Michael was the first to speak. "I'm in," he said. That once might have surprised her, but less than two days ago Michael had been the one to insist they help the air force pilot's daughter she had believed was still alive and the victim of a government conspiracy.

"I don't like bullies," Kyle said. "I'm in.”

"I'll help," Isabel said.

Liz looked at Maria, who shrugged and said, "What? You already have a majority. Okay, I'll help. My grand waitressing powers are at your disposal.”

Liz looked at Max last.

"That's the problem with democracy, not everybody gets what they want," he said, a tight smile on his lips. "Okay, I'm in. What's your plan?" he asked.

When she didn't respond, he prodded questioningly: "You do have a plan?”

"Well, I assumed we would come up with something together," Liz explained.

It was true; she had been so focused on convincing the group that she hadn't thought about the next step. Reach- ing into her pocket, she pulled out one of Jimmy's flyers. She had taken it from the diner as a reminder. Now she thought of a more practical use for it. "Isabel?" she said, holding out the flyer with the picture of Jessica on it.

"I'll do it," Isabel said. "But it's a long shot. Since I don't know her, she'll have to be asleep for it to even have a chance of working. And she'll have to be dreaming some- thing useful about her surroundings, something that will tell us about where she is or who has taken her.”

Liz nodded. "A long shot it is. We know what will hap- pen if we do nothing.”

Isabel tried to clear her mind. She found that most of the usual petty thoughts and distractions weren't there. They had been replaced by a single thought, by a single pain.

Jesse.

Leaving him had pushed aside a lot of things. Cleared out the cobwebs. Now, he seemed to have taken up resi- dence in her brain as well as her stomach as a large, heavy ball. By force of will, she loosened the knot and was relieved when it began to disappear. Flashes of her pain reared up from time to time. She let them come and then bubble away.

When her mind was finally clear enough, she opened her eyes and focused on the picture. She saw a girl of some- where between sixteen and eighteen years old. She was pretty, and the picture looked posed, like a school picture.

Jessica was smiling. Isabel concentrated on that smile.

Images of Jesse and other feelings that were surpris- ingly strong rose up. The knot started to form in her stom- ach again. Isabel didn't fight it. Instead, she concentrated harder on the picture, the smile.

Jessica.

Then Isabel began to feel the girl.

There was no better word to explain what dreamwalk- ing was like. She simply concentrated until she was able to feel people. The closest analogy she could make was the feeling she had about people that lingered after she had dreamed about them when she slept herself. Dreamwalk- ing was like that feeling, but instead of dissipating as she woke up, it grew stronger and stronger until she was with them in their dream.

With certain people, the feeling lingered long after the dreamwalk. She still had flashes of Max from the time that she had dreamwalked him while he was in the Special Unit's White Room. He had been so scared and vulnerable. She had felt it all; she had also felt him more clearly than she ever had before while they were growing up.

Then there was Alex. Isabel had dreamwalked him a number of times. At first it was just to find out if he was a threat to their secret, but even then the dreamwalks had left her feeling closer to him, connected to him in a way that she had had no words for at the time.

Eventually she was able to give that closeness a name. For a very short time around the night of the dance when she and Alex had held each other and she had called the closeness by its proper name… in her head if not to him.

Then Alex was dead.

Oddly enough, thinking of Alex did not distract Isabel. It focused her concentration and her energy. It had hap- pened before, and she liked to think that he was somehow helping her. Isabel began to feel Jessica more keenly, though the girl remained just out of sight, as if she was dancing on the edge of Isabel's peripheral vision. There was a cloud between them. Isabel had no trouble giving that cloud a name. It was fear. Wherever she was, Jessica was very afraid, even while she was sleeping.

Isabel concentrated again and suddenly found herself in a bedroom. Looking at the decorations on the wall, she realized it was a little girl's bedroom. On the bed she saw a dark-haired girl of perhaps nine or ten sleeping fitfully.

It was Jessica, Isabel realized. And she was dreaming about her herself as a little girl, sleeping in her room. The room felt very familiar to Isabel, but she knew that was only because it was familiar to Jessica. There was some- thing else, too, a sense of deja vu, as if Jessica had not only been here before, but had had this dream before.

Suddenly, Isabel was sure that Jessica was in the middle of a dream she had had since she was a little girl. That made the dream less helpful for Isabel. A recurring child- hood dream wouldn't have the kind of detail that Isabel and the others would need to find Jessica in the real world. There was a noise from inside the closet on the other side of the room, and the girl on the bed opened her eyes. Isabel could see fear in young Jessica's eyes.

Jessica glanced with recognition as if remembering this dream. Whatever was in that closet scared her badly. Isabel considered interfering, but decided to let the dream run its course. Perhaps it would show her something helpful.

Jessica got out of bed and walked toward the closet. She did so almost unwillingly, as if she knew what was inside and was being forced by some twisted dream logic to seek it out.

Isabel felt a swell of sympathy for the scared little girl in front of her in a long white nightgown and the scared young woman out there somewhere. She wanted to stop the girl from opening the closet door, but Isabel forced herself to keep out of it. Jessicas life would likely depend on what Isabel could learn here.

The girl padded across her room and reluctantly put her hand on the closets doorknob. Slowly she turned it and started to pull at the door.

An instant later, the door practically exploded open, throwing the girl backward and onto the floor in front of her bed.

What happened next, happened quickly. The first thing that Isabel noticed was the noise: A loud roar sounded from the closet.

It wasn't an animal sound that Isabel had ever heard, nor did she recognize it as anything from any movie or tel- evision show she had ever seen. It was a high-pitched and piercing series of clicks and tones that Isabel could feel in her chest.

Isabel was sure of one thing, though: It was terrifying Jessica. Feeling her panic rise, Isabel realized that there was something unnatural in that sound. Reflexively, Isabel found herself raising up her hand to defend herself as Jessica backed away from the closet as she sat on the ground. Then the creature that made the sound took a step from the darkness of the closet into the light of the room.

It was hideous. Isabel couldn't believe that it had come from a child's imagination. The creature had roughly the shape of a person, but that was where the resemblance ended.

Covered in a scaly brownish-yellow skin, it had a large head that came to a point in the back of its skull. Its eyes were a bright yellow, and it had a wide mouth that jutted out from its face and was full of long teeth.

It was a monster, and Isabel felt her blood run cold just looking at it.

A scream sounded from behind her, and Isabel turned to see Jessica cowering against her bed. The creature looked down at Jessica, and then it seemed to notice Isabel.