Henry spent another few weeks in the Republic of Rhone. The first several days were spent recovering. Ruby fed him and tended his wound until he was able to get up and move about. Ruby lived in a flat above a fortune teller’s shop, with a hand-painted wooden sign depicting a crystal ball and illegible letters hanging over the door. “Madame Reveur, Fortune Teller,” said Ruby, a little proud and a little embarrassed.

Henry felt safe enough that he let her lead him about like a tourist some days. They ate out every day, visiting cozy little cafes that served exclusively fancy versions of foods Ruby liked (mainly sweets with berries and fondant). There were museums, libraries, and the city’s famous train station, which was a museum and a library as well as a train station.

The first time they went, Ruby bade Henry to watch a seemingly random couple. The world seemed to sharpen around the two, as if a spotlight were shining on them. “I thought you were dead all these years,” the woman snapped. Henry thought she looked like Ingrid Bergman. “Do you have any idea how that felt, having to live my life with the hole you left in it? All these years rebuilding it, filling the hole brick by brick—”

Dramatic music was swelling, and Henry realized this was the resolution of the novel’s love story. “The plot plays out here on a loop,” said Ruby. “I like to go around and look for the scenes. Like a scavenger hunt.”

Henry snickered. The woman slapped her companion across the face, then kissed him (he looked exactly like Humphrey Bogart). The music reached its bombastic climax as pseudo-Ingrid lifted her foot, red kitten-heel dangling off her toes. Ruby clapped. The rest of the world didn’t seem to care.

Every day, Henry would channel. Each element and aspect had a distinct color and texture that appeared when casting a spell, or in the mind’s eye of the practitioner when they channeled. Earth was a golden amber color, malleable like metal, and frequently shot through with black cracks. Dream magic was far more chaotic on the senses, shimmering and changing, refusing a fixed color and texture, though it tended towards pinks and purples, and it liked to bubble and smoke.

The first day he channeled in the Dreamlands, he realized the dream magic was lying to him. It pretended to be Earth magic when he observed it, and went into his body. He grimaced at that, although channeling dream magic had been one of his objectives on the quest. It attached itself to his spirit with no issue, melding with his earth magic, where it seemed to stabilize. It didn’t seem to have an effect on his ability to do magic whatsoever, so he let it be. If he needed pure earth magic, he could invoke the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, or one of the Sybilline rites.

When Henry and Ruby weren’t touring the city, they were putting their heads together, discussing what to do about Henry’s situation. It didn’t bear much fruit. Ruby told Henry that she only knew the things he knew, and the things the real Ruby knew, so the insights she had given him were mostly things he would have come up with himself. She also tended to disappear at random, whenever Ruby would wake up in the real world. On those occasions Henry would just go back to the shop, which he quickly began to think of as home. He didn’t want to be outside in some strange place in case the doppelganger attacked, or if the ward on his arm failed and he passed out from the pain again.

Another problem was resisting sleep, which he did with feverish dedication. Henry didn’t want to see Phobetor again. The magic of the Dreamlands could sustain him without rest, but he still felt sleepy from day to day. Usually, eating something was enough to stave off his fatigue, but boredom would threaten to lull him off too, so he would slap himself and stomp around until it subsided. On those occasions, he fancied he saw a masked figure in gold at the edges of his vision.

By the second week, Henry was feeling much better. Ruby told him about the speakeasy. “It’s not one of the ones from the book, but the text said there were a lot of them, so it’s allowed to exist,” she said. “There aren’t any scenes set there, so travelers like to go there to relax.”

“Travelers?” Henry asked.

“There’s people like me,” Ruby tapped her index finger, “avatars, the dream-selves of sleeping people. Then there’s people like you, adventurers who come here in the body. Mostly they’re called dreamwalkers. Then there’s figments. That’s dream folk with enough substance to become real.”

“Like the doppelganger,” said Henry.

She nodded seriously. “Anyway, there’s usually just one or two people there. But maybe someone there can help you. It’s where I met my boyfriend, he sold me your bandage.”

“Hopefully someone—” Henry blinked. “Your boyfriend?”

Ruby blushed. “Yeaaah…”

“Ruby, you’re twelve,” he said.

“It’s fine, it’s normal, he’s thirteen!”

“You sure you’re not being catfished?” Henry asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Definitely!” She covered her face.

“Are you catfishing him?”

“How would I even catfish him?” she said, peeking between her fingers.

Henry pointed accusingly. “He knows you’re twelve right? That you’re not tall in real life, right?”

She let out a horrified gasp. “I would never do that! That would be evil!!!”

“Yeah it would be.” Henry crossed his arms and gave her a grim nod. “I’ll have to meet him.”

“Who knows if he’s even there,” Ruby muttered, and it sounded like a prayer.

The speakeasy was accessed through the basement of a restaurant and was part of the city’s extensive catacomb system. The walls were exposed brick and the ceiling had big, black stained beams. There were booths along one wall and tables with wrought iron chairs along another, red cushions on both. A stage stood opposite the bar, where a blonde woman sang “99 Luftballons.” A big neon sign opposite the door declared this to be Girasol’s.

Henry approached the bar and sat down. The man at the bar looked like a typical 1930s bartender; slicked back hair, thin little mustache, pinstriped vest, sleeve garters. He was polishing a glass and shot Henry a look. “Hey,” said Henry, “I’ll have a rum and Coke.”

Ruby sat down next to him. “Me too.”

“No, she’ll have a milk,” said Henry. “She’s not old enough to drink.”

“No way you’re older than she is,” said the bartender.

“I’m 37,” said Henry, and he tried to exert his will. Lucid dreaming didn’t work so well in projections, but it wasn’t impossible. He just—

“That won’t work on me,” said the bartender. He had an accent Henry couldn’t place.

Henry wiggled his fingers. “Come on.”

The bartender snickered and shook his head. Then he turned away from Henry and said, “Hi Ruby.”

“Hi Fen,” she offered a little wave.

Realization dawned on Henry, and he pointed at the bartender. “I’ll never believe this guy is thirteen.”

The bartender giggled and disappeared in a puff of smoke, replaced by a cheeky boy with the ears and tail of a white fox.1 “That sounds like your problem, not mine.”

Henry sighed in relief. “I’ll admit I should’ve clocked you as not being local when you didn’t speak to me in Esperanto like everyone else.”

Before Henry’s eyes Ruby shrank down to her proper size for the first time. “Fenny, this is my cousin, the one I’ve told you about,” said Ruby. Henry shot him a two finger salute. “Henry, this is Fenetre Lasair. My boooy frieend…”

Fen gave him the double shaka. “So, what brings you to the Dreamlands?”

“He’s, umm, dying,” said Ruby.

“Damn!”

Henry cleared his throat and explained everything from the beginning. When he was done, he sagged on his stool, leaning against the bar. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to know how to kill a doppelganger, would you?”

“Sorry, can’t help you there,” said Fenetre. He couldn’t seem to stand still. The entire time Henry had been telling his story, Fenetre had been fidgeting with random objects, flipping cups upside down and back again, stacking bottles. His ears and the tip of his tail never stopped twitching. “But if you figure out what you need, I can bring you stuff. Supplies, components, whatever. From deeper in the Dreamlands, or even from the real world, yeah!”

Henry nodded. “I’ll take you up on that when I need it, but what I really need is information.”

“Dream stuff is weird and hard to get your head around,” said Fenetre. “If you could talk to a Dream Lord that would help!”

“What’s a Dream Lord?” asked Ruby.

“They’re the strongest figments there is!” he said, tail wagging. The tip was black, like an inkbrush. “They’re more real than the rest of the dream folk. They can change things, make new dreams, erase old dreams, all kinds of stuff!”

“Swell,” said Henry. “Do you know any?”

Fenetre’s excitement faded away. “Oh, not personally. I know of t hem. I know some of their names!” He started counting on his fingers. “Ravana, Oneiros, Anansi, Phobetor—”

Henry swore. “That’s the name of the demon I saw when I passed out.”

“Whoa, that’s cool!” said Fentre, slapping his palms down on the countertop. “Better go talk to him. Quick, fall asleep right now.”

“No!” Ruby shouted.

Henry furrowed his brow. He was tempted. Maybe, just maybe—

“Oy! What are you doing over there?” shouted the woman onstage.

Fenetre giggled and jumped over the bar, pretending to hide behind Henry and Ruby.

“He doesn’t work here?” asked Henry.

“Of course not, he’s thirteen,” the woman stalked over and took Fenetre’s place behind the bar. Her spangly red dress morphed into a copy of Fenetre’s outfit, albeit cut for an adult woman.

Henry looked up at the neon sign. “Are you Girasol?”

“Yup.”

“Are you a figment?”

“Nope,” she said. “Avatar.” She started to straighten up the mess Fenetre had left behind.

Henry tilted his head. “Why do you dream of owning a bar?”

She rolled her eyes. “Kids don’t understand that there’s work you do for fun.”

He didn’t think she was having much fun right now, but said nothing.

Fenetre hopped up onto a barstool, sitting like a dog. “Hey, Miss Girasol, Henry needs help,” he said. “Apparently he’s dying!”

She grimaced. “Not much I can do about that.”

“I’m being hunted by my doppelganger,” Henry explained. “If I don’t kill it, it’ll kill my whole family.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “That sucks, but there’s nothing I can do about that. A doppelganger can only be killed by their own double.”

Henry furrowed his brow. He hadn’t heard that before. “But I saw it kill other doppelgangers.”

“They can absorb each other for power,” said Girasol. “But the other ones are still alive in there, kinda sleeping, kinda dreaming.”

“It’s dreams all the way down, isn’t it?” Henry said, bitterly.

Girasol clicked her tongue. “I could do something to help you actually.” She held out her hand and a gun appeared in a puff of smoke. The kids all ducked at once.

“Relax,” she muttered. “Look.” She spun the pistol and held it out to Henry. He’d thought it was a revolver at first, but instead of a barrel, there was a four-inch long spike, hexagonal like a pencil. Sigils that he couldn’t read crawled over the black metal surface. The grip was made of rough wood or horn, and it too was scrawled all over with sigils. The cylinder was made of brass and had three glowing green cathode ray tubes along the spine and where the hammer should be. “This is a disruptor, an antimagic gun,” said Girasol. “Shoot any practitioner with it and any spells they're running will be canceled. Shoot a magical construct and it’ll shut down. Shoot a dream creature, and it’ll disappear.”

Henry’s face lit up. “Even a doppelganger?”

Girasol shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe if you’re the one to do it.”

Henry reached out to take it, and it disappeared. “This isn’t the real deal,” said Girasol. “It won’t work. Just acts like a raygun. I can bring you the real one. It’ll take a couple weeks.”

“What’ll it cost?” asked Henry. “My aunt has money.”

Girasol gave him a long look. Then, with a deep sigh, she patted his head. “You just relax mijo, I’m not heartless. I’ll make sure you’re armed and dangerous soon enough.”

Girasol gave the kids Cokes (without rum) and they headed back out into the city. It was night now. Going through a door seemed to make the scene transition, skipping you ahead up to several hours at a time.

Ruby seemed to flicker between her true self and her adult self for a moment, before settling on being a child, the better to hold hands with Fenetre. “I’m gonna go soon,” he announced, as they reached Ruby’s flat. She frowned. “Don’t worry RuRu, I’ll be back. I’ll be looking around for stuff to help your brother with too.”

“Cousin,” said Henry.

“Yeah, him,” said Fenetre. “Doppelganger stuff is so rare, I never heard of anyone killing them! But surely someone has or no one would know that the double has to do it! I’ll figure out what I can, and I’ll tell you.” He let go of Ruby’s hand and offered it to Henry to shake.

Henry took it. “Is this the part where you threaten my life?” Fenetre asked, chuckling.

“No, you seem like a good guy,” said Henry. With a little grin, he added, “But if you mess things up somehow, we’ll revisit this topic.”

Fenetre laughed. “Hey, anything I can get you from the real world?”

“Pen and paper,” said Henry. “I used to journal. I think writing would help me stay awake.”

“Writing can be unreliable here, even with real ink and paper,” said Fenetre. “If you wanna record things, you should just make a mindscape.”

“I just need an activity that won’t mutate while I’m doing it,” said Henry. “And…mindscape?”

“It’s like a mind palace,” said Fenetre.

“Like for counting cards?”

Fenetre snickered. “Sure, you can use one to count cards, I know I do! But you can use it to remember anything. And here in the Dreamlands…” A sly look crossed his face, and he reached out to touch both their hands.

Suddenly, Henry and Ruby were in a palatial courtyard. The walls around them went up seemingly forever. “You can show people!” said Fenetre. A set of stairs appeared in front of him. “Come on!” he dashed up the stairs, and the cousins followed.

They arrived at an upper gallery looking down into the courtyard. There were people here dressed like croupiers. “To build a mindscape, you memorize a location, or build a fake one in your head,” said Fenetre. “Some people are smart enough to make up whole cities in their brain, but I’m not that crazy. I just copied the courtyard of the Monte Carlo Casino and stacked it up on itself forever.” He didn’t seem to find that impressive at all.

Fenetre walked through the people, who largely ignored him. “This first floor is for games and stuff. Each of these guys represents a hand or a move or a number, it’s pretty basic!” As he walked past the croupiers each performed a gesture or pose, and a hand of cards appeared in the air next to them.

“Wow,” said Ruby. She skipped off to the side and a set of stairs formed, leading up. “Where does this one go?”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“My memories of you, chérie!” said Fenetre, jogging after her, and she blushed. “Lemme show you that time we went on the carousel!”

“Don’t wander off,” Henry called, heading up the stairs. But they seemed to lead somewhere else when he got to them, and he found himself staring into a dark room. “Uhh, what’s here?”

A pair of glowing green eyes appeared in the dark. Pale light illuminated a silhouette of a great canine form, with gargantuan teeth.

“My nightmares!” said Fenetre, his voice sounding from above. Henry looked up and saw him standing upside down on a completely different set of stairs. “Don’t go in there!”

“Why would you want to remember those?” asked Henry.

“I keep them in there so I don't have to think about'em,” said Fenetre, tapping his temple. “It’s like a bank vault. Or I guess a jail.”

“This place is confusing!” said Ruby. She was now below Henry, standing on the wall.

Fenetre snickered. “It’s easy to navigate your own mind, but not everyone will get it.” He snapped his fingers and they returned to Rhone. It was daytime again.

Henry sighed and wondered if he’d ever get used to how time worked in the Dreamlands. “Well, thanks for that, Fenetre. I’ll think about building a mindscape.”

Fenetre snickered once again. “Thinking about it is the first step!”

Girasol left her speakeasy the next day, though she asked the children to peek inside every few days for her to make sure the place didn’t disappear in her absence. After all, it was her own dream, not maintained by anyone else.

A few days later, Fenetre turned up at the door with a stack of notebooks and a pack of gel pens (as well as a six-pack of canned milk tea from Japan). Henry would have preferred something a little more professional, but he actually came to like how the pens glided over the paper.

It took him a while to figure out how to write with his left hand. He supposed he didn’t have to make it legible for anyone other than himself, but Henry had his pride. Still, it seemed like willingness to learn a skill in the Dreamlands went a lot farther than it did back home.

After wasting a couple dozen pages on handwriting practice, Henry began to write his tale from the beginning of his quest. He wrote all that had happened, and all that had gone wrong. He divided each page into columns, and on one side next to the narrative he wrote his speculations, his theories, then his fears and pains. Henry wrote about the doppelganger—sometimes when Henry thought about him, he thought he could see him fighting more nightmare creatures. Henry started to draw them. Some he recognized from books, some from his own dreams. Most were unfamiliar.

He sketched Phobetor all in black, except for his cloak, which he did with one of the gold gel pens (there were several for some reason). He never saw the demon and the doppelganger together, and for that he was grateful. Who knew what the doppelganger could get up to with the help of a Dream Lord?

Some days later, he looked back on what he’d written so far and found that the words had changed. Nothing major that would interfere with the narrative, and no lies. But certain words were highlighted in certain colors, and some illustrations had moved. After a while, he concluded that the changes were like the changes that happen over time as a memory fades. He decided then to start trying to build a mindscape. But he kept writing. The goal, after all, had been to occupy time. The mindscape would be the true record of his quest.

A month passed in dream time. Longer, he knew, on the outside. He and Ruby attended scenes, watching the Letters From The Republic of the Rhone play out to the end, then start over from the beginning. The story technically took place over the course of three years, but the time between scenes didn’t really seem to exist, so they could happen whenever. In between scenes they watched plays and went to clubs. Henry finally got to try a rum and Coke; it was delicious, but he wondered if it tasted that good in the real world. Probably not, he decided. All the food here was geared towards Ruby’s taste, and she’d definitely never had alcohol.

Henry’s bad hand continued to degrade. He couldn’t move the fingers at all anymore, and could only barely bend the wrist. Whenever he bent the elbow he felt something terribly stiff inside, so he was sure the tendons might be turning to dreamsilver. The flesh was sloughing off his fingertips, exposing the pointed ends of his finger bones. It was peeling back from the injury in his palm as well. The crystals in his palm had grown and stretched the wound into an almond shape. With the dead puckered flesh around it, it looked like there were two eyes on his hand, one on the front and one on the back.

His bandages numbed the pain so that it was not agonizing, but it still hurt, a distant painful throb like a toothache that you know is going to be bad later. He only ever looked at it when Ruby wasn’t home, because it made him cry, and he didn’t want her to see that. He wished so badly he could sleep, sleep and heal and awaken in his room in San Francisco, healthy and uninjured. He would tell his aunt that there was no way he could do the quest, and she would see reason and have him do some other initiation, something more suited to his meager skill. She would stop holding him to the standards of the Achlydes, and he would stop having to try to atone for his birth.

But there was no sleep. Henry could not wake from the nightmare except by completing the quest. So he persisted.

Partway through the second month, Henry remembered the book in his pack. It had gotten wet and then dried out again, so the pages were the texture of wrinkly newspaper at the edges and some of the ink had run, curiously splitting into a rainbow spectrum at the edges. But it was legible. Ruby—the real Ruby—had left him a bookmark, a plastic one shaped like a shark that bit the pages.

Henry leafed through the book, taking in the line he’d worn into the map. He remembered talking about it with Ruby, and basked in the memory. Finally, he turned the page onto the prologue.

The novel began at the end of the story, with Ayane being led to her execution, thinking back on her life and the decisions that led her to this place. The first two acts of the book were a flashback, then the rest of the story was a mad escape, leading into a rebellion that grows into a revolution. Soon enough he was lost in the book, and lost in the memories of having loved it.

But the book was strange now, wrong. Prince Ramades was killed, and a tyrannical new king took over Kar Zippar. The strangest thing was that the new king was an earth djinn; not some fantasy writer’s idea of one either, but a real one.

He read on, confused, but intrigued. Was his brain just making up new story developments? Was this just fanfiction he would write? Probably not, it was a little stupid. The prose was limp and the scope overly ambitious. What’s worse, the story was getting meta, which he didn’t care for at all. Ayane was becoming aware that she was in a story, and that things were going off the rails.2

Henry could see her in his mind’s eye, and for some reason she didn’t look quite how he’d imagined. She was tall and proud, dressed all in blue, like the text says. Her hair was a rich navy blue, also canon. For some reason though, Ayane had pointy elf ears. It sort of reminded him of the Japanese covers for the books, illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano. Her robes flared out in the legs more than he thought they would, giving her a sort of bell-shaped silhouette. There was a corset-like garment around her midsection, instead of something more like an obi.

He got to a part where she tried to escape the castle, with the help of a new character and Clody. Clody. Henry hated Clody. A nasty little sycophant. He hoped the new narrative wasn’t pushing them together. If it did, then it definitely wasn’t based on Henry’s brain.

> The ground began to rumble, and Ayane stopped short. She spun around in time to see the wall opposite the stairwell move. Amber light cut slices in the shape of double doors, and lo and behold, they split apart, sliding and folding like curtains. It was a portal, not to another world, but to Ghun’s quarters. Then he and a handful of cronies stepped into the laboratory.

>

> Ayane leapt behind a barrel, curling up into a ball, hoping he hadn’t seen her. Then she looked up and met Henry’s gaze.

Henry dropped the book. Ayane put her finger to her lips and shhhed him as quietly as she could, looking panicked. He looked up and around. He was in the scene. Part of him, he felt, was back in Ruby’s flat, but his spirit was here—was he dreaming again? Did daydreaming count?

“Who’s that over there?” asked Ghun, pointing in Henry’s direction.

Henry held his breath, drew his knife, and stabbed it into the thin metal skin of an open barrel full of pink dust. He channeled magic down through the blade into the barrel and the dust sprayed out in a pink fountain.

Ayane leapt up and grabbed his arm, his good arm—he wondered why he had a form here but not in Phobetor’s land—“faster,” she hissed, digging her nails into his arm, and he complied. Together they ran up the stairs and into the buttery, then up another set of stairs and into the kitchen.

It was only then, in the nearly empty kitchen, that Ayane spun Henry around and pushed him against the wall. “Who are you?” she hissed. Then she blinked. “Thank you. But it was also your fault. Who are you?”

Henry’s mouth dried up. He realized she was taller than him. Older too, technically. How did that work when her book came out six years ago?

“Speak up,” she demanded. “Or are you mute?”

“I’m Henry,” he said. “I’m a fan—I didn’t mean to intrude though. I think I just dozed off.”

She bit her lip. “You’re dreaming? Just like the invaders keep saying…”

“Sorry,” said Henry. “I’m sorry about everything else going on here too. I’d like to help, but—”

“Henry, I’m home!” said Ruby, opening the door. Her presence made the scene wash away like ink dropped in water.

Henry looked back to Ayane, who was still there. They locked eyes, and she was gone too.

Ruby made a noise, clutching her hands in front of her mouth. “Sorry, did I interrupt? It’s okay if you have guests over, I just didn’t think you would…”

“It’s okay, Ruby,” he said, walking to her side, looking over his shoulder at the spot where Ayane had been as if she might return. “I think I just dreamwalked accidentally, from reading a book.”

“Oh. Oh!” Ruby lit up. “Did you go to Desert Reign? Did you meet Ayane? We should go together.”

“I did yeah,” said Henry. “They’re in trouble though, something weird is going on over there.”

Ruby frowned. “Tell me all about it—but not right now.” She twiddled her fingers. “We have to help you first. Guess what, Girasol is back!”

Henry smiled. “Good, good. But—how do you know?”

“I just do,” she said. “I've been worrying about it since it was taking longer than she said it would. But as soon as I popped in today I knew she was back.”

Henry didn’t question it. “Let’s go then.”

Since a speakeasy is most active at night, it always started to inch toward twilight when the cousins approached it in the day, even if they set off in the morning. Music sounded from inside as they opened the door, and there was a small crowd of regulars in there, including Fenetre. “Hey!” He jumped up and scurried over to Ruby, grabbing her hands as she shrank down to her child form.

“Good to see you,” said Henry.

Fenetre smiled at him. “Wow, you’re not looking great!”

“I’m not surprised,” said Henry, shrugging his bad shoulder. He wasn’t feeling great, and while he still couldn’t look in the mirror, he knew he had bags under his eyes and nasty little hairs on his chin.

Girasol was up on the little stage again, singing a wistful song. The kids got closer, waiting for the end. A few of the patrons looked at them funny, mostly travelers wondering what kids were doing in a bar, but none tried to confront them. It was the Dreamlands after all, and besides that, the drinking age in Rhone was something like fifteen.

Polite applause sounded as Girasol finished. She stepped down off the stage, her clothing morphing once again as she walked past the children. “Hey, come to say goodbye?” she asked, striding over to the bar. The kids followed.

“Goodbye?” said Henry.

“Hunting the doppelganger,” said Girasol. She pulled some Cokes out from under the bar and set them out for them. “Or did you change your mind about leaving?”

“Honestly I hadn’t thought about leaving,” said Henry. “I was just gonna wait for it to show up here. But maybe leaving would be safer, for Ruby.”

“I’d be fine,” Ruby insisted.

Girasol furrowed her brow. “You said you’d already decided to go hunting for the thing when I saw you earlier.”

“Earlier?” Henry blinked. “We haven’t seen you since you left for the real world.”

Girasol went from crinkling her brow to all out frowning. “You came in here earlier to get the disruptor.”

Henry went cold. “Was I wearing a red coat?”

Cold realization dawned on her face. “You were.” Girasol straightened up and glared at something over his head.

Henry spun around and saw a girl in a red coat and a surgical mask standing in the middle of the dance floor, ignored by the other patrons. She had his eyes. “What…?”

“I started thinking while we were apart,” she said. Her voice sounded like a dozen voices layered on top of each other. “Why would I want your life? Once I destroy you and take your flesh, I can be my own person, have my own name, my own face.” She spread her arms and her shadow spread out like a great pair of wings. The bar patrons shrank back in terror as it began to expand, to grow eyes and bloody hands. “I’m thinking 'Leila.' That’s a nice name isn’t it?”

It clicked into place. It was the doppelganger, wearing the face of a figment he’d eaten, and all these things were devoured figments too, the nightmares he’d seen the doppelganger fight in dreams. “You stole that name too,” Henry growled.

The doppelganger growled back. Two nightmares stepped out of her shadow, a mishmash of limbs and fur and dreamsilver skin. “Tear him apart, and bring me his heart,” said Leila.

Fenetre leapt over the bar, letting out a childish howl and lobbing a ball of green fire at the closest nightmare. “C’mon Henry, now’s your chance!”

Henry nodded and drew his knife, activating its sigils as he rushed the doppelganger, Fenetre laying down covering fire.

Leila drew the disruptor from her belt and shot them both in the chest. Henry felt suddenly weak and he collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He landed hard on his bad arm and his momentum sent him sliding right to Leila's feet. He felt the wards on his bandage dissolve, and the pain instantly surged up past his elbow, hitting his shoulder like a hammer. He could almost feel his veins turning to metal. His knife had fallen from his hand at some point and he could see it a few inches away, cooling down slowly against the cold stone floor.

Leila bent over him. Her mask dissolved away to reveal a mouth full of sharp mirror-shard teeth. Her hand split open and her own broken knife slid into her grasp, the thing that was eating Henry alive. She didn’t gloat. She didn’t say anything, she just stared down at him, breathing hard. He could see the unbridled hate in her eyes, and she knew it. There was nothing else to say.

“Get away!” shouted Girasol, and a bone-shaking BOOM sounded overhead. Leila's head burst apart and Girasol leapt over the bar holding a shotgun bigger than god.

The nightmare creatures surged at her like a silver wave, but she held them at bay with blast after blast, and soon they were crumpled on the ground like shriveled insects, not dead but rendered harmless.

She popped the ammo drum—it was the size of a pan pizza—and reached for another. Leila straightened up and aimed the disruptor at Girasol’s chest. “That was a mistake,” she growled. Her voice was hollow and tinny, sounding from deep inside her body instead of her throat. She shot Girasol in the chest.

Nothing happened.

“I’m not a magician.” Girasol shot her in the arm. The disruptor burst apart in an acid-green aurora and Leila crumpled to her knees. The vapor left her skin pitted and tarnished where it touched.

Fragments of the disruptor fell on Henry’s back and face, stinging like cinders. Ruby ran over, turning big once more as she pulled Henry to his feet. His arm felt like it was a bag full of broken glass when she shifted it, and it must have shown on his face, as she was very apologetic. “Sorry, sorry, sorry! But this is your chance!”

Henry nodded dumbly as she picked up his knife and put it in his hand. With Ruby steadying him, he loomed over the doppelganger, considering for a moment. She looked up at him, one eye reforming from the mess of metal and glass. He drove the knife down into her face. He stabbed again and again and again, and soon he was so splattered in silvery liquid that he looked like a doppelganger himself. The cloak of nightmares disappeared, as did the crippled figments lying on the floor.

His strength failed him and he fell back into Ruby’s arms. She wasn’t very strong and struggled to hold up his weight. The knife, slippery with fluid, fell to the floor.

Girasol and Fenetre joined them, the former aiming her gun at the sodden lump that was the doppelganger.

“Feel any different?” asked Fenetre.

Henry’s head was still swimming. His arm was still in pain and he was feverish. “I haven’t taken the token yet,” he realized. He’d never had to kill Leila. It was all about the token. He slowly bent his knees, shaking from the effort, extending his fingers with a slow agony. Henry touched the token, brushing it with his fingertips. His strength failed him for a moment, and then—

Leila leapt to her feet. Her arm stretched out to a length of a few yards and she grabbed a chair, hurling it at Girasol. It clipped her temple and she let off a shot as she fell, hitting the lights. Dust and glass rained from the ceiling as the speakeasy was plunged into darkness, save for the red glow of the neon sign. Bathed in its dim light, Leila looked like she was made of blood. She expanded, became a writhing thing of many limbs like the ghouls of Simhabad.

One struck Henry in the chest, slamming him against the ground. A second limb arced up into the air like a scorpion’s sting, holding the doppelganger’s token. This was it. It was over. The broken blade came down—

And Ruby leapt in between Henry and the knife.

“Henry!” The word burst from her mouth as a gasp, pushed out by the knife.

“Ruby!” Henry shouted, grasping for her hand. Their fingers entwined, and then she was gone, melted, consumed by the token.

Henry caught his second wind and leapt to his feet in a rage, but Fenetre was faster. He’d recovered his magical energy and slammed into Leila, aglow with emerald flames. He tore at her like an animal and his burning fists cut into her like an arc welder. One limb after another flopped to the floor, slowly melting. Henry scooped up an arm; it wriggled like a fish. His magic has recovered, just a little. It felt thick like mud as he pushed it into the limb, willing it to change. He forced the limb almost straight, and the hand into a point. He willed an array of sigils into the palm, a spell of petrification. He wasn’t strong enough to turn a living thing to stone, but in this place, and with this target, he thought perhaps it might work.

Leila was recovering now, fighting back, grappling with Fenetre, and though her hands melted when they touched him, there were always more, and soon his white shirt was almost completely red from a dozen hair-fine slashes. Henry rushed at Leila and thrust the spear into her chest. She didn’t see him coming, could not defend herself. His momentum and his weakness carried them both down. The spear went through her body into the floor.

Fenetre was free of Leila's grasp. He pointed up with one hand and down with the other, using the motion to forge a flaming circle around them. The crudest of bindings, but charged with power. Fenetre pulsed his magic, and Henry and the doppelganger found themselves in the Monte Carlo Casino, in his gallery of nightmares.

Leila choked and gagged, clawing weakly at the boys, but she couldn’t reach. “She’ll never have a pleasant dream again,” she said. Her voice sounded gravelly, as if the petrification was starting from the inside. “I’ll torture her every night. She’ll never have a moment’s peace—”

Fenetre slashed her across the mouth. Molten metal sprayed over the ground. “No you won’t,” he growled. “I’ll be here watching you.” The gallery warped around them and she was engulfed in a cell like the other monsters. Henry watched her melt and fuse to the floor like a candle left burning too long. The stone curse crawled out of her wound and stilled her wriggling. He turned away.

Fenetre met Henry’s gaze and the fire went out of his eyes. “I have to go back to Earth. We’re too deep in the Dreamlands; time’ll pass so fast in here, she might get out in just a few days.”

“What makes you think she’ll get out?” asked Henry.

Fenetre grimaced. “She’s not my nightmare, she’s yours. She doesn’t belong here, so I can’t keep her forever.”

He threw his arms around Henry. Surprised, Henry patted his back. “I’m sorry,” they both said.

Fenetre pulled back, rubbing at his eyes. “I know she’s not really dead, but she won’t remember me in the real world. With her gone from here, it’s like I’ve lost her forever.”

“I know,” said Henry. He put his hand on Fenetre’s shoulder. “I’ll fix this. I’ll figure this out.” He took a deep breath. “If I figure out how to kill Leila, maybe I can pull Ruby out.”

“I hope so,” said Fenetre. He raised his hand and drew a flaming circle in the air, an emerald gateway. On the other side was sunlight, green trees, the cry of seagulls and the smell of salt.

“Where is that?” he asked.

“Louisiana,” Fenetre replied, with a pained grin, as he backed into the portal. “The Camargue of America.”

“All this time I thought you were French,” said Henry.

“Every true Cajun is French at heart, cher, ” Fenetre snickered. “You wanna come?”

Henry furrowed his brow. The logistics of getting from Louisiana to California at his age, in his condition, with no money…”Tempting,” he said, “but I think I actually stand a better chance in here.”

Fenetre clicked his tongue. “That may be. I’ll check up on you.”

“I might not be here,” said Henry. “In Rhone, I mean.”

“Where you goin’ then?”

“Not sure. Somewhere I can find answers,” said Henry. In the pit of his stomach he knew where he would find those answers. He swallowed his anxiety and raised his good arm in salute. Fenetre replied in kind. Leila let out a final scream of rage as her mouth turned to stone. The portal disappeared and the mindscape faded, and Henry was left alone in the desolate speakeasy.

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1. Spirit foxes are recorded all across the world, in different times and cultures. Kitsune is a popular term for them, but the western variety are properly called reynards.

2. Well, I thought it was clever.