Bill and Tess go to the consulate to ask about her son. The ambassador’s assistant tells her about the drawing that had been hanging up in the office (the one that Taka had noticed, the one that lead him to the record). She says the ambassador’s paranoid business partner stole it.
Taka meets up with Alice–Sabine’s patient from the akepoT cult–and he tells her he saw her pull the bag over the Belgian ambassador’s head in the dream.
Burton is at Askeyton, and surprise, Charlotte (Tess’ mother) runs the place. He also sees the mysterious woman in a picture on the wall. They play a bit of verbal cat and mouse about the woman, Charlotte trying to convince Burton that the woman has a husband and none of his experiences with the woman were real.
Bill and Tess go to the paranoid business partner’s place, and find him dead, having hung himself. So many people connected to this end up dead.
Sabine rips Taka a new one for talking to Alice. Not only is she Sabine’s patient, she’s a minor. He tells Sabine about what the cult has told him (that they can help wake his mother up), and she basically thinks it’s all nuts, and that Taka was seeing her only to get close to Alice. That isn’t strictly true, but she’s pretty pissed off.
Bill and Tess go back to Bill’s, and she puts on a record–and it’s Somnambulism? The same one we saw Taka track down, buy, and play. They must have gotten it from the business partner’s place? It’s got the sketch on the back. They find information that ties the weird shrine to the business partner to White Sand.
Burton pursues Charlotte, because she obviously knows what happened to his mysterious woman. She admits the woman was a reporter of sorts, wanting to write that expose on Askeyton. Charlotte gets a bit weird, and convinces Burton that to find out what happened to her, he needs to follow in her footsteps. She locks him in an oubliette. He starts to get a bit claustrophobic.
Taka calls Sabine to apologize, and Somnambulism is paying in the background. Everything in this story is a weird Gordian knot.
Tess dreams of a white office she can’t get out of. Everyone seems to be trapped in one place or another. She hears her son crying. She sees him, just out of reach through a mirror/window.
Burton dreams he’s on a plane with his mysterious woman, and Charlotte approaches, dressed as a flight attendant, saying there’s something wrong with the plane. They end up off the plane, standing in a field. They watch the plane crash. She tells him they’re helpless, and Burton rewinds the image, and wakes.
Taka goes back to the cult to arrest the leader, figuring he’s been had. They argue over whether he has anything to keep her on, and while she’s talking about her righteous cause, the venue suddenly changes. Is this a dream? Taka snaps them back to the interrogation room they started in and lets her go. He’s got some power here.
Bill and Tess go to find more out about the deal between White Sand and the Belgians,and she sees Woody there. Woody tries to warn Tess away from Bill. Later, she tells Bill about it, and Bill gives her a new phone to broadcast the meeting she’s planning to have with Woody.
Someone lets Burton out of the oubliette, but in the dream. They go to the mysterious woman’s place, where Charlotte tries to convince Burton that he knows nothing about the woman, and is only in love with the idea of the woman. She shows him how the woman is now, locked up and treated like an animal. He gets snatched up and treated like her in his dream, tortured repeatedly until he shivers on the floor. Charlotte is trying to get him to abandon the woman. He refuses. The woman tells him to find the boy, he can save them both.
Alice goes to Taka to convince him to try again with his mother. They go to her, and Alice starts talking from Kumiko’s point of view, and suddenly, it’s as if she’s talking. Is she really talking, or is it still Alice? Are they dreaming? Increasingly, I’m thinking the distinction doesn’t matter. Kumiko gets out of the chair.
Before her meeting with Woody, Tess ditches the new phone.
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JL Jamieson is a strange book nerd who writes technical documents by day, and book news, reviews, and other assorted opinions for you by night. She is working on her own fiction, and spends time making jewelry to sell at local conventions, as well as stalking the social media accounts of all your favorite writers.