Grim took Cat’s hand and then the landscape shifted once more.

  Sirius had been ready to attack the caterpillar, only now there was no caterpillar. His body didn’t even feel like it was in one place anymore. The world took on a shimmering crystal like feel and it was as if he was looking at it from all directions, or perhaps just one direction but with mirrors placed everywhere. He could even see the back of his own head.

  He was about to complain that this was far far worse than simply not having solid ground to stand on when Grim’s voice echoed through whatever space this was.

  “Hang on, It’s fighting back. Just gimme a sec.”

  Then the world was whole again, but it was still weird. Everything was wood, polished table-like wood, the floor, the sky, the giant creature before them which was no longer a caterpillar but more like a giant clock with eyes.

  Grim let go of Cat’s hand and went for it with an axe.

  The creature dodged.

  The sky thundered overhead. Sirius looked up and saw what looked like semi-real sky breaking through, if not for the colour of it. It was a stark mix of green and pink and it was quickly filling with dark black storm clouds.

  The sky released a downpour of water so sudden it was like someone had simply turned on a tap.

  Cat gave a yelp and before the water could reach them she held up her hands.

  The next thing Sirius knew, large blobs of jelly were hitting the ground around them.

  Grim paused between attacks and looked up at the falling jelly in surprise. “Ah ha!” he exclaimed with a glance at Cat. “It’s not a fear of jelly at all. That’s just how you deal with what you’re really afraid of.”

  Cat glared at him. “Go fuck yourself.”

  Grim just laughed. Then he got serious again. “Right, well if you can do that then you should be able to deal with this. It’s all about perception. It looks like what we think it looks like so change what you think it looks like. We need to fix it to a shape. Use your imagination.”

  Cat was too busy still glaring at Grim to notice the watery hand that was reaching down from the sky toward her.

  Sirius noticed it though and he dashed over and yanked her out of the way just in time.

  Cat growled at the thing as the remnants of it crashing into the ground splashed them both. The whip she’d summoned had long since disappeared.

  “Oh, come on.” You can do better than that,” Grim yelled at Cat, before making another attempt at the dreamweaver.

  Too bad for him, its wooden body moved more like a liquid than a solid and Grim’s attack just went straight through it.

  Sirius could sense his sister’s frustration. She obviously didn’t know what Grim required of her.

  Sirius tried to puzzle it out. It was about perception. Sirius knew Kass was nearby somewhere. Maybe all he needed to do was imagine that he could see her?

  He took a deep breath and relaxed. He wasn’t a dreamwalker. He didn’t have their power in here but the dreamer always had some control over their own dreams and he still wore Katrina’s dreamwalking charm. He relaxed his mind and tried to make himself receptive to the world around him, to feel the magic, just like Amanda had shown him how to do many years ago.

  There would be a portion of this world where it was solid and and a portion where it was something else. Kass was concrete, as were Cat and Grim, but everything else could be anything. That meant it should feel different. Sirius didn’t try to force it, he let the feeling come to him.

  There! Lying on a stone slab just beyond the wooden feet of the dreamweaver, was Kass.

  Sirius took off running toward her, paying little attention to the towering beast above him. He knew when he was outmatched. He’d leave that thing for Grim and Cat to deal with.

  But the dreamweaver didn’t ignore him. It sent one large wooden foot toward him.

  However, Sirius did not fear wood. Wood was nothing to a strongarm. Nor did he fear the water it had become when Grim had struck it. Sirius knew water. It was familiar to him. He had sailed the seas and swam in the stuff like it was a second home.

  Wood or water, it did not matter. He simply punched right through it and kept going.

  Splinters flew everywhere.

  Grim laughed. “Your brother’s better than you are at this and he’s not even a dreamwalker,” he yelled at Cat.

  Sirius reached Kass. Picked her up off the slab and was immediately on his way back to where Cat stood.

  He watched as an angry Cat threw a fireball right toward Grim.

  Grim ducked.

  The fireball hit the dreamweaver and exploded on impact.

  Grim laughed again. “Woooo! Yes! Do that again. Fire, perfect!” Grim backed up, summoned a flamethrower, and pointed it at the giant clock. “Keep it wood. Don’t let it shift,” he commanded.

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  Sirius reached Cat, who was staring down at her own hands in puzzlement more than in anger now. A glance back at the dreamweaver showed the thing was still on fire.

  “What, you scared it’s going to turn to water?” Grim yelled at Cat.

  Sirius knew a bait when he heard one. It was a good call on Grim’s behalf though. Cat’s face hardened from confusion back to anger again and she threw another fireball.

  Sirius didn’t see if she’d aimed at Grim or the creature this time. He was distracted as Kass started to stir. He helped her find her feet and then he provided her an arm to lean against.

  She clutched at him and surveyed the scene with wild eyes.

  When Sirius next looked over at the dreamweaver he could see that both Cat and Grim were attacking the thing with fire now. The giant wooden clock no longer looked like a clock. All the features that had defined it as such had been melted off. Now it just looked like massive flailing bonfire. Sirius wasn’t sure if that meant they were winning or not.

  “I’ve got Kass. We should go,” he yelled at them.

  Grim glanced his way and shook his head. “No way! We let this thing go again and it will be chaos. We have it here now. We have to finish it off.

  “What are they doing to it?” Kass asked from beside him.

  Sirius shook his head. “I don’t know. Perception. Making it think its dead I think.”

  Kass didn’t ask how that was possible. She just nodded, as if she understood exactly what that felt like.

  Sirius gave her a worried look. He hoped she was okay.

  She didn’t look at him though. Her eyes were fixed on the battle ahead. “Should we help?”

  He frowned. She was still leaning some of her weight against him. He doubted she was in fighting condition and neither of them were professional dreamwalkers. He knew just enough to get by but he wasn’t about to leave Kass on her own.

  “We’d probably just get in the way,” Sirius answered.

  “Who’s the guy?”

  “A friend of Coal’s I think.”

  Sirius turned back to look at the battle. Cat had summoned some sort of long chain and had it wrapped around the dreamweaver. The burning wood crackled and buckled inward as she pulled the chain tight. If that had been a normal fire and chain, Sirius was certain her hands would have been burnt by now.

  Meanwhile, Grim had summoned some sort of oversized halberd, and was busy chopping the thing from the top. His boots stood in flame but not a lick of it caught him alight.

  None of it made any logical sense to Sirius. He was torn between helping, fleeing with Kass to find a way out, and standing his ground. He picked the latter partly because he wasn’t certain how to get out and because he didn’t want to draw attention from the dreamweaver. He wasn’t certain they had it trapped.

  For a moment things seemed to take a turn for the worse as the scene in front of him changed several times over in the span of a few seconds. The dreamweaver was the bonfire, then it was a swarm of little sparks, zombies, dogs, a pack of feather-filled charred pillow cases. Cat and Grim seemed to materialise out of existence and back again like a television with bad reception.

  Sirius kept a hold of Kass so at least she wouldn’t disappear.

  And then just like that it was over.

  All four of them stood alone on the top of a small green hill among several hundred rolling green hills. The sky was blue. The sun was out. The world was silent. If not for the sameness all around and the strange lack of any scent, everything would have been quite normal.

  “Did you kill it?” Sirius asked them. There was no longer any sign of it.

  “It is done,” Grim replied.

  “You’re sure?”

  “For the most part. Some semblances of it may remain but they are very small and it will take time for them to grow again.”

  Cat was eyeing their surroundings with suspicion. “I didn’t think you could kill a dreamweaver.”

  “You can’t. It has simply divided which they tend to do naturally when they get too large anyway,” Grim replied. “Sometimes of course they need a little bit of help.”

  “You mean there’s more of those things now?” Sirius asked.

  “There are but they’re very small and not all of them will grow. Some will fade into nothing of their own accord. That was a big one but far from the biggest I’ve ever seen.” Grim fixed his eyes on Kass. “You’re very lucky.”

  “How do we get out?” Sirius asked.

  “That’s easy.” Grim gave a wave of the hand.

  A moment later Sirius found himself back in Kass’s apartment, kneeling by Kass’s bed, holding Kass’s hand.

  “Job done,” said Grim.

  Kass stirred and groaned.

  Sirius was sure she must be pretty stiff after lying still for so long. He helped her sit up.

  Amanda appeared by his side a moment later.

  He glanced at her and could see the worry on her face.

  “Are you alright?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  She turned her attention to Kass next but for a moment she seemed unsure of what to do.

  Kass was rubbing her forehead and eyes, looking confused.

  Then an arm thrust its way between Amanda and Sirius. Coal offered a glass of water toward Kass. “Here, drink some of this.”

  Amanda stepped out of the way, looking almost relieved. Sirius felt guilty. She probably had a lot of mixed feelings about all this given the way he hadn’t initially told her he was coming here. It was too late to fix that now but there would be a lot of talking later he knew.

  Then Jesse ran between all of them and threw his arms around Kass. “Mum!”

  Kass winced slightly at the energy of the hug but quickly returned it. “Hey,” she said in a slightly croaky voice.

  Coal set the drink on the nightstand and then backed up, giving them space. He turned toward Grim. “You killed it?”

  “No, but it’s gone. To small to bother anyone now.”

  Sirius looked around the room. “Where’s Cat?”

  Amanda glanced up from where she had been eyeing the floor, concern etched into her features. “Cat was there?”

  Sirius couldn’t help but smile slightly. Amanda was always worrying about others first even when she was in pain herself. He loved that about her. But his smile fell. He had hurt her coming here. He had saved Kass but he had hurt Amanda.

  He nodded.

  Before he could say any more, Grim answered, “She’s back wherever she jumped in from.”

  “That would be jail,” replied Amanda with a slight sigh.

  Grim cocked an eyebrow.

  Amanda gave Coal a pointed look. They’d obviously discussed Cat’s situation.

  With a smile and a slight bow, Coal said to Amanda, “I’ll pick you up at 6, Saturday.”

  Sirius frowned. What deal had she made?

  Coal’s eyes swept past him and found Grim. That was all the signal it took for Grim to get the message that it was time to go. He swept past them all and joined Coal by the door. Glancing back toward the group he said with a nod at Kass, “She’ll probably need some food, a change of clothes, a shower, maybe even some new sheets, but I’ll leave that to you.”

  With that, Grim and Coal left.

  Sirius glanced down at Kass. She’d gone a bright pink and was biting her lip.

  Jesse was standing a few feet from the bed, fists clenched, glaring after Coal and Grim.

  Sirius was surprised by the boy’s reaction. Sure, nobody really liked the aristocrats, but the kid was 10.

  “Hey, Jesse,” Amanda said to he boy. “Why don’t you go see if you can rustle up some food for your mum. You think you could handle that?”

  Jesse’s posture immediately relaxed. He nodded and then scurried off toward the kitchen.

  Sirius met Amanda’s gaze.

  All her earlier uncertainty was gone. “You want to go and help him?” she asked.

  It wasn’t an order, just a suggestion. Sirius decided it was a good one to heed. Amanda would probably find it hard to see him this close to Kass, but no matter how Amanda might feel about the other woman, he trusted his wife to look after her.