Marrow walked around to the back of the desk and picked up the receiver on the rotary phone sitting among the clutter. “Have a seat.” He motioned to the chair across from him. I sat down, and listened to the odd whirring sound as Marrow dialed.

A moment later he said into the receiver, “This is Marrow. I’ve found her … yes, she’s fine. She’ll be home in a bit … okay … thank you.” He hung up.

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know that ditching would be such a big deal.”

Marrow sat in the desk chair and looked at me, his expression thoughtful. “It’s a big deal, as you say, because you are a big deal now.”

I swallowed. “Because I’m a dream-seer?”

He nodded. “You’ll want to be more careful in the future. That is, if you value what little freedom you still possess. Any more strange disappearances and the senate will assign you a full-time bodyguard.”

I grimaced. So my mom hadn’t been exaggerating after all. “I understand.”

“Good. Now, why don’t you tell me what you were doing?”

I sighed and wondered if it was possible to blush so much your face stayed red permanently. “I saw Mr. Culpepper go into Coleville, and I wanted to see what he was doing. I heard he’s a suspect in Rosemary’s murder and thought he might be headed back to the scene of the crime or something.”

“Did he?”

“No.” I gave him a quick summary of what happened. When I finished, I asked the question most pressing on my mind. “How is it I was able to cast those spells?”

“You’re a Nightmare,” Marrow said as if this explained everything. “Your magic works differently from other magickind. You’re the exception to The Will’s rule. You just never had occasion to discover it before now.”

Marrow hesitated a moment, the age lines on his face deepening. “The things I’m about to tell you are not common knowledge. However, I’m a firm believer that people ought to know the truth. But you must promise you’ll keep the information to yourself as much as possible.”

“I promise.”

He took a deep breath. “Despite the senate’s attitude to the contrary, The Will is far from perfect. It has its chinks and weaknesses same as any spell. The Will-Workers who maintain and administer the spell are just as flawed as the rest of us and more than capable of mistakes. But The Will’s greatest weakness, its blind spot, you could say, concerns Nightmares. The reason The Will fails to control your kind is because of the fictus that feeds your magic. Fictus is the very essence of imagination. It is the one magical force that resides inside all sentient beings, enabling them to create, imagine, dream, and other such activities. Imagination cannot be controlled or predicted by a spell. It is one of the few powers in the world that is truly wild.”

“But I thought fictus was just a form of mind-magic?”

“That’s a misnomer.” Marrow rested his arms on the desk. “True mind-magic comes from thoughts generated by all those electrical impulses in the brain. Fictus comes from something more on the level of instinct than consciousness. It’s why a dreamer usually has no control over the subject of their dreams or why artists can rarely identify the source of their inspiration. Understand?”

I began to fidget with the zipper on my jacket. “I think so. But … if that’s true, how come this is the first time I’ve ever been able to do something restricted by The Will? I mean, it usually stops me the same as anybody.”

“Ah,” he said, his dark eyes twinkling. “There are two reasons for that. The first is you’re consuming a lot more magic than you used to. The second is that fictus-fed magic must be used on the level of imagination and not mere thought. Simply muttering the incantation and aiming for your target the way you’ve learned in school won’t work. You must wield the magic the same as you do inside a dream.”

“But I don’t use magic in dreams, normally.”

Marrow tilted his head. “Do you ever bend the laws of reality? Walk on the ceiling or manipulate your appearance?”

“Sure. All the time.”

He smiled. “Then you have used magic inside dreams. You just didn’t know it.”

“But there’s nothing to that. I picture myself with blond hair, and it happens.” I snapped my fingers in emphasis.

“My point exactly. You use your imagination to affect the dream. Imagination is magic. You see?”

I thought of the Milky Way I’d conjured. Was it really the same as using magic in the real world?

Marrow must’ve sensed my uncertainty for he said, “Why don’t you let me see if I can demonstrate. Stand up, please.”

I did as he asked and waited as he came around the desk, stopping a few feet away from me.

“Now,” he said, “I want you to cast the same dazing spell you used on me earlier.”

I gaped at him. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Now go ahead.”

“Okay,” I said, still uncertain. But he was the teacher after all. “Hypno-soma!” The magic left my body but faded at once, absorbed as always into that unseen force. “See. That’s what usually happens all the time, but it didn’t earlier.”

“Earlier you weren’t thinking about casting the spell as you are now. When you cast it against Mr. Culpepper, you did it purely on instinct. And a Nightmare’s instinct works on the level of imagination. It’s simply how you’re designed. Now, try again, only this time pretend we’re in a dream.”