“Adeline!” Ursula’s face went as scarlet as her hair. Adeline shrugged, still grinning.

“The point is, we’ve seen it all,” Adeline said. “And I do mean it all.”

The orbit of Kane’s mind returned to the dark star of his world, the gap in the night sky where something should have been. In their extensive debrief, the Others hadn’t brought up Dean Flores once. They didn’t know about him. It was as though he didn’t exist to them.

“What about ghosts?” Kane asked.

The table was silent in the face of Kane’s first words in an hour.

“Often,” Ursula said solemnly. “Especially around the holidays.”

“So what you’re saying…” Kane cleared his throat. His tongue buzzed with questions now, so many he thought they might race out of him in an unruly swarm. “Is that these reveries just happen? They just burst out of people, every few weeks, unannounced? And you guys just deal with it?”

“Who else?” Elliot shrugged.

“The police?” Kane offered. “The FBI? The Vatican?”

Ursula scoffed. “Nah, basically everyone except us becomes useless once they get caught in a reverie. We tried to get the police to help once but they just got brainwashed, too. When you’re in someone else’s reverie, you’re whoever they want you to be.”

Kane thought about the glazed expressions of all the barbarians, the football players, the pep band, the cheerleaders. For them, the reverie was the only reality they knew.

“I remember that reverie,” Elliot said. “Science fiction. Bouncy house space station. Super campy.”

Adeline tapped her chin. “It was high silliness, low logic. Weren’t there carnivorous bunnies?”

“Oh, that’s right!” Ursula said. “I forgot about those!”

Kane’s head spun with the way these three pinballed among details.

“Anyhow.” Adeline folded her hands. “It’s better if we handle reveries ourselves. Otherwise, things get weird.”

Get weird.

Get!

Seeing Kane’s face, Elliot said, “Not all of them are as intense as tonight. In fact, almost all of them are harmless at first, but it’s all about how you play your cards. If something goes wrong, even the sweet reveries turn deadly. That’s why it’s important to play along and help the reverie reach its resolution. Otherwise it twists.”

Adeline’s lashes flickered in poised bitterness. “Like tonight, for instance.”

She knows I messed it up. They know it was my fault for getting caught.

“Right,” Elliot nodded. “Tonight’s reverie came from Benny Cooper, who was supposed to save the damsels. Probably would have jumped into the arena at the last second and killed the sorcerer, avoiding the summoning. That monster looked improvised.” The Others nodded. “Lots of hero fantasies coming out of the sophomore boys these days.”