On the horizon, the smoke continued to billow. The Smith Mountain Dam was there in the middle of these cornfields, being taken down slowly but surely by the unruly, otherworldly fire. Eerie dark herons circled above it, looking wispy as the smoke trail from a candle. They were ready to scoop up the fire and carry it wherever Ronan needed it to go. They would make the journey from Connecticut to the real dam in Virginia in very little time at all. Ronan was somehow holding the intention of the fire intact while also holding a conversation with Hennessy and also quietly shaping the dream into something else in the background without anyone noticing. He was very powerful when he was doing that.

“The Lace isn’t here now,” Ronan said. “As long as we work together, there’s no Lace. I can keep it away forever. We can take a break from what we’re doing. Hennessy, I found you before. You were drowning. I came looking for you. I wanted to do this with you. Do you remember? Don’t make me beg.”

Hennessy held the silver orb in front of one of her eyes and squinted, like it was a pirate’s eye patch. Both of them could sense it. It was not so much a presence as a non-presence. It was an absence of potential. It was a TV with the cord yanked from the wall. She didn’t say anything. Hennessy always had something to say, but she didn’t say anything.

“You fuck everyone this way,” Ronan said. His quiet changes to the dream were now visible to him, although still hidden to her. Slowly, birds were gathering behind her. Hundreds. Thousands. The fields were lousy with them. As he twitched his fingers by his side, they twitched, too, a gathering storm. They had a single intention built into them too: Get the orb from Hennessy. Destroy it so that Ronan could wake without it. Destroy it so Ronan could wake with his dam-destroying flames instead. “Have you thought about the consequences? You can’t deal so the whole world has to instead?”

“I’m the rubber and you’re the glue, Ronan Lynch,” Hennessy replied. “What’s funny is—Bryde’s you, and he’s still more right than you are. You’re still thinking like a non-dreamer. At least I’m thinking like a forger.”

She pointed behind him.

Ronan just had time to look and see that the real Hennessy stood there, holding another silver orb in her fingers. This one was even stronger than the other Hennessy was holding. It was not just the absence of sensation. It was a blanket of nothingness. It was noise-canceling, sound-deadening, pressure-relieving, stain-lifting, subscription-canceling, and his birds were pointed at the wrong Hennessy and the wrong orb and—

Hennessy woke up in the middle of the teahouse.

“Liliana,” said Carmen Farooq-Lane.

“I know,” replied Liliana.