On her thumb, there was the faintest smear of feather-pink paint, the same pink she’d smeared across the canvas in the dream. This was what she’d been paralyzed for, just a mere scraping of dried pigment. She supposed Jordan would’ve been delighted to see it. It wasn’t a dreamt copy of Hennessy. And it wasn’t the Lace. Technically, that was huge progress, even if it didn’t feel like it. Sometimes, as Ronan had just demonstrated, it was as much about what you didn’t dream as what you did.

She showed her thumb to Bryde as if she were hitchhiking. “Found it.”

Bryde rounded on Ronan again. “So you pulled the ley right out from beneath her. What a gentleman. How much is left now? What do you feel?”

Ronan looked like a cat doused with water.

“Right, you can’t, I forgot,” Bryde went on. “The fairy tales we tell ourselves are so comforting in times of darkness. I’ll tell you how much: very little. The ley line bent over backward for a barn full of wheels going nowhere. And if the Moderators drove up right now, where would you be? Up shit creek and unable to dream a paddle.”

The rubbishy part of Hennessy was still rubbishy and pleased to see Ronan getting reamed out, but the rest of her felt bad enough to come to his rescue.

“Pity, too,” she said, leaping to her feet. “I needed that ley line. I was just warming up. I was going to bring out Max Ernst’s entire cabin in Sedona. With Max Ernst inside it. And a bunch of his art. Maybe his wife, too. He built that thing with his own two hands after surviving two wars, did you know? The cabin, I mean, not the wife. I think she was from New York. Or maybe she moved there after Ernst died. I don’t remember, but I think she was the one who said there was no such thing as a woman artist, there was just an artist. Oh, I was also going to dream that bird thing of his, in your honor, Ronan Lynch. He was like you, had that bird alter ego, couldn’t tell the difference between birds and humans. Loplop.”

“Hennessy, this isn’t—” Bryde started.