Maren gulped down her fear and plastered a smile onto her face. Even though the yellow cab wasn’t decorated for the parade, people seemed happy to wave back to her, and a few kids screamed for her to throw them candy. Confetti mingled with the shimmery rain pattering down around the car, and a purple bubble drifted in through her open window.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,” it sang, then popped.

After ten agonizingly slow blocks of music and merriment and wet, dancing sea creatures, the cab skirted around another blockade and they were zooming again, weaving and swerving, stopping and starting. Finally, Maren recognized the blue flowerpots and multicolored shutters of the neighborhood a few blocks behind the dream shop.

“We can walk from here,” she said. “Thank you so, so much for doing that.”

“I don’t mess around with Titanic-sized emergencies,” said the driver.

Amos handed over some money, and they raced up a lane lined with aspen trees. As her feet thundered and splashed along the pavement, Maren prayed that they weren’t too late, that Obscura had gotten stuck in the same parade roadblocks. She couldn’t bear the thought of Lishta hearing that woman’s warped version of the truth first. She should have confessed as soon as Obscura started threatening her. It seemed so clear now—Maren never should have let it spiral out of control like this.

The front door of the typewriter shop was locked, and the sign said CLOSED, which Maren took to be a good omen. Lishta must have gotten her text after all. She fumbled her key out of her pocket and stuck it in the lock.

The shop’s dark and dusty interior smelled wonderful, as always.

“Gran-Gran?” called Maren.

A soft rummaging sound came from behind a stack of boxes, and Artax slunk out with a quiet meow. Maren brushed the dust from the cat’s fur, and Amos sneezed. A gap of light shone through the half-open door to the dream shop.

“Gran-Gran?” called Maren.

No answer.

Maybe Lishta was too absorbed in her dream-making to hear. Maren wove through the tables of typewriters, dread pooling in her gut.

“Gran-Gran?”

She pushed the door open. A jumble of boxes and bins lay scattered across the counter, their contents spilled onto the floor. The coffee grinder was missing, the butter churn lay on its side, and the ladder leaned drunkenly against the sanitizer machine.

Worst of all, Lishta was gone.

Nineteen

“Gran-Gran?”

Dreams crunched under Maren’s shoes as she checked behind the counter, in the typewriter stockroom, in the bathroom. She knew there was no point, but she couldn’t stop searching, couldn’t accept what was happening. The shop was eerily silent—Henri was missing, too.

“There’s a note.” Amos held up a blank dream contract with two short lines of tiny writing across the back.

1389 Sinclair Street

Tell anyone, and you’ll never see her again.