It was too late. Olive faded, and the room stopped flickering. It stabilized, firmly remaining a little country living room and offering no clues as to where Olive was. Defeated, Nina slumped into a wicker chair, tears in her eyes. “She woke herself up. That’s what happens every time. She throws up some obstacle for me to fight against, and it distracts me from making the dream show where she’s at. By the time I fight through, she’s managed to wake herself and escape from the dream.” Nina turned her gaze on me accusingly. “If we’d defeated her faster, she wouldn’t have had time to wake up! You should’ve used more spirit to blast that monster away!”

Nina, though obviously upset, looked mostly stable here in the dream world. Thinking back to the other day, however, I knew her real-world self was another matter. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said slowly. “I think using all this spirit has been having a, um, detrimental effect on you over time.”

“If you’d help me—really help me—we’d only have to do it once. If we can corner her, we can make the dream show us where she’s at.”

“Yeah, about that,” I said, sitting beside her. “Where’d you learn to do that? Make the dream show where she’s at?” That would’ve been incredibly useful when I’d been trying to find Sydney.

Nina shrugged. “You can make a person appear as they are in real life, right? I was experimenting one day and channeled the spirit through her in a way that made the dream’s setting simply mirror the place she was in.”

“I’m not sure ‘simply’ is the word I’d use,” I remarked. “That involved a lot of spirit too. And I wonder . . . did she start controlling the dream afterward? Did you inadvertently give her control?”

It was obvious Nina hadn’t thought of that. “I . . . I don’t know. Maybe I did . . . but how else am I supposed to find out where she is?”

“Try talking to her?” I suggested.

She slammed her fist on the wicker armrest. “I have! She won’t see me. This is the only way. Something’s wrong, and we need to find out what. We need to try again. Only next time—”

“Whoa, whoa. There can’t be a next time,” I warned. “You’ll burn yourself out. You’ve done this every day for how long?”

Her gaze grew distant. “I don’t know. Months.”

I winced. No wonder she was losing it. “No more spirit.”

She looked up at me, her gaze pleading. “I have to. Can’t you understand that? Do you know what it’s like to not know what’s happened to someone you care so much about?”

Jill, I thought with a pang. Nina must have seen something in my expression because she suddenly lit up.