As Ronan’s dream paralysis came to an end, a light came on, revealing the small hunting cabin Bryde had brought them to a few hours after the episode at the fast-food restaurant. Two decayed deer heads on the wall stared at Ronan with strained expressions. A lamp made of antlers lit a plaid sofa. Ronan had been too stupid with nightwash to notice any of these details when they’d arrived. Now they seemed quaint, charming, relieving in their mundanity. The Lace was fading.

He didn’t know how Hennessy had lived with it for so long.

“What did you bring back?” Bryde asked. The way he asked the question somehow seemed to imply he knew the answer already but wanted to hear them explain themselves, a teacher asking a child to explain their stick drawing.

“A phone,” Ronan said.

“A phone,” echoed Bryde.

“An untraceable phone.”

“A phone,” said Bryde again.

“You sound like a parrot. Yes, a phone, I got a phone.”

“Why?”

Now Ronan was beginning to feel foolish, as if he’d missed a lesson. “To call my family?”

“Do you think it’s wise to be looking in the rearview mirror?” Bryde asked.

There was something both uncomfortable and fatherly about this. Bryde treating them like children; Bryde knowing this dimly lit path they were on.

“Okay, Satan,” said Ronan, and Hennessy laughed hollowly from the dismal plaid couch.

“Get up,” Bryde said. “Wash off your face. We’re going on a walk.”

“Idea! You two go on a walk. I stay here and hate myself,” Hennessy said.

“Put on a coat,” Bryde replied. “It’s snowing.”

His dreamers grumbled and did as he said.

The cabin they emerged from was notched into the side of a mountain and looked even more remote and murdery than it had from the inside. There was nothing around it but trees and more trees. The driveway through the woods was barely more civilized than the rest of the forest floor.

To Ronan’s amazement, it was snowing. Lightly, without urgency, but enough to lend the night a peculiar brightness. In front of the cabin, the car was dusted with snow, which made it no more visible than before. It was emotionally hard to see, not literally. Snow and grime didn’t matter.

Ronan pulled his skullcap down over his ears. “Where are we walking to?”

Bryde said, “Up.”

So up they went.

These were foreign trees. Unlike the huge oaks and twisted beeches of Lindenmere, Ronan’s half-remembered fairy-tale trees, these were evergreens. Fat spruces with chunky bark and branchless trunks stretching into a snow-fogged sky kingdom. Still fairy-tale trees, but not from a tale Ronan had ever heard. Chainsaw flew above them, her wings strangely audible in the hush as they flapped.

“Are we there yet?” Hennessy asked.

“Up,” Bryde replied.