“Maybe, but if so and if she wanted to sell out your sister, she likely would have already. Third: even if they do manage to record, there will be a backlog of so many dreams. It’ll take them time to sift through it all, because they still don’t have that many lucid dreamers. That’s why Tila was able to rise through the ranks so quickly. So, if the dreams have been recorded, then when you work your first shift at the Verve lounge as Tila, you’ll have to erase that one without detection. That won’t be easy.”

“Nothing is easy.” I rub my face. I’m so tired.

“What happened in the dream?” he asks.

He’s been wanting to know this since we arrived, but he waited (wisely) until I was drunk enough to talk about it without screaming. Though I’m not drunk enough that I don’t realize that’s what he’s aiming for.

I don’t answer right away, but stare out of the window. This second safe house is near the Panhandle, on Fell Street. It looks right onto the thin strip of park connected to the Golden Gate Dome. I can just barely see the tips of Grace Cathedral from between two orchard high-rises. It’s quite a pretty view—those pure white towers flanked by fruit trees within glass buildings thirty stories high.

I get to my feet and wobble.

Nazarin leans back in his chair. “You’re drunk.”

“Very deductive, detective.”

“Come on. Tell me what happened to you in there.”

I stagger to the little bathroom. “I’ll tell you in a second.”

I pee and then lean over the tiny sink. I press my palms against my eyes, breathing raggedly. It’s late and I feel like shit. I’ve drunk at least a quarter of the bottle of the fake gin. I’m definitely drunk.

When I come back, Nazarin has a huge glass of water and I gulp it down. I’ve delayed as long as I can. Time to return to the nightmare world, at least for a little while.

So I tell him everything. I don’t leave anything out, and I’ve got a pretty good memory. I tell him about the mandrake demons, false Mana-ma and Tila, Mia’s scalpel. “The drug seemed to pull her in deeper. My sister was there and she started ranting. I guess Mia made that happen? Maybe it’s a hint, but mainly she just sounded batshit crazy.”

“What’d she say?”

“Something about finding the link and then: ‘He is the red one, the fair one, the handsome one. From Earth and now he goes back to the Earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Changing faces like kaleidoscopes.’”

“Sounds like the garbled scripture that Tila spouted in Zenith, according to Sal.”