The two of them were in one of those electronic boutiques that took itself very seriously. Indirect neon lighting, backlit products, every shelf rounded and modern. Phones of every shape and size lined the shelves and tables. There were traditional cell phones. Wall-mounted hard lines. Phones shaped like piggy banks and phones shaped like fake teeth, phones shaped like model cars and phones shaped like ceramic birds. Phones like dish-soap bubbles and phones like bank pens with fake flowers affixed to the end of them.

Many of them were impossible, but it didn’t matter, because it was a dream, Ronan’s dream, and he could do what he wanted.

Hennessy said, “You could dream anything, anywhere, and you bring us to a consumer playground with the logos only barely scrubbed off.”

“Jealous much?” Ronan was all snotty arrogance again, as if he wouldn’t have drowned in nightwash if Bryde hadn’t brought them to another ley line in the nick of time.

She wasn’t jealous. She was wary. Ley line energy boomed through the dream. She hadn’t felt this much ley power since she’d been in Ronan’s dreamt forest Lindenmere. It made the dream as lucid as any waking experience.

If she had her Lace dream with this much power at her disposal …

“We’re not doing the Lace dream,” Ronan said. “Chill out. What do we want out of these phones? They’ve gotta be untraceable, I guess. Portable. What else does a phone do?”

Why didn’t Adam text me back?

Because they were sharing the dreamspace, she heard his thought like a shout. It traveled through the dream with a retinue of amorphous sub-thoughts. Was Adam injured, was he bored with Ronan, did he prefer the company of his urbane new friends, calm down, Ronan, stop being needy, Ronan, get yourself together, Ronan, you’re always the car crash, Ronan. It would have been polite to pretend she hadn’t heard any of it, but Ronan and Hennessy had never been polite to each other and she didn’t see the point in starting now. “What’s your boy like?”

Ronan picked up a slender phone the size of a business card and made a big show of examining it for suitability. He didn’t reply.

“So he’s ugly,” Hennessy said. “Or a complete cock-up.”

Ronan studied another phone that looked like an umbrella. “What do you think he’s like?”

“I honestly have no idea,” Hennessy said. “Who would be attracted to you as a love match? Has he got crushingly low self-esteem? Is he one of those soft boys who hide in the firm pecs of their scary partners? Is he a witch? Did he say a spell wrong and you appeared and now you’re bound for life?”

“Yeah,” Ronan said. “That one.”