Unless it’s a wasp, in which case it doesn’t care if it stings you because it won’t die. But you might.

Maren held her breath, waiting for the bee—or the wasp—to get bored and go away. Instead, it flitted to her shoulder and crawled down her sleeve. She swallowed a scream, because a scream would definitely scare the dangerous little insect.

“Don’t move.” Amos’s voice behind her was calm. He slid a napkin between the bee and Maren’s arm, then carefully shooed it away into the salty sunshine. Maren took a great, gasping gulp of air, sagging as the oxygen returned to her brain.

“Thank you.”

“No problem.” A smattering of sprinkles flashed on the front of Amos’s shirt. He gave Maren a crooked grin. “I didn’t want to have to go back to the hospital again today.”

“I have my EpiPen,” she said huffily, but she almost wanted to hug him. Almost. She double-checked her backpack pocket to make sure the EpiPen was still there, even though she never took it out. “Are you ready to collect ingredients now?”

“Yes.”

“Try to keep up, because the tide’s coming in.” Maren slipped between two tents and ducked under the pier’s railing.

“Where are we going?” said Amos, catching hold of the rail and looking warily at the drop to the rocks below.

Maren pointed to a rusty ladder that ran down one of the pier’s thick wooden posts and ended in shadows. “Where the nightmare stuff is.”

* * *

Amos edged around a barnacle-crusted boulder and leapt over a dead seagull covered in muck.

“This is not what I was expecting when you said we were going to the pier,” he said.

Chattering voices and lilting organ music filtered down through the boards overhead, but underneath the pier was a different universe. Everything echoed wrong in the dim light, and it stank of decay and seaweed.

“What do you need?” said Amos.

Maren rubbed her jaw and thought. One of the nightmares could be about a sinking submarine. “Water,” she said.

“Want me to get it?”

“Sure.” Maren found a small plastic container in her backpack and gave it to Amos. She pointed to a sloshing, dark pool. “Try to get some from there, where it’s extra scummy.” Tiny details like that made the dreams extra vibrant. Done correctly, the taste of that water scum would stick with someone halfway through their morning. Maren would only add one-tenth the usual amount, and she planned to include a few safety elements like a flashlight and a diving helmet. The dreams had to be scary enough to count as nightmares, but they needed to leave people with a sense of safety and well-being.

As for the whispering dust, she’d tell Obscura she’d tried and failed again to get it from the safe. It wouldn’t work as an excuse forever, but it would buy time.