Dreamfever (6 page)

“There's no sky where you live?” Haley asked.

“There is. I mean, there's an imagined sky. An excellent likeness, I'll admit. But when I look up at it, I don't feel anything except that I'm looking at a very high ceiling. This feels … vast. Open.” Touching the wooden railing, she added, “Like I might even fall off the planet if I don't hold on.”

Haley smiled, but when she caught him, he ducked his head.

“I've always been a little obsessed with gravity,” she admitted. “I used to spend hours dropping stones off a bridge where I live. When I was little, I thought that the reason the stones fell so fast was that the creek was where they belonged, that things meant to be together would draw each other. Birds got drawn up into the sky, plants reached for the sun, bodies fell to the ground when they died. It was all part of my distorted childhood theory of physics.” She laughed. “Actually, I sort of feel like that's how I ended up here, that I was so meant to be here that I … attracted a path.”

Haley leaned against one of the columns that lined the porch. “The place you live…” His mouth twisted in a little frown. “It's not in the World, is it?”

Mirren stared at him, confused as much by what he didn't know as by what he did. “Should I know who you are?”

He smiled more easily this time. “No. I'm nobody. I just—sometimes when I touch someone, I see things. About them. I guess it's … like a, a psychic thing.”

A
psychic
thing?

“Oh,” she said. She had no idea what an appropriate response to such a declaration might be. Nor was she entirely certain whether or not to think him crazy.

“S'okay,” Haley told her in a tiny voice, his smile fled. “You don't have to believe me.”

“No, no, I don't mean to—I mean, I—I'm sure you're telling the truth.”

According to your own distorted version of reality.

She felt guilty as soon as the thought crossed her mind. How was Haley's belief that he was psychic any less reasonable than her own belief that she had somehow manifested a way to join the World because it was where she belonged?

Bewildered, she fought the urge to tug on her right earlobe, a gesture her aunt Collena had often said made her look ten years old. “I'm so sorry—apparently I'm awful at conversation.”

Haley chuckled. “I'm the one who writes notes.”

“Is that what you do when you're nervous? I should try it.”

“Here.” He extracted his steno pad and Sharpie and held them out to her.

Mirren laughed. “I'll let you know when I need them.” She looked up at the moon again, taking another deep breath. “So, what did you see when you shook my hand?” she asked.

“I saw … You were holding a jewelry box. It had a fancy star on the lid, and inside was all this jewelry, with like red-orange stones. You and a younger girl put them on, and then you danced around in long nightgowns. Like you were at a party, or a…”

“A ball,” Mirren finished, her voice flat. “Dear God, you
are
psychic.”

Haley shrugged.

“I remember that night. Katia and I—Katia, she's my cousin, but we were raised like sisters—we got all the royal jewels out and put them on, and we listened to the waltz from
Eugene Onegin
over and over and acted out the ball scene from
Anna Karenina
.” Mirren peered at Haley as if she might find the explanation of his ability somewhere on his face. “My aunt and uncle told exactly one person besides me about Katia. No one else knows she was ever born.”

Haley shrugged again.

“You're right, too, that we've never lived in the World. We call the place the Hidden Kingdom, but it's really just a pocket universe, which is sort of like—”

“I know what they are.”

A pocket universe was a section of the Dream cut off from the rest and formed into its own miniature universe.

“Really?”

He nodded but didn't explain, so Mirren continued. “After my parents were killed, my aunt and uncle took me to the Hidden Kingdom to keep me safe. I've lived there my whole life.” She tried not to sound bitter. “They thought they were protecting me by keeping me there. They wouldn't even tell me
how
to leave; I had to find my own way. Truthfully, I'm not sure if they ever would have let me go.”

Despite the heat, chill bumps rose on her arms.

“So,” Haley said carefully, “you don't need my help getting home?”

They looked at each other and smiled. “No, I don't need help getting home. I've been dreaming of the World for so many years; now that I'm here, nobody's sending me back. I can just be me here—nobody's niece, no queen-in-training. I can go to college and swim in the ocean and eat fast food. And I can dance at a real ball. This is where I'm meant to be.”

“Gravity,” Haley agreed.

“Exactly! And…” She swallowed. “I could have real friends.”

She didn't know if she was being presumptuous or not. To her relief, Haley turned so that he stood beside her, facing the lawn, and said in a timid voice, “You can have all the friends you want.”

Filled with impetuous delight, she said, “My name is Amyrischka Heloysia Solei Rousellario. But please call me Mirren.”

He ducked his head, but this time Mirren knew that meant he was smiling. “Haelipto Krismon Mozeiush Micharainosa. But everyone just calls me Haley.”

Mirren wondered if the gravity that had drawn her to the World had drawn her to Haley as well. If so, she was grateful to gravity. She was so happy, in fact, that she turned and hugged Haley.

The hug seemed to catch him off guard, and Mirren immediately realized her mistake.

“Oh, I shouldn't have done that,” Mirren said. “Did I make you see things again?”

“No,” Haley said softly. He managed to raise his face long enough to emphasize the point. “No.”

“I'm just so excited,” she said by way of apology.

Haley nodded. With his hand, he gestured to the World beyond the balcony. “You should be.”

 

Four

Josh loved waking
up next to Will, but less so when the thing that woke her up was Haley letting himself into Will's bedroom unannounced.

“Um, hi,” Josh said. She rubbed her eyes and poked at Will, who was sprawled out in bed beside her. “Will, wake up. Haley brought us doughnuts.”

“Huh?” Will's eyes flipped open, then scanned the room. “Wait—there are no doughnuts! You little liar!”

Josh laughed and inserted herself between his arm and side. She supposed she should be more polite or demure or whatever—dream-walker culture was painfully prudish—but instead she nestled her head against Will's chest and closed her eyes again.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Quarter of still-too-early,” Josh told him. “Haley, what's up?”

“I need to tell you something,” Haley said. “It's bad.”

Skippy,
Josh thought. “It's too early to hear bad news.”

“No, it's not,” Will said. He propped a pillow against the headboard and sat up, causing Josh to slump awkwardly against his side. “Go ahead, Haley.”

Josh grumbled to no avail. She knew that in the future, Will would be one of those psychiatrists who was available to his patients no matter the hour.

“It's about the girl,” Haley said. “Her name isn't Nan. It's Amyrischka Rousellario.” To Will, he added, “She's the lost dream-walker princess.”

“What?!”
Josh nearly shouted. “Are you serious?”

Haley nodded.

“Wait, the princess from the old monarchy?” Will asked.

“Yeah,” Josh said. “The one my grandfather overthrew. The king and queen had a baby daughter who either died or went into hiding after the revolution, and no one's seen her since. Until now, apparently.”

Josh—who had never cared about princesses—knew this only because Deloise had several books on the monarchy. As the years had passed, a certain romantic nostalgia for the old regime had developed, as is wont to happen with royals who die tragically—and leave behind princesses who may or may not have died.

“What was the princess doing wandering around in the Dream?” Will asked.

Haley explained the situation—that Mirren lived in a pocket dimension for her own “safety” but had eventually found an archway leading to the Dream and jumped through it, only to get lost in the Dream.

“You're telling us she ran away from home?” Josh summarized.

Haley considered. “Yes.”

“Great. So her aunt and uncle are probably going to be pissed at us. Please tell me she's not here because of the Accordance Conclave.”

After twenty years in power, the dream-walker junta was finally going to hand over power to a permanent government. At the Accordance Conclave, the dream-walker population of North America would be allowed to vote for the form of government they wanted.

Josh was a conservative, a member of the Troth Party. Her grandfather, on the other hand, was the head of the Lodestone Party and was running on a platform of dream-walking reform.
Radical
reform.

“I don't think she knows about the Conclave,” Haley said, answering Josh's question. “I think … she was very sheltered.”

“So you didn't want to tell us who she was because you think she'll be in danger if people find out she's a member of the old monarchy?” Will asked. “Does anyone still care?”

“Yes,” Haley and Josh said in unison.

“There's still a party trying to have the monarchy restored,” Josh explained. “It's led by some distant cousin. My grandfather tolerates them because they don't have much real power, but technically what they're advocating is illegal under the junta. Part of why they have so little power is that the cousin was twenty-sixth from the throne or something, but if they actually had the legitimate Rousellario heir, they might come up in the ranks real quickly, and I'm pretty sure Peregrine would have them all arrested. But you said Mirren's not here about the Conclave, right, Haley?”

“Right.”

“So, she just has the worst timing in the world. And apparently the worst luck, too, since she's now her worst enemy's granddaughter's houseguest.” Josh ran a hand through her hair, feeling how tangled and dirty it was. She wanted a shower. “If she's not here for the Conclave, then what's her plan?”

Haley shrugged. “She said she wants to go to college, swim in the ocean, and eat fast food.”

None of those things sounded very princessy to Josh. “There wasn't a McDonald's in her pocket dimension?”

“No. Her aunt is a health nut.”

“That would explain why she didn't know how to open a can of Coke,” Will remarked.

“Wait a sec,” Josh said. “Couldn't she have just imagined a McDonald's and her pocket universe would have created it?”

“Feodor could only do that because he was lucid dreaming,” Will reminded Josh. “His physical body was asleep, remember?”

“Oh, yeah. I had forgotten that.”

But as soon as Will brought it up, her mind filled with the image of Feodor's time-ravaged body, each limb and digit wrapped in a cobweblike sheath. Only his toenails and fingernails, grown hideously long and curved, had protruded from the shroud. Even worse, she remembered what it had been like to be
inside
the sheath, an uncomfortably hot, stiff cocoon.

“If nobody in Mirren's pocket universe could lucid dream, then the place where they lived probably never changed from what Feodor created it to be,” Will said.

“What?” Josh asked, looking at Will and wondering if she had heard Feodor's name only because she'd been thinking of him.

“Come on,” Will said, “who else would have built a pocket universe where the royal family could hide out? Who else
could
? In the 1950s, everybody knew that Feodor was secretly working for the king and queen. Half the stuff he invented ended up in the royal family's hands before his bosses at Willis-Audretch could even get a patent on it.”

“Oh,” Josh said hollowly. She'd known all of that before, of course, she just hadn't realized that Will knew.

Will's eyes were alight with an anger that had become all too familiar recently. Josh always saw it when he talked about Feodor, which was part of why she avoided the topic. She was afraid of his anger, especially afraid of what would happen if he turned his rage on her.

Will didn't know it, but he had so many reasons to be angry at her.

*   *   *

Josh knew that things between her and Will weren't right, but she didn't know how to fix them. Since Feodor and Gloves had tried to kill them, a tension had grown inside Will, and it never really went away. He always seemed to be on high alert, and the smallest things startled him. He'd begun trying to train again so soon after he got released from the hospital that he'd torn the stitches out of his hand. And there was his obsession with guns, too.

Not that Josh felt she was in a position to judge him. On a good week, she slept through the night twice. But the problem with the nightmares wasn't just that they terrified her; far worse was how she had become Feodor's unconscious conspirator.

She had a theory that when Feodor had tried to kill her with his memories, the bad memories weren't all that got through. Somehow, everything that Feodor had ever known or experienced had been planted deep in her subconscious. At night, all sorts of memories played themselves out in her head, twisted and warped, yes, but she believed they were based on true events. How else had she known what his sister, Bryga, looked like long before Will pinned a photo of her on his stalker wall? How had she aced a chemistry quiz even after she daydreamed through all her classes? How had she understood two women in a sporting goods store when they were speaking Russian?