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  Ava tossed up her hands. “Suit yourself. You used to love bingo, as I recall.”

  “Yeah, well, that was then.” Tovah focused on Henry’s wan face. There was no point in pretending she didn’t remember those days, when bingo was the highlight of the week and she had to be forced to wash her hair and brush her teeth.

  “You know something, Connelly? You’re the only patient I ever had who came back. Lots of ’em say they will, but you’re the only one who ever did.”

  Tovah looked at the nurse who at one time had known her more intimately than any lover. “He doesn’t have anyone else.”

  “Lots of them don’t,” said Ava as she left the room.

  “That doesn’t make it right,” Tovah whispered to Henry, so Ava couldn’t hear.

  She wasn’t, in fact, certain Henry could hear her. Sometimes he could. Sometimes he didn’t, it just depended on how far he was from his waking self. Tovah watched him sleep for a moment or two, then busied herself with making sure his room was clean and nothing was missing. The pajamas she’d bought for him were folded neatly in his drawer, which was good. Someone had nicked the last pair. The stack of books on the nightstand didn’t look as though they’d been touched. The bottles of shampoo and bars of soap lined up on his dresser were barely used.

  “Spider,” she said. “You’ve got to get up. C’mon.”

  His only response was the snort-whistle of his breath. This wasn’t surprising, but it was frustrating. Henry had been a patient in this hospital, on and off, for more than ten years.

  Tovah settled into the chair next to his bed, picked up the copy of The Pickwick Papers and began to read. Doctors had told her it didn’t matter so much what was read to him, just that somehow, someway, some stimulus reached Henry’s mind while he shut himself away from the world. The doctors—most of them overworked and frazzled, this floor one last stop before they moved on to something bigger and brighter—didn’t know that Henry wasn’t lacking in stimulation. Yet Tovah was sure the reading didn’t hurt. He never admitted to listening to her, but she was convinced the time she spent reading aloud to him somehow anchored him to the waking world in a way none of their drugs or psychotherapies could.

  The book served another purpose. It was so boring it usually put her to sleep within twenty minutes. It worked this time, too, her eyes drooping, and she slid a finger between the pages to mark her place. It helped, too, that last night she’d dreamed hard and strangely, that it had been almost too difficult to shape the club and the music. Last night’s dreams had worn her out.

  Tovah wasn’t quite asleep yet. She was aware of the chair beneath her, the hiss of the hot air pouring out of the vents, and the muffled sound of shouting coming from the hall. Aware, too, of the way her hair feathered over her face as it tipped forward and the feeling of dry paper on her fingers. A gray mist swirled around her, softening the edges of these sensations. Colors muted.

  And then, with a subtle shift, she lost sight of the hospital room and stepped forward, moving as though through water. She was there. The Ephemeros, land of dreams. Everything was bright and clear and fresh, and she tipped her face to a yellow sky with dancing pink clouds.

  “I wondered when you were finally going to show up.” Spider crouched on a large boulder.

  Today he represented in shades of gold and red, a spider in formal dress. His legs were longer today, his body less the squat, rounded shape of a tarantula and more like a garden spider. He held a small silk-wrapped package between his two front legs.

  “You’re not going to eat that now, are you?” Tovah grimaced, stretching, feeling her limbs work the way they were all meant to. She loved this part, the first few moments when she arrived. It was like magic, the small changes her body went through as she shaped herself. She controlled how she represented, but in those first few moments after she crossed over, sometimes she surprised herself.

  “It’s pastrami on rye!” Spider sounded offended. “What, you think I eat flies?”

  “You are a spider,” she pointed out.

  “And you’re a brunette,” Spider shot back. “Usually.”

  This was true. Tovah ran fingers through her hair, longer here where it didn’t matter if it got tangled. “Huh. Look at that.”

  She’d arrived with a definite auburn tinge to her tresses. She liked it. Where it had come from, she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t bother changing it. Everything else seemed the same. She did a few deep knee-bends, enjoying the way her muscles worked.

  “You’re with me, ain’t ya? Over there?”

  Despite his claim he wasn’t consuming insects, Tovah turned her attention away when Spider brought the package to his mouth and began to eat. “Yes. Ava sends her regards.”

  Spider snorted. “She forgive me for the television yet?”

  “No.”

  Soft grass, each individual blade a different shade of green, brushed Tovah’s fingertips as she did a slow, even cartwheel. Then a split, something she couldn’t do in the waking world, no matter how hard she tried. She laughed, feeling lighter.

  It was good to have people who loved her, even if they were a St. Bernard and a man who represented as an arachnid. Spider scuttled forward, the earth shaping with his every step to leave a trail of flowers behind him. It was a nice effect, though what purpose he meant for it to serve she had no idea.

  “Just to be pretty.” He couldn’t read her mind, but he had no problem reading her face. “Flowers are pretty. You should try it.”

  “Leaving a trail of flowers behind me? What’s next, jewels falling from my lips with every word?”

  “You could do that, too, but flowers smell good.”

  As he said it, the scent of roses and lavender filled the air. Tovah took a deep, hungry sniff. “They do. Thanks, Spider.”

  “Anything for my girl. You know that.”

  “Anything?” Tovah bent to scoop up a handful of flowers. The details were amazing, if not entirely correct. Spider was skilled, but even he needed to know what something really looked like in order to shape it accurately. He’d taken liberties with the petals, shaping them like hearts. Or maybe he’d done that on purpose. “Will you wake up for a while?”

  His only answer was the turning of his back.

  “Spider…”

  No answer. Tovah looked around the meadow. To please him, she shaped a bird or two. Some butterflies. When she looked back at him, he’d shrunk from the size of a midsized dog to a large rat. The vibrant reds and golds had gone to muted browns and greens.

  “So you’re going to abandon me? Is that it? Just walk away because you don’t like something I had to say? I don’t like a lot of the stuff you say to me, but I don’t ever run away.” She took a few running steps toward him, but he’d shaped the air to a thickness that made moving difficult. She concentrated and managed to thin it, but the birds and the butterflies disappeared, winking out in her field of vision like candles being snuffed. “Spider, dammit! You can’t sleep all the damn time! If you don’t wake up you’re going to—”

  All at once he was huge, the size of a compact car, then bigger. He loomed over her. Fangs the size of her arm dripped venom that hissed and burned the ground where it struck.

  “Don’t you say it!” The words shot from Spider’s mouth with the force of bullets.

  Tovah flinched but stood her ground, even though her pulse thudded in her ears and wrists and her body tensed to flee. Spider wouldn’t hurt her.

  “Don’t you say it,” he repeated.

  Tovah held out her hands to him. “I don’t want to lose you, that’s all.”

  His laughter echoed around them. The grass leaped up beneath her feet, thick and strong. The scent of flowers filled the air. Spider returned to his normal size.

  “You won’t ever lose me, kiddo. I’ll be around for-fucking-ever.”

  “Nobody can be around forever,” she told him. “Not even you.”

  For one rare instant, the spider flickered and vanished, replaced by He