A wistful look crossed her face. “At least you’ll be back soon.”

  “What?”

  “Did you forget?” Molly gave one of those tittering laughs of hers. Her dainty hands fluttered through the air in front of her face. “The story isn’t over, Quinn! This is just the first chapter. Every moon cycle, you’ll come back. I told you that.”

  “Right,” I said, with a slight twist of the mouth. “I had forgotten about that.”

  More like I had purposefully ignored it the first time that Molly brought it up. That wasn’t the sort of dream rule I needed to put any stock in. The moment that I woke up, everything else was just going to vanish. I wouldn’t see Quinn again, or Tabitha, or Harry.

  Did that make me sad?

  I wasn’t certain.

  It seemed to make Molly sad, even though she seemed to think I would be coming back.

  “Well, it was still nice,” I said, opting to just gloss over it. Why argue with a dream girl about dream rules, right? Whatever, forever. It was way better to just roll with the punches. That’s the only reason things like the talking mouse hadn’t totally thrown me off of my game.

  Molly looked into the basement. “There’s only one lantern. Maybe I should wait here.”

  She seemed suddenly nervous.

  “Do you know something about the basement that you aren’t telling me?” I asked her, frowning.

  Molly shook her head. “No, no, it’s nothing like that. But look how dark it is, Quinn. It’s just as dark in there as it is outside of the windows.”

  And she could see things outside of the windows.

  I turned to look into the basement, lifting up the lantern high above my head. The flame it gave off was supernaturally bright, but it still only seemed to extend several feet in front of me. It flickered and shifted just as the fire on the wick did, making me almost dizzy to watch.

  Beyond it was darkness.

  “Are you sure this is where Trevor is?”

  Molly nodded. Then she darted forward and threw her arms around me in a hug that was so tight, and so surprising, I nearly dropped the lantern. Instead, I was quick to set it down and give her a hug back.

  “I promised myself I wasn’t going to cry.” Molly sounded on the verge of tears. “I promised myself that!”

  “Well,” I hesitated, “I guess that it’s okay to cry.”

  She sniffed and pulled back, though she didn’t move her hands away from my shoulders. “You aren’t crying.”

  “I’m not,” I agreed with her. “But just because I know I still have to find Trevor. I might not be able to locate him in all this darkness.”

  “You’ll be able to find him just fine.” Molly sniffed. “I know it.”

  “You think so?” I chewed at my lower lip, glancing over my shoulder. The darkness was eerie; it made me feel as though the shadows were about to push out and devour me whole.

  I thought about Dream May, and I shuddered.

  Molly’s hands slid up. They pressed to either side of my face instead, and her fingers curled against my cheeks. “Quinn, will you promise me something?”

  “Sure,” I mumbled. “I already promised Harry a circus. What do you want, a ballet studio?”

  Molly’s brows furrowed and her lips pinched together, she let go of me and took a step backward, folding her arms over her chest with a huff. “If you’re just going to poke fun at me, I won’t say anything!”

  “Molly—”

  “I would have thought you would know better than to make jokes like that.” Her lower lip wobbled a little. “You know what it’s like to be made fun of.”

  “I wasn’t making fun of you,” I promised, grabbing her hand. Though my words were soft and kind, I couldn’t help but find myself particularly irritated with the little ballerina. She was acting as though I should already know what her promise is—and I didn't!

  It wasn’t even meant to be a poke at her. I really figured that she was going to ask me to draw her something, the same way that Harry had.

  Molly gave me a squint-eyed look, trying to judge if I was being earnest or not. She seemed to eventually come to terms with the fact that I hadn’t been trying to make fun of her, or at least, that I was genuinely sorry for it, because she nodded and uncrossed her arms, just a bit.

  “Will you promise to tell your Grandma thank you?”

  There was no way that I was going to say anything about this dream to literally anyone. But it wasn’t like she was going to be alive in the real world, so I figured that there wasn’t any harm in agreeing.

  “I can tell her. But, uh, what for?” Again, it was a strong urge to ask how she knew my Grandma. But just like the mouse had only known things I had already known. She knew about Grandma because I knew about Grandma.

  “Just thank her for me,” insisted Molly. “She’s going to know what I’m talking about.”

  “Okay, I can do that.” I felt strangely guilty making a promise I wouldn’tkeep, so I asked instead of just saying goodbye, “Did you want me to draw you somewhere, too?”

  “I loved going outside,” admitted Molly. “There used to be a big park, with a lake in the middle of it, and all sorts of flowers!” She clasped her hands in front of her chest. “And the backyard was a wonderland! There were so many roses, Quinn, and they all smelled so amazing!”

  She gave a heavy sigh, and her shoulders seemed to droop a little bit. “I miss going outside.”

  “Then I’ll draw you something outside, with flowers and a lake.” Even though it wasn’t going to change anything for the people in my dreams, I thought it would be a nice little homage to them all the same, to show them what I could do, and to make something inspired by them.

  After all, the people in the story were inspired by people I didn’t like! Why shouldn’t the locations be inspired by the people I did enjoy being around? And for all that Molly was strange and frustrating, she was still fun to be around.

  She had helped me out a lot, too. There was no way I would have found any of my victims without her help!

  Molly’s face went a little soft at the edges and for a few moments, the shine in her eyes didn’t seem as cold. She pulled me in for another hug, and this time the grip was lingering; like when you knew that it would be a long, long time—or never—before you saw someone again.

  I wished I’d been able to give my dad a hug like that—before the fire.

  My eyes went a little misty.

  “Oh.” Molly reached up with one pale finger and swept the tears away from my eyes, flicking them off to the side. “You’re crying too.”

  I sniffed twice and stepped away from her. “I don’t like saying goodbye.”

  “But this isn’t goodbye.”

  “I don’t like whatever this is, okay? I just want to go and try to find Trevor, and get this whole thing over with.” I rubbed at my own face with the meat of one palm. I rubbed at my eyes until bright splotches of color appeared in my vision, and then I rubbed at them a little bit more.

  Just because.

  The tears stopped. The colors blinked away.

  Molly said, “What about a see you soon, instead?” When that didn’t get a smile out of me, she said, “Or just a be careful?”

  “That one,” I told her, voice thick with unshed tears and unacknowledged emotions. “I like that one best.”

  “Alright then,” said Molly, with a little nod of the head. “Be careful, Quinn. Here and when you go back home. You don’t know—”

  She stopped talking, her mouth snapping shut with a click.

  When she didn’t finish the sentence, I asked her, “I don’t know?”

  “You don’t know,” Molly said, a second time. Her perfectly white teeth clicked together once again. She glanced around nervously, and then gave a little curtsy, fingers grabbing at the sparkling pink tutu that she was wearing.

  It was a dance curtsy, so one of her legs bent to the side and almost behind her. Her smile suddenly turned serene. She held the pose for several long seconds, looking like a perfect little ballerina from the wind-up spring on a jewelry box.

  And she held it.

  And held it.

  And held it.

  “Molly?” I asked her, confused.

  She didn’t move. She had been trying to tell me something, but it just… Hadn’t worked. Like Harry, she seemed to now be suffering the ill effects of it. Only where Harry had been able to pry his mouth back open, Molly had gone totally still.

  Even her chest had stopped moving.

  I waved my hand back and forth in front of her face, trying to get her attention again. Her eyes followed me, but that was it. It was like she had come under the same malady that Dream Hero had been pushed into; alive, but not really moving.

  Like a doll that could see but not move.

  Maybe that made a bit of sense, considering that Molly really was a doll. There had definitely been weirder things to happen in this place, after all.

  “I’ll thank Grandma for you, and I’ll make sure to draw you something really nice. Lakes and roses. A rose lake?” I hummed and thought on it for a moment, then picked the lantern back up. “Whatever I do, you’re going to love it, I promise.”

  Molly said nothing. She didn’t blink. She didn’t speak. She didn’t move. She just stared at me. There was something almost desperate about the glint in her eyes, like she was willing me to understand what she had been trying to say.

  Unfortunately… she was right! I didn’t know what Molly had been trying to share with me! All I knew was that time would soon run out, and I needed to go find Trevor and make him pay for what he did to me.

  “I’ll be careful,” I promised Molly, thinking that just saying goodbye and leaving might have been the best end to the situation.

  I took a step backward.

  Molly watched me, unblinking.

  I turned away and looked at her over my shoulder.

  She still didn’t move.

  I let out a shuddering breath, and started away from the little ballerina doll that had become my friend, heading out into the darkness instead.

  And behind me, just for a moment, for a second, for a single beat of the heart—I could have sworn that I heard Molly cry.

  I spun around.

  But she was gone.

  Dream Trevor

  I was alone.

  For the first time since this dream started, I was totally, fully alone. I couldn’t decide if it had only been a few hours or if it really had been a solid month. Either way, it felt weird to be walking through the basement all on my own.

  The darkness was thicker than pea soup. It seemed to sit in the air, something that had an almost physical texture to it.

  The fire wasn’t just bright enough to let me see through the darkness. It appeared to actually be burning away the dark. The spaces where I had walked stayed free of the shadows. My foot hit something; it rolled a few feet away from me.

  “What was that?” I lifted the lantern higher and stepped toward it.

  Balls of newspaper! They had been crumpled into such perfect spheres that they could roll about like a tennis ball.

  A thought struck me.

  I picked up one of the newspaper balls and examined it, then moved to a nearby upturned wooden crate. I sat the lantern down on it, and then popped open the glass door. Carefully, I held the newspaper ball up to the flame.

  It caught!

  Yelping, I tossed the ball away from me. It soared, burning, through the air, hit the ground, bounced twice, and rolled several yards.

  The darkness was removed from the area! It didn’t come back, either, and the fire just went away as soon as the newspaper burned up. Dream logic. Didn’t question it. I was mostly just glad that I had found a way to not have to wander around in the dark on my own.

  I started lighting the balls of newspaper on fire and tossing them around. The darkness simmered and hissed. It gave a long, low whistle like a tea kettle going off, and a garble like water rushing down the drain, and then there was nothing left of it.

  It was just the brightness.

  Well, the basement still wasn’t bright. But it wasn’t pitch black either. It looked by and large just like the basement back in the real world, except for the fact that this basement had all kinds of boxes sitting around. Crates. Cardboard boxes. Plastic totes.

  Bringing the lantern with me, just in case the darkness came back, I made my way over to one of the cardboard boxes.

  DANGER had been written on it in big, blocky letters with a black marker.

  “Danger, huh? I’ll be the judge of that,” I muttered, setting the lantern down next to the box and using both hands to flip it open.

  Inside was a doll. It was actually a doll that I knew for a fact I had seen before.

  This was the very same doll that was sitting in the rocking chair in the corner of the living room, back in the real world. He was still dressed up like a boy from the 1800s, complete with a waistcoat and top hat. His shoes had been scuffed up, and his clothes were wrinkled and looked like they were on the verge of tearing.

  His hair and his face sculpt—looked just like my dad. I braced myself, half expecting the doll to turn his head and look at me, or maybe for him to start talking.

  Nope.

  He stayed a normal doll that had just been tossed around a lot.

  Carefully, I put him back into the cardboard box. When I folded the flaps of the box back down, a hallway appeared on the wall adjacent to me. That must have been the way to Trevor!

  I picked the lantern back up, and started toward it. Something pinched at the back of my chest.

  Should I bring that doll with me? I wondered. No way. That’s stupid. It’s not my real dad. It’s not even a talking doll.

  Even in my dreams, I wasn’t able to speak with him again. All I could do was listen to mice talk about how he was dead. Dead, dead, dead. I hated that word. I hated those four letters more than I hated any other four letter combination, ever.

  Dead.

  My mood grew more sour by the second. The hallway was well lit, fairy lights strung up along the walls. They had leaves and flowers on them; the same fairy lights that had been in my house back home, before the fire.

  With a heavy exhale, I started down the hallway, the lantern bobbling along at my side.

  It was a normal-sized hallway. It let me into a normal-sized basement. In fact, it was almost the exact same basement from Grandma’s.

  There was the ceiling light. It should have been an ugly, old yellow glow. Instead, it was the same purple shine that had originally drawn me down into the basement. For some reason, I could tell that meant that the moon was almost at its highest point.

  Lucky then, that I wasn’t alone.

  A metal storage shelf had been pressed to the wall, held in place with thick bits of twine. Every single shelf was piled full of boxes, each one with the word DANGER scratched onto them with a shaking hand.

  My lips pursed. My brows pinched. If I were a dog, I would have growled at the real sight before me.

  There was Trevor, standing in the middle of the room, looking at the line of shelves. He had a marker in one hand, proving that he had been part of the Boxing of the Dolls; he had certainly been the one to write DANGER all over the place.

  Which was stupid. The only real danger to anyone were people like Trevor!

  “You,” I shouted, the fury in my chest so bright and so strong, it felt like a hurricane. It was twisting up and battering against the back of my sternum. My throat burned. “You lousy, lying piece of crap!”

  The words spilled from my lips before I could stop them, think about them, or even cognitively pick them.

  Trevor spun around at the sound and stared at me with wide eyes.

  I realized that unlike the others, he seemed to recognize me. The others had blank expressions—a desire to live and basic intelligence, but otherwise blank.

  Not Trevor. He looked afraid of me. I wondered if that was because I knew Trevor best out of all of them?

  In the end, I decided it didn’t matter. I took a step toward him. My fingers were curled so tightly around the curve of the lantern handle that it made my knuckles ache and throb; it turned them a milky white. The flame seemed to flare up brighter, as though it was being fueled by my anger.

  “Please, Quinn,” he whispered, the first of the newcomers to speak. “Please, I don’t want to die. I thought we were friends.”

  Well, Dream Mrs. Harringbone had spoken, but that didn’t count. She had spoken in a broken-up sort of computer-game-style gibberish. She hadn’t used actual words. And while a few of them had screamed or shouted, they hadn’t used full sentences.

  “Please,” Trevor said again, holding his hands out toward me. He dropped the marker. It rolled away from him, and bumped up against the toe of my shoe. I wasn’t in my own clothing. I was wearing Ghost Girl’s outfit.

  I was supposed to kill him. I was supposed to finish the story, and then go home. The corners of my eyes felt hot and itchy, and I realized that I was having a hard time not crying. I was upset over the thought of killing him.

  I just couldn’t stop thinking about the way that things had gone down before; the fact I had let him into my home, into my life, and actually thought that he might have cared about me.

  I hesitated. “You only wanted to get into my house. You didn’t care about me.”

  That was the truth of it all.

  He had just wanted to see the basement. Trevor was after clout, so he could share pictures of the basement with everyone else. He had just wanted to be one of the ones everyone thought was cool.

  Trevor countered, “But I do care about you.”

  “Stop lying to me,” I shouted, taking a step toward him. The fire in the lantern was definitely fixed to my anger. It swarmed so big that it hit the glass and was barely held inside. The fire rattled at the hinges of the lantern door.

  “I’m not,” Trevor insisted.

  “You are! I’m so tired of you lying to me! Admit it—the only reason you asked to come over was because you wanted in my house,” I snarled, the words seeming to echo in the basement. The ceiling had grown concave and massive, and the acoustics had changed.