The new clothes the doonie had provided didn’t help, nor did the warmth of his pony body under her as he walked along the drab shore. To add to her discomfort, she was also feeling a little motion sickness from the sudden passage they’d taken between the worlds. They never mentioned that in stories. How come the crew of the Enterprise didn’t throw up every time Scotty beamed them somewhere?

She took a deep breath of air—it was bracing, with a bit of a salt fishy smell to it—and tried to focus on something other than the damp cold and the queasiness in her stomach.

“What is this place?” she asked Timony. “Where is this place?”

I’m not sure.

Lizzie grimaced and put her free hand against her temple. The other was wrapped in the doonie’s mane.

“Do you have to talk inside my head like that?” she asked.

Only so long as I keep this shape, and I need to keep this shape until we can get someplace safe.

“This place isn’t?”

No. It’s . . . connected to the blind man.

“So why are we here?”

When I had to shift us away from my hidey-hole, this was the only place that was open to me. He hesitated a moment, then added, That’s never happened to me before. I’ve always been free to come and go through the other-world as I willed.

“Maybe . . . um . . .”

My dying has something to do with it, Timony finished for her. Yes, I’d already thought that.

“So can you take us away from here?” Lizzie asked.

And the sooner the better, so that she didn’t have to have the soft burr of his voice resonating inside her head. It didn’t hurt or anything. It just felt way too creepy.

I’ve been trying from the moment we got here, Timony said, but I can’t find one single point of exit in my mind.

“Well, we can’t just wait here for them to show up.”

No, we can’t. That’s why we need you to find us a way out.

“Then we’re screwed,” Lizzie told him. “Because when it comes to all this magic and stuff, I have zip. The only reason I’m here is because I spoiled the bogans’ fun a few nights ago.”

You don’t need magic, Timony assured her. You just need to focus on a safe place and then hold on to the thought of it. I’ll do the work to take us there.

“You mean like back to the hotel where the others are?”

If you mean your friends, then, yes. That’s as good a place as any, and we’ll at least have the safety of numbers.

“I hate to break this to you,” Lizzie said, “but we’re just musicians. Musicians and two incapacitated women. We’re not exactly the National Guard or anything.”