Dea closed the door behind her. It didn’t have a lock, but it didn’t matter. She doubted she’d need much time.

She ran the water in the faucet, turning the hot water on as high it would go. She barely recognized herself in the mirror. She looked skinnier, and wilder too: like a ghost.

Like someone from another world.

Her image soon began to fade, as steam rose up from the porcelain and clawed its way across the surface of the glass. Soon she couldn’t see her features at all, only the vague outlines of a girl. Then even these faded. The steam looked just like fog, like a thin curtain she could pass beyond.

Briggs rapped once on the door. “You okay in there?”

Dea allowed herself to smile. “I’m fine,” she answered. “Be out in a second.”

She placed a palm to the mirror. The glass trembled. She felt warmth, the pressure of a second hand, reaching across dimensions.

“Hi, Mom,” she whispered.

PART FOUR

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

—Henry David Thoreau

THIRTY-ONE

Connor always knew when Dea would come, because the birds preceded her: two vast eagle-like creatures that swooped across the sunshine of his dreams, creating twin shadows. Then he would turn and see her.

“Hello.” She shaded her eyes with a hand. Still, he could tell she was smiling.

“You came,” he said, moving toward her. “I was hoping you would.” She visited nearly every night. Still, he waited in agony all day, wondering whether he would see her, and when.

“Of course I did.” She put her arms around his neck, stretching up onto her tiptoes to kiss him. She tasted like honey, and her skin was gold-bronze from the sun, and very warm. No cancer in this world, she’d told him. I guess I should take up smoking. Except there are no cigarettes, either.

“You’re in trouble with Gollum, you know.” He loved how she felt in his arms, light and heavy at the same time, solid and soft. “She says you haven’t visited in weeks.”

Dea wrinkled her nose, which was very lightly freckled from the sun. It was amazing how healthy she looked here, so strong and happy and confident—the same Dea but not the same Dea at all. Like a flower after a good long rainstorm, opening into the sun, full-throated and joyous. “Gollum’s dreams,” she said, “involve far too much horse manure for my taste. And Star Wars. Lots of Star Wars. Did you know Gollum was a Star Wars freak?”

“I do now.”

“Tell her I’ll come soon.” She kissed him again, just lightly this time, on the very top of his chin. But he ducked, and got one on the mouth instead. She pulled away from him, laughing, but kept her arms around his waist.

“I see you have your escorts with you.” He nodded to the eagles, now perched on a nearby telephone line, preening. They were enormous, but the wire stayed taut beneath their weight—details, Connor knew, didn’t matter much here. Neither did physics.

She rolled her eyes. “Escorts,” she said. “More like bodyguards.”

He looped a finger in her hair, tugging gently—loving the feel of her, the smell of her hair, the closeness of her body to his. “Is your dad really afraid of what I might do?”

“He’s afraid of what I might do.” Her voice was teasing. “He’s worried I might go rogue and try to escape.”

He’d promised himself that he wouldn’t ask her again, but now he found he couldn’t help it. “When?” he said. “When are you coming back?”

“Connor . . .” She sighed and disentangled herself from him, stepping backward. Instantly, she looked much older. Like a stranger, especially in the dress she was wearing, sleeveless and white, different from anything he’d ever seen her wear in real life. “You know I can’t give you an answer. It’s—”

“Complicated. I know.” He didn’t mean to sound bitter.

She looked at him again. When she frowned, her nose pulled slightly to the left. He loved that. “You think I don’t want to come back?” She shook her head. “My dad keeps my mom locked in a weird tower. My mom is busy plotting my father’s downfall. Half my dad’s army is rebelling, and now a league of monsters is marching on the city. We’re talking major malfunction over here.”

It was crazy how she could talk about things like monsters and towers and still sound so absolutely, so resolutely Dea: sarcastic and funny and logical all at once. All of his anger dissipated. He reached for her again, tugging on the fabric belt that held her dress closed, drawing her into him again.

“So let me come to you.” He kissed her neck and shoulder. “I want to be with you, Dea.”

He could feel her shiver when he moved his mouth toward her jaw. “I want to be with you, too,” she whispered. “But you know it doesn’t work like that.”

He’d asked her a hundred times to take him to the city, to show him the palace where she now lived and the slave pits she was determined to close down; to see the mirrors through which she could keep watch over him (“Just as long as you stay out of the bathroom,” he’d said); to see the strange hybrid monsters and animals that had crawled out of or been recruited from other people’s dreams. Her answer was always the same: It doesn’t work like that. This, here, in Connor’s dreams, was the only way they could be together. For now. Dea always said that, for now, although he didn’t see what could possibly change.

“Come on.” Dea kissed him again, leaving a lingering taste of sugar. “Let’s be happy, okay? Let’s walk and be happy and forget about all the bad stuff.”

They walked through the ruins of an old fort—a place Connor remembered, vaguely, having gone to as a child. Before. Dea held Connor’s hand, occasionally squeezing tighter when she needed to navigate uneven ground or hop over a stone. Wildflowers grew between the splintered foundations, and moss cascaded from the ramparts, half-buried in the ground. But other, random features had intruded: telephone poles, a water fountain like the kind found in school hallways, and, in the distance, a carousel. He hadn’t dreamed of Chicago again, not since Dea had walked his memories.

“How’s your dad?” Dea asked. She’d been avoiding the subject, letting Connor talk about it only when he wanted to, which he never did. Connor knew this was her subtle way of reminding him of his place—that there were things in his world, people, he couldn’t just abandon.

“Better.” For days after Connor had first said the unthinkable—Uncle Briggs did it—Connor’s father had floated through the house like a ghost, pale and undirected. But a month later he was doing all right. He was functioning, maybe better than he had in a long time. It was as if he’d been cured of a deadly disease, something that had been eating him slowly from the inside. “He didn’t want to reopen the case at first. He just couldn’t deal. My stepmom convinced him. And Patinsky, of course. Turns out there’s all this crazy shit—police cover-ups, misplaced evidence, all of it. My uncle’s partner was the one who helped him—who stood watch. Conspiracy all the way up the chain. Or the other cops turned a blind eye.” He shook his head, feeling the anger, the old sense of grief, grip his chest. “I actually feel sorry for Will. I think . . . I think he knows, though, deep down. You know he told me one time his dad cracked him over the head with a guitar? Will was playing too loudly. He didn’t even take Will to the hospital. His mom did, later, because he started puking. Turns out he had a concussion.”

Dea squeezed his hand so tightly he could feel all the bones in her fingers. “I heard,” she said.