Wind whooshed past the rolled-down windows and sprayed Tanvi’s bangs back into wings as she floored the gas pedal. The old Honda Civic’s engine growled in response, underscoring the music blasting from her phone, and the tires gobbled up the curving highway mile by mile. On her left, the mountain glinted in the afternoon light like someone had painted it with honey. “Never gonna stop, never gonna stop, never, never, never gonna stop,” Tanvi belted out, her voice high and breathy, and zoomed around a bend in the road.

Suddenly she stood on a bridge spanning a green-brown lake, the relentless sun glaring down over everything. So hot. Too hot. Tanvi was going to melt.

Wait, where was the car?

She turned to find it idling next to her at the edge of the bridge. No, not idling so much as smashed into a guardrail, the front half folded into a perfect accordion. The pleats in the metal twinkled at her like a taunt.

Acidic horror ate through Tanvi, from the pit of her stomach right down to the tips of her toes. It wasn’t her mom’s Civic—but her stepdad’s precious Maserati GranTurismo. Cherry red and flashy, the car he’d dubbed his baby, the one whose black leather interior he spent hours buffing to prevent cracks. He’d never let Tanvi sit in it, let alone drive it.

He was going to kill her.

Her phone rang from the mangled passenger seat, and Tanvi wrenched it free. Somehow, unlike the car, it was fine. She tilted the screen to see who was calling—

And woke to find herself gasping for air in a stranger’s shadowy bedroom. A phone chirped inches away, half tangled in the actual dreamer’s sheets.

Tanvi yanked back her empty hand from where it hovered above the sleeping girl’s forehead, coaxing out the nightmare’s substance one translucent wisp at a time, and muted the phone. She scowled down at the girl. Who slept with their ringer on?

The scowl turned to a shudder. Though her dream had been interrupted, the girl’s distress still pulsed, slimy and wet, in Tanvi’s chest. It made her small. Terrified. Weak.

She hated this part of harvesting—having to inhabit the dream and become the dreamer. Knowing their innermost thoughts. Wanting what they did. Feeling what they felt, even when it was as banal as this.

Desperate to shove the dream residue away, Tanvi pulled the cork from the waiting amethyst dreamstone vial a little too hard. It came loose with an audible pop.

She swore under her breath, bracing herself to be caught, but the girl only shifted and mumbled.