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her arm to give her balance. “Tovahleh, are you okay?”
    She nodded and gripped Henry’s arm. “What the hell is that?”
    The sky went dark. The ground turned to black sand. Cold. Lightning split the sky in flashes of blue and white and angry red. God’s fire, her grandfather had called it.
    This had nothing to do with any god. Tovah slipped her hand into Henry’s. She’d encountered nightmares aplenty, but since meeting him and learning she could shape, she’d always been able to flee, escape, shift to something better. Or wake. But now they clung to each other as the earth rumbled beneath them and lightning made glass of the sand.
    “What’s going on, Spider?”
    It felt odd to call him that, when he was still Henry. He looked at her. He squeezed her hand.
    “It will pass.”
    “But what is it?” She’d experienced shifts in the Ephemeros before, when someone wanted something badly enough. But nothing ever like this.
    “Shape it away, Tovah,” Henry said, looking into the distance. “Shape us a haven.”
    “I don’t know how!”
    “We’ll do it together. Shape with me.”
    She concentrated. She’d felt Spider’s power many times before. The first time she’d woken in a dream and realized she was no longer powerless, he’d been there. The first time she understood she wasn’t merely imagining herself in a place, but was actually inside it, Spider had been holding her hand. He’d led her then. He would lead her now, too.
    “Are we fighting something?” she whispered. “Something bad?”
    “No. We’re trying not to be noticed, that’s all. Fighting’s not for us.”
    “I didn’t know you were a pacifist,” she said.
    “I’m not. I’m a coward.”
    He grinned at her. He looked so much like the Henry she’d first met almost three years ago, the one who’d convinced her to play bingo and start eating again, that she wanted to cry. She leaned up quickly to kiss his cheek. Stubble scratched her lips.
    Then he was gone and Spider was back, slightly less gaudily colored but still recognizable. She missed the touch of his hand. “Spider?”
    “Time to go,” he told her.
    “How do you always know—” she began, and then the Ephemeros faded as someone shook her awake.
    “Miss?”
    Tovah looked at Henry, so still beneath his shield of blankets. The hands of the clock told her she’d only been asleep for about half an hour. She hadn’t even dropped the book, though her finger had cramped from the pressure of holding it on her lap.
    She’d have known the tall man standing over her was a doctor even without the white badge and clipboard. He had that disheveled, not-enough-sleep, too-much-coffee physique. In a pair of dark dress trousers and a deep blue button-down shirt, he was better dressed than a lot of the docs she’d seen. Better looking, too, despite the furrow in his brow as he stared at her. He had dark hair cropped short and eyes that matched his shirt.
    “Sorry.” She sat up straight, immediately self-conscious. “Must’ve dozed off.”
    “Careful. You don’t want to end up like him.” The doctor looked over at Henry, so silent. When he looked back at Tovah, the frown had disappeared. “Are you Henry’s case worker?”
    It wasn’t a stupid assumption. Henry had no family to visit him. None that acknowledged him, at any rate. “I’m a friend, actually. Tovah Connelly.”
    She carefully tested her sound foot to make sure it hadn’t fallen asleep while she was dreamwalking. It had only taken her one embarrassing incident in which she’d tried to stand on two numbed feet and fallen before she’d learned her lesson. She wiggled her toes, no problem, and got up. She offered her hand, which he took and dropped immediately after a bare hesitation she noticed but couldn’t figure out. Germ-a-phobe? Some doctors were.
    “Martin Goodfellow,” he said. “I’ve been assigned to Henry.”
    “You’re new?”
    He nodded. “Started last week.”
    “Well, he’s no