Dreamfever (26 page)

Finally, he picked up the Nine of Moons to put it back in the deck, and his eyes fell on the paper beneath it: Mirren's re-creation of the page from Feodor's last manuscript.

Will read, “A tangential link between body and consciousness, manipulated by influential magnets, creates the possibility of using fragmentary physical specimens to locate specific souls within the Dream.”

“Fragmentary physical specimens,” Will murmured.

“That means small,” Ian told him.

Will looked at the card, still in his hand.

DNA. It means that anyone with a sample of my DNA can locate my soul within the Dream.

“Who's got your blood, Mr. Kansas?” a softly accented voice asked.

Ian was gone, and Feodor was sitting in the chair by the desk, the bottle of vodka in his hand. He wore the same neat white shirt and gray vest in which Will had seen him last, and he greeted Will with the same innocuous smile.

Will was so caught off guard by the sight of him that he simply said, “No one has my blood.”

Feodor reached out and picked up the deck of cards, causing Will to stumble backward into a chair. Its metal legs shrieked against the cement floor as it slid across the room.

Feodor didn't react. He shuffled through the deck and then laid out the three cards Will had drawn earlier: the Two of Spirals, the Archway, the Walker of Stones. At the end of the line, he placed the Nine of Moons.

“Look,” he said, and Will looked, but the only thing he saw were the bloody fingerprints left on each card where Feodor had touched them.

“Oh God,” Will said, backing away even farther.

Blood began to slowly seep out of Feodor's pores, tiny pinpricks of red expanding and merging until a crimson sheen covered his face and hands. In seconds, the fabric of his shirt went from white to red.

“Stop!” Feodor commanded. “It's only blood! Pay attention!”

He pointed to the Nine of Moons, and the swift motion of his hand flung blood flying across the desk in thin ropes.

“We have work to do!” Feodor said. “Death is a mere inconvenience!”

Will turned and ran across the basement, knocking over the free-weight rack and nearly getting tangled up in a jump rope along the way. He reached the archroom door and frantically punched in his code, only to see the light turn red instead of green.

“And you wonder why she comes to me at night!” Feodor taunted. “I can give her the World, the Dream, the Death—all of it!”

Will punched his code again, and the light turned green as internal gears unlocked the door. Before it had finished opening fully, Will was through and yanking the door shut again.

“You are a child—”

Will could still hear Feodor screaming on the other side of the door. As he backed away, he heard a different voice: Josh's.

“Will?” she asked.

He turned around and saw her tied up on the archroom floor.

“You're not real,” he said.

“What? Of course I am.”

“No,” Will told her, sinking to the floor. “You're just inside my head.”

He curled up in a ball and ground his face against his knees until his brow bones hurt. “Will,” Josh kept saying. “It's really me. Are you all right? Can you untie me? I promise I'm real.”

His head hurt. His eyes ached deep within every time he tried to open them. He needed to sleep, but Josh kept talking to him.

“Will, look at me. Please.”

He forced his eyes open against the daggers of light. “What?”

Her face was only a few feet away, a black patch over one eye, but he thought he saw something foreign in her expression, and he wondered if she had come from the future or the past.

“What's wrong?”

Will closed his eyes again. “I'm deep on Veil dust,” he told her.

Then he took a long swig of vodka from the bottle in his hand and went to sleep.

 

Twenty−one

Haley found Josh
sometime after midnight. By then she had been bound for hours, watching Will sleep and wondering if he'd been serious about the Veil dust. She hoped not.

While she slowly coaxed her stiffened muscles out of the positions to which they had become accustomed, Haley sat on the floor beside Will's unconscious form and explained how he and Mirren had come home to find Deloise standing on the second-floor balcony and emptying Bayla's purse onto the lawn below.

“I guess Bayla brought over some Veil dust,” Haley concluded. “And then Deloise got home and found her with Whim.…”

He winced.

“How bad was it?” Josh asked, remembering how she and Haley had once caught their respective loves naked in the forest. Together.

“Bad,” Haley said.

“That's just skippy,” Josh said, thinking about which punch she'd use on Whim.

They woke Will, but he was too disoriented to make any sense. “The seeker of blood,” he mumbled as Josh helped him to his feet. “The two of blood. The nine of—”

“Blood,” Josh finished in unison with him. “Yeah, we get it.”

Haley was examining the bottle of vodka curiously. “This is the brand Ian used to drink.”

Josh hated the idea that Ian had been a heavy enough drinker to have a favorite brand.

“Ex-boyfriend,” Will slurred, “of blood.”

“Should we take him to the hospital?” Josh asked.

“The bottle's nearly full. He's probably still just coming down from the Veil dust.”

As they prodded Will up the stairs, Josh asked Haley, “Have you done Veil dust?”

“No. I'm— It would be bad for me.”

“It's bad for everyone,” Josh said. “It never did Ian any good.”

Haley frowned. To her surprise, he said, “It has its uses. But not for Will.”

As they crossed the first-floor landing, Josh said, “You never asked why I was tied up on the archroom floor.”

Haley pursed his lips. “I … try not to see other people's business. But sometimes I can't help it.”

“So you already know?” Josh was still getting used to having this side of Haley out in the open, and the idea that he could spy on her—whether or not he did so deliberately—freaked her out. She'd had a lot to hide lately.

“I know that you're going to explain it to all of us in the morning,” Haley said. “I can wait.”

He gave her a smile then and guided Will into their apartment. Josh forced her throbbing muscles to carry her up to the third floor, and she found Deloise in her bedroom, sitting on her bed amid a sea of tissues.

“What happened?” Deloise asked at the sight of her sister's burned and bloody arms.

Josh gave her a very short version of the evening's events and promised to tell the whole story in the morning, but Deloise heard that Josh had gotten hit on the head and insisted they go to the ER that moment.

“I'm all right,” Josh insisted. “I just had a CT yesterday.”

“Either you can come with me to the ER,” Deloise said flatly, “or I can wake Dad up.”

They went to the ER.

“Haley told me what happened earlier to night,” Josh said as they sat in a curtained room waiting for the scan. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Deloise removed a packet of tissues from her purse. “I got home from Nate's party, I went upstairs to say hi to Whim, and the living room was empty but music was playing. Then I saw light coming through the slats in the door to a laundry closet, so I opened the door, and there they were making out on top of the washer and dryer. They were even doing laundry at the same time, and Bayla had dryer lint in her hair.”

For a fleeting moment, Josh was tempted to laugh. Nobody was better at making a complete fool of himself than Whim.

“Were they naked?” she asked instead.

“No, but they had every single button undone. Bayla was— Oh, I can't even say it.”

Josh took Deloise's hand. “I'm really sorry they did that. And I'm sorry you had to see them doing it. I know how that feels.”

“Yeah.” Deloise picked at an imaginary pill on her skirt. “Is there something wrong with us Weaver girls, something genetic, that makes guys cheat on us?”

“No!” Josh said. “There's nothing wrong with you, Del. This wasn't your fault.”

“I don't know. I've never done what Bayla was doing to him in the closet.”

“Deloise!” Josh cried. “Don't even think that! If Whim has been putting pressure on you to do things…”

Deloise gave her a look Josh couldn't read. “You're too young!” Josh said.

“I'm sixteen. You were sixteen.”

“That was completely different. Ian and I had been together for years. We were committed to each other.”

“Well,” Deloise said angrily, “obviously Whim isn't committed to me.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Oh, stop looking at me like that, Josh. I haven't had sex with Whim. And after tonight, there's a pretty good chance I never will!”

Then she burst into tears. Josh had never felt that she was the world's greatest big sister, but she at least felt confident that the right thing to do was coax Deloise to sit beside her on the bed so Josh could hold her while she cried.

“Sorry, Del,” she said, smoothing her sister's blond hair.

“I just can't believe he screwed this up!”

I can,
Josh thought.

The sun was rising by the time they left the hospital, Josh with a clean bill of health. Haley was already up—or maybe he'd never gone to sleep—and made them cheesy eggs with bacon for breakfast.

“I think we should have a meeting,” he said afterward. “All of us.”

Josh reluctantly agreed. She went upstairs to pull on clean clothes, but as she brushed her hair in the mirror, she wondered if Haley had been right that she was going to confess her secrets at this meeting. The thought filled her with panic, and she rubbed the plumeria charm she wore on a chain around her neck as she walked down to the guys' apartment.

In addition to the bright red burns where the magnets had touched her skin, the points where the wires had cut her flesh were inflamed, both on her arm and on her forehead and neck. She'd managed to hide the burns from the ER doctor using her bangs and a sweatshirt, but when she entered the guys' apartment, Mirren looked up from Haley's tablet and immediately said, “Josh, what happened to your arm?”

“Um, I'll explain in a few minutes,” Josh said. “Let me wait until everyone's here.”

Will appeared in his bedroom doorway; maybe he had heard her voice. He had changed clothes, but he still looked haggard, his cheeks shadowed with stubble, his eyes blinking often as if they wouldn't clear. Anger and defeat warred in his expression.

He fell onto the couch next to Deloise, so Josh sat beside Haley on the floor, glad for his silent support. “Who are we missing?” she asked.

“Whim,” Will said. “He's in his room.”

All eyes turned to Deloise, who said, “Somebody else call him.”

After a moment of silence, during which no one made any move toward Whim's room, Will hollered,
“Whim! Get in here!”

Whim emerged, looking like he'd slept well and awoken refreshed, and except for an underlying sheepishness in his expression, he appeared no different from the way he had the day before. “Did I hear someone ever so sweetly call my name?”

He dropped onto an oversize beanbag chair that—because of his height—looked proportionally normal in size. “What's up, friends? Why the official summons?”

“Why do you think, Whim?” Deloise asked.

Whim made an exaggerated wince while shrugging his shoulders. “I guess it might
possibly
be because Will and I got a little carried away last night.”

“A little carried away?” Deloise repeated at the same time Haley said: “We're here to talk about a lot of things.”

But Deloise was going to have her say. “You used a sacred substance to get high and then got your freak on with Bayla in the laundry closet!”

Genuine alarm flashed on Whim's face. “I don't actually remember that last part. Although it would explain why I woke up reeking of fabric softener.”

“This is not a joke!” Deloise snapped. “I'm angry at you, and I have every right to be!”

Mirren was looking everywhere except at Whim and Deloise. Haley was staring at the floor. Josh wondered if she should suggest her sister take her conversation somewhere private, but she couldn't get a word in edgewise.

“I'm not saying that you don't,” Whim told Deloise. “Obviously, I screwed up last night. I don't know what Bayla was doing here or why I didn't shut the front door in her face—”

“Stop,” Will said suddenly. “Just stop it.” He took a deep breath, and the weariness of the movement almost made Josh get up and go to him.

“He's been seeing her for weeks, Del,” Will said. “Ever since the last Grey Circle meeting. I've known almost the whole time, and I should have told you, but he kept saying he was going to break it off, and I didn't want to hurt you. I'm sorry. It was my fault she was here last night, though. I called her and asked her to bring over some Veil dust.”

“Weeks?” Deloise cried.
“Weeks?”

Whim cast a pleading glance Josh's way, but she had no intention of helping him, not after seeing Deloise break down in the ER earlier. The only reason she wasn't breaking his nose right now was that she didn't want to take the opportunity away from her sister.

Or maybe not the only reason. She also felt stunned that Will had known and not told her, and that he had initiated the Veil dust party the night before.

I thought I was the one keeping secrets.

“Thanks, bro,” Whim told Will, his usual lightheartedness gone. To Deloise, he said, “Okay, so, I've been seeing her for a few weeks. At first we were just sorting through some emotional stuff from the past, and then I guess we got sort of caught up in memories—”