The town says he drowned. Every night, she knows better.

Kate's husband Tom walked out into the rain six months ago, on the night of the worst storm their town had seen, and he never came back. A boat was missing from the harbor in the morning, so everybody decided he'd drowned. Kate didn't. As a nurse she had seen plenty of people die, and she didn't think Tom had. He'd left his pajamas folded on the pillow, for one thing. His thirty-one books about dreaming were still on the shelves. And that evening he'd promised to take her with him, wherever he went.

And every night since, she has had the same dream, about a city in ruins under a gray sky. There's an oak tree on its own, and figures stand in the rubble without speaking, as if they're waiting for her to work something out.

Then one night there's a road in the dream, and it leads to the In-Between Hotel. It's where they run things, apparently, for every world anyone can dream their way into, and the rules haven't changed in a thousand years. Everyone's very polite. Kate has no license, though, and they've never seen a key like hers, so they tell her to go home.

Kate isn't going home. Somewhere past the last of the worlds they guard, a man is wiping out whole civilizations, one at a time. And the last person anyone saw at his side was Tom.

To dream is to resist.