by Cara Wylde
“Do I know you?”
I hadn’t looked up yet. I couldn’t. I heard the window close, and I knew he was coming down.
What do I do? What do I do? He can see me!
You stay right where you are. The voice in my head, the feeling in my gut. It really felt like the orders were coming from within me, when in truth… they might as well have been coming from inside the house. There was something there. Someone. They’d been waiting for me, calling, begging… They weren’t going to let me go now that they had me so close, in their grip.
I didn’t move. I heard the front door open, then steps on the cobblestone alley. I heard the main gate creaking ajar.
“Come down, will you? Come inside.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, breathed in and out slowly, then finally gathered my courage and looked at him. He was tall, handsome, maybe slightly older than he should have been. Long blond hair gathered neatly in a low ponytail. Eyes as blue as the sky. As blue as mine. Sharp features, tanned skin. That was the difference. Tanned skin. He liked to be in the sun. This Valentine Morningstar liked to be in the sun.
“Why would I come inside?” I managed.
He furrowed his brows, lost in deep thought for a second. He pointed his finger at me, moved in closer.
“You remind me of someone,” he said. “I know I’ve never seen you before, but you look so familiar. Who are you?”
“You know who I am…”
He smiled brightly, kindly, as if he didn’t have a care in the world and the weird exchange we were having was just a welcome break in his daily routine.
“I really don’t,” he insisted. “Why are you spying over my fence?”
“Is this the future?” But how could it bloody be the future if I was his daughter and he didn’t recognize me?!
His demeanor changed at my words. He frowned, studying me more closely. He even took a step back, which was so unlike him. What was happening? He looked like my father, but he… wasn’t my father. I had a nagging feeling that no, this wasn’t the future. But it couldn’t have been the past, either. It didn’t look like he was… a Grim Reaper. In fact, he was wearing a cream shirt and blue slacks. What a strange combination for him. I’d always seen him in black… And where the hell was his scythe?
“You’re not from around here,” he said in a low, calculated voice. He was finally taking me seriously. “You’re from the other world.”
“What other world?”
“The other universe. You’re dreaming right now.”
I paled. How did he know? I swallowed heavily and decided to get down from the fence. Facing him now, the sensation that he was Valentine Morningstar but not quite, increased.
“I’m lost,” I said. “What is this place. Who are you?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m your daughter!” I raised my voice, which drew the neighbors’ attention. “I’m Mila.”
His blue eyes went wide, and his hands started shaking. He squeezed them into fists at his sides, trying to regain control over his emotions.
“This can’t be,” he whispered, in a daze. “He told me you were dead…”
“Who told you?”
He put his trembling fist in his mouth and bit down on his knuckles. Whatever was going on, he was taking this harder than I was.
“Come inside, we need to talk. I’ll tell you everything, but not here.” He threw a quick glance around and waved at one of his neighbors.
I dragged in a breath. He was holding the gate open for me, but I couldn’t decide whether this was a good idea or not.
“You don’t trust me…”
“How could I trust you? Your sole purpose is to destroy me.”
“I’m not who you think I am.”
“Who are you, then? What’s your name?” I already knew it, and I was beginning to understand what I’d gotten myself into, but I needed to hear him say it out loud.
“Valentine Morningstar. But I’m not… the Valentine you probably know. I’m not your father.”
Fuck. I stepped through the open gate and let him lead me to the patio, where we sat at a wooden table. He pulled out a bell, rang it three times, and a pixie appeared out of nowhere. He ordered her to bring us coffee. My heart ached when I realized the pixie looked just like Corri. He’d just called her from the Blank. I kept my mouth shut, though. This was not my Corri.
“Mila,” he said, staring at me over the rim of his cup. “Mila.”
“I realize this is a dream, but I’ve never dreamed like this before. I’ll ask again: is this the future?” He shook his head. “The past?” He shook his head again. “Oh, for God’s sake, what is it, then?”
“You really don’t know? You’re a traveler and you don’t know?”
“Traveler?”
“Jumper. Dream traveler. Your kind is known by many names.”
I chuckled stupidly. He stayed serious.
“Dream traveler… My kind…”
“Mila, this is a parallel universe. There are thousands of universes, and not all of them are accessible through trees, heavenly stairways, canyons, and rocks. In fact, most aren’t. Most are completely hidden from view, and only few people with rare abilities can access them. As far as I can tell, you’re one of these rare people. You can jump through the simple process of dreaming, and you can be in two places at the same time. You’re here, in the flesh, but you’re also in your bed, asleep. Personally, I’m not a traveler, but I’ve met a few, and they told me how it works.”
“This is insane…” I could barely form words, let alone speak them. “This is… No one told us about this. No one at Grim Reaper Academy, not one professor… N-no. This isn’t happening. It’s just a dream that will prove totally nonsensical when I woke up. If I’ll remember it at all…”
He shook his head. “You came here for a reason.”
“Look, dude… I don’t know what I’m doing. I didn’t choose this place, I didn’t…”
“Dream travelers choose their destinations instinctively.”
“What is a parallel universe, anyway?” PU. That was what PU stood for. Parallel Universe. The Valentine Morningstar in my world was just like me – a traveler.
He shrugged. “It’s exactly what the name says. A dimension parallel to yours. The same people, the same events… but slightly different. Time can be different, too. For instance, I know for a fact that I’m older than your father.”
“You know him?!” I jumped to my feet. The two cups of coffee clinked on their tiny plates when my knees hit the table by mistake. “You’ve met him?”
“He was the first traveler I came in contact with.”
“Oh my God!” I ran my hands through my long, tangled blue hair. This was it. This was the breakthrough. This was the last piece of the puzzle. I sat back down, placing my hands square on the table. “Tell me everything. You… you don’t know him. You don’t know how evil he is. I’m in danger because of him. We all are.”
“Who’s we?”
“The students of Grim Reaper Academy. Wait. Don’t you have an Academy here? Aren’t you a Grim Reaper?”
He sighed deeply. Suddenly, he seemed very sad.
“Grim Reaper Academy exists in this universe, too. And I used to be one of the twenty-two Grim Reapers a long, long time ago.”
“What happened?”
“I retired before my time was up. I retired when… I lost you and your mother.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
What. The actual. Fuck. My brain was glitching.
“It was years ago,” he began. “I met your mother on a pretty nasty job in Bulgaria. My scythe started glowing red, I teleported to the location, and there I was, in a dingy alley, in the middle of the night, and this woman… this beautiful angel with blond hair and blue eyes was screaming and fighting a gorilla of a man who was trying to subdue her. And I used to be good at my job, you know? But for one second, in that whole commotion, I didn�
��t know whose string of life I was supposed to cut. The blond angel got the upper hand, though. She managed to get her pepper spray from her bag, blinded her aggressor, and when he took a few steps back, she pulled a knife out of her boot and planted it right in his throat. I swung my scythe and released his soul from his body. The blond angel didn’t even see me. But I saw her. And from that day on, I followed her. I couldn’t resist, couldn’t stay away… She was perfect. I found out her name was Katerina.”
“Perfect? She was a prostitute.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “No, she wasn’t. She did odd jobs, worked as a waitress for a while, even took a job as a stripper when things got really tough, but she was never a… sex worker.”
“Hm. In my universe, that’s what she was.”
“Oh.”
“Go on.”
“I was in love. She’d stolen my heart, and I couldn’t hide from her anymore. I needed her to see me, I needed to know if she could ever love me back. So, I removed my Grim Reaper cloak one night, and went to see her at the club where she was dancing. I bought her a drink when she got off the stage, and we talked and talked… It was as if we’d known each other since forever, as if we’d been together before, in another life.”
“Or in all the other parallel dimensions out there.”
He smiled. “I didn’t know anything about parallel dimensions back then. I only knew what I’d learned at the Academy. Heaven, Hell, the Seelie Court, the Unseelie Court, Goblin Mountain, the Carnelian City… What year are you in?”
“Three. Second semester.”
“You must have visited all by now.”
I laughed bitterly. “I wish. Story for another time. Finish yours.”
“Right. Katia and I became friends. Then lovers. Then we got married. I told her the truth, of course. About who I was, what I was, about my job. She took it fairly well. She got pregnant. With you. We chose the name… She wanted to call you Mila, and I wanted to call you Josephine. We agreed you’d be Mila Josephine Morningstar. Our life was perfect. We were living in Scotland, in an old castle I’d inherited from my family. She loved it so much. While I was away reaping, she redecorated it and gave it a modern vibe. When the day came, I had a doctor, two midwives, and half a dozen assistants brought in. Still, they couldn’t do a thing. They couldn’t stop the bleeding, couldn’t save the baby’s life, couldn’t save her life…” His voice sounded choked, but he pushed through. “I lost my Katia, and I lost my Josephine. I lost my will to live, to reap. I retired and locked my scythe in a closet.”
We were both silent for a long while, sipping our coffee, and processing. He – his pain, and I – what I’d just learned. The puzzle was complicated. So many pieces… I could barely put it together, but I was starting to glimpse the truth.
“Do you still have your scythe?”
“No.” He cleared his throat. “I gave it away.”
“You gave it away?! What Grim Reaper gives his scythe away?”
“A Grim Reaper who wants his wife back.”
“Life?”
“No, wife. My wife, Katia. I exchanged my scythe for her.”
I blinked a few times, confused. He probably thought I had something in my eye. How silly of me to think I could solve this puzzle.
“I don’t understand.”
“He showed up two years after I lost them. The Valentine Morningstar from your world. He’d been traveling a lot, dream after dream, jump after jump, trying to find a solution for his… predicament.”
“What predicament?” But I already knew, didn’t I?
“He’d broken his scythe. He didn’t tell me how, and I didn’t ask. We agreed to an exchange. He would bring me his Katia, and I would give him my scythe.”
I felt like I was suffocating. I was still breathing, in and out, but my lungs refused to acknowledge they were getting the air they needed. I felt myself slipping out of the dream, waking up in the real world, and I fought to stay focused. This was not the time to lose my shit.
“He gave you Katia… my mother… from my universe.”
“He said he could do it. He said… she was one of the few dream travelers who could exchange bodies with themselves in other parallel universes. But he warned me that she was not okay, that she’d been locked in a mental institution for years, that she had delusions, thought she had a daughter…”
“Delusions? No! She did have a daughter. Me!”
“That’s not what he said. He led me to believe that things in his universe had unfolded similarly to things here, but instead of dying at birth, his Katia lost her baby and survived. He said he couldn’t bear the pain of seeing her consumed by agony and madness, of seeing her broken… I didn’t care. I wanted her. I knew I could make her better, save her. She was the love of my life. It didn’t matter she wasn’t from my world. I loved all Katias from all the parallel universes. So, we made the exchange. He wanted a scythe attuned to his energy, and I wanted my wife. It all worked out in the end.”
I was in shock. Hyperventilating, shaking, and dangerously close to waking up. I grabbed the cup before me with both hands and lifted it to my lips. The coffee was cold now, but the bitter taste grounded me to this world, to this universe that wasn’t mine, but was so similar to mine.
“No, nothing worked out in the end,” I finally managed to speak. Weakly at first, then more loudly and firmly. “Nothing worked out. In fact, it was all a mess. It is a mess. He lied to you. I didn’t die, and my mother wasn’t delusional. She was sick. Admitted to a mental hospital because of her schizophrenia. Do you even realize what you did?” He looked at me, lost, confused. He shook his head. “Do you know how he broke his scythe? He tried to kill me! That’s how. He tried to kill me when I was only a child. I was two years old, and he tried to cut my bloody throat! His scythe broke into pieces, and then he found you and took you for a fool.”
“I… I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know. I would’ve never…”
“Where is she?” I stood up, all my joints shaking with nerves and adrenaline, my body close to collapsing. Indeed, I was made of flesh and bone. I was in two places at the same time. The implications were mind blowing, but I couldn’t spare a moment to think about them. “Is she here?”
“She is,” he whispered.
“I want to see her.”
“She’s in the back, by the pool. Reading.”
That was all I needed. I burst through the main door, crossed the hallway, the living room, and the dining room. There was a glass door leading to a wide terrace, and I pushed it open.
There she was. Just like he’d said. By the pool, reading. Her long, blond hair shone brightly in the sun, covering her shoulders and back like a golden curtain. Her eyes were trained on the book she was balancing on her elegant knee, her face relaxed, and her lips slightly parted. Her dainty hand reached for the glass of wine on the table next to her chair. She lifted it to her red lips and took a sip.
My eyes filled with tears. I let them fall, and they soon soaked my cheeks, neck, and the T-shirt I was wearing. I was stuck on the terrace, looking at her, crying and trembling. Morningstar stepped behind me, and he must have guessed I needed a minute to compose myself, because he didn’t say a word. Katia hadn’t noticed me. She was engrossed in her book.
I had to move. I had to put one foot in front of the other and go to her. She was there, just a few feet away. I knew it was her. The Katia Angelov from my universe, the woman who’d given birth to me. She hadn’t abandoned me, and she hadn’t died. She’d just been used as a pawn on a board of chess where Valentine Morningstar was playing black, and the other Valentine Morningstar was playing white.
“You’re no different than him,” I spat through gritted teeth.
She looked up at the sound of my voice. My blue eyes met her blue eyes, and I felt like I was falling. Coming apart, slipping away, collapsing… I didn’t know what was happening to me, but something was happening, and I couldn’t stop it. I’d held
on long enough. Too long.
“My baby…” She whispered.
I opened my mouth. I wanted to say “Mom”. That was all I wanted to say.
It was too late.
I woke up in my bed. Corri was staring at me from atop the nightstand.
“Bad dream? You were screaming.”
I covered my mouth with my hand. Jumped out of the bed. Ran into the bathroom. Threw up in the toilet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It was early morning, before breakfast. On a Saturday. The Academy was asleep. I burst out of my room in my pajamas, startling Crassus and alarming Corri, who flew after me, her translucent wings beating wildly as she tried to keep up. Crassus himself found it hard to keep up, and his sword clanged when he accidentally knocked it against the winding staircase. I should have teleported. Would’ve been faster. But it wouldn’t have had the same impact as stomping angrily down the stairs, out of the north tower, across the inner courtyard, and into the Headmaster’s office. Just as I’d hoped, he was awake and at his desk, planning how to fuck the Academy harder in some new, twisted way.
“Mila!” He jumped when I banged his office door against the wall. “You’re in your pajamas. Proper dress and decorum…”
“I know everything.”
He furrowed his brows. “What do you mean?”
I walked up to his desk and slammed his dream journal on top of the files he’d been reading. Corri gasped, realizing my boldness would enrage him. Crassus simply closed the door and took his usual position in a corner, waiting to see how things would unfold.
“I know you’re a dream traveler. Turns out, I am one too. You saw the prophecy in one of your dreams, and you tried to kill me when I was just a child. Your scythe broke, so you universe-hopped some more until you found a lousy version of yourself to trick into giving you his scythe. Instead, you gave him my mother. Who isn’t dead, by the way, I know that too. She’s in a parallel universe, living with your lousy doppelganger. I saw her. I literally just saw her.” Tears were stinging my eyes, but I dragged in a breath and forced them back. This was not the time to become emotional.
