a muscle-bound jock wearing headphones, "it's really well written. Really suspenseful. It's a little out there, true, kinda paranormal sci-fi, but it's great."
"I'm usually asleep when it comes on," Tovah explained.
"Get it on DVD! They have seasons one and two out now," offered the woman without hesitating. "God, girl, you have got to get yourself some Justin Ross. Or as I like to call him, my second husband."
"How does your first husband feel about that?" Tovah laughed wryly.
"Meh, who cares. Like he'd toss his favorite starlet out of bed? I think not." Huffing hard, she slowed her machine. "I don't know how you do it."
Tovah, mouth full of water at that moment, swallowed hard. "Do what?"
"Work out like that. I see you here every time I come in. You're amazing." The woman stepped off her machine and wiped her face with the teensy hand towel the gym provided. She sounded sincere, which made Tovah feel sort of funny, like she didn't deserve the praise.
"It's not amazing, it's habit." She slowed, too, drinking more water and mopping her face. On the TV, Justin Ross was talking to some blonde reporter who couldn't seem to stop herself from making goo-goo eyes at him.
"I wish I had that habit." The woman held out her hand. "I'm Kelly Leeds."
"Tovah Connelly." They shook with a firm grasp of fingers and a short pump of palms. "I'll check him out."
She looked toward the television, now showing a compilation of clips from Runner. Kelly looked over at it and sighed happily, holding her towel to her chest like a girl clutching a bouquet of roses from a suitor. Tovah laughed.
"He's just dreamy," said Kelly, and laughed too.
They laughed a lot on the way to the showers, Kelly regaling Tovah with tales of her favorite episodes of Runner and various other tidbits of information about the actor and herself. Tovah listened, mostly, chiming in when necessary---which wasn't often. Kelly swept her up in a wave of words and giggles, and Tovah let herself be swept, enjoying the company.
It stopped as soon as Tovah slid her sweatpants over her thighs. She'd been laughing as Kelly rambled on, but when the laughter stopped, Tovah turned. Kelly looked startled. Tovah waited for the stuttering apology, the averted eyes. The awkwardness.
"Wow," said Kelly. "Now I feel like an even bigger putz."
"Because you didn't know?" Tovah straightened, feeling vulnerable in her panties and T-shirt, and grabbed her towel from the locker.
"No, because you are a frigging machine and I'm a big fat lazy slob with two good legs, and you still kick my ass on that treadmill!"
This honest answer squeezed a stunned giggle from Tovah's throat. Kelly laughed too, hands on her hips. She didn't look freaked out or sorry, either. A rush of relief flooded Tovah.
"Do you have anything going on after this?" Kelly asked. "I'm going to the Sticky Bun for some coffee and low-fat danish. Want to come along?"
She did, so much it surprised her, and she nodded. "Sounds great."
Kelly beamed and started shucking off her clothes. "Don't make me fight you for the clean shower. You'll win and I'll have to think of a creative way to get back at you."
And that was that. No further weirdness, no indiscreet stares. Kelly had seen Tovah's leg as a part of her. Not seen Tovah as an extension of her loss. That was worth a lot, even if it meant listening to fangirl squeeing about Justin Ross, who really was pretty cute.
"I don't really crush on celebrities," Tovah explained at the Sticky Bun. The coffee was delicious, even for being decaf, and she thought briefly of the hospital. Maybe next time she went to visit Henry she'd bring along a cup for Dr. Goodfellow.
"I can't help it." Kelly sounded glum but looked absolutely unapologetic. "Hey, at least crushing on an actor is better than a real person."
Tovah laughed. "You don't think Justin Ross is a real person?"
"Well, he's real. Just not, you know. Real." Kelly laughed, too, scraping up the crumbs from her pastry.
"And your husband doesn't mind?" Tovah sipped more good coffee.
Kelly shrugged. "He works third shift. I need something to do."
Tovah nodded. Kevin hated any actor she'd expressed interest in. Then she'd thought it was cute, that irrational jealousy. "My ex would've minded."
"Maybe that's why he's an ex."
Tovah laughed. "Maybe one of the reasons."
"At any rate, you have no excuse not to watch Runner then." Kelly declared this like there could be no question. "I'll even lend you seasons one and two. You'll love it."
Tovah smiled at the other woman's confidence. "Okay, you sold me."
"Great! You'll be at the gym tomorrow? I'll bring them then."
As easily and casually as that, they became friends. It was, Tovah reflected on the way to her car, the adult equivalent of giving someone on the playground a lick of your sucker. She didn't mind. It had worked.
Sleep was refusing Tovah. Her daily workout had left her body pleasantly exhausted, but her mind continued racing like a yappy dog fighting its tail. Max's snores from the floor next to her bed usually soothed her, but tonight they pulled her back from the edge of slumber with each rumbling mutter.
So did the whir of the ceiling fan, the clatter of cars passing, the flicker of moonlight streaming through tree branches moved by the wind. The weight of her blankets became too heavy, and she kicked them off, but was chilled a moment later and had to pull them up again. She closed her eyes, counting backwards. She timed her breathing.
Nothing was working.
It was performance anxiety, Tovah realized with a disgruntled sigh. She wanted so badly to get into the Ephemeros she was blocking herself. And why did she yearn so fervently for the dream realm?
Sex.
She could still feel her lover's touch. Smell him, taste him. She hadn't made love in the waking world since the last time she'd been with Kevin, and that had ended in disaster. He'd turned from the sight of her scars, breaking the already fragile glass of their marriage. She'd asked him to move out the next day, and he'd gone without argument.
She'd made love in the dream realm on occasion, when her solitary pursuits no longer satisfied and the craving for a man's hands on her grew too much to bear. She'd never carried over the sense of satisfaction into the waking world, the feeling that everything had somehow opened up for her in a way she wasn't sure she understood but enjoyed, anyway.
Now she tossed and turned and yearned for that feeling of freedom back again. It was sex, but more than that. It was the ability to let someone get close to her again instead of holding most everyone off at arm's length. The sex had been great, magnificent, extraordinary, but it had also been...
"More." She spoke aloud to her ceiling.
He'd said he'd find her, but he never would if she didn't get to sleep. Though her eyes drooped and her breathing had gone slow and deep, Tovah was still minutely aware of every tick of the clock, every rustle of skin on sheet.
Through her window a beam of light flared. Her eyes flew open. The floodlight from next-door had gone on---the neighbors had set it to trigger at movement and apparently had never considered that its path shot directly into her bedroom window. Nor had they disconnected it when they moved away. She could have dealt with it being always on, but the sudden random glare never failed to smack her awake. She muttered a curse and steadfastly closed her eyes. The light went out a moment later.
When the phone rang, her eyes flew open and her heart tried to leap out of her throat. She grabbed up the phone, the lighted keypad showing the identity of her late-night caller. She didn't recognize the number, though the name was familiar.
"Ben?" She cradled the phone against her cheek.
"We're waiting for you," Ben said, voice tinny through the speaker. "What are you doing?"
"I can't fall---oh, shit." Tovah looked around at her dark bedroom. "I am asleep. Where are you?"
"With Spider."
"I'm in bed," she said.
Ben was silent for a moment, but when he spoke he sounded amused. "I know. We can see you."
She looked around again and pulled the sheet up to cover her nightgown, a silly reaction since she only needed to shape herself as fully clothed if she wanted to. "I don't see you."
"You're not looking hard enough."
She stuck up her middle finger. "Can you see that?"
"Nice," said Ben. "Very nice."
"Stop fooling around, Tovahleh." A corner of the room brightened to reveal Spider. He looked impossibly huge and fantastic in the normal setting of her bedroom, but at the sight she swung her legs over the edge of the bed.
What an undiminished joy it was to get out of bed and stand, solid, on two feet. She took a moment to cherish the feeling of the soft rag rug beneath her toes. In the waking world she'd put the rug, which had been hand-knotted by her favorite grandmother, into the guest room after it had slid out from under her one too many times. Now she didn't fear falling.
Tovah stretched, shaping light where there had been dark. She unshaped the walls and floor, putting herself onto soft green grass and under blue skies. Ben and Spider thought she didn't practice her shaping enough, that she spent too much time playing in clubs and pursuing selfish pursuits. Tovah didn't deny that she used the Ephemeros to fulfill desires she couldn't in the waking world---but who didn't? But what Ben and Spider didn't seem to see was that she did also hone her skills. Just because she didn't want to be a guide didn't mean she didn't want to improve her control of the dream realm.
Now she saw Ben standing behind Spider. He stood on a patch of sand. Maybe from the oasis. She took a small amount of triumph in the fact she'd shaped around him, wherever he'd been.
"The meadow again," Ben said as she moved toward him and Spider. "I always know it's you when I see this meadow."
"Nobody's making you stay," she pointed out. She stopped to pat Spider's back. "Right?"
Spider snorted. "Kids, let's not fight."
She'd only meant to tease, but Ben wasn't smiling. He looked different today. A little paler. His blue shirt was rolled up to his elbows, the fabric rumpled and creased. The hem of his cords had frayed more. He held his right hand under his left elbow, and as she watched, stretched the arm slowly, fingers flexing.
"What's the matter with your arm?" she asked.
Ben looked at Spider and didn't answer for a minute. "I had a bad dream."
Tovah thought about laughing, but he had no humor in his voice. "And you hurt your arm?"
Ben nodded. He stretched out the arm again, then wiggled his fingers. "I had a run-in with someone bad."
"Really?" She moved forward without thinking to take his hand in hers. She probed the tendons of his wrist. "Just now?"
"No. Before."
Before wasn't a real time, though it made more sense in the Ephemeros than a clock's hours did. Spider clambered on top of the moss-covered boulder next to him. Ben took his hand away from Tovah's.
She looked back at them, one to the other. "What's going on? What aren't you telling me?"
"I told you there's shapers who don't play nice." Spider stretched out his two foremost legs like a magician demonstrating he had nothing up his sleeves. "Ben found one."
"The same one who is messing with the Ephemeros?" Tovah asked, still confused. And concerned. She and Ben didn't always get along, that was true, and after their last conversation she was fairly convinced they weren't ever going to be anything more than casual friends, but that didn't mean she wished him harm.
"We don't know. Maybe." Ben steadfastly didn't look at her.
Like anything else in the Ephemeros, the pain could be shaped away, or it went away upon waking. Why Ben's hadn't was more interesting than his pain, itself. She looked at Spider again, then back to Ben.
"Guys, c'mon."
Spider sighed. "Sometimes things happen, Tovahleh."
"Yeah, really?" She crossed her arms. "I'd never have guessed."
"Not as often as they could," Spider continued as though she hadn't been snippy. "But they do."
"This woman---"
"It was a woman?" Tovah interrupted. She thought of the boy with the red-and-white striped ball, the dogheaded man. There had been a woman with them, too. "A woman did that to you?"
Ben looked at her, the line of his jaw tense as he gritted his teeth. "She represented as a woman, anyway."
"But...you think she wasn't?" Tovah watched Ben pace. "C'mon, Ben. Talk to me."
He whirled to face her. "It was a bad dream, okay? You've had them!"
"Everyone does." Tovah looked to Spider for support and found none. She looked back at Ben, determined not to let his prickliness work her up. "But now that you can shape---"
He shook his head once, violently, then again. "No. She was strong. And she wasn't alone."
"Shapers working together to create havoc," Spider said. "Not a good thing, Tovahleh."
"No. I don't think so." She rubbed Spider's back lightly the way she'd scratch Max behind the ears. "But what can we do?"
"We can be careful, that's all." Spider turned to look at her with eight small dark eyes like glittering jewels. "I want you to be careful."
"I will. Of course I will." She thought of the man with the dog's head and shivered.
"And it wouldn't hurt if we stuck together." Spider's colors darkened.
"Do you think I need a babysitter?" Tovah stopped rubbing his back. "Aside from the fact you're the only one of us three who can always find the others, why would you assume that this person, whoever she was, is going to even bother with any of us again?"
"Because she can," Ben said. "She likes to. I mean...I wasn't doing anything to her. At first I thought she was a sleeper. She had that feeling around her. That drain, you know what I mean? From someone who wants something?"
Tovah knew what he meant. "Yes. But she wasn't a sleeper?"
He shook his head. "No. But she didn't seem like a shaper, either. I mean...she could shape. She did. But it was more like she...took. And she didn't know what a guide was. She didn't know Spider."
Spider made a low noise. "You told her about me?"
Ben nodded slowly. "I thought every guide knew you."
Spider's mandibles clicked. "No. Not all. The Ephemeros is a big place, Ben. Big and tiny at the same time, you know what I mean?"
"I know." Ben flexed his hand without wincing this time. "I'm sorry."
"We'll just have to be on our guards, that's all. Make sure we're strong. Don't put ourselves in her way. Like Spider said, the Ephemeros is a big place." Tovah looked at Spider carefully. "What? You're worried about something else."
Spider sank lower, his legs gripping the boulder. "Something's affecting everyone and everything, that's what. Something is making cracks in this world. Maybe it's that woman, maybe not. But things might get worse before they get better, is all I'm saying."
Tovah thought on this as she watched Ben keep up his pacing. "And what does that mean, exactly?"
"Lots of bad dreams," Ben said, voice grim.
"People have been having nightmares forever, Ben."
"What if that's all they'll ever have?" he shot back.
"You can't know that," Tovah said, not disagreeing with him but irritated at his tone.
"I know how it felt when she was with me, that's all. Like everyone was having a bad dream at the same time, and nothing good would ever happen again."
She watched him soberly. Spider said nothing. "Bad dreams are just that. Bad. Eventually, you wake up."
"Not everyone wakes up, Tovahleh," said Spider. "But you're going to, in just a minute. So go. We'll talk again. And be careful, doll."
"But---"
But there was no time for buts because her alarm went off, her eyes slammed open and Max, woofing, leaped onto the bed hard enough to rattle the headboard against the wall.
"How does he always know?" she said aloud.
Tovah was in love with her computer. She used it to communicate with her boss, buy a new winter coat, rent the latest DVD releases, pay her bills and keep in touch with friends who lived far away. Kevin had always monopolized their computer to play online games and later, she'd discovered, chat with his then lover, now fiancée. Having the computer to herself---and a new one, at that, better than the one he'd insisted on taking---was a pleasure she wasn't ashamed to relish.
Today she was using it to find free stock photos for some last-minute layout changes in the upcoming issue of This Week In Central PA. The magazine was due to the printer by Friday, some advertisers had changed their minds about fonts and graphics, and her boss had actually called her at home instead of emailing her the way he usually did to talk about what they wanted. She was having a hard time finding sensual black-and-white photos that didn't look sleazy.
She couldn't type very fast, but she rarely made mistakes. Even with several different screens open, she was able to move back and forth between them with ease, keeping up an IM conversation with Adina while she worked on the project and sipped hot tea at the same time. Tovah had just signed off the instant messenger when the small red one appeared on her mail icon, and she opened her email.
CHECK THIS OUT.
Wary at first, she looked to the message's sender. Kelly. Okay, so maybe it wasn't spam, but Tovah wasn't so sure it wouldn't be porn. Then again, a little porn never hurt anyone, and if it came from Kelly it was sure to be worth a look. Times like this she was especially happy to work from home. She clicked on the message and let out a low whistle.
Justin Ross. The face stared at Tovah from her computer screen in such high definition she could count the freckles on his nose. He had very nice greenish brown eyes and a lush mouth that looked good frowning and smiling.
Hotty McHottenstuff, said the message. Click on the links for interviews. You will die!
Tovah shook her head with a small laugh at Kelly's fannish obsession, but clicked. The link took her to a popular video posting site where people could upload their favorite interviews. Kelly had sent her to several Runner-related clips. Tovah hadn't yet watched the borrowed DVDs and had no clue about its plot or characters, but she watched, intrigued as Justin Ross maneuvered the various red carpets and answered the same questions time and again with the same gentle humor.
She had to admit, she was impressed. He was cute and seemed nice. She watched a clip of him signing autograph after autograph with a smile for each screaming, shaking girl who offered up her pen and her heart. Maybe she'd stay awake a bit later tonight and start on season one.
Someone had uploaded a clip of him being interviewed by a popular daytime TV talk-show hostess, a brunette who couldn't seem to keep her hands off him. She touched his shoulder, his knee, the back of his hand. Tovah wouldn't have been surprised if the woman hadn't climbed up on his lap. What really caught her attention, though, were the woman's questions.
"Runner deals with a lot of paranormal stuff," said the hostess with a smile. "Tell me, Justin, do you really believe in all that?"
"I think there's a whole lot of stuff in the world I don't understand," came his answer accompanied by a charming smile.
"If you only knew," Tovah told the computer monitor.
Though there were dozens more clips, Tovah didn't have time to watch them all. She typed a quick email to Kelly thanking her for the eye candy and entertainment, then prepared to get back to work. Before she did, an advertisement on the video clip site caught her eye.
Find Anyone.
Just for fun, she typed the name Justin Ross. More than thirty matches came up on her screen, each listing an age and city. She had no way of knowing which were true matches, though she could rule out the ones with ages over forty. She'd have had to pay for more information, and though the option to pay one flat fee for forty-eight hours of unlimited search results was reasonably priced, Tovah didn't exactly feel a burning urge to track down Ross in Los Angeles, Vancouver, Dallas or Pine Creek, Illinois, wherever that might be.
Still, the thought she could look up anyone, even a relatively well-known actor, and discover their street address and the names and addresses of possible relatives intrigued her. Scared her a little, too. What would a search reveal about her?
A minute later, she knew. The search came up with her past five addresses, including the P.O. Box number from her time in the Sisters of Mercy. It listed her sister's name and address as well as her parents'. And Kevin's new address, oddly enough.
Henry's name came up with four matches, one of which was his current. Kelly's had a couple pages of matches, most of them not the right Kelly Leeds. Tovah, fascinated by the ease with which she could use this information to search further for birth and death records, marriage licenses, real estate transactions, typed in the names of old school friends and even an ex-boyfriend or two. It really would be easy to become a stalker, she thought when the name of the first boy ever to break her heart popped up on the screen.
Her search on Martin Goodfellow, M.D., came up with no matches.
Your search has resulted in 0 matches. Try expanding your search.
When she took away the quotations around the name, she got thousands of results. Most of them meant nothing. A Martin in one spot paired with a Goodfellow in another part of the page wasn't helpful. She scrolled anyway, through a list of links to Web sites as varied in their content as jellybeans in a jar. She looked over the first page and clicked to the second, though she knew she shouldn't bother. She found ads for doctors' offices and several for a British rock band, along with the hosted ads that offered to sell her Martin Goodfellow off an auction site.
And then, near the bottom of the third page, a link jumped out at her. Dream Crime, it said, and the premise was intriguing enough for her to click through. The article she found was worthless for her search. It was rehash of years-old crimes that had, on the surface, seemed like sure things. Embezzlements, jewelry thefts, forged identities. The name Goodfellow showed up connected with a kidnapping that had ended badly, Martin with an insurance scam, the M.D. with something else.
She should let it go. It didn't matter. Tovah clicked on the advanced search option, which allowed her to enter a last name and wildcard search string.
Too many matches, now. She tried Goodfellow, M. and found Michael, Myrna, Morris, Matthew, Marshall, Mary, Maeve, Matilda. She tried one last time, narrowing the search to Pennsylvania. No M. Goodfellows at all, though there was a Goodfellow, E. listed in both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and a Goodfellow, W. listed in Scranton and Pittsburgh.
She laughed at herself. What had she expected to find, anyway? His address and phone number? She didn't need either. She'd see him when she visited Spider. She wasn't going to call him, even if she did know where he lived and who with.
Yet...knowing how to find someone gave a certain sort of power. Knowing she had all this information at her fingertips, available with the virtual swipe of a credit card, was tempting. From this site she could figure out where he'd gone to school, if he'd been married or divorced, had children, been in trouble with the law. She could see if he was as trustworthy as he'd seemed.
She didn't want to think overlong about why this was important to her, or why she was letting a pair of pretty blue eyes so invade her thoughts. He'd given her no reason to think he was available or interested. Hell. She wasn't available, or interested. He was Henry's doctor, and therefore, not a dating option, should she even decide she wanted to start dating again. Which she wasn't sure she'd ever want to do out here in the waking world where it was all so much harder.
Before she could get sucked in further to the Internet's wiles, Tovah closed the browser. Max lifted his head from his paws as she twirled in her chair to look at him. "Yes, I know. Silly."
Max panted and licked his jaws.
"He just seems nice, that's all." Tovah scratched Max behind the ears. "Oy vey, Max, a doctor! My mother will plotz!"
Max woofed lightly, pushing his head into her hand. Tovah laughed and was just about to get up when the small red one appeared in her email icon again. Another message from Kelly.
Runner's on tonight. You'd better watch it!
She'd added another few pictures of Justin Ross. Tovah looked at them. She had to admit, the guy was cute.
"Why," she asked the dog, "do men like that simply not exist in my real life?"
Max gave her a look of unmistakable disdain.
"I know. Men are trouble. I don't feel like dating. I don't want to deal with the whole getting-naked thing. I know, I know, I know!" Tovah tossed up her hands. "It's just..."
She bent to rub her face against Max's broad head. "It's just lonely sometimes."
Max licked her face. Slobber flew. Tovah, who loved her dog but wasn't enamored of the drool, grimaced and pushed him away to wipe her face.
"Gross."
Max woofed and grinned, tongue lolling.
"C'mon," she said. "Let's go have some ice cream and watch Runner."
Sleepers in need of a guide often sent out signals that reminded Tovah of the tap-tap of Morse code. Small, flexing ripples in the fabric of the Ephemeros directed those interested in helping toward the sleeper, or attracted other sleepers with the same dream needs. Tovah wasn't either, so she pushed away the insistent push and pull and concentrated on her own scene.
She sensed him before she saw him. At first surprised that the sleeper had somehow bypassed her shields, it took her but a moment to understand. With so many episodes of Runner filling her brain just before bedtime, it was no wonder Justin Ross had found her.
He wasn't alone.
No wonder he was running, she thought as the crowd behind him emerged from the boundary of her meadow. A horde of screaming fangirls had almost caught up with him. Tovah watched from a distance as he stumbled over the hills she'd shaped as practice not more than five breaths before. She hadn't intended them to be an obstacle course. He recovered quickly, running though he was in bare feet, the hem of his jeans dragging. His shirt, too, was open, exposing a chest and belly Tovah could see was taut with muscle even from her vantage point.
"Rep-re-SENT," she murmured appreciatively. Ross had no issues with his body.
He went to one knee as she watched. He looked over his shoulder, a movement that brought his profile into clear view. She expected fright, perhaps anger. It was his expression of weary resignation that got her on her feet. He was a man ready to give up, give in, to let himself be trampled by the swarm of groping zombies. A quick glance showed her the chasing crowd had grown. It wasn't just women anymore. There were a fair number of men, too, and sexless others on the outskirts clutching cell phones and yelling about options and lump payments and lunch.
He got up, hands held out as though he meant to offer himself up to them. The crowd surged, nearly reaching him. He closed his eyes. Clearly this was not a new nightmare. Spider would say he had to dream it, for reasons Tovah wasn't meant to know, but she couldn't stand by and watch him get mauled right in front of her. Nor could she bring herself to shape away to some other corner of the Ephemeros and leave him to his fate.
"He needs a guide!" she cried out, not hoping for much. She wished for one, hard, but even here wishes didn't buy beans any more than sorries did. "Anyone?"
No guides. This was just pure bad luck for Justin, who might have to fend off his fears, after all. The crowd was closer. More volatile. She spotted a few of them carrying...
"Oh, God, sex toys?"
They were attacking him with dildos?
Tovah wanted to laugh, but she'd had dreams of being chased, too. And the ones about showing up for class naked, or forgetting where she worked. Looking at it from the outside it was funny, but her sympathies roused for the man in front of her who waited so patiently to be assaulted with faux phalluses.
"No guides?" she asked again, but didn't get an answer. No Spider shimmering out of the grass. Nothing.
The crowd had nearly reached him. They might look ridiculous but they sounded scary, their combined voices a low muttering hum of desire. Like wasps.
A few feet in front of him, she shaped a ditch. A big one, too wide to jump, too deep to climb out of. One by one, the horde fell in. None of them came out. She sealed up the pit with another slight shift of her will. After a second, she covered it with flowers.
Justin Ross opened his eyes. He did a double take, looking around. Then he sat suddenly, like his legs had given out, on the small hill that had originally tripped him. He put his head in his hands, the backs of them resting on his drawn-up knees. His shoulders shook.
Tovah hadn't wanted to interfere. His tears moved her, though, to step forward and place a hand on his shoulder. "Hey. It's okay."
He looked up, and those arresting greenish brown eyes were shining with tears...but of laughter. He chortled breathlessly and wiped his face. "Holy shit. I thought I was a goner, for sure."
Texas twanged in his deep voice. Though she wasn't as big a fan as Kelly, Tovah hadn't noticed an accent on Runner or in the interviews her friend had sent. His hair was rumpled, and beard scrufted his cheeks. Most of the time it was impossible to know how closely a person was representing to their true selves, because most of the time she had no idea who they were in the waking world. Justin Ross apparently had enough sense of himself to accurately represent in the Ephemeros. Except for the accent, which he probably suppressed in his waking life, she thought. Interesting.
He looked at the patch of flowers under which his pursuers had disappeared. "That never happened before."
"They chase you a lot, huh?" Tovah settled onto the grass beside him, fascinated by the play of sunlight on the lines of his face.
"Yeah." He turned to look at her. "A lot."
"You know," she said cautiously, "you could have made that ditch."
He studied her. He might be pretty, but he wasn't stupid. "This is a dream, huh?"
Tovah smiled. "Yep."
He ran a hand over his hair, face crunching as he thought about this. "My mama used to tell me that if I was having a nightmare, all I had to do was turn around and put out my hand and say 'no!' And it would all stop."
"Your mama was a smart lady."
He laughed. "She said that, too."
Tovah had spent too much concentration on rescuing Justin, and the borders of her meadow had blurred. Something like a gray mist, the natural state of the Ephemeros, swirled along the edges. It parted now, and a man came through. She knew that easy stride, that lumbering walk, and Tovah got to her feet to greet him with a small nod.
Ben gave her a smile, but before he could speak, Justin got up, faster than she had, and stepped in front of her. His will nudged hers. Because he wasn't a shaper, he couldn't control it and probably didn't understand it. It came from someplace inside him, a tapestry woven of threads of experience, fear, desire. Tovah could resist it, but didn't.
He had to dream this, for reasons she wasn't meant to know. She'd taken on a bit part in the drama of his subconscious. She and the guide who'd shown up to answer her call.
"Hand over the bag, lady," said Ben, who'd bulked up and become menacing. The words fell easily enough from his lips as he responded to the curling tendrils of Justin's will. "And nobody will get hurt."
"No way," said Justin, putting up his fists. "You back off and leave her alone."
He needed to play the hero in his dreams the way he did on TV? And she was to play his damsel in distress. Tovah stifled a groan. She should have run the moment she saw him. But here she was, her do-good instincts wrapping her up in someone else's agenda when all she'd wanted to do was practice making hills. Ah, well. It could be fun.
"Yeah, back off!" She shook her fist at Ben.
The stranger-who-was-Ben grimaced and pulled a knife. A frisson of fear sliced through her, even though she knew it wasn't real, this was a dream, she could change it all at any moment...she knew all that and still she let out an eep of terror and clutched the back of Justin's shirt. He stood straighter. His muscles tensed. He was ready to fight to protect her, no matter what, and she...loved him?
Oh, she loved him, her hero. Tovah took a step back as Justin moved toward the would-be assailant. The men sized each other up, circling. The knife slashed, and she cried out, covering her face and peering out through the slots made by her fingers. But Justin, her Justin, didn't care about the knife. He kicked and punched and swung. He beat the living crap out of the other guy, who hit the earth with a thud that made the ground shudder. Groaning, the stranger went still.
Justin turned. He took her in his strong, manly arms. When he kissed her, fireworks went off. Literally. Red, white and blue sparks set to the incongruous soundtrack of a late '90s techno song she'd forgotten used to be her favorite. His mouth urged hers open and his tongue swept inside, and she had time to wonder why he tasted of black licorice before he pulled away to look into her eyes.
"You never have to worry about anything, as long as you're with me," Justin told her.
Tovah couldn't stop the shiver of delight that ran down her spine at those words, though they were meant for the woman he saw in his arms and not for her. Not really. "I know," she said, and caressed his cheek.
And just like that, he was gone. Her arms held nothing but empty air, and the man on the ground was getting up and wiping away a streamer of blood from his nose. Tovah shook off the remnants of the encounter.
"Wow," she said. "That was...interesting."
"Isn't it always?" asked Ben, dusting himself off. "Being a guide, I mean."
"I'm not a guide."
He grinned, tilting his head to check her out up and down. "Looked like you were being a guide, to me."
Tovah shook her head. "Don't start. He was having a nightmare and I just helped him out a bit, and then you came along and I guess he just..."
"Needed a guide." Ben stepped closer, not at all menacing now the way he'd been when Justin was in charge. "But you're not a guide. And yet, you guided him. Interesting."
She gave him a narrow look. "It's not that interesting, Ben. I was just being nice."
"Are you sure?" Ben had a smile as easy as his gait, when he chose to use it. "You're good at it."
Again, she shook her head. "I'm good at lots of things."
Ben looked around. The meadow was still here, though she noticed he'd again added a running brook. He was good. Not as strong as Spider, but stronger than she was. She refused to admit how much that annoyed her. Ben shrugged.
Tovah lifted her chin, irritated by his silence that seemed an accusation. "There's nothing that says all shapers have to be guides."
"No, of course not."
Tovah resisted the easy charm of his smile. At least with Justin she knew she was playing a part, however reluctantly. "He just needed a hand. I felt bad. That's all."
"And when he started with that whole hero routine, you felt bad, too?"
"It's not good to disrupt someone else," she pointed out. "You don't have to be a guide to know that. He needed to dream that. I was here. I could've resisted him, but that would've messed with his dream. It's not his fault he doesn't know how to shape. And it didn't kill me to go along with it."
"I could see that. Loverboy has quite a set of lips."
She put her hands on her hips, looking him up and down. "And?"
"And, nothing. I'm just making an observation."
Tovah raised an eyebrow. "It was only a kiss. We weren't getting naked in front of you."
Ben looked away when she said that. His hands slid deep into the pockets of his faded brown cords. "You'd have turned that down?"
"That," said Tovah evenly, "is none of your damned business."
Ben looked up, his blue eyes shadowed in an expression she couldn't read. "You're right."
A fight was trying to rise up again between them, and she wasn't entirely sure she didn't want it to. She'd known Ben for close to nine months, but time passed differently in the Ephemeros. She might as well have known him for nine years. That didn't give him the right to judge her.
"Don't you ever want to play, Ben? Don't you ever just come here to have a good time? Why do you always have to be working so hard? What are you, an Eagle Scout?"
"I was an Eagle Scout, actually." He scuffed a worn work boot along her grass and gave her a half smile.
Ben wore his button-down rolled up to the elbows, and the sunshine cast golden light along the hairs on his forearms. He had good, strong arms, a heavy-duty watch banding one wrist. She liked Ben's arms, which looked like they could lift heavy things and put a baby to bed with the same ease.
"Even Spider has fun, sometimes." She watched him bend to lift a rock and throw it. The rock became a bird and flew away. She laughed. She could do that, too.
Ben didn't laugh. He looked back at her, the mouth so suited to smiling turned down at the corners. "I'm not here to have fun."
"But why?" she demanded, pushing despite knowing she shouldn't. "Why not just...let go, once in a while? Do something you wouldn't do?" She leaned toward him, teasing. Flirting, just a little. She reached to run her fingers along the crease of his shirt just at the shoulder. "Get a little wild?"
"If I wouldn't do it there, I don't want to do it here." Ben's voice wasn't cold, but it was firm, and she pulled back her hand. "I wouldn't kiss a stranger when I was awake, I'm not going to do it when I'm asleep."
His tone affronted her enough to be snappish. "You never dreamed about sex? Most people do. Hell, Ben, most people want to."
"Most people can't shape. I can. I have responsibility."
"To who?" Tovah snapped, irritated with his calm self-righteousness, his judgment.
"To people like that guy you were making out with."
"And yet you're judging me for it," she pointed out. "I was just going along with what he needed to dream. That's all. Jesus, Ben, I didn't seek him out. He found me. Just because I don't want to be a guide doesn't mean I don't respect what you do."
Ben stared for a moment, then looked away again. This time she could see sheepishness on his face. "And I should leave you alone."
"Yes. You should. Unless---" She stopped herself. Unless you don't want to leave me alone.
"Spider's a good guide. I try to be a good guide." Ben shoved his hands into his pockets again.
"Is there such a thing as a bad guide?"
He was silent for a moment, staring at her until she blushed. "How long have you been shaping?"
"About three years."
He nodded at that. "You have a lot of skill, Tovah, that's all I'm saying. You're strong."
"Yeah, yeah. And I should use it for the better of the world. I know." She shrugged, still not looking at him. Ben could make her feel bad about that choice in a way Spider didn't, mostly because Spider wasn't afraid to flat-out tell her she was being a selfish bitch, and Ben just always showed her up by leading by example.
"Listen, I have a guru already, okay?" Tovah unshaped the stream. "I'm not the only person who comes here to play."
"You're right." Ben held out his hands. "Sorry. I'm not trying to be overbearing."
The apology earned him a smile. "Well. That would be something new."
The surge of his will passed her. The stream reshaped. They were playing push me-pull you. She didn't unshape it this time. Tovah looked at the grass between their feet. The flowers she'd shaped for Justin had crumpled, a detail she wouldn't have thought to shape, and again she marveled at the power of the Ephemeros. "Did you do that?"
He looked to where she was pointing. "Me, or you. One of us did it."
"I know that. But I didn't think I did."
Ben smiled. "You don't always have to."
She shaped the crushed stems back to upright beauty. Unlike Spider's blooms, these were dead-on perfect. Tovah knew daisies. A few more pushed up from between the blades of grass. It wasn't like magic, with a wave of the hand and an abracadabra. She had to imagine them first, then hold them there. Shaping was complicated and challenging.
"Do you ever wish you couldn't do it?" She looked up to see Ben staring at her with a look so intense, heat spread over her cheeks.
"You mean, do I wish I could just go to sleep and dream without knowing what I'm doing?"
She nodded. Something invisible passed between them. An understanding of sorts, perhaps. Something mutual yet unwilling to be spoken.
"All the time. You?"
"No."
"Now, see," Ben said. "That's why you should become a guide."
This time, his insistence didn't rub her quite so fiercely the wrong way. "No. Too much responsibility."
"C'mon. You can't tell me it was such a chore to let that guy make out with you."
Tovah laughed. "Why are you so fixated on that? You were helping him, too."
Ben snorted. "I was the one getting the crap kicked out of me."
Maybe she was being too sensitive. "True. But it's not like it hurt you."
"I can assure you, it hurt. Just because it's not permanent doesn't mean it didn't. I felt every punch."
"You chose to guide."
"I know." Ben stretched and rolled his neck on his shoulders, a very normal gesture that was nonetheless incongruous in the Ephemeros where his neck didn't need to hurt. "Next time, I'll just have to make sure it's a pretty lady who needs the help and maybe I'll get to make out with her instead of getting my jaw broken. Oh, wait," he added with a tinge of sarcasm that seemed out of place in his usual placid demeanor. "I don't have to be a guide to get it on with a sleeper. Right?"
This dig at her set her back a step or two. "Well, this has been fun," she said, tone making it clear it had been anything but. "But I've got things to do. Goodbye, Ben."
In the waking world she'd have turned on her heel and stalked off, chin held high. It was a little easier here, where she simply unshaped the meadow around her and reshaped something else---minus Ben. Take that, she thought a trifle smugly as he faded from view, replaced by a stone wall complete with moss.
"Nice," said Ben from behind her.
Tovah whirled, heart lurching into her throat. "What the---"
"It's not that hard to follow someone if they're not trying too hard to hide from you." Ben shrugged. "I didn't want you to walk away mad."
Tovah backed up a step. "Why do you care?" She sounded snippy, and didn't care.
"I think that should be obvious," he said.
Silence passed between them.
"Well, it's not," Tovah answered.
She couldn't hold on to her anger and the rest of the Ephemeros, too. It faded into the gray swirl, interrupted now and then by silhouetted figures on their own journeys. Ben looked around.
"Well, for one thing, when you're mad you lose focus."
This was not the answer she wanted, and she set out to prove him wrong by shaping more concrete surroundings. "So?"
"If you're not focused...bad things can happen."
His concern should have been flattering, but it didn't feel that way. "Since when are you my guide, Ben?"
It turned out he wasn't always so unflappable, himself. "Since you seem to need one!"
"You arrogant son-of-a-bitch!" She ground the words between her teeth like powder and tasted dust. "I don't need a guide, and if I did, you sure as hell wouldn't be the one I'd choose!"
The faintest look of hurt flickered in Ben's eyes. "Hey. Tovah. Listen---"
"No, you listen." She took a long breath and tried to shape herself as calm, but it wasn't working. "I know you and Spider have this...idea...about me. But I'm not some fair young maiden needing a big strong man to come in and rescue me, okay? That's stuff for fairy tales."
"Last time I checked, most of the stuff here was the stuff of fairy tales."
She shook her head slightly. "No, Ben. I don't need a prince in my waking life, and I don't need one here."
"I'm not trying to be a prince. I'm trying to be your friend."
A simple word but layered with meaning. Friend. Not boyfriend, not lover. Certainly, as he'd just declared, not prince.
She'd pissed him off, she thought, watching the emotions twisting on his face. Ben could get angry; she'd seen him in a fury when he couldn't complete some task Spider'd set, or when he'd come across a sleeper at the mercy of shapers who were taking advantage of them. Ben was a champion. He just wasn't hers.
"Then just be my friend," she told him. "Not my guide or my guardian. Okay? I'm fine."
"Fair enough." Ben backed up again. "But just be careful, Tovah. Okay?"
She watched him disappear into the Ephemeros's swirling mist and wanted to call him back, but in the next moment, a new figure emerged from the blankness.
Tovah, no longer in the mood for unexpected company, prepared to shape her exit light. She'd made it to the x when she stopped. "It's you."
"I told you I'd find you," said her lover from the club. "And here you are."
Tension coiled in the pit of her belly. "Here I am."
He smiled, moving forward. "You didn't make it very easy."
She returned his smile, which sent heat flaring down to her toes. All ten of them. "Sorry."
"I thought maybe you were avoiding me." His mouth tilted down at the corners in a self-deprecating frown she found utterly charming.
Tovah moved toward him. She had to tip her head back to look into his face, but didn't feel like representing taller. Being with a man that size, so tall and broad, made her feel like something she never was. Petite. Delicate. Uberfeminine.
"I wasn't avoiding you."
"Good."
Novelists were fond of writing things like "the air crackled with tension" or "sparks of attraction flew between them." It was understood to be creative license, not meant to be taken literally...in the waking world. In the Ephemeros, where all things were possible, sparks really did crackle when he looked at her.
Her lover reached his hand to take hers and bring it to his lips. Tovah shivered. Perfection, that touch. That look. She might be shaping some of it, but it didn't matter because he was going along with it.
"I don't even know your name," she whispered as his breath ghosted along her skin.
"What do you want to call me?" He slid a hand along her hip to press against the small of her back.
Tovah raised an eyebrow. "Your name?"
He laughed and dipped his head to brush his lips along her temple. Music, something soft and slow, something meant to be played on a record, not an iPod, sifted through the air around them. They were dancing in a moment, her feet moving unerringly to the pace he set.
Candles on tall metal holders bloomed around them like the daisies she'd shaped before. The grass became smooth, polished wood. Her partner wore tails and shiny shoes that reflected the warm yellow glow of candlelight. He was making this for her, and it was tempting to let him.
It was a dream, after all.
Did his name matter, when everything else was perfect? When he knew just how to move with her along the floor, their bodies aligned just so? What mattered a name when the hem of her red gown whispered over rose petals that should've, would've, tripped her up but didn't.
The music swelled and he twirled her out, then in again. His hands fit her body like they'd been made for her. Shaped for her. They probably had been.
"How much of this," she murmured, tipping her head to offer him her mouth, "is me?"
His mouth brushed hers. "I'd venture to say, all of it."
The kiss took a long time, and she savored it. His mouth tasted of mint and sunshine, fresh things. Of heat and desire. His eyes fluttered closed, the lashes like dark gates closing off the emotions in them---but she wasn't here for emotion.
A low leather sofa appeared in just the right spot to hold them when he sat. Tovah straddled his lap, her knees pressing the soft leather and her dress no longer sweeping the floor. His hands slid up her thighs, finding the soft, tender skin inside them and stroking with his thumbs. Liquid heat pooled between her legs beneath the wispy lace of panties she knew she hadn't shaped.
"Nothing of you at all?" She gave him a small smile.
"Maybe just a little." His thumb roamed higher, pressing her until she pushed her body against his.
She put her hands on the sides of his face to kiss him. She swept the inside of his mouth with her tongue, tasting him and drawing out his breath, which she caught in her lungs for a moment before releasing it.
"Maybe more than just a little," she breathed, looking deep into his eyes.
Then she asked no more questions. This wasn't her dream alone; it was theirs. She had no clue where he might be in the waking world. His name, his real appearance, what he did for a living. None of that mattered. There was no worry. No disease. No accidental pregnancy. Hell, not even a worry of heartbreak. There couldn't be any expectations of flowers and coffee in the morning when in the morning you wouldn't even know the other if you passed on the street.
"Do you want me?" she asked as his fingers tangled in her hair.
"Yes." He didn't shout or moan the answer. It came out in a low growl, like rocks tumbling together.
Orgasm already hovered moments away from her own stroking fingers. When he pulled her up and onto his lap and their clothes vanished in a neat trick she didn't have time to admire, Tovah trembled, waiting for the surge of welcome pleasure. She gasped as he filled her. Pleasure built higher and higher until she could think of nothing but the urgency, the sweet heat his movements were making.
She cried out when the first wave washed over her. For one moment she could no longer see, nor hear. Her breath left her and was given back with his kiss a moment later. He filled her lungs and her body at the same time. He surrounded her. Tovah floated on ecstasy as ripple after ripple of sweet pleasure cascaded over her. The leather couch had become a much larger bed, and her lover rolled onto his side. He took her hand, linking their fingers loosely, and let out a long sigh.
He smiled and turned his head to look at her. Funny, how his features changed subtly whenever she looked at him. What might've been disconcerting was only curious. She reached to brush his dark hair off his forehead. The silky length felt good.
"I have to go," she said at last, with regret.
He nodded. His hand followed the curves and valleys of her body. "I know."
"Will you find me again?"
"If you need me to."
She paused at that, realizing what he meant. "Oh," she said, unable to not sound disappointed. "You're a guide."
His smile warmed her a little, but she still felt a bit like an ass. "You knew that, didn't you?"
She had to admit she'd guessed it. A shaper with that much skill would have to be a guide. She just hadn't thought he was guiding her.
"This is only a little bit about me," he reminded her. "I think it's going to be a lot more about me in the future, though. If you don't mind."
She ran a finger over his chest. "I need to have hot, naughty sex with a stranger, is that what you're saying? My subconscious is putting this out there, shaping this for me, and you as a guide are only helping me find my way?"
"Something like that," he purred, kissing her again. "But even guides don't guide all the time, sweetheart."
She giggled at this endearment, and the way his hands tickled along her sides. "Okay, Lothario."
"Is that what you want to call me?"
"Is that your name?"
He didn't answer, just kissed her again until the edges of the Ephemeros frayed and she let out a low curse. "Shit. I have to go."
"Don't fight it. There's always later," he assured her with another kiss.
They were dressed, then, and she appreciated the consideration. They could say goodbye this time instead of stealing from sleep like thieves. And not naked, always a bonus.
"You'll find me?" She already knew the answer. "Of course, because you're a guide."
He smiled. "Yes."
She thought of what Ben had said and frowned a little, remembering how annoying he'd been. "Are you a good guide, or a bad guide?" she asked without thinking, the alarm blaring in her ear tearing her concentration in half.
"Oh, sweetheart," said her lover, "I'm very, very good."
And then she was awake, staring at her ceiling while the wah wah wah of her alarm echoed in her bedroom.
The witchwoman's voice seeped through thick stone walls. Punctuated now and again by the dogman's growl, her voice drilled into the boy's ears like the scream of a teakettle...but he listened. If she was screaming about someone else, she would leave him alone. They both would.
He didn't want to be here, in this room with the cold stone walls and the damp concrete floor. But he wasn't quite sure where else to go. The witchwoman and the dogman were right outside. Sometimes he could sneak past them. Sometimes he could get away.
But not today.
The witchwoman was screaming about a spider. There were webs high in the corners, strung from beam to beam and sagging with the bodies of insects, but the boy had never seen a spider in them. He looked, now, searching for a sign of eight legs, and shuddered with relief not to see one.
Once a spider had crawled across his face while he slept. He'd woken as it crept into the corner of his mouth, brushed it away still half-asleep, and sat up screaming when the thing had skittered over his hand. Mommy came and shushed him, but he hadn't been able to explain to her it hadn't been a dream. It had all been real.
Like this all was real.
The man on the beach had tried to help him, but at the last minute, the boy had been afraid. The witchwoman told him not to trust anyone, that she would take care of him. Always. He didn't believe her, because she lied, but there was comfort in her lies. They were lies, but they never changed, no matter what else did.
"Hello, sweetheart," the woman said from outside the door. "Are you going to let me in?"
And, because he was only a boy who hadn't yet learned the habit of distrust, he did.
Tovah woke with a pounding heart and the taste of copper in her mouth. She'd been dreaming the world was falling apart. She fumbled for the ringing phone that had woken her too soon and stabbed the button with her finger. Her mouth was so dry it took her a moment to croak "hello?"
Silence greeted her. The bedside clock told her she'd only been asleep for fifteen minutes. She sank back onto the pillows and tried to shake the cobwebs from her mind. "Who is this? Adina? Kelly?"
"Tov. It's me."
Every time they spoke, Kevin managed to make her forget one more thing about why she'd ever loved him at all. For an instant her finger hovered over the disconnect button, but then she sighed and put the phone back to her ear.
"What do you want, Kevin?"
"I didn't think you'd be home."
If he meant to lie he should've put more effort into it. "It's Friday night. Where did you think I'd be?"
"Did I wake you up? You sound tired."
"I was asleep. What do you want, Kevin?" It wearied her to have to ask again.
"I'll make it quick---"
Her laugh interrupted him. Kevin's mother had said he'd been kissed by the Blarney angel at birth. She'd been proud of that fact, her son the charmer, the smooth talker. He never made anything quick.
Though she could hear Kevin's annoyance at her reaction, he acted like he didn't hear the laugh. "I'm going to do it. I'm going to file the papers. I wanted you to know."
She put a hand over her eyes. "Okay."
"But you have to do something for me, okay?"
"I don't have to do anything for you."
More silence. It must have killed him not to speak. Tovah heard his breathing and imagined the way he'd be biting his lower lip. Scowling. Maybe he'd be doodling on the spare pad of paper he always kept by the phone. Writing her name and crossing it out, or drawing a caricature of her face and giving her devil horns and a mustache.
"Why do you have to make this so ugly?" he asked, finally. "It doesn't have to be. It shouldn't be."
Wetness slipped down her cheeks and tickled her ears. She turned so the pillow could absorb them. "No. It shouldn't. Just file the papers, Kevin. I'll sign them. We'll be done with each other. You can get on with your life."
"That's not what this is about!"
"What is it about?" She kept her voice steadier than she'd thought she could manage. "The money?"
He would not admit it, even then, and it was as though he'd slipped another splinter into an already festering wound. "It's not like I'm asking for something I don't deserve."
"Deserve?" His audacity should no longer have shocked her but did.
"We were both in that accident, Tov."
He had scars, too. She'd seen them. Yet she could find little sympathy for him now. "You agreed to sign the settlement over to me, Kevin. We went to mediation to avoid just this sort of thing---"
"That was before!" he cried so vehemently she knew exactly why it had become so important to him now. "Things changed."
"Not for me!" Her shout roused Max, who lumbered to the side of her bed and gruffed until she reached to pet him. Tovah swallowed another shout. "Things haven't changed for me."
"I'm sorry," Kevin said.
The words no longer had any power to move her. They were empty, spoken too often without sincerity. She didn't believe him.
"Good night, Kevin," she said, and hung up before he could say anything more.
Ava looked up as Tovah paused to sign in at the desk. "You're back."
"Well...yes. It's Sunday." Tovah hitched her bag higher on her shoulder as she shook a pen unwilling to give up its ink. "You're here, too."
"I have to be here. It's my job." Ava handed her another pen but held out her hand, waiting for its return when Tovah had finished. Pens appeared to be a precious commodity.
"I'm here to see Henry." Tovah signed her initials and returned Ava's pen. "Just like every Sunday. What's the problem?"
"No problem." Ava shrugged, eyebrows lifting and mouth pursing. "It's just that every Sunday I figure this will be the day you don't come. And then, you do."
Tovah raised her own brow. "And this matters to you...why?"
Ava frowned. "It doesn't matter to me. I just wonder when you're going to have something better to do. That's all."
Tovah didn't know how to respond to this. Was it an insult? A comment on her loyalty? An expression of concern? "I'm not sure what you're getting at."
"I'm not getting at anything." Ava bent back to her paperwork. "I was just wondering."
"But why?" Tovah persisted. She set her bag down to lean on the counter. "Ava, you've known me for a few years. Why does this matter, now?"
Ava looked up, face stern. "Tovah, Henry's not going to wake up today."
"You don't know that."
"He didn't wake up yesterday or the day before that, and he probably won't wake up tomorrow, so I'm pretty sure he won't today. And even if he did, he wouldn't know you. Or appreciate that you're here."
"Why does that matter?" Tovah shook her head. "What difference does that make to you?"
"No difference. I thought it might make one to you." Ava shrugged and set her gaze firmly on her papers, ignoring Tovah with the deliberate concentration of a woman used to disregarding what she didn't want to see.
"It doesn't," Tovah snapped and bent to pick up her bag.
The short walk to Henry's room did little to appease her anger. She knew what Ava was getting at. She thought Henry was a lost cause, that Tovah should concentrate on her own life instead of wasting her time with someone who couldn't appreciate it.
Ava didn't know about Spider, Henry's sleeping self, who was more awake than the body in the hospital bed. But that wasn't what had made Tovah angry. It was understanding that if she didn't know about Spider, she'd probably have felt the same way Ava did. That Henry wasn't worth the time.
She was angry with herself.
"Hey," she said as she pushed open Henry's door. "I brought---oh. Hi."
Dr. Goodfellow sat on the edge of Henry's bed, Henry's hand in his. He'd been murmuring something when Tovah came in, but stopped at the sound of her voice. He looked up, expression distracted, then smiled.
"Tovah. Hi."
"What are you doing?" She set her bag down by the chair and moved to the bed. "Is he okay?"
"He's the same. I'm just trying something a little different. Some energy work." The doctor's smile flickered. "Alternative medicine has done amazing things."
Henry lay unmoving but for the soft rise and fall of his chest beneath the sheet. Dr. Goodfellow let go of his hand and stood. Once again she was struck by how tall he was, how broad-shouldered. He was built like an athlete, not an academic.
"I wondered if you'd come today," he said.
This, on top of Ava's observation, made her snark a bit. "It's Sunday. I visit Henry on Sundays."
"I know." If he noticed the snappish undertone to her answer, he didn't show it.
She looked at his mild smile that looked nicer the longer she looked at it. He wasn't like Ben, she thought, who baited her on purpose to get a reaction. And comparing a man from the waking world to one in the Ephemeros was ridiculous.
"Sorry. Ava was giving me a hard time."
Dr. Goodfellow's low laugh was like the chuckle of a stream on stones. "She does that a lot, doesn't she? Not just to you."
"You, too?" Tovah's mouth yearned to return his smile, and after a moment, she let it.
"Yep. Says I don't need to work weekends. Says it won't win me any points with the administration or the staff, and that the patients don't care, either."
"Wow. She really laid into you." Tovah bent to smooth Henry's covers and took the time to brush his hair from his forehead. He needed a cut. She looked up with a small smile, teasing. "But she's probably right."
Dr. Goodfellow sighed. "Yeah. She is. But I'm still here."
Tovah knew why she was there. "Why?"
Today he wore another blue shirt that made his eyes seem even bluer. His hair looked rumpled, like he'd slept and not bothered to brush it. His teeth were very white, very straight. His collar was undone, no tie. He was loosening up. The disarray suited him.
"Because I think I can help him." He looked at Henry, then back to her. "And...well...I don't have anything better to do."
This seemed an answer almost painful in its honesty, and she reacted with a laugh meant to ease the awkwardness. "I'm sure that's not true."
He shook his head. "No, it's true. I don't have any family in the area, and I haven't had time to make any friends to call up for a barbecue or anything. And my apartment...God, my apartment's so depressing it makes this place seem like an amusement park."
"Wow, that's really bad." She didn't mean to laugh again.
He laughed, too, but shook his head. "I'm serious."
"I thought you were going to move?"
He shrugged. "Haven't had time to look."
"The house next to mine is for sale. I can give you the Realtor's number, if you want." The offer slipped out before she could grab it back.
He smiled. "That would be great. We'd be neighbors."
"You might hate the house." She hated the eager way she sounded.
"I might l-love it."
He stuttered it, and Tovah thought the word love had never sounded so appealing.
"So...what were you doing to him, exactly?" Tovah looked again at Henry, whose snort-whistling breath hadn't changed. She leaned to wipe a silver strand of drool. The meds did that.
"Are you familiar with guided imagery?"
Tovah shook her head. "Sounds..."
"Freaky deaky?" He laughed softly. "Sort of. It uses the power of imagination to promote healing, reduce stress. That sort of thing. Studies have proven it works. I thought I'd try it with Henry."
"What were you saying to him?"
"I was describing a path to him," Dr. Goodfellow said. "If he could find it, I thought maybe I could guide him home."
Emotion slammed through her, tears burning. She busied herself with something in her bag to hide the fact his words had struck her so hard. He couldn't have any idea of what he'd said, or what it meant. "I hope you're right."
He cleared his throat. "He's lucky to have you for a friend. I think I told you that before."
"Luck's got nothing to do with it. Henry was good to me when I needed someone to be, that's all."
Dr. Goodfellow waited for her to say more. He was good at that. Letting her talk. Listening. She'd discovered that. She liked it.
"Tovah, would you like to have some lunch with me?"
The offer surprised but pleased her, and she ducked her head to hide the heat rising in her cheeks. She fussed with Henry's blankets. "Now?"
"Sure. Now."
She gave Henry's doctor a sideways look, half expecting to see him grinning. Or maybe staring like she was some sort of freak for not answering right away. She lifted her head at his expression. He looked...blank. Only for a second, so fast she couldn't be sure she'd seen his eyes go far away and mouth part slightly, like he breathed different air. Only a second, then he passed his fingertips over his forehead and smiled tentatively.
"If you don't want to---"
"No. I'd like to. Sure. Just let me put these things away and we can go."
Smiling, she bent to empty her bag of the books and sundries she'd brought to tempt Spider into waking. She put the chocolate bars beneath the clean pajamas where they might not be stolen, and the books on the pile on the nightstand.
Dr. Goodfellow took her across the street to a small deli she'd often passed but never entered. The menu offered matzah ball soup and noodle kugel, and she ordered both as much for the novelty of finding such fare in a local restaurant than because she was hungry for them.
"Tell me about yourself," he said.
To her surprise, for Tovah wouldn't have said she could find enough of interest about herself to occupy more than a few minutes of conversation, she spoke for half an hour without a break, longer than it took to eat her soup. It was good soup, too, rich and salty and full of floating bits of carrot. She spooned some, mindful all at once that he hadn't been saying much.
"Sorry, I'm sort of monopolizing the conversation." She cut the second huge matzah ball in half with her spoon then in half again.
Dr. Goodfellow, chin resting in his hand as he watched her, shook his head. "No. It's nice to have someone who talks back in coherent sentences. Really."
She felt guilty laughing. "I try."
He smiled and reached for the small bowl of pickled vegetables on the table. He picked a carrot and bit the end. "Thanks for coming with me. I couldn't stand another meal in the hospital cafe and Ava always brings in leftovers...they smell so good, but she's stingy and won't share."
"Hospital food sucks. I think it's because they want to make sure nobody likes it there so much they want to stay."
"That's a theory." He wiped his fingers fastidiously on a paper napkin.
She watched the fussy motion of his hands, then looked at his face. His brows had knit while he studied his fingers, perhaps for any stray gleam of vinegar. In concentration his face looked harder, unlike the open ease or occasional uncertainty he'd shown before. He looked darker. The shift was subtle, almost minute, but she looked automatically at the plastic-covered menu lying next to her, then again to make certain the letters hadn't scrambled.
"Do you want something else to eat?"
He'd caught her checking her reality. Tovah shook her head, wondering what he'd think if she told him the truth of what she'd been doing. "No, just...looking. In case I want to come here again."
"Would you like to come here again?"
He had a way of phrasing things...she couldn't quite figure it out. It was like he meant to ask one question but another came out, instead. But when he smiled and leaned back against the bench, one long arm stretched out, she had a sudden image of herself nestled in that spot. That perfect spot, where she'd fit just right along his side.
"Sure." She looked into his eyes, which were very blue.
It had been too long since she'd flirted in the waking world. She wasn't sure she remembered how, or if she'd recognize it if someone did it to her. She wasn't entirely sure Dr. Goodfellow's offer had been more than friendly. But for the first time in a long time, Tovah thought she'd be willing to find out.
"I should get back," he said, and the moment ended like a door had slammed. He got up and waited while she did, too.
"Thanks for asking me to lunch." Tovah's jeans had ridden up a bit, catching on the edge of her prosthesis, and she tugged the soft denim as she stood. In a way, her motion was as fussy as his had been with the napkin, and she looked to see if he'd been watching her the way she had him.
He wasn't. He was looking out, across the parking lot toward the large red stone building that was the Sisters of Mercy Hospital. A van drove by emblazoned with the logo of a local florist. At least, that was what Tovah thought it was, but she blinked, the van slowed to allow a customer from the deli to pass in front of it, and the logo had become an advertisement for a landscaping company.
Close. But not quite the same. Yet she was certain she'd seen the distinctive caricature of the laughing daisy used by Button and Daisy florists.
"I've got to get back," he said in a low voice she almost missed, concentrating as she was on the van that had passed by, out of sight. "I'll see you next Sunday, Tovah. Don't forget to bring the Realtor's card."
He pushed out of the deli's front doors without looking back, one large hand cupping itself into half a wave as he went. She watched him, her heart pounding suddenly in her ears and throat. She'd burned her tongue on the soup and only now noticed. Her legs didn't hold her, and she had to sit.
She watched Martin Goodfellow cross the parking lot, then the street, his long legs moving without hesitation. She watched until he'd disappeared into the front doors of the hospital. Then she looked down at her hands, clenched together so tight her knuckles went white.
The clock on the wall said three o'clock. A moment later, it said the same. The same a moment after that, though she blinked and looked away hard before checking again. The clock didn't change, nor did the menu beneath the edge of her hand, nor did anything else.
She was in the waking world. She was certain of it. Nothing was out of line, out of place, out of order. She was awake. She hadn't seen the van logo change, she'd been mistaken, that's all. That had to be the explanation.
Unless she was crazy.
This thought got her up and moving away from the table and the deli. Away from the hospital. Tovah got into her car, buckling herself tightly as she always did and driving carefully. Her hands gripped the wheel so hard her fingers hurt. By the time she pulled into her driveway, her entire body ached with tension.
She wasn't crazy.
She hadn't been crazy then, either. She knew that now. Her depression had been justified. A life-changing accident, the dissolution of her marriage, the loss of her life the way she'd known it, had been good reasons to sink into despair. It had been a weak choice, perhaps, not one she'd willingly make again, but at the time it had seemed the only one.
The things she'd seen, the shifting world and things she could do in it, were not insanity, either. Deep in her head, she hadn't been able to tell the difference between the waking and sleeping worlds for a time. She'd lost track.
That was not what had happened in the deli, she was certain of it. So, if she wasn't crazy, and she wasn't asleep, what, exactly had happened?
Cultivating a friendship isn't like watering a garden. A friendship doesn't drown with too much attention, and Tovah was glad for Kelly's enthusiasm. Kevin had inherited most of their social circle, and though she still kept up a frequent online communication with several of her best friends from high school and college, it wasn't quite the same as having a girlfriend on hand.
Tonight they were having dinner at one of the new pubs on Second Street in Harrisburg. On a Wednesday night it shouldn't have been crowded, but the street still teemed with people heading out for an evening's entertainment. They didn't have to wait for a table, but the pub was far from empty.
"I'm getting shepherd's pie. I walked an extra mile tonight. Think that'll cover it?" Kelly grinned as the cute young waiter took their drink and appetizer orders.
"Not a clue. What's in shepherd's pie?"
"Ground lamb. Mashed potatoes. Fat and carbs."
Tovah chuckled. "Kelly, you really don't have to worry."
Kelly fluttered her lashes. "Aww, you're just saying that because you want to get into my pants."
That caught the attention of a pair of young men standing at the bar waiting for drinks. The taller one turned. His gaze caught Tovah's. She returned it for the barest moment. When he turned to murmur to his buddy, she cut her gaze away, turning her attention back to Kelly.
Kelly, however, had seen the direction of Tovah's look and swiveled in her seat to look herself. "Nice," she said, turning back around. "If you like the metrosexual type."
"Oh, please!" Tovah threw a straw paper. "Like Justin Ross, you mean?"
"Justin Ross is a certified hot hunka burning love, Tovah." Kelly held up a finger like she was lecturing. "He's paid to look that way."
"And that guy over there?"
Kelly gave the man at the bar another quick glance before grinning at Tovah. "If he's not gay, he's definitely high maintenance. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to date anyone who takes more time to do his hair than I do."
"I don't know. I like a man who's put together. There's this guy---" Tovah stopped herself, but then forged on. It would have felt like she was keeping a secret, otherwise, when there was no secret to keep. "Martin Goodfellow. My friend Henry's doctor. He looks like he takes the time to get ready."
"Uh huh." Kelly looked interested. "And this Dr. Feelgood---"
"Goodfellow."
"Whatever. You like him?"
"He's nice." Tovah shrugged, feigning a casualness she didn't quite feel, then gave in to a broad grin. "He's coming to look at the house next door to me, maybe to buy it. I invited him over for coffee, after."
"He might be moving into the house next door?" Kelly hooted. "Niiiiice!"
"Might." Tovah held up a finger, a ridiculous attempt at reining in her friend's exuberance. "If he likes the house."
"But he's going to come over for coffee after he's done looking? Mmm, mmm, mmm."
"Kelly! God, he's just looking at the house next door. I offered coffee, it's not like I was asking him to strip down and play naked Twister."
"That's for the second date." Kelly had a wicked, free laugh that turned heads.
It was also infectious, and Tovah giggled too. "It's not a date. It's nothing like a date."
"Uh-huh."
"That's not an 'uh-huh' of agreement, that's a placating 'uh-huh.'"
"My mom wanted me to marry a doctor." Kelly sighed. "A nice, hot doctor. You know, like Justin Ross."
"He's not a doctor!" Tovah laughed again, just as the waiter brought their appetizer plate and drinks. Their huge drinks. The price made sense now. There must have been enough alcohol in each drink to satisfy four thirsty women.
"He plays one on TV. Isn't that the same thing?"
"I don't think so." Tovah eyed the margarita-filled fishbowl in front of her. "I'll never finish that."
Kelly sipped her own drink. "Sure you will. Next thing you know you'll be down at the Pharmacy dancing on the bar."
Tovah hadn't been to the Pharmacy in years. "Do they even have music on a Wednesday night?"
"Honey, where there are horny singles, there is music and bar-dancing." Kelly pushed the drink a bit closer to Tovah. "So g'head."
Tovah sipped, but just a little. "Just what I need. To be more unsteady on my feet."
"Don't worry. The bar has a pole you can hang on to." Kelly chortled at her own wit.
Tovah rolled her eyes. "I won't be dancing."
The statement might have made her melancholy except that around Kelly she never felt gloomy.
"No? You don't dance? What'sa matter, two left feet?" Kelly snickered.
Tovah snorted at the bad joke. "Something like that."
Kelly eyed her. "You could dance, Tovah. I've seen you kick a treadmill's ass."
"Walking on a treadmill isn't the same as doing the Macarena."
"Oh, good lord," said Kelly. "Even people with two good legs shouldn't do the Macarena."
Tovah gestured at the drink. "You know, sometimes...sometimes stuff like that makes me madder than anything."
"Not being able to dance?"
"Not being able to drink because I'm afraid of losing my balance." Tovah frowned at the frosty golden drink.
"I'd be mad, too." Kelly pulled the plate of fried cheese closer and nibbled one.
She'd never asked Tovah about the accident, or what it was like to be an amputee, which somehow made it easier to say, "Actually...the worst thing is not being able to wear pretty shoes."
Kelly stabbed the air with her finger. "Hell, yes!"
"I mean, the pain was bad," Tovah continued, not sure why she had to share this but feeling compelled to. "The recovery took a long time. And there's the time it takes me to take care of it and not being able to take something simple like walking for granted. But not being able to wear pretty shoes is really...the worst. I can buy a nice dress or find a cute pair of pants, but without the shoes I never feel..."
"Pretty?" Kelly asked softly.
Tovah looked up. "Yes."
Kelly pushed the breadbasket toward her. "Would it help to tell you I think you're gorgeous?"
"Would that make this a date?" Tovah smiled, taking some bread.
Kelly snorted. "Tovah, babe, I know you know nothing I say could really make that better."
"I know."
"I know you know." More laughter, and Tovah relaxed into her chair.
Kelly's normal exuberance dimmed for a moment, becoming sincerity. "Is that why you're not dating?"
Tovah sighed and crumpled a breadstick crumb by crumb onto her plate. "I guess so."
"But you like Dr. Feelgood. What's-his-name."
"Dr. Goodfellow. Martin. Yes. I mean, he's cute but..."
Kelly was too perceptive to accept dissembling. "But what?"
"I don't really know him, that's all."
"Can't you get to know him?" Kelly wasn't kidding around, now.
Tovah smiled. "Maybe."
Kelly tossed up her hands. "Okay, okay. I get it. I'll back off. Enough about you, let's get back to me. Guess who I dreamed about last night?"
"Let me guess. Justin Ross?" It wasn't much of a stretch.
"Bingo. It was really weird, though. I was in a horde of crazy women waving dildos, and we were chasing him."
Tovah looked up. "Again?"
Kelly gave her an odd look. "What do you mean, again? Usually I just dream we're getting down to the wild, passionate sex."
Oops. "No, I meant---never mind."
"Yeah. It was definitely strange. I mean, the sex-toy part I could maybe figure out, since I went to that toy party a few weeks ago, but the whole crowd thing was sorta creepy. I should look up what it means on the Internet."
Tovah raised an eyebrow. "What, chasing someone with artificial genitalia? Do you think that really means anything?"
Kelly laughed, especially as Tovah's comments turned the head of a bronzed and muscled bar-crawler passing their table. "I don't know! What do you think?"
"Dream symbols definitely have meaning. Not always what you'd think they'd have, but yeah. Anything you put into your dream has meaning."
Kelly shot Tovah a look. "Are you gonna get all New Agey on me?"
Tovah shook her head. "No."
"Good. Because if you told me I needed to light a candle before I went to bed or put weeds under my pillow or something, I would have to find someone else to get coffee with."
Tovah shook her head again, slower this time. "Don't worry."
"But you know a lot about dreams, huh?" Kelly looked at Tovah closely.
Tovah hesitated. "Some. Not everything."
Kelly nodded. "My grandma was big into dreams. She used to tell me she could do...whatchamacallit...where you know you're dreaming?"
"Lucid dreaming?"
"Yeah. Lucid dreaming."
The waiter interrupted their banter, his pen at the ready. "Ladies?"
Confronted with the lack of a vegetarian selection, Tovah chose fish and chips. She wasn't picky about meat being kosher or using the same pots or pans to cook in, but eating meat and dairy together was a long-time habit she'd never gotten around to breaking. Kelly faltered in her quest for shepherd's pie and ordered a club sandwich, instead.
"Lots of people can do that. What did your grandma say about it?" Tovah asked when the waiter had gone.
"Oh, just that what she liked best was flying. My grandma was in a wheelchair for most of the last fifteen years of her life," said Kelly matter-of-factly. "She said only in dreams was she able to get out of the damn chair and dance the way she used to."
Tovah knew how that felt. "Have you ever tried it? Lucid dreaming, I mean. Did she ever tell you how she did it?"
Just because Kelly's grandma had been able to do it didn't mean Kelly could. Then again, it didn't mean she couldn't.
"How do you think I get Justin Ross to bang me?" Kelly answered with a grin.
Tovah laughed again. "Good for you."
"Don't tell Frank. So long as he's convinced I can't control what's going on, he can't be mad at me. What about you? Can you do it?"
Tovah hesitated again but didn't lie. "Yes."
Kelly looked impressed. "Wow. What's it like?"
Tovah thought about it for a second. "Did you ever see The Matrix?"
"Hell-o," Kelly said. "A movie with Keanu Reeves in it? Of course."
"It's sort of like that. When you control your dreams, you control everything in them and around you. You can make anything happen."
Kelly was silent for a moment, as if she were pondering that. "Huh."
There was more to it than that. Lots of people could enter lucidity in their dreams, but even though they managed to manifest their desires in the dream world, they were still just...dreaming. How could she explain the differences to Kelly, who'd never done it? How could she explain that achieving lucidity was fluid and amorphous, that keeping it was a struggle few could master completely. Shaping, on the other hand...that was conscious and consistent. Tovah didn't understand it herself, just that before waking from her accident she'd had dreams in which she'd known she was dreaming. But knowing how to shape the Ephemeros, how to manipulate and mold it to her whim...that was a much stronger talent.
"Haven't you ever had a dream you knew was a dream?" Tovah attempted the explanation.
"Sure. Usually that's when I tell Justin I can't sleep with him because I'm married."
"No." Tovah laughed but shook her head. "I mean where you know it's a dream and you manipulate it. Or manifest something you want or desire."
Kelly thought. "Once or twice. But it was hard to hold on to it. Usually if I suddenly realize I'm dreaming I wake up right away. I've had nightmares---"
Tovah waited, but Kelly didn't continue. "About what?"
A shadow passed over Kelly's face. "I've had dreams about falling and I wake up just before I hit the ground. Or dreams I'm being chased, or that someone's in my house. Usually I'll wake up before something really bad happens. And I think I know I'm dreaming, but it's still scary."
"Everyone has bad dreams once in a while. But if you know you can control the output, you can get out of them."
Kelly nodded, still frowning slightly. "Yes. But lately I've been having some real doozies. Frank, too. I told him it must be something in the water."
Tovah looked up at that, and thought carefully about how to phrase her question. "What are the nightmares about, now?"
Kelly's laugh sounded forced. "It's stupid."
"I bet it's not."
Kelly shrugged. It was rare to see her unsure of herself. "I dreamed the world fell apart."
Tovah didn't say anything to that and Kelly gave her no chance to. "Crazy, huh? I'm afraid to analyze it, you know? The world falling apart? What's that say about my mental health?"
Before Tovah could answer, the waiter returned with two more drinks, though they hadn't finished the first. "Compliments of the gentleman at the bar."
Kelly gave Tovah a look.
"What?"
"Now see what you've been and gone and done," Kelly scolded. "You made eye contact before, didn't you!"
Before Tovah could answer, the two men from the bar showed up at their table.
"Hi," said the man who'd earlier caught her eye. "Are you ladies alone?"
"No," said Tovah as Kelly answered "yes," at the same moment.
They battled with their gazes while the two men stood frozen, halfway into the table's empty seats. Tovah, who was fine with long-distance yearning but had no intention of giving in to flirtation, tried to give Kelly a subtle glare.
Kelly wasn't into subtle. "Have a seat, fellas."
They did. Tovah scooted over to leave more legroom. The table was small for two and nearly impossible with four, no matter how many chairs claimed they wanted to belong. Kelly was already moving her napkin over and sampling the gifted drink. Tovah wasn't so foolhardy.
"John." The one Kelly had labeled metrosexual held out his hand. "This is my friend, Pete."
"I'm Kelly. This is Tovah." Kelly shook John's hand, then Pete's. Tovah did the same.
John turned out to be the conversationalist, Pete his trusty cohort who seemed to be playing wingman. Tovah wasn't sure about Kelly's role in this little quadrumvirate, but with Pete taking up her attention, that left John to hit on Tovah.
Hard.
He was smooth about it. Not subtle, by any means. But smooth. He knew just how much sincerity to use, just how close to sit. Or when to draw away. He knew when to talk and when to listen, and he didn't seem taken aback when Tovah gave him one-or two-word answers only.
Using the excuse that females could only visit the restroom in pairs, Kelly pulled Tovah away from the men. In the ladies' room she pulled out lipstick and bent forward over the sink to concentrate on lining her mouth while Tovah washed the greasy fish and chips from her fingers. Kelly gave Tovah a look in their shared reflection.
"So? You don't like him? What?"
Tovah pulled out her compact from her purse and set about freshening her own makeup. "He's cute."
"Yeah, he is." Kelly rubbed her teeth to clean them of any stray lipstick stains, blew into her hand to check her breath, and pulled out a package of mints. "Want one?"
"Is that a hint?" Tovah took the mints and crunched one.
"No. But it's good to be prepared, huh?" Kelly laughed. "He sure is putting the moves on you."
Tovah leaned against the sink. "What about his friend?"
Kelly laughed. "Married. I saw the ring. I slipped him a little comment about my husband and you should've seen the look on his face. Relief. Clearly he's just along for the ride. Romeo on the other hand..."
"Yeah, Romeo." Tovah sighed, looking again at her reflection. "He sure is cute."
"Very."
"But a metrosexual," she couldn't help teasing.
Kelly rolled her eyes. "Hey, some chicks dig that. I mean...we could make up some excuses about having to leave or something. I thought maybe you liked him."
Tovah shook her head, watching her hair fall around her shoulders. She'd never worn it this long when she was with Kevin. Nor worn this much makeup. Though it was only a deeper tone of lipstick and a touch more eyeliner, the differences in her appearance still reminded her she was a single woman.
"Sort of like tossing out chum," she said aloud.
"Huh?" Kelly put away her lipstick and the mints and turned to look at Tovah.
"I'm not so sure what I think about a guy who picks up women in bars, that's all." Tovah shrugged. "I mean, yes, he's cute and he seems nice, but I can't help but wonder at his motivation."
Kelly frowned. "Yeah. But does that mean you can't have fun with him tonight? Nobody says you have to go home with him."
Tovah smiled at that. She and Kelly had talked a lot about sex, mostly as it related to Justin Ross or a few other celebrities. Fantasy talk. She hadn't ever told Kelly about the nights she went searching for strangers in her dreams. Why would she? Besides, what she did in the Ephemeros was far different than what she did in real life.
"You're right. Unless I want to," she added.
Kelly grinned. "Ooh, c'mon, now. You're going to make me jealous. He's no Justin Ross, but he's cute."
"Of course not," Tovah agreed. "Let's go see if they're still waiting or if they've hied off in search of greener pastures."
Her admirer hadn't abandoned her. Pete had lit a cigarette and was chatting on his cell phone, a call he quickly disconnected when she and Kelly returned to the table. John smiled and stood to pull out her chair for her.
"We weren't sure you were coming back." He smoothed his tie flat in a practiced, unconscious gesture as he sat. His smile teased one from her mouth. "So, where to from here?"
Tovah ducked her head to hide a smile at the faint look of panic and then resignation on Pete's face. "Who says we have to go anywhere?"
John's look of disappointment was brief, and he didn't pout. "Good point. It's nice just sitting here, talking to you."
Not that she'd said anything of much consequence. Tovah didn't hide her smile, this time. He smiled back. The conversation went on. As the hour grew late, Pete's cell phone rang again. This time when he disconnected the call, he gave John a sort of desperate look.
"Man, I gotta go."
"I have to get going, too," Kelly added serenely.
They stood at the same time. After a moment, so did John. He shook Kelly's hand again.
"Nice meeting you," he told her.
"Thanks for the drink," she answered with a cheery grin. "C'mon, Pete, walk me out to my car so I don't get mugged."
Pete looked scared again. Kelly sighed. "I promise to keep my hands to myself."
John waited until they'd gone before he said, "Pete's married."
"So is Kelly."
He looked a little surprised, but like his disappointment, that seemed to pass quickly, too. He waited a beat, one perfect hesitation, not too long or too short. "Are you?"
"No. Well, separated. You?"
"Not married," he said with a firm shake of his head. "I mean, I wouldn't be here talking to you all night if I were married, Tovah."
"Good to know." She'd already checked his finger for a ring and seen none, but that meant nothing. "I wouldn't want to be here talking to you if you were."
A slow grin spread across John's face. Tension crackled between them. When the waiter came to ask if they wanted anything else, John looked to her for an answer. Tovah shook her head.
"It's late. I've got to work in the morning."
That was how he ended up walking her to her car. Clouds had covered the moon and stars, and the harsh blue-white light from the street lamps washed out John's complexion. The night was too chilly to linger in conversation. John, apparently, had an idea of how to keep them warm.
His attempt at kissing her didn't take her by surprise. What did was how she turned her face so his mouth landed on her cheek instead of her lips. Every detail moved her. The warmth of his lips and scent of mints on his breath, the squeeze of his hands on her hips as he pulled her closer. Even the chill of the car door behind her added to the scene.
John pulled away slightly to look into her eyes. "Sorry?"
She didn't think she'd said anything. "For what?"
"Kissing you?" he asked. "Did you not want me to?"
Tovah laughed, self-conscious. From the sidewalk came a burst of raucous laughter as a group of men and women walking to their cars passed. Someone wolf-whistled. John, grinning, turned to look over his shoulder before he looked back at her.
"Kids," he said, though he didn't seem that old, himself.
"It's cold. And late. I need to go," Tovah said.
Her body tingled in the places he touched her. But when he bent to put his mouth on hers again, Tovah again turned her face. His lips brushed her cheek, and he pulled away.
"No?"
"I've got to go," she said around a laugh, pushing at his chest a little. "It's been nice, John, really. But it's late."
"I make great pancakes." His voice dipped low. Sexy. He moved closer to nuzzle at her ear.
Oh, boy.
Arousal tiptoed over her skin, tightening her nipples. Her panties felt a size too small, suddenly. It would be so easy...
And so difficult.
"I can't," she whispered. "Believe me, I wish I could."
This time, his disappointment wasn't so easily pushed aside. It sat on his mouth and forced it to frown. He didn't move back, not at first, and for a scary moment Tovah wondered if she'd severely misjudged him.
Then it passed. He smiled, though without the earlier sincerity. He took one step back, then another. He put his hands in his coat pockets.
"Thanks for the drink. And everything." She didn't like the all-of-a-sudden too-eager tone in her voice and stopped herself from saying more.
"Sure. Nice meeting you. You okay here? You've got your keys and everything?"
She showed him. "Yes. Thanks again."
John nodded. "Good night."
He didn't ask for her number. Didn't ask if he could see her again. Tovah watched him go, a sick feeling like an unexpected punch settling into her stomach. It was like she didn't know what he wanted, but to have it so blatantly proven was more than an insult. It made her feel like a fool.
Worst of all, her reasons for turning him down had nothing to do with morals, or her hopes that playing hard to get would hold his interest better than going to bed with him at once. No. She had no problem with sex for the sake of sex...at least, she didn't used to.
No. She'd turned him down because she was afraid of that moment when the lights go off and the clothes fall away, when she could no longer hide what shouldn't have to be a secret.
And what had happened? She'd been rejected anyway, no matter how subtly, and she couldn't even blame it on prejudice about her disability. It was a rejection, entirely, of her.
She didn't bother to watch him turn the corner, just got in her car and fired the engine. The ride home took less than ten minutes. The mail scattered on the floor when she opened the front door. Her foot caught a sales flyer and she slid hard enough to catch herself on the side table. Muttering a curse, she bent to gather it.
The envelope marked with the return address of a familiar legal firm caught her eye as she hit the button on the answering machine. She slit open the envelope and pulled out the thick sheaf of papers just as Kevin's voice emerged from the speakers.
"Tov, it's me. I really need those papers signed." A feminine voice burbled something she didn't understand in the background. "Yeah. Anyway, if you could get them signed and sent back ASAP, I'd appreciate it. Bye."
He'd actually said ASAP like it was a word. Tovah checked the date on the top letter. Two weeks ago. She flipped the envelope. Two days ago.
"Prick." Saying the word aloud made her feel better. "Did you tell her you didn't mail the fucking papers and I only just got them? No. I bet you told her I was holding on to them to be a bitch. Well, guess what, asshole, you can wait another two weeks before I sign these."
She tossed them onto her kitchen table and looked up as Max came out of the kitchen. "Hey, buddy. What's up? Did you miss me, at least?"
Max sat on his haunches, grinning.
"Yeah," she told him. "I know. I'm out late. I've been drinking and canoodling. Are you going to ground me?"
No discernable judgment from Max, whose tail thumped the hardwood floor in a regular beat. Tovah sighed and scrubbed at his head with her fist. His fur, soft on her knuckles, made her think of the way John's hair had touched her there not so long ago.
She sat suddenly in the worn leather chair just inside the living room doorway. Max whined and laid his head on her knee. Tovah closed her eyes against unwelcome tears.
"You know what he wants me to sign?" she asked him. "You want to know what those papers are? A share of my insurance claim, Max. Yes, that's right. He drove the car that crashed into the truck that crushed my leg. Welcome to the fucking house that Jack built. And now he wants a piece of the settlement."
Max licked her hand. Tovah sniffled, hand pressed to her eyes. "He left me, and he still wants a piece of my money. Never mind that he makes almost twice what I make. Or that he doesn't want to take responsibility for any of the medical bills, Max. Because I haven't forced him to. Because I'm too damned nice, that's what! That's what!"
It was no good yelling at the dog, who couldn't complain about being so abused. It wasn't Max's fault Kevin had turned out to be a heartless bastard. Or maybe just a bastard, which was worse. That he kept on finding ways to gouge her when he knew how much he was hurting her, and did it anyway.
"Jennifer must be one smoking hot piece of pussy, that's all I have to say." Tovah rubbed beneath Max's chin. The dog's eyes closed in ecstasy. "Hear me? Pussy."
He barked, once, twice, and she shushed him with a laugh, mindful of the neighbors. "You said it. I hope she gave him the clap, too."
Tovah looked at the table where the papers lay, then down at her faithful pooch. "It's bedtime."
Max yawned and put his head back into her hand. Tovah put her face to the dog's soft fur, smelling faintly of shampoo. She closed her eyes and took what comfort she could from knowing that if nothing else, she was the world to this one creature.
He took her up against a wall, hard and fast. No speaking. Tovah touched the lines of his face, heard the rough hoarseness of his breathing. They climaxed together, him with a shout and her with a sigh.
It was easy to tilt the wall behind her until she lay upon it, easier still to shape hard brick into a soft mattress. They lay upon it together, both still breathing fast. So far, neither of them had said a word.
"Tell me what I needed," Tovah said. A challenge.
Her lover turned on his side to stretch out along her body. Warmth from his skin kept the chill from her better than any blanket. He ran his hand over her body.
"To feel wanted."
This perfect answer hit so close to home she gasped with it and sat, turning from him. Tovah pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, pushing back tears. She wished she hadn't asked.
He touched her hip and drew her closer, back toward him. He spooned against her. His breath caressed the back of her neck and stirred the tumbled length of her hair.
"Is it so wrong?" he asked finally. Softly. "Why should you be ashamed of something so many people want?"
She couldn't explain to him that she didn't want a guide. She wanted a lover. A real person to hold her. To want her.
Her lover said nothing when she didn't answer. He stroked over her hip, then up again, each touch meant to calm her. The subtle tug and pull of his will tried to soothe her, and after a while, she let it. She let him take away the tension and the grief, let him surround her instead with calm.
She turned to look at him at last. "You always have a different face, but I still know it's you."
He smiled. "I'm whatever you want."
She teased his hair from golden to midnight and shaped his eyes from green to gold. "What about what you want?"
He shrugged and kissed her. Against her mouth, he murmured, "I'm not concerned with my physical representation."
"Why not?" She sat again but without drawing away.
He sat, too. "Because it doesn't matter what I look like. It matters how I behave. Doesn't it?"
He cocked his head to look at her. His features stilled, frozen by her will, and he smiled and didn't fight her. Tovah gave him perfect arched brows and blue-green eyes, a full mouth and two dimples.
"It's distracting," she said after a moment, though the result was perfect.
He passed a hand over his face like a mime using the motion to change expression. "Only because you let it be."
"I thought you were supposed to give me what I want," Tovah said, annoyed.
"What you need." Her lover smiled. "Guides give you what you need, remember? Even when you don't know you need it?"
Tears stung again and she blinked against them. She lifted her chin, stubborn, feeling an urge to argue. "Okay. So give me what I need."
She thought he would make love to her again. Make her breathless. Make her forget there was a real life that failed her.
Instead, he drew her close and linked his fingers with hers. He held them tight in his, held her against his body, her head upon his shoulder. He embraced her, skin on skin, and though his lips pressed against her neck, the kiss was one of comfort and not seduction.
It was exactly what she needed.
"Where's your friend?" The witchwoman's words were not cruel, but her tone was. She leered in the doorway.
The boy said nothing. He watched the dogman pacing, its fists clenching and sometimes creeping to the tools on its belt. Drool, thick white curds of it, curdled in the corners of its mouth. It smelled bad.
"Don't you know there's nobody for you?" The witchwoman put herself between the boy and the dogman, forcing him to look at her, instead. "Maybe you'd like it better if I let him have you? Would you like that?"
She snapped and the dogman turned. It squatted by her side so she could pat its head. Like a pet. The boy shuddered and withdrew. He was so tired his eyes felt like he'd rubbed sand into them, but he dared not close them.
"Do you want him?" the witchwoman asked the dogman, who growled low in its throat. Her fingers stroked over coarse fur. "Do you want to bite that boy? Make him bleed?"
The dogman's growl revved like an engine. Like laughter. It lunged forward, snapping at the boy's feet.
With a cry, the boy jerked out of reach, his eyes closing and hands thrusting forward. Pushing. Pushing. Wishing he could run and knowing he had no place to go.
The soft sigh of the heating vents, the feeling of paper against her fingers, those were the sensations Tovah associated with the Ephemeros when she visited Henry. Tovah hovered on the edge of sleep, not really tired enough to doze but forcing herself to try for Spider's sake. Visiting his waking body didn't mean much if he wasn't awake.
"You know," she said, stretching as she almost always did when first entering the dream world. "I do have better things to do with my Sunday afternoons, Spider."
"Tovah. Hi."
Spider's body had blocked her view of Ben, lying on his back, arms and legs spread. He got to his feet, smiling cautiously. His body left an imprint in the blue grass.
"Is there a reason why the grass is blue?" She was determined this shouldn't be awkward.
Ben looked down. The grass became green. He looked back at her with an easier smile. "That better?"
"I don't care what color it is, really. I just wondered if there was a reason it was blue."
"Ben's not so good at color." Spider turned, eight legs moving with precision. "It's the first to go when he's got anything else to do. For Tovah it's the edges."
He sounded like a parent describing his children's strengths and weaknesses. Tovah frowned, annoyed. "Are the edges that important?"
"Depends what's on them," Spider said.
Tovah looked at them, back and forth. "Was I interrupting something?"
"No." Spider's colors swirled. Today he was blindingly blue and orange.
"Psychedelic." Tovah pointed. "What's up with the headache waiting to happen?"
Ben had reached to pluck up a handful of the grass that had become blue again. "Spider's been helping me shape, that's all. He's probably tired."
This was not a good enough explanation. She pushed forward to put her arm around Spider's thick body. He felt hot. She looked into the topmost pair of red eyes. "What's going on?"
She felt it again, at once, swift as the crack of a whip and with the same painful sting. The Ephemeros shook around them. The grass vanished, replaced by cracked and sand-scoured rock. In the distance, black mountains surged forth. There was no longer any delineation between sky and earth, nothing to keep them anchored but the small patch of ground on which they stood.
Ben grabbed her and Spider. She grabbed Ben. The three of them clung together, a triangle of resistance against the onslaught. Spider trembled, shrinking until he could fit in Tovah's palm. She curled her arm against her body, sheltering him from the wind whipping around them. Ben's arm tightened on her.
"Why is this happening?" she cried over the howling wind snarling her hair into a tangle.
Familiar but long-forgotten terror sank its teeth into her.
Somewhere:
Somewhere, a child sobbed at the sound of the closet door creaking open.
Somewhere, lovers turned their backs to one another and dreamed of a stranger's caress.
Somewhere, a sharp blade flashed and brought blood.
"Shape a haven." Spider's voice sounded like it came from far away. "Together."
Ben took her hand, their fingers linking and squeezing tight. She looked at him, his face grim, mouth pressed tight together. She was too terrified to be ashamed of her fear, of the way it had sent her back to every nightmare she'd ever had. Was the entire Ephemeros suffering the way she did? Was everyone in the world?
"Shape with me," Ben said.
She heard him though his mouth didn't move, understood what he wanted though he hadn't spoken. Her fingers clamped hard enough to bruise. But she nodded. And shaped.
Together, the three of them, they made a haven. A small one, barely able to stand against whatever was pushing its fury and terror around them, but they did it. For a moment, at least, until the Ephemeros reared up again, prying apart their shelter and tossing it aside.
It was like being on a ship caught in a storm, no place to go. Nothing safe to hold. Every nightmare she'd ever had rammed at Tovah. She knew they weren't real but couldn't stop herself from screaming at the sight of sharp teeth, razor blades, at the feeling of falling. At the memory of screeching metal and heat, the smell of smoke, the sting of a needle.
Of waking to find the bandages on what was left of her leg.
"Wake up," Spider said from her palm. "Get out of here, Tovah. Wake up, girly! Wake up!"
But she couldn't. There was no exit light, no portal through which she could escape. Tovah felt Spider in her hand, felt Ben's fingers against hers, but even those sensations were fading in the face of the images, sounds and smells attacking her.
"Wake up!"
Spider fell, and she screamed for him, clutching, and was unable to find him again.
"Wake up!"
Ben's hand tore from her grip, and she was alone.
"Wake up!"
Hands shook her.
Tovah came awake with a strangled shout, pushing at the hands on her shoulders. It took her several seconds to realize she was awake, that the shaking hands belonged to Dr. Goodfellow, that she was in Henry's room at the Sisters of Mercy and not alone in her bed.
She was awake.
Heart pounding, breathing fast, sweat coating her face and palms, Tovah sat up straight on the sticky vinyl chair. Dr. Goodfellow stepped back, releasing her. She clutched her sweater around her, though she was embarrassed, not cold.
"You were dreaming," he said.
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
"Must've been a doozy."
Again, a nod. She swallowed and found her voice. "Yes. It was."
He looked sympathetic. "You look like you could use a drink. Let me get you some water."
He was pouring it before she could protest. He pressed the plastic cup of lukewarm water, poured from the pitcher on Henry's nightstand, into her hand. Tovah sipped it, though her stomach churned in the aftermath. After a moment she put the cup aside and looked up at him.
"I'm sorry," she said. The terror was fading the way dreams did. She looked at Henry in his bed, unmoving. He hadn't woken. Was he still living it?
"Don't be sorry. Dreams happen. It's not like you could control it or anything." He stopped. Looked at her closely.
Tovah looked away, unable to meet his eyes. "Thanks for the water."
"I could exchange it for a coffee, if you're interested." He sounded a little hesitant, then got bolder. "We could go across the street again."
She looked up with a small smile. "That sounds good."
"I have a break coming to me." He looked at Henry, then put a hand on the man's shoulder for a moment. Henry didn't move. Dr. Goodfellow looked back at Tovah. "If you don't want to---"
"No," she said, surprising herself. "I'd like to. Across the street sold me."
His laugh sounded like it surprised him. "Good. I mean...that's good. I'm glad."
They shared a smile, and she stood. She hadn't checked for the pins and needles tingling, and the floor slid under her. Dr. Goodfellow caught her and kept her from falling.
"Thanks," she said, embarrassed again.
Finding himself with an armful of female seemed to embarrass him too. Pink crept up over his cheeks as his arms tightened around her for a moment. He set her firmly on her feet and then let her go.
They didn't talk much on the way across the parking lot, though she caught him giving her surreptitious glances. She smiled when he reached to take her elbow as they stepped off the curb to cross the street. It was a brief touch, meant to steady, and he seemed to make it automatically. The pressure of his fingers remained even after he'd taken his hand away.
He held the door open for her, too, and waited until she'd scooted into the diner booth before he took the seat opposite her. He let her order first and when the food came, he waited until she'd lifted her fork before he picked up his own. Tovah noticed his consideration but tried not to let herself think it meant anything more than good manners.
"I'm worried about Henry."
Tovah paused with her fork of macaroni salad halfway to her mouth, then put it down. "Something's changed?"
Dr. Goodfellow shook his head. "Nothing's changed. That's why I'm worried. He's not responding to anything any longer. Treatments and medications that used to have an effect on him are doing nothing. He's remained in a catatonic state for the past two weeks without any sign of acknowledging his surroundings. And yet I feel...I know he's in there, somewhere. If I could just get to him."
His conviction touched her. "He's in there, Dr. Goodfellow."
He looked up at that with a familiar look of faint surprise. "I wish you'd call me Martin."
The offer pleased her, and she nodded. "Okay. Martin."
He added sugar to his tea by tearing open each packet precisely along its short side and tipping the contents into the glass. He did it three times, each the same way, his motions so exact as to be almost hypnotizing.
Tovah looked up. He'd caught her staring. Their eyes met and held for a moment, and he was the one to break the sudden silence.
"Can I call you Tovah?"
"Of course. Absolutely." She nodded and fought the urge to duck her head.
Martin's smile moved from tentative to certain. "It means good."
"Yes," she said, surprised.
"Martin means warrior," he offered. He stirred the tea until the sugar dissolved. His glance was amused. "My parents were optimists."
He'd charmed her. "Your parents wanted a warrior?"
Martin put aside the spoon and stacked the empty sugar packets neatly. "I think they wanted a fighter. Yes."
She studied him a moment before answering. "Why do you think they wanted a fighter?"
Martin shrugged, looking away. "Isn't that what boys are supposed to do?"
"It depends on what sort of fighting you're talking about, I guess." Tovah sipped from her own glass.
He looked back at her. "I wish your friend would fight."
Tovah didn't have to think twice about answering that. "Me too."
Martin nodded then, as if her answer pleased him, and the conversation turned to other things.
"I never thought I'd say this, but I'm off Justin Ross." Kelly swigged water as she walked a little faster on the treadmill.
Tovah was adjusting her own program and paused at the revelation. "What? I thought it was true love!"
"Well...you're going to think this is weird, but ever since I had that dream about him, I just can't look at him the same way."
Tovah didn't laugh, though she could tell Kelly was expecting her to. "Why not?"
"Well...I just feel bad. We were all chasing him. He's just a kid, really. All those women running after him, wanting to dive into his pants like we were ravening wolverines? Mmm...Wolverine."
Tovah laughed this time. "You're incorrigible."
"Encouragable. You know it." Grinning, Kelly shook her head. She sighed after a second. "Anyway. He's adorable and all that, but now when I look at him I just sort of want to pinch his cheeks. The ones on his face."
Tovah snorted. "Dreams aren't real, Kelly."
Kelly swiped sweat from a furrowed brow. "Yeah. I know."
Tovah gave her a curious look. "Are you all right?"
"Sure. Just...bad dreams. I'm tired today."
Tovah's treadmill slowed, nearing the end of her workout, and gratefully she stepped off. Her thighs ached. "What sort of bad dreams?"
Kelly, too, got off her machine and swigged more water before answering. "Did you ever have a dream that didn't seem like it should be scary but really was?"
Together they headed for the locker room. Tovah didn't have to think hard about her answer. "Of course. Something that seems sort of silly when you wake up but scares the bejesus out of you when you're under? Yes."
Kelly nodded. In the harsh fluorescent light of the locker room, she looked pale, eyes circled with shadows. She laughed, but it sounded forced. "Well, I had a dream like that last night."
Tovah paused in taking out her shower basket as Kelly sat abruptly on the low bench in front of their lockers. She sat too. "Want to tell me about it?"
Kelly nodded again, slowly, her expression guarded. "It's silly."
"Try me."
"I was at the beach," Kelly said. "Swimming. Somehow, I knew there could be no sharks in the water, because they'd strung up those nets. You know, like they do in Australia?"
Kelly looked up, waiting until Tovah'd nodded before continuing.
"Anyway, I was swimming against the waves, letting them bounce me up and down. And then all at once there was this..." Kelly shuddered, the movement pronounced and sudden. She grimaced, as if something tasted bad.
Tovah waited.
"It's so silly!" Kelly cried, though her face showed she felt anything but silly.
"Tell me," Tovah said softly.
They had the locker room to themselves. With nobody else to overhear them, Kelly seemed to draw courage. She swiped at her face with her towel, though the sweat had already dried.
"It was a ball. A red-and-white ball."
Tovah reached for Kelly's hand on instinct, though she wasn't normally touchy-feely. "What happened, then?"
Kelly squeezed Tovah's fingers and laughed self-consciously. "Nothing."
"That was it?"
"Just the ball. It floated in the water. Up and down, up and down." Kelly shuddered again, but more like she was throwing off the residue of her fear than giving in to it again. "Like I told you. Stupid."
"And...nothing else?"
The red-and-white striped ball. The boy. The woman and the man with the dog's head. Tovah shivered.
Kelly looked curious. "No. Just that. Except that when I saw it, I felt like I was drowning. I woke up right away. Scared Frank half to death, poor guy. He was just coming in, and I sat straight up in bed screaming bloody murder. I even...well, I hit him, Tovah. Really hard. Gave him a nosebleed and everything. I didn't mean to, you know? But that dream...it took me a few minutes to get out of it. I thought he was something bad. My Frank, a bad guy! Can you believe it?"
Kelly's laugh teased one from Tovah, too. Relieved that her friend seemed better, she got up again to gather her shower equipment. She pulled the folded piece of heavy vinyl lined with Velcro around the top and shook it out until it fell straight. At home she'd have taken off her prosthetic, but this would protect it from the water long enough for her to rinse off. It was easier and attracted less attention than actually removing her leg would have.
"Well," Tovah said firmly, "it was just a dream."
Kelly nodded, her laugh this time fake. "Oh, I know. But it felt..."
Tovah waited, but Kelly didn't continue. "What?"
Kelly shook her head and shrugged. "When I woke up, I felt like it was all still happening. Only nothing happened, right? But it was all happening, it was all real. I saw that ball and the world was going to just...fall apart. Lame, I know, right? Poor Frank. He's lucky I didn't give him a shiner."
"Super lame," Tovah said, mocking fondly, even though she didn't mean it.
She knew what Kelly had felt, about the world falling apart. This was bad. Very bad. And there was nothing she could do about it right now...or maybe ever.
"So...what happened last week?" Kelly's bright smile and knowing wink left no question as to what she meant. She seemed to have recovered from sharing the nightmare. "After me and Pete left?"
Tovah hadn't even been thinking about that. "Oh. Nothing."
"Do you mean nothing as in you're not going to tell me because I'm nosy, nothing? Or...really nothing?"
"Really nothing." Tovah followed Kelly to the large open shower. In moments steam wreathed them.
"But he was so into you!"
"Yeah, apparently not."
"But...Pete said John thought you were really funny and hot!"
"Apparently only as long as he thought I was putting out." She scrubbed her face under the water.
"Men," Kelly huffed. "Sex-crazed weasels. What a jerk!"
"It's okay."
"You are way less upset than you should be, that's all. Might it have something to do with a certain doctor?"
"Martin?"
"Ooh," Kelly said, rinsing quickly and turning off the water. "First name basis. Niiiiiice."
Tovah turned off her water, too, and wrapped her towel around her. "Stop it."
"Stop what?" Kelly made a face of mock innocence. "One day he's Dr. Feelgood---"
"Goodfellow!" Tovah laughed. "His last name's Goodfellow."
"Yes, but now he's Maaaaartin." Kelly drew the name out, making it sound lecherous. "And you have a date with him."
She paused, staring as Tovah made her way back to the locker and began drying herself. "Oh, wait...you had a date with him? Didn't you! Spill it!"
"No!" Tovah protested. "It wasn't a date. We just had lunch together, that's all. I was visiting Henry and he was there, and..."
"He asked you to lunch?"
"Yes." Tovah grabbed her clothes.
"He paid?"
He had, actually, but Tovah felt funny admitting it. "He's a gentleman."
"Date," said Kelly in triumph. She whistled under her breath and shook her hips in an impromptu bump and grind. "And you're seeing him again when?"
"Friday afternoon. He's looking at the house then. And it's just coffee," Tovah said, before Kelly could interject. "He likes coffee."
Kelly stared a bit, then concentrated on pulling on her clothes. "He was a cheater, wasn't he?"
"Who? Martin?" Tovah paused in buttoning her shirt. It took her a second to get it. "Oh. Kevin. Yes, he was."
"Bastard." One of Kelly's best qualities was her unquestioning loyalty.
"There was a lot going on." Tovah had made a habit of excusing Kevin, though she hated it.
Kelly's look told her there could be no excuse in her mind. "Does that matter?"
"No. I guess it doesn't."
Kelly looked at Tovah's left leg. "He left you because of that?"
"Does anyone ever leave because of just one thing?"
Kelly paused, then shrugged. "I don't know. I guess not."
"Anyway, technically I asked him to move out." Tovah sighed. "It was a bad time for me. I was in the hospital for so long with my injuries and he couldn't deal with it. And then...things just went sour. I went a little crazy."
"Who wouldn't?" Kelly said firmly.
"I mean I really did." Tovah took a slow, deep breath. "I'm talking meds crazy. I was in the Sisters of Mercy Hospital for about six months."
Kelly, bless her, didn't seem fazed. "Did it help you?"
"Yes."
"Then that's what matters. And you're free of your cheating ex-bastard."
"If only." She outlined the sordid tale of settlements and payments.
"God," said Kelly. "No wonder you don't want to date."
Tovah laughed loudly, grateful for a friend who understood and didn't push her all the time. "Every time I think I might want to, I realize just how much of a pain in the ass it is."
Kelly nodded, then reached to squeeze Tovah's shoulder. "Have you been with anyone since Kevin?"
It felt like a lie to answer no, but that's what she said.
"Because you're nervous."
Tovah didn't have to pretend otherwise. "Of course. It's bad enough getting naked for the first time with someone and worrying about belly blubber and thunder thighs...but..."
"Anyone who cares about you won't care. You know that."
"Yeah," Tovah said with a shrug. "That's the problem, isn't it? Finding that person?"
Kelly gave Tovah's shoulder another squeeze. "You will."
Tovah smiled, wishing she could tell her friend the truth, that she had found someone like that.
He just wasn't real.
Gray skies, a heavy blanket and the soporific drone of a classic drama on the television all argued against wakefulness. Tovah, who'd been rubbing her stump with oil and doing all the adjustments to her prosthetic to make sure it stayed in working order, put aside the small bundle of tools and the bottle of lotion with a sigh. Her head fell back onto the couch.
"Just a little nap, Max."
The dog didn't bother lifting his head from his own sleep to comment on hers. Tovah sighed again, content in the warmth of the blanket and softness of the cushions. The phantom pains that had plagued her off and on all week trickled away. She closed her eyes.
She wandered for a while, hesitant to settle into one place that might be changed out from under her. The Ephemeros had betrayed her, badly, and it was hard to trust its promises again. She passed scenes half-finished, their occupants caught up in their own dramas that had nothing to do with her. Their wills tugged at her, some of them more urgently than others. Some needed guides. She ignored them all. She wasn't much in the mood for interaction.
She did make a net of her will and cast it out, hoping to catch Spider, but once again he eluded her. If he didn't want to be found, he wouldn't.
The waking world came close but didn't touch her. She knew where she was, heard the blah-blah of the television and saw light pressing her eyelids. She wasn't down deep, but it was enough.
She sensed him before she saw him. A trickle of familiar will, a thread of desire she recognized. She stopped wandering and opened herself to the ebb and flow of the Ephemeros around her. Waiting.
It was impossible to know how long it took him to arrive, but when the gray veils parted, shifting and firming into a set scene, Tovah had been asleep long enough for the movie to end and another begin. They were in a park, now, with a nice wood-and-iron bench and a fountain. A stream, too. Ben's familiar touch. He liked the sound of running water.
He was fishing again. He stopped when he saw her, like he was surprised. It stung, a little, the way he so clearly wanted to avoid her. She saw it in the hesitation of his step and his wary gaze.
"Hi, Ben."
He nodded and looked toward the fountain. "That's very nice."
Until he said so, she hadn't noticed, but as soon as she did she understood that she'd shaped it. Not him. "Thanks."
He shoved his hands deep into his pockets. "How've you been?"
"Fine. You?" Tovah sat on the bench. Its curved metal was cold and hard and bit into the backs of her thighs, a discomfort she allowed for a moment before shaping it away.
"Fine."
Ben cleared his throat. "So...what've you been up to?"
Tovah's mouth twisted on her answer. "According to you and Spider, nothing important."
It was a mean thing to say, and she got no satisfaction from the slightly guilty look he shot her. His answer, though, surprised her. "Yeah. I can be a little bossy."
She huffed a little, not willing to concede even though it wasn't gracious of her. "A little?"
A small smile tugged the corner of his mouth. "I'm not as bad as Spider. C'mon. He's frustrated me, too."
She'd seen the way Ben worked hard to strengthen his shaping skills. Spider wasn't always the one pushing him. "You work hard."
Ben looked around. "Not hard enough. There are still people I can't help."
She studied him. "That's always going to be true, Ben."
Even though he nodded, she didn't miss the way his fists clenched as he shoved them deep into his pockets. "Yeah. Maybe."
"There's no rule that says you have to save everyone you try to guide, you know. Spider says we dream what we're meant to dream."
Ben looked at her. She noticed, for the first time, faint lines at the corners of his eyes. "What about us, then?"
Tovah shook her head. "I'm not sure what you mean."
Ben gestured. "This. Us. Shapers. If we're supposed to dream what we're meant to, where does that leave us? If we can shape anything we want and unshape what we don't, what does that mean?"
Once said aloud, the words made such utter sense Tovah couldn't believe she'd never thought of it herself. "But...we are dreaming this, Ben. This is all a dream."
He shook his head with a small scowl. "Sleepers dream both good and bad things. Sometimes they need someone to help them through. Find a conclusion. Solve a problem. Sometimes they just need to be rescued. Spider says we don't have to know why, just that they do."
He looked up at her. "What was the last dream you had before you knew you could shape?"
"I don't remember." Tovah shrugged, watching as he paced. "Do you?"
Ben shook his head. "No."
"So maybe this is what we're meant to be doing. For whatever reason." Tovah offered the suggestion quietly. He seemed so vehement. "Maybe Spider's right, Ben. There's a reason for everything that happens here. We just can't know it."
"Why not? God doesn't want us to?" He laughed derisively and sneered the word God. He waved a hand around them. "Sorry. I don't buy it."
"Are we back to that? I'm not going to try to convince you it's any sort of god, Ben."
He peered at her. "Good."
"In fact," she said, getting up from the bench, "I'm not going to argue with you."
"Tovah---"
She held up a hand to stop him. "No. I don't come here to fight with you. And I'm not going to. You don't like me. I get it, okay? I don't need it spelled out for me."
He tried again, saying her name, but Tovah dismissed him again. "Bye, Ben."
"Tovah, wait!"
She didn't wait. She left him behind. It should've been easier; she'd put worse behind her, after all. Even so, she looked over her shoulder at him just before she shaped herself away.
When she looked ahead again, she stood in the middle of a church. The scent of incense tickled her nostrils. Shafts of light pierced the stained glass, illuminating the lifted hands of the saints. She wasn't alone. Penitents bent their heads in several long benches as the priest in full vestments murmured ancient words from the altar.
She was in a field of flowers, surrounded by mountains.
She was in a classroom, about to take a test for which she hadn't studied.
A playground.
A treehouse, looking down at the world below.
And then she was in a quiet room, on a plush couch, wearing a long silk robe and smelling roses.
Tovah sighed, reclining a little. Soft fabric caressed her skin. Tension eased.
"Hello, sweetheart."
She smiled. "Hi."
Her lover approached on swift, silent steps and knelt before her. He put his head into her lap, and her hands came up to caress his short dark curls. His breath pushed against her thighs through the silk.
"How do you always know where I am?" she asked after a moment.
He tilted his face to look at her. "I can feel you wanting me."
"That's very convenient," she teased. She traced the rim of each brow and the slope of his nose. "And clever. Surely you have better things to do here than find me."
His smile warmed her. "Better than making love to you? Never."
Tovah laughed, tipping back her head. He climbed her body and captured her mouth, stealing the laughter and giving it back to her at once. They laughed together, until he bent to nip her throat and she gasped. He licked her skin, his hands sliding up over silk to cup her breasts.
"It feels good to know you want me," he murmured.
Pleasure built slowly, and she didn't try to rush it. There was plenty of time. Her lover eased his lips and tongue over her skin, finding all the places that best pleased her. Tovah shivered, her body tensing and releasing. Bright sparkles of delicious tension surrounded her, hovering like butterflies. Or stars. She was covered in stars.
Stars covered him, too, until his nakedness gleamed with silver and gold. Even his hair turned to gold and she ran her fingers through it as his face pressed against her. He nuzzled her skin. His hands pulled her closer. He looked up at her.
He had blue eyes, now, and she smiled at him. "Why don't you ever stay the same?"
"Would you like that better?" He kissed her mouth. "If I was always the same?"
She kissed him, too. "I don't know."
The couch had become a bed, just as soft but with much more room. She lay back, pulling him with her. He stretched out over her, his body hard where hers was soft. He kissed her jaw and throat. His teeth pressed her lightly as he took a mouthful of her and sucked gently.
"Tovah, I thought you understood. Nothing holds you back here. You can be whatever, whoever you want. Always. All the time."
She rolled onto her side to look at him. When she reached to touch his cheek, her lover caught her hand and kissed her palm. He closed her fingers over the spot, which burned a little.
"I know that," she said. "I do."
"Then why not let yourself do it?" He seemed genuinely curious. He took the hand he held and put it to his chest. "Feel that. My heart beats because I tell it to."
The pulse-thump under her fingers stopped. Alarmed, she tried to pull back her hand, but his kept hers prisoner. His skin was still warm. He kissed her. The familiar beat began again. Thump. Thump. Thump.
"See?"
Her own heart had sped its rhythm, her body's innate reaction and not something she did on purpose. "You have more control than I do."
"You can have what I have."
She shook her head. Her hair fell over her shoulders and across her breast. He brushed it away. His fingers cupped her. His touch still sent ripples of sensation through her, and she moved closer.
"What do you really look like?" she asked.
"Why does it matter?" He smiled, disarming her.
Why did it matter, really? Except that she'd had lovers in the Ephemeros before, but never more than once. This man...this lover...
"I don't know," she admitted, feeling foolish. "I shouldn't try to control you."
"Tell me what you want, and I'll be it," he said. "You might find you like the variety."
Blond hair, green eyes. Brown eyes. Black eyes.
She laughed. "I might. But as long as they're all you---"
"All me." He kissed her again. "I know what you want, don't I?"
His hands crept over her, stroking.
"Yes." She shuddered. Need filled her, rushing into the empty spaces inside. "Yes, you do."
"Then let me give it to you. Don't ask why. Don't question a gift."
"Is this something I need, again?" she asked, sly, as her body responded to his touch.
Her lover laughed and mouthed her shoulder. "Something we both need."
"I need you inside me," she said.
He looked into her eyes. "Say it again."
"I need you inside me. All the way inside me."
"I think I can oblige."
He shifted his weight and sank into her with a smooth, slow motion. His pelvis nudged hers. His first thrust took an eternity as he pulled out and pushed in, settling against her.
"You fit me just right. And I don't have to do anything to make it so, it just is." His slightly formal tone was like a burr on silk, ragged and a bit out of place, but making interesting patterns all the same. He moved inside her, propped on his arms to hold himself upright.
Then there were no more words. The world around them blurred at the edges, unnoticed and unneeded. Her lover pulled her close, turning them so she was astride him. They paused, settling this way. His hands held her hips. Tovah looked down at him. The chest beneath her hands was smooth, with twin dark nipples. His belly, taut and covered with hair thickening around the base of his cock. The thighs beneath her ass were hard with muscle. He might not look the same all the time, but those changes were minor and cosmetic. The man beneath was the same, and it didn't matter how he represented.
"What's wrong?" he asked when she stopped moving.
This wasn't love. She couldn't fall in love with someone she didn't really know. This was pleasure and passion, the fulfillment of needs.
"Nothing's wrong," she said.
Passion and pleasure. Her body wanted it. So did her mind. Tovah moved and her lover followed, each motion point and counterpoint. He groaned and the sound of his desire called out her own small gasp. Together they collapsed onto the bed, much solider now that it had become necessary. A room formed around them, small and not so lushly appointed as the ones he'd formed for them in the past.
After a second, she realized it was because she had shaped this place. No billowing curtains or aphrodisiacs or flickering candles. Bare walls, a soft place to lie and the warmth of her lover beside her. Those were the important things. To test herself, she opened the ceiling to reveal a nighttime sky littered with stars.
He turned on his side to pull her close, spooning. It took a moment for her to relax, but she did. He smelled good, not of stale sex. She smiled.
"What?" he murmured into her hair. "You're laughing."
"I'm not laughing. I'm just thinking."
"About what?"
"This is nice, that's all."
His hand rested flat on her belly. "It is nice."
The in-out of their breathing met and matched. Tovah drew her knees closer to her, rubbing the left one absently. It didn't hurt, but sometimes having it here felt as awkward as missing it did in the waking world.
"Most people don't bother with this part," she said. "The afterward."
"You mean sleepers?"
She rolled to look at him. "I guess so. Yes. I mean, to them this isn't real. Well, it's not real."
He didn't laugh with her, this time. "Of course it's real."
"I mean...at least for them, it doesn't seem real. It doesn't last."
"Does something have to last to be real?" He reached to grab her hip a little too hard. "Doesn't this feel real?"
"It feels real now," she said. "But when I wake up I'll only have a memory of it. It doesn't last."
He kissed her slowly, squeezing her hip and stealing her breath. He pulled away, searching her gaze with his. "It wouldn't in the waking world, either. What makes it more real there, than here?"
"It just is," she said, and sat. "I don't know why."
He sat too. "Then you're not much better than a sleeper, even if you can shape."
He made it sound like an insult, and she frowned. She gathered the folds of her robe from the Ephemeros around her and pulled it over her nakedness. "You make that sound bad."
"Would you like to go back to it? Never knowing your potential?" He got out of bed. Tall, lean, unconcerned with his nudity, he stood before her. "Then again, if you never explore it, what use is it? You might as well never have learned you could shape at all."
"That's not fair!" she protested. "I practice! I learn! Just because I don't want to be a guide---"
"I'm not talking about being a guide." Her lover knelt before her and clasped her hands.
Startled, she tried to pull away but he held her fast. "What are you talking about then?"
"I'm talking about the way you tie yourself to this form. This one way of thinking. I bet you're like that in the waking world, too. Afraid." His lip curled, just a little. "Scared to take chances."
Her throat tightened as emotion rushed through her, sharp as knives. "You don't even know me."
"Tell me I'm wrong."
She shook her head, pulling at his hands now encircling her wrists. "Let me go."
"You can be free of me. All you have to do is shape it."
"You're stronger than I am."
He pushed her back without letting go of her wrists. Looming over her, he brought his mouth close to hers, but didn't kiss. "Is that what you'd say if someone tried this in the waking world? You'd just lie back and take it? Let someone put their hands on you like this?"
He let go of a hand to grab her hip again, harder even than before.
"Stop it!" Tovah shoved him back, hard, adding the force of her will to her physical push.
Her lover let go and moved back. He smiled. "Look around you."
The room had lost its walls. The entire world revolved around them, earth, sky, sea. He pointed outward, to the line of dark mountains along the horizon.
"What is that?"
"A mountain," Tovah said.
"No. It's an obstacle. Would you climb a mountain in the waking world?"
"I---" She refused to say she could not. She could. Her disability did not mean she couldn't climb a mountain. It might make it more difficult than it might otherwise have been, but it would not keep her from doing it.
Only she could do that.
"Climb that mountain without falling, and you'll learn something about yourself," her lover said. "Something real. Something that will last."
The gust of his breath caressed her from behind. After a second, the pressure of his hand on her shoulder turned her to face him. She didn't want to, but she did, and it had nothing to do with him shaping her to do it.
"I don't even know you," she whispered miserably.
"But you trust me," he said in a gentler voice. "Why don't you ask yourself why?"
Tovah shook her head. Her hair fell over her face, covering her from his gaze. Her lover, the stranger with many faces, pulled her close. He smelled the same as he always did. His hand stroked over her hair.
"You won't even tell me your name!" The accusation burst from her throat without warning. "I don't even have anything to call you. And you look different every fucking time I see you!"
He said nothing, for a time. Somewhere, eyes were trying to open. Her bladder had filled, her stomach emptied, her dog would be nosing her hand. The waking world tugged her with supple, ignorable fingers, but it wouldn't be ignored for long.
"Why don't you call me Edward?"
She lifted her face to look at him. "Is that your name?"
"It could be. If you wanted it to be."
She stared. "You're an asshole, you know that?"
"It's my name, Tovah. Call me Edward." His hand stroked the tangled strands of her hair and came to rest on her shoulder.
"What do you really look like, Edward?"
"I look like anything you want most."
She sighed, frustrated, fists clenching. "Goddammit!"
"You want me to fix myself to one face? One body? No matter how I represent, I'm the same person inside. It's the man inside you want, not my eyes or mouth or cock. Well," he amended, grabbing up her hand and putting it to his half-hard erection. "Maybe it is my cock."
Her anger had fled. Her stomach rumbled. One more minute, perhaps, until she woke. "Edward. I want to know what you look like, that's all."
"Tovah," he said. "If it pleases you better I'll stay that way every time we meet unless you say you want something else."
"That's not---"
"Hurry," he said mildly. "It's close to time, for you."
"But it won't be your face!" she cried, frustrated. "It won't really be you!"
"It'll be the me you want the most," he assured her. "Think of all the faces I've had. Pick one. Any one of them is as to the other for me."
It wasn't the first time she'd noticed the formal, somehow medieval tone of his language. "Edward---"
The waking world called her and she fought it, wanting one more minute. A second. A moment...
Sunlight stabbed her eyes and, wincing, she awoke. Max woofed from the doorway, demanding his breakfast. The blanket tangled around her ankle. Sweat dampened her pajamas. She'd slept the night through on the couch.
She didn't notice the bruises until she was out of the shower. Four perfect oblongs on the back of her hip and a smaller one in front.
A hand.
Tovah wasn't much for peeking out windows, but she couldn't help herself. Martin's appointment had been set for the afternoon, but evening was already creeping into the sky and he still hadn't arrived. With her work to keep her occupied, Tovah managed to keep from checking the clock every five minutes, but when another hour passed with no sign of action from next door, she gave up and went to the kitchen to start Shabbat dinner.
Maybe he'd cancelled. Maybe he'd found another place to live. The house next door was probably overpriced. Hell, she knew it was. He'd probably found something he liked more, in a better neighborhood.
Her hands smashed and kneaded ground beef into a simple meatloaf that she put into the oven along with some red potatoes and a green bean casserole. It was silly to make so much just for herself, but she could eat the rest for lunches next week. She was not, she told herself, hoping for company.
Though of course she really was, and when she saw the dark car pull up next door there was no denying the way her heart fluttered suddenly. It didn't belong to the Realtor, who drove a kicky little Miata. This car had seen a lifetime of loving neglect. Dents, bumps, dirt, a missing hubcap. Not the car one might expect a doctor would drive, but when Martin unfolded himself from the driver's seat and closed the door with a careful shove, Tovah found it hard to imagine him in anything else.
He looked toward her house first, and she moved away from the window though he couldn't have seen her. She laughed at herself. Looking like she was hiding would have been more embarrassing than being caught staring.
The red Miata pulled in behind Martin's car. Beth Richards got out. It was interesting to watch the dance she did, patting down her hair and clothes and offering him her hand. They shook, and she gestured at the house next door. Martin nodded, and with another glance at Tovah's house, he followed the Realtor inside the home for sale.
They were in there a long time. As she wiped down counters and set the table and looked around her kitchen, trying to see how it would look to a stranger's eye, Tovah kept an eye out the window over her sink. Lights came on and went off next door as they moved through the house. She thought it was a good sign it was taking so long.
By the time her meatloaf was done, the lights next door had gone out. She looked out the window again. The red Miata was gone.
Her doorbell rang. Martin. Max leaped to life, woofing and galumphing down the hall to skid to a stop in front of the door. Tovah muscled him out of the way, into the living room, where she slid closed the pocket door to keep him from overpowering her visitor.
"Hi---" Max woofed from behind the door. Martin turned, startled as anyone would be by the enormous bark. "---I'm hoping it's not too late to take you up on your offer for coffee. Wow. What do you have behind that door, a wildebeest?"
"Something like that. And absolutely not. C'mon in." Tovah held the door open for him to step inside.
Max thudded against the pocket door, shaking it, then gave up and trotted around the dining room to the kitchen doorway, where he stood and woofed some more.
"Max, stay."
And for once, a miracle, Max obeyed. He barked again and backed up, shaking his head. Tovah looked at Martin in apology. "Sorry. He's very friendly."
"He's big."
"You're not a dog person, I take it?"
Martin hesitated, but then nodded. "I was bitten as a child."
Tovah grimaced. "Ouch. I'm sorry."
"It's okay." He shrugged and gave her a small smile. "I'm a big boy now."
She made a show of tilting her head to look up at him. Way up. He took up a lot of space in her narrow hallway. "No question about that!"
They laughed. She led him to the kitchen. "I actually was just getting ready to have dinner. I hope you'll stay."
He stared a moment, then nodded. When he smiled, it was like watching sunshine on water, small bright ripples spreading outward. He had a great smile. She was caught in it for a second before she pulled herself away and busied herself with taking the food to the table.
"Did you do all this for me?" he asked as she pulled her set of Shabbat candlesticks from the cupboard and placed the small white candles inside them.
"I wish I could impress you and say I did," Tovah said.
"You could say it anyway," Martin told her. "Flatter me."
She looked at him over her shoulder, pausing before lighting the match. "It's better than just coffee, isn't it?"
He smiled. "I think so."
She hesitated again. "I'm going to light candles. I hope you don't mind."
"Candles? Of course not."
After she said it she wondered if he thought she meant she was going to light them for some romantic purpose. She lit the candles and said the short blessing, then sat at the table and poured wine for both of them.
Martin watched her, curious. "This is nice. You do this every week?"
"Yes." She murmured the blessing over the wine and then the challah, tearing off a piece and dipping it into some salt, then giving it to him.
He took it and chewed. Tovah waited for the questions, but either he already knew about Shabbat or he didn't want to ask. Either way, his steady acceptance of the rituals Kevin had always scoffed was a relief. Like talking about her leg, Tovah didn't mind answering questions about her faith. She simply didn't want it to be all she was.
The conversation was easier between them than it had ever been. He had a good sense of humor and wasn't overbearing with it. He was smart and didn't seem intimidated by her being smart too. After an hour talking with him on subjects as varied as literature and thrift shopping, Tovah had stopped worrying about her hair and lipstick. It was easy talking to him. Easy and nice.
"Did you like the house?" she asked finally, when the coffee'd been served and the cookies she'd made for dessert began disappearing.
Martin nodded, mouth covered in crumbs. "Yes. Looks like we're going to be neighbors."
"Really? Wow." She stirred sugar into her cup of herbal tea.
"Yes. Thanks for guiding me to it. It's just what I was looking for." Martin brushed his mouth clean and sipped coffee.
Tovah looked up at his word choice. Guiding. She looked automatically at the clock, then away and back again, checking to make sure the numbers hadn't scrambled. Martin followed her gaze.
"It's late, huh? I'm keeping you up."
"No, no. It's not that." Tovah shook her head. She didn't want him to go. This was nice, sharing conversation and cookies over her worn kitchen table. "But of course, if you have to go---"
"No, I'm okay."
They both laughed. Martin ducked his head in a way she found totally endearing. Why was he so shy?
"Unless you want me to go," he added, and she bubbled with laughter.
"Martin," Tovah said.
He looked at her. "Yes, Tovah?"
"I think it's great you're going to be my neighbor."
That slow, bright smile rippled across his mouth again. "Me, too."
This was nice, she thought.
"This was nice," he said suddenly, echoing her thoughts. "Thanks."
"We'll have to do it again." She stood when he did.
They stared at each other over the table until he broke and inched toward the doorway. "Now it really is late. I've got to go."
He paused in the hallway to look at the row of photographs she hadn't yet bothered to take down. He turned to look at her, face open with curiosity. "This is you?"
He pointed at a snapshot of her and Kevin on their wedding day. It showed her laughing, head tipped back, as Kevin bent to kiss her hand. The photo had captured one perfect moment, one she couldn't even remember except for how it had been frozen in time by film. She'd put away all the formal pictures a long time ago, shoved the album in a box in the attic, but that picture had been too hard to take down.
"Yes. That was my husband, Kevin. We're getting divorced."
"I'm sorry." Martin looked embarrassed to have asked.
"Don't be." She smiled to ease the awkwardness.
Martin nodded twice, slowly, and looked like he meant to say more, but stopped himself. He headed for the front door, but paused. He looked back at her.
"What happened? Do you mind my asking?" Martin shook his head. "Never mind. It's none of my business. I'm sorry."
It wasn't his business, but his instant apology softened any retort she might have given. "We were in a bad car accident," she said. "Kevin was driving. I was permanently injured. Kevin was unable to deal with the consequences of what happened...and...the marriage ended. I'm told it happens a lot like that."
Martin looked out the front door to the ramp at the side of the porch, and more astutely, at the door itself. His eyes took in the brightly lit hall, the scuff-marked walls from where, clumsy and angry, she'd banged the arms of the wheelchair. It had only been a few times. She hadn't been in the chair long, but it had been long enough.
"What happened?" he asked again, quietly.
"He fell asleep at the wheel. We ran into a tractor-trailer parked on the side of the road. He suffered a concussion and walked away from the car. I...didn't."
He waited.
She lifted her chin. "My left leg was crushed beyond repair in several places. They had to remove it just above the knee."
Martin looked, as she'd known he would, immediately toward her leg and the foot showing beneath the hem of her long skirt. Then he looked up at her. "They did an excellent job fitting your prosthesis."
A doctor would say something like that, she thought. It wasn't the worst reaction she'd ever had. "I did my share of limping around until I found something that worked. But I'm happy with it, now."
As happy as she could be.
Martin nodded again, like he understood something she hadn't explained. "You're right. Lots of marriages don't last when something like that happens."
This wasn't what she expected him to say, and her stomach twisted like a fist had clutched it. Before she could respond, not that she knew what she was going to say, Martin spoke again.
"He was a fool, Tovah."
She still didn't know what to say, so only nodded as he had a moment before. "I know."
"And it's better to know that early on, when you still have time to live your life, than waiting until later."
This was still somehow so intimate an observation, so unexpected, she could only stand with her mouth parted to speak but with nothing to say.
While she gaped, he leaned in to take her hand, shaking it firmly as he barely brushed her cheek with a kiss. "Thanks for dinner. Good night," said Martin, suddenly cheery, and left her standing in the doorway.
"Good night," she managed after he'd already reached his car.
Tovah, hand cupped over her cheek like she meant to hold his kiss there, watched him drive away. She wasn't sure if she should squee or be insulted he'd kissed her the way a dutiful nephew busses a maiden aunt; the heat from his lips was still too distracting.
Max appeared at her side, pushing his shaggy head into the palm of her hand. "Hey, boy. Where'd you disappear to?"
Max woofed once, low. She scratched his ears and shut the door. Martin had kissed her. Kissed! Her!
Okay. It was a squee.
Breathless, Tovah pushed off the ground, her attention focused on the jutting rock of the mountainside. She hit the stone with a bone-jarring thud, teetered and nearly fell, but pinwheeled her arms and managed to keep her balance. She grabbed the rock and squatted, heart pounding, and looked down to the ground, which seemed twice as far away as it had been a moment ago. It probably was. Tovah didn't have quite enough control to keep all the details in line unless she was paying specific attention to them.
She searched for a handhold and found one, her fingers digging into the side of the mountain as her feet pushed into other cracks. Small pebbles broke away and fell past her. She moved another step, gained another inch. Dirt sifted into her hair and down the back of her collar, itching, but she didn't bother shaping it away.
She was going to find something real even if it killed her.
"Nice jump," said Spider from the rock in front of her. Eight crimson legs matched the wee rubies of his eyes, gleaming. Today he was about the size of a tarantula, with the same rounded, furry body segments, but the coloration was different. "When you gonna learn to fly?"
Tovah wiped sweat from her brow, realizing even as she did there was no reason for her to sweat. No need for exertion, for the thumping of her heart or her body to feel weariness. It was habit to represent this way. Easier to concentrate on what was going on around her if she didn't have to think about changing what felt most natural to her body.
"I don't need to learn to fly."
Spiders couldn't roll their eyes, but this one did. "Oh, and you really need to climb a mountain?"
"Hey. I don't see you soaring through the air with the greatest of ease." Tovah settled herself onto her butt, her back pressed up against the mountainside. Her feet dangled into nothingness. Apparently the ground below had become some sort of sea. Water misted her cheeks and the sound of waves rushed around her ears.
Spiders couldn't flip a bird, either, but this one managed. "I'm a spider, doll. I don't need to fly."
She laughed, peering over the edge. "I got up here. That's good."
"Now you gotta get down. You gonna jump?" Spider scuttled to the edge and looked over. His body pulsed with every breath. In real life, the sight of a spider that size would have made her squeal in disgust. Here she reached out a hand to pet him as she would a kitten. Spider's mandibles clattered. "You hitting on me?"
Tovah chuckled. "You want me to?"
Spider inched closer, his eight legs working seamlessly. The pattern on his legs shifted as he moved, becoming darker. His eyes, still red, reflected her face. At the feathery touch of one leg on her bare skin, Tovah shivered. Spider made a low chuffing noise, a laugh.
"Sorry," Tovah said. "It's the whole arachnid thing."
His head bobbed. "Yeah, yeah, grosses you out. I know."
Tovah had never asked Spider why he represented that way, instead of more like his human form. She thought it might be rude, but she did wonder.
"You seen Ben?"
"No." Let him make of that what he would.
"How come?"
Tovah glanced at him. "Ben and I...we don't get along, Spider."
He scoffed. "Bullshit."
Tovah didn't bother arguing about it. Ignoring how it felt for her not to see or talk to Ben might not be the best way to deal with the fight, but it was the easiest. Sometimes, you just had to walk away and keep walking away.
"Tovahleh, don't be like that."
"Like what?" she snapped, hating that Spider knew how to push her buttons. "We don't get along. That's the truth. Ben is what he is and I am what I am. Not everyone is destined to be BFF."
"If I knew what that meant," Spider said, "I might agree."
"Best Friends Forever," she told him. "Which Ben and I are not."
She stood on the ledge and stretched, flexing her muscles. She looked at the mountain looming so high above her. She wanted to be sure she'd shaped it with enough hand and footholds, but not so many it wasn't a challenge to climb. The advantage to doing this in the Ephemeros was that here she didn't need special equipment, just her own hands and feet. If she fell, she only had to shape a soft landing.
She gained a few more inches before he spoke again.
"You're wrong about him, you know. Ben," Spider added, as if she couldn't guess.
"I don't think so." She inched higher.
"I'm just saying maybe you should give him another chance."
She stopped for a moment to glare. "Oh. Sure. Make it my fault? Spider, it's okay. Not everyone has to like everyone else. Not even here."
Except...she did like Ben. A lot. She didn't necessarily like the way he seemed to go out of his way to needle her, but she still liked him. Too much. She blamed the memory of the kiss for that.
"There are things you don't know, Tovahleh."
"Spider," she said with a laugh. "There are plenty of things I don't know."
"About Ben."
Again she stopped climbing to look at him. This time, she glared. "Then it's up to Ben to tell me, isn't it? Not you."
She reached higher to find another handhold.
"Lots of people want to learn to fly." Now he was going for the casual commentary.
Tovah slipped her fingers into a crevice and found a stone protrusion with her foot. She looked at the top of the mountain. Almost there.
"I don't. Anyway, don't they say dreams about flying are signs of sexual frustration or something?"
"What half-assed psychology books have you been reading?" Spider's back undulated with a myriad of shimmering, mesmerizing colors.
Tovah admired his shaping ability for a moment before heaving herself a bit higher on the mountain. "None."
"You have a lot to learn about this place."
Annoyed, she glanced over her shoulder at him. "No shit, Sherlock."
"Touchy, touchy!" He skittered up the wall and squatted by her right hand, now scrabbling for purchase in a shallow crack. "Why not just shape it deeper?"
"Because that's cheating," she snapped. Sweat again ran into her eye, stinging, and she blew out a gust of air to flap her sodden bangs off her forehead. "I want to do this---"
"The hard way. I know. You always have to do it the hard way." Spider scuttled higher, around her, then jumped over her back.
Tovah ducked in reflex. Her foot slipped, sending a flurry of pebbles cascading down to the unseen earth below. Her heart lurched into her throat. "Goddammit, Spider! Quit showing off!"
Dreaming wasn't the same as imagining. Awake, she could imagine falling, and her fear would be imagined, as well. Here it was as real as hitting the ground would be. She didn't need to fear falling, but she did.
"Whatta you worried about?"
She could easily hear Spider's grin in his voice and imagine the look of it on his waking face. She'd seen it plenty of times. She said nothing, just gripped harder, toed another spot. She clung to the rock like moss, heaving a few breaths while she plotted her next move.
"I don't get you, Tovahleh. I just don't get you. You can do the hard shit at home."
Panting slightly, Tovah took another handhold and shifted her weight higher. "Not like this."
"According to you, you don't even like this!" Spider shook his massive head, mandibles chittering in disdain. "You told me that yourself. You're a couch-and-afghan kind of girl."
"Was," she corrected. "Was that girl. People change."
"Life's too short to spend it doing shit you hate."
She heaved herself an inch higher. "And your bestselling self-help book is coming out when? Oh, that's right. Never."
She'd made this climb harder than the last, wanting to challenge herself. Now it was becoming so difficult, she didn't have the concentration to shape anything other than the square of rock directly beneath her. Spider didn't seem to mind. He squatted in the same place he had before, but now on nothing but the gray furled edges of the unshaped Ephemeros. The good thing was, all her unconscious shaping---the sweat in her eyes and pain in her straining muscles---faded into the background, too.
Shaping was all about skill. The mind filled in details on its own---the stronger the shaper, the less work it was to fill them in. Blinking, breathing, a shadow twisting to follow the sun. Things inherent to the waking world and unnecessary in the Ephemeros except to please its occupants. Shaping took concentration and focus. A truly skilled shaper could juggle a myriad of layers and nuances to create the exact experience he/she wanted. Tovah was able to make things pretty and keep them around but not always able to split her focus to keep everything going. Like a juggler adding ball after ball to the ones already in the air, sometimes when adding something, she dropped everything.
"Smart ass." Spider bounced a little.
"Shut up. I'm almost to the top."
"How do you know that? You can't see anything."
Tovah found another crevice for her fingers and paused while her right foot sought a new place to land. "I shaped the top just a few feet away. I know it will be there."
"You have faith it will be there." Spider's voice went low, more like his regular Henry voice. "That's good, Tovahleh. Very good."
"Thanks for the pep talk. Now, if you don't mind---"
A rivulet of sweat trickled down her spine and lodged between her buttocks. She hadn't shaped that, on purpose or not. Who thinks about sweat in their ass? Tovah opened herself to the flow of will ever present in the Ephemeros. It was like plucking the strings of a harp, each its own distinct note but played together creating a piece of music.
"Spider!" she shouted. "Stop it!"
Spider chuffed. "Stop what?"
"You're shaping that!" Distracted, her fingers slipped. Her feet did too, and Tovah shouted as she caught herself with the tips of her fingers just before she fell. Her heart didn't just leap into her throat, it tried to jump all the way out of her mouth. "Stop! This isn't the time!"
"It's always the time. If you're going to put yourself in places like this, you have to learn to shield." Spider's calm tone infuriated her.
More sweat slid down her face, into the collar of her shirt. Rocks shifted under her grasp. She forced a sturdy platform to shape beneath her feet, fury making her sloppy.
"Spider, I mean it, goddammit. Don't do this now!"
"If not now, when?"
"Don't quote Hillel to me like that will make it all better."
Breathless, she clung to the jagged rock. It became a pile of razors and glinting glass. Agony sliced her and blood painted her fingers. She sent forth a surge of will, and the pain disappeared. Glass shimmered into rock for a moment before becoming glass again. Spider was stronger. He'd been doing this longer.
But she could grab glass as if it were stone. It was a test, to prove to her body that what the eyes saw was not absolute. It was a test to make her let go.
"You can forget about new pajamas for a year," she muttered as Spider squatted serenely beside her. "Don't think I won't remember this."
"Of course you'll remember it. And maybe next time you'll know how to push back."
"I know how! You're just stronger." She reached up. Her hand didn't want to close on the glittering shards, but she forced it to.
Rock. She was holding rock. Her hand came down.
Pain seared her hand. Tovah cried out and yanked her hand away. Her other hand came down on more glass, which shredded her palm.
She fell, cursing Spider and gritting her teeth with frustration over failing. But, no matter what Spider thought of her skills, she was better than he wanted to give her credit for.
She woke herself up before she hit the ground.
It was too late to go back to sleep and too early to be awake. Tovah stared at her ceiling for a while until finally admitting defeat. She grabbed up her glasses and turned on the light. It took her only a few minutes to attach her prosthetic limb, each motion precise and so familiar she barely needed to pay attention.
By the time she'd done all that, though, she was definitely awake and not so pleased to be. Max yawned and rolled on his belly, tongue lolling. She bent to scratch his thick fur.
"C'mon," she said. "If this doesn't deserve pancakes and double chocolate coffee, I don't know what does."
The sun hadn't even come up, which made the light in the kitchen seem that much brighter when she turned it on. From her place at the sink as she filled the carafe for the coffee maker, she could look across the side yard to the house next door. Martin's house. A light was on in the kitchen there, too.
He'd been absent the past couple times she'd been to visit Henry, and though she saw his car, she never saw him. Just the lights burning late into the night, or in this case, the morning. Maybe he was avoiding her.
"It's not paranoid to think that if it's true, Max." Tovah looked down at the dog, who waited on his haunches for her to give him something to eat. Food, of any sort, was Max's best friend. "Smart boy. You know I'm making pancakes?"
Woof.
"Eloquent," she told him. "Pancakes aren't good for dogs."
Woof, woof!
"They're fine for humans in moderation," she said to that reproach, laughing at herself for acting like he was talking. "It's the syrup that's the problem."
Max didn't care about calories. He woofed again, big head jerking with the force of it. He licked his chops, telling her to get on with the pancake-making.
"You go out and do your business while I mix this batter. I don't want to sit down to eat and have you need to pee. Go." She shooed him out the back door, leaving it open so he could let himself in the screen door that swung both ways to accommodate him, and went about pulling the ingredients for the mix from her cupboards.
No pre-made mix for her. Tovah ate pancakes so rarely it wasn't worth buying the boxed mix, and mixing from scratch took as little time. The pancakes tasted better, too. Humming under her breath, she cracked an egg, added baking soda and oil and stirred. The griddle had already heated enough to make the few drops of water she flicked on it sizzle and dance. She poured the first pancake, a small one, to test the heat level. It puffed perfectly, golden brown on one side when she flipped it.
She heard the clack of Max on the back porch. "You ready, big guy?"
"That smells delicious."
Max had a lower voice than she'd expected him to. She turned, spatula in one hand, mixing bowl in the other. "Martin?"
He leaned in her doorway, the screen making him a blur. "I'm sorry if I startled you."
Max woofed and nudged the door open, knocking past Martin hard enough to cause the man to take a step inside. Martin grabbed the doorframe, then held out a hand but was too slow to keep the door from swinging back and hitting him in the face.
"It swings both ways," Tovah explained unnecessarily, since he could see that well enough. "So the dog can get in and out. Are you all right?"
He nodded, holding his nose. He tipped his head back. "I don't think it's bleeding, is it?"
"Oh, for---come in." She put down the bowl and spatula and pulled out a kitchen chair. "Martin, sit down."
He did, so tall his head came up to her shoulder even sitting. She looked at his nose, which bore the red hashmarks of the screen but wasn't bleeding. She gave him a dampened paper towel, anyway.
"I think you're fine."
He nodded, looking at her quickly before looking at the table. "Thanks."
Tovah looked at herself. The cardigan she'd thrown on hung open, revealing the nightshirt she wore beneath. Made of thin cotton, it outlined every curve and bump and hit her in the middle of her thighs. She pulled her sweater tight over her breasts but could do nothing about the way the gown shifted high on her thighs.
She turned back to the griddle.
"I was awake and saw the dog," Martin said after a minute. "And your lights were on. I was going to go out for a jog, and...I'm sorry, I should go."
"I haven't seen much of you lately," Tovah said.
From behind her, the purr of the chair legs on her linoleum stopped. Martin didn't stand. "My hours at the hospital changed."
She dropped another circle of batter on the griddle. "How's the house?"
"The house? It's...great."
Silence between them. She turned, expecting to see him staring, but Martin was looking at his hands, clasped in his lap. The paper towel had been folded neatly into a perfect square on the table.
"Would you like to stay for breakfast?"
He looked up. His smile knitted tension in her belly as she waited for an answer. "Sure."
"I don't mind telling you," she said in a few minutes as she slid the plate of steaming golden pancakes onto the table, "I'm a pretty fine pancake maker."
"Nobody's made me pancakes in years." Martin waited for her to sit and serve herself before he used a fork to pry one of the pancakes from the pile. He settled it on the plate and took the bottle of maple syrup from her. He poured a small puddle to one side of his plate, then cut his cake into several even pieces as she watched, a bit amused. He caught her looking. "These look great."
She looked at her own plate, which bore a stack of hacked pancakes smeared liberally with syrup. "Did you want to be a surgeon?"
Martin paused, his fork halfway to his mouth. "Pardon?"
She used her knife to point at his plate. "You're so precise."
He looked at the food, then finished his bite, chewing slowly and swallowing before answering. "I don't have the patience to be a surgeon."
"You have the hands for it." She meant the statement lightly, but Martin put down his fork and lifted his hands to stare at them, front and back.
"You think so? I never did. I have big hands." He curled them into fists, slowing, working each finger.
"Does size matter?"
As soon as the words came out, she realized how they sounded, and laughed. Martin looked up, mouth slightly parted, like he didn't get it at first. And then he did.
"That's not the sort of question you should ask a man, Tovah."
"I'm sorry." She giggled. "Blame it on lack of sleep."
He smiled and opened and closed his fingers again, then picked up the fork. "Why were you up so early? Surely not just because you had a craving for pancakes."
"No. I had a bad dream. I couldn't go back to sleep. I could ask the same question of you." The scent of coffee she'd forgotten to pour teased her nostrils. "Oh, I forgot, coffee!"
She got up to pour them both cups. When she came back to the table, Martin's gaze followed her path. She'd been under such intense scrutiny before, and as usual heat rose in her cheeks because of it, but she tried not to show it. She gave him the sugar and cream she already knew he took.
"Thanks." He added the sugar and cream and stirred, but didn't sip. "I never wanted to be a surgeon because I wanted to fix what was inside people's minds without having to cut them open to do it."
"That's a good reason."
After a moment he dug back into his pancakes, severing each piece into halves and chewing them carefully. He interspersed each bite with a swig of coffee, finishing his first cup before she'd even taken more than a few sips of hers. He got up to help himself to another as matter-of-factly as if he'd always made himself at home in her kitchen.
She liked that, she realized, as he brought the pot to freshen her cup. Having a man puttering around. "Thanks."
He smiled. "Thank you. This is the best breakfast I've had in a long time."
"Me too, actually," she admitted. "Usually it's a toaster pastry and a diet cola as I work at the computer."
Martin laughed, the sound easier than it had been before. Tovah was having a hard time getting a handle on this man, who moved among his patients with such confidence but spoke to her as though he expected her to bite his head off.
He looked up and saw her staring. "What?"
It was just the sort of thing she'd have said, herself. She recognized that awkward sensation of wondering whether she had something on her face. "I'm glad you stopped by, Martin."
"Are you?" He sounded surprised, and finished his second cup of coffee.
Tovah nodded. She tasted syrup on her mouth as she licked her lower lip. His eyes followed the motion of her tongue before he looked away. He was blushing again, and she found it as charming this time as she had the first. "Yes. I really am."
"Well," he said, sounding a bit gruffly pleased. "You make excellent coffee. And pancakes. I'm glad I came, too."
A step forward and another back, like a child's game of I Dare You. Watching him, unable to read his signals, Tovah didn't dare. "Thanks. Be careful, Max will beg you for the rest of it."
Martin looked at Max, who'd raised his shaggy head at the mention of his name. "Will he?"
She remembered what he'd said about being bitten as a child. Though Martin didn't seem frightened of Max, he did seem...wary. And Max, for his part, hadn't snuffled or slobbered on Martin the way he did on nearly everyone else.
"He might."
Martin ate another bite. "I guess I'd better finish, then, before he has the chance."
He watched her again when she got up to put her plate in the dishwasher, and Tovah was mindful of the way her nightshirt hit her at mid-thigh. How she must look, disheveled from sleep and without makeup. No wonder Martin wasn't flirting, she thought wryly. She probably looked like a mess, and even though he knew about her leg, the sight of it was still probably unfamiliar enough to make him feel a little awkward.
Or, he just didn't like her in that way.
He was up to put his plate in the dishwasher, too, close behind her when she straightened and turned. She came face to chest with him, and it was impossible not to notice how tall he was. How broad. It was the first time she'd seen him in something other than a button-down shirt and dress trousers, and his T-shirt stretched across muscles she wouldn't have guessed were there.
"Sorry." Martin leaned around her to tuck his plate into the open slots of the dishwasher.
Tovah had always had a fairly large personal boundary area; Martin had seriously encroached upon it. Yet she didn't move, and not because she felt so comfortable with him it didn't matter that he'd suddenly entered her space. The reason was something more visceral than that, like a punch to her gut.
He smelled good.
Better than the scent of cologne, or even the clean scent of soap. Better than anything artificial. Martin smelled of...himself, of skin and breath and sweat, of something so familiar it was like breathing in a memory she'd forgotten until just now. Except she still didn't remember it, just had the hint of it in her mind.
She looked up. He looked down. His thumb came up to stroke along the corner of her mouth, and her mouth parted with a sigh of surprise and no small flare of sudden desire.
"You have some syrup," he said, "just there."
He wiped it, then licked it from his thumb. The bottom dropped out of her belly, the feeling like being on a roller coaster just before heading down the first hill. She drew in a shivering breath.
Then he'd moved back, away, turning to the table to pour more coffee and leaving Tovah blinking away the rush of heat that had filled her to overflowing. Her heart pounded. She went to the sink to wash her hands and take up a paper towel to clean her mouth.
He'd touched her face as though he owned it. Yet he wouldn't shake her hand? He couldn't meet her eyes, sometimes, but he'd licked syrup that had been against her lips?
She didn't understand him. Not one bit. "Martin---"
He turned, face already set in a smile, seemingly unaware of the mixed signals he was sending. "Hmm?"
Something had changed between them. Something small and subtle, but good. "Did you have enough coffee?"
"Never have enough coffee." He lifted his cup to her, toasting. "Thanks."
She took some more for herself, though she could already feel the caffeine making her jittery. "Do you have to work today?"
"Yes. Later."
It was Sunday.
"I'll see you there?"
He nodded, sipping coffee and watching her over the rim of his cup. "I guess you will."
And this, for some reason, made her laugh, the weird moment gone. Max lifted himself from the floor and nudged her hand with his head. Martin put his cup on the table and used a paper napkin to wipe the corners of his mouth.
"I should get going on that jog," he said, putting a hand flat on his stomach. "Though after all that coffee and those pancakes, I'll be lucky if I can go any faster than a brisk walk."
"Don't make yourself sick," she warned.
Martin shook his head. "I've got an iron stomach. I'll be fine."
She watched him head for the back door, not missing the slightly exaggerated berth he gave around Max muzzle-deep in his food bowl. Martin pushed through the screen door and caught it so it didn't swing back again, but instead closed gently. He stood on the other side of the screen and looked back at her, then raised a hand. It wasn't a wave, exactly, and not quite a salute.
She raised her hand too, as he'd done, and without saying goodbye, he jumped off the back porch and disappeared around the corner of the yard.
"Max, I have no idea what to think about all that."
Max didn't care. Max wanted food. Tovah scraped the remains of the waffles into his bowl and watched him gobble the sweetness with the pure joy only animals and children seem to make look easy.
The witchwoman was angry again. The witchwoman wanted the boy to put away his toys. She wanted him to make the earth shake and the skies dance.
The boy didn't want to.
So the witchwoman did what she always did when the boy defied her. She found someone else instead. She'd met him on the beach before. The boy knew him too. He'd seen him with the nice lady who'd tried to help him a while ago.
"Hello, sweetheart," the witchwoman purred, crooking her finger at the man. "I know you."
He came forward at once, though the boy felt him trying to resist.
"Look at me," she said softly, then louder when at first the man ignored her. "Look at my face."
Blinking, the man did. "Leave me alone."
He'd maybe meant to dream of fishing, or playing baseball, or painting a picture. He had a lot of wishes, and all of them fell away when the witchwoman pushed him. There was no secret to this. No tricks.
She lowered her voice to tease him into leaning forward. "Why should I?"
"Because I want you to!" His shout pushed her back with more force than she'd expected.
"Oh, sweetheart. That's not very nice."
He cried out, and the witchwoman laughed. His shirt hung from his body in shreds over the skin scored red beneath. Crimson painted her fingertips, and she lifted each to her mouth to lick them clean.
The boy shuddered, clutching his ball, watching as he always did from the shadows as the scene played out in front of him. He thought he could stop the witchwoman, take her attention away from the man she was abusing, but when he stepped forward the dogman growled and snapped, and the boy held back.
"I taste you," she purred. The grass beneath them waved in a gentle breeze. "No snakes this time, sweetheart?"
The man grimaced. "Don't call me that."
"What should I call you, instead? Baby? Lover? Punkin Pie? Ah, I know." She snapped her fingers and advanced on him. She reached, tugged, pulled, yanked. Stole. "Your name is...Ben."
He flinched, and she clapped her hands in glee.
"Oh, I love it when I'm right!" She looked over her shoulder at the boy in his place. "And I'm always right, aren't I, sweetheart?"
The man looked at him now. Looked at the boy. His face was sad, disappointed, the way his father had looked at him sometimes when he brought home the notes from Mrs. Bellestead.
That look made the boy ashamed.
The witchwoman laughed again, creeping closer to the man. She'd teased something else from him, too. Another name. Another face. It danced, shimmering, in the air above the man's head like the thought bubble in a cartoon.
It was the nice lady, only instead of legs, she had a tail.
"How sweet." The witchwoman sneered. "Does she know about you?"
Ben's mouth twisted. "She has nothing to do with this."
The witchwoman laughed. "Oh, I think she has everything to do with this. Doesn't she? Your mermaid?"
The nice lady's face disappeared. Blocked, but too late. The witchwoman had already tasted her. Smelled her. Learned her name.
"Tovah." It clicked on her tongue.
"Stop." Ben moved forward, hands out.
Stupid fellow. As if fists could harm her. The boy knew better.
"I'm not afraid of you," the man gritted out.
"Sweetheart, I think you should be. I know how to make you."
What an easy scene to create. A cliff. A figure with the face she'd seen shimmering in the sky over his head.
"Tell me, Ben. Have you ever wanted to fly?"
"Leave her alone!"
The witchwoman pushed. She couldn't shake the earth or open the skies, or unmake the world, not the way the boy could. But she could try. She could do things. She could make stuff happen.
"Watch her fly!"
"No!"
"No?" the witchwoman said. "Take her place, then. You for her."
Ben's hands opened and closed. "Don't hurt her."
So predictable.
"Say goodbye."
"No!"
"Time to fly, Ben, if you can."
He ran. The figure the witchwoman had made vanished. Ben reached, grabbed. He leaped.
He fell.
Within a breath, the witchwoman waited at the bottom of the cliff to watch him break, but he never appeared.
"I guess he learned how to fly," said the boy. He held his ball with both hands. "You tried to break him, but you couldn't."
"Be careful," the witchwoman said through bared teeth, "or I'll break you, instead."
But they both knew she could only try.
Bounce, bounce. Catch.
Bounce, bounce. Catch.
Bounce. Bounce---
"Can you hand me back my ball?" The boy in front of Tovah held out his hand with the certainty of someone who doesn't expect to be refused. "Please?"
A moment ago she'd been shaping the room in which she planned to meet Edward. The sudden shift of scene unbalanced her, literally. The step she took with her sound foot landed on soft black sand, and she pinwheeled her arms to keep herself from falling.
"I'm sorry?" She wasn't sorry, just confused and taken aback, a little bit afraid. She knew this boy.
"My ball," he said patiently. "It's right over there."
He pointed. The red ball with white stripes had rolled against a craggy stone wall. Details had filled in around her as they spoke. A dark sky. Dark trees. Black mountains in the distance and the far-off rumble of something like thunder. Shifting black sand. She remembered Kelly's dream and looked for the black sea that would try to drown her, but she didn't see it.
"Please?"
The force of his will pushed her to step toward the ball. Tovah was already reaching for it when she stopped herself. Her fingertips brushed the ball's rubber surface, but she didn't pick it up.
"Please, Mrs." The boy's voice hadn't changed in tone or urgency. It remained the voice of a child complacent in knowing he has always had his way. "I want my ball."
But Tovah didn't want to be here. How she'd managed to lose the sensual display and end up in this place, she didn't know, but she didn't intend to stay. This boy was here for a reason, and she didn't want to be a part of it.
She grabbed up the ball, which fit the palm of her hand perfectly though a moment before it had been the size of a basketball. She turned and tossed it. The ball became a blackbird and flew away.
"Oh," said the boy, grief heavy in his voice. "Oh, my ball."
"I'm sorry," Tovah said. "It just happens that way sometimes."
The boy stared at her with vivid blue eyes half-hidden by a shock of unruly dark hair. "Why? Why does everything good have to go away?"
"I don't know."
In the face of his tears her resolve weakened. Tovah had little experience with children. She'd been the youngest child. She'd never babysat. She'd never had a child of her own.
"Hey," she said. "Don't."
The boy sat on a large black rock and put his face in his hands. The knobs of his shoulders punched up through the thin denim of his shirt. His fingernails were bitten down, his fingers dirty in the creases. His sobs rent her. She touched his shoulder tentatively.
"What's your name?"
He shook his head and looked up at her with streaming eyes. She thought he might be about eight years old, and small for his age. His lashes, dark and thick, swept over cheeks as smooth as milk.
"Only bad things stay!" he cried.
She took her hand back at the sudden shout. The force of his will was like a thousand tiny plucking hands. Like the skittering touch of an insect, or the unexpected prick of a pin left in a garment.
Tovah shaped green grass, but the black sand pushed it away. She shaped blue sky, but midnight swallowed it. Things were getting beyond her control. She didn't want to be caught in this child's nightmare. She wasn't a guide.
"I'm sorry." She backed up. "You'll find your ball. If you want to."
She closed her eyes. When she opened them, she would be away from this place and this child. She would be in the club, where she could find something to distract her. Or in the meadow, shaping flowers. Anyplace but here.
She opened her eyes.
There wasn't time to scream; there hadn't been then, either. One moment she'd been drifting into sleep, the next the shriek of tires on pavement and the blaring of the car horn had flung her eyes wide open. The seat belt had bitten her shoulder. The sound of metal on metal and shattering glass filled her head.
No time to scream, or block her sight. No time to brace herself before the car slid under the back end of the tractor-trailer and everything went black.
Black.
And blue.
And red and blue.
Red and blue and yellow. The sound of sirens. Smell of smoke. A vague sensation of pressure against her thigh. No pain. The pain would come later, the angry stinging of a hundred thousand wasps, the burn of molten wax. But for now, no pain.
She looked to her left at Kevin in the driver's seat. Blood dripped from a small cut on his forehead. He'd cracked the windshield. His eyes were closed, mouth slack.
Outside his window, an alien rapped. No, not an alien. A firefighter in a suit, masked, hands made thick by gloves. He had an ax. He swung against the back window. More glass shattered.
More red and blue, more yellow, the droning blare of a siren and the rumble-mutter of megaphones. A policeman appeared at her side, the door open and gone. A man in white. A woman in a blue jacket.
Then nothing.
She knew this was a dream, each detail crisp and clear and unwanted, accurate but not real. Not this time. A dream she could control. Shape. She didn't need to be here, didn't need to live through this, no matter what Spider said. She didn't need this.
"No," she said aloud, voice thick, throat raw. "No."
"Relax, honey," said the woman in the blue coat. It had been a jumpsuit back then, now a coat, more proof this wasn't the waking world. "Relax. We're going to have to cut you out of there."
"No," Tovah said, struggling. "No! Please---"
Pain shredded her. The wail of the sirens grew, stabbing her ears. The shriek of metal gave way to the whine of the chainsaw the woman in blue sported instead of her left hand.
"Just a minute, sweetheart, and we'll cut you free."
"I'm not free!" Tovah screamed. "I'm not free!"
She wanted Spider. Needed a guide. Anyone. Someone.
Spider didn't come. She cried for him as she struggled against the shoulder belt that had locked her tight into the crumpled remains of the car.
"Don't worry so much. It's just a little...prick."
The woman's teeth had become hypodermic needles.
"You should get out of there."
The familiar voice was soothing. Calm. Beneath it, Tovah heard the soft tick-tock of a clock. Behind the scary woman, a figure loomed. She wept with relief.
"Ben?"
"I'm here. You can make this go away. You know you can."
The woman began to blur and shift. She became a stone angel. The car, however, stayed around Tovah, tighter than the embrace of a lover.
"I'm trying."
"You're scared. Let it go."
"I can't! I can't let it go!"
Tovah struggled in the prison of metal and leather. The stench of smoke burned her throat and nose. All her limbs were leaden. And then, terror so fierce it hurt like a blow leaped up inside her. Not leaden.
Gone.
"You can do it." Ben's voice smoothed over her. "Shape it away. Shape your exit, Tovah."
She could do it. Had done it, dozens of times. She'd forgotten until Ben reminded her.
The blinking red letters swirled in the air, fixing themselves into solidity.
EXIT.
And she pushed herself toward it.
For fully three seconds after she sat up in bed, the exit light hovered in front of her before she blinked and it dissolved. Sickness roiled in her stomach. Her nightshirt clung to her body.
Shaking, Tovah sat up and swung her leg over the bed. The other, the stump, stuck out just past the edge of the bed. She rubbed it. It didn't hurt anymore, and the lumps and runnels of the scar tissue had become as familiar to her as any other part of her body. Nothing to fear, or to hate. She was more than one limb, more even than the sum of all her body. There was more to her than a physical imperfection, always had been more. Always would be.
She put her face in her hands and wept, anyway, for what had been and what was left.
The witchwoman was hunting a Spider.
She didn't have to tell this to the boy; he just knew, the same way he knew where she was and what horrors she committed even when they were hidden from him. The way he knew what the dogman did when he wasn't looking.
She hunted the Spider Ben had told her about. A guide. Someone more powerful than she. It infuriated her, and the boy knew this, too.
The boy had found the Spider, but he kept this discovery shielded from the woman and the dogman as best he could. He wanted to talk to this Spider alone, before they found him.
They always found him.
The Spider watched him, and the boy wondered how different he looked through eight eyes instead of two.
"My mom says if you kill a spider, it'll rain."
The Spider's head moved a little, from side to side. "Do you like to kill spiders?"
The boy shook his head. "Billy Morris in my class used to pull the legs off of Daddy Long Legs. But I never did."
The Spider said nothing, but though the dogman often said nothing because it couldn't, and the witchwoman often used her silence as a distraction, the boy didn't think the Spider meant to harm him.
"You're strong, aren't you?" the boy asked.
The Spider managed a nod. "Been here a long time. Yes."
"So have I."
"I know you have, son."
Nobody had called him son in a very long time. Not since he'd been with his mom and dad, and not often then. Tears welled in the boy's eyes, and he didn't have the power to hold them back.
"I have a ball," he said, showing it desperately. "Do you want to play with me?"
"I wish I could, son. But..."
"But you're afraid of me?" The boy immediately knew this to be true, the same way he knew the witchwoman hated him, no matter how many times she told him otherwise. "You hate me!"
The Spider said nothing. It bounced lightly on its nasty, jointed legs. It turned the boy's stomach, and he looked away.
"I don't hate you, son. But I'm worried about what you're doing."
"I'm not doing anything! It's the witchwoman! And the man with the dog face! It's them!" The boy's voice rose, high and hysterical. It hurt his throat like a necklace of barbed wire. It made him bleed, and he wept, tugging at the sharp metal but unable to keep it from digging into his throat.
"Stop it! You're hurting me."
The Spider said nothing. It grew larger. Scarier. Hair sprouted along its legs and back. Its legs got longer. Bright, shining drops of venom dripped from its jaws.
The boy tried to scream, but the wire bound his mouth. He shook his head, pulling. "Stop," he whispered. "Please."
The Spider moved forward, turning its back. Spinnerets glinted, and the boy saw the first threads of sticky silk protrude.
"Stop!" he cried out past the bulging muzzle of barbed wire. He took a little of the witchwoman's anger for himself. "You stop, right now. Or I'll---"
"This is my home," that nasty Spider said. "And I can't let you ruin it, son. I'm sorry. I know that maybe you don't mean to. But you've got to stop what you're doing before you lose control of it. Before you break something. Or someone."
"No!"
"You have to wake up, son. That's all you have to do."
The boy struggled from his place on his knees. Tears of acid traced rivers down his cheeks, and sobs brought the taste of blood to his lips. They put him here, the witchwoman and the dogman, on his knees. On the cold floor, hunger in his belly like a knife. They kept him in the dark, they didn't close the closet door, they took away his ball and gave him the bad dreams. The witchwoman and the dogman did this.
The Spider was doing it too.
The boy cried out again. "But I'm not asleep! I'm never asleep!"
Somewhere: a mother slapped her child.
Somewhere: a husband raised his hand to his wife.
Somewhere and everywhere, there were very, very bad dreams.
And the rain came down.
In the first days home after her accident, Tovah had avoided sleep. Every time she'd closed her eyes, she'd relived the crash in vivid detail, made worse by knowing it was a dream. No matter how many times she'd fought it, each night had sent her back to that car, the shriek of metal on metal and the fear.
Now she knew she'd dreamed it over and over as a way of releasing herself from the horror. Working through it. Now she understood the people who'd appeared had been guides, there to help her survive the horrid event, but back then she'd been so desperate to avoid it she'd kept herself from sleep by any method she could.
Cold showers, lots of coffee and soft drinks, forgoing pain medication. She'd set her alarm to ring every twenty minutes, just before she'd start to drift into dreams. And it had worked for a while.
Sleep is as vital to human existence as food, water and air. A sleep-deprived person might suffer lack of judgment, poor coordination. Mood swings. In severe cases, even hallucinations as the dream world tries to connect with the waking. The Ephemeros had its way of making itself noticed even to those most determined to ignore it.
It had started, for her, with simple things. The changing numbers on the clock and the inability to read even the most basic texts because the letters refused to stay in place on the page. The sound of voices had come next, along with seeing things from the corners of her vision that disappeared when she faced them head-on.
She'd thought she was being haunted.
The more the real world dissolved around her, the more virulently Tovah had fought sleep. Kevin had gone at her bequest, their marriage ruined, and she had nobody there to notice if she sat up night after night pressing the buttons on her remote control to find something to keep her awake.
Tovah didn't remember the breakdown and had never been brave enough to ask anyone the full story. All she remembered was stumbling into the health-and-beauty aisle of a local discount store. She'd swept handfuls of boxes off the shelves, looking for sleeping pills.
"I can't take it any longer," she'd said over and over. "I can't stay awake any longer."
In the hospital with drugs and therapy trying to "fix" her, Tovah had met Henry Tuckens one day. Spider the next. It had been weeks before she realized they were the same. Months before she could do the things Spider had told her she could.
She'd been crazy. She never wanted to do that again. Yet now, with the nightmare still fresh in her mind, Tovah once again was trying to stop herself from going to sleep.
Her computer offered distraction in the form of more Justin Ross interviews and movie clips. Email, celebrity gossip sites, some online shopping. The night wasted away and her eyes got heavy, but she couldn't bear to risk finding herself back in that car.
From her window she could look across to Martin's house. The light in the kitchen was on. She saw his shadow shifting behind the curtains. Martin was awake, too.
Soft music tickled her eardrums. She wanted to dance. With a partner, yes, a tall man with eyes that shifted color and a face that always changed...
Tovah sat up straight. The keyboard had imprinted its buttons on her cheek, and she rubbed the numb skin. She'd been dreaming, almost, of Edward.
Not even he was a comfort she wanted to risk.
Soft meadow grass tickled her bare feet as she ran, laughing, after a butterfly. A man stood waiting for her at the meadow's other side. He reached for her. She reached for him as she ran, still too far to see his face.
"Shit!" Tovah jerked in her chair and slapped her face lightly.
She couldn't stay awake. She simply couldn't. She was drifting too much. Without thinking too hard, so she didn't lose courage, she grabbed her phone and dialed a number.
"Hello?"
"Martin," Tovah said. "I hope I didn't wake you."
"No."
She could hear a smile in his voice. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure. What's wrong?"
Nothing was wrong now, nothing at all. The conversation started off a bit slow but something about the night and the distance provided by the phone made it easier to be honest. To flirt, a little. To share.
She moved to her bedroom, still talking. Took care of her bedtime routine, still talking. Slipped into bed between soft sheets and cradled her head on the pillow.
Still talking to Martin.
"I think you're lovely," he told her in a voice like warmed honey. "You're smart and brave and lovely, Tovah."
His words moved over her like hot chocolate on a cold day, like a cool breeze on an August night. "I like you, too, Martin. A lot."
"I'm glad." His small, deep laugh prompted one from her. "Because I don't have many people in my life. I'm glad you're in mine."
This touched her. "I'm glad to be in it, too."
"Tovah?"
"Yes, Martin?"
"It's morning."
So it was. Smiling and stretching without getting up, she cupped the phone closer to her ear as she rolled onto her side. "We talked all night long. Martin?"
But Martin's only answer was the hum of the dial tone.
Startled, Tovah disconnected the call and sat up. Her eyes no longer felt heavy. Had she slept? Had they talked?
Or had she dreamed it all?
"You look lousy." Kelly didn't pull any punches.
Tovah didn't mind. It was true. "I'm having a hard time sleeping lately."
Kelly gave a low noise. "You and me both, hon. I told you, it's something in the water."
Tovah swigged water and looked at her friend. "Bad dreams?"
"Hell, yes. I'd go back to chasing Justin Ross with a vibrating penis any day."
"That doesn't sound so bad to me, either." Tovah gripped the treadmill's handles tighter. "I don't know how he'd feel about it, but...yeah."
Kelly stepped up her pace a bit and wiped some sweat from her brow. "Frank says it's because I worry that he's not home. That maybe we should get a dog or something, but I told him I don't dream about someone breaking in. I dream about the whole damned world falling apart around my ears. Like I'm in an earthquake but worse. Pieces fall away and they're just...gone. And then I wake up and I'm so damned tired I'm afraid I'll drive off the road on the way to work or something."
Tovah looked at her friend. "No. Oh, you have to be careful!"
Kelly laughed a little. "Yes, I know. Frank said the same thing. But I'm okay, Tovah, really. It's just these damn dreams."
Tovah shuddered at the thought of Kelly in a car accident. "Just be careful, Kelly. Promise me."
"I promise." Kelly looked at her. "Hey, are you all right?"
"Yes. I just need some sugar." Tovah forced a smile.
She wasn't all right. Something bad was happening and not just to her. Avoiding it wasn't going to make it go away. She had a responsibility to do what she could.
Even if that meant facing her own nightmares.
Tovah shaped another mountain in front of her. A higher one, this time, with fewer places to grab. Spitting into her palms, she rubbed them together. She flexed her fingers.
She wasn't paying attention to anything but the gray stone in front of her. Grass beneath her feet, the sound of waves, the scent of salt. The beach had nothing to do with her urge to shape herself away from whoever wanted it. She was going to get to the top of this mountain before she woke up.
"Did you know an octopus has no bones?"
She turned at the sound of the voice beside her, automatically testing to see if it belonged to a sleeper or a shaper. She took her hands away from the rocks when she saw who'd spoken. "Oh. It's you."
Ben smiled. "Last time I checked."
Tovah didn't smile. "I'm sort of busy, Ben."
"I see that. I just thought I'd say hello."
"You didn't say hello, you said octopuses don't have bones."
"They don't."
Tovah gave him a narrow, sideways glance. "Are you stalking me?"
"Maybe."
Tovah's mouth wanted to curl, but she forced it downward instead of upward. He didn't seem perturbed.
Without her attention, the mountain had dissolved into a sand dune. She looked around. The beach scene had grown more detailed, mostly from Ben, but her will was automatically filling in the empty places, too. It was interesting, that her sand was golden brown and his was white. Together they made a patchwork quilt of sand. Farther down, the beach faded into smooth black stones. A few people were fishing, some with rods and some with nets.
"Why the beach?" she asked.
"Why not? Don't you like the beach?"
She looked around again. "It's all right."
In the waking world, she hadn't been to the beach in a long time. She didn't want to think about what sand would do to her leg, how it would be impossible to keep the joints clean or how walking would be even more of a challenge.
She had no problems now and wiggled her toes deeper into the sand. A wave curled toward her feet, wetting them. The water was as warm as bath water.
"I thought it would be cold," she said with a small laugh.
"I don't like cold water."
She nodded, watching him. "This place still surprises me."
"It probably always will. That's the nature of it. But it gets easier, the longer you're here."
"Most things do."
They'd begun walking while they talked, toward the rocks and the fishermen. A small red crab scuttled out of the water, directly beneath her foot, and Tovah automatically sidestepped. More crabs appeared, each as tiny and perfect as someone's will could shape them. They merged, becoming one, and crept back beneath the water.
"You like crabs?" Tovah gave Ben another sideways glance.
"That wasn't me." He laughed, pointing at the water. "There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of wills working here. Someone has a crab fetish, I guess."
No matter how far they walked, they weren't getting closer to the rocks and the fishermen. "I don't see hundreds of people."
"You don't have to see them. It's not about seeing anything."
"Yeah. Right, right." Even now it was still a hard concept around which to wrap her mind. That the Ephemeros, the dream world, was formed from the collective subconscious of the world. That it was a genuine, alternate plane of reality, existing simultaneously in the minds of every person on earth and accessible only in sleep.
"How many people are sleeping right now?" she asked suddenly.
Ben bent to pick up a flat stone and, turning, skipped it out across the water. "A lot."
"I read once that on average, we spend a third of our lives sleeping. I had a roommate in college who hated to sleep. She said she'd rather be awake all the time and just take her third all at once, at the end of her life. Just close her eyes when she was done and spend the rest of it asleep, but give her every moment she could take right now."
Ben picked up another stone. A breeze ruffled his hair. "She wouldn't have really wanted that. People need to sleep."
"And dream." Tovah found her own smooth stone and attempted skipping it. She wasn't as successful. "People who don't dream get sick."
"So do people who dream too much." Ben turned to her. "There has to be a balance."
"That's what I keep trying to tell Spider." This time, when she took a step, Tovah shaped less distance between them and the rocks.
"You're good."
The appreciation in his tone made her turn to look at him. "What makes you say that?"
"You want something. You make it happen, but it's not jarring. It's nice being around you."
She shot him a look that clearly said she thought he was yanking her chain. "Uh-huh."
"I mean it."
She shrugged. "You're better than I am. Stronger. Way smoother."
Ben shook his head, staring off toward the sea. "Only because I spend more time here than you. That's all."
"Well, believe me, if it weren't for this freaky shit that's been going on here lately, I'd be happier to spend more time here."
"No." Ben looked at her sharply. "You think that, but you don't mean it."
"You can read my mind?" She tossed a pebble toward the water. "Relax. I'm only teasing you, Ben."
Now she could see that the group of people on the rocks were really a family. Mother, Father, Son. She wondered which one of them was dreaming. Or if all of them were.
"Can I ask you something, Tovah?"
Tovah paused. The sea swirled around their ankles and she cherished the sensation, even if the water wasn't cold like she'd have shaped it. She looked over at Ben. "Sure."
Ben looked out over the ocean, itself a patchwork of color and texture. It was, she realized, a perfect representation of the Ephemeros itself. A patchwork sea.
"Why don't you want to be a guide? Really?"
Tovah studied him. He wasn't looking at her. His face was also pleasant in profile. The curve of his forehead met the swoop of the bridge of his nose, and his chin anchored everything together. Ben had a good face.
He couldn't know her thoughts on that were changing. "The Ephemeros is a playground. I wanted to swing on the monkey bars, not be the monitor."
Son had cast his net into the ocean. His dream then, she guessed. He pulled in the net, empty, and cast it out again while his parents encouraged him.
He brought up a net full of shining silver fishes, glittering like they'd been covered by sequins. Some of them wore tiny top hats. Some of them were singing.
Ben stopped walking. His hands thrust deep into his pockets, he steadfastly didn't look at her. He lifted his chin a bit toward the kid casting out his net again. "What do you think he's trying to catch?"
Tovah studied the scene in front of them. The waves had gotten bigger, rising higher on the sand. Mother and Father faced into the wind whipping off the sea. Tovah had thought they were encouraging Son in his fishing, but now that she was closer she could hear what they were saying. All of it was spoken in fond, loving tones almost syrupy in sweetness. None of it was nice.
"I don't know," she said.
Son cast out his net again. His small shoulders hunched with the effort of drawing it in. When it arrived empty, the taunting of Mother and Father got a little louder.
"Do you think he's just trying to make them happy?" Ben asked. "Or is he doing this for himself? What do you think he wants to find in that net, Tovah? Is he wishing that just once he'll pull in something bright and magic that will change his life?"
Tovah looked at him. This speech was like nothing she'd ever heard from Ben before, and yet it sounded truer than anything he'd ever said. She looked again at the family trio dredging the ocean for something unknown.
"Is that what you're always hoping for? Something bright and magic?"
Ben's smile only made it to half of his mouth. "Tell me you don't."
She could feel soft sand between all ten of her toes. She could walk without losing her balance, climb and run without fear of falling. She was here and whole, in dreams.
"I know the difference between this life and my waking one, Ben. Nothing that happens in here changes anything about my life when I'm awake. Hoping to make a change from something I do in here is a waste of time."
Ben nodded, looking down at the line he drew in the sand with his foot. She'd never seen his bare feet before, the long, strong toes and smooth pale skin below the ragged hem of his cords. Seeing his feet felt suddenly intimate and tender. She looked away.
"I know," Ben said in a low voice. "But I can't stop trying. Okay? Is that the answer you want to hear?"
He looked up. His eyes held hers. Something passed between them. In the waking world it would have been a hint, unknowable, a guess. Here, it entered her like a wisp of smoke or perfume breathed deep. A scent and taste wrapped up together to create emotion, and it sank immediately into her heart and lodged there so tight and fast she momentarily could not breathe.
"Is that why you keep me so far from you?" Tovah whispered the question on the outward-bound breath. "I thought it was because you didn't like me, but---"
"Things that happen here do change what happens there, Tovah. I have to believe they do. I have to."
The note of quiet desperation moved her toward him, but she stopped herself from touching him. Her hand outstretched between them seemed sad and anxious and she withdrew it after a heartbeat. He wouldn't meet her eyes. Every line of his body bespoke sadness struggling not to be grief.
A thousand words rushed to her throat and were imprisoned behind her teeth. Her lips parted, but nothing came out. So much to say and none of it seemed right.
"I'm sorry, Tovah." Ben looked out at the now-black sea.
She'd lost something she hadn't known she had. A gift taken away before it had been given. Something fragile broken by a heavy hand.
She thought of Ben making her a mermaid, and of how he'd kissed her just that once before he'd known she wasn't something bright and magic that would change his life. Of how he'd always been there, no matter what time she came or left. Of how he'd been the one to help her when things got scary, how his encouragement and friendship had been her rescue, not just his hand pulling her free. And she thought of how many times she had slipped into the Ephemeros hoping to see him and settling for something anonymous instead.
"We're friends," she whispered, aching. "Aren't we?"
He looked at her then, his smile familiar and lovely. "Yes."
And that was all. Because he believed that anything more here would change something in the waking world. The real world. And he didn't want her there.
She managed a smile. "Okay, then."
The knowledge between them didn't dissipate, but it eased a bit. Ben looked up at the sound of a shout. Son had caught something bigger in his net than glittering cabaret fishes.
Tovah looked, too, and took an unconscious step back in shock at what she saw.
Son had, indeed, pulled out something bright and magic, and Tovah looked at Ben at once, certain he'd had a hand in shaping it. But Ben looked as stunned as she felt. His hand came out of his pocket, and instead of stepping back he'd gone one forward, fingers curled as though he meant to reach.
Son had pulled a mermaid from the water.
No golden-tressed buxom beauty with sequined scales and a sweet, trilling voice. This creature had been dragged from the depths of the sea's darkness, and it writhed and mewled in fury or agony at being made to face the light.
Its torso was human-shaped by broad definition, with two dangling arms ending in webbed hands. It had no breasts, for it was clearly never meant to suckle or nurture its young. Trailing remoras clung to skin nearly translucent in its lack of color, fading into deep gray where the torso met the scales of its tail. A series of dorsal spikes lay flat along its spine, and they jutted upright as Tovah watched Son struggle with the net. His hand landed on one of them and he cried out, jerking away. Clear poison leaked from the tips of the spines, bubbling as it hit the sand when Son dropped the net.
The creature turned as it fell, and the face---oh, the face was an abomination. Eyes, nose, a gaping, screaming mouth lined with multiple rows of teeth like a shark---it was the face of something damned and, worse, it knew it. Intelligence glittered in round eyes without any differentiation between iris and pupil.
Tovah put a hand over her mouth and nose to hold back a gag at the creature's stench. Ben stepped forward, closer, with a low, agonized groan. "Ben, no!"
Son turned, weeping, his hand swollen to the size of a cartoon glove. Mother and Father turned, too, each of them laughing. The mermaid lay at their feet, tail painting calligraphy in the sand as it writhed.
"Ben, stop!"
She knew that boy. She knew that man too. Even as she watched, his body rippled, shoulders hunching and mouth yawning wide as it filled with teeth.
The man with a dog's head growled and snapped. The woman beside him stopped laughing and made a face of exaggerated surprise. She put a hand to the o of her mouth.
The boy between them wept.
"What have you done?" Ben's fists rose as he took another step toward the others.
"Ben, no!" Tovah reached but he'd gone too far. Her fingertips brushed the soft faded blue fabric of his shirt and closed on empty air.
The boy covered his face with his hands. The woman with him, not his mother, put her hand on the back of his neck. She pushed him forward.
"Look what you've done," she said. "You've made something ugly."
The boy didn't squirm or fight to get away, though his slim shoulders shook with sobs. The dogheaded man snapped its jaws until thick curds of yellowish foam flew.
Ben, heedless of Tovah's cry, went to his knees in front of the creature the boy had pulled from the ocean. "No," he said, a single word weighted with too much meaning.
Tovah reached him, her hand on his shoulder. "Ben. Don't."
She could smell the dog, smell the pitiful thing masquerading as something bright and magic. Smell the sea. Ben's shoulder under her hand was solid. Real.
The boy took his hands away from his face. Tears streaked paths of silver down pale cheeks. His eyes, bluer than blue, glimmered. The woman's hand tightened on his neck. She pushed him forward, just a little.
The woman smiled. She shoved the boy forward another step. One more and he'd trip over the mermaid.
"See what you've done?" she repeated conversationally.
The boy looked at the mermaid, which lay gasping, its gills flapping open and shut. Its webbed fingers had dug into the sand, and sand covered the dampness of its tail.
"Make it go away," prompted the woman. "Go ahead."
The boy shook. His eyes went wide, mouth pinched tight with grief and horror. The dogman behind him snapped its jaws again, but he didn't flinch.
"Can you make her go away?" he asked Tovah in a small and quavering voice. "Can you make her stop? Can you stop me?"
Tovah didn't know what to say. Her fingers curled on Ben's shoulder, urging him to get to his feet. Her desire to help this boy was tempered by knowing she didn't know what to give him, or how.
She wasn't a guide.
"Ben," she said, but Ben didn't move.
The woman laughed. Her head tipped back, throat working with mirth. Long nails tipped her fingers, and they dug into the boy's skin, bringing blood.
"Can you stop me?" the boy asked again, louder, more desperate. His entire body shook. "Please."
"She won't help you," said the woman. "Nobody will. Not now. Not ever."
The sand and the sky and the sea turned black.
"Please," said the boy.
Pushing against his will was like butting against brick. Unyielding. Tovah cast out her desire to take the boy from the woman's touch, but nothing happened. She tried again, pushing harder than she'd ever pushed against anyone.
"Ben, help me."
Ben did nothing.
The boy's eyes went dark as around them the Ephemeros cracked and crumbled. Lightning lit the sky overhead, and...things...crawled from the clouds. Tovah pushed, hard, for blue sky and green grass. Nothing.
"You don't have to do this," she told the boy.
"It's the only thing that will make them stop," he cried and clapped his hands over his ears. "Make them stop hurting me!"
The woman growled and the dogman laughed; Ben cried out as the mermaid began to dissolve. Tovah fell forward and caught herself with her hands before her face could hit the ground.
Her stump throbbed, but though she felt the loss of her leg again she didn't let it stop her from pushing up on her hands. She looked up at the boy, the woman, the dog with a man's body.
She pushed.
She pushed again.
"She won't help you," said the woman, her voice like the buzzing of a hive. "Not now. Not ever."
This time, when Tovah pushed, she felt the truth. This was the three. The boy. The woman. The dogman. They were the same, each separate but at their hearts, the same. Three wills collected as one, and she understood then why she, Ben and Spider had been able to shape this away before by working together.
"Ben, help me!"
Two against three was better odds than one against three. She reached for Ben with her hand and her will, pulling him toward her. He moved slowly, like he was caught in tar, but she managed to get him to look at her.
The world rocked. Despair so vast, so formless, so infinite there was nothing else, wrapped itself around her. Ben wept, his eyes closed. Tovah's eyes burned with tears.
There was no point in going on. No purpose to her life, nothing good to hope for or to cherish. Nothing but emptiness and grief, and sorrow and fear.
The boy bled beneath the woman's hands and the dogman blew fetid breath. Three as one. One as three.
Ben opened his eyes. Tovah saw her reflection there, one last thing before she gave up to the emptiness. She saw herself in Ben's eyes.
"Ben," she said.
They reached for each other at the same time. Their fingers linked. His hands, warm and callused, enfolded hers.
"Tovah," Ben said.
"See? See?" the woman cried. "They don't care about you!"
The boy sobbed and screamed as the world crumbled around them.
"Don't do this!" Tovah looked at the boy. She ignored the woman and the dog, who were distractions. She shook her head, staring into his deep, dark eyes. "Don't. Only you can stop this."
Ben's will bolstered hers. Together, they shaped a haven, a small patch of green grass beneath them. The boy stopped shaking. He stopped crying. He went still and silent.
"Don't let her make you think you have to do this," Tovah said.
The boy said nothing. The woman spoke but nothing came from her mouth. The dog barked, soundless.
"She is---"
"No!" The boy's cry silenced Tovah.
"Tovah, you have to go. Get out of here." Ben's fingers tightened.
"I can't leave you here," Tovah said.
"Go," Ben gasped. "Before you don't have a choice!"
"But what about you?"
In front of them the boy had gone straight and still, flanked by the woman and the dogman. They made a triangle.
"He doesn't know," Ben said, "that they're him. He doesn't know."
"I'm not going to leave you."
Ben shook his head. "You have to. Before this tears you apart. Wake up, Tovah!"
"Promise me you will too," she begged. "Promise you won't let this---"
Ben kissed her. It wasn't like the first time, when his mouth had been tender and full of joy. This kiss was hard, full of longing, tinged with despair that didn't come from what the boy was doing. This kiss was almost brutal, but she gave in to it.
He pushed her away.
The boy cried out.
Tovah woke to darkness, acid burning her throat. She lurched from her bed. For one endless moment she hovered before realizing only one foot had hit the floor. She pitched forward, hands held out, and landed on the floor with a solid thud. Her stump rammed the floor. Pain, exquisite and also endless, shot through her.
She couldn't even scream, breathless with agony. Sickness again filled her throat as she writhed on the ground. She was afraid even to touch the stump, certain she'd broken open the scars and afraid to feel for blood.
She rocked herself, touching her mouth at the memory of Ben's kiss. The remnants of despair surrounded her and slowly fell away. She hadn't felt like that in a long time. She never wanted to feel like that again.
The boy was the one shaking up the Ephemeros. The boy who was also the woman, and the dogman, but who didn't know he was hurting the world to save himself from himself.
Moaning, Tovah rolled onto her rear and ran her hands over her stump. Her stomach settled slowly as the despair and fear subsided. She had figured out who was causing all the turmoil, but not why. Not how to stop it.
She needed to talk to Spider.
In the morning, her stump had swollen too much for her to even consider fitting it into the socket of her prosthetic. Black bruises painted her thigh, and the skin had split along the length of her suture scar. Blood crusted the edges of the cut, which still seeped. She'd wrapped the stump in several layers of gauze bandage and covered it with a cotton stocking, but it ached so fiercely she thought about taking a painkiller. Her prosthetist would probably scold her for her carelessness, but she didn't want to visit her doctor for treatment.
By the time she got to the Sisters of Mercy, the phantom pains had set in. Fire consumed her missing leg, her toes relentlessly cramping, and needles and pins stabbing the sole of her foot. She parked crookedly in the lot and pushed her seat back to stretch out, biting her lip against the pain and wishing desperately for the pill that would take it away.
Later.
Now she had to get inside and drive herself home afterward. She couldn't afford to be under the influence. Still, by the time she got her car door open and hauled herself out onto the aluminum crutches she hated, chill sweat had begun its conquest of her forehead and down the line of her spine. The foam crutch handles tucked beneath her armpits exacerbated the dampness all over her skin. Her clothes bunched unpleasantly under the handles, but she ignored it and managed to hobble across the parking lot and into the lobby.
She'd been proficient on her crutches, though never graceful. Today, each hop-step shot stabbing pain all the way up her phantom limb and into the bruised and bleeding stump. She managed to navigate the elevator buttons but, once inside, slumped against the wall and swallowed hard against the slow-rolling waves of nausea.
The elevator door started to close on her as she tried to get off on Spider's floor. She was too sluggish. The door banged against her crutch and lumbered open again, giving her enough time to gather her energy and move. She had to stop and rest again as soon as she made it to the hall.
It wasn't a Sunday, and that made all the difference. Things were louder today, with more staff bustling about and more patients walking the halls. Tovah didn't even earn a curious glance as she made her way down the hall to the nurses' station to sign in. Someone on crutches and missing a limb didn't seem to garner the same sort of attention here as it did outside.
She didn't know the nurse behind the desk, which was something of a relief. She didn't need to explain herself, or chat, like she'd have had to do with Ava. She signed her name and turned herself toward Henry's room.
"He's not in his room," said the nurse, who looked like she'd just graduated from nursing school. Yesterday.
Tovah stopped. "He's not?"
The nurse shook her head and pointed toward the lounge. "No. He's in there today."
"He's not in bed?"
The nurse shook her head. "Nope."
"Is Dr. Goodfellow here today?"
"Dr. Goodfellow?" The nurse frowned a little. "Not that I know of."
Tovah turned herself toward the lounge, calling a thanks over her shoulder as she made her way toward the room. Henry wasn't in bed. He was up. Which might explain why he wasn't in the Ephemeros. And though she knew they needed him there, Tovah couldn't stop herself from grinning as she went to find him.
Today the lounge was cacophony and chaos. Several of the residents circled the room repetitively, one of them making distinctive chicken-wing flapping motions with her arms. The television, set to an inane soap opera, blared in Spanish. Puzzle pieces were scattered on the games table, but nobody sat to piece them together into a whole.
She didn't see Henry at first but when she did, Tovah's smile faded immediately. He stood rigid against one of the room's pillars, his face contorted into a grimace. He didn't blink as the flapping woman passed him, but after a second he, too, flapped his arms just as she had.
"Henry." Tovah put herself in front of him. "It's me. Tovahleh. Hi."
"Hi."
Relieved that he'd answered, even though he didn't appear to be paying attention, Tovah couldn't stop herself from hugging him. The crutches made it awkward, as did the fact Henry didn't hug her back. She let go after a moment, her throat tight with emotion, and looked up at him.
"Hey. Henry."
"Hey."
Hugging him was like hugging a statue. His body had no give to it. The flapping ceased, he'd gone back to his stiff stance. Her back hurt in sympathy just looking at him.
"Talk to me," she said quietly, aware they weren't alone even if nobody seemed to be paying attention to them.
"Talk to me," Henry repeated.
"Oh, Spider," Tovah whispered, but that didn't reach him, either. She really needed to sit and take the weight off her sound leg. Her arms had begun to ache, and exhaustion threatened to topple her.
Henry didn't move. When she reached to tug his sleeve, his body tightened at once, resisting even the slightest pull. She didn't have the balance to really yank him, and even in his fragile state Henry was taller and broader than she was. Frustrated, the couch only a few feet away, Tovah tried again. Pulling on Henry was like pulling on a block of stone.
She crutched over to one of the games tables and pulled a chair away from it, but carrying a chair was next to impossible without the full use of her hands. Frustration stung her further, making her angry enough to grit her jaws. Her stump throbbed and her head swam with the discomfort. All she really wanted to do was sit and talk to Henry, but nothing was cooperating. She looked for an orderly or an aide, but saw none.
"Dammit," she whispered harshly.
From his place by the pillar, Henry muttered, "Dammit."
"Don't do this," Tovah whispered.
She leaned against the back of the chair to give her armpits a break from the crutches. Grabbing them in one hand, the other on the back of the chair, she hopped and pushed. Hop, push. Hop, push, using the chair like a walker. She only managed two steps before the pain shooting up from her bruises made her stop, but she was two steps closer to Henry than she'd been before. The chill sweat became heat pooling along her brow and in her armpits, in the crack of her butt and between her breasts.
Now she'd drawn an audience. It wasn't so much that she cared about being stared at---Tovah had spent enough time in this place to understand that the social boundaries of the outside world didn't apply. What pissed her off was they were all staring, but nobody was helping. Hop, push.
"Henry," she said sharply. "I need to sit. You need to talk to me."
Nothing from Henry, but the woman standing behind him, the one who'd been flapping, let out a nervous titter. Tovah looked at her, and she ducked behind the pillar. The TV let out a blast of canned laughter. A young man in a faded flannel shirt, his hair mussed but for one smooth section straight down the center, approached her.
"What happened to your leg?"
Tovah looked up at him. "I lost it."
"God, that sucks," said the young man. "I hope you find it soon."
His question prompted more attention from some of the other patients, who now gathered around her. They weren't crowding her, not yet, but neither were they making it easy for her to move the chair. Tovah shifted her grip on the crutches and took another hop. The chair scraped loudly on the linoleum floor. The flapper covered her ears with her hands.
"Does it hurt?" asked an older man wearing a navy bathrobe. "It looks like it hurts. It looks like it hurts very much. Does it hurt? It looks like it hurts. It looks like it hurts a lot---"
"It hurts," Tovah said. "A lot."
The man in the bathrobe nodded, like he'd expected no other answer. "It looks like it hurts."
"It hurts!" The flapping woman peeked from behind Henry. "Jesus, Alonzo, she already said it fucking hurts!"
Alonzo drew himself up, his dignity clearly wounded, and turned on his heel to face the woman. "Shut up, Sandra. Just shut up. You shut up."
"No, you shut up!" Sandra ducked behind the pillar. "You!"
"Shut up," said Henry.
"Don't tell him to shut up," said the young man who'd first asked about her leg.
"All of you be quiet!" Tovah hop-pushed. "I'm trying to talk to Henry."
"Henry's not talking today." Sandra peeked around again. "You might ask to talk to Spider, but he's not here, either."
Tovah stopped her journey with no more than one step to go. "What did you just say?"
Alonzo muttered something vaguely antagonistic and stalked away. The young man with the funky hair gave a little squeak and also backed off. Henry said nothing, but Sandra scuttled around from behind the pillar.
"Spider," she said. "He's not here."
"Spider," said Henry. Then again. "Spider. Spider. Spider. Spider!"
With each repetition, the word got louder and more frantic, until at the last he was shouting and striking out with his hands. Tovah was glad she hadn't actually made it all the way over to him. In light of this, though, she couldn't keep going. She had to sit. Settling the crutches alongside the chair, she got her butt into place and collapsed with a groan of pure relief.
"Henry, stop," she murmured.
"Spider! Spider! Spider!"
Sandra ducked out of the way of Henry's flailing hands. Tovah wanted to shake the laugh right out of the other woman. Sandra danced a little, back and forth, clapping.
"Stop it," snapped Tovah. Then more gently, "Henry, love, stop."
"He's not listening," Sandra chanted. "He's loony fucking toons."
"Oh, really?" Tovah glared. "Pot, have you met kettle? You've got a lot in common."
Political correctness didn't really have a place here. Not among the patients themselves. It hadn't been so long ago that Tovah had been one of them herself.
"Ooh," said Sandra. "Bitch."
Tovah ignored her and raised her voice to be heard over Henry's muttered yelps. "Henry! It's me, Tovah. I need you to listen to me. I need you to hear me."
"He can't hear you, stupid. He's not here. I fucking told you."
Tovah looked at Sandra. "You said Spider's not here."
"Well, he's Spider, ain't he?" Sandra jerked her thumb at Henry, who'd contorted his body into an awkward position against the pillar.
"How do you know Spider?"
"Listen, dummy, I might be crazy but I'm not retarded, okay? Who doesn't know Spider? You know Spider. I know Spider. Henry knows, but he's not here. Spider's not here."
"Where is he?" Tovah cried, thankful for the first time all day she was effectively hobbled, or else she'd probably have jumped up and throttled Sandra.
"The fuck should I know? You got any cigarettes? Maybe if you gave me some smokes---"
"No." Tovah cut her off and focused again on Henry. "Henry. Look at me."
"Fuck you, then!" Sandra backed off behind the pillar again until the only sight of her was the occasional flap of her hands to either side.
"Spider," said Henry, mournful. "Spider, Spider..."
"Shh. Henry, you've got to calm down."
"Calm down!" His shout echoed in the room. He looked for the first time at Tovah, his face twisted. He looked, but she was pretty sure he didn't see her. "Down! Down! Down!"
He wasn't getting better. In fact, the posturing was getting worse, and the shouting had finally attracted an aide.
"Hey, hey," Marco said. "What's going on in here?"
"She's agitating." Sandra's finger pointed from behind the pillar. "She is. That one. She's agitating."
Tovah shrugged and indicated her stump, clear proof she'd been innocent of any agitation. The pinned-tight leg of her pale blue sweatpants had bloomed a series of small brown specks. It was bleeding again. She'd have to get home and change the dressings and ice it, if she wanted to be able to use her leg again this week.
"Sandra, am I gonna have to send you back to your room?" Marco's deep voice rumbled toward the other woman.
No matter how long it had been since Tovah had been the one in the bathrobe watching television in a language she didn't speak, small and simple things could take her back to that time at once. The threat of being sent to one's room and the scent of peppermint coming from a deep, rumbling voice were two of those things. She too well remembered the triumph of being one of the "good patients who never got into trouble," and the petty squabbles. Like siblings under the care of one stern parent.
Sandra shot Tovah a look of pure loathing. "But she---"
"Spider!" shouted Henry. "Spider! Oh, no! No, no, no!"
Marco moved at once, his big hand reaching for Henry's shoulder. Henry ducked the touch. He was fast, less clumsy than he looked, and he made it away from Marco's grasping hand without much effort. Sandra yelped, clapping her hands and dancing, but Tovah could do nothing but watch as Henry stumbled toward her.
The solid smash left Tovah gasping, breathless in agony as Henry's leg connected with her already abused stump hard enough to move the entire chair half a foot across the floor. She forgot everything else as she rocked in the chair and grabbed at her injury.
There had been pain like this just after the accident, during the times she swam up out of the haze of meds. And later, during physical therapy, when she'd spent hours in agony learning to walk again. She'd been careful since then to keep herself from fresh injury, and though she'd had some bumps and sore moments, nothing compared to this.
She was, she realized, graying out, and she put her head down to her thighs. The world tipped. As though from far away, she heard the scrape of chairs being moved and the patter of running feet. Shouts. She heard the deep rumble of Marco's voice and smelled peppermint. The world edged itself in gray, then red, then finally, black.
"Tovahleh. Look at me."
Blearily, she opened her eyes. Henry knelt in front of her, his hands on her knees, two of them. His eyes were clear and focused, his mouth thin with anxiety. Tovah blinked, weaving even as she sat upright.
"I don't have much time," Henry told her with a glance over his shoulder. "They'll come right away if they know you're here with me. But listen---"
"Who? What's going on?" Tovah tried to get up but the chair refused to let her go.
Behind her, she heard the shouting, the moving chairs. She saw the lounge all around them, and Sandra capering with glee behind the pillar. But in front of her knelt Henry, not Spider...even as she caught sight of waking Henry ducking and running from Marco's steady pursuit.
"I'm not here, I'm not there," Henry said. "I can't explain, Tovahleh, but they've done something."
"Who? The boy?"
"The woman and the jackal-headed man."
She shook her head, reaching for him. "Spider, they're the same---"
"I'm not Spider now," Henry said sadly. "I can't help you, doll, you've got to go."
Tovah shook her head again. "No. Listen to me, Henry, the boy, the woman and the dogman, they're the same person. I felt it the last time, when Ben and I were on the beach. It's why we could only shape them away when we were all together. You have to---"
"I can't, lovey." Henry shook his head, drawing away. The room behind him faded to gray, then black, a shifting hole in the Ephemeros. "They're holding me."
"We'll find you!" she shouted after him. "Ben and I. We'll come after you, Spider!"
Henry/Spider shook his head, stepping back. "Too dangerous..."
"No!"
The world rocked around her again. Face, meet floor. The stinging odor of ammonia burned her nose and shook her awake with streaming eyes and coughs. Marco patted her back gently.
"You okay?" he asked, gripping her arm to help her up. "You need a doc?"
Tovah shook her head. "No. I'm okay. It just hurts."
"Hurts a lot," offered Alonzo from his place across the room.
She looked around. A whirlwind had swept through the lounge while she'd been passing out. Sandra bit her fingernails in the corner across from Alonzo while the young man in flannel had disappeared.
"Henry?" Tovah asked.
Marco pointed to the far side of the room, where Henry sagged in the arms of two orderlies. "He's been sedated."
"Is that..." She shook her head, knowing nothing she could say would take back the drugs they'd already given him. "Will he be okay?"
Marco shrugged. "As okay as he can be, I guess. You sure you're all right? That looks bad."
She looked at the fresh red roses blooming on her pants. "Damn."
"Let me bring you some gauze, at least." Marco stood, towering over her.
"No. It'll be fine until I can get home." The lie clicked from behind her teeth. She didn't want Marco fussing. She needed to get home, get into bed.
Find Ben.
"You sure?" Marco looked skeptical. His strong fingers unpinned the fabric and probed the top edge of the bandages, heedless of her hiss of pain or the fact he might be taking liberties. "I think one of the docs should see this. Really."
Again, she shook her head. "No. Really. I fell last night and it just got bumped now. I'm really okay. Hurts a lot, but---"
"A lot," called Alonzo.
Tovah and Marco shared a smile. "I'll be fine."
He stood and helped her onto her crutches. "Okay, but I'm going to walk you to your car."
That was an offer she knew better than to refuse. Tovah paused in the doorway, watching as the orderlies assisted Henry down the hall toward his room. Her heart ached even as her head throbbed with what had happened. With Marco's strong grip, she made it down to her car without incident, though by the time she collapsed into the driver's seat her sound leg was quivering with strain and her arms had become lead weights.
"You can drive, right?" Marco tapped the top of the car. "You're good?"
"I'm good."
He nodded, still looking skeptical, but backed off. She waited until he'd gone inside the front doors before she gave in to the sob that had been lodged in her throat for the past ten minutes. Only one. It barked out of her, and she rested her head on the steering wheel, willing her body not to betray her until she could get home.
She barely made it.
By the time Tovah pulled into her driveway, hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, her vision had blurred with the effort of operating the vehicle. She put the car in park and turned off the ignition, then closed her eyes and took long, slow, deep breaths to get herself under control.
The porch seemed very far away. The stairs insurmountable. She'd have to take the ramp and it would make her journey twice as long, but unless she crawled on her hands and knee, dragging her injured leg behind her, she wasn't going to make it any other way.
She wanted to cry but refused to allow it. She only had to get inside. Get some ice. Put her feet up---the one remaining and the one she no longer had but could still feel. And yet, she couldn't quite make herself open the door, grab the crutches and get out. She did pull the keys from the ignition and put them in her fist, but that was as far as she got.
Just a minute more. She'd sit a minute more. Gather her strength.
She'd grayed out a bit again when the rapping of knuckles on her window glass woke her with a start. She looked over, expecting the fireman. Smoke. The crunch of glass and metal.
"Tovah?" Martin looked concerned. "Are you all right?"
She nodded, but realized that wasn't going to be a good enough answer. She pushed open the driver's door, and Martin stepped away to let her. He grabbed the door as it swung open, though, and stepped to the inside of it.
Martin barely looked twice at the blood on her pants. He looked into her eyes, instead. "Are you all right?"
She meant to say yes, but shook her head. No. "Could you help me get inside?"
Martin didn't waste time with a verbal answer. She was in his arms before she knew it, the breath squeaking out of her as he lifted her like she weighed nothing. Her arms went around his neck at once to keep from falling...and because it seemed utterly natural that's where they should go. Martin didn't bother with her crutches, just shut the car door with his foot and carried her up the stairs to her front door.
"Key?" He didn't even sound winded.
Tovah held it up and he turned her so she could fit it into the lock. The screen door threatened to cause them trouble but Martin navigated that, too. Max was already barking when they entered the hall. He ignored Tovah's commands to shush but stayed out of the way as Martin took her directly to the den and settled her on the couch.
He propped her with pillows. He disappeared into her kitchen. When he came back he brought the tackle box of first-aid supplies she'd left on her kitchen table and an ice bag from the freezer. He pulled the ottoman close and lifted her sound foot onto it.
And then, he sat in front of her and took care of her.
Her first response was to go stiff when he reached for the folded leg of her sweatpants and worked open the large safety pin holding it closed. Her hands went automatically to push his away. Her mouth opened to say no.
But then Martin looked at her, his fingers gentle on the skin of her thigh as he pushed up the loose fabric of her sweatpants. Tovah relaxed a spare inch against the back of the couch. Martin pushed the hem past the edge of her stained cotton sock. With an unhesitant touch he slid it free and unbound the damp bandages beneath. He shook his head slightly at the sight of the damage, but when he looked into her face, his eyes weren't pitying.
"You fell?"
She nodded and winced as those strong hands probed. "Last night. And I got knocked into, today."
Martin pulled away the gauze and used antiseptic cleaner on a fresh pad to cleanse the seeping splits in her skin. It stung less when he did it than when she had. He pushed gently along a few of her wounds. Tovah found it easier to watch him when he wasn't looking at her. He had good hands.
He caught her looking as he reached for the ice packs and the hand towels. He watched her face as he carefully slid the ice around her stump, making sure to keep the soft fabric of the towel between her skin and the freezer pack. Tovah didn't look away.
"Want to tell me about it?" he asked in a low voice.
"I got up in the night to go to the bathroom and forgot I wasn't wearing my leg. Stupid." The lie tasted bitter.
Martin started putting the supplies back in the tackle box with swift, efficient movements. "And the bump?"
"I went to see Henry."
Martin looked up, his hands pausing in their organization. "You did?"
"Yes. He was awake. But...agitated."
Martin closed the lid. "He hurt you?"
"He didn't mean to. He was running away from Marco, and he bumped me. But it was enough to start it bleeding again."
"And it hurt." Martin's face shadowed. "He hurt you."
"It wasn't like that. Henry's my friend. He was just confused."
Martin nodded after a moment and busied himself with the tackle box. "Henry's a sick man. You're right. I'm sure he didn't know what he was doing."
The ice was helping a lot. So was the company, she had to admit. Though she'd have been burning with mortification should anyone else have been the one to help her from the car and change her bandages, with Martin it just seemed right. Safe. Like it made sense.
"Do you have another sock?" he asked. "I can get it for you."
"I do." She pointed toward the basket of laundry next to the doorway. She'd meant to take it upstairs, later, but now was glad she hadn't. She couldn't remember if she'd made her bed, and didn't want Martin rooting around in her underwear drawers, anyway. "There's some clean ones in there."
He nodded and got up, crossing to the basket in smooth, steady strides she envied. She hadn't noticed until just now that he'd been dressed for a jog. His blue T-shirt clung across broad shoulders and his flat stomach when he turned, new sock in hand. He stopped, noticing her stare.
Why now? Tovah wondered as he crossed to her and used those strong but gentle hands to slide the soft cotton around her stump and adjust it so it didn't bunch or pinch. Why this now, when she'd just found out how Ben really felt about her?
The grandfather clock in the front hall chimed the half hour, and she looked automatically to her watch, which was a few minutes fast. She was still looking at it when Martin took his hands from her leg and put them on her face. He brushed the tumbled disaster of her hair off her cheeks and back behind her shoulders, then smoothed his hand down her arm to loosely cup her wrist. The couch dipped as he sat next to her sound leg, still propped on the ottoman.
Tovah looked at him, the surge of anticipation like the rush of the sea all around her. He leaned in to kiss her, and she waited for it with parted lips and held breath, but open eyes. Only when Martin's mouth touched hers did she close them.
Her arms fit around him as naturally this time as they had when he'd been carrying her. The couch creaked as she shifted toward him. Her fingers curled on the back of his neck, her other hand anchored to the jut of his shoulder blade.
He tasted of anise and an under-hint of mint, like he'd been eating some sort of strange candy. It wasn't a bad taste, and she opened her mouth to take in more of him. His tongue slid against hers, his kiss as confident as his caretaking had been.
The uncertain man she'd seen him be so many times did not exist just then. Only the man who moved and touched with surety. He pulled her against him but softly enough that her injured leg didn't shift and pain her. He broke the kiss for a second to brush her lips with his, then went right back to it with twice as much effort. His hand slid beneath her hair, his fingers massaging the twin points at the base of her skull guaranteed to make her melt.
Melt she did, with a soft sigh. He'd primed her by using those hands on the one part of her body in which she had the least confidence, and now using his mouth to create the intimacy she'd been craving and avoiding.
She opened to him, gave herself up to the kiss, let it flow over and around her as Martin threaded his fingers in her hair and tipped her head back, just a little. He moved closer, the heat from his body a welcome warmth, but he didn't crowd her.
He was careful not to jostle her, and she noticed and appreciated his concern. The kiss got deeper, but not harder. Soft and firm and gentle and sweet, hot and sultry...it was everything a kiss should be. It was what Ben's kiss would have been, if they'd had time, and at that thought guilt tiptoed up and down her spine.
"Something wrong?" Martin pulled away to whisper.
"No." Tovah licked her mouth, feeling her lips plumper than they'd been before. Every muscle had relaxed, ready for limpness. She shook her head, cutting her gaze from his like he'd be able to read in her eyes that she'd been thinking of another man.
A man who wasn't real, she reminded herself. Or not real enough. Not a man who should matter here.
Martin was real, he was here, he was real. He was a friend, a good man, trustworthy. He'd seen all the parts of her and not backed away.
There was a chance to make something here, to not back away. Martin let out a surprised sigh when she kissed him, but his arms tightened around her at once. Tension coiled in the pit of her belly. Yes or no hung between them the way it always did between two people courting intimacy for the first time. Yes to the hand curling around her waist, yes to the stroke and probe of his tongue. So far he hadn't attempted anything that would be a no.
Tovah wasn't sure there would be a no. In her waking life she'd never bedded a stranger. She had, in fact, only slept with three men in her whole life, one of whom she'd been married to for six years. She'd never been a vixen, temptress, tease.
In the Ephemeros, however, she'd learned how to touch and be touched. How to move and how to use stillness as seduction. She'd made love without awkwardness or hesitation, and there should be no reason not to do the same in the waking world.
Martin wasn't a stranger with a changing face. Even if he turned out to be something she didn't expect---a cheater, an emotional vacuum, the sort who left the seat up no matter how many times he was asked to put it down---he would still be Martin. Things like that didn't change here.
"You taste so good," he murmured against her mouth, sipping at her lips like he was sampling wine. "You smell so good."
His fingers drifted through her hair, tugging just hard enough to send pleasant tingles over her scalp. They echoed in her throat and wrists and the insides of her elbows. When his hand slid a little higher, over her ribs, Tovah arched a bit to accept Martin's touch. To encourage it, even.
The injury to her leg made the possibility of actual lovemaking impractical, but she didn't want him to stop. His touch---a real, actual touch---felt too good. His warmth warmed her. His mouth teased hers. It had been too long and it had taken too much for her to give him even this. She wasn't going to be the one to stop it.
"I've thought about this for a long time," Martin told her.
"Have you? Really?" With a small laugh, Tovah nuzzled his cheek. "I wasn't sure---"
"How could you not have noticed, sweetheart?" He smoothed a hand over her hair.
The endearment made her blink, odder than the sudden expression of desire. Martin's brow furrowed so briefly she couldn't be sure she'd seen it. His hand hesitated in its path along the length of her hair. The weight of his hand on her shoulder seemed suddenly greater, the pressure of his fingers on her ribs less.
She kissed him again.
Martin kissed exactly how she'd have expected a man like him to kiss, with confidence and skill, and with an ease she'd only sometimes glimpsed in him. Martin kissed her like he'd always been meant to do it, and she wondered how she could have ever doubted his interest.
The grandfather clock chimed the half hour.
Caught up in the softness of Martin's mouth and the comfort of his touch, Tovah didn't pay attention to the familiar sound. Until it chimed again a minute later. She opened her eyes, lips still pressed to his, but looked over his shoulder at the clock on the wall.
It was a Krazy Kat clock Kevin's parents had given her one year for Christmas. The batteries had run out months ago and, relieved that the incessant motion of the eyes and tail had finally stopped, Tovah hadn't replaced them. It didn't keep the right time, had stopped at quarter past four. Now it showed half past one.
The grandfather clock chimed again.
"Tovah?"
Tovah blinked and looked at him, then back at the Krazy Kat.
Quarter past four.
"Did you just hear the clock chime?"
Martin licked his mouth. "The one in the hall?"
"Yes." Tovah pushed away a little. Her stump suddenly flared into a fresh ache and she looked away from him to rub it gently, away from the places she'd cut it.
"About half an hour ago, yes. Why?"
"I just..." She looked up at him, her stomach falling away.
She should have known this wasn't going to work.
"What is it?"
The grandfather clock began its slow, steady chime again, this time for the hour. She'd been hearing it for so many years it rarely registered, but she heard every note this time. The Krazy Kat was still at quarter after four. The grandfather clock was chiming the hour.
She was in the waking world, and yet she couldn't shake the feeling she was asleep. Because maybe that's really where she wanted to be.
"I'm sorry," she told him, struggling for the right words. Words that wouldn't sound like she was making excuses, an explanation that didn't ring false. "I'm not sure I'm ready for this."
Martin didn't move but she felt him withdraw from her as quickly and thoroughly as if he'd leaped away. "I see."
"You don't, Martin. You can't. I'm sorry, I---"
He got up fast, like she'd pushed him. He didn't look at her. Every line of his body had gone stiff, and Tovah realized now that, confidence or not, his kiss had taken courage. A lot of it. She wondered again what had made him so wary.
Now she might not ever know.
"Don't be sorry," he said, stiff as starch.
"Martin..." She trailed off, not certain what she meant to say.
That she was crazy? That the clocks changed their time? That the dream world poked her even when she was awake?
"If there's someone else..." he said, and left it at that.
Tovah hesitated, which seemed to be the answer he expected, even if she wasn't sure what it was. Martin nodded, moving away. She wanted to get up and couldn't.
"Keep ice on that," he said. "Twenty minutes on, an hour off. It will help with the swelling. Take some ibuprofen, too, three tablets every four hours. And go to your prosthetist as soon as you can. You're going to probably need to be refitted with at least a temporary socket or something."
"Martin---"
He held up a hand, still not looking at her. "Don't. Please."
Awfulness washed over her like a wave of nausea. He didn't want to hear that she was sorry, even though she was. Tovah couldn't blame him.
"I'll let myself out," he told her. "Take care of your leg."
As soon as he'd gone, Max padded into the room and laid his head on the couch next to her. Tovah buried her face in the thick, soft fur, not sure if she was crying or only imagining her tears until the dog lapped at her cheeks.
"What just happened?" she asked the dog, and was glad he had no answer.
The last thing Tovah wanted to do was walk into the meeting on crutches. Walk. As though what she was doing could be called walking. She lurched into the meeting already flustered by the difficulty of navigating the elevator and doors while carrying her briefcase and maneuvering her crutches. The only thing worse would have been showing up in a wheelchair.
She bore the pitying look on Kevin's face when she came through the door by biting the inside of her cheek hard enough to taste blood. He got to his feet when she pushed the door open, but it was her lawyer Reginald Perry who held the door for her and helped her get to her seat. The pressure of Kevin's fingertips against the glass tabletop left expanding circles of moisture.
"Tov." One small word, made so important by the waver in his voice.
It was the first time they'd been in the same room since the day they'd signed the mediation papers. She'd seen him once after that, looking at her through the glass of an observation room at the Sisters of Mercy Hospital. He'd turned away from her then. She turned away from him now.
Tovah thanked Mr. Perry and arranged herself as best she could in the too-cushioned chair. She'd chosen a midlength skirt today, long enough to cover the bandages but short enough not to tangle in the crutches and to provide ease in caring for her stump during the day. It was serviceable but not attractive, and at the sight of Jennifer Petrucci's smart navy pinstriped suit, dowdiness ambushed Tovah into wishing she'd worn something a little less practical.
Kevin's lawyer, Bill Long, cleared his throat, perhaps to catch Kevin's attention. It worked, because Kevin sat abruptly, as if someone had cut the back of his knees. The marks his fingers had made on the tabletop slowly dissipated. Tovah watched for a moment but had to look away at the evidence of Kevin's anxiety.
"Should we get right to it?" Mr. Perry said.
Mr. Perry didn't waste time with cheery words or false enthusiasm. He laid out the insurance company's final settlement in clear, crisp tones, then added the specifics about the divorce agreement. He pushed a thick folder toward the center of the table. It bulged with receipts for service from Tovah's doctors, her prosthetist and the supply companies she used. She'd kept careful documentation for years, had been the one to live through the endless appointments and open the boxes full of skin creams and cotton socks, and even to her the file looked obscenely stuffed.
"This is the financial responsibility my client has managed for the past three years." Perry pushed another, slimmer file next to the first. "These are copies of the insurance payouts."
A chortle---an actual chortle---burst from between the other lawyer's lips. "Yes, but Perry, you don't need a thick stack of papers when the checks have six zeroes on them."
Mr. Perry pursed his lips and looked at Tovah. "My client has looked over the proposal carefully, Mr. Long, but I'm going to be upfront about this. I've counseled her to deny any further requests for support or a portion of the settlement."
"Still got that beach house in the Keys, huh, Perry?"
Mr. Perry looked pained. "We're here today to discuss these arrangements, Mr. Long. Not my vacation house."
"Right, right." Long nodded. Unlike the actual chortle, he didn't really rub his hands together in glee, but it didn't take much imagination to picture him doing it.
Tovah had never met Kevin's lawyer before. The divorce mediator had been nice and fair. This lawyer seemed almost a parody, and she turned to look at the man to whom she'd been married. Kevin wasn't looking at her. He stared at his hands, clasped tight on top of the table. His shirtsleeves had pulled up, showing wrists once familiar to her but now not.
Kevin's lawyer was still talking, making a joke out of the insurance companies and their bad habit of holding on to settlements or something, Tovah wasn't paying attention. She was too busy looking at Kevin's watch.
For as long as she'd known him, he'd worn the thick metal band of a watch that had belonged to his grandfather. Even in college he'd preferred that old-fashioned timepiece to the nylon and plastic sports styles his friends had worn. He'd worn it every day and placed it with care into its original box every night.
It had been replaced with a similar but brand-new watch. There could be no mistake. The metal was shiny, the links tight, the watch face decorated with large, clear numbers instead of the slightly blurred roman numerals. She was too far away to read the maker, but the watch looked expensive.
"Nice watch," she said aloud.
The conversation between her lawyer and Kevin's stopped. Kevin looked up. The way he pulled his sleeve down over the watch told Tovah more than anything else. She felt the wash of emotions cross her face: anger, grief, loathing, disgust, and she saw that Kevin saw them, too.
Tovah looked at Kevin's lawyer. "Mr. Long, Kevin signed a mediation agreement in which he agreed to relinquish any insurance settlement to me in return for not taking financial responsibility for the continuing costs of my injury."
Long's slick, smarmy grin made Tovah want to spit. "Ms. Connelly..."
"That was a binding agreement, Mr. Long." She looked at Kevin. "He can't come back with his hand out now just because the dollar signs started flashing."
"Tovah." Kevin gave a small shake of his head, seeking to stifle her.
"Since the insurance premiums were paid for through my client's wages and via his employer---" began Long, but Tovah cut him off.
"He walked away. He was driving the car, and he walked away." She bit out the words one at a time, making each count. "Literally. Kevin walked away from the accident and from our marriage. As far as I'm concerned, he doesn't deserve a penny of this money."
"I don't think you can just---" started Long, but Tovah cut him off again.
Her gaze, locked on Kevin, didn't waver, and though Jennifer tugged at his arm he gave Tovah the respect of looking at her instead of at his fiancée. "You walked away."
"I know." Kevin's voice scraped the floor, but he didn't look away from her.
"Kevin," whispered Jennifer with a frantic look back and forth between him and Mr. Long. "You don't have to talk to her!"
The room filled abruptly with silence.
It took Kevin seven breaths, in and out, to speak. "Actually, Jen, I think I do."
There was a kerfuffle then, with the lawyers posturing and Jennifer flailing, but in the end it was just the two of them. Tovah and Kevin, facing off over a glass-topped table. Kevin leaned back in his chair, one long leg crossed over the other. He toyed with the end of his tie, one she'd never seen.
Once she'd known every item in his closet, had washed and folded and taken to the dry cleaner everything he'd ever worn. His clothes had been as familiar to her as his body had been, each line and bump. Each scar. All the flaws, and all the perfections, too. Though they sat close enough for her to count the stripes on his tie, they were very far apart.
She shifted in her chair, pulling the skirt smoother under her thighs so the bunched material wouldn't rub. The glass of the table hid nothing, and though she was careful not to flash him with anything, she made no effort to conceal the wrapped end of her limb. Kevin had, after all, seen her in the hospital. Seen her at physical therapy. Seen her in the car, as a matter of fact, her bones sticking through her shredded skin. He'd seen her in the first days after the accident, when what remained of her leg had swelled and oozed. He'd been there the day they took off the bandages and began fitting her for the first prosthetic.
He'd been there for all of that, had once professed to love her, and still he flinched at the sight of her residual limb beneath the skirt. And still she didn't manage to hate him for it.
"I think it might be easier if it's just you and me," Kevin said.
The table rocked a bit as she scooted her chair closer. "Maybe."
Such small words, common talk. Like strangers, though they weren't.
His eyes flicked again beneath the table, but he looked away. Ashamed, she thought. Discomfited. Repulsed. She didn't move.
"Look, it's not like I'm asking for something that---"
"You don't deserve?" she cut in.
He met her gaze. "We were both in that accident."
She'd seen his scars. He'd been hurt, too. "You agreed to sign the settlement over to me."
"Yeah." He played with his tie again, rubbing it between his fingers. She might not recognize the tie, but she knew that habit. "Well, things have changed."
"Not for me."
He frowned. "Tov. C'mon. Be fair."
She blinked. "Fair?"
"I'm sorry, Tovah."
"Then don't do this. Do not fight me for this money, Kevin. I don't care what Jennifer wants."
"It's not her," he said so stoutly she knew he was lying.
"Don't fight me for it. I didn't fight you for things I could have."
That was true, though it made her feel petty to point it out. Kevin's frown creased his mouth and made him look older. For the first time, she noticed a glint of silver in the black hair at his temples.
She hated that it took so much effort and arranging to stand, but she did it, balancing on her sound leg and using the table for support. "Sign the papers like you said you would, and we'll be done with each other for good."
"Is that what you think I want?" He stood, too, buttoning his jacket. He shoved his hands into his pockets, a little boy pouting.
"It's what I want!" she cried, too loud. "I want to be done with you, once and for all, so I can just get on with my life!"
They stared at each other. Kevin looked away first. Sickness swirled in Tovah's gut.
"I need that money," he said after a moment.
"So do I, Kevin. More than you. I need it to take care of myself, okay?" The instant she said it, she regretted it.
He looked at her, eyes gleaming a little. "You're doing okay, aren't you? You're not---"
"I'm not crazy," Tovah told him harshly. "If that's what you're getting at."
"I never said you were crazy."
He'd come to see her just that once at the Sisters of Mercy. Once through glass, not even close enough to speak to her. She'd never forget the way he'd stared and turned away.
"It's...a lot of money, Tov. That's all."
She was glad to hear shame in his voice, though it was a short-lived happiness. "Yes. I know. I have a lot of bills."
"You always did like to shop." Kevin's lame attempt at humor would have slapped her more had she not been so unsurprised by it. "I'm sorry, that was---"
"Insensitive? Boorish?"
"Stupid," he told her.
She shrugged. "That, too."
"Dammit, Tov! Why are you being so vindictive! I said I was sorry!"
He'd never been good at taking blame. Not for things as simple as leaving the kitchen light on or forgetting to feed Max, and certainly not for greater transgressions. He thought sorry should always be enough.
"And that should make it all better?" Tovah's sound leg ached a bit, and she reached for the crutches to settle them under her arms and use her hands to take some of the weight off. The urge to pace was a physical need, incapable of fulfillment.
"Yes! I mean, no." Kevin scraped a hand through his thick dark hair. "It just means I'm sorry. That's all."
"Then don't fight me for this money," she repeated. "Do not make this uglier than it already is, Kevin. I mean it."
"Or what?"
She'd pushed him a little too hard, she guessed. Played too much upon his sense of decency by insinuating he wasn't decent. Kevin reacted as he'd always done, with bluster and self-righteousness. Once it would have made her feel guilty enough to take back what she'd said, or to soothe him. Today it only exhausted her.
"Or nothing. Or you'll have to live with the fact that you're a prick, that's all."
A storm brewed in Kevin's gaze, followed quickly by a scowl. "Nice. Very nice."
Tovah sighed, bruised but not yet beaten. "You'll have to sue me for it. I'm not signing it over to you. Period. End of story. Goodbye, Kevin."
"You said you'd negotiate this with me!"
"Negotiation is over." She turned to go.
"If I have to sue you, I will!"
"Goodbye, Kevin," she said gently, because she had once loved him so much it was like fire.
He didn't call after her. She didn't look back.
Tovah burst through the veil between sleep and dreams. She needed the Ephemeros. Needed her body, the ability to shape something the way she wanted it.
If this was addiction, she didn't care.
"Fuck it," she said aloud to the gray. "I need to dream this for a reason, right? I need to be here for a reason. What's my reason, then, huh? What's my fucking reason?"
The mountain again. An obstacle to climb. A test to win.
She was here, and shaping this, on purpose or because she needed to, whatever that meant. She was going to climb this mountain. All the way to the top.
Tovah took a moment to center herself. To focus. This mountain was made for her, each crevice a potential hand or foothold, each outcropping another obstacle to overcome. And she would make it this time, all the way to the top, glass and razors or not.
She looked up. The mountain would have rivaled Mount Everest. Its top disappeared into swirling clouds of gray. No telling what awaited her at the top. But she'd never know unless she tried.
Hand over hand, her feet digging into the mountain, Tovah climbed. Higher and higher, each inch a triumph and exhilaration. Yes, she knew this wasn't real, that a fall from here didn't mean injury or death, but that didn't make the climb any easier. Her muscles stung and pulled like they would have in the waking world, because she demanded that of herself.
She was close to the top when the rocks began to change.
"No."
Her hand came down on glass. Sharp. It cut her palm, but unlike the last time, Tovah didn't let go. She reached with the other hand and grabbed. Her hold slipped as the glass sliced open her palm. Blood ran down her arms, down her sides, dripped off her skin to fall to the earth below.
And she still didn't let go.
Her right foot nudged the mountainside. A needle of glass pierced her foot. She didn't scream, though the pain was sudden and intense, worse than in the waking world where shock would've shielded her for a while. She kept going.
She moved her left foot, but her mind betrayed her, refused to put it down. The memory of pain overpowered her will. She looked up again. She was one step from the top. One step and she'd reach her goal.
One step.
And still she couldn't move, too afraid of the pain she knew would come if she put her foot on the glass.
One step, she thought. Just one.
And then, she took it.
Her left foot dislodged from its place in the crevice. Her knee bent. Her foot moved and found its place on the razor-blade-littered mountainside. Razors and glass pierced it, but Tovah felt no pain, because rubber and vinyl couldn't feel.
And then she was on top of the mountain, the sweet grass tickling her face as she clung to the flat meadow. Daisies and violets sprouted beneath her fists as she laughed and cried, cried and laughed without distinction.
"I did it," she said. "Fuck you. I did it. I made it."
She looked up at the sound of slow, steady clapping.
"Good job, sweetheart."
"You." Tovah got to her feet easily enough, with a shift and surge of her will.
Edward spread his hands and cocked his head. "Me."
Tovah's smile felt forced. "You found me again."
"Of course I did." He reached a hand to pull her closer, but she resisted. "What's wrong?"
It had taken her some time to figure it out, but now it all seemed very clear. "I think...Edward...that I don't need this."
"Of course you do." His confident smile left no room for doubt. "If you didn't, I wouldn't be here."
Tovah shook her head. The memories of Ben's kiss, and Martin's, swelled in her mind. "No. Please don't."
Edward let go of her hand. "What is it?"
If there had been a good reason to push him away, give herself distance, she'd have used it. Instead, she could only be honest. "There's someone else."
Edward looked stunned for one brief moment. Then he laughed. He drew her closer, trying to kiss her. "Sweetheart. Out there? How can that matter here?"
Tovah turned her face from his mouth. "No, Edward. Not just out there."
He blinked and let her go so fast she stumbled back. "Not just? What's that supposed to mean?"
Tovah sighed and began to pace, one hand on her hip. "I've met someone new, but there's someone I've known for a while---"
"Wait. Stop."
She stopped and looked at him. "I'm sorry, Edward."
Edward shook his head. For once his features didn't dance on his face, or shift and blur from one to another. He'd frozen himself to stillness. He looked up at her with one brilliant blue eye and the other a deep, fathomless black.
"But I gave you what you needed, Tovah. Didn't I?"
"Yes. For a time." Her heart cracked. "But things change."
Edward shook his head again, negating her. "You weren't supposed to change."
She had nothing to say to that. Another apology would sound patronizing and insincere. She had no more explanation.
"Is it because of my face?" His features blurred and shifted. "Because I never look the same to you? That matters so much?"
Once it had mattered quite a bit, but now it didn't seem like it should have.
Tovah stepped away from him. "No. Not that. I got sort of used to that."
"Then what?" He sounded so sincerely confused that she hated herself for being so full of doubt. "What did I do? Was it the mountain? It was the mountain. I pushed you too hard, didn't I? But I did it to help you, sweetheart. Don't you understand? To help."
He moved fast, grabbing her wrists. The blood from her hands had dried and caked, painting her skin like an abstract tattoo. She hadn't yet shaped away the wounds, and at his touch she hissed in pain. He didn't let go. Edward smoothed his thumbs over her palms, sealing the slices with his touch.
"Let me go."
"But I just wanted to help you," he insisted. "Didn't I help you?"
Tovah looked into his face, which had shifted again, so slightly she might not have noticed. Something was different in the shape of the brow, the width of the mouth. Edward's lips parted slightly, showing teeth that gleamed.
"Didn't I?" he asked her again, softly.
Tovah nodded slowly, her heart twisting. "Yes. You did."
His hands linked with hers in a lover's grasp. "I told you when you climbed this mountain you'd find something real, didn't I?"
"Something that would last. Yes."
His smile would have charmed her, before, but now it left her cold. "And here I am. Wasn't this what you've been looking for?"
Tovah shook her head once, twice, slowly. "No."
Edward dropped her hand and stepped back. "No? You tell me no?"
"That's what I said." Tovah looked at her once-upon-a-time lover. He turned his back to her, his shoulders slumped.
"But why?"
Tovah was used to strange things happening in the Ephemeros. She hadn't before experienced the ability to taste colors or smell sounds...but now Edward's voice smelled like rain. It tasted like rain, too, the sort that falls between lightning and turns the earth to mud.
She looked at her feet, still resting on grass. The left was still there, but still fake. It had no toes, just a smooth, curved edge that usually didn't matter because it disappeared inside shoes. She shaped it to match the right and felt it shift and blur, but the shaping took more effort than she'd anticipated and left her sweating.
"Why?"
Edward had turned to face her while she concentrated on her foot. His eyes had gone dark, though his face still played. The few familiar pieces blended with new features. He was still handsome, but bleak.
"Edward. Some things have been happening here. Bad things."
Edward frowned. "Bad things happen. If they didn't, nobody would need a guide. But good things happen, too, Tovah. I thought we were a good thing."
"I thought so too."
"But you don't anymore."
She shook her head. "No, Edward. I'm afraid I don't."
"Why not!" His shout thudded around her like stones hitting the earth.
The force of it thundered in the soles of her feet. It smelled like lavender and burning leaves, and her throat closed against an uprush of emotion. She said, "What do you want instead?"
He faced her, his mouth working and fists clenching. Tovah wanted to back up again, wary, but the cliff was still behind her and she knew too well how high she'd climbed. She could jump, maybe fly, but she didn't want to run.
His will pressed around her on all sides, then did something unexpected. It reached inside her and pulled on hers. Threads of desire, memory, wishful thinking, unspooled like thread and were swallowed up by his. It was a violation worse than rape.
"This?" Edward became Ben. "Your helpful, faithful Eagle Scout?"
"Or this?" Edward became Kevin. "Your bastard ex-husband?"
"Stop!" Tovah gathered the tendrils of her will around her, tight, ripping them from Edward's phantom touch. "You're crazy!"
"I'm not crazy!" Edward's cry echoed all around them.
A pain that had nothing to do with the glass on the mountain sliced her. "I'm sorry, Edward."
"I'm not crazy. I was trying to help you. What's so wrong with that?" He paced, each step leaving the imprint of his feet in the grass. The wind came up, whipping around her face. Edward didn't notice.
The Ephemeros shifted around her. "Edward. Listen to me. There's something you should know."
He looked up, gone a total stranger. There was no part of him left she recognized. Nothing left of the lover who'd given her body such pleasure and her soul such ease. His fists clenched and opened at his sides while fury and sorrow bent his mouth.
"There's someone..."
"Tovah?"
Tovah whirled. "Kevin?"
It was Kevin, representing as his college self, but recognizable. He probably always represented like that. Still stuck in his past. She wasn't surprised. He wore the shirt she'd bought him for their first Valentine's Day. It flapped open over a T-shirt she also knew. His hair, longer than he'd worn it for years, hung in smooth black waves to his shoulders. She'd loved his hair like that.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Kevin looked around, hands on his hips. "I was just with Monica Godsey. We were getting ready to go waterskiing."
It wasn't the most bizarre dream she'd ever heard, so she didn't even bother trying to explain. There could be no good reason for him to be there now. "You should get back there, then."
"Don't send him away on my account," said Edward. "Since it seems you two are so cozy, and all."
His words made that true. Kevin's embrace felt like coming home to her parents' house after living away---like she'd once never been able to imagine living anyplace else while simultaneously unable to imagine how it had been to reside there. Tovah had been pushed before, against her will and with it. This was an odd combination of both. Edward was guiding Kevin, who didn't know it, and shaping Tovah, who did.
She didn't fight Kevin's arms around her, or Edward's desire they be there. "Edward. Don't do this."
"Who's Edward?" Kevin, belligerent, jerked his chin toward the other man. "How does he know you?"
He was college Kevin but she was still early-thirties Tovah, and this bit of posturing that might have seemed romantic back when his jealousy had meant something no longer appealed. She pushed out of his arms, standing between the two men. Edward, tall and broad, advanced. Kevin stood his ground.
Edward sneered. "I'm the guy who's been fucking her, that's who I am."
Kevin put up his fists. "I'm her boyfriend, asshole!"
"Stop it! Stop this right now!" Tovah put her hands up, holding them apart. "This is ridiculous!"
"This is your ideal man?" Edward spit on the ground next to Tovah. "This is the best your will could dredge up?"
"What the hell's he talking about?" Kevin, still posturing, lowered his hands a little.
"Kevin. You want to be waterskiing with Monica right now. Go back there. Find her."
"Not until I figure out what you've been doing with this jerk!"
This dance would have been more absurd if she hadn't felt the shifting shudder of the Ephemeros begin. Fear and anger, she thought. Fear and anger did this.
"Edward. Don't."
"Don't what? Don't let him try and get into it with me? I'll take him down, no problem!" Kevin bounced on his feet, thumbing his nose.
"Why him?" Edward ignored Kevin and looked to her. "Why did he show up?"
She'd thought Kevin's sudden appearance had been courtesy of Edward, but he seemed to think she'd brought him. "This is my ex-husband."
"Ex-husband? Dude!" Kevin laughed. "I didn't know you were married!"
"Not him," Tovah said. "You."
Watching college Kevin morph into his present-day self was like watching a series of photographs overlaid atop one another, each transparent enough to still show those beneath. He changed, but the youthful self was still there.
"What?" Kevin asked.
"You have to go now, Kevin. Right now."
"Or else what?" There it was again, that arrogance at feeling pushed.
"This is what you'd choose?" Edward's voice was quiet and underlaid by the sound of rising wind. "A man like this? One who seeks to hold you down instead of raising you up?"
"Hey, dude, you can't possibly know anything about me, so back off. Tov, what the hell is this?" Kevin turned his back on Edward, focusing on her.
Tovah, however, kept her gaze fixed over Kevin's shoulder on her dream lover. Kevin was right. Edward could know nothing about Kevin other than what she knew. But the question still was who'd brought him there. Had she unconsciously pulled Kevin to her in some sort of retribution? Some misguided, leftover longing or memory? Or had Edward reached into her and pulled it free...and why?
"I loved him very much," she told Edward. "Enough to marry him and make a life. But it's not him."
Edward seemed calmer. Less twitchy. Tovah kept her guard up, knowing too well how quickly things could change. She kept her gaze locked on his until Kevin, probably angry she was ignoring him, shoved her shoulder.
"If this is about the money," he began.
The moment her gaze broke from Edward's, her shallow grip on the world around her broke. The edges of everything blurred. For the first time she realized something else.
"The mountain," she murmured. "I'm on the mountain."
The mountains that had always been in the distance the other times the Ephemeros rocked were under her feet. She'd been gripping the world to keep it still, but could she? Against a shaper as strong as Edward?
"Fuck this shit." Kevin's college-age words spilled from his mouth as he pushed Tovah aside.
He was already swinging a fist before Tovah could shout a warning. It crunched against Edward's chin, driving him backward with his arms outstretched. He stepped back, then again. When he straightened he did it slowly, a spring with coils pulled to looseness that could no longer maintain its shape.
He turned to Kevin. "Don't do that again."
Kevin didn't stop. "Make me---"
Edward did no more than flick his gaze toward Kevin, and Kevin stopped talking. Kevin choked and went to his knees. Edward looked at Tovah.
"You wanted to see my true face?"
Edward had a body. Arms. Legs. Torso. He had a head. But his face now consisted of the swirling grayness of the Ephemeros. Of nothing waiting to be created into something. She'd asked him to show her his true face.
He had none.
"You see, sweetheart?" His voice hadn't changed. "I can be whatever you want me to be. All you have to do is decide."
Indecision tore at her. He was offering her a dream come true, a perfect partner. But at what price?
"Edward," she whispered. "I already have."
"Nothing really matters, then. Does it?"
Edward turned his no-face toward her. Tovah began to scream.
Hands shook her. She fought them, punching and scratching and slapping while she screamed. And screamed.
Her scream cut off as abruptly as a slamming door when she looked into Martin's face. Max barked ferociously from somewhere in the house. In moments she heard the massive thud of the big dog's footfalls and the solidness of his body hitting the doorway.
The couch dipped beneath her as Martin's weight shifted and he stood. He turned. Max rounded the corner from the front hall, skidded on the tile floor and launched himself into the den. In seconds he'd come to rescue her from the man trying to do the same.
"Max, no!"
Too late. Max had already chomped Martin's hand. Martin yelled and yanked free. Blood and spittle flew, splashing Tovah's face. She swiped at it in disgust, blinking.
Trying to figure out if she was really awake.
"Max, down! Down!"
Max's growl sounded like a motor revving, higher and lower. He menaced Martin with bared teeth, but made no move to jump him again. Martin, who'd fallen back onto the ottoman, cradled his bleeding hand close to his chest heedless of the way it stained his shirt.
"I'm so sorry," Tovah began, grabbing tight hold of Max's collar. "He must have thought you were hurting me---"
"I thought someone was murdering you." Martin's voice was hoarse, a little shocked. "Max, boy. It's me."
Max growled again. The dog's muscles quivered under her hand, but he didn't pull away from her. Which was good, since she wasn't sure she could hold him. She struggled upright, careful not to knock her stump again. She didn't remember falling asleep on the couch.
"I had a nightmare," she said. "Oh, God, Martin, I'm so sorry. You'd better get that cleaned up. Give me a minute and I'll help you."
Martin shook his head. "I can do it. You stay put."
"Max. Go lie down." Tentatively, Tovah released the dog's collar. Max thumped over to his bed and lay down with a baleful look toward Martin. Tovah twisted to look at Martin, who was running water over his hand at the sink.
Tovah looked at the screen door. The hook and eye lock she rarely used had been pulled straight out of the wood and dangled, loose. Martin must have come through it at top speed.
"You were screaming." Martin pulled a hand towel from the hook on the cupboard and wrapped it around his hand. He turned to her. "I was taking out the trash, and I heard you screaming. I thought..."
He sat, suddenly, in one of her kitchen chairs. His head drooped, words trailing off into a slur. He took a deep breath and put his head between his legs.
"Oh, shit." Tovah struggled to grab her crutches and get to her feet. She made it to him with a vast amount of awkward effort but very little time. "Are you okay?"
Martin said nothing. Small red dots decorated the hand towel. Tovah grabbed up the dishcloth from the drawer and ran cold water on it, then pressed it to the back of his neck.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered again, maneuvering into the chair across from his. "God, Martin, Max has never bitten anyone. I'm so, so sorry."
Slowly he raised his head. "He was trying to protect you, that's all. I don't blame him. But shit, it hurts."
At the sound of his name, Max had lifted his head and whined. Now he padded toward them on thickly furred feet. He pushed against Tovah's hand and then nosed tentatively toward Martin, who flinched. Max retreated to his haunches, tongue lolling.
"You need to get that looked at by a doctor. Max has had all his shots, but even so, animal bites almost always get infected." Tovah paused at the irony of her lecture. "But I guess you know that."
"I might have heard something like that before," Martin said.
She'd meant that he knew it because he was a doctor, but his answer made her remember that he'd told her about being bitten in the past. "I can't apologize enough. You were only trying to help me."
"You were screaming," Martin repeated softly.
"I was dreaming." The horror of it washed over her again, and she shuddered. Tears fought her eyes and won, sliding over her cheeks. She put her hands over her face and struggled against weeping. "I was only dreaming."
The phone rang. She and Martin both looked at it. The kitchen phone was ancient, green to match the kitchen's 1970s décor, and still attached to the wall by a long spiraling cord. It was too far away for her to reach, and she was in no position to jump up to get it. Martin solved her dilemma with a casual reach of his unbitten hand. He snagged the handset and passed it to her without a word.
Tovah looked at the clock. Just past midnight. "Hello?"
It took her a moment to decipher the voice on the other end, but after a second it clicked. "Spider?"
His voice sounded thick and swollen, like he spoke through a mouthful of molasses. "Tovahleh. Did I wake you?"
"No." She looked at the clock again, just to make sure she was awake. The entire night had taken on a surreal quality. "I'm awake. But Henry...so are you!"
"I'm awake, doll."
"Henry, what's wrong?"
Martin had leaned in close. The hand towel fell away, exposing the angry red punctures Max's teeth had left. The phone at his belt beeped, and he pulled it from his belt to check the text message.
Henry's answer was so garbled she couldn't make it out. Hissing static fused the line, covering up his words. It cleared, but he'd stopped speaking.
"Henry? Something's wrong with the phone."
"Nothing...phone..."
Frustrated, Tovah shook the handset, as if that would help with the connection. "Henry? Are you there? What's going on? How'd you get permission to call me this late? Are you all right? Henry!"
He'd gone. The dial tone replaced static, and Tovah let the handset fall to the table. She looked at Martin, who was already hanging up the phone for her.
"Henry's awake. Really awake."
Martin held up his phone. "The hospital just called me."
"You have to go." She nodded, stunned and worn out from the night's adventures---in both worlds. "I have to get there, too. I have to see him."
"Tovah, it's after midnight. You know they won't let you."
She shook her head. "They will if I'm with you. Please, Martin. It's important. Very important. I need to see him. Before---"
"Before he goes back to sleep?" Martin's soft voice rubbed itself over her skin, and she couldn't stop thinking of the taste of his mouth and how stupid she'd been.
"You know it's more than a possibility. It's a likelihood."
Martin stared at her in silence for what seemed a very long time before he looked away. "C'mon. I'll take you."
"Martin," she said softly and waited until he'd looked at her again. "Thank you."
Martin was a good driver. Conscientious, never failing to put on his signal or stop completely at every stop sign, even though the traffic on the road was next to zero. His hands firmly grasped the wheel at the correct positions. He looked carefully both ways at every intersection, not just once, but twice.
Even so, urgency and anxiety made Tovah want to squirm. She resisted by clasping her hands tightly in her lap. She stared straight ahead, tensing at every flare of red taillights in front of them. Her seat belt was a comforting tightness against her chest, but she fought the urge to grab at the handhold each time the car sped up.
"Are you okay?"
From the corner of her eye, she caught the motion of Martin's head as he glanced at her. "Just a little edgy. I'm sorry."
He didn't ask again. He reached to turn on the radio so music filled the space between them instead of silence. Outside, it had begun to rain.
The road emptied, leaving them the only car making the journey through mostly darkness. They hadn't yet turned off the main road onto the smaller local streets that led to the Sisters of Mercy, but the streetlamps had disappeared. The road unwound before them like a long dark ribbon.
She knew this song. It was a Celtic piece, full of the mournful wail of uilleann pipes. It was something like a lullaby, though perhaps one meant to sing to a child whose sleep was never going to end. Her hands crept up to press her belly, briefly and without conscious effort, though she at once put them back in her lap.
The sound of the rain was like a lullaby, too. The soft shush-shush of a mother soothing a fretful babe. The tires purred along the road, going round and round just like the wheels on the bus...the wheels on the bus...
Her tension eased one muscle at a time. She still heard the rain, the music, the tires rolling. She still saw the road ahead and the occasional flash of another vehicle's lights. They simply no longer had the power to tighten her nerves.
They drove a long, long time.
The car slowed. It stopped.
Tovah turned her head to face the driver. The light from the parking lot lamp cut across Martin's face in bars of silver edged with shadow. One eye flared a blue almost painful in its brightness. The other stayed a faded gray, shielded by darkness.
"You shouldn't have to be afraid," he whispered. "See? I wish you'd let me help you not be so afraid."
Words snuck around her mouth before tripping from her lips. "You can't help me not be afraid."
His hand reached, fingertips brushing her cheek. "I can, sweetheart."
Sweetheart.
Tovah startled awake. Martin had pulled into the parking lot. Lights blazed from all the windows of the immense brick building in front of them, and cars circled the lot even at this hour gone so late it had become early.
Where had the peace gone, the light and shadow?
"Tovah?"
"Sorry, I must have dozed off." She scrubbed her face, hoping she hadn't drooled and glad for the chance to feel for a blush.
She had no right to dream of Martin as her savior. Not after the game of back and forth she'd played with him. Hell, not even if she hadn't pushed him away. Nobody deserved that much responsibility.
Look what it had done to Spider.
Martin grabbed her crutches from the back seat and waited patiently as she hoisted herself out of his car. Neither of them had bothered with an umbrella but the rain of earlier had turned to a fine, light mist that coated her hair and coat within moments with damp. Tovah balanced using the open car door, then settled her crutches under her arms and started toward the hospital.
The last time she'd been there after visiting hours, she'd been a patient. The staff had changed, but the feeling the hospital got in the wee hours hadn't. Buildings in which people who were supposed to be sleeping stayed awake always had a certain vibe.
Security shouldn't have let her through, really, even though she was with Martin, who had a staff ID badge. Tovah tensed for a confrontation. She wasn't above threats. She could toss around legal and medical jargon, whip out proof she was Henry Tuckens's guardian. Cause trouble.
"Dr. Goodfellow." The guard nodded, his eyes flickering past Tovah without stopping. "And a guest?"
"Thanks, Terry." Martin tucked his ID back into his shirt pocket.
The guard turned back to his newspaper and bag of popcorn. Tovah waited until they were on the elevator, doors closed behind them, before she said, "How'd you do that?"
Martin pushed the button for Five. "Do what?"
"With the guard. He should've given us a harder time than that. What did you do?"
Martin shrugged. "Some people don't take their jobs seriously, I guess."
"Jedi mind trick?" Tovah asked, watching him refuse to look at her.
Martin looked at her then, his pupils wide and dark in the elevator's fussy, flickering light. "I don't know what you mean."
"You have a way, don't you?" she murmured. "With people."
The doors opened. Martin pushed a hand against them to keep them from closing before she could get off, and this, yet another example of his constant consideration, proved to her again he was a good man. He waited until she was through before stepping through himself and waited again to make sure she was moving smoothly before walking after her.
Despite the hour, or perhaps because of it, Five was alive with activity. Staff moved purposefully from room to room, always in pairs and armed with trays of small plastic cups and gleaming silver needles.
"What's going on in here?" Martin snagged a passing orderly Tovah didn't recognize.
"Full moon? Hell if I know," said the orderly with a shake of his head. "It's been a madhouse since that dude on the end decided to join the land of the living."
"It's always a madhouse," Martin said without a trace of irony.
"Yeah, well, it's even worse tonight." The orderly shook off Martin's hand and headed into a room from which a flurry of shouting had started.
Martin didn't wait for her this time. He stalked down the hall, his long legs taking him twice as fast as she could hobble. He pushed through the door to Henry's room. The door hissed shut behind him on its pneumatic hinge, clicking entirely closed just as Tovah reached it.
She grabbed the handle but paused to listen for shouting or cries from inside before opening it. She heard plenty of commotion, but it all came from outside, not Henry's room. Tovah pushed open the door.
"Henry?"
He and Martin stood by the window, their backs to her. Both turned as she said his name. Tovah would have run into his arms, had she been able, but Henry didn't wait for her to try.
"Tovahleh." He pushed past Martin without a second glance and came to her. "Look at you, doll. You're a sight."
Hugging around crutches and with only one leg was awkward, but they managed. Tovah didn't mean to cry, but seeing him aware and awake was such a relief she couldn't help it. Henry smelled of the soap she'd bought him, and of comfort. His chin rested neatly on the top of her head as he rubbed her back.
From outside his room, the sound of pounding feet filled the hall. Then a wail and a crash. Tovah looked, but Martin had already gone to peer out the door. He looked over his shoulder at them.
"I'd better go help."
"What's going on, Spider?" Tovah said when Martin had gone. "Why is everyone acting so---"
"Crazy?" Henry didn't laugh. "It's because they can't wake up, Tovah."
She shook her head, not understanding. "I have to sit, my leg's aching."
He helped her to the chair by the bed. "When was the last time you were in the Ephemeros?"
"A few hours ago."
Henry looked grim. "Did you see Ben?"
"No, Spider. But I didn't see you, either. Look, what's going on?" Tovah pulled his hand until he sat on the bed facing her. "Where have you been?"
"Was it bad, there? Like before?"
She looked at him. "It was bad. But not like before. But, Spider..."
"Henry. I'm Henry, here."
"Henry," she said. "I think I know what's causing the trouble there."
"The boy. The dog. The woman. I know." Henry squeezed her hands.
Tovah told him about Edward, the man who'd been her lover and all the forms he'd taken. Of what had happened on the beach with Ben. She left out the part about the kiss, mentioned only that she'd intended to break it off with Edward completely and that he hadn't taken it well.
"Oh, God," she said, stunned as the memory of Kevin on his knees came back.
She fumbled in the pocket of her jacket for her cell phone. She dropped it onto the hard tile floor and it slid beneath the bed like it meant to escape. Henry grabbed it for her, handing it over while his face creased with concern.
"Tovahleh, what is it?"
She couldn't speak through the emotion burning her throat. She dialed by memory, praying her trembling hands didn't hit the wrong keys. She swallowed, again and again as the phone rang and rang.
"Kevin," she managed at last, looking into Henry's eyes. "I think he did something to Kevin."
A shriek from outside Henry's door made her drop the still-ringing phone. The screen flickered this time and went dark, and Tovah let out a string of curses when she saw the case had cracked open. The call had disconnected.
"There's nothing you can do about it now." Henry put his hand over hers. She looked up at him, his face blurred by her tears. Henry took a tissue from the nightstand and wiped her cheeks. He leaned forward to take her face in his hands. "We have other things we need to do now."
There was beauty in chaos, and chaos in beauty, and all of it rotated in and around and among them, and the witchwoman laughed her terrible, beautiful laugh.
The dogman growled, snapping and chasing.
The boy stood on the mountain with black sand beneath his feet and black sky above his head and the wind screaming all around him. For the first time that he could ever remember, he let the wind whip at his hair and clothes without trying to run from it. Not even the witchwoman's laughter or the dogman, now pacing on all fours, were enough to make him flee.
"I told you, sweetheart, didn't I? How lovely it all was?" The witchwoman laughed, twirling in a circle with her arms spread wide. Her dark hair blew straight out, each strand painted with silver lightning as it flashed.
The boy ignored her. He wasn't doing this for her, not because of her, not even in spite of her. He was doing this, for the first time, for himself.
The world shimmered and shuddered around them, and he heard screams. The boy knew how it felt to scream so hard your throat burst; he'd done it once or twice. He knew the taste of blood and how it made you want to vomit. He knew about cowering before shadows, too, and some small part of him wished he could soothe all of the screamers. He wanted to tell them that all they had to do was reach inside themselves and pull out all that fear and fury, that they could do what he did, that they had no reason to quake and break.
Perhaps later he could make them understand. Show them the truth, that they dreamed this because they needed to, for reasons he could never know.
The darkness parted and the man who never looked the same came through it. He had a long and easy stride, long arms moving naturally at his sides as he walked. The wind plucked at his clothes like a nervous mother, but he ignored it the same way he paid no attention to the woman, who reached her hands to him, or the dogman that snapped its jaws.
The man knelt in front of the boy and took small hands inside his large ones. "They're coming for you."
"What can we do?" Tovah didn't bother reaching for her wounded phone. Her gaze searched Henry's. She trusted him.
In the corridor, more feet pounded. More things crashed. Henry looked up, overhead, as the lights flickered. A far-off boom of thunder turned his gaze back to hers.
"They're all having nightmares. They look like they're awake, but they're not, really."
"And other people?"
"Not everyone who's crazy is in the hospital." Henry's wry grin tipped his mouth. "Tonight, I think the world is crazy."
"But...what can we do?" she asked again. "Henry, eventually, the people who are sleeping will wake up."
"And the ones who are awake are going to sleep." Henry sighed, rubbing his forehead. "I don't know, really, okay? I don't know what's going to happen. I just know we have to stop them."
"But..." She shook her head, her mind weary and body aching. "None of this makes sense."
"What, everything should make sense?" Henry squeezed her hands. "You know I'm right. You can feel it, can't you?"
It took her only a second to nod. "Yes."
"We have to guide them, Tovahleh. The three. Guide them back together."
She sighed, squeezing back. "Can we do it?"
Henry nodded. "I hope so."
The man had many faces and had been called many names, but Edward was the name he said to the boy.
"They want to hurt you. Stop you. Hurt you," chanted the witchwoman.
Edward looked at her. The boy's hands felt impossibly small within Edward's much larger ones. A world of responsibility rested in those hands, both pairs.
"They want to stop you," Edward said. "But not hurt you. I want you to listen to me---"
"Don't listen!" The witchwoman flew forward, her face twisted. "Don't you listen to him, sweetheart!"
Edward struck her hard enough to crunch the bones of her face under his fist. She crumpled to her knees, her face in her hands. She made no sound. He turned back to the boy, whose nose was bleeding.
"People are screaming," the boy said. "All around the world. Babies are crying..." It was too much. He clapped his hands over his ears.
Edward took them gently away. "Listen to me."
"No! No! They're screaming!" The boy shook his head, back and forth. "And I like it! I like it! I like it! Let them be afraid instead of me!"
Edward did what nobody had done in a long, long time. He hugged the boy, held him close and tight. Held him safe.
The boy's body tensed and twisted in Edward's grasp as he fought the embrace. The witchwoman moaned from her place on the ground, and the dogman stalked closer, getting bold.
"You don't have to be afraid. Let me help you not be afraid any more. I won't let anyone hurt you."
"Too late." The boy wept against his chest. "It's too late! They already hurt me, both of them."
The witchwoman rolled onto her back. The dogman lapped the blood on her face. She laughed.
"I won't let them hurt you again," said Edward. "Not ever. I promise."
"How will we do it?"
Lightning flashed outside Henry's window, and rain spattered the glass. He looked at the window for a moment. To Tovah, who loved him, Henry was beautiful, but she could see the lines of strain that would make him look haggard to anyone else. He'd aged since the last time she'd been able to talk to him in the waking world.
"I don't know," Henry admitted. "I'm a coward, remember?"
Tovah hugged him, hard, though it bent her body in another awkward position. "Being afraid of something dangerous doesn't make you a coward. It makes you smart."
His arms tightened around her, and she felt the press of his face against her hair. "Then I'm the smartest bastard I know, because I'm scared shitless."
"What happened to you?" Tovah whispered, holding him tight.
"They kept me from getting back," Henry said. "For the first time in a long time I wanted to come back, and they made me forget how."
Tovah didn't push for more. She looked into his face, echoing the position he'd held before, with his cheeks in her hands. "You're here, now."
Henry nodded and took her hands to link their fingers. "I'm sorry, Tovahleh. I know you wanted me to come back, before."
Good friends don't lie to each other. She looked him over, how frail he'd become. "I did. But you had to do what was best for you, Henry. I was just worried about you. I don't want to live without you, that's all. Not here, or there."
"I told you before, doll, you'll never get rid of me." Henry squeezed her fingers and smiled.
She believed him, somehow, even though she knew that wasn't really true. Tovah kissed Henry's bristly cheek. "So. Let's do it."
Even as she said the words, her heart pounded harder. It was easy to sound brave sitting here with Henry's hands in hers. Awake. In a world with rules. It was easy to play the braggart's role and pretend she was ready to go in with guns blazing, when the truth was there was nothing she felt less capable of doing.
"You're a good guide. Even if you don't know it." Henry smiled.
Tovah shook her head. "But this is big. Bigger."
"It's still someone who needs to get someplace---"
"For a reason we don't know. I know. But Henry, it would help so much if we did know. If we could just...stop this boy from what he's doing. And what if it's not that easy or simple? What if he doesn't want to stop?" Words tumbled from her mouth, pushed by anxiety. "What if he's doing this on purpose, just because he can?"
"What if he is?" Henry asked gently. "Does that mean we should just let him, when we can stop him?"
"If we can stop him," Tovah whispered. "That's a big if."
"Do you want to live the rest of your life unable to dream, Tovahleh? Because that's what's happening. Maybe not to everyone. But to many. To me." Henry looked pained and suddenly paler. "To you, no?"
She thought of the last few times she'd gone into the Ephemeros. It had been a while since she'd been able to go to the club or make flowers in her meadow. She missed those simple pleasures that had come to mean so much and had made her waking life bearable. "Yes. To me, too."
"Do you mean it?" The boy heard hope in his voice and hated himself for trusting.
The witchwoman got to her feet. "You put him down."
The blood stained her face like war-paint. The dogman pressed against her leg and she reached to bury her hand inside the thick, dank fur of its head. Its hand curled around her ankle. It had not yet decided to go naked, but the boy knew that time was coming. Maybe, too, a time when not only its head would become that of a dog.
"You put my boy down," the witchwoman said. "He is my boy. I planted him. I watered him. I grew him from a seed. He is my boy, and I shall have the reaping of him, too!"
"Fuck off," said Edward, and the witchwoman laughed.
"He's not yours."
"He's not yours, either."
The boy buried his face in Edward's shoulder. The screams grew louder. Maybe it was the wind. The witchwoman didn't care. Her fingers curved to slap and scratch. She pushed away the dog's head from her thigh, where it had been sniffing, and the dogman snarled.
"He's as much mine as he is anyone's!"
"And why," said Edward softly, "is that?"
"Because I am the one who makes him afraid," said the witchwoman. "I own him. We own him, the dogman and I, and you...you are just---"
"I'm trying to help him!" cried Edward, cradling the boy against him as though he were suddenly afraid he might drop him.
"You are trying," said the witchwoman, "to help yourself."
"That doctor man. He's a friend to you?" Henry lifted his chin toward the door, though Martin had not yet returned.
"Yes. A good one. He brought me here tonight. He helped with my leg."
She didn't mention the kiss.
"Do you trust him?"
"I---" Tovah stopped herself. Did she trust Martin? "I have no reason not to trust him. Why? Has he hurt you?"
"Tovahleh, would I know?" Henry spread his hands, the wry grin returning.
"I trust him. He's been kind to me. And to you, even if you didn't know it." Tovah's left foot twinged suddenly and she automatically used her right to itch it---though it wasn't really there.
Henry looked down. "Inside, you might not have it, either."
Tovah looked, too, at the smoothly folded and pinned hem of her soft sleep pants. She hadn't even changed. "I know. Whoever it is...he's strong. Or she."
"Yes."
"And every time, so far, the leg's gone when he starts doing his thing. That boy." She paused. "Who's not a boy."
"Will you be all right, though, this time? Knowing what's going to happen and facing it anyway?"
"I'll shape harder. Rocket-powered crutches, if I have to."
"Good girl." Henry patted her shoulder. "We'll help you. Ben and me."
Tovah still had no idea how they were going to make a difference. How they were going to convince this shaper to stop breaking the Ephemeros...or force him to. Henry winced as though something had poked him.
"Henry?"
"She noticed I'm gone." His hands fell slack from hers, against his thighs. His lips parted with an intake of breath. His gaze swung back to Tovah's, and it looked a little blank. "We have to hurry, Tovahleh."
She gripped him, hard. "Who has you? The woman? Henry, look at me!"
Already his muscles were getting rigid under her touch, resisting her.
"Me," he said. "Me. Me. Me."
"Shit. Henry. Spider, listen to me! I'll find you, okay? I'll find you!"
Henry's eyes cleared for a moment. He shook his head, just slightly. He licked his lips. "Tovahleh, doll, listen to me."
She listened, but he did not speak.
After too many seconds, his voice growled from his throat like the sound of rusty gears, like each word cut him. He made the effort, though at what cost Tovah was afraid to ask. His body beneath her hands had gone hard, the muscles like granite.
"Find Ben. You and Ben, find me. And...Tovah..."
"Yes, Henry?" She shook him though she knew it would do no good.
He blinked, hard, and looked at her for the last time. "There's a good chance, a really good chance..."
She couldn't ask him to stay with her. He had to go. But not like this, pulled against his will. "What is she doing to you?"
And how? Was this real? Was Tovah awake or asleep? She was finding it hard to tell the difference now.
"I might not...come back..."
Then he was gone. The body remained, but the part of Henry that made him Henry had become Spider and disappeared into sleep.
Henry sat motionless on the bed. His eyes had glazed over. When Tovah lifted his hand it moved without resistance, but hung in the air where she left it. She didn't waste time with trying to wake him, but put his hand back on his lap. She wanted to lay him down, but couldn't from her chair.
She looked up at a sound in the doorway. "Martin!"
"What's going on?" The door banged shut behind him. He was at her side in a moment, doing doctorish things like checking Henry's pulse and whipping out a pocket flashlight to look at his pupils. He gave Tovah an accusing look. "What happened?"
The look, like he thought she'd done something, set her back a moment. "He's back under."
It took her a second to realize that outside, all the noise and commotion had stopped. Martin stood and arranged Henry's body on the bed. He took his time and care, going so far as to smooth Henry's hair over his forehead before turning to Tovah.
Henry's door slammed open hard enough to hit the wall. The orderly standing in the doorway looked surprised, maybe at his own brute strength.
"Sorry. I wanted to tell the doctor that we got everyone settled down now. Just like...they all just stopped." He shook his head. "They all just stopped and went back to sleep."
Martin nodded. The orderly went away. Martin returned his attention to Tovah and sat on the edge of Henry's bed. They stared at each other a moment longer in silence before he spoke.
"Is there something you want to tell me, Tovah?"
She'd heard that tone before, from well-meaning friends and physicians who sought to get her to admit she was having what was euphemistically referred to as "trouble orienting herself."
"Tovah?" Martin looked into her face but didn't encroach on her personal space.
Anticipation hung between them. Tension of a different sort. The sensation ran chill fingers over her skin, and Tovah fought a shiver.
"He's in trouble," she said at last, knowing how that sounded.
Martin looked at Henry, prone and silent. "Right now?"
"I think so. Yes. I'm almost certain of it."
"But not positive?"
Tovah thought of the boy, the woman and the dogman, and of a dream lover who'd taught her to climb mountains. Three who would harm a Spider...and one who might save him, if she could convince Edward it was what she needed. "I am sure that if he's not in trouble at this moment, he will be very soon."
She watched him carefully for the signs she'd learned to recognize, but Martin didn't appear to be placating her. He nodded after a second's hesitation, like what she was saying made sense. He looked again at Henry.
"And he's your friend, so you want to help him."
"Martin." Tovah reached for his hand to bring his attention back to her. "Yes. I need to help him. It's important."
She resisted the melodrama of saying "for the entire world." That sounded too much like disaster-movie dialogue. She turned Martin's hand over in hers, so the palm lay face up. She traced one of the long lines.
Martin's fingers closed over hers. "Tell me what you think you need to do to help him."
What you think you need to do. He didn't quite believe her. Tovah couldn't take the time to care about that, not as long as he was willing to help her.
"I need to get to sleep."
To give him credit, Martin didn't immediately look as though he wanted to laugh. He looked from her to Henry, then back again. He studied their joined hands. His thumb passed over her palm. Then he let go of her hand.
"Right here? Now?" He stood.
Tovah nodded. "As soon as possible."
Martin moved away from the bed and put his hands on his hips. He paced, slowly, paying close attention to the position of his feet on the tiles. "You want me to give you drugs."
She had never thought he wasn't smart. "Yes. Please."
He laughed. Tovah had seen him smile before, had heard a chuckle once or twice, but this was something different and without humor. He looked at her over his shoulder. "How'd I guess?"
It stung, that he thought she might just be pressuring him to get her high. "I can try myself, but I need something that's going to help me down and help me stay there."
"Why?" he asked in a low voice that sounded like it wanted to be a shout. "Why sleep? What is going to happen?"
"I can't tell you. Just please...trust me."
And though she could tell he didn't want to, Martin did anyway.
The boy looked at the figure crouched on the ground. A moment ago he'd been a broken spider, jointed legs crushed, furry abdomen oozing from a dozen wounds. Now he wore a pair of faded blue pajamas and dug his fingers into the black sand. His hands and feet were so pale as to be almost translucent, startling against the sand's inky darkness. The boy couldn't see his face.
Edward had put him down but held tight to his hand, almost too hard, but the boy didn't let go. With his friend beside him, the dogman was kept at bay. The witchwoman, though she laughed and circled them, kept her distance, too. Both had taken their turns with the spider, kicking and fighting, biting, until it had become human.
"See, sweetheart, what we do for you?" The witchwoman aimed another kick toward the blue pajamas. It struck solid flesh beneath, but her target didn't cry out. "We are your friends. We love you."
"No," said the boy with a shake of his head. "You don't."
"He doesn't, either." The witchwoman pointed behind the boy. "He's only using you. You can take that to the bank."
His mother had used to say that. Yearning so vast it was like a whirlwind whipped around the boy, and he went to his knees. He let go of his friend's hand.
He began to cry.
He was, after all, only a boy and a small one at that, no matter what they expected him to do or be or become.
"I w-w-want to go h-home!" The words caught and stuck, hurting his throat, but the boy didn't care. "I want my mom and dad!"
"Too bad," said the witchwoman, "that they don't want you."
The boy wept, his face in his hands. After a moment he felt the touch of his friend's hand on his shoulder, but it didn't help. The witchwoman was right. His mommy and daddy didn't want him. Why wouldn't they have come for him, if that was the case? Why had they let him be taken away in the first place?
He remembered now, how it had begun. The blackness as the hood was pulled over his face, the sharp stench of the chemicals they'd used to put him to sleep. The room in the basement where they kept him. The promises, the lies.
The dog.
"You don't have to listen to them," whispered a thin voice, low, beneath the sound of the wind. Only the boy could hear it.
"You shut up," cried the boy. "You want to hurt me!"
"I only want you to stop what you're doing, son. That's all. I want to help you."
The boy got to his feet. "No! No, you don't! You're not my friend!"
"Of course he isn't." The witchwoman sneered and opened her arms. "Come here, sweetheart. You know I'll take care of you."
"No." The hand on his shoulder kept the boy still. "She's a liar. You know it."
It was too much. Too many people claiming to want to help him, but none he could trust. The boy threw out his hands, pushing them away. Pushing it all away. Breaking everything around him until everyone was broken, too.
The pills were taking too long to work. Tovah had, with Martin's help, turned the reclining bedside chair into a makeshift bed complete with Henry's extra pillow and blanket. Her legs, the sound one and the residual limb, were propped comfortably. She was warm. The room was dim and quiet. And still, she couldn't fall asleep.
Martin had pulled over the straight-backed chair from the room's built-in desk to sit beside her. They didn't speak, nor did she look at him, but Tovah felt his gaze on her. She heard his breath, slow and steady. She waited for him to touch her, but he didn't.
The pills he'd given her should've started working already, but her mind kept racing. What was happening to Henry as Spider? Had he found Ben? What was going on? What---
"Dr. Goodfellow?"
The voice snapped Tovah's eyes open, and she looked toward the door. The orderly again. He gave her a curious look, but not a very close one. Martin got up.
"Yes?"
"We could use you out here. We've got an admission."
Martin stood. He straightened the rumpled hem of his shirt, tucking it in. Tovah thought of the first time she'd seen him, so clean and pressed and put together. Now he looked like he'd been rode hard and put away wet, as her grandmother would have said. He left the room without a glance at her.
"Tovahleh."
She turned. "Henry?"
Henry had vanished from the bed beside her.
The boy understood fear. Everyone had to be afraid, sometimes. Without fear to conquer, how would anyone ever grow? Learn? That's what his daddy had always said, the times he held the boy's hand over the flame, not quite close enough to burn.
This was different. This was sheer, constant terror. Unrelenting and without end. There was no conquering it. There was nothing to learn from it. Only relief when it passed, but it wasn't passing, it was getting stronger and stronger, and he wanted to stop it but didn't know how.
Edward went to the witchwoman first and grabbed her by the throat. "You should leave him alone," he told her, squeezing.
The witchwoman's eyes bulged and her tongue popped out, but she managed voice enough to say, "You know we can't!"
The dogman had stayed away, circling them and whining, but now it lunged. Not at Edward, not to save the witchwoman, but toward the man in blue pajamas who'd begun creeping toward the weeping boy. The dogman locked its jaws on his calf. Blood flew, and the dogman's victim screamed and kicked it in the face. The dogman, undeterred, bit again.
"Get away from him, you son-of-a-bitch!" A rock flew from nowhere. It struck the dogman in the head, and the creature clapped its hands to the wound and rolled onto its side with a yelp. "C'mon, Spider. Get up!"
The boy knew this man. Ben. He backed away, hands up, pushing as hard as he could at the world knitting and unknitting all around them.
The man on the ground, the one who'd been a spider, got onto his feet with Ben's help. "She's coming, Ben. I saw her at the hospital. She's on her way."
Edward lost his grip on the witchwoman's throat at that, and she took the chance to get away. He ignored her for the moment. "Tovah's coming?"
Spider-who-was-now-a-man looked at him. "She is."
"Don't think she'll be happy to see you," said the witchwoman in a strangled voice, and Edward backhanded her to the ground, where she lay and laughed at him.
Edward looked at the boy, who'd huddled into himself. "She's coming to hurt him, too?"
The boy looked up at that. Terror and despair rolled off him in faintly visible waves, making him sick to his stomach.
Ben seemed to be struggling a bit, too. His face had gone white, and he spat to the side as if he wanted to clear his mouth of the taste of something foul. "He's hurting a lot of people!"
The boy sobbed, trying to tell them it wasn't his fault. It was the witchwoman's fault, and the dogman's. They made him do it. But even as he couldn't force the blame, he knew it wasn't true. He knew it was him and had been him, all along.
"He doesn't mean to!" Edward stepped in front of the boy.
The one they called Spider put his hands out, placating, and took a step toward the boy. "Mean to or not, he's doing it. And he has to stop. You can help us."
"Don't let them hurt me, too!" The boy grabbed tight to Edward's shins and buried his face against them. "You promised!"
Edward put his hand on the boy's hair tenderly. "I did. Do what you want to the other two, but leave the boy alone."
"Don't you get it?" Ben looked around at the witchwoman and the dogman, both pacing while the world shuddered around them. "You can't take them and leave him alone. They're all part of each other!"
The wind, the lightning, the black sky, the sand, the far-off screams...
Everything stopped.
The moment Tovah saw the empty bed, she got to her feet. No hesitation. Utter faith that when she stood she'd be standing on two sound feet...and she was. The room looked the same as it had when she was awake, minus the presence of Henry in the bed. She looked hard for something different. A door, maybe, or a wall made thin. Everything looked the same.
"Henry? Ben?" She paused, listening. "Spider?"
Nothing but the sound of the radiator hissing air, and the faint, far-off murmur of voices from down the hall. Tovah looked harder. There had to be an exit from this room. She sent the tendrils of her will seeking Ben and Spider. She closed her eyes.
At once, terror sheared her as though she'd run her hand over the edge of a razor. She gasped, her eyes flying open, her hands clutching the sudden sharp pain in her guts. Her legs went weak and she kept herself from falling only by stepping forward.
She shaped, instantly, on instinct. Not a meadow this time, or green grass, but the full length of her left leg. Solid and strong. It wanted to go away, she felt that, felt the tug and pull and tear of someone else's will trying to break her down. Push her back. Make her afraid.
She was afraid, but she would not allow that fear to take away her wholeness. Not now. Not ever again.
Edward had not been what she needed, in the end, but he'd taught her something vital. She had climbed the mountain and found something that would last. Her sense of strength and self. Nothing and nobody would take that from her again, no matter how strongly they shaped.
She cried out for Spider and for Ben again, but they did not appear. It took every effort she had to keep herself steady, but she managed. Shape a haven, Spider had told her, and though she didn't think she could without Ben and Spider there to help her, she managed.
The Ephemeros's usual shifting gray mist had become a void.
With nothing solid beneath her upon which to stand, Tovah should have fallen. With no sky or earth to orient her, she ought to have been lost. But instead, she shaped a haven, something small, a bubble of protection.
Screams echoed in the darkness, and Tovah caught flash after flash of different wills in search of guides. Someone ran from a monster while another huddled on the tracks of an oncoming train. Sleepers faced guns and fire, heights. The world dreamed, held tight in the fist of an unseen dictator who allowed only fear to reign.
She couldn't worry about others, now.
Tovah shaped a meadow. Green grass. A stream, for Ben, who liked the sound of running water. A rock for Spider to sit on. Butterflies, here and there, because she liked them. Each effort left her breathless, as though she was running a race.
She didn't have time to waste. Martin would be back in a few minutes. They wouldn't let her sleep in Henry's room forever. Though the pills Martin had given her would keep her under more easily than if she'd fallen asleep on her own, they could and would still wake her.
The meadow, half-formed, shuddered and quaked. In the distance, she saw the mountains. That's where they'd be. All of them.
"You can fly, you know."
Tovah looked to her left. Justin Ross, dressed in the gray jumpsuit uniform of his character from Runner, pointed to the distance. He nodded, solemn, as if he was imparting great knowledge.
"Can I?" She knew she could, but wondered why he was there. She didn't have time to guide him, and looked for the army of dildo-waving fangirls. Tovah looked at the mountains. She bounced lightly on the balls of her feet. "I could run there, too."
"Flying's faster." Ross shrugged and finally, really looked at her. "Hey. It's you. I wanted to thank you."
She paused, eager to be on her way but too used to the way the Ephemeros worked to discount the possibility he might have something important to say. "For what?"
"Saving me that day."
"You saved me, too."
Ross gave her smile-porn. "Yeah. I wish I could do it again."
The offer was surprising and sweet, but Tovah shook her head. "Not this time, Justin. Listen...you might want to wake up now."
Ross's smile spread like honey on a biscuit, and Tovah had no difficulty imagining him wooing the ladies. "I'm on a plane from L.A. to Vancouver. I took a dose of Dramamine. I don't think I can wake up."
Tovah looked around for other sleepers, but her shaping had kept her far from them as it always did unless she was trying for contact with others. She moved to Justin Ross, who was taller than she'd expected. Kelly claimed he was over six feet, and he was definitely representing as such. She had to tilt her head to look up at him.
"Okay, then," she told him. "Just remember---"
But before she could give him advice, she lost hold of the haven she'd shaped. Blackness swallowed him, then her. She swam against it, kicking and finding nothing to push against.
No. No. No. She would not let this happen.
She was in the car, the seat belt locked tight against her chest and the reek of smoke forcing her to bark with coughs.
No.
She was in the hospital, watching wide awake as the surgeons cut off her leg. The pain was immense.
No.
She was a child, hiding beneath the bed as something crept from the closet on taloned feet...
No!
And then she had a handful of agony, climbing the mountain of razors and glass.
They were all the same. All of them. The boy, the witchwoman and the dogman. The boy let out a low, strangled groan, hands clutching and clenching, and dropped to his knees.
He could feel them inside. They would never go away. Never, never, never. They would never go away...because they were all part of him. He could feel it. He knew it was true. But they didn't, not the witchwoman or the dogman.
Everything had stopped. If there was screaming, the witchwoman could no longer hear it. She touched a trickle of blood coming from the corner of her mouth and wiped it without care on her jeans. The dogman paced, hunger in its belly like fire.
"Come here, little Spider," the witchwoman said. "Let's dance again."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Edward stepped forward, yanking his leg free of the boy's grip. "You're a liar!"
Ben moved forward, too. "It's true."
"Who told you that?" The man advanced again, ignoring the boy's sobs. He grabbed Ben by the front of his shirt and shook him. "Did she? That lying bitch?"
"Careful," the witchwoman said, easing her way toward the boy. "You might make me cry."
"You're a guide," Ben told Edward. He wasn't struggling to get away. "Aren't you? Can't you feel it? That boy needs guidance, right? Can't you tell---"
"Shut up!" The man shook Ben harder and raised one fist to punch him in the face.
The witchwoman took advantage of his distraction to grab the boy. She cradled him close, crooning words of love and intimidation. The boy lay lax in her embrace, the dogman panting at his feet.
"Don't you listen to them, sweetheart," she whispered, pushing his hair from his forehead. "They all want to hurt you, but you're not for them, are you?"
The boy looked up at her with wide blue eyes shining with tears that no longer slid down his pale cheeks. Bruises colored the flesh beneath his eyes, and his mouth looked puffy and sore, the lips cracked and hinting at blood. He cradled that damned red-and-white ball in his hands.
"Where did that piece of shit come from?" The witchwoman recoiled at the sight of the toy.
The boy reached to grab her, holding her close with torn fingertips. Blood dotted her shirt, and sudden disgust rolled over her. The boy's grip was like iron. She had thought she was trapping him.
She'd been wrong.
Tovah shaped the pain away. Barely. She could concentrate on getting up this damned mountain to her friends, or she could shape herself without pain, but doing both was like breathing water. The effort choked and threatened to drown her.
She got to the top, though, fast, and heaved herself over the edge without even resting. She got to her feet. Blood streamed from a dozen wounds, but she didn't bother shaping it away.
"Spider!"
He was there, and Ben too, and Tovah ran to them with wings on her heels. She was in Ben's embrace without quite knowing how she got there, just that when his arms went around her she stopped feeling afraid. The world around them rocked and reeled, but she was safe.
It only lasted a moment.
"Tovah?" Edward had yet another new face, dark eyes and pale hair, but at least he had one.
Tovah faced him. "Edward."
He moved toward her, one hand outstretched, but he stopped before touching her. His gaze took in Ben's arms around her. Shadows swam in his eyes.
Once he'd promised to give her everything she needed. Tovah hoped he still would.
"We're glad you came," Spider said as calmly as if she'd just shown up at the annual Fourth of July picnic.
Spider took Tovah's hand. The three of them faced Edward. Behind him, Tovah saw the boy with the red-and-white ball sitting on the black sand. The woman crouched beside him, one wrist caught in the boy's hand. The dogheaded man had dropped onto all hands and knees behind them, its whine reaching Tovah's ears like the sound of a dentist's drill.
The boy stood without letting go of the ball in his right hand, nor the woman held tight with his left. She hung in his grip like a toddler-dragged doll. The boy let his right hand tilt. The ball dropped and rolled away. The dogheaded man fit itself beneath his right hand at once, the boy's fingers sinking into the coarse fur and grabbing tight.
Three faced three with one between them.
"He says," Edward pointed at Ben. "He says they are all one."
Tovah, each of her hands held tight by someone she loved, nodded. "Yes. I think that's true."
Edward looked over his shoulder at the boy, the woman and the beast, all silent. When he looked back at Tovah, she saw understanding in his eyes. Blue eyes, the color of a summer sky. "You really do want to help him?"
"Yes, Edward. I really do."
It took him a moment more, but Tovah saw him break. Whatever he had done or meant to do, he'd attempted it for noble reasons. Edward stepped aside, his hands spread flat, palms up. Mea culpa.
"Then stop him," Edward said.
Three faced three.
The boy didn't move, but neither did his previous tormentors. Both knelt beside him, tethered to him by his hands and also a physically palpable tangled skein of his will. He held them close to his body and, for the first time ever that Tovah'd seen them, the woman and the beast were quiet and still.
"Shape a haven." Spider's quiet voice. "Shape it big enough for everyone."
Ben's will nudged hers, and Spider's next. They threaded together, a collective desire to push away the darkness and the fear. Black sand shimmered, becoming golden in one spot, emerald green grass in another, smooth white stone in a third. No good. They had to shape together.
"Together," Tovah murmured.
She'd only guided by accident before, or against her judgment. She'd never sought to help dreamers face their troubles the way Ben and Spider had. Hell, the way Edward had, in his own manner. Shaping this way took more effort than anything she'd ever done in the Ephemeros, but with her friends beside her, Tovah pushed forward, up and out. She opened herself to the world around her and sought to respond to what filled her. She shaped.
Somewhere and everywhere, fears became real. Horror and anger warred, swirling. The boy, face without expression, was pushing harder than they were.
"Just wake up, son," Spider said.
The boy shook his head. The woman and the beast shuddered, but remained silent. "I can't! Don't you know, I can't?"
"You have to try!" Ben's grip tightened on Tovah's. "You don't want this. We know you don't."
The boy shook his head again, harder. He looked at the woman, then the beast, held tight in his grip. He looked up at Tovah, his blue eyes swimming with tears.
"I can't wake up! I can't. I can't do it. They'll be there when I wake up. And they hurt me..." He broke into sobs.
He wasn't lying. Truth outlined every word, giving each a rim of gold as they passed through his lips and hung in the air between them. He looked again at the woman and the beast, this time crying out, shaking them.
"I can't let go. I can't wake up. I can't let go!"
Tovah's heart broke, watching him, but she didn't let go of Ben's or Spider's hands. "Let us help you. Let us guide you. You have to face your fears."
The boy shook his head so hard his hair whipped around his cheeks. Tears flew from his face and turned to glittering ice when they landed on the sand. The woman and beast in his grasp were shrinking, becoming smaller versions of themselves. Puppets. They squirmed and wriggled but couldn't get away.
The mountains dissolved and reformed to become damp gray cinderblock walls. Concrete replaced black sand and cobweb-laced beams filled in above their heads, blocking out the night sky. One narrow window had been covered with black paper, the edges hinting at sunshine but not letting it through. The only light came from a small camping lantern settled on a table askew on three legs.
The boy sat on an army cot covered with a blanket of undetermined color. He held his red-and-white ball in both hands. His feet dangled, barely able to touch the floor. In the dim light, his eyes looked dark, not blue, and white tear-trails snaked through the grime on his pale face. He stared past Tovah, Ben and Spider, still holding hands. He wasn't looking at them.
Tovah looked over her shoulder to the wooden door set into a wall that looked newer than the rest of the basement, as though it had been built especially to enclose this space. The door itself was battered but solid, with a crystal handle of the sort found in very old houses. The keyhole beneath it winked with light, showing no key filled it from the other side.
"Where are we?" Ben's murmur turned her head toward him.
"This is where he is in the waking world, I think."
Spider made no comment on that. His hand twisted in Tovah's, pulling her with him as he stepped forward. Ben moved, too, at the tug of Tovah's hand in his.
"Son. We want to help you. If you wake up---"
Now the boy gave them his attention. He clutched the ball to his chest. "They're coming."
For the first time since she'd learned the truth of the Ephemeros, Tovah felt she was watching from the outside instead of being a part of the action. They were there, all of them, but only the boy had control of the scene. She was an observer, only, could shape nothing but was affected by nothing, either.
Their trio had moved back along the wall, away from the bed and the door, which opened. The boy cringed, drawing his legs up to move back along the cinderblock wall behind his cot. He made no sound.
"Heya, little bastard." The man who came through the door wore dirty work trousers and the sort of shirt mechanics wore, flapping open over a stained white T-shirt. A leather leash wrapped itself around his fist several times, the end of it attached to the collar of a large wolfish dog that growled immediately and lunged toward the boy.
The boy still didn't cry out, just retreated. The man, laughing, moved forward, letting the dog lunge close enough to snap at the boy's feet before yanking the animal back hard enough to make it yelp.
"Leave him alone," said the woman who came through the door next. She carried a tray and edged around the dog, making like she meant to kick it. The dog backed off. The man did, too. "Look what I brought for you to eat."
She settled the tray on the bed next to the boy. On the tray was a bowl of what looked like vegetable soup and a hunk of Italian bread, along with a glass of water.
"Now all you have to do is make a message for your mom and dad and tell them you want to come home. You know how we like you to do it."
She pulled a hand-held tape recorder from her pocket and held it out. The boy scooted away. Quick as spit, the woman grabbed the boy by the scruff of the neck and yanked him closer. The man laughed. The dog went into a frenzy of barking, its jaws snapping. It lunged closer until the man jerked it away by the leash.
The recorder clicked on. The boy said nothing at first, until the woman's fingers dug deeper and the dog was allowed closer. She held him still while the dog barked and snapped inches from his face, until his terrorized screams filled the room.
"Mommy, Daddy! I want to come home! I want to come home! Please!"
"You know," said the man when the woman had tossed the boy back to the bed, "you could just tell him to scream. He prolly would."
The sneer she gave him said it all. "But that wouldn't be as much fun, would it, asshole?"
Together with the dog, they left the room and the boy sobbing alone on his cot.
Tovah's stomach lurched to her throat as the scene unfolded, and her heart went out to the boy. He sat and reached at once for his ball. The food was left ignored. He bent his head over the toy, his small shoulders hunched. Empathy swept over her and Tovah made to let go of Spider and Ben, but Spider clamped his hand tight around hers.
"Don't, Tovahleh. Don't let go."
"Everything makes so much sense, now," she murmured. "Poor, poor boy. No wonder he doesn't want to wake up."
"Tovah." At Ben's murmur she turned to look at him. He met her gaze with his, then looked back at the boy, who was staring at them in silence. "I don't think he's asleep."
"If he's not asleep, what is he?" Her hands inside the others' sweated and cramped, but she didn't let go. "Is he like Spider?"
Spider sighed softly. Together they watched the boy on the cot. He'd stopped crying and turned his face to the wall. Tovah looked at Spider, whose gaze was fixed intently on the boy.
"Spider? Is he like you?"
"He's not really here," murmured Spider. "I mean...I think he was here, but this is still the Ephemeros. We're all still dreaming. He's dreaming us."
"Whoa," said Ben with a flash of the dry humor Tovah found so appealing. "What a mindfuck."
"Am I a man who dreamed he was a butterfly? Or a butterfly who dreamed he was a man?" Spider's husky chuckle lifted Tovah's spirits. If he could joke about this, maybe it meant they weren't so bad off.
The world wasn't shaking, at least not here, and the terror that had battered them before had relented. It hadn't disappeared, not exactly, but it had faded to a manageable amount. Tovah found she could breathe again, and hadn't realized she'd been unable to, before.
The cinderblock walls got fuzzy now and again, a sign the boy's concentration was with other things. Tovah took the chance to try and catch his attention. She moved forward, her arms pulling Spider and Ben with her, though they resisted hard enough to keep her from getting close enough to touch the boy.
"Hey," she said gently.
He lifted his head, took in the sight of their clasped hands. "You want me to stop, I know."
"Can you?" Tovah's voice stayed gentle. "Do you want to?"
The boy said nothing for what seemed a very long time. In one hand he held the woman-puppet, in the other the beast-doll. He clutched them hard and drew his knees to his chest, burying his face. His thin shoulders heaved.
"I want my mom and dad."
"Where are they?"
"I don't know!" The boy's fingers linked around his knees. She could see he'd bitten his nails down so far they had to be sore.
The walls around them faded entirely, leaving only the cot and the boy with his toys. They were back to black sand and sky. The screams, this time, weren't so far off. The club Tovah had always been so fond of shaping surged and seethed just beyond the boy's cot, but instead of writhing in ecstasy the occupants squirmed and wailed in terror.
Edward stepped from the shadows. The boy looked up, sniffling. He threw a gaze of sheer desperation toward Tovah and lifted his puppets.
"No!" Tovah's cry turned his head, stopped him for a moment, but it wasn't enough.
The boy lifted his puppets higher, holding them out to either side of his body. "I'm sorry."
In the club, the screams got louder.
Without speaking, without even thinking too much about it, Tovah opened herself to the threads of Spider's will and Ben's. The boy pushed. They pushed back.
It was like trying to shape water, fluid and slippery, without form. The world around them whirled in the way only dreams could, flashing bits and pieces of scenes and sending emotional currents washing over them. Tovah drew strength from her friends and knitted it with her own, sending it out to force away the bad.
Beside her, Ben groaned. His eyelids fluttered. But Ben was stronger than she was, wasn't he? She looked at Spider, who stared impassively at the boy. Only the vein ticking in his temple gave away his strain.
"I...can't." Ben's mutter nudged Tovah's ear. "This isn't like making an oasis..."
"You have to." Spider's voice allowed no argument. "It's coming apart at the seams."
He was right. The fabric of the Ephemeros was unraveling around them, and what would that mean? No more dreams? Or something more dramatic?
"Is it something you want to risk?" Spider snapped, answering the question she hadn't asked aloud.
Clutching her friends tight, Tovah used every bit of skill she had. "Remember what you told me, Spider, when I needed to find the way out. Exit light. Do it now. Exit light!"
The mantra wasn't working. Beside her, Ben's hand flared hot and the force of his desire rubbed her like sandpaper. On the other side, Spider's grim determination tasted like gasoline, burning her tongue.
"I can't let you do this, son," Spider said. "I can't let you take this place away from me. It's all I got."
Tovah turned her head to look at her friend. "Spider, that's not true!"
He didn't look at her. "It's all I got, Tovahleh. It's more real to me than anything else. And I won't let this kid break it into pieces."
The boy cried out, backing up a step and dragging his puppets with him. Spider's will pulsed and throbbed, pushing outward. A hint of blue sky edged the darkness the boy's fear had created. It was a start, but not enough.
Tovah's stomach lurched. "Listen to me. They're a part of you. They can only hurt or scare you if you let them, just like any other dream. I'll teach you how to get out. But you have to trust me."
The boy looked at the woman and the beast. The earth shook. The sky opened and lightning flashed inside the rent. "I'm scared! I'm scared to get out."
"I know you are." Strength and compassion filled Tovah's voice.
"Leave him alone." Edward, feet bare and hand reaching, appeared. He stepped toward the boy, who looked up at once.
"We don't want to hurt him," Tovah protested. She looked from Spider to Ben and back again. "Do we?"
"Tovahleh," Spider said, "he's got to be stopped."
"You don't mean to hurt him," she said, understanding. "You want to kill him."
She looked at Ben. "You knew this, too?"
He had the grace to look guilty. "Spider told me."
This was a betrayal worse than any she'd known, and Tovah fought to keep herself from reeling with the shock of it. "You both decided this without asking me? Why wait, then? Why not just do it?"
"Because we need you, Tovahleh," Spider said. "We couldn't do it alone. You're the only one---"
She shook her head. She would not listen to this half-assed rationale. "You should have told me. He's just a kid! Look at him!"
"It's a representation, Tovah!" Ben cried. "He's not a boy any more than Spider is a spider."
Tovah did not believe that. She'd seen the truth in the boy's words, and in the scene he'd dreamed for them. "He's a boy. And he's in trouble. Is this why you wanted me to become a guide?"
Ben's guilty look gave her an answer, but Tovah fixed her glare on Spider. "Is it, Spider? To do things like this? To decide who gets to play and who doesn't?"
Spider's expression turned grim. "You have a lot of power, Tovahleh. You need to use it for something other than selfishness."
A slap would have hurt her less and been more easily forgiven. "Were you just using me?"
"No, Tovahleh. Never that."
Tovah wished she could believe him. She looked at Edward. "I don't want to hurt him, I swear to you. But you have to trust me."
"Tovah, don't do this," Ben warned, but she yanked her hand from his anyway. Then from Spider's.
The instant she did, the terror and pain their mingled will had held at bay surged forward. It knocked her, clutching her gut and screaming, to her knees. Behind her she heard Ben and Spider doing the same. In the club, the screams rose to an insufferable pitch, and she clapped her hands over her ears.
And then she got to her feet.
She faced the boy. "You have to trust me."
The boy shook, his face white as bleached sheets, eyes two dark coins. The dream creatures in each of his hands rippled and writhed. Tovah stepped toward him. She began to shape.
Spider had told her to shape a haven, and that's what she did. Green grass, a butterfly, the sweetly spanning limbs of a shade tree. She shaped a haven for herself and the boy, in all his forms. Spider had said she could do it, and she did.
She was sweating by the time it was half-finished, gritting her teeth with effort a moment after that. Never had she needed to work so hard to shape anything, not even in the beginning. For everything she shaped, she had to unshape something else. Even then, when it was done, she stood inside something as fragile as a soap bubble with the world outside pressing against it, trying to make it break.
The boy looked better, not so pale, and he didn't shake. The puppets in his hands dangled, ignored for the moment.
"Where are we?"
"I made this place for us," Tovah said. "It's a safe place. And any time you're scared, you can come here, okay? You don't have to...do what you did, before."
The boy looked around with wide eyes. "You did this for me? Even though I did those bad things?"
"Yes."
He looked back at her. "Why?"
Tovah wanted to weep for this broken soul. "Because I know you didn't mean to do it."
"Your friends wanted to kill me, didn't they? Like Angie and Stan?" The boy looked at the dolls he still clutched.
Grief at how Spider and Ben had tried to get her to take part in such a thing made her stutter. "Angie and Stan?"
"That's their names." He shook the dolls and looked up at her. "They want to hurt me."
"They can't hurt you here."
He nodded, looking around, then back at her. "What's your name?"
"Tovah." She smiled, moving closer. Though outside the haven she could still feel the push and pull of a world on its edge, fighting with itself, she thought it might be fading. "What's yours?"
The boy looked shy and ducked his head. "Eddie."
"Well, Eddie---" Tovah stopped, stunned.
They'd tried pushing against this boy, three on three, and had been unable to stop him. Because, though it had become clear the woman and the dogman were manifestations of his fear, there had been one piece missing. Not three on three.
Three on four.
The boy had trusted Tovah for one minute, had given her his true name, and in that minute the world had ceased its shaking. He had stopped being afraid.
"I remember," he said slowly, looking at her with wonder. "Oh. I remember now!"
The grass and sky and flowers made him want to dance, but he tipped his face to bright yellow sun and laughed instead. "But I'm okay here. I'm really okay! This isn't the bad place. I'm not in the bad place anymore!"
And he wasn't, until the edges of the yellow sun began to turn black, like the time he'd held a leaf over the campfire to see what would happen to it. The edges had crisped brown, then black, and the smoke had started. He'd burned his fingers, crying out and sucking them, and his mother had given him a piece of ice and a sip of her soda.
"Tovah?"
Her face had gone long and sad, and she shook her head. "Oh, honey."
The witchwoman stood. The dogman stood. No longer dolls.
"What's happening?" The boy cried out. "What are you doing?"
Tovah wiped her face and looked behind him. "You didn't know, did you? Please. Tell me you didn't know."
The boy turned. Tovah wasn't talking to him, nor to her friends, but to Edward. He looked like Eddie's dad had when Eddie did something stupid, like left the water running from the hose so it flooded the basement and ruined his dad's new band saw in the workshop.
"You told me to trust you, and this is what you do?" Edward jerked his chin around at the pretty place Tovah had made to keep them safe. "You're no better than them!"
He pointed to Tovah's friends. She'd called one Spider, and Eddie remembered he'd really been a spider. The other one, Ben, had tried to fight the witchwoman whose name was Angie and been knocked to the sand, but Eddie had saved him. He'd saved the spider, too, opening the cage in which Angie had stuffed him.
Why did they still want to hurt him?
"Edward. Stop this."
"I don't know what you're talking about." Edward held out his hands as though he meant to hurt Tovah.
"No!" Eddie cried. "Don't do that! She's nice!"
Tovah turned and went to her knees, clutching Eddie's shoulders. She looked deep into his eyes. "You stay here. No matter what happens, you stay here, okay?"
She got up and faced the man again.
Everything around them, all the nice things she'd made, began to disappear.
Tovah couldn't hold on to the haven. Not against Edward's will. And it was his will, she realized with a stab of sorrow, not the boy's. Not the woman's, not the dogman's. They were all the same. One man, split into pieces by what had been done to him as a child.
She pulled out of the meadow and stood again on the mountain, black sand under her feet. Edward followed. His lip curled, showing white teeth. His features blurred, shifting, showing her each of the faces he'd worn. His body shaped and reshaped, taller, broader, leaner, longer. He shook with the changes, some coming so fast it was like watching a wink.
"You don't have to be afraid anymore," she soothed.
Spider came to one side of her. Ben to the other. But Tovah, unwilling to be bound between them again, stepped forward. Her motion drew Edward's attention as swift as a rubber band snapping. His head whipped around, his face fixing solid for one moment. Something familiar in the lines of brow and jaw called to her, but the eyes were blank and dark, without emotion.
"You are wrong," he told her. "I am not afraid. Not that. Not ever again."
She began to shape again. Another haven. A safe place for her dream lover to rest. To be safe.
Edward grabbed her by the upper arms and shoved her back. Her left leg twinged, then erupted into pain as her representation dissolved. She teetered for a moment, then hit the ground with a thud. She couldn't even cry out, could only clutch at her limb and try to shape away the agony.
"I'm sorry," Edward told her. "But there is a reason why we dream what we dream. Your Spider was right about that. And I can't let you take it away from me."
Edward needed no weapons. No bullet. No blade. He needed only the effort and force of his desire to cause harm, and he used it with as much skill and confidence as he'd used his charm and will to help, before.
"Don't do this!" Tovah cried, body twisting in the black sand.
Edward stared down at her. "I have to."
Tovah cried out then, her protest as nothing to him. He hit Spider first, wrenching the older man to the ground and pinning him there with no more than a wave of his hand. Spider bucked against an unseen pressure, arms and legs flailing, but Edward paid no more attention to him than if he'd seen a beetle struggling on its back.
Spider died.
No blood or fanfare, just a sighing-out of breath. His eyes glazed and fingers twitched once, twice. Ben was at his side, grabbing up his hand, before Tovah could do more than take a step.
"No," she said conversationally, unable to believe what Edward had just done. She looked at her once-upon-a-time lover and couldn't believe the hands she'd once let roam her body had done this savage thing.
Edward lifted his hands, palms up, to stare at them as though they belonged to someone else. But in the next moment his expression hardened, full mouth twisting into a sneer. He looked to where Ben knelt next to Spider with his hands on Spider's chest, compressing in the steady pattern Tovah recognized as CPR.
"C'mon," Ben muttered over and over while Tovah stood, frozen and useless. "Not you. C'mon, Spider. We need you."
She did need Spider, there was no question of that, but watching Ben perform a waking-world cure smacked Tovah's face with its futility. She reached her hands toward her two friends and began to shape.
"No, no. No." Edward turned to her. "I can't let you do that, Tovah."
"Fuck you!" she screamed, shaping. Pushing. Pulling.
Edward shook his head. "Why couldn't you just love me?"
The world blurred, but not from being shaped. Acid tears filled her eyes and slipped, burning, down her cheeks. Tovah pushed harder, but Spider lay still and silent with Ben beside him.
Tovah lurched to her knee, residual limb stuck out in front of her. She used her hands to push upward, seeking to get on her feet. At the last minute she shaped crutches, but they came through as no more than a crudely hobbled together conglomeration of sticks tied with twine. She used one to lever herself upright.
Tovah hobbled to Ben and Spider and fell on her knee on the soft earth, neither green grass nor black sand now but brown, crumbling dirt mixed with rocks that cut her skin. She ignored it, concentrating on Spider.
"I can't do it." Ben's voice had gone hoarse with his own tears. He gripped Spider's limp hand and bent his head to it, shoulders bent. "He's gone."
"No."
You'll never get rid of me. I'll be around for-fucking-ever.
Tovah put her hand on Ben's shoulder, urging him to look at her. "We can't think that way."
There had been many moments shared between them, looks and words. Sometimes anger, always something more. Ben's lips parted, but he said nothing.
"Why me?" Tovah asked. "Why me, that first time?"
Ben reached to touch her face. His hand cupped her cheek and drew her closer, the tips of his fingers curving just behind her ear. Tovah didn't need the tug of his will to move her; she was already moving on her own.
"Because I was lost," Ben whispered, "and I needed someone to guide me. And you were there for me, Tovah. All this time, it's always been you who kept me from being lost again."
She saw him kiss her, clearly. She felt the pressure of Ben's mouth on hers. She tasted him. But it didn't happen.
A shadow loomed over them both and pitched them into darkness.
"So it's him." Edward's flat voice was like the slap of waves on a dark shore. "He's the reason?"
Tovah got to her feet, Ben a moment behind her. She faced Edward, took a step toward him. "I'm sorry, Edward."
"Why are you lying? You're not sorry you love him! You're not sorry one fucking bit!" Anguished, Edward fell to his knees in front of her. A vast black lake spread out behind him, endless and smooth as glass. "I was everything to you, everything you could ever want! Why not me?"
"Maybe it's because you're a crazy fuck." Ben snapped the words like individual punches, each one hitting Edward in someplace vulnerable.
"I am not crazy."
Split into four, each unaware of the part the others played in the whole, how could he be anything resembling sane? Yet Tovah remembered feeling her mind fall apart and wanting so desperately for it not to be true that she'd denied it until it had nearly killed her.
Edward looked up from his place on the ground. "I never meant to hurt you, Tovah."
She didn't have enough time to step between Edward and Ben, and it probably wouldn't have mattered if she had. Edward rose up atop the sudden wave of black water that hung over them, rich with the smell of secrets. Tovah's legs buckled, twisting at the last moment, subject to the push of someone's will---whose, she wasn't sure, but when her legs melded and grew glittering scales to become the muscular tail of a fish, she knew. Ben had done this once again, pushed her hard and fast into a shape that wasn't hers.
She didn't have time to be grateful before the water curling into a solid wave above them crashed down on top of them all.
She swam. The dark water and the taste of despair choked her, but she breathed. She opened her eyes and could see in the blackness. She pushed with her tail and pulled with her arms, unable to find up from down. She tumbled over and over as the water retreated and then she was on the wet sand, bruised and aching but alive.
Spider was gone. Ben lay curled on the sand, his eyes closed, blood and bruises already forming on every patch of skin Tovah could see. He'd saved her, but not himself.
Edward, perfectly dry and unharmed, stepped down the retreating wave as though it was a set of stairs, coming to land beside her. His bare toes curled into the sand by her face. He looked down at her helplessness, the form Ben had given her useless on the ground.
"Apparently I am," he said without a trace of emotion, "a crazy fuck."
Ben didn't move. Tovah looked up at Edward. He looked back at her with yet another stranger's face.
He'd encouraged her to climb the mountain, taught her she could do anything. This world had no limits for her but those that existed in her mind. And at last Tovah had reason to banish all of them.
She was strong. Unstoppable. She got to her feet without struggling, changing her form as fast as she thought it. The black lake vanished in a blink, the sand in a breath.
"You are done, Edward."
Edward rippled but Tovah held him in place with the lift of a finger. He cried out. She'd hurt him.
Good.
She caged him with her desire that he be so caged. Silver bars pressed him on all sides, the representation of her will made solid. It hurt her when he broke them, in a place deep inside, but she didn't retreat.
"You are done," she repeated.
She shaped a haven, once again, the green grass of her meadow, the trees and flowers, the brook. It shaped around them seamless and effortless. Her dream within a dream. The boy looked up from his place in the grass where he'd been playing with his puppets. He got to his feet, face alarmed.
Tovah looked at Edward. "You took away two people I loved."
Edward groaned, falling again to his knees and clutching his guts, but Tovah refused to be fooled by this display. She sealed off all hints of anything other than the meadow.
"Get up," she told Edward and, groaning, he did, though not of his own volition.
Eddie, eyes wide, clutched his puppets to his chest.
"Look at him." Tovah jerked Edward's eyes toward the boy, who did not move or speak. "Face your fears. It's about time."
"No." Edward tried to shake his head, tried to turn his eyes away, but Tovah would not let him.
Fury and sorrow swirled around her. When the cold bite of steel pressed the bare skin of her back, she crossed her arms, each hand going to its opposite shoulder. She was an angel with wings made of glass and razors, and her hair waved around her as her will pushed Edward toward Eddie.
"Face your fears, Edward."
"Why are you doing this?" Edward's shout ripped from his throat. He pushed back but there was no stopping her. Not now.
Not ever again.
"Because you are lost and need someone to guide you," Tovah said in a voice that stunned and sliced.
"Please," whispered Edward, his hands raised to ward her off.
The Ephemeros had shaken and broken in the face of Edward's fear. In the face of Tovah's fury it did something worse.
It began to unknit.
The blades of her wings whirred, stretching out behind her, but she ignored them. Tovah saw nothing but the man and the boy, face to face, one and the same.
The boy reached first, a puppet in each of his hands. The man made to back away, but the snicker-snack of glass-shard wings slashed the air behind him, and he stayed where he was. He turned his head to Tovah.
"I'm sorry," Edward said.
Tovah faced him with her wings of glass spread out behind her. She didn't need to fly. "I'm sorry, too."
Eddie whimpered. Tovah turned.
She pushed. Something new broke inside her and she pushed on, anyway. Like overlaying shadows, she shaped one on top of the other. Silhouettes. The small, frail shadow of Eddie disappeared beneath Angie's curving form, which vanished under Stan's snouted profile. Three in one.
Edward shouted like he'd been stabbed in the back and turned, running toward the shadow tableau Tovah had created. He ran so fast he kicked up grass and skidded to a stop. He reached, but his hands passed through the shadows without stopping.
He faced her. "What have you done?"
"You don't have to be afraid," Tovah said. "Let me help you."
"Oh, you stupid, stupid bitch," Edward moaned, staggering. The shadows rose up. Black water. "Don't you understand? Now I'll never be able to get away from them!"
Hands fisted, he stood his ground before the wave he'd created. It loomed over him, dripping acid that hissed and sizzled on the sand and turned it to slick glass. The roar of the surf filled the air.
"Wake up, Edward!" Tovah cried. Pain twisted in her guts. "Just wake up! All you have to do is wake up."
Edward looked at her, taking on one, final face. The shifting features halted, each finding its place. She recognized nothing about him. He'd become a stranger again.
"I'm not asleep," said Edward.
The water consumed him.
As he disappeared inside it, Tovah shaped the meadow closed, faster than she'd ever shaped it before. Without walls, ceiling or floor it didn't look like a prison, but it had become one just the same. She was on the outside, looking in to what had been her favorite place, her own haven, the one place in both her worlds that had been hers alone. Her private dream within a dream.
Giving it up hurt worse than climbing the mountain of glass had, but she did it in the span of two heartbeats. It left her aching and bruised, every breath a fire in her lungs until she remembered to shape the pain away.
But there was another agony she could not shape away.
"Ben?" Tovah ran to him. She cradled him, watching her tears splash his face. This was as real as anything she'd ever known. She bent to kiss him, hoping to open his eyes.
It worked. Ben's eyes fluttered open and he sat up so fast he knocked his head against her chin. Tovah tasted blood but only for the second it took to shape it away, and the sting with it.
"Are you all right?"
She nodded, looking around. In the distance she saw a family on a picnic. Her dreamscape had altered a little. She felt the tug and pull of the collective will, felt the desire of someone not too far away looking for a guide, and she didn't block it off. Not right away.
"I thought you were gone, too." Her arms tightened around him, squeezing. Tovah buried her face into the side of Ben's neck, breathing him in. "I thought he'd killed you, too."
Ben's embrace warmed her as he rocked her slightly into place on his lap. "No. I'm still here. I'm right here."
His tears wet her shoulder, and her own fell faster. "I don't want to lose you, Ben."
"You won't lose me, Tovah." He pulled away to look into her eyes. "I promise."
He kissed her, slow and certain. Her mouth parted, accepting the probe of his tongue as his hands slid up her back to tangle in her hair. Strong fingers massaged the base of her skull. Ben pulled her closer until she straddled him. He broke the kiss to press his face to the hollow of her throat. The heat of his tongue flicked her there, and Tovah shivered.
"I promise," Ben whispered.
Tovah curled against him. Pain pricked her all over, but deep inside it was worse. Harder, somehow. Stronger. She'd ruined something inside.
"I---" She began to speak, but Ben's lips stopped her words.
"Find me," he told her. "Out there. Find me, Tovah."
There was no more time for them now. She kissed Ben again, their mutual longing not enough to keep her there when the waking world plucked so fervently at her sleeve. She didn't want to leave him, to face the loss of Henry in the waking world alone. She didn't want to face the loss all over again, but steeled herself for it by stealing one more kiss to bolster her until she could dream again.
"Find me," Ben said again. "My name...my name is what I've always been."
It was that way, here. Words scrambled, clocks never told the right time. Truth refused to be told.
"I'll find you," she promised, and reached for him again.
She'd thought she was being shaken awake, but it was the thunder of feet on tile floors that had done it. Tovah's eyes flew open as her chair was shoved aside to make room for the nurses flocking to Henry's bed. An orderly banged into her stump and she cried out, but the man didn't do more than glance in her direction.
Tovah shoved the floor with her foot, pushing the chair out of the way. It didn't have far to go, and she banged into the wall with a thud that wracked her leg again, but she bit down on the pain. She saw Martin bent over Henry's still form.
The team worked swiftly in a seamless, too-often-performed dance. Martin gave orders without the barking arrogance Tovah had seen in too many doctors. He moved with confidence, only once looking up at her across Henry's body.
Whatever he saw on her face made him look away at once.
"Call it," he said, looking at the clock on the wall, the one upon which the numbers stubbornly refused to shift. "He's gone."
And though she already knew that was the truth, Tovah began to weep.
"Why did you even wait so long?" Kelly plumped Tovah's pillows and settled the tray more steadily on her lap. "Jeeze, girl, you're gonna give me a complex."
"I didn't want to be a bother." Tovah's stomach grumbled at the aroma of the soup Kelly had made for her.
Her friend had picked Tovah up at the hospital, driven her home, fed the dog, tossed in a load of laundry and helped Tovah change the bandages on her leg, not even flinching at the sight of the bruises and scrapes. And bless her, Kelly hadn't asked why Tovah hadn't asked Dr. Feelgood for a ride.
Kelly snorted. "It's not a bother, Tovah. God. What sort of shitty friend would I be not to help you out?"
"You're not---"
"Exactly." Kelly patted her shoulder. Beside her on the floor, Max snuffed happily. She'd fed him. He would be her friend for life. "So shut up and eat your soup."
Tovah had told Kelly an abbreviated version of the story---her fall, the late-night phone call and Henry's passing. Though she could tell Kelly wanted to ask more questions, she didn't, and Tovah was grateful.
"It's almost time for Runner, isn't it?" Tovah pointed to the remote in its caddy on top of the television.
"You sure you want to watch with me?" Kelly made a little face. "I tend to squee."
Tovah's laugh was a welcome surprise, perhaps to them both. "I'd never have guessed."
Tovah had watched only a few episodes, but the premise wasn't difficult to follow, the dialogue was alternatingly clever and poignant, and the characterization well developed. A combination of the sci-fi classic Logan's Run and the more modern Running Man by Stephen King intermingled with a healthy dose of urban legends and vintage X-Files, it was a program Tovah would have loved from the beginning even if she'd never saved Justin Ross from a horde of dildo-waving zombies.
"Hey," said Kelly softly, reaching for the box of tissues and handing her one.
The tears had slipped silently down her cheeks without her noticing. Tovah took the tissue and swiped at her face. "I'm sorry."
"Don't worry about it." Kelly turned the volume down a little bit and twisted her body on the couch to face Tovah. "I'm sorry about your friend."
Tovah accepted the sentiment with a nod. "He was a good guy. And...I'm going to miss him very much."
Outside the window the yard flashed with brightness glaring enough to turn Kelly's head. "Was that lightning?"
Tovah's head had turned as well, but she knew it wasn't an oncoming storm. "No. That's my neighbor's floodlight."
"Dr. Feelgood's floodlight?" Kelly leaned over and pushed aside the slats of Tovah's blinds to peer into the back yard.
Tovah's throat constricted again, but she didn't cry this time. "Yes."
"So he must be home." Kelly shifted again, looking harder. "Dammit, I can't see him." She turned to look back at Tovah. "You never said what's going on with him, by the way."
"That's because...nothing is."
It wasn't the right time to talk about it, even if she knew what to say.
Kelly studied her intently. "You don't look like there was nothing."
Tovah sighed, looking down at her hands clutching the shredded tissue. "I don't know about him, Kelly."
"About him? Or about yourself?"
"Isn't that always the question?" Tovah shrugged. "I don't know."
Kelly couldn't stay forever, but Max refused to leave Tovah's side, not even for the freedom of the yard outside. Tovah leaned on the enormous dog as she collapsed on the couch, where the pillows soaked up her tears as she sobbed until her throat was raw.
When the phone rang fifteen minutes later, she answered it by fumbling blindly for the handset on the table next to the couch. Though the phone displayed the name and number of the caller, Tovah didn't bother to look, just croaked a hoarse greeting. There was silence.
She sat up a little higher. "Hello? Who's this?"
"Is this...Tovah?"
"Yes." Tovah snatched up the box of tissues and pressed one to her eyes and nose. It disintegrated almost at once and she took another. "Who's this?"
At the next long silence, Tovah looked at the handset. The number and name had come through as Unknown, a call she normally wouldn't have answered, anyway. She was just about to hang up when the woman on the line spoke.
"I'm calling about Kevin."
Tovah sat up straighter. An image of Kevin falling sliced through her and sickness lurched to her throat. "Is he all right?"
She cursed the fresh bout of silence broken only by the soft sound of the woman struggling to speak.
Tovah gripped the handset tighter. "Is he all right?"
"He's going to be fine. He had a scare, but he's going to be fine. He asked me to call you."
Tovah had no patience for petty games. "A scare? What does that mean? Who's this?"
"This is Jennifer." The soft sniffling turned to a much colder tone. "His fiancée."
Tovah had no strength for a pissing contest, so she kept her voice calm because of that. "What happened to Kevin, Jennifer?"
"He was hospitalized with arrhythmia. We thought he was having a heart attack!" She said it as though Tovah should take the blame, though she could have no clue how much Tovah had actually been involved.
"But he's fine?"
"Yes. They think so. They're keeping him overnight for observation and to run some tests, see if there was any permanent damage to his heart."
Jennifer sounded tired, and though Tovah had no love for the other woman, she did manage to dredge up some sympathy. "I'm sure you must have been worried."
This time the silence crackled with anger. When Jennifer spoke it was in clipped, sharp-edged tones. "He wanted me to tell you he was sorry, and that he was going to withdraw pursuing the settlement."
Old resentment surged forth, making her bite down, hard. "He couldn't tell me himself?"
"He was intubated. It hurts him to talk. He had...he had to write it down...and he was on heavy medication at the time!" This last came out with the force of defensiveness.
Of course Jennifer would be unhappy to watch her future husband toss away what promised to be a sizeable amount of money to his ex-wife. What she couldn't know was how frightened Kevin must have been to do it. Tovah knew.
"Well." Tovah cleared her throat and wiped her face. She tried hard to find happiness that Kevin had not died, but against the blinding loss of Spider, she found no joy for Kevin. "I'm glad to hear that he'll be fine."
"We just want to get married!" Jennifer's voice had gone high and thready. In the background, Tovah heard the thin wail of their child.
"And I just want to get divorced," Tovah answered steadily.
Another long silence. Tovah didn't break it---this was not a conversation she wanted to own. Jennifer sniffled loudly into the phone, then hung up. The sound of the dial tone was very loud.
Tovah thumbed the disconnect button and fell back onto the pillows. She waited for a fresh bout of tears but had apparently run herself dry. Max pushed his head into her hand in a familiar ploy for her to feed him. Tovah looked into the kitchen, where the dog had dumped his empty bowls. She looked down at her sleep-rumpled clothes and touched her limb carefully. She looked again at the kitchen, and the distance.
"I can't do it," she told the dog. "I'm sorry, Max. I just can't do it."
And then she realized she wasn't done with her tears, after all.
It was a week before she could fit her prosthetic over her stump again. The pain had gone away faster than the swelling, and though she might have risked padding the socket of her leg in order to get back on her feet sooner, the worry she might take another tumble had kept her on the crutches for a few days longer.
She didn't begin to know where to search for Ben. She knew his face, the smell of him, the weight of his mouth. She knew his first name, but not his last.
He'd said he was what he'd always been, but what was that? A guide, an Eagle Scout? Even with the vastness of the Internet at her fingertips, she had no way of knowing where to begin, and though she forced herself to sleep every night and looked for him, the Ephemeros had gone dark and silent in the aftermath of what had been done to it. She was afraid to shake it more, afraid it would break for good.
She didn't see Martin again until the funeral. Henry Tuckens had no family who seemed willing to come forward to plan the simple service Tovah knew he'd have wanted. There hadn't been much money to put toward a fancy casket or pay for a lunch after, but then again there hadn't been many people to feed.
A hard recent frost and the layer of snow meant Henry would be interred in the cemetery's mausoleum until warmer weather allowed a grave to be dug, and the brief ceremony took place there rather than at the as-yet nonexistent grave site. Tovah had met Father Halloran a few times at the Sisters of Mercy. Henry had liked him.
The crowd was small. Ava had made it, and Marco. A frail woman in an oversized coat hung toward the back of the group, chain-smoking. Tovah's throat closed at the smell of the cigarettes. The woman, who wore Henry's features with less grace than he had, didn't linger. Tovah didn't get to ask who she was.
Now, the service finished and Henry's body tucked away inside the vault, the crowd dispersed. Tovah thanked Father Halloran and slipped him an envelope that he took without comment. She turned to make her final goodbyes to her friend, grateful for the privacy she now had in which to weep.
"Hello, Tovah."
At the sound of Martin's voice, she turned. Martin, shoulders hunched inside a long black wool coat, had his hands shoved into his pockets. The chill wind had blushed his cheeks, and his eyes watered from the sting of it. He blinked at her.
"Martin." She didn't know what else to say. She hadn't seen him since the night Henry died. She'd seen lights on in his house and heard the putter of his car as he drove away in the mornings, but that was all.
It felt wrong to cry against him, so she didn't. Tovah forced her tears back and scrubbed her face with the handful of tissues she was never without these days. Her upper lip had rubbed almost raw. She looked a mess...and didn't care, which said a lot about how she felt about Martin, if not exactly what.
"I wasn't sure you'd be here," she said.
Martin's eyes remained shuttered, his face neutral. She didn't blame him. She'd really taken him for a ride.
"I had to come," he said without further explanation.
She didn't deserve one, and the way he said it made her feel stupid for doubting him. "Of course. I'm sorry."
She was sorry for many things, the dissolution of their friendship not the least. He'd kissed her, and she'd let him. Had even encouraged him, then pushed him away without explanation, and what good reason could she really give him? "There's someone else" didn't really fit, did it, when she'd only ever met the other person in a world to which she couldn't bring herself to return?
"The service was very nice." Martin looked around briefly. "I didn't know Henry was a veteran."
"I don't think he told many people." Tovah had known only because of Spider. Henry had never mentioned it in the waking world.
"He could have gone to a veteran's hospital. Had benefits." Martin looked around again at the cemetery's rolling hills, the grass tipped with white. "He could have had better treatment than just a nice plot in a government cemetery."
"He had good treatment at the Sisters of Mercy." Tovah's quiet vehemence turned Martin's head. "From you."
It was too cold for silence to hang between them, too frigid to stand and share a poignant moment. Neither of them moved. Tovah's fingertips were getting numb.
"Thank you," Martin said at last. "That means a lot."
Why couldn't it be Martin, she thought suddenly, fiercely. Why couldn't she fall in love with this decent man who took such care of everyone around him and asked for none, himself?
Why not me? Edward had asked, and she shuddered at the memory.
"You're cold. You should get inside." Martin looked up the slight hill to the parking lot where her car and his sat side by side.
"Yes. You too."
Together they walked up the sidewalk. The slope was just enough that she had to concentrate extra hard on every step. There was no ice, but she could still slip. Martin didn't offer his arm, and Tovah didn't ask for it.
They had spent many moments without speaking and more than a few enmeshed in awkwardness, but it poked her more keenly today. This was her fault, and she didn't know how to fix it. She didn't know if she ought to try.
Deep breath.
"Would you...like to get some coffee with me?" The question wasn't a new one, the act of asking it not real bravery.
Martin looked at her without expression. "No."
Tovah flinched.
Martin had pulled his car into the spot next to hers but in the opposite direction, so opening their drivers' side doors put them within inches of one another. Martin slid into his seat without effort, while Tovah prepared to do the balancing act required for her to get behind the wheel without falling into her seat. She was glad for the focus, today. It kept her from looking at him.
Martin's hand stopped her door before she could close it, and she looked up at him, surprised. She hadn't noticed him get out of the car. "Martin?"
"What were you really trying to do?" he asked seriously. Intent. His gaze probed hers. "With Henry," he added, saving her from guessing if he'd meant with him.
"It's complicated, Martin." Complicated and pointless to try and explain, since Tovah wasn't certain she'd ever do anything like it again.
He nodded like her answer hadn't surprised him. "Tell me, anyway."
A burst of wind pushed against him. The frigid sting slapped Tovah even within the shelter of her car. She could imagine how it felt to Martin, but he didn't flinch. His bare hand gripped the cold metal of her car door. His fingers had turned red.
"It has to do with...dreams."
He lost the neutrality he must have been forcing and pushed away from her car with a grimace she thought was disgust. A low noise burst from his throat. Not quite a laugh.
"Jesus, Tovah! Do you think I'm an idiot? Is that what you think?" He turned, the blue of his eyes only a rim of color around the vast dark circles of his pupils. "Dreams?"
She couldn't get out of the car gracefully, but she struggled to do it anyway. Now it was her turn to grip the car door for support. Martin had turned, his hands linking behind his head like a man trying not to hit something.
"No, I don't think that! I never did. I told you it was complicated."
"And crazy!" Martin turned.
Tovah caught a glimpse of blue shirt beneath the black wool coat and swallowed hard against the memory of seeing him for the first time. She didn't refute his accusation of insanity.
"You think I don't know crazy?" Martin continued. "I'm a fucking psychiatrist, for fuck's sake!"
She'd never heard him swear, had never imagined such vulgarity from him. "I know that."
He whirled to look at her. He raked both hands through his hair, pushing the waves into spikes the wind further mussed. For a moment he pressed both palms to his temples, his teeth gritted, the perfect portrait of a man in pain. Then he took them away and shook himself, cracking his neck and rolling his shoulders.
"Tell me," he said.
She couldn't tell him the truth. Not the exact truth. "Henry was teaching me about lucid dreaming and...and astral projection. Out-of-body experiences."
It wasn't quite a lie.
Martin stared. A fierce grin slashed his face and he turned from her again. "Astral projection. Very New Age."
"That's a funny sort of attitude from you," she snapped. "What makes that different from Healing Touch or whatever the hell you were trying with him?"
"The results of Healing Touch and guided imagery can be medically and statistically proven." Martin's scowl was pure heat but did nothing to warm her.
Anger prompted her to tell him everything, all about the Ephemeros, but common sense held her back. Her stomach clutched, and she had to swallow hard against her retort. She wasn't really angry with Martin.
"So you convinced me to give you drugs---you convinced me to give you a controlled substance, an action that could have cost me my job, not to mention my license! And for what?" Martin sneered. "Some half-assed foray into a bunch of metaphysical bullshit that did nothing? Nothing!"
"What did you really think I was doing?" she shouted, wanting to advance on him but hanging on to the car door, instead. Keeping it between them. "Why'd you give me the drugs, then, Martin? What the hell did you think I was going to do?"
He shook his head. "I don't know."
"Then why are you so angry with me?" she cried around the tears forcing their way up her throat like bile.
"Because you told me to trust you, and I did," Martin said. "And Henry still died, dammit. And you won't tell me the truth."
"Martin---"
He tossed up his hands, pushing her away without touching her. He went back to his car and got behind the wheel.
"Martin!"
He turned, saying nothing.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, not sure he could even hear her over the winter breeze.
"Go back to sleep," Martin said, and slammed his car door and drove away.
Tovah took the long way home. Backcountry roads fell quickly to darkness and she took them without the anxiety that would have plagued her in past months. Husked cornfields and empty cow pastures followed her on every side, but though she tried to get lost, eventually she found herself on a state road she recognized.
Pulling into her driveway, fingers numb from gripping the wheel, she looked at her house. A single light burned in the kitchen, lit for Max's benefit. He would need to go out. Be fed. She couldn't forget about her faithful friend, no matter how much she wanted to forget about everything else.
Once fed and returned from the yard, though, Max ignored her and went to sleep. The night wore on and Tovah found no solace in it. Nothing held her attention. She got up to get herself a drink of water she didn't want and looked across the yard she shared with Martin.
His light was on, as it usually was. She could see his outline as he stood at his sink, too. The shadow blurred as he moved away.
It was late, but she could not sleep. She didn't want to. Tovah dumped the water into the sink and watched it swirl down the drain. She set the glass on the drainer.
Martin's light was still on.
Martin was a good man. It wasn't fair, the way things had worked out between them. How having a choice had led her to put aside something that could be good, something right in front of her, to once again choose the slippery and ephemeral substance of dreams. She had learned a lesson, probably too late, but that didn't stop her from shrugging into her coat again.
Martin had been there for her in a way she'd never allowed anyone else to be. He'd seen everything about her, the real her, not some representation. Martin had laughed with her, shared himself, opened up. Martin was a good man, and if nothing else she owed him an apology.
She did not allow herself to hesitate when rapping at the french door leading to his kitchen. From inside she heard the scrape of chair legs on the floor. The curtain didn't even twitch before the lock snicked and the door edged open.
"Hi," she said. "Can I come in?"
Silently, Martin nodded and held open the door for her. Also silently, he kicked aside a rag-tied throw rug that was in her path. His kitchen was warm, the cold air from outside still swirling around her, and he shut the door quickly behind her.
Tovah hadn't been in this house since Martin moved in. The previous owners had decorated it with country blue walls and red apple accessories, but he'd painted the walls stark white. A series of black-framed black-and-white photos adorned the wall and matched the black appliances.
She wasn't here to admire his interior decorating.
"I have something to tell you," she said.
Martin nodded and gestured for her to sit. And there, at his bare white kitchen table, Tovah told him all of it. About her accident, the depression, how she met Henry and what he had told her. About the Ephemeros, and what she could do there. She told him about the past few months and the destruction that had threatened that world, and her part in it. Of her dream lover and all his pieces, and why she'd needed so desperately to get to sleep the night Henry'd died. She talked for a long time without a break or a word from him.
"I know it's a crazy story," she said at last, her throat dry from talking. "You must think I'm insane."
Martin gave his head the barest shake. "I told you, Tovah. I know crazy."
His slow, easy smile made everything seem a whole lot better.
"I'm sorry, Martin. For everything. I really like you."
"I really like you, too."
They stared across the table.
"Do you think you'll ever be able to get back there?" Martin asked her seriously. "To the Ephemeros?"
"Everyone gets there," she said.
He nodded. "But do you think you'll be able to...what did you call it? Shape? Do you think you'll ever be a shaper again?"
That question needed more thought before answering, but Tovah was weary of thinking on it. "I don't know."
Martin nodded again, his face solemn. He reached for her hand and took it, cradling it palm up in his own. His fingers traced the lines there. His touch tickled, but she didn't pull away.
He didn't look at her at first, but when he did, his gaze was intent. "Do you want to?"
Tovah closed her fingers around his. "Dreams aren't real."
He lifted her fingertips to his mouth. "No, sweetheart. That's where you're wrong."
They stared at each other. It was not the first time she'd catalogued Martin's features or noted the blue of his eyes. Tovah remembered his kiss, and the times he'd seemed so uncomfortable in his skin, only to turn up with confidence a short time later. She remembered the way the grandfather clock had marked the time as Martin's mouth had pressed hers.
How the patients calmed around him.
How the road had stretched out while she dreamed.
How his mouth and hands had felt on her, how tenderly he'd cared for her wound, how he'd been there when she woke, screaming.
And how the patients calmed around him.
"Martin," she said. "When's the last time you dreamed?"
His fingers tightened on hers, not quite painfully but promising it. "I told you, didn't I? I don't dream."
Tovah closed her eyes. "Oh, Martin."
"You can call me Edward, if you like that better. Martin's my middle name. I was named for my grandfather. I use it now because I don't like people to know I'm Eddie Goodfellow. The story was in a lot of papers. On the news. Once they know that, they think they know me."
She opened her eyes.
Beneath her feet, the meadow. The stream that was always Ben's and never hers. Spider's flowers. All of it, there in Martin's kitchen. She hadn't shaped this because they weren't in the Ephemeros. They weren't asleep.
"How?" she asked simply.
Martin shrugged and looked at their linked fingers. "I was eight when they took me. Angie and Stan. They stopped me when I left the playground. Told me my parents had sent them to pick me up from school. That my grandpa had to go to the hospital, and they were going to take me there. To meet my mom and dad."
He looked at her, then, blue eyes glittering with tears that didn't slip down his cheeks. "I knew I wasn't supposed to go. But...Angie knew the safe word. The one my mom had told me she'd give anyone who came for me, so I'd know it was okay."
Slowly, slowly, Martin's kitchen disappeared and became the swirling gray of the Ephemeros. "How are you doing this?"
He let go of her hand and got up. The table disappeared, though she still sat in the hard-backed chair. Martin paced. He scraped a hand over his hair, rumpling it. He stopped and shot her a look.
"Sleep's a funny thing, you know? An average person can survive up to six weeks without food. Maybe a week without water. But you know how many days you can go without sleep before it starts to kill you? Four days. That's when the hallucinations start. In studies, sleep-deprived rats have died after a month. Humans take less than half that time to lose their fucking minds."
"How long has it been since you slept?"
"They did things to me when I slept," Martin said in a voice so broken it broke her, too.
"How long, Martin?"
"Long enough." His shoulders slumped, then straightened.
Mountains grew and lightning flashed. Thunder boomed, rolling across the meadow. Martin tipped his face to the sky, eyes closed and mouth open, arms outstretched, as the rain began to fall.
It didn't touch her. Tovah, on her chair, stayed dry. Her heart didn't need to beat, her breath come short in fear---did it? Were they here, or were they there?
"It's how you helped them all, isn't it? Your patients? You shaped them into calm."
He looked at her and swallowed a mouthful of rain. "I helped them!"
"But what about all the people you hurt, too?" She didn't raise her voice, didn't accuse.
He shook his head. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Edward hadn't known he was the boy, the dogman and the woman. Not for a long time. "You're kidding me, right?"
He looked at her. "You're the first person I've ever met who I thought would understand...me. Who might understand. I wouldn't joke about that."
Her stomach dropped. Tovah stood, still with only one sound leg. Martin had shaped a lot of things, but he hadn't shaped her whole. Only she would think to do that.
So she did, sending out her will and making what she needed happen.
"Martin, look at me."
He did.
Tovah stepped toward him. She took his hand in hers and held it tight. When she kissed him, it was not because of the man he'd been, but the one she'd wished he was.
"There is something you should know," she told him gently.
She shaped the truth. It was hard, here, but she pushed until the world around them started to change. She shaped what she remembered of the haven she'd created for Eddie, and what she could remember of what she knew.
"What?" Martin looked down at her. His face didn't change. "What is it?"
She touched his face and closed her eyes against tears she didn't want to shape away. She looked at him, though, determined not to be a coward when it came to this. "That man I told you about. The one from my dreams?"
"The one who tried to break the...what did you call it?"
"The Ephemeros. The dream world. Yes, him."
"What about him?"
Tovah took both Martin's hands and held them tight. Tighter. "His name was Edward."
"No." Martin tried to jerk away but Tovah held him tight.
It was impossible; she couldn't be strong enough for this. Not to keep him. Not to hold him. But the harder he pulled, the tighter her grip got.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "But you're too dangerous, Martin. Do you know that?"
"No!" He yanked, and when that didn't work, swept her legs from under her with his.
They fell to hard earth, jagged with stones. This was not soft grass, or even his kitchen floor. And he was not creating this.
At first, no matter how hard he'd tried, he couldn't stay awake. He knew now they'd drugged him, but back then all he'd known was he was too hungry not to drink the milk they brought. But the longer they kept him, the harder he tried to keep his eyes from closing.
Until one day it had worked.
He didn't sleep. He didn't dream. And Martin---Eddie, then, not Edward unless he was in trouble---had discovered something else.
He could make things happen.
Good things. Bad things, too. Some very bad things had happened to Angie and Stan and he'd done them. He'd put the blood on his small hands. Blood that wouldn't come off no matter how often he washed, or what soap he used. Or bleach.
"I'm sorry," Tovah said again from underneath him this time, Martin covering her body like the lovers they'd never become. "But you can't do this, any more."
He looked up and cried out in terror and disgust. "Not the house!"
The white rancher, unmown grass. The basement. That was where they'd taken him. Kept him. Hurt him.
Somehow he and Tovah were on their feet again, and she was walking with him toward the front door. Martin held back, but she had an inexorable strength and though she was so much smaller, she was much, much stronger.
"Please," he said as the basement formed around them. "Please, not this."
She still held tight to his hands but her voice softened. A shadow peeled away from the walls. Small. The shape of a boy.
"Don't you understand?" Tovah whispered. "I'm not the one doing this, Martin. It's you."
He wept, then, and fell to his knees and she let him go. Her hand stroked softly on his hair. She knelt beside him. She smelled of lavender and sunshine. Martin buried his face in his hands.
"And it doesn't have to be this place," she said. "Shape yourself a haven, Martin. And let yourself dream."
He looked up at her then. "No."
"You have to."
"I said no." She was stronger, but this was not her world.
It was his.
Martin got to his feet. "I thought I told you to go back to sleep."
He didn't need to use his hands to push her. Tovah stumbled back, her leg going out from under her. He didn't like to hear her cry of pain but it was necessary.
"Don't do this!" she cried.
"I have to," he told her.
Tovah struggled to get up, a feat he knew would be nearly impossible given that her leg was now again missing from the knee down. He'd done that. Guilt pricked him, but when he looked past her shoulder and saw those stone walls, when he smelled the scent of burning, he knew he couldn't do what she said.
"I killed them both," he told her in a tight, hard voice that scraped his throat raw. "And then I burned the house down."
Weeping, she cupped her leg and rocked against what must've been intense pain. "You were a boy, Martin."
He looked down at her. "You might as well call me Edward. It's what you want to call me, isn't it? It's who you want me to be."
"No." She shook her head. "I don't."
But he didn't believe her. "Once anyone ever found out who I was, that's all they cared about. All they thought they knew. I've spent my entire life trying not to be that boy, Tovah!"
She closed her eyes and incredibly, he felt the steady push of her will against his. He watched her body change, watched her get to her feet. Both feet. She stood steady and strong, tears streaking her cheeks but her fists clenched.
"Then stop being that boy! Stop doing these things."
The truth ripped from him. "I don't know if I can."
"Then let me help you!"
He backed away from her touch, not trusting her. "No."
"Martin." Tovah said his name with such sweetness, such gentleness...such love...he knew her mouth had to be full of lies. "Then let me stop you."
He didn't need his hands to make things happen, but he put them up anyway. Mountains of glass and razors surged from the earth around them. The ground turned to black sand. A far-off wind howled like an angry, unfed dog. He had power. He could make things happen.
Bad things.
He dropped to his knees again, in front of her, and put his hands to the soft black sand. He put his forehead to it, too, and his mouth. It coated his lips, gritty and harsh. "I am so tired."
He felt her hand on his hair again. Soft touch of stroking fingers. How long had it been since anyone had comforted him in such a way? Since he'd allowed anyone close enough to touch him like that, or anyone had wanted to?
He shook. The world shook, too. Only Tovah stayed strong and steady, her touch more than a solace.
A salvation.
"I will shape you a haven," she whispered. "Full of soft grass and flowers and nothing but beauty. Do you want it?"
"Yes," he cried into the sand. "Oh, God. Yes. Please."
Her voice was hoarse with grief. "Then here it is."
"Martin?" Tovah blinked. She was drenched with sweat, her stump aching and eyes blurred. Her jaw ached from gritting her teeth. She was kneeling beside him.
He wasn't moving.
"Martin!" She shook him but got no response.
He was breathing, his eyes open, but Martin simply wasn't there.
It was too much, all of it. The trip in the ambulance. The admission. The smell of antiseptic and despair.
"You should go home," Ava told her. "This isn't the place for you."
And, though Tovah didn't want to leave him, she knew Ava was right. Martin might wake up in an hour, or a day. Or never. But she could do nothing for him, because she'd been the one to do it to him.
At home, in bed, Tovah stared at the ceiling and waited for her eyes to close of their own accord. They didn't. She wondered if she'd ever sleep again.
Tovah wanted to get back to the Ephemeros, to see Ben. To mourn Spider with him. To explore what they'd begun. Yet each time she closed her eyes, her body tensed with the memory of how it had felt to carry wings of glass and razors on her back. How the power had tasted.
What if she went back, only to find the haven hadn't held? What if Edward had escaped, was wreaking more havoc? Didn't she hold a certain responsibility to make sure he didn't?
Morning sun greeted her before she knew it, and she got out of bed. Worked. Went to the gym. Came home, had dinner. Another day had passed and she sought her bed with anticipation and anxiety.
Something had really broken. She'd slept, dozing fitfully for a few minutes at a time. She even dreamed, or at least she thought she did when she woke with vague images shifting through her head. But she wasn't lucid in her dreams. She didn't shape. Her mind refused to stop working long enough to disconnect.
Could not, or didn't want to. She'd been no better than Edward, in the end. She'd done the same things, found the power to unravel the dream world. She could be murderous and vindictive, and knowing it terrified her.
Go back to sleep.
Tovah didn't want to go back to sleep. The life she'd led in dreams was no longer accessible to her. It wasn't real. It couldn't be real. The Ephemeros had no future or past, only the present.
Tovah could no longer ignore the past and pretend there was no future. It was time to make her present part of both.
Ben had not always been in the Ephemeros every time she had, but he'd been there enough for her to be certain they lived within the same time zone. He slept at the same times she did. He'd probably be awake at the same times, too.
He'd given her a clue, if only she could think of it. What had he always been? A guide. A friend. A man who kissed mermaids and liked the sea, liked streams. Water.
A fisher.
Ben Fisher? Could it be that simple?
Tovah sat in front of her computer the way she'd done months ago, searching for information about Martin Goodfellow. It hurt to think of that now. This time her fingers flew over the keys and she typed in a different name, found as many possibilities.
The difference was, this time, she might actually take a chance and make something of them.
She found him on the Connex site, of all places. His profile picture showed him laughing, crinkles at the corners of his eyes she hadn't ever seen in the Ephemeros. It was him, though. She had no Connex account, but could view his limited profile. Tovah stared, her cursor hovering over the letters of his name, underlined to show she could click on it for more information. His name. His hometown. And from there, she could find anything.
Tovah pushed away from the computer and turned her chair so she could no longer see the screen. She'd promised to find him, but that was dream talk. There was no reason to think finding Ben in the waking world could be a good idea. What they'd shared in the Ephemeros was...well, a dream.
Spider had told her dreams were real as anything else. Her friendship with Ben was real. So were her feelings. He'd kissed her there, held her in his arms. If she believed him there, she needed to believe he'd mean it in the waking world, too.
Or maybe not.
Tovah growled at herself and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. Martin's admonishment, "go to sleep," haunted her. No matter how real the Ephemeros, it was still not the part of her life she could count on. She'd faltered there worse than ever in her waking life. She didn't want to be like Henry, sleeping away his waking life in favor of hiding away in dreams.
Not only that, but she wasn't sure she actually could get back there. Each night she went to sleep and each morning she woke with nothing but the most amorphous memories of having dreamed. At first she'd been relieved. Now she was beginning to worry she'd never shape again.
She spun her chair, facing the list again. Indecision pawed at her. There was no reason to believe that even if she found him it would be in any way practical to assume she could actually meet him. A phone number, an email address...she could send him a letter. But if she did discover where Ben lived in the waking world, she would have to contact him somehow.
Was she ready to do that? Take that step? Maybe she should dream again, first. Try one more time...
No. No excuses. She lived here, in the waking world. Dreams were not enough to satisfy her. Not anymore.
She clicked.
"Oh my God."
The words, said aloud, sounded like a stranger's voice. Max pricked his ears at the sound and looked up at her, head cocked. Tovah stared at the computer monitor, not believing. She'd found a name and an address, a phone number.
Ben Fisher lived less than an hour away from her.
According to the address Tovah clutched in her hand, Ben lived in the red-brick Victorian with paint peeling around the windows and doors, a half-circle drive bisecting the scrubby side yard and a black iron fence spotted with rust blocking it from the sidewalk. It must have once been magnificent, and still stood out from its neighbors on either side. It should've been harder to find him, she thought. Too much coincidence, too much serendipity. Too much fate, maybe. And yet she knew all of this had happened for a reason. Ben's ability to find her so easily in the Ephemeros had been something more than convenience. Their lives had been linked there...and now here, too. What seemed easy was really a very complicated matter made of many scattered pieces that had at last become a whole.
Tovah stood on the sidewalk, daring herself to go through the gate and knock on the front door.
What did she have to lose?
Nothing. Everything. Nothing.
She was on the front porch before she could stop herself. The bell didn't seem to work and she was afraid to push it again in case it had and she hadn't heard it. It might be a sign she should turn and go, but she stopped herself. She knocked, instead, anxiety knotting her insides like stockings tumbled in a dryer.
It took too long for the door to open. She almost fled before it did, had even turned to make her way down the uneven steps when it creaked open behind her. Tovah turned.
"Yes, can I help you?"
It wasn't Ben's face framed in the doorway. Too late, she realized she'd forgotten to make up a story. "I'm here to see Ben."
That apparently was a good enough answer because the white-haired woman opened the door all the way. "Oh, certainly. Come in."
It was too easy, the way finding his address had been too easy. Tovah, stepping into the narrow, dim hallway, sought automatically something to check herself against. A clock whose numbers didn't shift. This was the waking world, surreal as the circumstances seemed. She wasn't sure if this was a relief.
The woman gestured for Tovah to follow her up the thickly carpeted stairs. The carved, smooth banister could have used a dusting, but Tovah didn't care what it looked like, only that it was a strong place for her to grab as she attempted the stairs. The woman in front of her glanced back but if Tovah's limp alarmed her, she showed no sign.
At the top of the stairs another long hall lined with doors, all closed, greeted them. So did another steep set of stairs, but the woman didn't pause. "These stairs are heck on my knees." She puffed a little, taking the second set even slower than she had the first.
The third floor was more open, with fewer doors and big bright windows at the hall's end. The woman, who didn't seem to question Tovah's presence at all, nudged open the last door on the left with her hip and stood aside for Tovah to enter.
Tovah breathed deep. For a moment the world wanted to tip, but she didn't let it. She could control the waking world, too, at least a little. She could at least control herself. She would do this, even though her guts were trying to leap out through her throat and a giant fist had squeezed the air from her lungs. She needed to do this.
She entered the room with a smile on her face, ready to face him, no matter what.
Or not.
The bedroom needed to be large to hold the equipment, most of which she recognized without knowing what to call it. The hospital bed, the monitors, the steady swish-swush of breathing, though, she knew.
"Oh, honey..." The woman behind her grabbed her arm. "I'm sorry. I thought you were a respite volunteer. The agency told me they were going to send someone new. I thought it was you."
"No." Tovah managed the single word though it took every effort.
"You're a friend?" The woman patted her arm. "This is the first time you've seen him?"
Speech escaped her. Tovah nodded. She found a chair beneath her suddenly and sank into it without a word.
The woman moved to the bed and tucked the covers more firmly around Ben. And it was Ben, Tovah could see that clearly. A thinner, paler Ben with his hair cropped close to his skull and a curving white scar there to show the reason why.
She couldn't breathe. Tovah looked at her watch once, then again, willing the numbers to blur and shift. Praying this was a dream. All but demanding it, really, but the numbers were bastards and refused to move.
She drew in a deep, sobbing breath. The woman looked over at her, face drawn with sympathy. "He's not in any pain, sweetie."
Tovah shook her head. "How long has he been like this?"
The woman gave her an odd look. "I've only been coming for about six months, but I think he's been with hospice for close to eight."
She looked at the figure on the bed. "He's a fighter."
She looked again at Tovah. "What did you say your name was?"
"I didn't. It's Tovah." The chair had arms, which meant she didn't have to struggle quite so hard to stand. "He can hear me."
The hospice worker paused before nodding. "We think so. Research has shown coma patients can hear on a subliminal level. And it's good for those around him to feel like they're able to be heard."
Tovah wanted to shake, to tremble. She wanted to make the world unravel. She knew now how Edward had felt and why he'd done what he had. If she could split herself to forget she'd ever come here, she thought she might have tried. On feet steady only by long habit, she moved toward the bed.
"Ben," she said. "Oh, Ben."
The woman gave her another odd look. "Would you like some time with him alone?"
Tovah nodded, not looking at her. "Please."
"I'll just be downstairs."
Tovah didn't know if that was supposed to be a comfort or a warning. She waited until the woman had left the room before reaching for Ben's hand. His skin was cool, the fingers limp. She pressed it between her own.
He made no reaction. She'd expected one, hoping against reason, but she couldn't shape here. No matter how much she wanted his eyes to open at the sound of her voice, it wasn't going to happen.
He'd always been in the Ephemeros when she was. The way Spider had been. She should have known there was a reason like this.
"I promised to find you, and I did. But you should have told me, Ben," she whispered. "I'd have---"
She'd have what, exactly? Understood? Would knowing about his condition have changed anything? Tovah bit off the rest of her words and swallowed them, not caring if they scratched her throat on the way down. She didn't have anything to say to Ben, whether he could hear her or not.
She had spent too many hours sitting by a silent bedside, hoping for someone she cared about to wake. She couldn't do it again. She didn't want to.
Ridiculous anger, selfish and irrepressible, flared in her. "You should have told me."
She'd come here to see if they could make things work in the waking world. If what they'd found together in the Ephemeros could translate into something solid. Into something real.
It was easy to promise he'd always be there for her when he knew he had no other choice.
"Can I help you?"
Tovah turned to face the woman moving through the doorway toward her. She wore her pale hair fixed off her face with a wide ribbon of black velvet. It matched her neat white blouse and black ankle-length skirt, but it didn't flatter her. She looked like Alice out of Wonderland, with her porcelain skin lined from stress at the corners of her pale blue eyes.
"Are you the new respite volunteer?" The woman came closer, holding out her hand.
Tovah couldn't refuse to take it, even as she shook her head. The woman's hand was cold. "No. I'm...a friend."
Stupid, she realized. Ben had family who would know she was lying. She had to get out of here. "I'm sorry, I'll just go."
"A friend of Ben's?" The woman's head tilted slightly. "From---?"
"College." Tovah bit her tongue to keep from wincing. "We were friends in college. I just learned about his..."
Had it been an accident? Or illness? The woman didn't seem to mind the trailing off of Tovah's comment.
She shook Tovah's hand firmly. "I'm Lauren."
"Tovah Connelly. I was very sorry to learn about Ben." This was no lie, and the shake of her voice proved it.
Lauren eyed her and then nodded. Whatever tears she'd shed, they'd been long put away into privacy. She moved to the bed, tucking in blankets and smoothing her hand over Ben's forehead. "Thank you."
Tovah watched. And then she knew. This woman was Ben's wife.
"I've got to go," she blurted as the floor threatened to slap her in the face. "I'm sorry."
Lauren gave her a knowing look. "It's shocking, isn't it? Especially if you're not expecting it. The doctors say it won't be long now." She stroked her fingers again across Ben's cheek. "But he keeps hanging in there."
Tovah had taken a few steps backward, toward the door. Ben's wife. Ben was married.
"Can you tell me what happened?" she asked.
Lauren looked up. If the question surprised her, she was good at not showing it. "Do you really want to know?"
It was a perceptive question. Tovah respected her for it. She nodded.
"He started smelling things. Odors that had nothing to do with what was around him. And seeing things, too. He said they looked like dust bunnies in the corner of his vision. I told him to go to the doctor, but..." Lauren shrugged with the fond exasperation of a put-upon wife who's been proven right and wished she had not. "He wouldn't go. About ten months ago he had a seizure. The CAT scans showed what they called a shadow. By the time we got home that day, Ben was having vivid auditory and olfactory hallucinations. He kept hearing rushing water."
Tovah didn't know what to say, but Lauren didn't seem to need a reply. She smoothed the blankets one last time and came around the bed. "The plan was to operate to remove the tumor, then give him extensive chemotherapy. He didn't wake up from the operation. Though he could breathe without assistance, they told me without further resuscitative measures he'd be gone within a few months. A few days or a week, if I didn't feed him."
Lauren's laugh was like the grinding of gears. "As if I could decide to allow him to starve to death. I arranged for hospice care. I thought it would be better to have him at home."
Tovah wanted very much to sit, but she stabilized herself with a hand against the doorjamb. "Is there any chance he'll ever wake up?"
Lauren hesitated. "I don't think so. No. His eyes open sometimes. And once he spoke..."
Tovah waited, but Lauren stayed silent. "What did he say?"
Lauren's mouth worked and at last a glint of tears showed up in her pale blue eyes. "Nobody believes me. Anyone I've told said I must have been dreaming."
"Tell me," Tovah urged softly.
"I'd fallen asleep by his bed. Early on I spent every night next to him. Now..." Lauren lifted her chin a bit. "Now I sleep in my own bed. But then I was sitting next to him. And he opened his eyes, the way he would've had something startled him. And he said something so odd I wonder if it really was a dream. It seems like it, now."
Tovah's fingers gripped the doorway.
Lauren's soft laugh sounded forced. She looked up and then shrugged. The tears had vanished. "He said, 'She's a mermaid.'"
Tovah sighed, eyes closing against the tears she didn't dare show.
"I left him, you know," Lauren said matter-of-factly. "Just before it all happened. Things had been bad with us for a long time. We both made mistakes. But when he got sick, I put all that aside. I had to, didn't I?"
A splinter from the door gouged Tovah's palm, but she paid no attention to the thin sting. She mumbled something, another apology, an explanation...a series of nonsensical syllables that nevertheless seemed to satisfy Lauren, who nodded.
Ben's wife looked at her, voice weary, resigned, but not bitter. "You didn't go to college with my husband. Did you."
Tovah backed out of the door, found the stairs, managed to get down them without falling.
In her car, bent over the wheel and hiding her face in her hands, she gave in to breathy hysterics. This was too much, all of it too much. Losing Spider, the tragedy with Edward. Not dreaming. Finding Ben.
She'd lost him in the dream world, and wished she'd never found him in the waking one. She'd kept no secrets from Ben. He'd done nothing but keep everything from her.
Time passed.
The divorce went through. Kevin made good on his word not to fight Tovah for a greater portion of the settlement from the insurance company. The check itself came and she looked at it for a long, long time before putting it back in the envelope to deposit later. Her life would be easier now. Simpler. Just her and her dog, enough money in the bank to make working for a living a possibility instead of working to barely make ends meet. She'd begun thinking about starting her own web design business, a job she could still do from home but which would give her more creative freedom.
If she dreamed at night, she still didn't know it. She went to bed and woke with the vague, swirling sensation of having spent the night on storm-tossed seas, her stomach sick and head aching. But she couldn't remember what, if anything, she'd dreamed.
Tovah combed the obituaries for notice of Ben's death, and every day she didn't see it she thought it would get easier for her to forgive him for keeping such an important truth from her. She thought of him often, trying to force her mind to hold on to the memories of time they'd spent, every word and gesture they'd ever shared. But, like dreams always had, those memories had started fading and slipping away. She'd lost Spider. She'd lost Martin. She was losing Ben, too.
Two months after Martin's collapse, Tovah visited him at the Sisters of Mercy. He was on Five though not, thank goodness, in Henry's old room. She wasn't sure she could've handled that. No, Martin had been placed in a brighter room at the other end of the hall. New paint, new furniture. A silent television mounted to the wall. In the private bath, bottles of soap and shampoo, soft towels.
"How is he?" she asked Ava, who'd shown her to the room but now stood in the doorway, not approaching the bed.
"Oh, how the mighty have fallen," Ava said.
Tovah looked at her. "Hey."
Ava shrugged. "Gives me the creeps. Seeing him like this. Of all the patients I've ever had---and believe me, we've had some real winners---Dr. Goodfellow is really the worst."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because he shouldn't be in here, that's all. Guy like him should have someone, you know?" Ava snorted and looked her up and down. "Well, I guess he does, right? He has you."
Tovah said nothing to that and looked over the room again, noting the small touches that made this one so much nicer than the others. "He must have someone to do all this."
"All what?" Ava frowned.
Tovah gestured. "Make the room nice like this. Don't tell me you did it."
Ava's face went blank and a slow tremor rippled over her. "I dunno what you're talking about."
"The---" The paint, the pictures, the flowers, the bedspread. Tovah touched it with her fingertips, the soft nubbly fabric. She looked around again, trying to see it through Ava's eyes. "Never mind."
Ava left then, and Tovah turned to the bed. She sat in the chair next to it and looked at Martin. She studied the slow rise and fall of his breathing. He looked thinner than he had. Instead of pajamas he wore a soft blue Henley and navy track pants. His hair had been cut too short. His eyes were closed.
"Martin?"
He didn't answer, but she hadn't expected him to. Tovah wasn't sure she wanted him to. It hurt her heart to see him this way, even though she knew it was for the best. Not for him, maybe, but for everyone else.
That didn't make her feel any better.
Much had faded but not the memory of those glass and razor wings, how it had felt to make...and break. She drew a deep breath and reached in her bag for a copy of an old and boring favorite.
"I hope you like Dickens," she murmured, flipping to the first page of The Pickwick Papers.
She read for a while until her throat got dry and then reached in her bag for a bottle of water. She caught a glance of Martin as she did---he hadn't moved, but his eyes were open. She dropped the book. She took his hand.
And all at once, everything was gone but the bright green grass beneath her feet, both of them, and the blue sky overhead. Butterflies danced. A stream burbled. This was not her meadow, but it was the closest she'd come since that last time in the Ephemeros, the time when Henry died.
She covered her mouth with both hands at the sight of the spider on the rock. Belly banded with red and gold, it grew as she watched. Tovah cried out, running. "Spider!"
"It's me, doll. Here I am. I told you, you can't get rid of me."
She hugged him, hard. "Oh, Henry. Spider. I thought you..."
"Shh," Spider said. "It's all right. I told you, didn't I?"
"So what does this mean?" She laughed through tears and twirled, arms out. "What does all of it mean?"
"It means the next time you see Jim Morrison," a familiar voice said, "you'd better ask for his autograph."
Another figure stepped out from behind the rock. A tall man with sandy hair, a pair of brown cords and a blue shirt. Tovah didn't run to greet him.
"Ben," she said.
"Tovah. I'm sorry."
Spider cleared his throat. "Tovahleh, it's been a long time. We've been looking for you. We were worried."
In the waking world she might've had to sit and put her head between her knees to combat the sudden lightheadedness pushing at her, but Tovah welcomed it here. She rubbed her bare feet in the grass and fought the tightness of emotion in her throat.
Tovah looked at Ben. "You should've told me the truth. I would've understood."
Ben nodded. "I know. But I couldn't. I didn't know, myself, for a long time, and then when I did...I didn't know what it meant."
She looked around at everything they'd created and felt the effort they'd made to bring her here. To bring her back. She looked at the two men she loved, one a dear and constant friend and the other something else.
She held out her hand. Ben took it. It wasn't time for a kiss and maybe never would be. She wasn't a mermaid now. She stood on her own two feet.
"I didn't think I'd ever make it back. I thought something was broken."
"Something is broken," Ben said quietly. He looked to the distance, where lightning ringed black mountains and the faint sound of thunder rumbled. "It's been broken since you left."
"Edward?"
Ben shook his head. "No sign of him, or the others. But things have shifted. Can't you feel it?"
She could. Once the Ephemeros had been a swirling mass of gray smoke, easily formed and shaped to fulfill the desires of the sleepers who'd entered it. She tested herself, shaping a few flowers. A tree.
"I can't tell if it's harder to shape, or if it's just me. Could be both." She squeezed Ben's fingers, feeling the warmth of his hand. "What's it like for you?"
"There's more blankness. It's taking people time to recover. I can't explain it better than that. For those of us who are here all the time, it's harder to find each other."
"But you found me," Tovah said.
Ben smiled. "Yes. We did."
More thunder rumbled, but it was far off and no threat to the three of them. At least not for now, and not in this haven. This special place.
"Tovahleh, doll. I'm so happy to see you I want to bust something," Spider said, "but it's time for you to go for now."
"How do you always---"
But there was no time for her to finish, because, still laughing with joy, Tovah woke. She still held Martin's hand. The room formed around her and she shook her head, laughter fading.
Ava stood in the doorway, arms crossed. "You okay?"
"Fine." Tovah let go of Martin's hand, his fingers cool and pliant. His eyes were closed again.
She stood, careful to keep her balance. She gathered her things. The room wasn't so nice just now, the paint she'd thought so pristine now peeling a bit in the corners. Through the doorway to the bathroom she saw the fluffy white towels had shrunk. They'd be scratchy, those towels.
Tovah stood straight and looked at the man on the bed. She took the time to smooth his hair off his forehead and, though she hesitated, she put her mouth to his cheek to kiss it. She whispered into his ear.
"I'll be back."
And she would be, that was clear. Not just from guilt, or because Martin needed someone to care for him, but because somehow he'd become the conduit for Tovah's return to the Ephemeros. She couldn't explain it and wasn't sure she cared. She'd felt what it was like to have the world unravel all around her. Now all that mattered was that for the first time in months everything felt like it was going to be all right. She didn't miss the irony of not wanting to sit by another man's silent bedside and yet discovering that it was the only way to get back to the Ephemeros. The land of dreams always granted what was needed, after all. As for what she wanted...
The rest would come in due time.
About the Author
Megan Hart was born and lived for a while, and she did some stuff. Then some other stuff. Eventually, she started writing books. Now some of them get published. She writes in the woods of Pennsylvania, where she lives with Superman and two monsters...erm...children. Learn more about her at her Web site, www.meganhart.com, or her blog, www.readinbed.net.
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-9003-1
Copyright © 2010 by Megan Hart
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