Dark Consort

by Amber R. Duell

  I waved my hands frantically at the yard. “This is literally putting a neon sign on your hideout.”

  “Do any of them mention me? No.” Kail pried a piece of chain link fence away from a post. “In you go.”

  “No way.”

  He stared incredulously down at me. “Why not?”

  “This is all reverse psychology, right? Don’t go out there because it’s dangerous, but what you really have to worry about is what’s inside.” I crossed my arms, waiting for him to deny it, but he didn’t. “What’s Plan B?”

  Kail rolled his eyes. “It’s just a wax museum, Lady. Why would I drag you all the way out here if I didn’t know we would be safe?”

  I grimaced. Why would he? Because he was a cat, and I was a mouse. “Was that supposed to make me change my mind? Because you obviously haven’t seen wax figures with their creepy smiles and—”

  “Look.” He huffed, obviously agitated but trying to control himself. “You can’t be afraid of your own nightmares.”

  “I’m not afraid. I just don’t like them,” I grumbled, not wanting to admit that he had a point. Besides, my feet were killing me and there was sweat in places I didn’t know I could sweat. I grunted and slipped through the hole in the fence.

  Kail followed, and the fence clanged perfectly back into place. “Ladies first,” he said with sarcastic enthusiasm.

  I ground my teeth together and strode past the signs. One was nothing more than a neon red skull, a dozen more were in languages I didn’t know, and one was a blank headstone.

  “That one adds the Dreamer’s name and personal information,” Kail whispered conspiratorially when he saw me looking at the carved stone.

  Of course it did. I raked a hand over my face and waltzed up to the red door. It opened without a single touch to reveal a grand foyer with black silk wallpaper and a crystal chandelier. A long banquet table sat against the far wall, the entire surface covered with a long, metallic gold tablecloth. A book lay open at its center beside an ink pot and quill. On either side were trays of grapes and cheeses.

  “I thought this was a wax museum,” I said from the corner of my mouth.

  “It is.” He stepped across the threshold. “A very refined one. Care to sign the guest book?”

  I sucked in a breath, ready to explode, while Kail plopped a grape in his mouth before disappearing into a side room. I continued to stand in the doorway. What was I doing? I should’ve gone with the Sandman. He would never drag me into a place like this. But where else could I go? Not the beach. There was nowhere for the Sandman to take me that guaranteed my wellbeing.

  “Keep up,” Kail called from the other room.

  I scowled. Why did I have to be stuck with him, though? The moment I stepped fully inside the foyer, the door creaked shut behind me. I stared at the red-painted iron as if it were a living thing. In a way, it was, but… Panic burned its way into my throat. Where was the handle? “Uh, Kail,” I shouted. “We can get out of here, right?”

  “Worried, Lady?” he asked, leaning out of the other room before vanishing again. “Come on.”

  I would kill him when this was over. Stab out his other eye and feed it to whatever happened to be nearby. But for now, I followed his voice into a room with several wax figures. No one famous—just a family of four in a seemingly innocent setup: the father in a suit by the fireplace, the mother in a hoop skirt in a chair beside him, and two young girls playing with a puppy on the rug at her feet. I met the mother’s glassy stare as I moved toward another door. Her eyes tracked me through the room and her full lips broke into a big smile. Fear drove a spike through my forehead only to meet the dark, steely grin inside and shatter. The grin seemed to recognize the woman. The room. All of it. It softened into something proud and content.

  Kail’s beak grazed my shoulder, and I nearly fell over. “What part of keep up confused you?”

  “Something is about to be up,” I said in a raised voice. “My foot up your—”

  “Now, now. Watch your language around the children.” He put a finger to his mouth, shushing me, and winked at the two little girls. The one facing our direction looked up and giggled.

  “Holy fudgsicles.” I accidentally used the curse my friends and I used around Emery’s little brother. Had used. When my friends were alive. The memory was sobering. “You’re in such a hurry, so move.”

  “Testy,” Kail sang.

  In the next room, a cell door stood between us and three wax figures. The inmates wore black and white striped jumpers straight out of the movies. Two of them played cards on a moldy straw mattress and the other clanged his tin cup on the bars. I itched under their gazes and shuffled closer to Kail. The rooms got worse the deeper he led me into the museum. A flailing pig on a hook, a woman crawling from her own grave, and a shipwreck in a sea that swallowed the passengers, even though it appeared as nothing more than a puddle. I shut my eyes against the guillotine setup but still heard the metallic whir of the blade falling toward a man’s neck. The thwack of it hitting its mark. The thump as the head fell into the waiting wicker basket.

  When I stepped into the next room and lifted my gaze, I wished I hadn’t. A small group of men and women gathered in front of a large, raised platform. The women all wore white caps on their heads, and the men wore top hats. Their clothes were moth-eaten, their skin grimy, but they weren’t what stopped me in my tracks. It was a girl no older than me balancing on a stool atop the platform with a noose around her neck.

  Kail skipped up the side steps to stand beside her. “Don’t just stand there,” he said, motioning me forward.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, suspicion seeping out.

  “This relationship isn’t going to go anywhere if you don’t learn to trust me a teensy bit.” He held his fingers up with the slightest space between them.

  “I should’ve gone with the Sandman,” I grumbled, regretting my choice yet again, and eased around the wax figures to stand beside him. “For the record, this isn’t a relationship. It’s survival.”

  Kail gasped dramatically. “Are you breaking up with me?”

  I pulled the Swiss Army knife from my pocket and flicked open the corkscrew, twisting it so it caught the harsh lighting.

  “No sense of humor, that one,” he whispered to the girl on the stool.

  “Kail,” I warned.

  “Excuse me, dear,” he said nonchalantly to the girl. Then he kicked the stool out from under her.

  “Kail!” I shrieked.

  He ignored me in favor of lifting a trap door beneath her swaying feet. I gaped at him. “What?” He flicked a piece of hair from the forehead of his mask. “The longer you stand there, the longer she’ll suffer. Once we’re gone, the display will reset itself. So…”

  I stared at him, halfway sure he lost whatever sense he had. “What?”

  He pointed into the darkness below the platform. “Secret bunker. Geez. Did you land on your head or your butt back at the tower?”

  “Is this your thing?” I hissed, ignoring the still swinging wax figure. “Trap doors?”

  He glowered. “That’s a bit judgmental coming from someone that was saved by the fact that I have them.”

  My blood warmed. You know what, ya jerk… I shoved Kail toward the hole the same way he had shoved me into the first one. His knees banged against the edge of the opening, then his beak smacked against the opposite side before he fell in. A soft glow filled the hiding space. I smirked to myself, pleased I was able to catch him off-guard. More than pleased. I peered over the edge to find Kail flat on his back and waved at him.

  “I’m fine. Thanks for asking,” he said, breathless.

  I leapt down beside him, not caring that it was nowhere near the graceful landing he managed back at the Blood Tower. The important thing was that he was the one on the ground and I was the one on my feet. “Keep talking the big talk. See what happens,” I repeated the words he’d said to me.

  “Touché.” He stood slowly and reached up to sh
ut the hatch. “Don’t pretend this isn’t an ingenious hiding spot.” The sound of wood scraping against wood came from above my head, and the creak of the rope ceased. “See?” he added. “Wax Girl is all better.”

  Pick my battles. Pick. My. Battles.

  I turned, taking in the supposed safe house, though it was more of a safe box. A sleeping bag was rolled up in the corner beside a wooden chest, and one of four lanterns was lit with small floating orbs. That was it. Where were the weapons? The food? Food. When did I eat last? Not since I arrived in the Nightmare Realm. So why wasn’t I hungry? In fact, I felt pleasantly full. But still, what kind of safe house didn’t have even basic supplies?

  “Kail.” I took a breath to center myself. “There’s nothing here.”

  He kicked the trunk with his boot. “What do you call this?”

  “That depends on what’s inside it.”

  He lifted the lid to reveal a variety of items. A few coins, a map, and what appeared to be an extra set of the same clothes he was currently wearing, plus a cape. And he made fun of me when I wrapped a sheet around myself so the Blood Army wouldn’t boil me alive. Not that it would’ve worked. “Did you raid a five-year-old’s toy box?” I asked, my voice high with disbelief. “All you need now is a stuffed parrot and a plastic sword. Where are the weapons? Supplies?”

  He huffed. “We are your weapons. And what other supplies would I need? Gold in case I need to bribe any nightmares that like to play human, a map of the Nightmare Realm—albeit extremely outdated at this point—and clean clothes.”

  I lifted the cape with two fingers. “This is a joke, right?” He snatched the fabric from me, and I rolled my eyes, reaching for the map instead. Crudely drawn lines covered the yellowed parchment. “You did steal this from a child, didn’t you? Is this even accurate? Look at the size of this tree compared to the mountain over here. Is there a giant forest I should know about?”

  “Okay, you know what.” He snapped the paper from me. “You can sleep on the floor tonight.”

  “As opposed to the feather bed?” I asked, crossing my arms. His eyes flared murderously, and I reminded myself that I did, in fact, need to sleep near him. I tugged my t-shirt off, and the threads whipped away from the sleeve in favor of my razorback tank. I wadded the fabric up to use as a pillow. “Forget it. Where’s the food?”

  “We feed on fear, not food.” He snagged the sleeping roll for himself. “Which in turn feeds you. The whole thing where the Sandman banned Dreamers left most of us starved, so you have him to thank if you’re feeling a bit peckish.”

  My stomach growled in protest, as if it missed the food it no longer needed. “You ate a grape when we came in.”

  “I didn’t say we couldn’t eat. It’s instinctual sometimes, especially with the mindless brutes, but there’s no reason for me to meal plan for emergencies.” He grinned, almost too satisfied with my discomfort. “You’ll live.”

  True enough. If it took me nearly a week to realize I hadn’t eaten, there was no point in lugging food across the realm with us. I eased back on the hard cement floor and shoved my shirt beneath my head, too tired to argue with Kail. “See you tomorrow.” I said through a yawn.

  The last thing that passed through my mind before I fell into a fitful slumber wasn’t that he would kill me. He could’ve done that a hundred times by now. No, the last thought I had was much worse. It was the look of pain on the Sandman’s face. A hammer to my chest. I treated him horribly. More than horribly. And, honestly, I wasn’t sure there was a way to truly come back from that.

  When I saw another fissure waiting for me in my slumber, I hesitated. They had only given me more questions so far, and I didn’t have the energy for that tonight. There were enough unanswered things in my life. Why was Kail helping me? How long until this was over? Did Rowan really have no idea where this safe house was? Real issues. Not something that I already had a general answer to. The Sandman and the Weaver survived whatever they were running from the first time, and I knew all too well how the Weaver’s binding ended.

  But, as they say—whoever they are—curiosity killed the cat. So I looked anyway.

  A woman with long, crimped hair stood with her back to me, surrounded by thick metal bars. The breeze blew a snow-white shift around her body as she hummed.

  “A new tune, Mare?” the Weaver asked.

  Mare. Wasn’t that what the Sandman called Mara? And, true enough, when the woman turned to gaze at the Weaver, it was with the same horizontal pupils as the nightmare in my bedroom. Her knobby knees were visible through the shift, though she stood tall. Nearly eight feet, I would guess, which was extreme compared to the posture I was familiar with.

  “Weaver,” Mara crooned. “Come again, have you?”

  “Tell us how you escaped the Ever Safe,” the Weaver demanded.

  Mara wrapped her hands around the bars, iron dipped nails clinking against them. “Ask Baku. He followed.”

  “Baku doesn’t speak, and the path is too dark for his dreams to reveal anything useful.”

  She sneered. “And yet, he is out there while I am in here.”

  “Because he doesn’t want to rip the world out from beneath our feet,” the Weaver said with an edge of impatience.

  “Weak-minded,” she spat.

  “Smart,” the Weaver corrected.

  The breeze around Mara ceased, her clothes and hair utterly still as if she commanded it. Her eyes, on the other hand, were a tempest. “I am caged because I let you cage me.” To prove her point, she pried the bars apart and stepped through the opening. “I think, dear one, I will no longer allow it.”

  The Weaver ran then, screaming for the Sandman, before the memory snapped shut. My sleep was pitch black again, and I let out an aggravated huff. Every time. Each memory stopped just before anything important happened. But maybe I’d seen what I had to. Mara as the Sandman knew her.

  Mara as Mare.

  16

  Nora

  “Wakey, wakey,” Kail droned.

  I rolled over and refused to give him the satisfaction of a groan. It felt as if I aged fifty years the way my joints had stiffened after a night sleeping on the hard floor. “What time is it?” I asked, my words thick with the remnants of sleep.

  “Time for task number two,” he said.

  “What was task number one?” I eased up off the floor, stretching my sore muscles, and yanked the dirty t-shirt back over my head. The glowing orbs still floated around inside their lanterns, and Kail’s belongings were gone—probably back in the chest.

  “The dog.” Kail gripped me by the shoulders and spun me around to face a stained cloth draped over something square. “That’s task number two.”

  I blinked the sleep from my eyes. Where did that come from? It was probably better not to ask or to think about how he got it in here without waking me up. “How long have you been awake?”

  “Aren’t you going to ask me what’s inside?” he asked, sounding far too excited.

  “Nope,” I quipped, but couldn’t stop staring. It was too small to be the loom—not that he could’ve broken into the Keep and dragged it here—and that was all that mattered right now. Well, that and killing Rowan, which was really the same thing. “We have more important things to deal with.” Whatever was underneath the cloth rattled the bars. Hard. I jumped, my back slamming into Kail’s chest, and quickly shoved away from him. “Get rid of it.”

  “You don’t even know what it is,” he admonished.

  “I don’t care what it is, Kail. We need to figure out a way to defeat Rowan, not mess around with… that.”

  Kail whipped the sheet off with a dramatic flair to reveal a small cage. Inside, a monkey—or what resembled a monkey—less than a foot tall with dark matted fur bared its tiny fangs. A white moustache curled away from its face like an Emperor tamarin, but in true nightmare fashion, it was deformed. Its arms were short with small hands where elbows should’ve been, and a bare, rat-like tail twitched behind it. Pointed ears flic
ked at the edge of a scaled face with black eyes. It had no nose, and its pointed canines hung over its bottom lip.

  “Do you know how hard this thing was to catch?” Kail said in a hard voice. “It bit me. Twice. And it peed on me.”

  I smirked at that. “Smart nightmare.”

  “You’re welcome.” He crumpled the cloth into a ball and flung it at me.

  “What am I supposed to do with it?” I asked, dodging his throw.

  “Practice. Obviously.”

  “Oh, obviously.” I rolled my eyes. “Take it outside and let it go.”

  Kail laughed. “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “You seem to have some sort of moral objection to testing on animals, but you need to get over it. We agreed you need to be feared, and that won’t happen if you don’t want to hurt one of us.” He banged on the cage, and the monkey squawked, outraged. “You need to master us before we master you.”

  He wasn’t wrong, but it felt wrong. The monkey hadn’t done anything against me, so what good would it do to hurt it? I could be feared and fair at the same time. No, you can’t, the grin seemed to say with its sarcastic curl. The sentiment filtered through my logic, but I fought against it. I could try.

  And fail, the grin implied.

  “What exactly do you want me to do?” I asked, weary of my own warring thoughts.

  “Change him. You can alter nightmares with almost no effort.”

  “But…” The monkey’s eyes darted between Kail and me, pupils wide. Did it understand what he was saying? I cringed. “It’s already alive.”

  “So?” Kail watched me carefully. “You draw, don’t you? Once you finish a picture, is it impossible to tweak anything?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “How do you know about that?”

  “Rowan,” he said dismissively.

  For some reason, that made it worse. I ground my teeth together. “How does Rowan know?”

  He sighed. “Look, I don’t know, okay? Let’s not get off topic.”

  “I don’t know how to change nightmares,” I admitted. “Besides, it looks fine to me.”