Wanda tells me she wants a private concert if I can get my nightmare band ready for one. They are nowhere near ready, partly because it very hard to teach them and partly because I've only been half serious about actually making them into a band. But Wanda doesn't have to know any of that. And it would feel good to give a proper performance again.

So instead I smirk at her and say, "Sure! as long you agree to sing at least one song with me during it."

She does not make me guess what the problem is she just sighs, nods and our dancing is over for now and possibly for the whole evening. Wanda grabs us some wine and we go out to the terrace.

I amuse myself by providing us with an enormous silvery moon en-ringed by a belt of smaller moons. She starts by saying she did not ask me here just to talk business. Though I understand why she asks. She is a good leader and uses any means at her disposal to help her do her job. And am I not doing something similar when I ask her for news of the waking world?

The Carnival's back in Excolo. Woke up Saturday and 'poof', there it was.

"Ah." So. I had wondered, when more and more dreams of the circus started to appear, and so many of them were nightmares. Next to the Tower, the Carnival Diabolique does feature quite often in Excoloer's nightmares.

Perhaps that's why so many of the mirrors in my front hall have become fun house mirrors.

Sip my wine and put one hand on Wanda's shoulder. Her skin beneath my hand is warm and silky smooth. "Are they complaining a lot about it? Or has it become something one only mentions in whispers?"

If they are complaining it can't be that bad yet. Not that I can really talk much about the carnival. Only went the one time with John. Our first date. And I like Zann, who is with the Carnival.