“Look at how you got all this information,” said Hermia. “You put yourself into a hallucinogenic trance. You were sitting there in the Egyptian sun, baking, not drinking, not eating, not moving, just locked in place, having hallucinations while conversing with—whom? Why, crazy Loki’s outself! Do you see how absolutely unreliable this is?”

“No, I don’t,” said Danny. “Loki’s a smart guy.”

“Being smart and being a loon aren’t mutually exclusive,” said Hermia. “You’re smart and you’re a complete loon.”

“No he’s not,” said Veevee.

“We just saved his life in the desert because he was catatonic in the hot sun. Please find me a definition of ‘lunatic’ that doesn’t include that!”

Danny had no answer to that. He knew she was wrong. He knew that what Loki learned was right. Or at least he trusted that it was right.

But maybe he only believed it because he had worked so hard to get at the memory.

“Don’t let her talk you out of this,” said Veevee. “She doesn’t know anything.”

“No, but I am attached to the rational universe,” said Hermia. “Not meaning to give offense, but Veevee, you spent your whole life convinced you were a gatemage without any evidence at all.”

“But it turned out that I was,” said Veevee.

“But you believed without evidence,” said Hermia. “It doesn’t make you a reliable judge of weird theories like this. Don’t you get it? Danny’s probably completely right about what Loki learned. Only he was a loon learning from a loon, and Danny’s a loon using a lunatic process to recover their lunacy, and we’d have to be loons to take it seriously.”

“Since you’re the expert on lunacy,” said Veevee, “just what do you think should happen?”

“I think it’s time to let the Families use the Great Gate,” said Hermia. “There’s no reason to keep people from passing between worlds. There are no kas and bas that take possession of people’s bodies. There’s no Dragon waiting to pounce. He doesn’t exist. It’s from the craziest book in the Bible, for heaven’s sake.”

Danny pressed his palms against his eyes. “I’m so tired,” he said.

“You just put yourself through torture, nearly to the point of death,” said Hermia. “I’d say, yes, you need a nap.”

“I missed a whole day of school,” said Danny.

“That’s why we knew something was wrong,” said Veevee. “Your friends got worried and so they had the girl with the cleavage look up your records in the office and call me.”

“I thought you guys were already looking for me,” said Danny.

“I was,” said Hermia. “I just didn’t know where to look.”

“You mean that it didn’t occur to you to ask a drowther,” said Danny.

Hermia shrugged.