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  Now she saw Ben standing behind Spider. He stood on a patch of sand. Maybe from the oasis. She took a small amount of triumph in the fact she’d shaped around him, wherever he’d been.

  “The meadow again,” Ben said as she moved toward him and Spider. “I always know it’s you when I see this meadow.”

  “Nobody’s making you stay,” she pointed out. She stopped to pat Spider’s back. “Right?”

  Spider snorted. “Kids, let’s not fight.”

  She’d only meant to tease, but Ben wasn’t smiling. He looked different today. A little paler. His blue shirt was rolled up to his elbows, the fabric rumpled and creased. The hem of his cords had frayed more. He held his right hand under his left elbow, and as she watched, stretched the arm slowly, fingers flexing.

  “What’s the matter with your arm?” she asked.

  Ben looked at Spider and didn’t answer for a minute. “I had a bad dream.”

  Tovah thought about laughing, but he had no humor in his voice. “And you hurt your arm?”

  Ben nodded. He stretched out the arm again, then wiggled his fingers. “I had a run-in with someone bad.”

  “Really?” She moved forward without thinking to take his hand in hers. She probed the tendons of his wrist. “Just now?”

  “No. Before.”

  Before wasn’t a real time, though it made more sense in the Ephemeros than a clock’s hours did. Spider clambered on top of the moss-covered boulder next to him. Ben took his hand away from Tovah’s.

  She looked back at them, one to the other. “What’s going on? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “I told you there’s shapers who don’t play nice.” Spider stretched out his two foremost legs like a magician demonstrating he had nothing up his sleeves. “Ben found one.”

  “The same one who is messing with the Ephemeros?” Tovah asked, still confused. And concerned. She and Ben didn’t always get along, that was true, and after their last conversation she was fairly convinced they weren’t ever going to be anything more than casual friends, but that didn’t mean she wished him harm.

  “We don’t know. Maybe.” Ben steadfastly didn’t look at her.

  Like anything else in the Ephemeros, the pain could be shaped away, or it went away upon waking. Why Ben’s hadn’t was more interesting than his pain, itself. She looked at Spider again, then back to Ben.

  “Guys, c’mon.”

  Spider sighed. “Sometimes things happen, Tovahleh.”

  “Yeah, really?” She crossed her arms. “I’d never have guessed.”

  “Not as often as they could,” Spider continued as though she hadn’t been snippy. “But they do.”

  “This woman—”

  “It was a woman?” Tovah interrupted. She thought of the boy with the red-and-white striped ball, the dogheaded man. There had been a woman with them, too. “A woman did that to you?”

  Ben looked at her, the line of his jaw tense as he gritted his teeth. “She represented as a woman, anyway.”

  “But…you think she wasn’t?” Tovah watched Ben pace. “C’mon, Ben. Talk to me.”

  He whirled to face her. “It was a bad dream, okay? You’ve had them!”

  “Everyone does.” Tovah looked to Spider for support and found none. She looked back at Ben, determined not to let his prickliness work her up. “But now that you can shape—”

  He shook his head once, violently, then again. “No. She was strong. And she wasn’t alone.”

  “Shapers working together to create havoc,” Spider said. “Not a good thing, Tovahleh.”

  “No. I don’t think so.” She rubbed Spider’s back lightly the way she’d scratch Max behind the ears. “But what can we do?”

  “We can be careful, that’s all.” Spider turned to look at her with eight small dark eyes like glittering jewels. “I want you to be careful.”

  “I will. Of course I will.” She thought of the man with the dog’s head and shivered.

  “And it wouldn’t hurt if we stuck together.” Spider’s colors darkened.

  “Do you think I need a babysitter?” Tovah stopped rubbing his back. “Aside from the fact you’re the only one of us three who can always find the others, why would you assume that this person, whoever she was, is going to even bother with any of us again?”

  “Because she can,” Ben said. “She likes to. I mean…I wasn’t doing anything to her. At first I thought she was a sleeper. She had that feeling around her. That drain, you know what I mean? From someone who wants something?”

  Tovah knew what he meant. “Yes. But she wasn’t a sleeper?”

  He shook his head. “No. But she didn’t seem like a shaper, either. I mean…she could shape. She did. But it was more like she…took. And she didn’t know what a guide was. She didn’t know Spider.”

  Spider made a low noise. “You told her about me?”

  Ben nodded slowly. “I thought every guide knew you.”

  Spider’s mandibles clicked. “No. Not all. The Ephemeros is a big place, Ben. Big and tiny at the same time, you know what I mean?”

  “I know.” Ben flexed his hand without wincing this time. “I’m sorry.”

  “We’ll just have to be on our guards, that’s all. Make sure we’re strong. Don’t put ourselves in her way. Like Spider said, the Ephemeros is a big place.” Tovah looked at Spider carefully. “What? You’re worried about something else.”

  Spider sank lower, his legs gripping the boulder. “Something’s affecting everyone and everything, that’s what. Something is making cracks in this world. Maybe it’s that woman, maybe not. But things might get worse before they get better, is all I’m saying.”

  Tovah thought on this as she watched Ben keep up his pacing. “And what does that mean, exactly?”

  “Lots of bad dreams,” Ben said, voice grim.

  “People have been having nightmares forever, Ben.”

  “What if that’s all they’ll ever have?” he shot back.

  “You can’t know that,” Tovah said, not disagreeing with him but irritated at his tone.

  “I know how it felt when she was with me, that’s all. Like everyone was having a bad dream at the same time, and nothing good would ever happen again.”

  She watched him soberly. Spider said nothing. “Bad dreams are just that. Bad. Eventually, you wake up.”

  “Not everyone wakes up, Tovahleh,” said Spider. “But you’re going to, in just a minute. So go. We’ll talk again. And be careful, doll.”

  “But—”

  But there was no time for buts because her alarm went off, her eyes slammed open and Max, woofing, leaped onto the bed hard enough to rattle the headboard against the wall.

  “How does he always know?” she said aloud.

  Chapter Eight

  Tovah was in love with her computer. She used it to communicate with her boss, buy a new winter coat, rent the latest DVD releases, pay her bills and keep in touch with friends who lived far away. Kevin had always monopolized their computer to play online games and later, she’d discovered, chat with his then lover, now fiancée. Having the computer to herself—and a new one, at that, better than the one he’d insisted on taking—was a pleasure she wasn’t ashamed to relish.

  Today she was using it to find free stock photos for some last-minute layout changes in the upcoming issue of This Week In Central PA. The magazine was due to the printer by Friday, some advertisers had changed their minds about fonts and graphics, and her boss had actually called her at home instead of emailing her the way he usually did to talk about what they wanted. She was having a hard time finding sensual black-and-white photos that didn’t look sleazy.

  She couldn’t type very fast, but she rarely made mistakes. Even with several different screens open, she was able to move back and forth between them with ease, keeping up an IM conversation with Adina while she worked on the project and sipped hot tea at the same time. Tovah had just signed off the instant messenger when the small red one appeared on her mail icon, and she open