Raylene just laughs. “Well, we’re not nuns. Or at least I’m sure not walking around with a rosary saying my Hail Marys. But are we bad people? Who knows? Does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

“That you forgive him, or that we be good people?”

“That we’re good.”

“You’re good,” she says. She answers immediately, like she doesn’t even have to think about it. “Me, I’m still working on it.”

“I think that makes you a good person.”

She does that thing with her eyebrows again—part question, part ironic comment.

“When you know the difference between right and wrong,” I explain, “and you choose to do the right thing, even when it’s usually harder, that’s the sign of a good person.”

“I guess . . . “ She waits a beat, then adds, “So, are we really inside your head? Because I’ve got to tell you, that kind of freaks me.”

“Me, too.”

“I think maybe we’re not. I think all the crap in your head made some new little pocket world here in the dreamlands and that’s where we are.”

“I guess that’s possible . . .”

“Let’s go with probable.”

I nod. “Okay. I suppose it makes more sense. Like anything makes sense in this place.”

“Everything makes sense,” she says, “if you study it enough. We just don’t know the right physics to explain this place because it’s all different once we cross over. If we could ever find the manual, we’d be laughing, but I think it’s pretty much the kind of thing you have to come up on from behind. You know, catch it by surprise.”

I keep forgetting how smart she is. Unlike me, she’s got a real head for maths and sciences. And she totally gets computers. Me, I know how to turn them on and work the software, but she can get right inside to the mechanics of the circuitry and wires. She used to do it just for fun—because she could—but now she makes her living getting people’s machines up and running, and keeping them that way.

No more stealing and scams and running wild and crazy. Like I told her, she’s a good person now because she knows the difference and chooses to not break the law anymore.

“ ‘Course that’s a problem for me,” she goes on. “This being the dreamlands, I mean. Those wolf boys find out I’ve been back, and they’re going to seriously kick my ass.”

“No, I think it’ll be okay. I brought you here. You didn’t force your way.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think that’ll hold much water with them, Jill. They were pretty damn clear when they told me to get out and stay out.”