Stephen Strange returned to the dressing room in the auditorium in Charleston, West Virginia. Clea looked at him, concern on her face.
“Thank you,” Stephen said.
“I felt your call . . .”
“You were my anchor,” he said. They looked down at Billie Joe Jacks. “He’s dreaming.”
Clea looked at Strange. “And will it be a nightmare?”
He shook his head. “Nightmare fled. I don’t know where. The dream dimension vanished with him. I . . . I created another.”
“We need dreams,” Clea said, “whether they come in the night or whether we construct them with our eyes open.”
Strange nodded. They went out of the door, past the guards and television people, past Alicia Jacks with her worried look that Strange smoothed into a serene expression with a gesture, past the curious, and into the darkness of the evening. No one saw them, no one spoke.
They rose into the air smoothly. The city dropped away below and became a blanket of glowing jewels spilled across a black carpet.
Tomorrow, dawn would bring the dreaming back. They would want that change of which Jacks had spoken—some kind of change, some kind of difference in their lives. They would hope for it, and perhaps work for it. Some would die for it. A few would dream of it.
None would remember the disturbing dreams that had set them tossing in their beds as titans clashed in a place they knew of and denied was there.
Stephen Strange wanted it that way. They had to believe—to know—they controlled their own lives.
The two sorcerers flew northwest, toward home, toward the pleasures of love and the pleasures of the flesh. And when they slept they would not need a magical spell to keep out unwanted invaders.
There was only one last lingering thought.
Where had Nightmare gone?
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