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Jay held his breath until he was sure that he wasn’t going to hyperventilate. Don’t panic, he told himself. He’d never been to the Dreamlands before, so maybe ‘monstrosities in the stars trying to get in’ was normal here. Maybe it had always been this way.

And besides, he’d wanted to come to a safe place, so surely this was safe.

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No Signs, Jay decided. If he wanted to establish himself as a neutral figure, he had to start out that way. He might need to use a Sign to get information from the Library sooner or later, but that could wait until he had at least two of them.

So he’d just sleep a normal sleep, and try to dream something else.

But that could wait. He still had a little time before bed. Thus decided, he put the treasure chest containing the awful figurine in a desk drawer and re-locked it, then turned back to Grace’s computer, sorting the files by date.

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I have to be cautious about this.

Jay thought it reluctantly, but he did think it. Yes, Louis was attractive, mask and all, and under normal circumstances, going out for a dinner date—and maybe more—with a cute boy sounded great. They’d only met that morning, but they’d hit it off pretty well, and… well, why not?

But under the circumstances, Jay wasn’t sure he could take things at face value (as it were). Without spending more time getting to know Louis, he had no way of knowing his intentions. Was it even possible to separate Louis from the fact that he was the bearer of the Pallid Mask, the messenger of the King in Yellow? That, before they’d even met, Louis had left him a message about the Yellow Sign?

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Jay jerked his gaze back to Hannah from the door, almost distracted by the cold tension that had been between her and Louis. “Ah, that’s… by Mother, do you mean…?”

“I am a Child of Yidhra,” Hannah said, with another sharp-toothed but, he thought, friendly smile. “So, you know. Mother.”

“Right, sorry if that was obtuse,” he said, smiling back. He decided to let go of whatever was going on between the two of them; the book had said that Yidhra’s sign was invoked to oppose the other Elder Gods, so it made sense that Hannah would be a bit cool when major players in other cults showed up. Louis might have said some pretty reassuring things to Jay personally, but ultimately, this was really none of his business. “I haven’t received a lot of direct names of, uh, groups or anything.”

She laughed. “You can say cult; it’s totally true.” Her hands were working briskly, taking things out of the bin and sorting them into piles. “‘The Children of Yidhra’, for me. If anyone else doesn’t give their association out, they’re just trying to be sketchy and mysterious. I mean, I get it, this whole thing sort of loans itself to sketchy mysteriousness.”