"Do you think it's that easy?" Samantha asked from the doorway, the cleaver poised over her head. "You think you could waltz in here, click your heels together three times, and magically teleport back home? You fools. I would have spared your lives, such as they were, but now I'm going to enjoy hacking you up into suet."
As Samantha readied to bring the cleaver down onto Prudence's skull, Wendell finally understood the missing ingredient. It wasn't enough to simply touch his real body; he had to touch its mind as well. Wake up now, he thought as hard as he could. It's time to wake up. This has all been a terrible dream, but now it's over.
Wendell's eyes shot open. He found himself tied to the bed as before Joseph Pryde had given him a terrible green potion. He could move his head enough to see Prudence flopping around the bed, no doubt still battling Samantha in her dreams. "Prudence, wake up! It's only a dream. You're safe with me here in the real world. No one is going to hurt you. Wake up."
Prudence's body stopped moving. For a horrible moment Wendell thought she must have died. Then she cleared her throat and asked, "Are we alive?"
"I think so," he said.
"Are you sure this isn't a dream too?"
"I don't know, but even if it is, we'd better untie ourselves and get out of here." Freeing themselves didn't prove difficult. A trick he'd learned from Samantha was how to angle his wrist so that a knot appeared to be tight, but in reality had enough slack for him to slip his wrist through once he relaxed. He freed his right hand and then untied the rest of the knots.
After he freed Prudence, she crushed him in a bear hug. She kissed him not on the forehead or cheek, but on the lips as he'd always hoped Samantha would do. Prudence's lips were dry, but at the moment they tasted as sweet as honey. "You saved my life," she said. "Another minute and I would have died a pig."
"You were never a pig," he said.
"You were never a girl," she said and kissed him again.