“It was terribly unfortunate.” Lishta wiped her hands on her apron. “But I don’t like that she’s still looking for nightmares, and I especially don’t like that she followed you. I’m going to ask around, see if anyone remembers that girl and knows her name. And if you see her again, please tell her I’d like to speak with her.”

The tightness in Maren’s chest eased a little. At least one adult agreed that something was weird.

“JOLIE JOLIE MADEMOISELLE!” squawked Henri, pushing a brass safety pin along the counter with his beak.

“Did you ban her brother?” said Maren.

“I never met him,” said Lishta. “I’d sold only one of those python-swallowing dreams—to a middle-aged man, so I assumed the girl’s brother had stolen or bought it from him. I banned the man, just to be safe, and that’s when I started locking up the nightmares.”

Maren pictured a crocodile-sized snake with her leg halfway down its throat and shuddered. “I’m glad you did.”

Lishta laid her wrinkly hand over Maren’s smooth one. “Try not to worry about it, dear. Shall I tell you about that whispering dust I found?”

“Yes!” Maren shouted, startling Henri, who dropped his safety pin onto the floor and let out a long string of French swears.

Eyes twinkling, Lishta spun the combination lock of the safe. She pulled out the tin, slid open its lid, and shook a few flecks onto a white sheet of paper. Then she and Maren bent over it. It looked like ordinary dust, gray and dull. It smelled like ordinary dust, too, though Maren was careful not to sniff too hard and suck it up her nose.

“We’ve got at least twenty different kinds of dust already,” said Maren. “What’s so special about this?”

“There’s a college right smack in the middle of Connecticut,” said Lishta, wiggling a little with excitement. “Full of big old trees and red brick buildings. In the far-back corner of the center for the arts, there is a curving alcove under some stairs.”

Maren waited, knowing that Lishta’s stories usually didn’t make sense until they were done.

“If you stand at one end of the curve with your head close to the ceiling and someone stands on the other side, you can whisper things, and they’ll hear it like you’re right next to them,” said Lishta. “It’s a whisper chamber. And I collected this dust from the inside of the arch.”

“Sounds cool,” said Maren. “What will it do in dreams?”

Lishta hopped from one slippered foot to the other in her own old-lady version of a tap dance. “It allows you to whisper through the layers of consciousness.”

Maren cocked her head and stared at her dancing grandmother. “Layers of what?”