The Last Dream Keeper

by Amber Benson

  Lyse took a deep breath, gathering her energy.

  “Well, we still need to finish the ritual,” Lyse said, crawling onto her hands and knees. “For Eleanora. So she can be free—and I want to do it now.”

  There was a power in Lyse’s words the others could not argue with.

  “The cardinal candles have been lit. Let’s finish what we started,” Arrabelle said, kneeling beside Lyse. “What are we waiting for, ladies? You heard what Lyse said. Lizbeth, go get the urn, please?”

  They’d cremated Eleanora, and what was left of her physical body had been placed into a small brass urn that was now sitting in the grass beside the stone altar. The plan had been to do the Releasing Ritual, then spread her ashes here in the grove, allowing her spirit to move on to the next plane, if she so chose.

  “I’m in,” Daniela said. “But once we’re done, I want us out of here.”

  “Agreed,” Dev said.

  Lizbeth picked up the urn, and it felt heavier than she’d expected, the brass cold to the touch. She carried it into the center of the circle, where Lyse was sitting. As she joined them, she felt a calming presence fill the grove. It was like Eleanora was already there among them, waiting.

  Lyse motioned for Lizbeth to hand her the urn, and Lizbeth realized she’d been holding it so tightly her fingers were white with tension. She watched as Lyse set the urn down in the grass, placing it dead center between the women. She took the moment to look each of her blood sisters in the eye, acknowledging that they were all in this together. She got up and, her gait still unsteady, walked to the stone altar, picking up the two white candles she’d lit earlier. One for each hand. She rejoined the circle, holding the candles out in front her, their flames guttering in the chilled air.

  “We call upon the Goddess and her light to help our friend, Eleanora Eames, pass into the next realm.”

  She tipped both candles forward, so a few drops of wax dripped onto the urn.

  “We release her from this plane and bless her with safe passage to the next realm,” Lyse finished.

  She passed the candles on to Dev, who was on her right.

  “May she be blessed by the Goddess on her journey,” Dev said, some of the wax spilling onto her fingers as she dripped it over the urn.

  She handed the candles off to Lizbeth and began to pick the cooling white wax from the top of her knuckles.

  Lizbeth’s eyes were attracted to the twin flames, each dancing upon its wick like a tiny ballerina.

  “The Goddess releases you from all of your earthly duties,” Lizbeth said, dipping the candles too far forward, so that some of the wax missed the urn and landed in the grass.

  “Sorry,” she said, and handed over the candles to Daniela.

  “Freedom is yours, Eleanora Eames, if you really want it. You have been the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone—you have experienced the triple goddess in every incarnation,” Daniela intoned as she repeated the ritual and gave the candles to Arrabelle.

  “Do you really think I’m gonna bow out now when you need me the most?” Arrabelle’s mouth was moving, but the words and voice were not her own.

  “Eleanora? Is that you?” Dev asked, and Arrabelle rolled her eyes in a physical affectation that was pure Eleanora.

  “Of course, it’s me. I told you I wasn’t going to curl up under the house like some dying old cat.” Once again, the face was Arrabelle’s, but from the animated way her features moved, the brow furrowing in good-natured consternation, it was clear that Eleanora was in charge.

  “I’m not going. Releasing Ritual be damned. And you”—Arrabelle/Eleanora turned on Lizbeth, glaring at her—“you could’ve been killed. They know we’re here and they know one of you is the last of the Dream Keepers. Don’t disobey the others. Listen to Daniela when she says that they need to look out for you.”

  “I wasn’t going to be taken,” Lizbeth said. “I knew what I was doing.”

  She wasn’t going to let herself get hurt—and no way was she going to stand there and let something terrible happen to Lyse and Arrabelle. Not if she could help it. She knew how to take care of herself. She’d been on her own for most of her life, and no one had taken care of her then. They’d just thrown her in that horrible psychiatric facility where she’d been totally alone, forced to fend for herself.

  Lizbeth’s brain sensed something was different in her thought process. At first, she wasn’t sure what it was, but then she realized she’d never been able to go down this avenue of thought without her whole person shutting down. Never before had she been able to tolerate thinking about the past. Specifically about the psychiatric facility her father had placed her in after her mother died. Just the smell of the cleaning disinfectant they’d used at the facility could send her into a mental meltdown, but now all of that had changed.

  It was as if the two parts of her mind had finally fused together and become one. No longer was the child brain in charge of her, and it never would be again. Not now that the adult part of her possessed all the power.

  The past was the past.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Arrabelle/Eleanora said, interrupting Lizbeth’s train of thought. “We’re just trying to do what’s best for you, dammit.”

  Lizbeth opened her mouth to reply, but Lyse beat her to the punch.

  “Eleanora,” Lyse said, changing the subject. “You’re free to go on to the other side. Don’t stay here for my benefit—”

  “It’s not just for you, my sweet Lyse,” Arrabelle/Eleanora said. “It’s so much bigger than that. Hessika and I stay behind as Dream Walkers for a greater purpose. You will need us and we are here for you.”

  It was true. Hessika had stayed behind partly to save Lizbeth’s life.

  The very first night she’d been taken to the institution, she’d cried herself to sleep only to be woken up by the most magical creature she’d ever seen: a giant lady with fluffy strawberry-blond hair and eyelashes as thick as beetles’ legs. Only later did she realize it was a dream, but that didn’t matter. From that night forward, Hessika’s dreamlands appearances were the only thing holding Lizbeth’s sanity together.

  “Eleanora—” Lyse said, but Arrabelle/Eleanora merely shook her head.

  “It’s my choice, and my choice alone to make.” Then Arrabelle’s face went slack as Eleanora’s spirit vacated its host body.

  Then every candle within the circle extinguished itself.

  Lizbeth knew the possession was over. Eleanora had made her choice and she, for one, would make sure her wishes were followed. To that end, she picked up the brass urn and held it tightly to her breast.

  “Thank you,” she whispered into the night.

  Thank you, Eleanora and Hessika.

  Arrabelle

  Arrabelle turned the key in the ignition and the car shuddered once and fell quiet. In the silence, she heard the gentle ticking of the engine; the outside sounds—the rise and fall of the waves as they lapped at the boat, the insistent call of seabirds, the idling of the other cars lined up to board the ferry—seemed a million miles away. She felt cut adrift, as if she were a shade walking through the world of the living, a revenant returned from the grave and forced to wander the Earth.

  The events of the previous night had left them all shaken, but hadn’t deterred them from their plan. Arrabelle had taken a flight to Seattle; Lyse, Daniela, Lizbeth, and Weir had gone to Rome; and Dev had remained behind, but with the knowledge that her family was coming to stay and the Dream Walkers, Hessika and Eleanora, would also be available to her. Arrabelle tried not to let their parting feel like an ending, refusing to believe she might never see her coven mates again.

  Instead, she held on to the belief they would be reunited again, and sooner than any of them expected.

  She got out of the rental car, closing the driver’s-side door behind her, the wind biting into her flesh, stinging h
er with cold air and salty sea spray. She wasn’t thinking straight, her mind filled with memories, the past making it impossible to be alive in the present. The drive had been good. She’d found solace in the monotony of the road and the swish of the windshield wipers as the rain beat down on the red rental car she’d picked up at Sea-Tac—but now she had nothing to do. Just sit on the ferry and wait to cross the water.

  She depressed the lock button on the keychain the young guy at the rental counter had given her, the subcompact now impenetrable, and began to weave her way through the sea of parked cars. Old rusted junkers, modest midsize cars, minivans, and SUVs . . . they mostly seemed to belong to people who lived on the island but worked on the peninsula.

  Not a lot of tourists this time of year.

  Except for her. But then she was really just a virtual tourist, lost in her own memories, traveling back in time as her physical body remained moored to the present. Soon her memories and reality would intersect: She’d be on the island where Evan had spent the last decade . . . precious years that did not, besides the occasional phone call or note, include her.

  She ignored the rows of wooden benches bolted to the deck floor and made her way over to the side of the ferry, resting her elbows on top of the metal mesh railing. She was just another body wrapped up tight inside the wall of fog that rose up from the water, the late-afternoon sky above her turning charcoal gray as she stared out toward the fading horizon.

  Evan.

  She heard his boisterous laugh and almost turned around, her heart hammering out a chaotic, nervous beat. But the laughter was just a phantom, an echo inside her head. She closed her eyes as a wave of tears flooded past her eyelashes. She did nothing to wipe them away. She knew anyone looking on would think she just had sea spray on her cheeks.

  * * *

  They met at a used bookstore. Well, he was standing outside the bookstore, and she was inside shelving books in the romance aisle—but she figured it still counted. He only caught her eye because he was leaning against the building, reading a dog-eared copy of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (a book she loved), and biting his thumbnail like a nervous child.

  He was cute in a nerdy, grungy fashion—curly red hair, freckles, and the kind of round-rimmed glasses the Harry Potter books would popularize a few years down the line. He was beanpole thin in his baggy khaki cutoffs and oversized Screaming Trees T-shirt, black Chuck Taylors on his feet. He had the sole of one shoe pressed against the wall as he leaned against the brick, turning pages at a rapid pace. All the while silently mouthing the syllables of each word he read.

  As she moved an errant copy of Victoria Holt’s The Legend of the Seventh Virgin from the P section back into the H section, she kept glancing through the plate-glass window. Out on the sidewalk, the cute boy—she didn’t know his name was Evan yet—was oblivious to her stares. He just kept reading and rereading pages, flipping back and forth between the beginning, middle, and end of the book as if it were a puzzle he was trying to figure out.

  He scratched the side of his nose as he read, a very unconscious gesture that Arrabelle found amusing and kind of endearing. Part of her wanted to knock on the glass and get his attention, but she was working and responsibility was the touchstone of her existence. She just wasn’t capable of slacking off, even though it was only a silly summer job, something to pay for food and incidentals while she decompressed from a rigorous spring semester of pre-med hell.

  Her dad had wanted her to continue taking classes, but the thought of going to summer school made Arrabelle’s teeth ache. She was so burned out from studying she couldn’t see straight. She needed a break, but she also wanted to stay in Santa Cruz for the summer, so getting a job had been their compromise.

  Arrabelle loved to read, was a total book whore growing up, her nose always in the pages of a novel, and it was thrilling to think she might fall in love with a stranger she’d seen only through the window of her bookstore. It made her feel like an Austen heroine all flush with excitement after her first dance with Mr. Darcy. Not that anyone threw balls in that day and age. And not that Arrabelle needed a husband—but having someone to talk about books and hang out with, well, it did sound pretty nice.

  She’d never had a boyfriend before. She’d always been too busy. At least, that was what she thought, but then her freshman-year roommate, Allison, had told her the truth: Arrabelle intimidated the shit out of guys.

  So many things had made sense after that—for all her book smarts, Arrabelle was naïve when it came to romance. She knew what she’d read in books and that was it; she had zero practical experience in the ways of love. She’d always been too busy reading, had missed some crucial real-world stuff because she was too busy getting lost in books. Not precious about what she read, she loved literature and genre stuff: westerns, science fiction, and fantasy. There was just something exhilarating about disappearing into another world. You were a voyeur, true, experiencing the stress and romance and misery of the characters you were reading about, but then when things got too intense, you could just put the book down and be glad the story wasn’t your own.

  When it came time for her lunch break, Arrabelle decided she’d let fate dictate what happened: If the cute guy was still outside on the sidewalk, she’d go talk to him. If not, then that was fate’s way of saying to let it go. So she grabbed her brown bag lunch from the back room of the bookstore—she was too student-poor to eat out every day—and made for the front entrance.

  The shop wasn’t very big, but it was crammed floor to ceiling with bookcases. Tall wooden ones precariously bolted into the drywall, their skinny frames and shelves thick with books, making Arrabelle a little nervous should an earthquake decide to hit while she was standing under one of them. Jezzer was the only other employee working that Sunday afternoon, but he barely noticed when she walked by the register.

  “I’ll be back in thirty minutes,” Arrabelle said, slipping a gauzy gray scarf around her neck and donning a pair of Jackie O sunglasses.

  “Evs,” Jezzer replied, pen in mouth, eyes glued to the New York Times crossword puzzle he was working. Jezzer wouldn’t have been caught dead doing the Times in pencil.

  She passed the curio cabinets by the front of the store, their glass fronts just out of reach of the sunlit glare from the windows. Full of first editions and other specialty collector’s items, the cabinets held the items that were the store’s real moneymakers—without them, they would have had to sell a metric ton of two-dollar paperbacks to pay the rent.

  She stopped by the door to look at the signed German-language first edition of Hermann Hesse’s Journey to the East, of which she was particularly fond. Her father had given her an English translation of the book when she was a kid, and she treasured it.

  Even when she and her father disagreed, he was always the person she wanted to please the most. He believed in her, and for that she would be eternally grateful. He’d never treated her like a girl. Never told her there was anything she couldn’t do or be. He saw the beauty in her brain, understood her innate curiosity about life (a quality they both shared), and he nurtured it.

  A thoracic surgeon by day, her father was a magic storyteller by night. He knew how to weave together the greatest tall tales, and often dinner table conversation centered on odd cases from his work. Hearts with extra valves, hearts reversed so that they formed on the wrong side of the chest . . . her father had lots of juicy stories filled with blood and guts and macerated organs. It was a wonder anyone could stand to sit at the dinner table with the two of them.

  She sighed, leaving thoughts of her father behind as she strolled toward the front entrance. The little bell nailed to the top of the doorframe tinkled when she opened the door, a light breeze catching the edge of her scarf and ruffling it. Arrabelle had always been a careful dresser, liking a certain style and taste of clothing. She had a penchant for jumpsuits and soft clothes that hung from her tall frame like
drapery. She appreciated things that were elegant but comfortable—something that didn’t change when she got older.

  This day she’d decided on a pair of green linen pants and a silky tank top, her lean body on full display. She liked to run, feeling the muscles working like machines underneath her skin, and this outfit showed off her toned physique. She felt good about herself, was confident in who she was becoming—and all of this was due to her father giving her the greatest gift of all: the belief that she could do anything she wanted. That nothing was beyond the limit of her abilities.

  Except there was one key piece of information she had trouble learning, and in this friendship with Evan, it would eventually prove to be her downfall. It was something a lot of strong-willed people could never really wrap their brains around . . . that try as you might, you couldn’t make other people do what you wanted them to do just by sheer dint of will.

  Arrabelle looked in both directions, hoping to see the boy, but there were only a few random shoppers on the sidewalk, following the flow of traffic. She stood by the doorway, her sack lunch in hand, trying to decide where to go. Usually she ate on her own in the back office, but now that she’d changed up her routine, she didn’t relish going inside again. Not that Jezzer knew or cared what she was doing. It was enough that she knew. That she felt stupid standing out there on the street with no plan.

  “Hey.”

  Arrabelle lifted her head and saw the cute boy standing beside her.

  “Hi,” she replied, trying to figure out where he’d come from. She’d checked in each direction, searching for him like a hawk, but he’d been missing in action—and then, just like that, he’d popped into her view.

  “You were in my Intro to Cultural Anthro,” he said, his angular face a study in morose adolescence. No smile, thin lips slightly turned down. He had a curious expression in his dark eyes, thick eyebrows pressed together thoughtfully.

  She thought back to the class, racking her brain to find his features in her memory catalog of faces, but she came up blank. She didn’t think she’d seen him, or maybe he’d just been so unprepossessing she hadn’t really noticed him.