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then slid across the pavement before rolling and clawing to a stop. His face tipped up, a snarl on his mouth.
    She swayed, aftershocks of whatever he’d done to her making her arms and eyes twitch. Her breath was a shallow, staccato pull-and-push that didn’t quite balloon her lungs. Flaring her nostrils, she forced a deep draw that almost steadied her.
    “You need to go,” she said, pointing down the street to where Scrape sand dusted the pavement, then heaped like drifts of golden snow, and beyond that, the dark void of the Scrape. “I won’t ask you twice.”
    He made a mock fraidycat face as he stood up again. “Nightmares out there.”
    “Too bad.” She could tell he wasn’t scared. Just surprised. Amused.
    She was surprised, too. Not so much amused, though.
    “If you’ll just cooperate,” he said, “this will go easier for you.”
    Doubtful. But at least she’d been forewarned. This Peter seemed to have some weird talent that debilitated an opponent. She’d ask Harlen later if he’d heard of it before. But for now, she lifted a hand and beckoned him forward. “Let’s go.”
    A little bravado to get her back up.
    He adjusted his clothes, small movements that included a couple of steps toward her. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”
    She stood her ground. “You can blame yourself.”
    He took another step and half, and she felt that greed again.
    “Just show me where he is.”
    “Not going to happen.”
    He rushed her, chin down, wide shoulders flexing to bulldoze her. He lifted her off her feet, his arms tight around her waist. Again, lightning struck her system. Her vision flashed white, bones rattled, muscles quivered involuntarily.
    She dropped her weight—not her waking world 130, either—she dropped the weight of her natural determination and her absolute certainty that under no conditions could Maze City be breached—certainly not by this guy with this weird power.
    They fell together, his face at her ribs. The pavement cracked as they hit the street. She condensed all her fury into a single surge of movement and sent him overhead again. If he landed, she didn’t hear it. She was caught in a relentless, teeth-clattering spasm that left her limp in a sprawl, utterly vulnerable to attack from above.
    Remembering Harlen finally gave her the impetus to turn over and blink past the residual haze in her eyes to look for her assailant again.
    At first, she saw only shadows dancing, but then she realized that Peter was in Eleanor’s clutches. No, not Eleanor’s. The nightmare’s. Black claw marks were slashed deep across his neck as the creature grappled with him, and wind blew gold sparks in his eyes.
    Sera pushed up to her hands and knees. She’d thrown him that far? To the edge of the dream?
    A small impulse to help him twitched inside her, but then a second nightmare came, and Peter went down. In the gust and swirl of sand, she couldn’t see exactly what was happening, but she’d heard that nightmares ate revelers so she would keep her distance. Peter thrashed, but the Scrape wind lifted his cries away. And then he was still. She watched until the electric tremor in her body subsided.
    Then she followed the directions she knew, not even counting the blocks or registering the turns, until she reached the meeting room. Still dingy, still needed a coat of paint. She sat on the velvet sofa, cold as stone. And then she waited until someone shook her.
    It was the madman himself, Vincent Blackman. “You okay?”
    She was a long way from okay. She’d just essentially killed someone. “I have to get back to the restaurant,” she told him instead. It was impossible to wake from someone else’s dreamscape or the Scrape, so she had to go back across the Scrape to what was left of her kitchen dream. “Harlen needs you to wait here—you or Rook.”
    “Oh? Why?”
    “I don’t know. Sounded important, though.” She didn’t want to talk to Vince. His hands were stained with nightmare