by Kit Alloway
“Wait a sec,” Josh said. “Take it easy. You fainted.”
The girl looked around the room with large gray eyes and an expression of distress that suggested she thought she might not have woken up at all.
“What’s your name?” Josh asked.
The girl stared at her, panic-stricken. “Am I dead?”
“Definitely not,” Josh said.
The answer relieved some of the anxiety in the redhead’s face. “Are we still in the Dream?”
“No,” Josh repeated.
“It’s a miracle,” the girl murmured.
She closed her eyes, slowly this time, and released a long sigh. Josh and Will waited for her to open her eyes again, but she didn’t, and when her breath began to deepen, Josh said, “Did she pass out again?”
“I think she just went to sleep.” Will touched the young woman’s shoulder. “Miss? Can you wake up?”
He gave her a little shake, then a less little shake, and finally her eyes opened again.
“You need to stay awake,” Josh said. “You might have a head injury.”
Will assumed Josh was making this suggestion based on the fact that the redhead had visible injuries to her hands, neck, and face, and blood stained her ripped turquoise jacket.
The young woman’s eyes fluttered shut and then dragged open again. “May I sit up?”
“Slowly.”
Once sitting, she insisted on climbing to her feet, and she took a few slow steps toward the archway. Josh stayed close by, as if worried the redhead would try to leap back into the Dream.
“I didn’t catch your name,” Josh said.
The redhead made no reply. She touched the stone archway with one hand, then passed her fingers through the empty space between the pillars. Will noticed that her right pant leg was torn vertically and something dark had seeped through the back of her jacket. A patch of hair had been torn out of her scalp.
“I’m sorry,” she said, turning back to them. “You’ll have to forgive me. I can’t recall my name. It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t quite catch it.”
“You don’t remember your name?” Josh asked. “What about where you’re from, or how you ended up in the Dream?”
The redhead shook her head. “Nothing.”
“You don’t remember anything?” Josh asked. Her tone had gone from skeptical to incredulous. “You have…” She hesitated before using the word, as if embarrassed to put forth such a silly idea. “Amnesia?”
“Yes. Yes, I think I do.”
Josh looked at Will, and that was all she needed to say, Do you believe this?!
Will held a hand up for her to be patient. Not that he believed the redhead—her downcast eyes and the speed with which she’d spoken had broadcast her lie. He was just hoping to figure out why she had lied.
“Does your head hurt?” he asked.
The redhead looked at him beneath eyelids that kept threatening to close. “Yes,” she said. “It hurts. I need to sleep.”
“Take off your windbreaker,” Josh said, “so I can check you for injuries.”
She fumbled with the zipper on her jacket and finally tugged it open.
“Damn,” Will said when he saw her.
Bruises, cuts, scrapes, a serious bite, puncture wounds, and even what appeared to be burns covered her skin.
Josh’s animosity vanished. “What hurts?” she asked briskly.
The redhead gave a long list of pains, and Will believed her about every one. Joints were swollen, scrapes ran in every direction, bruises spread far and wide. She had a three-inch gash on her back that was clearly infected and another bite on her leg beneath the tear in her pants.
While Josh inspected the visible injuries, Will did a quick and dirty evaluation of her mental state. She knew who was president, how many continents were on the Earth, and that Schwarzenegger had played the Terminator, but she was two days off the date and claimed not to remember anything about herself except the name Nan.
“Is that your name?” Will asked.
“I don’t know.”
When they were finished, Josh and Will conferred on the other side of the room.
“She needs stitches, antibiotics, and probably a rabies shot,” Josh whispered. “Obviously she’s been in the Dream. How else did she get burned and bitten by an animal and hit in the head and shot with an arrow? But the weird thing is some of those bruises are fresh, but some of them are a few days old.”
“What does that mean?”
“Maybe she’s just been dream walking nonstop for the last week—and doing a terrible job—or maybe she’s been lost in the Dream for days.”
If she had been in the Dream for days, fighting off monsters and running from disasters and enduring the fear of so many dreamers, that would explain why she was so exhausted and possibly even her bizarre lie. People could easily become delirious after several days without sleep.
“There’s no way to be sure without a CT, but I don’t think she has a concussion,” he told Josh. “Or at least, if she did have one, she’s recovered enough that she’s able to go to sleep without falling into a coma. The best treatment might be to just let her sleep, at least until Saidy’s off work.”
Saidy was Whim and Winsor’s mother, and she lived on the second floor. She was also a paramedic, and over the years she had cleaned a lot of wounds, stitched a lot of cuts, and driven a lot of people to the ER.
Josh nodded. “She can take Grandma Dustine’s old room. She probably needs food, too. Let’s get her upstairs.”
Watching Josh gather the redhead’s discarded jacket, Will felt the muscles around his rib cage contract and press painfully on his lungs. It’s so easy for you to feel responsible for people, he thought. If they’re in the Dream and in danger, their well-being is instantly more important than yours.
She’d told Will once that she felt ashamed of the fact that she sometimes had difficulty caring about other people’s problems, that she worried she wasn’t as compassionate as she should be. But Will thought that this sense of absolute responsibility was its own kind of compassion and astonishing in its own right.
He just hoped it didn’t get her killed someday.
Josh explained about Saidy and that they’d get the girl medical attention as soon as possible. “You said you remembered a name? Nan? Is that what we should call you?”
“I suppose … Nan will do as well as any other name.”
“All right. Are you a dream walker, Nan?”
Oddly uncertain, Nan said, “I believe I am, Josh.”
“Well then, you can stay here until we figure all this out,” Josh said. “Salt among oceans, right?”
Will didn’t know what that meant, but it made Nan smile for the first time. She had a beautiful smile; it conferred a sense of wise benevolence and, at the same time, vigor. She didn’t look tired when she smiled. “Salt among oceans,” she repeated, as if in agreement. “I am very grateful for your hospitality.” She added ruefully, “Although I doubt I’ll be able to sleep in someone else’s bed.”
“Why not?” Will asked, opening the archroom’s heavy door. “You don’t remember your own, right?”
Nan almost tripped over her feet as she followed. “Right,” she agreed.
As they crossed the basement, Will noticed Nan’s eyes fall on his stalker wall. “Is that…” she muttered, and then shook herself, as if she had started to fall asleep again. Will put a hand on her elbow to nudge her up the stairs.
Josh and Will lived in a large Greek Revival–style mansion that had been converted into a triplex. Josh’s family lived on the third floor, and Saidy and Alex Avish lived in one of the second-floor apartments. Will had recently been booted from his third-floor bedroom to make room for his adoptive parents’ new baby, but he didn’t mind. He and Haley and Whim were living in the other second-floor apartment, where they had created a teenage dude paradise.
As they crossed the first-floor landing, Will caught a glimpse of a hideous lime-green-a
nd-butter-yellow-striped cardigan walking into the library farther down the hallway. “Haley!” Josh called. “Come here for a minute!”
Will hoped Josh wasn’t about to do what he thought she was about to do.
Haelipto McKarr, most often addressed as Haley, was best known for not saying very much. When Will had first met him, Haley was being haunted by his brother Ian’s disembodied soul, which had occasionally possessed Haley’s body. It had taken a while for Will to suss out who Haley was apart from his brother, but when he finally had, he’d discovered an observant, infinitely kind guy whose subtle sense of humor was easy to miss. Will liked him tremendously.
Hell, by the time they freed Ian’s soul—no easy task—Will had come to like Ian, too.
Will understood immediately what Josh intended. Haley’s psychic powers operated partly through touch; a handshake or kiss on the cheek could tell him all kinds of things. Will didn’t like the idea of Josh using Haley’s abilities to get information from people against their will, but he didn’t argue, because as long as Nan kept up the amnesia act, he still considered her an unknown. And unknowns had a way of becoming dangers in his experience.
“Nan, this is Haley,” Josh said, careful to set the introduction up properly. “Haley, Nan.”
Nan pushed herself upright from the wall she had been leaning against and held out her hand. “How do you do?” she asked.
Haley took her hand slowly, hardly touching her with more than his fingertips.
Then, just when Will thought he would let go, Haley grabbed Nan’s hand like a drowning man clutching at the side of a boat. Nan released a cry and pulled away.
Haley sucked in a wet, sick-sounding breath and ran for the stairs.
“Oh, my,” Nan said in a dreamy, drowsy voice. “I should have washed my hands first.”
Her eyes closed and she fell against the wall. Josh, grabbing Nan to keep her upright, gave Will a look.
“I’ll go,” Will said. As Josh revived Nan, Will jogged up the stairs to the second floor.
The guys’ apartment looked exactly as one would expect an apartment occupied by three teenage boys to look. Nothing on the walls except a flat-screen TV and a poster for Alien, carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed in months, a bag of chips spilled on the grubby old couch, and a trash-rescued bookcase packed with movies and video games.
Haley had taken the master bedroom when he moved back in—this was, in fact, his apartment—but his bedroom looked just as bad as the living room did.
“Hey,” Will said when Haley let him in. He brushed some clothes off the desk chair and sat down. “What happened back there?”
Haley didn’t look good. He looked like he’d just realized he had food poisoning and would inevitably begin vomiting soon. He’d even opened the window, in spite of the June heat.
At Will’s question, he started to pull a steno pad and pen out of the pocket of his awful green-and-yellow cardigan, then stopped himself. He and Will had begun their friendship on the premise that Haley could tell Will things—even crazy things—and Will would believe him, but sometimes Haley still fought the urge to censor himself, and sometimes Will still found the things Haley told him hard to swallow.
“I saw … a lot,” Haley managed to say. “She’s in danger.”
“Okay. What kind of danger?”
Haley cracked his knuckles. “I can’t…”
Will hadn’t seen him reduced to sentence fragments in a long time, and that worried him. “You can tell me, Haley. You know I only want to help her.”
He realized he sounded patronizing at the same moment Haley sent him a sharp glance. The days when he had to talk to Haley like he was a five-year-old were over. Will shrugged apologetically, and Haley shrugged back in forgiveness.
“I can’t tell you,” he said, as if forcing the words out. “The more people who know who she is, the more danger she’s in.”
Well, that explains why she’s lying about having amnesia, Will thought, but otherwise, he hated this news. He needed to know who Nan really was, what sort of trouble she was in, and whether or not her troubles could expand to encompass those around her.
But he saw a rare determination in Haley’s eyes. I can trust Haley’s judgment, he told himself, even as he remembered how Haley had eaten that cheddar with the mold growing on it two weeks before.
Cheese and people are not the same.
Will sighed. “What do we do?”
“Hide her. Call Davita.”
“Davita?”
Davita Bach was the local representative of the dream-walker government. Although she had stuck her neck out to protect Josh and Will on more than one occasion, Will had never felt entirely confident that he could trust the woman. Anyone who worked for one government while wearing the symbol of another hidden beneath her blouse made him doubt her capacity for loyalty.
“Call her,” Haley repeated. “Tell her to come here. Don’t tell her why until she’s here.”
“You’re worried about the phone?” Will asked, half-disbelieving.
Haley looked him square in the eyes then. “No one can know she’s here. She can hide in my room. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“Your room? Where?” Will cast his hand about the room.
“I can clean up,” Haley protested. “Please, Will.”
Will felt too frustrated to smile back. Six months ago he would have respectfully let the subject drop, but today he wanted to make demands. He wasn’t just curious—he needed to know what was going on. If they were in danger—if Josh was in danger—and he didn’t see it coming, something terrible could happen and he’d be helpless to stop it.
He knew that Gloves—Feodor’s zombie henchman—trying to kill them had changed Will. These days, he wanted to know everything going on: who was where, and with whom, and when they would be back. He wanted to do everything himself to make sure it got done properly, so he could know with certainty that things were taken care of.
He knew he wasn’t okay. But he also knew that he should trust Haley in this, that he had no reason not to. Besides, letting Nan stay in their apartment would allow Will to keep a close eye on her.
“Can you promise she isn’t a danger to us?” he asked.
Haley looked perplexed. “She just needs a place to hide.”
“Okay,” Will said. “I’ll call Davita.”
Haley sank back against the bedroom wall, relieved. “Tell her…” He thought. “Tell her that the tragedy isn’t a tragedy yet.”
“Will she know what that means?” Will couldn’t help asking.
Haley frowned again, uncertain. “I hope so,” he said.
* * *
Will went downstairs to tell Josh the new plan, and by the time they got Nan up to the second floor—she swayed on each step—Haley had cleaned 90 percent of the mess in his room. He’d accomplished this by dragging the mess into the living room, rendering it a minefield of dirty clothes, sci-fi novels, steno pads, and Sharpies.
While Haley put clean sheets on his bed, Will tried to coax Nan into eating a peanut-butter-and-blueberry-preserves sandwich. She made it through about half, but Will could tell she was out of energy—she couldn’t even remember how to open a soda can and just kept spinning the tab like the hand on a clock. Finally, Josh took her into the bedroom and helped her out of her filthy clothes and into a T-shirt and pajama pants. Nan was asleep before Josh closed the bedroom door.
Hours later, Saidy confirmed Josh’s earlier suspicions: Nan had a sprained wrist, two broken fingers, one twisted ankle, a ruptured eardrum, three infected wounds, and a toenail that had to come off immediately. Since Nan was able to remain awake long enough for Saidy to evaluate and treat her, they decided it was safe to let her go back to sleep afterward.
The story they had agreed on and told Saidy was that Nan was a dream walker who had gotten lost in the Dream for a number of days and that they wanted to let her rest before putting her on a plane home. The only part of the story Nan got wrong was that instead
of saying she was from Chicago, she named Geneva as her hometown. Frantic glances were exchanged until they discovered that Nan knew an inordinate amount about Switzerland and was able to converse easily in French.
“Maybe she’s really Swiss,” Josh whispered to Will.
Saidy left, and Nan slumped over on the bed, mumbling, “Au revoir,” as she fell back to sleep.
* * *
Late that night, Will woke to the sound of his bedroom door opening. No light came from the living room, but he knew that the figure darting into his room was Josh. He rolled to the far side of his twin bed and held up the blanket for her to climb under.
He didn’t have to ask what was wrong; he knew from the way she trembled that she’d woken up from a nightmare. Ever since Feodor had tried to kill her with his memories—and Feodor had lived through the worst parts of World War II—she’d been having nightmares. He suspected that some of those memories had simply stayed in her subconscious.
“Sorry,” Josh whispered.
“For what?” Will whispered back, tucking her in beside him. “Letting me sleep next to my girl?”
He kept his words light to hide his rage. He had never hated anyone the way he hated Feodor Kajażkołski. Feeling Josh hide her face in his shoulder and hold him with her fists clenched against his back made Will want to go buy a bigger gun. It made him regret the peaceful death he had allowed Feodor. The man should have suffered the way Josh was suffering now.
But Will knew that anger was only ever a shield against hurt or fear, and he didn’t want to burden Josh with either of those, so he just tightened his arms around her. Her neck was sweaty, but he kissed it anyway. “You’re safe. Go to sleep, Josh. You’re safe here.”
He didn’t know what she’d dreamed of, and he didn’t ask because he didn’t think he could bear to know.
He was right.
Three
Waking was difficult. Mirren struggled up into her mind, which was as gray as early morning, but her body kept calling out to her like a foghorn: Sleeeeep. Sleeeeep. Sleeeeep.
She opened her eyes, despite the pain, and saw that the foreign bedroom was dark and empty. She didn’t understand why she had woken up until she realized how full her bladder was. Since entering the Dream, she had peed in a lot of weird places, and she wondered what new dreamscape she would mark as her territory this time.
