by Cara Wylde
“Thank you so much, Furio. This was amazing.”
We shook hands, then he returned to his tour guide duties and showed us out of the training facility.
“You looked badass in there,” Paz whispered as he walked past me, pretending he wanted to catch up with some guy.
“Word.” GC pulled off the same move. Nowadays, with Crassus watching me like an eagle, this was the only interaction we got. “Like a warrior goddess.”
I smiled, feeling pretty good about myself. I had Valentine’s notebook, I’d just learned some cool tricks from an Unseelie soldier, and we were heading to the Academy already. The visit had been short, which suited me just fine. All I wanted was to grab dinner, then lock myself in my room and dive into young Morningstar’s secrets.
Who knows… Maybe this notebook will tell me how to retire you. Was it too much to hope for?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It turned out… it was. It was way too much to hope for.
The damn thing was a dream journal. A. Dream. Journal.
“The fuck am I supposed to do with this? Ugh!” I threw the notebook across the room. It opened to a random page. I eyed it for a moment, then got up and decided the page it had opened to must have a clue for me. It didn’t. It was some dream about looking through a window and seeing a bunch of wild horses playing in a field.
“Useless,” I muttered.
I placed the notebook on my nightstand. Corri’s bell caught my attention. With a sigh, I rang it three times, hoping my pixie would show up. I missed her so much! Today, her one-week sentence in the Blank expired, but I’d totally forgotten the exact hour, minute, and second Morningstar had banished her, so I’d been ringing the damn bell all evening. I plopped on the bed, stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, then sat back up and grabbed the notebook again.
“There has to be something in here.” I couldn’t accept defeat. I couldn’t accept that I was isolated from my friends, my lovers, from my parents, and Corri, that I was all alone trying to solve this, and that the only clue I’d found was no clue at all. “I’m just going to read it over and over until I figure it out.”
One thing that was clear was that Valentine Morningstar could lucid dream, just like me. He’d categorized his dreams according to what he believed they were. He called some of them lucid, others out-of-body experiences, a few were under the tag “regurgitated thoughts” (I had a pretty good idea about what that meant, but still… ugh! that name!), and then there were the dreams categorized as PU. What the hell does PU stand for? Of course, there was no glossary, because why would there be one? He certainly didn’t expect his dream journal to be found and read. I thought these were the most interesting ones, and not because they were marked with an abbreviation I would probably never decipher.
In the PU dreams, he usually met people he knew in real life. He talked about some professors that I knew because they were still teaching, like Mr. Curio from Rhetoric. Lovecraft was mentioned, too. He once dreamed about a girl he liked from the Righteous Death Cabal, and in this dream, he saw himself hanging out with her. “It was as if I was a spectator watching a scene from my own life,” he wrote. “I was myself, but at the same time, I knew the boy before me was me, as well. I could only see the scene through my own eyes, though, not through his.” The dream ended when the two kissed, and Valentine realized he couldn’t feel her lips on his. He got mad, and that woke him up.
The last entry was a dream in which he saw himself again, years older, reaping high up in the snowy Alps. Two climbers had gotten lost, and no one had found them. Their time had come. The dream was marked as PU, but it ended with an almost unintelligible scribble. “Is this my future?”
I cocked an eyebrow.
“Hm. Strange.”
It was then that I noticed the PU mark must have been added later. I turned the pages back and looked for it. Indeed, it seemed to have been added in blue ink that was slightly darker than the one he’d written his dreams in. The only explanation was that the ink was fresher.
“So, he thought the dream showed him the future, but then he changed his mind and called it PU. Whatever the fuck that means…”
His experiences were consistent with mine, though. I’d found his dream journal after having an OBE that had showed me the past. So, both he and I could see the past and the future in our dreams. Neat.
I reached for the bottle of water I’d left on my nightstand, and my hand found Corri’s bell instead. I rang it out of habit. Poof! The pixie materialized out of nowhere, right on top of the notebook.
“Oh my God, Corri! You’re back!” I grabbed her by the waist and smushed her against my cheek. “I’m so sorry. My stupid father is stupider than I thought. I tried to convince him you didn’t do anything.”
“Don’t worry about me, Mistress. I’m fine.” She beamed at me, but I could see it in her eyes that she was far from fine. She looked haunted.
I bit the inside of my cheek. I wanted to promise her so badly that it would never happen again, but I’d done it before, and it hadn’t meant a thing. Morningstar had made it his mission to make my life hell, a hell where I couldn’t keep my promises to my friends.
“What’s this? Have you started a diary?” It was so obvious she wanted to change the subject that it hurt.
“Err… no. It’s Valentine’s dream journal. I found it in his room. He wrote it when he was at the Academy. Maybe year two or three.”
“Oh. That’s odd.”
“What’s odd?”
She shrugged, as if it was evident. “He’s a hybrid. Half archangel and half human, but still… supernatural. Supernaturals don’t dream.”
My jaw dropped. She was right! Supernaturals could not dream. How could I have forgotten?! Sariel had almost killed me over it. I still had no idea why they all thought dreaming was cool, but Sariel was well-known for being petty and jealous just because I could do something that he couldn’t, no matter how useless that something was. He’d changed, though. Since he’d lost his wings and told me he was in love with me, I was pretty convinced he’d changed.
“Stay here,” I told the pixie. “There’s only one way to find out if hybrids dream. I’m going to see Patricia.”
“No, Mistress. I’m coming with you this time.”
“Dude, we’re not allowed to leave the room after curfew. If my father finds out, he’ll send you to the Blank again.”
“I don’t care. He’s going to send me again and again, no matter what I do. I’m done being good and playing by the rules. I’m your pixie, not his. I’m going to help you from now on, even if I spend a whole year in the Blank after that.”
“Oh, Corri… I wish you really were my pixie. Because he bought you for me, he’s got more power over you than I have. Fuck him! But are you sure?”
She fixed me with a confident gaze. “Let’s go see Patty.”
* * *
“Yeah, I have dreams sometimes.” Patty was putting away the clean dishes. She had her long hair pinned on top of her head and stuffed inside a white cap.
“Wow,” I whispered. “I learn something new every day. Hybrids can dream.”
“Well, we are half human, after all.” Her mother was a succubus and her father was human. She’d never met him. “But I don’t dream like you. You’ve told me some crazy shit. I rarely remember my dreams, and I’m never aware that I’m dreaming. Why are you asking, though?”
I took out Morningstar’s notebook. “I found this in my old room. My father’s old room. It’s his dream journal. I can’t figure out why he kept it, or what it all means, but Corri just pointed out that it’s weird he can dream at all, since he’s supernatural. I thought I’d ask you.”
She wiped her hands on her apron and took the journal, scanning its pages quickly.
“These are awfully detailed. No, I don’t dream like this. Or, I don’t remember. Even for a hybrid, I think he’s special.” She gave it back to me.
“I just
thought I might find a clue… Oh well.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you came. I have to give you something from Klaus.” She opened a cupboard, lifted a pile of kitchen towels, and took out something that looked like a leaf. A big, fat leaf.
“Fay’s Alder?”
“Yes.”
I accepted the leaf and stared at it in confusion. What was I supposed to do with it?
“I have one, too. So does Klaus, his boyfriend, your boyfriends, Sariel, and Francis. See? We haven’t sat on our asses all this time. We put our minds together and came up with a new way to communicate. No technology involved, so your father has no chance of finding out.”
“You’re telling me I’m holding a communication device?”
“Yes! Here, let me show you how it works.”
She took out a pen and started writing on my leaf. Underneath “You’re my best friend, xoxo”, she wrote her name – Patricia. Then, she took her own leaf out, and I saw the text she’d written on mine now appeared on hers.
“So cool!”
“Shh… You have to be very careful with this. No one has to see it. Ever. When you want to message one of us, just write whatever you want to write, then put the name under it.”
“Does this thing vibrate or something? How do I know when I got a text?”
She laughed out loud. “It doesn’t vibrate. Geez, Mila, it’s not a phone. It’s a magic leaf.”
“And Klaus did this?”
“Yeah. It only works with Fay’s Alder, and it was a complicated spell, too.”
“Aww… he’s improving.”
“He’s doing his best. He didn’t like it when you had to ask Lorna for help on Mabon.”
“Good. A kick in the butt is a step forward.”
“Yeah, it kinda’ hurt his feelings.”
“We both know he could be one hell of a mage if he tried enough.”
“Well, he’s trying now.”
“Good. Good. Because I need one hell of a mage on my team.”
So, it turned out young Valentine’s dream journal didn’t contain the instructions to build the only weapon that could destroy him, but it took me to Patricia, and now I had a neat communication device. The second I teleported back to my room, I settled in bed with my leaf, a naughty grin on my lips.
“How’s it going, handsome? What are you wearing?” And I added GC under the text.
It took him for fucking ever to reply, so I texted the same thing to Paz in the meantime. Whoever saw my message first was going to get some well-deserved leaf sex.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
This year’s Christmas vacation sucked more than the last two combined. Year one – Lorna revealed that I was adopted. Year two – my adoptive parents and my real father fought over me. Year three – work. Work work work. Headmaster Morningstar had kept his word. No Yule Ball, because parties and celebrations were forbidden. No one got to see their family. Also, yes, practice. He sent us reaping alongside our mentors. He was my mentor, as well as Francis’s and Merrit’s, so he came reaping with us, calling it a vacation. Apparently, he needed a break from the Academy and his headmastery duties, and reaping the souls of the tortured relaxed him.
I was still the only student who knew how to teleport without a teleportation pin. He’d given everyone their pins back, but they all knew not to step outside the boundaries that had been traced for them. The pins were tracked, and if Morningstar didn’t check the locations every day, he checked them at least once a week, for sure. Crassus was off duty, so at least there was that. I didn’t have to see his ugly Unseelie face for a while.
Okay, okay. Crassus was not ugly. He wasn’t the handsomest fellow, either, but he was decent looking. And I didn’t hate him, even though he made my life a living hell. It was his job. He got paid for it. It was the way of the Unseelie. Sometimes I wondered how far the Unseelie were willing to go if they were paid the right price. They were soldiers, and soldiers could be turned into assassins, right? Better not think about it…
But I was thinking about it, as dark and unsettling as it was. And I was thinking about other dark things, too. Reaping could do that to someone who wasn’t yet ready to reap every day, all day, and sometimes all night, too. I hadn’t yet graduated. I wasn’t an official Grim Reaper. And what sucked even more was that we were one hundred students who were spending their winter vacation running from one place to another, to Hell and back, then to Heaven to reap the souls of those whose time had come. One hundred. And of those one hundred, only twenty-two would be chosen to replace the old generation. Which meant… Ugh! Which meant that we weren’t all meant to do this! We weren’t all meant to separate souls from bodies!
Maybe I wasn’t meant to do it…
No. I was the most talented student the Academy had ever had the privilege to train. I was a natural. No, I was going to become a Grim Reaper for sure. No doubt about it. I was Mila Morningstar.
Then why did I feel like… Like I was crumbling. Falling apart. I was… disintegrating. Piece by piece, until there was nothing left of me, until I couldn’t recognize myself anymore. Because I wasn’t me. I wasn’t Mila. I wasn’t Mila Morningstar, and I wasn’t invincible. I was tired. So tired.
I’d gone through the same shit last summer, when my father had sent me to reap in his place to keep me away from GC and Pazuzu. I’d started cutting, then I’d turned to tattoos, so I wouldn’t cut anymore. They were fancier, too. Fancier than deep, white, wrinkled scars. But I couldn’t get my fix this time. Not with Valentine watching over my shoulder, acting like he was my goddamn shadow because he cared about me. Bullshit. He wanted me broken and weak. He could see that I was hurting, that the pressure and the stress were too much, that I needed a break, I needed space, I needed to breathe. He could see that I was suffocating, and he kept pushing and pushing. When Francis and Merrit took a few hours off, I wasn’t allowed to. But I didn’t say a word. I didn’t complain, I didn’t cry, I didn’t even allow myself to think about it. Because if I thought about it – about the pain, screams, tears, blood, guts, scars, tats, about about about… GC, Paz… how much I needed them to hold me hold me hold me… about Sariel and his ripped wings… about about… Francis – at least he was there, at least he saw me, at least he looked at me and his eyes told me to hang in there, just hang in there one more day, one more night… Because. Because if I thought about it, he would see it on my face. He would see it in my eyes. He would see it in the thin line of my lips as my jaw clenched and my teeth grit. He would see it in the twitch of my fingers as I held my scythe when it glowed red red red. He would…
“Mila, are you okay?”
Francis took my hand and squeezed it firmly. I looked at him, but for a second, my eyes didn’t focus.
“Yes, of course.”
“Mila, look at me.”
“I am… looking at you.”
“You’re not.” He placed his hands on my face, and my frozen cheeks sucked in the warmth of his palms. We were somewhere in Alaska. “Hey.”
I blinked, and there he was. Francis Saint-Germain. Warm, kind, alive. No, not alive. I had no idea what he was – he’d never told me, – but he was there, and that mattered. He was there, and he was pulling me back to the surface.
“I see you.”
He smiled. “Yes. Yes, you do. And I see you. Are you okay?”
“No. But I’m going to be.”
“It’s the last day, Mila.”
“Is it?” My heart thumped in my chest, and that was when I realized I still had it. A heart. I had a heart, and it beat. This was the last day, and I was still here. I’d survived.
“We’re teleporting to the Academy at midnight.”
“We are?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“Then, you are okay?”
“I am now. Thanks.”
“Okay. Because I thought I’d lost you there for a second.”
I looked into his mo
ssy green eyes for a long minute, and when I felt like I was grounded enough, like my scattered thoughts had stitched back together, I traced the sharp edges of his face with my eyes, the tip of his straight, noble nose, the curve of his plump, tasty lips… He must be tasty. Without wanting to or having planned to, I lifted myself on my toes. My lids fluttered, unsure whether they were supposed to stay open or shut, and my lips sought his.
“Mila,” he whispered. And I drank in my own name coming off his gorgeous lips. “You don’t want to…”
“I want to…”
Our lips locked. Mine moved against his, and he soon responded, shy at first… And I would have liked to say he turned more daring later, but he didn’t. Shy at first, shy all the way through… Our tongues never even touched. It was the most boring kiss I’d ever shared with a man, but it meant everything to me. The more we kissed, the more pieces I’d lost on the way came back to me, reattached to my body, my aura, my mind. The more we kissed, the saner I grew.
Francis Saint-Germain saved me that night. The last night. And he didn’t even know it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I slept for ten hours straight, only woke up to go to the bathroom, then I pulled my curtains closed, and slept for another five hours. I needed this. Sleep. Oblivion. When my body said I’d had enough and I needed breakfast (lunch, actually), I groaned, turned on my side, and forced myself to sleep some more. The truth was that I never wanted to wake up. I had one free weekend before the second semester started, and I wanted to sleep it all. Whatever this semester brought, it wasn’t going to be good. I could feel it in my solar plexus.
I was drifting on and off. My stomach rumbled, and I ignored it. No food. I don’t need food. I need to sleep. I hugged the pillow to my chest, and I briefly became aware of a breeze on my cheek. Corri. Her wings flapped hastily when I grabbed the pillow from under her. I wanted to say “sorry”, but I couldn’t move my lips. I drifted off again, and even though part of my awareness was still in the room, an even bigger part was far, far away.
