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seemed unlikely to have led to something this severe. It wasn’t like she’d been sipping some sort of potentially toxic moonshine. She’d been in a bar where even the well liquors were high end.
    The ability to move seemed to be slowly creeping downward. Chloe wiggled her fingers and stretched her arms. The pins-and-needles feeling was a welcome sensation. She fingered the pendant she wore on a chain around her neck. Her aunt had given it to her for five years’ sobriety—which she had ended last night.
    The last thing she remembered was having an obscenely overpriced drink in a suit-filled bar. It wasn’t her usual sort of digs, but it was the first place she’d seen after she’d found her fiancé, Andrew, and her boss humping like feral bunnies. She’d walked out of her apartment, the apartment he had moved into only a month ago. She hadn’t even slammed the door. She’d left them there fucking in her home and wandered for a few hours until the warm light of a bar beckoned. It had been a long time since she’d even come close to breaking her sobriety, but it was either that or go home to a bed she couldn’t sleep in now. The images of walking into the bar, of ordering several drinks, of ignoring Andrew’s calls: those were all clear. After that, it was all a blank until she woke up wherever she was now.
    “I told you she was bound to be out here,” a man’s voice said.
    Chloe turned her head to see a man who looked like he’d stepped out of a western TV show, dressed in patched brown trousers and a plain button-up shirt.
    “Don’t be smug, Jack.” The woman who came to stand beside him was wearing a strange skirt that was hitched up above her knees in the front but hung to her ankles in the back. The strange cut of it exposed a pair of what looked like battered red leather boots that laced up to the knee. The peculiar skirt was topped with a snug, low-cut blouse that exposed far more bosom than even the most daring swimsuit Chloe owned.
    The woman held out a hand to Chloe. “Name’s Kitty.”
    “This is a very vivid hallucination,” Chloe told her.
    “And that’s Jack . . . short for jackass,” Kitty continued as if Chloe hadn’t spoken. She kept her hand outstretched. “Come on now. Standing’s going to hurt no matter when you do it.”
    When Chloe didn’t respond, the woman reached down, gripped Chloe’s hand, and hauled her to her feet.
    Chloe’s legs weren’t quite as reliable as her arms were. She wobbled and had to close her eyes against a wave of dizziness that was followed instantly by the pressing need to vomit. Kitty held her steady as she did just that.
    “Hush,” Kitty murmured. “It passes soon enough. What are you called?”
    “Chloe.” She kept her eyes closed as she marshaled the strength to stay upright. After a few moments she opened one eye tentatively to see the two strangers watching her.
    The man held out a neatly folded square of cloth.
    “It’s clean,” Kitty said.
    After Chloe took it and wiped her mouth and chin, Jack bowed his head slightly. “I’m Jackson, but everyone calls me Jack.”
    The woman holding her upright interjected, “Except when we’re calling you—”
    “This is my sister, Katherine,” Jack continued. “She’s not nearly as vulgar as she appears.”
    “ Kitty, not Katherine,” the woman corrected. She smiled and cajoled, “Come on, Chloe. You’ll get your bearings soon enough, or you’ll succumb to madness. Either way, it’ll be easier after you get past the travel sickness and rest awhile.”
    “Travel sickness . . .” Chloe echoed. “I’m just hungover, and you’re a hallucination . . . or a coma dream.” She glanced toward the pasture, where she saw what looked like an elephant-size iguana. “This is all a coma dream.”
    “Of course it is, sweetie.” Kitty’s arm tightened around Chloe’s waist. “Why don’t we head back to the camp? You can catch some sleep, and then we’ll talk about