Sebastian

fear until the girl had been glutted with it, then hollowed out by it. Her terror, day after day, had pulsed through the land, giving It the power to reshape something small and natural into a nightmare come alive—a nightmare people called bonelovers because that was all that had been left of the little girl who had been their first prey.
    Sighing like a sated lover, It watched the last bonelover disappear. Being simpleminded creatures, they couldn't cross over into the alley. For them, the alley didn't exist. But anyone on this side of that fluid border who could be lured or driven onto that sand would disappear into the bonelovers' landscape—
    and never return.
    It climbed down the wall, Its body changing as It touched the sand. As a bonelover, It raced across the sand to the access point It had created that would take It back to the enemies' lair—the place they called the Landscapers' School. It had found a safe place there, a dark place where It could hide while It anchored Its landscapes within other landscapes—and searched for the landscape where the Dark Ones now lived.
    As for the humans and other creatures who lived in this hunting ground… When they came back for the female's body, they would find sand instead of hard ground, an elegant dress that was now tattered rags, a wide gold bracelet… and clean bones.
    *
    Sinking into a chair, Sebastian braced his arms on one of the tables scattered around the courtyard of Philo's place. His body shook, as if it comprehended something his mind couldn't bring into focus.
    Teaser, collapsing into a chair opposite his, looked just as sick, just as frightened.
    What had happened in that alley? Glorianna had told him once that a person couldn't cross over into a landscape if the heart wasn't open to what it held, just like you couldn't always get back to a landscape you'd known if something had changed inside you so that your heart no longer resonated with that place.
     
    When you crossed a resonating bridge, the borders and boundaries that defined the landscapes could become as fluid as a dream. The only constant in Ephemera was that it was ever-changing.
    So what did it mean that he, Teaser, and the bull demon had almost stumbled into another landscape without crossing any kind of bridge? How could two landscapes meld so that you saw one fade as the other became dominant?
    Nothing like that had happened in the Den before.
    Philo, a short, round, balding man who served the best food in the Den, hurried up to them and clattered two whiskey glasses on the table. Sweat beaded his forehead, but his hands were steady as he poured drinks and pushed the glasses toward Sebastian and Teaser.
    Teaser gulped down the whiskey. Sebastian, afraid to haze the edges of his mind and slip into nightmare, took a cautious sip.
    The crowd gathered in the street just beyond the courtyard, but there were a few precious minutes of silence before Philo shifted from one foot to the other, drawing Sebastian's attention.
    "This is the second one in two weeks," Philo said. "There is no demon race that kills like that. Nothing in the Den kills like that. That's why, when we found this one, we asked Teaser to fetch you."
    Sebastian frowned. "I don't understand."
    Philo and Teaser wouldn't look at him. When he glanced at the crowd, none of them would look at him.
    Finally Teaser asked softly, "Are we being punished, Sebastian?"
    "How should I…" But he did know. Looking at the naked fear in Teaser's eyes, he did know. He shook his head. "She wouldn't do this. Belladonna wouldn't bring something like this into a landscape."
    At the edge of the crowd, Mr. Finch made distressed chirpy noises.
    Philo wrung his hands. "If we have done something to anger the Landscaper—"
    "She wouldn't do this!" Sebastian snapped.
    Silence. Then Philo said, "Someone did."
    Keeping his eyes focused on the table, Sebastian sipped his whiskey, feeling the tug of conflicting loyalties. The Den was his home. He'd spent the past fifteen years living among these people. But every good thing that had happened in his childhood had come from Glorianna, Lee, and their mother, Nadia.
    Every happy memory from the years before he escaped his father for the last time had a connection to at least one of them.
    And the year the wizards, those self-righteous pillars of law and justice, had tried to destroy the Den…

    Six years after the Den was created, the wizards came with a Level Seven Landscaper whom they had convinced