by Cara Wylde
GC sat next to me every day. He wouldn’t give up. Paz would sit next to me sometimes, then get angry when I ignored him and move a few seats away. Francis, just like Sariel, gave me space. I hoped he felt shitty for what he did after the Yule Ball.
“What’s up?” GC tried to initiate a conversation in Anatomy of Souls. It was his MO. Maybe he thought one of these days I’d give in and let them all back into my life. He was wrong. Because this wasn’t about them, it was about me. I wanted them in my life. I just didn’t want poisonous me in theirs.
“Nothing much.”
“You doing okay?”
“Sure.”
And that was about it. I didn’t want to let them get any closer than they already were. I didn’t want to be friends, because friends would lead to friends with benefits, and then… I felt like I was walking on thin ice. If either of them kissed me or touched me, they’d melt it from under my feet and I’d fall fall fall into a lake of my own despair.
Between the last class of the day and dinner, hid in my room. Even the Library was too exposed now. I could feel them in the shadows. My ex-boyfriends. Corri told me I was being paranoid, but I knew. Wherever I went, at least one of them was there, watching me. Maybe to make sure that I was fine, or to make sure they were around just in case I changed my mind and wanted to get back together. Out of the blue. Like most of the things I’d been doing lately.
My phone rang just as I was dropping my scythe next to a pile of dirty laundry. In PE, Mrs. Charon had started teaching us how to take other people with us when teleporting. I was drenched in sweat. On the one hand, I hadn’t expected it to be so difficult, but on the other hand, I was glad I was finally getting challenged again in PE.
“Yes?”
“Miss Mila Morningstar, this is Celine Barnes. From the bank. Do you remember me?”
I rubbed my aching temples. “Of course.” Yeah, I remembered her. She’d been the one to give me the news about my father emptying both his vault and mine. Not a crime, of course, since the treasure was all his.
“I’ve got great news for you! The Council has just made a money transfer to your account, payment for the months you reaped in Valentine Morningstar’s place.”
“You’re kidding me…”
“I’ve noticed you haven’t checked your account in a while, and I figured I might as well call and tell you.”
I ran my hand through my slightly damp hair and let out a breath of relief. Well, that solved some of my problems.
“Practice is practice, of course,” Celine Barnes continued, “But two summers ago, Mr. Morningstar sent you to reap in his stead, and that wasn’t practice. It was honest work, and the Council has finally decided to reward you for it. I’m glad, honestly. I believe it’s only fair and you deserve it.”
“Thank you. For saying that, and for letting me know.”
“My pleasure. Call me if you need anything.”
I hung up. Corri flew over to rest on my shoulder, but when she got close enough to feel the sweaty heat of my body, she scrunched up her nose and went to sit on the kitchen counter. God, her nose was sensitive alright! Offensively so!
“What was that about?”
I quickly checked my account and cocked my eyebrow at the hefty sum. Well, being a Grim Reaper sure was a well-paid career.
“I’ll tell you what. Yoli’s getting new clothes.”
* * *
We went shopping, and it was the perfect excuse to get her out of the house and away from Stepan and Lena, who always seemed to lurk outside the bedroom door when I was visiting. I had to give it to them. They were taking care of this kid like they’d never taken care of me. Yolanda chose a few pairs of pants, a few sweaters, and a dress. She’d been wearing her old clothes from the orphanage for too long, and they were mostly second-hand stuff donated by people. My mom had given her some of my old clothes, but since I hadn’t had many myself, they were too worn out to look even half-decent. I didn’t want the kids to make fun of her at school. Been there, done that. It wasn’t pleasant, and it didn’t build character, either. It just made you sad, bitter, and insecure.
When she got tired, we stopped at a small family restaurant in the better part of town, and I chose the most isolated booth I could find. It was time.
“Yoli, I wanted to talk to you about something.”
She was stuffing her mouth with the complementary nachos.
“But first, you have to meet someone.” I figured it would be easier to convince her that I hadn’t gone insane, and there was a world full of supernaturals out there if I could demonstrate with… a pixie. “Promise me you won’t freak out, though.”
“I promise.” Her big blue eyes were trained on me.
“Like… seriously. You might feel the need to jump and scream. Promise me you won’t do it.”
She furrowed her brows and placed her fists on the table, taking the position I used to take at the doctor’s office, when I knew I wouldn’t like what the woman in scrubs was going to do to me, but I also knew it was necessary and I just had to suck it up for a few minutes.
“Good.” I opened my bag. “Corri?”
The pixie emerged slowly from the bag, making sure no one was around to see her. Her brown hair was disheveled, and her clothes were wrinkled. She’d been forced to ride in my bag the whole shopping session, and she wasn’t happy about it.
“Hi there!”
Yoli blinked, then blinked again. She pursed her lips, and I could tell she was biting hard on her tongue. Her reaction was priceless! I almost burst out laughing, but that would’ve been inappropriate, so I coughed and tried to stay focused.
“Corri is a pixie. My pixie.”
Yolanda shook her head as if to say she didn’t believe her eyes and didn’t believe me either. This wasn’t going to be easy, but at least her protest was silent.
“Yes, pixies are real, but not just pixies. Angels, demons, vampires, shapeshifters… I’m going to tell you a story. About how I came to study at Grim Reaper Academy. Me, a human, just like you. But if we’re only human, it doesn’t mean we don’t have our own powers and we’re not supernatural in our own way.”
“Are you saying I’m supernatural?”
Well, she did know how to read between the lines. But first things first, I had to start with the beginning. So, I told Yolanda everything, except two things: that I wasn’t human anymore, and that I found out about Katia, who was trapped in a parallel universe, because I used to be a dream jumper myself. I faded over those details, and in my opinion, the story didn’t have much to suffer because of it. It was overwhelming for an eleven-year-old as it was.
“Those dreams you told me about… they’re real, too. You have the same gift my mother has. You were born with it. So, you see, I need you to travel and find her.”
She nodded. “What about him?”
“I want you to stay away from him. Valentine Morningstar is dangerous. My mother… she knows him better than anyone. I have this strong feeling that if we get to her, she will tell us how to retire him.”
Corri looked at me like I was the eighth wonder of the world. That was the first time she was hearing this theory. In truth, it was the first time I had thought of it. After telling Yoli how awful Morningstar was and how important it was for me to retire him so I could take his place as a Grim Reaper, I felt like a needed to give her a solid incentive to look for Katia instead, and not for him. I didn’t want to send her after him, although I was dying to know what parallel dimensions he’d been traveling to lately. My mother could as well have something helpful, and if not her, then her husband – one of the few versions of Morningstar who weren’t mad and evil. Something’s gotta give. I was out of ideas, anyway. Yoli was my only chance.
“Now that you know lucid dreaming is a gift, you’ll be able to control it. We’re learning about it at the Academy. Corri, can you please get my notes?” The pixie swirled in the air, clapped her tiny hands, and a bunch o
f papers materialized on the table. “Even though I’m not a great dream jumper myself, I paid attention in class and wrote everything down for you.”
Yoli started going through my notes. “It’s strange that you haven’t inherited your mother’s gift,” she said. “I’m sorry. Life is just so unfair sometimes.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. Those were wise words coming from a child. You have no idea…
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll be a Grim Reaper. It’s a pretty cool job.”
“If we find your father first.” She looked up from the papers. “I will find her for you, and then I will find him. You can count on me.”
“Thank you.”
After a while, Corri went back into the bag, and we ordered dessert. Between two bites, Yoli said something I would never forget.
“I’ve always hoped that someone would show up one day and tell me that I was special. That I had a gift or a superpower, and I could help save the world. I know it sounds stupid…”
“It doesn’t. I hoped the same thing when I was your age. And then later, a letter in a red envelope made it all real.”
She smiled. “You’re my letter in a red envelope. Sister.”
A vise clutched my heart and squeezed. It wouldn’t stop squeezing until all this was over.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
We started mapping the parallel universes together. Now that Yoli knew I was a student at Grim Reaper Academy and I could teleport, I’d just show up in her room with Stepan and Lena being none the wiser. After I finished my classes and she finished hers, I’d get food and snacks from the kitchen (Joel was such a sweetheart!), and we’d spend hours on the floor of my old bedroom that was now hers, creating a sort of map that only we could understand. Corri was at our disposal, ready to go steal more snacks for us. Sometimes, Lorna would join us. The mage wanted to be kept up to date.
It was one of those evenings when we were all gathered around a mess of papers, nachos, and guacamole.
“This is getting too complicated,” Lorna moaned. “How many parallel dimensions are there?!”
“No, look,” I said, pushing a bunch of papers over to her. They were filled with drawings and scribbles. “We’re dividing them by time. These are the universes that are slightly in the past compared to our time. And these are the ones that are in the future. My mom is in the future because I clearly remember Morningstar being older. Yoli will focus on these.”
“Right. Any of them in the present?”
“I think I only found two,” Yolanda said in her clear, childish voice. This was an exciting project for her. She was so busy sleeping, dreaming, and writing down what she remembered that I was starting to get worried about her grades. “I think. I can’t be sure. I usually try to find a store where I can check the date in the local paper, or I ask someone. But it’s weird to go around asking people what year it is.”
“Anything interesting?”
She shrugged. “In one of them, I’m still at the orphanage.”
“We don’t care about the ones where time runs parallel to ours,” I pointed out. “Katia is in the future.”
“Have you seen Morningstar?” Lorna continued her impromptu interrogation.
“A few times.” Yoli shuddered. “Sometimes he’s normal, but most times he’s scary, with that black cloak and his scythe… And I didn’t even recognize him once. He looked like a skeleton. Even his wings had lost their feathers.”
A knot formed in my throat. Lorna shot me a suspicious glance, then asked the question she knew I wouldn’t have the guts to ask myself.
“And how did this particular dimension look like? Where he was a skeleton…”
“I couldn’t see much. It was dark. Night, probably, but I couldn’t see the moon. There was no moon. The city was in ruins. Tall buildings crumbled to the ground, abandoned cars, nature taking over. I walked around, tried to find someone, but there was no one, as if they had all died a long time ago.”
“Did you see any bodies?”
Yoli shook her head. “That’s why I said everyone must have died a long time ago. I tried to find a newspaper or something, but the stores were empty. So, I walked some more, figured I’d either find something or wake up at some point. I saw him from a distance. He landed on top of a car. I hid because he looked so scary. It was as if his bones were glowing from inside his body. Then, a bunch of cloaked people appeared from inside the ruined houses and gathered around him in a circle. They were skeletal, just like him, little meat on their bones, but they didn’t glow. They had scythes, too. I got so scared that I woke up.”
“The future?” Lorna suggested thoughtfully.
“I’ll retire him before that happens to our world.” I hoped I sounded confident even though I wasn’t.
“Yoli, was he a version of our Morningstar, or was he… actually Morningstar?” That was a wise question, indeed, but I doubted Yolanda could answer it.
“I don’t know. I’ve never met him.”
We moved on. Another quiet evening of dissecting Yoli’s dreams and mapping dimensions I’d never get to see. From what I could tell, she hadn’t found my mother’s dimension yet. I knew every detail of that dream. Well, not dream. Inter-dimensional trip to the world that had become her cage. If Yolanda found it, I would know in a second. I remembered Morningstar’s house, the fence I’d climbed to see inside, his neighbors, even the people walking their dogs down the street. I remembered the wooden table on the patio and the coffee his pixie had served. I remembered my mom sitting by the pool, reading her book. Her golden hair in the sunlight… No, Yoli hadn’t found her yet. But she would. She had to.
“Your mother can still dream jump, can’t she?” Yoli asked out of the blue.
“I think so.”
“Maybe she’s looking for you right now, as we’re looking for her.”
That reminded me… I’d had so much on my mind lately, that I’d completely forgotten to ask Corri what she’d meant when she’d said she knew why Katia hadn’t been able to find her way back.
“Corri, when I sent you to Bulgaria, you said you found something.”
“Oh, oh! Haven’t I told you?” When I shook my head, she continued, but not before throwing Yoli a concerned glance. “It’s not pretty. And I’m sorry it happened this way.”
“What happened?”
“Your father did something… awful.”
“What a surprise!” I said sarcastically. “Just tell me what he did.”
She gulped. “Well, we know that the most gifted dream jumpers can switch places with their versions of themselves in parallel universes, and Katerina Angelov was one of them. For that, she was believed to be a schizophrenic, probably because she was normal today, then tomorrow she’d act like an entirely different person. Because she was a different person, technically. There’s one condition to making the switch: the dream jumper must also exist in the universe he or she jumps to.”
“It doesn’t make any sense. Valentine forced my mother to switch places with the other Katia when she was already dead. In her parallel universe, Katia died while giving birth to me. Well, a very much dead me.”
“I know! And that’s what I don’t understand! Somehow, your mother was able to take over her body in the other universe. So, naturally, I was thinking that she could have returned to her own body in this universe, if she wanted to. I poked around and found the record of her death at the clinic. It appears that one morning, the nurse just found she’d passed away in her sleep. Naturally, the clinic was supposed to hand her remains to her family. Morningstar showed up. I saw his signature on the release papers, and I followed the trail. He didn’t bury her, as is the custom of the Orthodox people. He cremated her.”
“Oh my God. But why?”
“My only guess is that he wanted to make sure your mother would never be able to return to this universe. Without a body, how could she?”
We were all silent for a long while. I was strugg
ling to wrap my mind around what Corri had just revealed. I had to find out how Katia had been able to switch places with herself when she was already dead in the other dimension. I felt like there was something there… Maybe the key to understanding all of this.
“Do you know what this means, Mila?” Lorna broke the silence reluctantly. “That even if you could travel to her universe, you couldn’t stay. You don’t exist there.”
I nodded. That was another thing that was just dawning on me. And it wasn’t pretty. To know that we were separated like this. That he’d done everything in his power to keep us separated. I was boiling inside.
Yolanda reached over the mess that was on the floor and took my hands in hers.
“I will find her for you, sister. Don’t worry. And I will find him, too. I’m not afraid of him. He can’t hurt me. He doesn’t even know me.”
I looked into her eyes. Blue met blue. We really did look like we were sisters, not second cousins.
“Be careful.”
This time, I didn’t tell her to keep away from him. Even though she was just a kid, she was strong. And I needed her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Colossi Valley was just a fancy name for the Valley of the Giants. We entered through a portal in the Andes of Peru, and at first, it didn’t seem like we’d stepped into a pocket universe. The terrain was the same. Then we saw the mountains around us move, and we understood they weren’t mountains at all. They were people. Giants. Their skin looked like stone, and their hair was of a dark, muddy color. They moved slowly and deliberately. Every step they made sent shivers through the crust of the earth.