“Maybe you better keep practicing.” She noticed him still holding his folded tank top against the wound in his side. She frowned. “Has it stopped bleeding?”

“Think so.”

“Think?”

Grimacing, he peeled the shirt back. She leaned closer for a better look. The gash was lipless and filled with blackish-red blood, though it no longer seemed to be bleeding.

“It’s fine,” he said. He applied the shirt to it again.

“If we didn’t drink all the vodka, we could disinfect it.”

“It’s fine.”

“I can get some water, try to clean—”

“You said you had a bad dream,” he said, changing topics. “What was it about?”

Elizaveta hesitated. She didn’t like being dismissed. She was worried about him. But he clearly didn’t want her fussing over the wound, and maybe that was for the best.

“Dolls,” she said. “Two came out of trapdoor. One took you.”

“Took me?”

“Down the hole, to crawlspace.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, Jack. It was dream. Strange things happen in dreams.”

“Didn’t you go down to get me?”

“It was your fault. You didn’t fight. You just let it drag you down.”

He shook his head. “I would have fought it.”

“You didn’t,” she said. “Anyway, I had my own problems. The other doll was covered in scorpions. It tried to hug me.”

“Did you fight it?”

“Why are you so upset?”

“I’m not. I just wouldn’t have gone down that hole without a fight.”

“It was my dream, okay? In your dream, you can fight doll. You can fight one hundred dolls if it makes you feel like man.”

“I actually did have a dream about a doll earlier,” he said. “I heard a noise in Lucinda’s room. I went in. There was a doll lighting a candle.” He glanced across the room at Jesus and Pita. He lowered his voice further. “It was Pita.”

“The doll?”

“She said Solano caught her and turned her into a doll.”

“Da, that is something she would say.”

“She said Solano caught you and Rosa too.”

“And turned us into dolls?”

“Yeah.”

Elizaveta thought about that. “Was I a cute doll?” she asked.

“I didn’t see you. I woke up first.”

“Oh.” She smiled.

“What?” he said.

“You dreamed about me.”

“I guess. Indirectly. You weren’t actually in the dream.”

“Do you dream about me often?”

He chuckled. “You dreamed about me too.”

She almost told Jack what happened in her dream before the dolls arrived, but she didn’t. Having a dream about someone was one thing; having an x-rated make-out session with them in the dream was something else entirely. She said, “Rosa asked me earlier if we would see her again.”

“When we get off the island?”

She nodded.

“What did you tell her?”

“Maybe.”

Jack shrugged. “Maybe we will.”

“She wants to have a sleepover.”

“A sleepover?”

“You, me, and her.”