by Kit Alloway
“Hi, Serpico,” Josh said, with no trace of mockery; Will thought that maybe she didn’t get the reference. “Want a bear claw?”
“Hell yes,” he said, sitting down across from her. “This bagel blows.”
“So,” Whim said, “you said you work for the Gendarmerie. What rank do you hold?”
Serpico shook his head. “I don’t have a rank, man. I’m an assistant janitor.”
Josh looked like she was about to bust out laughing.
“So where is your information coming from?” Whim asked. “Are you reading official documents out of the trash?”
“Naw, naw, man, they shred all that stuff. But one of the other guys heard two bigwigs talking about it. He said the guy in the trench coat’s real name was Geoffardus Simbarticolsi.”
The name meant nothing to Will. He only realized it was significant because Whim looked at Josh for a reaction, and when Will did the same, he saw that the huge glass of milk was about to slide out of her hand. He caught it just in time.
“Geoff?” Josh repeated weakly. “You’re certain they said it was Geoff?”
“Yeah. They went back and forth on telling his old lady, Mary.”
“Marni,” Josh corrected in an empty voice. “Her name’s Marni.”
When the table fell silent, Will asked, “Who’s Geoff?”
“Everyone thought he was dead,” Josh said. “He opened the archway at the cabin with my mother. But only Mom’s body was found, so we thought Geoff was lost in the Dream.”
“Yeah,” said Serpico, “I heard some stuff about a cabin. The Gendarme cap wants to storm it, but some old guy on the junta’s blocking her.”
The light came back into Josh’s eyes, but it was fueled by anger. “There’s more than one old guy on the junta,” Whim warned.
“More than one who would stop the captain of the guard from storming the cabin?” Josh asked. “Don’t you see what happened? Somehow Mom and Geoff cut two archways, one to the Dream and one to Feodor’s universe. Geoff got trapped inside Feodor’s universe, and Feodor did something to Geoff to turn him into … whatever he is now.”
“Then why didn’t Feodor just come walking out?” Whim asked.
“They might not have finished that archway. It might only open in one direction.”
“But Geoff made it into the Dream,” Will pointed out.
“That’s true,” Josh admitted, thinking. “But not for years. Not until—”
“Oh, damn,” Whim said. Will had never heard his voice full of dread before.
“That night at the cabin,” Josh said, her voice growing increasingly monotone, “what if we opened the archway to Feodor’s universe instead of the Dream? And then, when Ian went inside, we thought he was marking the other side of the archway, but he could have been opening an archway to the Dream.…”
And then, breathlessly: “They never found Ian’s body.”
This can’t be happening, Will thought. Everything she’s gone through … there can’t be another blow waiting for her. I have to stop this.
He watched helplessly as Josh’s face changed, as all the guilt and self-blame she’d released in the limo came back into her expression.
Whim coughed, then gagged, then got himself under control. “No, no way,” he said.
He looked almost as freaked out as Josh, and Will remembered that Whim had been Ian’s best friend. “The guy we call Gloves,” Will said, “is he Ian’s height?”
Josh nodded.
“What about eyes—we haven’t see his eyes. Or his face. What about how he walks?”
“He fights like Ian,” Josh said. “Like he’s had training.” She stared at the tabletop and the plate of doughnuts. “I have to get out of here,” she said, and then she ran out of Doughnut Heaven.
* * *
In the car, Josh shot back down the highway at breakneck speed and with a ferocious attitude. Will tried to look at her and not at the road; it was harder to block out the honks of outraged drivers.
“Josh,” he said, “you can’t go after Feodor.”
She didn’t reply.
“I’m dead serious. This is when we call Davita and tell her to send in the troops.”
“Will’s right,” Whim said from the backseat.
“No.” Josh swung the car around with such speed that Will’s stomach didn’t know which way to lurch. “What has Davita managed so far? She couldn’t even get Peregrine to listen to us. I can’t trust her.”
I can’t trust her. Not we can’t trust her.
“Are you listening to yourself?” Whim cried. “You’re a seventeen-year-old kid who just got off crutches, and your grandma just died, and you’ll probably totally freak out when you see Ian. You can’t do this.”
The highway lights caught her pale eyes, giving them a yellow, wolfish glow. “I can. I have to—”
“No,” Will said, and he said it in a tone he remembered his father using before his parents divorced.
Josh turned to stare at him, and he shouted, “Look at the road!”
She looked back at the road just in time to avoid rear-ending a truck full of horses, but the line of her mouth remained hard and stubborn.
“You don’t have to, Josh,” Will said, sounding like his father again. “I don’t care if you opened that archway knowing exactly where it led and shoved Ian inside—you’re not the person to fix this. You’re exhausted, and you’ve had one shock after another today, and you’re going home to bed. Ian is dead. Gloves isn’t the Ian you knew; he’s a zombie.”
The volume of his voice made the car’s interior feel all the more silent when he stopped. Will felt ashamed of himself as soon as he finished. He was her apprentice, not her father.
But if Lauren had been there, he probably would have been cheering Will on.
“That’s just terrific,” Josh said finally. Her tone burned like acid. “Thanks for your loyalty, Will. I suppose you’ll physically restrain me?”
He didn’t want to hurt her. But he wanted even less to see Gloves and Feodor hurt her.
Josh must have taken his silence for the answer it was, because she said, spitting venom, “Never mind. An outsider wouldn’t understand.”
Will gritted his teeth to keep from arguing with her.
“Whim, what about you?”
Whim’s voice was firm. “You know I love you like my own little sister, Josh, but this is freaking suicide and I’m not letting you do it, even if I have to tie you to a chair.”
“God, you were his best friend, Whim. Who lets their best friend live as a zombie puppet?”
“It’s not Ian!” Whim shouted. “That thing isn’t Ian anymore!”
Josh and Whim fought the rest of the ride home, but Will sat in silence. He thought of a dozen more good reasons why Josh shouldn’t go into Feodor’s universe and didn’t voice any of them, because he knew his reasoning was logical and that Josh wasn’t acting according to logic just then. She was a hurt animal—a tiger willing to destroy the jungle to get a thorn out of its paw.
And he knew she would destroy him, too, if he got in her way.
* * *
At the house, Josh vanished into her bedroom. No slammed door, no shouting. Whim found Deloise and Haley, and he and Will told them what they’d learned. Deloise cried. Haley just closed his eyes. The four of them sat vigil in the living room between Josh’s bedroom and the apartment door.
“I still don’t understand how all of this works,” Deloise said. “There are three archways at the cabin?”
“No, there are only two,” Whim said. “But there’s a third between Feodor’s universe and the Dream.”
“Hang on,” Will said. “I have something that might help.”
He retrieved the diagram of the three universes that Josh had drawn for him during their first lesson and laid it out on the coffee table.
With a pencil, he added another circle. “So, Jona and Geoff built an archway between the cabin and the Dream. That one goes both ways, but they also acc
identally built an archway to Feodor’s universe, which is this fourth circle. That archway only opens one way, so you can only enter Feodor’s universe through it. You can’t come back into the World using it.”
“But Josh said that Ian cut an archway on that side,” Deloise pointed out. “When he was in Feodor’s universe.”
“Right,” Will said. He added an arrow to the diagram. “He cut a one-way archway between Feodor’s universe and the Dream.”
“So the only way into Feodor’s universe is through the cabin,” Whim said, “and the only way out is through the Dream.”
“Also right.”
“And Ian’s … some sort of zombie?” Deloise asked miserably, wiping her eyes again.
“Ian stays with me,” Haley said quietly. “Feodor only got his body.”
Ian’s scroll makes perfect sense now, Will thought. He was contemplating the last two lines—Death has her own tales to tell / but those I do not know so well—when Josh’s bedroom door opened.
She’d been crying; tears still glistened along her jawline. “I’m going downstairs to walk,” she said. “You can follow me down there if you want, but please leave me alone while I’m dream walking.”
They all trooped down the stairs after her. At the archroom door, she said, “All right, that’s far enough.”
Whim and Deloise looked at each other and shrugged.
Josh shut the vault door.
“Something’s wrong,” Haley said.
Will had the same feeling. He glanced at the archroom door, wondering what he’d missed. “Maybe she really is just going to walk a couple of nightmares. I mean, that’s how she usually works off stress.”
“I can’t imagine her giving up that easily,” Whim said.
“Impossible,” Deloise added.
They stood together in silence for almost a minute. Will kept thinking about the nightmare in which she’d turned a beer cooler into an exit. She’d taken the cases of beer out, then climbed inside.… But what did that have to do with their current situation?
Once she’d made the beer cooler door lead somewhere, she and Will had been able to use it to create an exit from the Dream. But they’d already triggered Chyman’s Dilemma, so they didn’t come out of the Dream in the basement.…
“She’s going to the cabin,” Will said with sudden conviction. “Josh is going to trigger Chyman’s Dilemma and try to exit through the archway in the cabin.”
“What?” Whim said. “That’s not possible.”
What could Will do but shrug? “She’s Josh. And we did it once before by accident. She could do it again.”
Haley turned and tapped his code into the keypad on the door. But when they entered the white room, the archway was empty. Josh had already gone into a nightmare and triggered Chyman’s Dilemma, breaking the archway’s ligamus hold on her. She had allowed the Dream to swallow her up.
“No!” Deloise cried. She checked her watch. “The cabin is an hour’s drive away.”
Will had a better idea. “I can use the looking stone to find her in the Dream.”
“No way,” Whim said. “That’s insanely hard.”
“I’m Josh’s apprentice,” Will said shortly. “I can do this. Do you have a lighter and mirror?”
Haley touched his pants pockets. “Yes. I’m coming with you.”
“So am I,” Whim said.
“We can’t all go,” Will pointed out. “Somebody has to stay here and get in touch with Davita. We need her to send the Gendarmerie into Feodor’s universe as backup.”
“I’ll stay,” Deloise said, though she looked ashamed of herself. “I want to come, but … I don’t think I can handle seeing Ian like that.”
“It’s okay,” Whim said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “You’ll make an excellent ground person.”
Deloise hugged each of them and said, “You guys bring her back, okay?”
Haley nodded. Whim promised. Will just hugged Deloise again and whispered, “You know I’m not ready to lose her yet.”
“I know,” she whispered back. “And I always knew I’d have a brother someday.”
Will blinked back the tears in his eyes.
Minutes later, standing in front of the archway, he pressed his hand to the looking stone and felt it warm to his touch. The milky red glass grew soft and melted into another palm pressing back against his.
The Dream shimmered into view, and Will had to close his eyes to avoid seasickness. He ignored the images it was sending him—the terrors and the fears and the darkness. He blocked out everything it was trying to say. Instead, he sent himself into the stone with a message:
Find Josh.
He gathered around himself his sense of her, his memories. Her voice, her focus, her nervous tics. Her unflinching protection of those she loved. The scent of hot chocolate in the morning. Her pale, gossamer-green eyes. The feel of her forehead buried in his shoulder. Her unexpected—and unexpectedly sweet—kiss.
I’ll find you, Josh.
He sent his heart into the void, searching for hers.
Thirty-three
Josh hit the Dream hard and fast. She barely knew where she was going before she jumped in, which proved to be a mistake.
A bedroom decorated for a child. A grown woman cowered in the corner, her tearstained face lit by the lights of a rotating star map. Pink block letters on the open door spelled out the name Tanessa.
The woman took no notice of Josh. Downstairs, a plate shattered. People shouted.
Josh didn’t want to be there. She’d chosen this particular nightmare because she sensed it was nearing its end, and she needed to sit through the end of a nightmare to trigger Chyman’s Dilemma and break ligamus. For the first time in her life, she walked into a nightmare and completely ignored the dreamer’s fear. She was here on a mission other than resolution.
Will didn’t understand. She had opened the archway to Feodor’s universe, she had let Ian go in first, and if Ian’s body was trapped doing Feodor’s business, it was her fault. If his spirit was haunting Haley, it might still be possible to reunite him with his body, but even if not, she couldn’t leave Ian like this—hurting, roaming, soulless. He wouldn’t have wanted to be a puppet.
Sobbing, the woman Tanessa crawled under the bed. Josh fought the urge to hurry her. Will might be a coldhearted traitor, but he wasn’t stupid. He was going to figure out what she was doing quickly enough.
From the floor below, a shot rang out. Instinctively, Josh dropped to the floor. Tanessa screamed, her voice muffled by the bed skirt.
Footsteps pounded up the stairs.
Josh realized she had made a serious mistake. She hadn’t thought this dream had a villain—she’d thought the woman was dreaming of her parents fighting. But apparently the situation was much worse. Josh could only hope that whoever was coming upstairs didn’t enter the bedroom.
Dozens of dolls and stuffed animals filled the shelves on the walls. As the footsteps approached the bedroom door, a baby doll in a sparkly dress called out in a whisper, “She’s here!”
The other toys echoed—and within seconds, a chorus of “She’s under the bed! Here she is!” sang through the room.
Oh, shit! Josh’s eyes searched the room for a hiding place. The closet—too far away. The desk—not big enough to hide beneath. The door—
Not a good option either, but her only one. She ducked behind the bedroom door and pulled it in front of herself just in time to hear a revolver being cocked. Through the crack between the door and wall, she saw a fleeting dark shadow as a man entered the room.
Josh shut her eyes, but she couldn’t block out the fear flooding the Dream. It made her heartsick.
Save her! Josh’s instinct screamed, as loud as she’d ever heard it. Save her! Save her!
The fear swelled up around her, filling the room to the ceiling like a red haze. Josh clenched her hands around her plumeria pendant to keep from flinging the door away.
This was actually quite close to h
ow the dream-walker royals had proven their worthiness to rule: by sitting through nightmare after nightmare, doing nothing, for one day and one night. Supposedly, enduring the pain and fear of so many dreamers would make them compassionate.
Josh didn’t buy that any monarch had ever passed that test. No one could stand this agony for very long. It was unbearable.
You were meant to save her, Josh’s instinct whispered. You must save her.
The man lifted one corner of the footboard and threw the whole bed across the room.
“Daddy!” Tanessa wailed.
The revolver went off. The wailing stopped, replaced by a gurgling sound.
Something sick and sharp cut through Josh, and she accidentally let her forehead fall against the back of the bedroom door, sending the door swinging.
Tanessa’s father spun around, aiming the gun at Josh’s chest. Behind him, she saw Tanessa lying on the floor, blood pouring from her mouth.
Wake up, Josh thought. Wakeupwakeupwakeup!
But Tanessa didn’t wake up, and her father shot Josh in the chest.
She felt her breastbone crushed against her heart and lungs, making it impossible to inhale. Her knees buckled and she sank toward the floor.
Then the nightmare ended, and Josh went tumbling, legs scooped out from under her.
She landed on her back on the ground, a sharp stick poking into her back. Above her, tree branches encroached on a dreamy blue-and-white sky. The Dream had shifted, and she’d landed in a forest. Her chest hurt worse than ever, but she managed to lift her hand and find the bullet, still hot … caught in the center of the Kevlar vest Davita had given her for her birthday.
Best birthday present ever, Josh decided. The vest wasn’t more than a quarter of an inch thick and felt like nothing more than several dozen sheets of thin plastic tarp stuck together; Josh couldn’t imagine how it had stopped a bullet. But she was grateful that it had. Very, very grateful.
If she hadn’t been lying on the ground just then, she might not have heard the hoofbeats soon enough. As it happened, she rolled out of the way just in time for a cavalry unit in Confederate uniforms to trample the grass where she’d been lying. The dreamer, a shirtless young man riding a slow-trotting donkey, followed behind them. He was trying to pull on his uniform while keeping hold of his rifle and forcing the donkey to run faster.
