Dimitri looked perplexed. “I actually thought he was coming back here.” He touched his earpiece. “Does anyone have a visual on Neil Raymond?” We all watched in silence as Dimitri waited for a response. At last, he shook his head. “No one’s seen him.”

Adrian and I exchanged glances, the same thought hitting us. “Get everyone looking for him,” Adrian said. “Now. If you don’t find him right away, I have a feeling you won’t ever.”

Dimitri looked astonished by that declaration but nonetheless ordered a camp-wide search for Neil. Eddie looked both concerned and confused. “Do you think he’s hurt? Or captured?”

I shook my head. “I think he saw an opportunity. And we have to stop him.”

But we were too late, and after an hour, nothing came back from Dimitri’s searches. Neil had performed his heroics and then disappeared.

“He knew,” Adrian said. “He knew that as soon as this was over, I was going to start a hard sell on Declan. This is my fault.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Rose. She could tell something was afoot and had been waiting not so patiently during the search. “Is Declan okay?”

“He’s fine,” Adrian said, but again we exchanged looks, neither of us able to give voice to our fears. If we’d lost Neil, what was going to happen to Declan? Adrian shook his head. “I’ll find Neil in a dream.”

“Adrian,” I warned. “You just said—”

“I know, I know,” he said with a groan. “But we have to find Neil. You know why.”

Here it was, spirit threatening us again. “Even if you find him in the dream world, that’s no guarantee he’ll come back to us in the waking one,” I reminded Adrian.

“Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” asked Eddie. “Why wouldn’t Neil come back?”

I laced my fingers with Adrian’s. “Let’s just get back to Declan. Then we’ll figure out what to do about Neil.”

Even though they didn’t know the whole story, Rose, Dimitri, and Eddie wanted to go back to Clarence’s with Adrian and me in the hopes of tracking down Neil. Jill wanted to as well, but she was taken away to Court, both to be under Lissa’s protection and to receive further medical treatment. I could tell it was agonizing for Eddie to part with her, but Neil was his friend, and they’d saved each other’s lives more than once. I pretended not to see as Eddie kissed Jill goodbye and promised to see her soon.

Back at Clarence’s, we found things as we’d left them. Clarence was resting in his room, and Daniella was in the living room, going on about how Declan needed pajamas made of organic cotton rather than “God-knows-what” kind of cotton. She told us, much to our complete astonishment, that Neil had been by.

“What?” exclaimed Adrian.