Bryde tilted the closest mirror to reflect her. They just had time to see Rhiannon’s true self: face puffy with tears, mouth hopeless with grief, and then he returned it to its place, restoring her dignity.

Suddenly, the emptiness of the house seemed obvious to Ronan. It couldn’t have been long, because he knew from experience it did go away eventually. It was only the first few months that everything inside the walls was still shaped like a family that no longer existed.

That framed portrait Bryde had picked up had been a snapshot of the past.

“Oh,” said Hennessy. “In that case, it’s like fucking Disneyland. Who wouldn’t want to try it at least once.”

Bryde cast a withering look at her.

Rhiannon whispered, “It just feels impossible.”

“We are impossible,” Bryde told her. “You have always been impossible. Tell me how you felt when you opened the door and saw it was us.”

She bit her lip, thinking, but then her expression abruptly changed. “Oh, darling, you’re—” Darling meant Ronan. She was gesturing to him, to his face. “You’ve got—”

He turned back to the mirror. Nightwash was running from his nose. This was why he had been feeling strange earlier. Because his body was betraying him again.

The mirror tried to show him the truth of the nightwash, and it made him feel even stranger. He always saw it as toxic. As defeat. As a symbol of failing to dream, of being weak far from the ley line. But the mirror said: This nightwash is from trying. This is the consequence of striving.

He didn’t understand.

His head hurt.

Rhiannon had jumped up and instantly produced tissues from somewhere: It was that kind of house, she was that kind of woman. She pressed one to Ronan’s face and rested a comforting hand on his back, a gesture so firmly maternal that Ronan couldn’t tell if he felt ill from the nightwash or from grief.

“Is it a nosebleed?” she asked.

“Nightwash,” Bryde said. “Some call it the Slip. Others the Black Dog. It has many names. It means a dreamer is in a place where there isn’t much ley energy or has waited too long between dreams.”

“I’ve never had this happen to me,” Rhiannon said.

“You haven’t opened the door as many times as he has,” Bryde said. “He broke the hinge the moment he came through it and now it’s come right off.”

“Is it dangerous?” she asked.

“Very. If he doesn’t get to ley energy or dream something into being, the most dangerous,” Bryde said. “So we need you to make a decision.”

“Bryde’s right,” Hennessy said abruptly. She was staring into the mirror still. “You should come with us. There’s only the past here. Fuck the past.”

Rhiannon worked her hands over each other. “I need more time.”