“Hey,” Kimbra said softly. “Have you been having weird dreams?”

It feeds

Jamal flinched. For some reason he thought of the words he’d seen scribbled beneath Dylan’s face yesterday. “Sometimes.”

“I think everybody has. You heard what happened at the bank yesterday, right? And some guy’s house blew up. Of course everyone’s fronting like there’s nothing wrong. Like we always do here.” Kimbra hesitated. “What’s in yours?”

“My what?” he said, though he knew what she meant.

Kimbra only cocked her head.

Jamal toyed with his cookie. A cold slick of sweat ran down his neck. “Lights. Just...lights. Way out in the dark.”

“Not a woman with long hair, watching you from a window?”

“What? No.”

Kimbra let out a relieved little sigh. “Thank God. April swears we’ve all been dreaming the same thing.”

“But they started Friday night, didn’t they?”

The girl’s attention had already moved on. She glanced at the one-way glass again, at the microphone bolted to the table. She lowered her voice. “Have you ever heard of the Bright Lands?”

Yes. Oh yes. “Is that what you came here to ask me?”

“I brought you a snack.” She narrowed her eyes. “Is that a yes?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you—”

“It’s stupid. Don’t ask about that.”

Mr. Irons opened the door of the little room. “That’s all we have time for today.”

“Is it a place you go to? Or just some kind of party?” Kimbra made no move to rise.

Jamal stared at the table.

“They didn’t talk about it in the locker room or anything?”

“Thank you, young lady,” Irons said. “You can leave now.”

Jamal stared at Kimbra. She was too clever to bullshit. Clever enough to get herself hurt.

“Just—don’t ask people about that,” Jamal said in a low voice. The big deputy hooked a hand under Kimbra’s elbow. “Don’t let those guys fuck you up.”

But Kimbra had stopped listening. She didn’t say goodbye. She shook off the deputy and stepped through a door where nothing awaited but a black night, an empty sky, an awful dome of lights—bad lights, wrong lights—trembling on the far horizon. The girl takes a step toward the lights, stops, turns back to give him a quizzical look and—

A blink of the eye and the sight was gone, the sheriff station’s hallway returned to its proper place outside the door, and Jamal could only give Kimbra a little wave and watch her go. No big deal. His dream hadn’t left him, after all. It had only followed him into his waking life.

CLARK

Clark passed Kimbra Lott coming out of the sheriff’s station. They nodded to each other, said nothing.

Deputy Jones emerged from the holding cells. Clark avoided him. It had occurred to her last night that Jones was the last man to see Jason Ovelle, alive or dead.

Mayfield, standing at the coffeemaker, looked like he had slept in his shirt. He called for Clark as she made her way across the bull pen toward the sheriff’s office. Something in his voice made her stop.