We didn’t speak to each other as we walked. I didn’t think Fletcher would make a run for it, but I kept a firm grip on Bella all the same. Her nightmare flickered and jumped around us, like a television with a bad signal dropping half in and half out of the world. Was she really so powerful that, even diminished, she couldn’t wrestle such outbursts under control? Or was it simply a test of my limits, of what I’d allow before my patience frayed? I didn’t know—and, I suspected grimly, Fletcher was well aware of how she could play on my ignorance.

I knew something for damn sure, though: I wouldn’t want to run into Fletcher strung out on Jabberwock. Hopped up on her own power with nothing to stop her, a whirlpool that dragged you down into your own personal medical abyss.

Robin looked like she was having the same thoughts, if more abbreviated than mine. She, too, wanted to stay the hell away from Fletcher. Soon, I wanted to tell her. Soon, we’d get what we needed and leave Fletcher to figure out her own exit plan. Soon, we’d have the answers about what happened to Chesnes, we’d know what kind of dread creature had taken roosts in the dark parts of the city. And soon…well. That was where a detective’s job usually ended, with the answers. But they wouldn’t save me here, and they certainly wouldn’t save Robin-

Fletcher held up a hand to stop us. “We’re here,” she hissed.

It wasn’t the same warehouse Conjager and I had broken into—but it could have been. Just another blocky building with a heavy door, although they’d learned and strung heavy iron chains across the window. There was a hunchbacked guard near the door, eyes smoldering yellow beneath a dark hood. Another Watcher from the gutters. “Great,” I said. “Get us in.”

“It’s not that simple. They might not recognize you on sight but they’ll certainly know what you are. You have no nightmare clinging to you, and that thing will be able to taste that like raw meat.” I couldn’t tell who she had more disdain for—us humans or that Watcher.

“Can’t you—convince him to walk away?”

“They are convinced by nothing less than information, Hexel. You know that. And I do not think you want me giving what I know.”

“Cloak us,” Robin said.

“What do you think you know?”

She clenched her hands into fists and unclenched them. “When you’re…a nightmare, your nightmare extends really far out. I remember it, that night, when you were—it was like we were there, standing in the hospital. Like we were in the nightmare already. I don’t like you,” she said. “I don’t like you or your nightmare at all. But if you do that then it won’t notice that we don’t have a nightmare of our own.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Fletcher was silent for a moment. “Intriguing,” she said at last. “Clever.”

“It’ll work?”

“Not for anyone but you. Too much conflict. But having nothing but raw psyche for it to brush up against…” She rubbed her hands together, and the first signs of her nightmare began to creep along the ground, warping the shadows and the light. “Move only when I move. Don’t say a word and don’t give it anything to hunt for. If this goes wrong I’m cutting you both loose.”

I raised Bella into the glare of the shifting white light so she could see it. “I don’t trust giving you this much control. You have no reason to do everything you say you will.”

“Must we go through this rigamarole? Last time we met, you had a gun and I didn’t; today you have a gun and I don’t. I am not stupid, Hexel. I know my nightmare does not overpower you. If I were to betray you I’m sure I would enjoy the benefits of a bullet in my back,” she spat. “Neither you nor I have to call it trust.”

I found I couldn’t argue with that. I took Robin’s hand—she was shivering a little, but didn’t breathe a word of fear or worry—and followed Fletcher towards the door. Blinders settled in around me, like walking down a long, stretched-out corridor, passing by rooms which stank of death and formaldehyde-preserved life. Fletcher was in the garb of a doctor, a white coat sweeping invisible dirt from the road. It was easy to fall into the rhythms of the nightmare, the maze of the hospital—I needed to remember this was only temporary, that it’d last no more than a minute or two, and then we’d drop back out.

She yanked open a door with a hiss of steam from beyond it. I put a hand out to steady it for Robin, recoiling a little at the oddity of its feel: half-metal, half-glass, changing friction like ice. “Hurry,” Fletcher hissed. “It’s not meant for this.”

She slammed the door as soon as Robin was through. Her nightmare didn’t vanish in one. Instead, it disintegrated, bit by bit, panels of wall reverting to dark cement, the dingy floor blurring through clean tile. “Nightmares are meant to be…patchy,” Fletcher continued. “Your mind fills in the gaps—the wall patterns, the machine readouts, the tang of the air—or ignores them altogether. To maintain them for a prying audience, carrying dead weight passengers…”

“We’re here,” I said. “We’re in.”

“And you will never ask that of me again.”

“I hope we never talk again, Fletcher. I hope we never see each other again.” I sighed and looked around the room. Inside was the same story too: crates and crates of Jabberwock on the shelves—although severely depleted here, with only a few left on the highest racks. They were doing a run tonight, Fletcher’d said. “But I need you a little longer.”

She sneered. “For what?”

I pried open one of the crates and pulled out a vial of Jabberwock. Clear liquid sloshed inside, a little too viscous for my taste. Strange shimmering gold particles were collected at its top, and wouldn’t disperse even when I shook the bottle. “To use it,” I said. That was the key, and that was the problem—even holding it in my hands, I still needed a nightmare to show us how to use it.