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  “He needs a guide!” she cried out, not hoping for much. She wished for one, hard, but even here wishes didn’t buy beans any more than sorries did. “Anyone?”

  No guides. This was just pure bad luck for Justin, who might have to fend off his fears, after all. The crowd was closer. More volatile. She spotted a few of them carrying…

  “Oh, God, sex toys?”

  They were attacking him with dildos?

  Tovah wanted to laugh, but she’d had dreams of being chased, too. And the ones about showing up for class naked, or forgetting where she worked. Looking at it from the outside it was funny, but her sympathies roused for the man in front of her who waited so patiently to be assaulted with faux phalluses.

  “No guides?” she asked again, but didn’t get an answer. No Spider shimmering out of the grass. Nothing.

  The crowd had nearly reached him. They might look ridiculous but they sounded scary, their combined voices a low muttering hum of desire. Like wasps.

  A few feet in front of him, she shaped a ditch. A big one, too wide to jump, too deep to climb out of. One by one, the horde fell in. None of them came out. She sealed up the pit with another slight shift of her will. After a second, she covered it with flowers.

  Justin Ross opened his eyes. He did a double take, looking around. Then he sat suddenly, like his legs had given out, on the small hill that had originally tripped him. He put his head in his hands, the backs of them resting on his drawn-up knees. His shoulders shook.

  Tovah hadn’t wanted to interfere. His tears moved her, though, to step forward and place a hand on his shoulder. “Hey. It’s okay.”

  He looked up, and those arresting greenish brown eyes were shining with tears…but of laughter. He chortled breathlessly and wiped his face. “Holy shit. I thought I was a goner, for sure.”

  Texas twanged in his deep voice. Though she wasn’t as big a fan as Kelly, Tovah hadn’t noticed an accent on Runner or in the interviews her friend had sent. His hair was rumpled, and beard scrufted his cheeks. Most of the time it was impossible to know how closely a person was representing to their true selves, because most of the time she had no idea who they were in the waking world. Justin Ross apparently had enough sense of himself to accurately represent in the Ephemeros. Except for the accent, which he probably suppressed in his waking life, she thought. Interesting.

  He looked at the patch of flowers under which his pursuers had disappeared. “That never happened before.”

  “They chase you a lot, huh?” Tovah settled onto the grass beside him, fascinated by the play of sunlight on the lines of his face.

  “Yeah.” He turned to look at her. “A lot.”

  “You know,” she said cautiously, “you could have made that ditch.”

  He studied her. He might be pretty, but he wasn’t stupid. “This is a dream, huh?”

  Tovah smiled. “Yep.”

  He ran a hand over his hair, face crunching as he thought about this. “My mama used to tell me that if I was having a nightmare, all I had to do was turn around and put out my hand and say ‘no!’ And it would all stop.”

  “Your mama was a smart lady.”

  He laughed. “She said that, too.”

  Tovah had spent too much concentration on rescuing Justin, and the borders of her meadow had blurred. Something like a gray mist, the natural state of the Ephemeros, swirled along the edges. It parted now, and a man came through. She knew that easy stride, that lumbering walk, and Tovah got to her feet to greet him with a small nod.

  Ben gave her a smile, but before he could speak, Justin got up, faster than she had, and stepped in front of her. His will nudged hers. Because he wasn’t a shaper, he couldn’t control it and probably didn’t understand it. It came from someplace inside him, a tapestry woven of threads of experience, fear, desire. Tovah could resist it, but didn’t.

  He had to dream this, for reasons she wasn’t meant to know. She’d taken on a bit part in the drama of his subconscious. She and the guide who’d shown up to answer her call.

  “Hand over the bag, lady,” said Ben, who’d bulked up and become menacing. The words fell easily enough from his lips as he responded to the curling tendrils of Justin’s will. “And nobody will get hurt.”

  “No way,” said Justin, putting up his fists. “You back off and leave her alone.”

  He needed to play the hero in his dreams the way he did on TV? And she was to play his damsel in distress. Tovah stifled a groan. She should have run the moment she saw him. But here she was, her do-good instincts wrapping her up in someone else’s agenda when all she’d wanted to do was practice making hills. Ah, well. It could be fun.

  “Yeah, back off!” She shook her fist at Ben.

  The stranger-who-was-Ben grimaced and pulled a knife. A frisson of fear sliced through her, even though she knew it wasn’t real, this was a dream, she could change it all at any moment…she knew all that and still she let out an eep of terror and clutched the back of Justin’s shirt. He stood straighter. His muscles tensed. He was ready to fight to protect her, no matter what, and she…loved him?

  Oh, she loved him, her hero. Tovah took a step back as Justin moved toward the would-be assailant. The men sized each other up, circling. The knife slashed, and she cried out, covering her face and peering out through the slots made by her fingers. But Justin, her Justin, didn’t care about the knife. He kicked and punched and swung. He beat the living crap out of the other guy, who hit the earth with a thud that made the ground shudder. Groaning, the stranger went still.

  Justin turned. He took her in his strong, manly arms. When he kissed her, fireworks went off. Literally. Red, white and blue sparks set to the incongruous soundtrack of a late ’90s techno song she’d forgotten used to be her favorite. His mouth urged hers open and his tongue swept inside, and she had time to wonder why he tasted of black licorice before he pulled away to look into her eyes.

  “You never have to worry about anything, as long as you’re with me,” Justin told her.

  Tovah couldn’t stop the shiver of delight that ran down her spine at those words, though they were meant for the woman he saw in his arms and not for her. Not really. “I know,” she said, and caressed his cheek.

  And just like that, he was gone. Her arms held nothing but empty air, and the man on the ground was getting up and wiping away a streamer of blood from his nose. Tovah shook off the remnants of the encounter.

  “Wow,” she said. “That was…interesting.”

  “Isn’t it always?” asked Ben, dusting himself off. “Being a guide, I mean.”

  “I’m not a guide.”

  He grinned, tilting his head to check her out up and down. “Looked like you were being a guide, to me.”

  Tovah shook her head. “Don’t start. He was having a nightmare and I just helped him out a bit, and then you came along and I guess he just…”

  “Needed a guide.” Ben stepped closer, not at all menacing now the way he’d been when Justin was in charge. “But you’re not a guide. And yet, you guided him. Interesting.”

  She gave him a narrow look. “It’s not that interesting, Ben. I was just being nice.”

  “Are you sure?” Ben had a smile as easy as his gait, when he chose to use it. “You’re good at it.”

  Again, she shook her head. “I’m good at lots of things.”

  Ben looked around. The meadow was still here, though she noticed he’d again added a running brook. He was good. Not as strong as Spider, but stronger than she was. She refused to admit how much that annoyed her. Ben shrugged.

  Tovah lifted her chin, irritated by his silence that seemed an accusation. “There’s nothing that says all shapers have to be guides.”

  “No, of course not.”

  Tovah resisted the easy charm of his smile. At least with Justin she knew she was playing a part, however reluctantly. “He just needed a hand. I felt bad. That’s all.”

  “And when he started with that whole hero routine, you felt bad, too?”

&n