As soon as she said the words, Dea knew. She what her mother had meant when she said she must give the monsters faces, and understood, too, what Kate had been trying to communicate to her. It wasn’t about Kate or some book or even about Dea—it was about Connor. Connor needed to know the truth so he could be free.

And Dea could help him. More, even, than Kate knew. What she could do—where she came from—wasn’t just a burden. It was also a gift.

“I think . . .” Dea swallowed the sudden dryness in her throat. “I think I know a way to make the nightmares stop.”

Connor’s expression turned guarded. “What do you mean?”

“You’d have to let me in again,” she said. Dea took a deep breath. She didn’t know whether what she was about to suggest was even possible; still, she had to try. But an idea was blooming: if she could walk a dream that was like a memory, why couldn’t she walk a memory like she did a dream? “Into your memories.”

“No.” Connor stood up. He backed away from her, looking afraid. “Forget it.”

“It’s the only way for you to know,” she said quietly. And she thought that maybe this had been the point and the purpose of dream-walking all along: so that she could help the boy she loved. “Don’t you want the truth?”

He watched her for a long time without saying anything. “Who are you?” he whispered at last.

Dea took a deep breath. She stood up. There was no longer any point in hiding or pretending. “You want the truth?”

Connor nodded.

“There’s a world of dreams,” she said. Saying the words out loud felt like releasing air from a balloon that had been stopping up her chest. “A world even older than this one. That’s where I come from. That’s where my mother comes from, too. And now, she’s gone back.”

Dea could hear the ticking of a clock loudly somewhere in another room. Or maybe she only imagined it, a rhythm synced to the heavy pounding of her heart. She waited for Connor to flip out, or accuse her of being out of her mind. A troubled expression passed over his face, a fast ripple.

“Are you going to go back, too?” he asked.

Dea’s heart broke for him, then. He must be freaking out—he must have a thousand questions—but all he cared about was whether she would stay.

“No,” she said, and she meant it. Somehow, she would find a way to stay. “But I’m running out of time to help you.”

Connor moved back to the window. “I don’t know anything.” His voice crept higher. “I’ve told Kate a million times. I don’t remember.”

Dea thought of the men with no faces, and the ragged pant of their breathing, like deformed animals. “You said you never got a look at the guys who did it,” she prompted him.

“That’s right. First I was sleeping. Then I was . . . hiding.” He spat the word out as if it were poisoned.

“You weren’t hiding the whole time,” Dea pointed out. “You crawled to the door. You peeked into the hall.”

“Yeah, but just for a second.” He shook his head. “Besides, they were wearing ski masks. All I could really see was a pair of mouths.”

So that was where they had come from, the monsters with faces made of mangled flesh, and mouths to taste their prey: from Connor’s distorted childhood memory of his mother’s killers.

Give them faces, her mother had said. They’ll lose their power.

“Take me through it again,” Dea said. “From the beginning.”

Connor swallowed back a sigh. “The first thing that woke me was the shot,” he said, in the voice of a kid reciting multiplication tables. Dea wondered how many times he had been forced to go through the same story. “Then my brother started crying. I freaked out and crawled into the closet. I heard a few . . . thuds. Wet sounding, like—”

“That’s okay,” Dea said quickly. “What next?”

Connor winced, as if the memory were hurting him physically. “There was another shot. That’s when they . . . when they got my brother. I crawled to the door. I looked out and saw two men moving toward me. One of them—I could have sworn one of them saw me. I wet my pants. They left. The end.”

“And you didn’t hear anything before that first shot?” she said. “They broke a window, didn’t they?”

Connor nodded. “I didn’t hear it, though. Nothing until the shot.” He pressed a hand to his eyes, as if gripped by a sudden headache. “Wait. That’s not true. I was awake before that. They must have been talking to my mom. . . . I could hear their voices through the wall.”

Dea’s heartbeat quickened. “Do you remember what they were saying?”

Connor shook his head. “I wasn’t really listening. At first, I wasn’t frightened. But then I heard my mom start saying ‘no, please, no.’” Connor’s voice cracked. “Then a bang. People always say gunshots sound like firecrackers but I knew—even then I knew what it was. TV, you know?” He managed an approximation of a smile. “Even then I wasn’t that scared. I didn’t understand. I didn’t connect the gun to my mom. But then Jacob started crying. He started screaming. And my mom was begging for her life. Then I knew.” He looked down at his hands, gripped tightly in his lap. Dea could see the individual bones of his knuckles.

“Where was your dad?”

“Business trip.” Connor cleared his throat. “That’s why everyone thought I did it. The gun was his, you know. Whenever he was out of town, my mom kept it in her bedside table. So how did the killers know it was there? It must have been someone she knew.”

Dea felt the idea, the knowledge, massing on the edges of her consciousness, a wave about to break. The vast majority of women are killed by their partners. Or by their ex-partners.

“You said at first you weren’t frightened,” she said slowly. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” He hesitated. “I think at first I thought my dad must have come home early from his trip. I just heard the voices and assumed . . .” He trailed off, shrugging.

“And you didn’t hear them break in through the window.”

Connor frowned. “I already told you that.”

“Okay.” Dea wiped her palms on her jeans. Even though it was cold, she felt sticky all over—nervousness, probably, and guilt. “Isn’t it possible they broke the window afterward? To make it look like a break-in?”

Connor stared at her. “The front door was locked.”

“Maybe,” Dea said carefully, “someone else had a key.”

She was worried he’d get angry. But he just shook his head. “No way. My uncle looked at pretty much everyone who’d ever been in the apartment—plumbers and friends and even our goddamn cleaning lady. If there was anything to find, he’d have found it.”

The wave had broken, leaving the idea, the association, glittering and solid in Dea’s mind. The dream of a woman enfolded by a giant cockroach; Connor mistaking the killer’s voice for his father’s. She wanted to be wrong.

She said, “Your uncle and your mom were . . . close?”

“Very close,” Connor said immediately. “Roach loved my mom almost as much as . . .” Then, abruptly, he trailed off. His whole face changed—in a split second, he turned guarded, as if someone had drawn a curtain across his eyes. “No,” he said. “No. I know what you’re thinking. And the answer is no.”

Dea swallowed. There was a bad taste in her mouth. “He knew where she kept the gun. He probably had a key.” Connor didn’t correct her, so she knew she was right. “You weren’t scared when you first woke up. You thought it was your dad talking. I bet—I bet your uncle and your dad sound alike.”

“No.” Connor practically shouted it. He turned a full circle, like an animal trapped in a pen, desperate and confused. “No. Jesus, Dea. Don’t you understand? He’s family—he’s practically the only family I have left. He helped us, he loved my mother, he—” Connor was out of breath, as if the words had left him physically exhausted. “Why are you doing this?” Connor’s face had gone totally white. His eyes looked like twin holes. “Why are you doing this?”