Then she spotted it: a small slate box with a dust-coated lid, all the way at the back. Maren nudged it with her flashlight until she could reach, and as her fingers closed around its sides, the faint scent of decay wafted out. Holding her breath, Maren climbed down the ladder and set the box and her flashlight on the counter. Artax hissed and went back through the doorway to the safe typewriters. Even Henri hopped away from the box, murmuring something in French.

Maren found a plastic bag, turned it inside out on her right hand, and lifted the box’s lid with her left. The sachets inside were jet black, and they emitted the faintest smell of what could only be described as fear: oily and metallic with an underlying hint of rot.

Lishta had made this batch of nightmares about a year ago, before Maren was allowed to help. She’d scraped splinters from the inside of a coffin and ground up the leg bone of a deer she found dead on the side of the road. Maren had asked what the dream was about, but Lishta had been reluctant to tell her everything. Very loosely, she said, it was about being locked in a coffin and buried alive. And not being the only thing in the coffin. And the other thing in the coffin was whispering your name.

Maren shuddered as her plastic-bag-covered fingers closed around the sachets, and quickly she turned the bag inside out and zipped it shut. She wondered why Maybe Ms. Malo would choose to sink into such deep horror.

Something darted at the flashlight beam, and Maren leapt away. It flapped and circled—a pale blue moth as long as her finger. Maren grabbed a tissue and flapped it at the moth, and it blundered away to a window where faint light filtered through. As the insect skittered against the glass pane, Maren tried to slow her breath.

She checked the time: nine thirty. Her mother would be home any minute. Maren slid the lid back on the slate box and shut the cabinet. Just before she climbed down the ladder, she stopped and stuck the key back into the lock. Pulling out random boxes without looking at their labels, she added several more sachets to her plastic bag. Just in case.

“Voleuse, voleussse,” hissed Henri. Maren had never heard him whisper before. Now that she had, she preferred the screeching. She tucked the plastic bag of nightmares into her pocket.

“You’d better not tell Gran-Gran I was here,” she said. The joke sounded weaker than she meant it to. She wondered if Henri really could tell Lishta. The bird squawked and flapped up to his perch on the ladder.