The trouble with fadeblades was that they themselves faded away if their user stopped projecting into the Worldmind. Since Ethan didn't want to lose the weapon he worked so hard to get, he couldn't return to the real world.

All he could do was hide far enough from Stafford's house that she wouldn't hear him calling out Violet's name. But since they parked so stupidly close to the house they were going to rob, the loudest he felt comfortable making his voice was a stage whisper.

As he later found out, Violet had solved the proximity problem just after Ethan projected into the Worldmind. She actually moved the car around a corner into a cul-de-sac, still maintaining a line of sight to Stafford's house.

When she had seen Stafford pull into her driveway and that Ethan still wasn't back in his physical body, she pretended to go for a run (still dressed in her leather jacket, dress, and tights) and struck up an awkward conversation with the woman who wasn't even her teacher in the hopes of buying Ethan time. Somehow it worked, as far as Ethan could tell, since Stafford hadn't found him out.

When Violet got back to her car, Ethan's body was still drooling in her passenger seat. So she managed to eventually project herself into the Worldmind to go looking for him. It wasn't long before she heard him pathetically calling her name like a lost child. (Yes, she made fun of him for that.)

She caught him up on all this as they walked back to the car. That was when the problem of the fadeblade came to Ethan's mind. Since Ethan couldn't go back to his physical body without losing the fadeblade, he would have to stay in the Worldmind until the confrontation with Westbrook. He explained this to Violet.

"Guess we'll have to leave our bodies napping in the car for a while," she said. "It'll take a while for us to walk to Westbrook's place. We could project ourselves to the school; that would be closer."

"My place is even closer," Ethan said, remembering the location on Google Maps.

Violet smirked. "Inviting me over, eh? Well quench your mind, bud. I don't know your place well enough to teleport there."

Ethan chuckled but his heart quickened. Except the sensation was just in his mind, of course.

"Yeah, fair enough." His face straightened. "I wish I could be in both the Worldmind and the real world at the same time."

"Can that be done?"

He shrugged. "Neil could do it, I think. I'm worried we'll go to Westbrook's house in the Worldmind and find nothing. Especially if Westbrook is in a coma. Might be he just projects himself where his victims are and never goes near his physical body. I would have liked to ask the caretaker some questions about him too."

"Well, Ms. Stafford is home now, so we can't drop the fadeblade and hope to sneak in and get it again later."

"Right. Plus we only have so much time before midnight." He shook his head. "The only way we can do this all in one night is if one of us goes in the Worldmind and one of us goes in the real world."

Violet bit her lip. "Sounds risky. If one of us gets in trouble, the other won't be able to quickly come to the rescue. We'd have to either jump into the Worldmind, or if we're the one in the car we'd have to leave the Worldmind and get into the house from outside. Like, no way. We should both do the Worldmind today, and both do the real world tomorrow."

"And what if Westbrook kills someone tonight?" Ethan asked seriously.

"Come on, you don't know that'll happen for sure."

"But it might."

"Well... we might be able to handle him from the Worldmind tonight and won't have to worry about tomorrow?"

"Yeah. We might." He sighed. "I just don't think we should be taking any chances with other people's lives."

"Just our own," Violet sighed too.

"You didn't have to come. You still don't."

Violet scowled at him. "Shut up, Mur-dock. I chose to. And I'm in this now." She folded her arms and looked at her feet. "Fine. I'll go in the real world, since I can also drive us there. You go in the Worldmind. And keep that stupid forget-me-sword in your hands. Don't drop it like Neil did."

"I won't."

"And don't fade my car! I wouldn't want to forget it while I'm driving."

Ethan looked at the fadeblade briefly and only looked away when his eyes started getting that photo-flash blind spot. "Uh, I don't know if I can hold this inside the car without fading it, or one of us..."

Violet hummed. "I guess I'll just roll down the window and you can, like, sit in the same place you're sitting in the real world? And just hold the fadeblade out the window?"

It was the best idea they had, so Ethan agreed. But there was also the problem of how to ride in a car that was only an impermanent memory in the Worldmind. It might just pop in and out of existence and Ethan would fall right through it onto the street.

If only he could go back to his physical self, just for the car ride....

Actually, he thought, maybe I can--just not in the real world.

Thinking aloud, he said, "Every time I go into the Worldmind and step out of my physical body, there's this weird sensation, like a magnetic pull that I'm dragging my projection away from. But if I can use my physical body as, I dunno, a vessel? Maybe it could just carry my projection along."

Violet tilted her head like a confused puppy. Ethan explained his plan further, specifying that he isn't completely sure the car won't disappear in transit, so if he can attach himself to his body somehow he can ride in the car without needing to leave the Worldmind.

"If you think that'll work," Violet said doubtfully.

Ethan shrugged. "Unless your car is psychic and I can ride its astral projection, I'll just have to ride myself."

Violet kept her expression even. "Ride yourself?"

"I... yeah. Ride my... Look, just... like, shut up." Ethan felt his cheeks burning. He was just as embarrassed by his dimwitted reply as he was by the fact that his own mind was probably giving his projection a red face.

Violet was kind enough not to tease him. She just gave him a thin, pitying smile, and patted him on the shoulder. He hung his head.

"Anyway," she changed the subject, "did everything go okay in Ms. Stafford's house? No BDSM dungeons or shrines to Cthulhu or anything weird like that?"

"Uhh, nooo," Ethan said. He didn't laugh, thinking about what he really did find.

But how was he supposed to explain that he met Stafford's imaginary friend--and Greek goddess--who gifted him the fadeblade from a box in a dusty basement? He wasn't even sure he believed it himself, and he was still holding the fadeblade as evidence.

"Too bad," Violet said with a smirk. "She's too buttoned-up to not have some juicy secrets. Other than being psychic, I mean."

Ethan chuckled. "I know, right?" He resolved to tell her about Athena later. Ideally after learning more about Worldmind beings from Kara or someone. "Well," he said, "I guess we better keep moving...."

It took some time to get Violet to return to the real world--she'd had enough trouble projecting into the Worldmind on her own. She explained how she had to project into her bedroom in order to do it, and had to walk to Stafford's house again in the Worldmind just to find Ethan.

After Ethan coached her for a short while, she figured out how to stop projecting without needing someone to alert her physical body. She was learning fast. But now Ethan was on his own in the Worldmind. All just to keep hold of that fadeblade.

Thankfully his theory about "riding himself" worked. When Violet started driving, he consciously allowed his projection to stay with his body rather than be left behind. In effect, he was just as much a passenger as he was in the real world. Except in the real world he wasn't holding a memory sword out the window.

Unfortunately, he didn't account for how scary it would be to fly through the Worldmind at sixty kilometers an hour.

Simply standing still in the Worldmind was disorienting enough. Being inside a car while constantly-shifting memory images floated past and traffic appeared everywhere and nowhere was enough to make Ethan's stress levels spike.

In the Worldmind, all the traffic lights were all colours at once. Ghost memories of pedestrians and bicyclists and vehicles all blew through each other without noticing a thing. Ethan was not so calm.

Every time Violet's car passed through another car or person he had to scream internally at himself: This isn't real! We're not going to crash! We didn't just plow through like seven pedestrians and a dog! They're just memories!

Yet each time it happened he felt like waves were washing over him, pummeling him into dust. It wasn't as bad as it would feel if he were really crashing into things, surely, but his fear was making his imagined pain into real pain.

He tried to focus his attention on Violet instead. If he could only forget about his fear and pain, it would go away. But Ethan couldn't even see Violet other than the bloom of astral light that filled her like a glass jar. He would have preferred to look at her cascading hair, her delicate brown skin, the shape of her lips.

But he couldn't. And so the fear and pain remained.

When the car came to a stop on the residential street where Westbrook's address was, Ethan told Violet to give him a minute. He took some deep breaths, and despite the oxygen not being "real" in a physical sense, he gradually felt calmer.

He never thought he'd be so afraid to be the passenger in a freaking SUV--not even one with Violet behind the wheel. All in all, instant astral projection seemed a much safer mode of transport in the Worldmind.

Ethan asked Violet what time it was, to show him with her fingers. She held up five fingers, then two, then made an "o". 5:20.

"I wish I could hear you," Ethan said. Violet's astral silhouette nodded. She reached toward him with her hand and he said, "You better not touch me. It might make me pop back into the real world and lose the fadeblade. Sorry."

She paused and then drew her hand back.

Since Ethan couldn't see or hear Violet's reaction, nor could she smack him, he smirked and said, "You can touch me all you want later."

She shook her head and got out of the car. He hoped she laughed, at least.

As soon as Ethan stepped out of the car as well, it vanished from its place in the Worldmind. It blinked back once or twice, no doubt thanks to Violet's present memory, but mostly stayed gone. Ethan hoped no one would try to "wake up" his physical body, but it would be fine there for now.

The house where Westbrook lived (or dwelled, anyway, since he was apparently in a coma) was small and quaint. Psychics sure loved unassuming houses, Ethan guessed. No beads or crystals or even Halloween decorations, just like Stafford's place. The tiny lawn was devoid of leaves, and had grass so short and uniform it might have been fake turf. There was no gate or driveway, and the little cement path that led up to the house was smooth and devoid of cracks.

Everything was so pristine yet featureless, like a mannequin. Even in the Worldmind, which was normally so inconsistent. At no point did the Worldmind show the lawn covered in snow, or the door opening and closing, or the curtains drawn in the windows. The sun still bounced around the sky, rain and snow sometimes dropped from above, but the house remained the same. As though only one person had one picture in their mind as to what it looked like, and it was all the Worldmind had to go on.

As unsettling as it was, they didn't come this far just to stare at the outside. They'd have to go in.

"Don't know how you're going to talk your way inside," Ethan said to the astral bloom that made up Violet's silhouette, "but see what you can do. I'll investigate things from the Worldmind. As long as you're in the real world you should be safe, but I'll keep an eye on you in case anything goes wrong and I'll let you know what I'm seeing on my end."

Violet's silhouette nodded and made for the front door. When she got up the steps she touched the doorbell. A faint ding-dong chimed in the Worldmind and rang out much longer than a real doorbell would, like an echo.

A memory ghost of a slender middle-aged woman with shaggy dark hair briefly appeared in the doorway while the door was still closed, blending into it like a ghost phasing through a wall. The door opened and shut and sometimes appeared to be both open and shut at once. But Ethan was used to that kind of thing by now. What he wasn't expecting was how familiar the woman inside the door looked before she had faded away.

He knew her. He was sure of it, even if he couldn't remember from where. There was something in her eyes, except they weren't quite right. They were too sad.

Perhaps he'd seen her around town. In the mall, maybe? No, he thought, it had to have been on TV or his computer.

Somehow Violet must have convinced the woman to let her inside, because Violet's astral silhouette passed through the doorway. Ethan followed behind at a safe enough distance so he wouldn't accidentally hit her or the caretaker with his fadeblade.

The house's interior was just as pristine and featureless as the exterior. There was a small shoe rack with nothing on it, a bland carpet runner going through the entrance hallway, but no art or photos on the walls or any clutter to speak of.

Violet stopped in the kitchen. The memory ghost of the caretaker appeared and disappeared around the cupboards and fridge and stove.

"What's the hold up?" Ethan asked. He whispered even though the caretaker had no astral bloom and so couldn't be a psychic, which meant she wouldn't be able to hear him.

But Westbrook might, he thought.

Violet turned in his direction, putting her back to the caretaker, and made some hand gestures Ethan didn't recognize.

"Are you... speaking sign language?" he asked.

She "nodded" with her fist.

"Okay, that's the sign for yes... what's no?"

She held up her thumb and first two fingers and then touched them together like a beak being shut.

"Is someone you know deaf?"

After a brief pause, she made the sign for yes.

"Guess I should learn too. Anyway, what's up? She offering you tea or something?"

Yes.

"Okay. Cool. I guess I'll... look around?"

Violet gave a thumbs-up. If she noticed the worry in Ethan's voice he had no way of knowing.

Even with the fadeblade, he was nervous. His throat constricted, and it didn't matter that he knew the tightness was just his imagination. All he could think about was cold, gnarled fingers closing around his neck.

He was in the dream man's home now. Enemy territory. Whoever Alexander Cullen Westbrook really was, whether responsible for the brain-deaths of four people or not, he was still the man who tried to strangle Ethan to death on his first day in Shirewood.

At least there's still a few hours until midnight, he thought. Maybe he can't attack any other time? And maybe he can only attack latents anyway? Just wish I knew how any of this worked....

There was also the question of who the next victim would be. Now that Ethan and Violet were both full-fledged psychics, the dream man would leave them alone in favour of a latent. At least, if Neil's theory was correct.

Ethan remembered Neil also saying there was no way to tell who was latent until they appeared in the Worldmind somewhere a psychic could find them. That meant that the next victim could be anyone. And unless they lived long enough to happen upon one of Neil's posters, like Ethan did, they could be stalked and killed and no one would know what really happened to them.

Which was why Ethan couldn't chicken out now.

He gripped the fadeblade tight, keeping it low and pointed straight so it wouldn't affect his vision while he had a look around the main floor of the house.

At first glance it looked like any middle-class home. Nice modern furniture, clean white walls, big windows, plants. But, again, there were no pictures on the walls. No TV or computer or even any books. Nothing in the way of art or entertainment or anything interesting to look at. The living room just had a couch, a couple chairs, coffee tables, and a sideboard. Surfaces held nothing but plants and lamps.

Any normal house (in the Worldmind, anyway) would have plates and cups appearing and disappearing, books moving around surfaces, or at least memory ghosts of residents or pets. This house was almost still and static enough to be mistaken for the real world, if it weren't for the changing lighting outside the windows.

Good thing I'm not already scared shitless, Ethan thought, or this eerie-ass house might start to freak me out....

A few voices came from the kitchen, disjointed and inarticulate, like pieces of a whispered conversation. "Mister Westbrook," Ethan thought he kept hearing, mostly due to the sibilant "s" sounds. He couldn't tell if the words came from Violet or the caretaker or someone else, but the voice was feminine.

He was about to return to the kitchen when he heard a different voice altogether. A man's voice.

It said, "Stay here."

Ethan looked around as though whoever said the words was nearby. Now that he knew there were psychic beings inside the Worldmind, like Athena, he no longer felt so invisible in the Worldmind.

But there was no one in the living room with him. Whoever it was who said the words was gone. The words were a memory.

Westbrook must have been the speaker back when he was conscious, Ethan thought. It sounded like him--sort of. Then again, the sound was filtered through the Worldmind, as well as the memory of whoever it was who heard the words in the real world--presumably the caretaker. Ethan might have been looking for a connection where it didn't exist, just like when he saw the caretaker's memory ghost. His mind played tricks on him here.

He carried on searching the main floor, now listening more closely for any remnant memories of old conversations. Strangely, though, he didn't hear anything else, other than bits of nonsensical conversation from the kitchen between Violet and the caretaker. He heard the odd rumble of a dishwasher, or the sound of lawn mowers from outside, but not much else. No TV, no music, and no words other than "Stay here" and "Mister Westbrook".

Makes sense there wouldn't be much conversation in the house if it's just a woman and a catatonic dude, Ethan mused. But surely the caretaker has friends stop by once in a while?

He thought about what Violet told him about the woman. That she's a registered nurse, a widow, and Westbrook's sister. Did that make this the caretaker's house or Westbrook's?

Must be his. If it was hers, she would have had some old memories of conversations with her spouse, and I don't hear anything like that. Since Westbrook is in a coma, I guess his memories don't contribute to the Worldmind? Maybe?

Violet and the caretaker were still in the kitchen when Ethan returned. He wished he knew what they were talking about--he was growing tired and disoriented from so much time in the Worldmind creeping around empty houses.

Especially this one. He felt like the sole resident in a haunted mansion. Nothing but astral silhouettes