I waved a hand at the scene of us reaching for a blade in unison, and it scattered. A lump formed in my throat. Binding the Weaver gave me no pleasure when once, a millennium ago, we were friends. I raked my hands down my face as longing spread through me. It had been a mistake to watch the past—to allow myself to remember with this much clarity. No matter how guilty I felt now, it was the right thing to do. The only thing to do. Locking the Weaver in the Nightmare Realm saved millions of lives.
And yet…
I pressed my fingers against my eyelids.
And yet…
A sound like nails on a chalkboard wrenched me from my turmoil. Razor sharp talons clawed at the fabric of the barrier before me. The magic glowed blue beneath each tapered point as it held the line, buffering each blow. I kept my eyes on the reptilian nightmare and scooped up handfuls of sand. It fell in showers from between my bare fingers, swirling and twisting into kunai throwing knives. They hovered in the air around me, dozens of gleaming, pointed tips aimed at the beast.
“Come on,” I whispered the challenge as I stood.
My muscles twitched, my nerves tingling. Nora could never see this. I felt her on the other side of the beach at the same moment the barrier strained, and this needed to be over before she came looking for me. I spent countless hours reinforcing the protections between the Dream and Nightmare Realms after what happened at the mall. Although they were stronger now, they were not completely unbreachable. No magic was.
The Weaver knew exactly what he was doing. While Katie’s nightmare and Randy’s death came as a surprise to Nora, she wasn’t quite as emotionally vulnerable as he would’ve liked. The Weaver needed the shock of today, the blood and the carnage. The things that called to nightmares like hopes called to dreams. He was turning Nora into a flame in the middle of the dankest dungeon.
I supposed I should be glad it attracted a mindless nightmare instead of a more sophisticated creation, but I couldn’t find it in me to be grateful. Intelligent or not, the scaled creature was perfectly capable of ripping a hole in my barrier. The magic around the Dream Realm was as secure as I could make it, but even the strongest metal bent with enough exposure to heat.
A high-pitched shriek rippled across the starry sky. If I didn’t act soon, the commotion would attract others. I filled my lungs and blew a handful of sand at the wall. It opened for me, a mere pinhole in the scheme of things, and a forked tongue slipped through followed by the tip of a green scaled nose. The barrier fogged with the creature’s hot breath. A single clawed toe slipped inside, and the barrier creaked under the pressure.
I sent the first wave of knives soaring forward. They whizzed through the air, hitting their mark one after another. The giant lizard reared back, exposing a yellow underbelly. The next set of knives rustled my clothes as they flew past me. They hadn’t yet hit when padded steps thundered across the invisible domed ceiling.
Black and yellow fur streaked across the sky, and the lizard squealed the most human of sounds. A breath fell from my mouth. Thanks, Baku. I lifted another handful of sand and blew it at the breach. The space glowed with blue light, and I turned before it faded to match the rest of the wall, tugging my hood up. There was little worse than watching Baku devour his meals.
The sound, maybe.
Definitely, the sound.
Besides, I had a promise to make good on. I told Nora I would see her soon, though she never heard me say it, but we hadn’t met in days. Day Walking didn’t count. Even with Nora’s ability to see the marks on my arms, she didn’t know me in the Day World. How could she? She had never seen me in the Night World. I needed to be more careful with what I let slip around her. There were things I shouldn’t know as Ben but taking form in her world—being near her in a way I never could before—it was too easy to forget. The extreme amount of energy it took to be there didn’t help my focus either.
With a sigh, I ripped the gloves from inside my tunic and strode across the beach, leaving the gnashing teeth and tearing flesh behind.
Nora’s pink sweatpants stood out against the silver sand, where she sat at the edge of the beach. The thin white fabric of her T-shirt allowed the lines of a black bra to show through, and I forced myself not to look. Her wet hair was twisted into a high bun, beads of water still clinging to the messy ends. A line creased the space between her brows.
I hated that line and the fact that I was partially to blame for it. I hated that I hated it.
Nora was the Dream Keeper. That’s all she was ever supposed to be. I didn’t dare give voice to anything more because it was undoubtedly impossible. I loved her enough to recognize I couldn’t give her more than a few stolen hours every night, and she couldn’t give me more than a handful of decades before she passed away. It wasn’t fair to either of us, but the heart never cared about fair.
It was enough that I was her refuge. That I was the one she turned to every night since that first call, five years ago. It had to be enough. But it wasn’t…not really. I didn’t want to be her dirty little secret. To be the thing she had to keep hidden from everyone she loved because the truth would mean more doctors.
My chest ached. That’s what I had to be for her—hidden. I took a silent, deep breath, and approached. “Hello, Nora.”
Her voice was distant, cool, when she replied, “Hello.”
“I’m sorry I’m late.” I swallowed hard and knelt in front of her. My hands balled into fists on my thighs—as much from nerves as they did to make sure I followed the rules. The feel of her skin beneath my hands was ingrained in me now. A taste of a drug I would always crave. “I came as soon as I could.”
She said nothing for so long, my pulse echoed in my ears. The barriers had thinned more than I expected, and with the Weaver playing hide-and-seek... Hurting Nora was the last thing I ever wanted to do but losing her trust could be deadly. We were bound together, a team, whether she knew it or not—what one of us did affected the other.
It was quickly becoming obvious my time of sheltering her from the truth was ending, though. How much damage would the Weaver inflict before she remembered our first meeting? It was easy to let her forget that night. Anyone could’ve called out to me at that moment and become the Dream Keeper. If I hadn’t been so desperate, I would never have chosen someone so young, so vulnerable, for the task. But fate intervened.
I had explained things the best I could at the time, saying that a bad man was trying to hurt her world, and I needed a safe place to hide the key to his cell. Nora had glared into the shadows of my hood with wide, curious eyes, and granted me permission when I asked for it. But it was a game to her. An adventure in the storybooks. A dream. She didn’t know the gravitas of the danger.
She couldn’t have because as soon as I removed the information from my mind and placed it into hers, I collapsed—broken in every way from the battle with the Weaver.
The balance was upended when I turned his own magic against him, binding him to the Nightmare Realm. Although our circumstances were vastly different, the results were the same: two weakened sides of the same coin. A fact I was both grateful for and loathed. I betrayed the Weaver the night we met to discuss things, but his excuses for invading the Day World were never going to make a difference. I don’t remember how I did it—Nora carried that knowledge now—so the Weaver couldn’t use the same methods against me. And, though binding him was a necessary evil, it is only right that I suffer for betraying someone I once called a friend.
“Where were you?” Nora asked in a voice so lifeless I hardly recognized it.
“I...” Not yet. I couldn’t tell her yet. There was still time for me to fix things first. “You were about to have a nightmare,” I said softly. It didn’t answer her question, but it wasn’t a complete lie, either.
“A nightmare.” She was quiet for a heartbeat, her eyes narrowing. “I can’t remember the last time I had a bad dream.”
“I’ve always kept them away.” Something I would not be able to do much longer. Worse y
et, the Weaver knew it. Yesterday. Tonight. Tomorrow. On and on, the attacks would continue until he either got what he wanted, or I found a way to rebind him. This was just the beginning of the nightmare. The prelude. My gloves strained against their stitching. This was a battle I wasn’t prepared to fight a second time.
“My boss was murdered. Someone snapped his neck. You’d know that if you were here, of course.” Nora’s green eyes swept over me, dull and distant. “Then today I watched a girl at the mall stab herself to death with a pen.”
There was nothing I could say, nothing I could do, to make her forget what happened. I knew because I saw it too. The Weaver’s wicked joy slammed into me both times, but never soon enough for me to pinpoint his target. All I could do was make sure I was nearby in case he sent a sleepwalker after Nora. Not to kill her, of course—if she died, the dream died with her—but to persuade her in the only way the Weaver knew how: torture.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, letting my sincerity coat each word.
“You don’t happen to know anything about it, do you?”
I stared out from beneath my hood, my heart racing. “Why do you ask?”
She turned her head away from me. “No reason.”
With a clenched jaw, I shoved the image of the cashier from my mind and grabbed a handful of sand. Nora needed to talk about what happened but doing it here would only draw more attention to herself. Besides, Baku was ravenous, but he could only eat so many nightmares in a single night.
The sand shifted and swirled as it took shape. First a pair of sneakers, followed by legs, a torso, arms. I stared at my own face, and the sand lifted my image’s lips into a smile. My stomach dipped. It was stupid to be jealous of myself, but a seed of discomfort planted itself anyway. Ben could be there for her in a way I couldn’t. The fact that she would never know that particular truth… was sand in my wounds.
At that thought, I cleared my throat. Now was the wrong time to go looking for hope. Walking in her world may have taken more out of me than I could afford, but not going left her vulnerable. I had to concentrate on protecting her from the Weaver. Nothing else.
“That’s Ben,” Nora said in a flat, distinctly unhappy voice. “Katie and I ran into him today at the mall.”
That wasn’t intentional—the being spotted part, anyway. I meant to watch from afar in case the Weaver tried anything. Not that it mattered in the end. I drew a deep breath and pushed aside the growing guilt. “And?”
Nora shrugged one shoulder. “And nothing. He works at Howell’s.”
“Nothing doesn’t show up in your dreams.” Especially not the first one the sand finds. Those are the most important ones—the ones that give Dreamers the peace they need to truly rest.
She flicked a hand at Ben’s abdomen, and the image scattered. “It’s not a big deal.”
“You must like him.” I bit my tongue. Hadn’t I just decided not to go seeking hope?
“Are you jealous?” She smirked, but it fell as fast as it came.
Of course, not—I’m much cuter, I almost joked, but I didn’t want her to ask me to prove it. It was hard enough to resist showing myself. I wasn’t sure why I bothered to hide anymore; it was meant as another way to keep a wall between us, but that wall had crumbled to dust. There was nothing other about my face besides my eyes. Nothing to scare her.
However, she now knew me as Ben. Would she feel lied to? Betrayed?
“Don’t worry,” Nora said with a sigh. Her nose wrinkled in the way that never failed to fill me with adoration, and she pinched her own cheeks, trying not to smile. “You’re still my favorite, and I’m sure you’re just as cute. If I ever saw you, I would probably dream about you too.”
She thought I was cute? My hand twitched with the impulse to reveal myself, but before I could move, a familiar throb pulsated through my marrow. The Weaver was close. If Nora didn’t stop dwelling on what happened, she would light his path right to our doorstep. I grabbed a second handful of sand and willed it into my own creation. A butterfly glided through the air to land on her knee.
“I truly am sorry, Nora,” I said in a strained voice. “There were some things I needed to take care of. I didn’t mean to stay away.”
She nodded and turned her attention to the fluttering wings. “It’s okay. Maybe not the best time for you to go M.I.A.” Her nose wrinkled again, but this time her eyes lacked the playful glint that always accompanied it. “But you’re back. That’s what matters.”
Nora hadn’t looked this lost or confused since before we agreed she should lie to her mother about my existence. I felt just as horrible about it then as I do now, but I saw what those doctors were doing to her. The bright-eyed, care-free girl I knew faded slowly. She withdrew from all but two of her friends, tossed her astrology books in the dumpster behind the school, and quit the swim team in her freshman year. Though Nora still sketched, there was always a tightness around her eyes on the rare occasions she talked about it. Everything that might relate to me or this place put her under a microscope, so she replaced the slide that was her life with one that could withstand the scrutiny. But her manufactured existence lacked the fiery spark of her soul.
I released another handful of sand and a dozen smaller butterflies took shape. They landed in her hair, fluttering around her with graceful ease.
She reached out a hand to let one rest in her palm. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Do you think you’ll—” She squinted around me. “What’s that?”
The sea shrunk away from the beach, and a tendril of black fog inched across the receding water. “Wake up.” The words flew from my throat in a stunned breath. “Nora, wake up.”
The fog snapped forward, crushing the butterflies mid-flight. Nora gasped, and I lurched to my feet. Sand rose with me, snapping together to form a long blade in my hand. The curved metal gleamed in the moonlight.
“Wake up,” I shouted.
“What?”
“Wake. Up.” A whistle sounded above us, and the retreating water rose into a tidal wave. It rushed toward the shore, eclipsing the sky. “Nora!” I screamed in a rush of terror.
She vanished, and I flung an empty hand at the wave. A break wall shot from the shore and caught the impact before collapsing. The mist writhed against the beach, scraping against the sand trying to find purchase. With Nora gone, taking her piece of my power out of play, the Dream Realm was entirely dependent on me, and I held no fear of the Weaver—only of what would happen if he escaped. Without fear, he had nothing to hold over me. Fear was his power, his strength, his everything.
“Weaver,” I called. Binding aside, he was forbidden from this place. There were no living things for him to kill here, but his presence was a poison, infecting the beach, tainting the dreams. He had an entire world to govern—generals and soldiers, enemies and allies. There was no reason he should need mine or Nora’s. “Show yourself.”
The mist paused, and the Weaver’s deep voice drifted from its center. “I’d love to, old friend, but it’s a tight squeeze. Open a door so we can face each other.”
“I will be dead before you step foot in here,” I snarled.
A soft chuckle danced across the beach before the mist retreated beneath the water. I watched the last wisps vanish and exhaled. The sword disintegrated from tip to hilt. The barrier wasn’t deep enough to keep him out—nothing I did was enough. It was a miracle I managed to bind the Weaver at all. My shoulders sagged. There was no guarantee I could do it again with the barriers and a Dream Keeper siphoning my power. Not when I had to resort to Day Walking to protect Nora.
The Weaver was still weak but keeping him that way meant weakening myself. It didn’t matter who was right or wrong. It didn’t matter that the Weaver had tried to unleash his beasts on the Day World. The universe always kept the balance.
For every light there was a shadow, for every dream, a nightmare.
6
Nora
I swept thro
ugh Howell’s, systematically adjusting chairs around tables and fidgeting with the decorative centerpieces. The police left the entire store a mess. I rolled my eyes. As if they would find something hidden beneath a vase... But I was thankful for the busy work. It kept me away from the office and Lisa’s elderly father, who hadn’t moved from the desk all morning. The music from his portable radio drifted through the store and, try as I might, I wasn’t able to block out the cheerful rhythm. It fed my anxiety, making me jerk and jump without reason. They may have had to reopen the store to survive, but I didn’t need to come back. I shouldn’t have. But then again, sitting home wasn’t much better.
I paused near the back room where Ben was busy talking to a young couple about office chairs. He smiled and laughed and joked with them. All things I would probably never do again after what happened at the mall. Detective Bell interviewed Katie and me last night. He was the same dark-skinned man that interrupted the woman’s TV interview about Randy. He was nice enough, promising we weren’t suspects, ensuring it was important to speak with eyewitnesses, but that didn’t stop him from giving me a distinct once over. With two strange deaths in the same short span of time and my connection to both, there had to be suspicions.
“Hey, you,” Ben said, bobbing his head slightly.
I jumped, nearly dropping a set of fifty-dollar bookends. A breath shuttered out of me as I hugged them to my chest. Break these and it was goodbye fancy new colored pencil set.
“You break it, you buy it,” he said with a grin.
I laughed dryly and set the ceramic pieces down on top of a TV stand. “I break it, you buy it for scaring me.” I rubbed my hands together to hide my shaking fingers.
Dream Keeper Page 5
