Even though it was late, a buffet of potential dreamers drifted around her, from the wealthy people in Rittenhouse Square leaving swanky restaurants to the buskers and tourists on South Street to the office workers heading home from bar crawls in Center City. If only she could follow them all and reap every one of their dreams.

Glass crunched under her shoes, a pair of ballet flats Asha had given her to help her blend in on Prithvi. Tanvi vaguely registered that she’d stepped in the shards from a smashed bottle. She kicked them into a nearby drain.

The smart thing would be to call it a night. She had three dreams, even if two of them were boring.

But Venkat might not want them, and Tanvi knew she could do better than the meager wares she’d pulled in so far. Besides, it wasn’t like she’d be back in Philadelphia anytime soon.

Dream runners circulated around the mortal world, never staying in any one place. That meant they could harvest from the full spectrum of dream flavors without the risk of being recognized. Recently Tanvi had gone to Beijing, Aix-en-Provence, Rio de Janeiro, and a tiny hilltop town in Mongolia where the sheep outnumbered the people—and often starred in their nocturnal rambles. Even there, she’d found the best wares, so how could she accept anything less tonight?

All she had to do was hurry.

Her mouth growing dry with excitement, she quickened her pace. What sorts of dreamers would get her closest to her bracelet?

Something collided with her, all muscle and hard bone. “Watch it!” a voice ordered, as near as a breath—way too near.

Tanvi’s stomach clenched. Dream runners weren’t supposed to let themselves be noticed, never mind getting so wrapped up in possibilities that they bumped into people. She might as well have been daydreaming.

“Sorry,” she muttered, avoiding the boy’s eyes, and brushed past him. The faster she got away, the faster he would forget her.

She marched toward a crosswalk, her breath coiled, snakelike, in her lungs. Fifteen seconds passed, then thirty. But the boy wasn’t in pursuit, and Tanvi could exhale again.

That had been careless of her. Foolish.

Her whole body still tensed for discovery, Tanvi peeked over her shoulder. No sign of the boy. The traffic light changed. Using the crowd around her as her shield, she stepped into the crosswalk.

“Wait up!” someone else shouted.

Tanvi kept walking. What potential dreamers said to one another outside their dreams wasn’t any of her business.

“Hey! Didn’t you hear me, Nitya?” the voice asked from beside her. “I saw that guy plow right into you. He didn’t even apologize.”

Another step, and Tanvi made it to the other side of the street. So did the speaker, a Hmong girl with a shiny bob. No one Tanvi had ever seen before. But the girl was clearly talking to her.