Cassie considered pulling out her cards and taking another run at what they might tell her. She’d already done it once since Geordie and Joe had gone off with Walker, but the images on them hadn’t changed and there was no reason to think they would have by now. That was just how the cards worked. When you asked a certain question of them, they’d only give the one answer, it didn’t matter how many times you asked. She knew that. But that hadn’t stopped her from trying anyway.

“This so sucks,” Siobhan said out of the blue. “Did I say that out loud?” she added when everybody turned to look at where she was sitting by the window.

“Loud and clear,” Con told her.

Siobhan sighed. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

“Well, it does,” she said. “I feel so useless. And don’t anybody make any jokes about how’s this different from any other time.”

“I wasn’t going to say a word,” Andy said.

Con gave her a half smile. “Although you’re very good at the merch table.”

“Oh, shut up.” Siobhan turned to Cassie and asked, “Is there any news?”

Cassie blinked in surprise. “I’ve been here with you the whole time. How could I have any news that you don’t?”

“I don’t know. I thought maybe there was some magic way of talking in your head or something.”

“There is. But no one’s contacted me so far.”

“Crap.”

“I hate this waiting, too,” Cassie told her.

“How about those cards of yours?” Con asked. “Can’t you check with them again?”

Andy nodded. “So that we can at least know that everybody’s still okay.”

“The cards don’t work that way,” Cassie said without bothering to go into why.

“Figures. That’d be too easy.”

“I don’t know that it’s a matter of easy or hard. It’s more the innate capricious nature of any and everything that comes out of the dreamlands. The otherworld,” she added at their questioning looks. “The place has a hundred names. I often think of them as dreamlands because it’s where we go in our dreams.”

“We go to a real place?” Con asked.

Cassie nodded. “Except, usually, we’re the spirits there. And most of us don’t remember the trip, or at least not clearly.”

“I have some really weird dreams,” Siobhan said.

“There are some really weird parts to the dreamlands. Joe says that anything we can imagine exists there, and more. Lots more.”

“So,” Con said, “anything can happen there—just like it does in a dream? There’s no structure or—I don’t know—natural laws?”

“There are both, but they’re not readily apparent. Which is why it’s so dangerous for humans like us to go there.”