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  Edward looked up from his place on the ground. “I never meant to hurt you, Tovah.”

  She didn’t have enough time to step between Edward and Ben, and it probably wouldn’t have mattered if she had. Edward rose up atop the sudden wave of black water that hung over them, rich with the smell of secrets. Tovah’s legs buckled, twisting at the last moment, subject to the push of someone’s will—whose, she wasn’t sure, but when her legs melded and grew glittering scales to become the muscular tail of a fish, she knew. Ben had done this once again, pushed her hard and fast into a shape that wasn’t hers.

  She didn’t have time to be grateful before the water curling into a solid wave above them crashed down on top of them all.

  She swam. The dark water and the taste of despair choked her, but she breathed. She opened her eyes and could see in the blackness. She pushed with her tail and pulled with her arms, unable to find up from down. She tumbled over and over as the water retreated and then she was on the wet sand, bruised and aching but alive.

  Spider was gone. Ben lay curled on the sand, his eyes closed, blood and bruises already forming on every patch of skin Tovah could see. He’d saved her, but not himself.

  Edward, perfectly dry and unharmed, stepped down the retreating wave as though it was a set of stairs, coming to land beside her. His bare toes curled into the sand by her face. He looked down at her helplessness, the form Ben had given her useless on the ground.

  “Apparently I am,” he said without a trace of emotion, “a crazy fuck.”

  Ben didn’t move. Tovah looked up at Edward. He looked back at her with yet another stranger’s face.

  He’d encouraged her to climb the mountain, taught her she could do anything. This world had no limits for her but those that existed in her mind. And at last Tovah had reason to banish all of them.

  She was strong. Unstoppable. She got to her feet without struggling, changing her form as fast as she thought it. The black lake vanished in a blink, the sand in a breath.

  “You are done, Edward.”

  Edward rippled but Tovah held him in place with the lift of a finger. He cried out. She’d hurt him.

  Good.

  She caged him with her desire that he be so caged. Silver bars pressed him on all sides, the representation of her will made solid. It hurt her when he broke them, in a place deep inside, but she didn’t retreat.

  “You are done,” she repeated.

  She shaped a haven, once again, the green grass of her meadow, the trees and flowers, the brook. It shaped around them seamless and effortless. Her dream within a dream. The boy looked up from his place in the grass where he’d been playing with his puppets. He got to his feet, face alarmed.

  Tovah looked at Edward. “You took away two people I loved.”

  Edward groaned, falling again to his knees and clutching his guts, but Tovah refused to be fooled by this display. She sealed off all hints of anything other than the meadow.

  “Get up,” she told Edward and, groaning, he did, though not of his own volition.

  Eddie, eyes wide, clutched his puppets to his chest.

  “Look at him.” Tovah jerked Edward’s eyes toward the boy, who did not move or speak. “Face your fears. It’s about time.”

  “No.” Edward tried to shake his head, tried to turn his eyes away, but Tovah would not let him.

  Fury and sorrow swirled around her. When the cold bite of steel pressed the bare skin of her back, she crossed her arms, each hand going to its opposite shoulder. She was an angel with wings made of glass and razors, and her hair waved around her as her will pushed Edward toward Eddie.

  “Face your fears, Edward.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Edward’s shout ripped from his throat. He pushed back but there was no stopping her. Not now.

  Not ever again.

  “Because you are lost and need someone to guide you,” Tovah said in a voice that stunned and sliced.

  “Please,” whispered Edward, his hands raised to ward her off.

  The Ephemeros had shaken and broken in the face of Edward’s fear. In the face of Tovah’s fury it did something worse.

  It began to unknit.

  The blades of her wings whirred, stretching out behind her, but she ignored them. Tovah saw nothing but the man and the boy, face to face, one and the same.

  The boy reached first, a puppet in each of his hands. The man made to back away, but the snicker-snack of glass-shard wings slashed the air behind him, and he stayed where he was. He turned his head to Tovah.

  “I’m sorry,” Edward said.

  Tovah faced him with her wings of glass spread out behind her. She didn’t need to fly. “I’m sorry, too.”

  Eddie whimpered. Tovah turned.

  She pushed. Something new broke inside her and she pushed on, anyway. Like overlaying shadows, she shaped one on top of the other. Silhouettes. The small, frail shadow of Eddie disappeared beneath Angie’s curving form, which vanished under Stan’s snouted profile. Three in one.

  Edward shouted like he’d been stabbed in the back and turned, running toward the shadow tableau Tovah had created. He ran so fast he kicked up grass and skidded to a stop. He reached, but his hands passed through the shadows without stopping.

  He faced her. “What have you done?”

  “You don’t have to be afraid,” Tovah said. “Let me help you.”

  “Oh, you stupid, stupid bitch,” Edward moaned, staggering. The shadows rose up. Black water. “Don’t you understand? Now I’ll never be able to get away from them!”

  Hands fisted, he stood his ground before the wave he’d created. It loomed over him, dripping acid that hissed and sizzled on the sand and turned it to slick glass. The roar of the surf filled the air.

  “Wake up, Edward!” Tovah cried. Pain twisted in her guts. “Just wake up! All you have to do is wake up.”

  Edward looked at her, taking on one, final face. The shifting features halted, each finding its place. She recognized nothing about him. He’d become a stranger again.

  “I’m not asleep,” said Edward.

  The water consumed him.

  As he disappeared inside it, Tovah shaped the meadow closed, faster than she’d ever shaped it before. Without walls, ceiling or floor it didn’t look like a prison, but it had become one just the same. She was on the outside, looking in to what had been her favorite place, her own haven, the one place in both her worlds that had been hers alone. Her private dream within a dream.

  Giving it up hurt worse than climbing the mountain of glass had, but she did it in the span of two heartbeats. It left her aching and bruised, every breath a fire in her lungs until she remembered to shape the pain away.

  But there was another agony she could not shape away.

  “Ben?” Tovah ran to him. She cradled him, watching her tears splash his face. This was as real as anything she’d ever known. She bent to kiss him, hoping to open his eyes.

  It worked. Ben’s eyes fluttered open and he sat up so fast he knocked his head against her chin. Tovah tasted blood but only for the second it took to shape it away, and the sting with it.

  “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, looking around. In the distance she saw a family on a picnic. Her dreamscape had altered a little. She felt the tug and pull of the collective will, felt the desire of someone not too far away looking for a guide, and she didn’t block it off. Not right away.

  “I thought you were gone, too.” Her arms tightened around him, squeezing. Tovah buried her face into the side of Ben’s neck, breathing him in. “I thought he’d killed you, too.”

  Ben’s embrace warmed her as he rocked her slightly into place on his lap. “No. I’m still here. I’m right here.”

  His tears wet her shoulder, and her own fell faster. “I don’t want to lose you, Ben.”

  “You won’t lose me, Tovah.” He pulled away to look into her eyes. “I promise.”

  He kissed her, slow and certain. Her mouth parted, accepting the probe of his