“You saved it, actually,” Elliott says, his voice unreadable as he watches my reaction. “Kept a death grip on it until we got in the door. I’m guessing this is why you needed me to distract everyone back at the bridge? So you could steal that?” He shakes his head, a sharp, jerky motion that betrays the frustration he refuses to show in his tone. “I know you’re up to something, Callahan. I know you know something about … whatever it is that happened, back there in the clearing. Tell me what’s going on.”

So we’re back to Callahan now. I shake my head, holding off his questions for the moment while I slide to the ground and start toward the stairs. I want to double-check that the transmitter is okay—and maybe also stall just a little bit so I can figure out what version of the story to tell him so I can make sure he helps me. When I take a step forward, though, something crunches underfoot. The picture frame.

I pause. I pick it up, brush it off. The left side of the frame has come unglued, and I carefully push it back into its spot. I’ve got some superglue somewhere that can fix it, I think. The picture inside has gotten crinkled. There’s no glass covering it—it was rumored that glass of all kinds might be put on the Reflectivity Index any day now, and while I’m happy to sell reflective materials to my customers, I don’t want to risk spawning a Being in the middle of my office. Carefully, I straighten the picture back out.

I remember Elliott is watching me. I look up. His gaze is on the picture in my hands. Something flickers across his face—guilt.

He feels guilty because he thinks my brother’s dead. Because he lied to me, and let his mother lie to everyone, about London being alive.

I slide the picture out, fold it and tuck it into my pocket. I know it’s imaginary, but I still feel better with it on me.

I drop the frame back to my desk. “Okay, Ackermann,” I say. “You might want to sit down for this.”

And then I tell him everything.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WELL, ALMOST EVERYTHING. I HOLD BACK A FEW key bits of information and add a tweak or two.

“Mirage forced us back into the dream,” I finish, without so much as a hitch in my voice, because damn it all, even if I’m good at nothing else, I’m a fantastic liar. “He said we have to wake everyone up, and then he’ll let us go.”

Elliott stares at me for a long moment. I force myself to exhale instead of holding my breath while I wait for his response.

At last, he says: “Okay.”

I blink, caught off guard. “What?”

“I said ‘okay.’”