“Not real, not real, not real,” she whispered, then turned to Amos. “We need to make a waking antidote.” She closed her eyes, trying to visualize all the ingredients. “Spearmint, dried firefly, lemon zest, and cayenne pepper. Oh, and coffee.”

Amos helped her as she swept through the ingredients on the floor. Maren made sure not to touch the skeleton’s foot, which tap-tap-tapped along to a high-pitched, creeping melody that she knew no one else could hear.

Once everything had been found except the firefly, which was probably still at the shop, Maren ground it up and took a pinch, not bothering to put it in a sachet. Amos held open Lishta’s mouth while she pushed it under her tongue, praying that it would work, that an overdose of Obscura’s sleeping medicine hadn’t permanently damaged her grandmother’s brain.

Moments later, Lishta stirred. She clawed at her mouth, but Maren took her hands gently away and held them.

“It’s okay, Gran-Gran. It’s not a nightmare. Just leave it there until you’re all the way awake.”

Lishta’s eyes fluttered open, and her face burst into a radiant, wrinkly smile. “I’m so happy to see you, darling,” she said. “And you,” she said to Henri, who had landed on her shoulder and was busy combing her messy hair with his beak.

“I’m happy to see you, too.” Maren’s voice broke as she thought about everything they’d been through, everything that might have happened.

Amos had found the duffel bag and was already on the phone with the police, repeating their names and their location.

Maren squeezed her grandmother’s hand tight. “It’s all going to be okay now.”

Thirty

Maren sat at a table in the storeroom, surrounded by all of the secondhand typewriters Lishta had bought over the past year but hadn’t had time to clean and repair. In front of her lay a 1960s Remington Quiet-Riter model with its lid off and a rag tucked under the type-bars that swung forward and stamped the letters onto paper. The ink-crusted letter plates were called slugs, and Maren had always wondered where the name came from. They were nothing like the slimy creatures she found in her mother’s garden and that Lishta sometimes dried and powdered for dreams.

Maren squirted cleaning solution into the typewriter’s innards and dug in with her metal brush. This was the second part of her punishment for breaking Lishta’s rules, in addition to being banned from the dream shop for a month. Considering what should have been her punishment, it wasn’t bad, even though the cleaning chemicals made her sneeze every few minutes and her fingernails were stained permanently black.

Shuffle ball change stamp shuffle ball change went Maren’s feet under the table. Stamp step stamp step.