They sat in the gaining light, alone. She'd sent the others away with a small smile and a plate smelling of confectioner's sugar and cinnamon. Chess pieces sat in end-game on a nearby table, the players frozen without tension.
    "You're not eating," she said, lighting her cigarette. She offered the sweet-smelling pack to the stranger but he only jerked his head, swallowing. He was so pale and thin--it seemed that the morning sun should be dancing in his shadow.
    "You don't eat, either, do you?" He asked tentatively.
    "I can't." She shook her head, tossing strands of ill-cut blond hair back from her face. "But you must already know that."
    Her smile faltered a bit as she watched him struggle not to look away. His reactions had been honed over many years of attempting normalcy, of feigning to live the way the mundane did. The fear and disgust surfacing in his expression from time to time was beyond his control.
    "You're the first I've met who has truly seen me." She remarked, exhaling a deep drag. "The Old Man wasn't lying. You are cursed."
    His lips were pressed tight together, but she knew the words he sought to speak.
    "We're cursed." She corrected. "But at least you're not dead."
    A sigh escaped his mouth: an expression of relief. He was not used to agreement in his thoughts.
    "Some people can't see themselves for what they are." She explained, regaining some of the innocence in her expression. Beyond everything that had happened to her body, she wore the face of a seventeen-year-old girl. Eternally.
    "I chose to die, Michael. I begged for it. But they wouldn't let me."
    "Who?" He asked, tense.
    She would not answer, shoulders hunching beneath a battered felt peacoat.
    "I was never human." She looked him in the eye, and his hands clenched the wrought iron of his chair seat.
    Beyond the smoke he could see the clockworks in her hollowed right eye, could see them beneath the gold and the glass of the orb embedded in the socket. Everything else was simulacra--a gray skin stretched taught over darkened meat, the imago of a woman shattered and stitched back together with black thread. He had never seen one of Them capable of sharing a coffee and cake, capable of smiling and laughing and pretending to be human. The thing Jacobi had called Ivy was a nightmare, and only he could see it.
    She seemed to understand his question, and for a moment the color returned to her in a way, and the holes twined with thread did not distend as visibly as when she had first smiled at him.
    "This body once belonged to someone, and when the strong-minded believe that they are still around, the effects can linger." She laughed, stubbing the dark filter in the wet grass. "Some notice what has happened to me more, they just have better manners."
    He blushed, to her obvious delight.
    "I can help you, maybe. I know what it's like to be chased down by them, haunted by them."   
    "How did you fight it?" He asked, almost desperate in tone.
    "I never did, never with any success that is. I could change into things, make myself into birds and such. But I needed protection. They joked that I was the 'bait'." A smile lingered on her granite-colored lips.
    "You were one of the Guardians." He murmured.
    "I don't think we called ourselves that, but yes. We pretended we had some measure of control over the Dreaming."
    He brought the little cup of espresso to his mouth, the cup trembling slightly as he watched her reminisce.
    "Did you ever meet them?" She asked, her good eye still retaining a glimmer of life in it's greenness.
    "Yes," he sighed. "The . . . Fox. I saw her on the way here, actually."
    Ivy smiled again, more boldly. "She has been around. Keeping watch. She can't come here physically anymore, not with the marks."
    "She told me." He nodded, warming his hands around the cup. "We were attacked by a . . . lisp? She said they will know which side she is on."
    "We are at war with ourselves," Ivy answered cryptically. "We did not know the true face of our enemy until recently."
    "What?"
    "It has much to do with you, Michael--but I can not speak of it but to say that you were brought here for a reason. You understand that your curse has given you the power to create, and control, nightmares like myself?"
    The young man nodded deliberately, as if not fully grasping the extent of his ability.
    "This is a special gift, and many who are born to it do not survive. The Lucid are capable of creating dreams in varying levels of complexity, but only the unlucky few find themselves as conduits of fear. Most resist it on some fundamental level."
    "But why? Why me?"
    "There is no pattern to the wheel's spinning, it stops without meaning."
    It was not an agreeable answer, but her profile was unreadable.
    "You killed your parents, didn't you?" She was not asking.
    "It was an accident. At least, my mother was." His voice was strained and quiet.
    She merely nodded. "You have tormented yourself more than you have caused harm to others."
    He shook his head, wetness appearing for a moment in the blue skin beneath his swollen eyes.
    "I don't know," he said. "I don't know if I believe it. I have killed others. Others who deserved it."
    "You are still a good man, Michael." She moved to put her bandaged hand on his, but he flinched carelessly.
    "How can I make it go away?" He did not beg this time, looking up at her with a flicker of rage in his burnt-out eyes.
    "There will be a time when you regret this, Michael. You will want to know this sight and this gift again."
    "Never," he assured her, wiping his face with his palm. "You don't understand what I have seen. What I've done because of this."
    She looked at the table for a long while, tracing the steam rising up from her untouched cup.
    "There is only one who can help you, but first you must help us."
    "Yes?" Michael's face was softer now that she had given him some indication of hope. His eyes still bespoke his doubt in everything.
    "We have to raise the dead and open the gates of Hell."
    To his credit, he did not laugh hysterically.