“Hmm.” Nitya brought the dreamstone to her face and peered into its facets. “Sameer’s dream, huh? Is it really embarrassing?” She began to uncork the vial.

“Wait!” Tanvi cried. “I don’t know if I can put it back in once you open it.”

Nitya grinned, impish as a pixie, and let go of the cork. “You know, I think I’ll hang on to this. I’m sure I can find a good use for it.” She gave Tanvi a one-armed squeeze. “This is so cool. Thanks.”

“Yeah,” said Tanvi, stunned. Nitya liked it? Enough to hug her?

“So,” Nitya prodded, leaning against her, “dreams? What’s the story there?”

Tanvi gathered her breath and the glut of words she’d never thought she’d share with anybody. To her astonishment, she wanted to say them as much as Nitya wanted to hear them.

There, on the secluded patch of brown grass, she described getting to Nagalok and the initiation and what it was like to harvest dreams. She talked about the other runners and how they needed help. She explained how worried she’d been about Madhu’s threat.

Everything but the reason she’d run away.

As she was finishing up, Nitya’s phone buzzed. She fished it out of her tiny beaded-elephant purse and tapped at the screen. It buzzed again, and she typed another lightning-fast reply. “Mom’s asking where I am. I told her I’m with a friend.”

Tanvi inspected the now-empty parking lot. “Everybody really cleared out.” Something hooted above, reminding her she’d seriously overstayed. Other, much more dangerous birds might be circling, too. “Maybe we should get going.”

“Just so I’m clear,” Nitya said, “Nayan’s the one who had Asha steal you?”

“Yeah.” It sounded so stark put like that, but it was the truth.

“And the other kids are still there?”

“Some of them.” Tanvi thought of Indu. Of Bharat and Jai. This had been great, but it couldn’t last. She got to her feet. “I know you want me to stay here, but I can’t. I have to help them.”

Nitya stood, too, holding up the kyanite dreamstone like a lantern. “Then I’m coming with you. What do you think I was just arguing with Mom about?”

“What?” Tanvi couldn’t have heard right. “You said you didn’t tell her about me!”

“I told her I was sleeping over at a friend’s.”

A shout tore through the night. “For the fiftieth time, Sameer, I have no wish to wed him. It is my duty!”

“Yeah, and what am I supposed to do?” Sameer retorted. “You show up when you want, you disappear when you want, and now you’re getting married. Why’d you even come tonight?”

Their voices drifted over from the side of the mandir. Tanvi glanced at Nitya and saw her own worry echoed there. “Stay here,” she ordered, then broke into a run.