Dreamfire (34 page)

He felt like he'd ruined everything between them. If Whim hadn't arrived at the dance, he had no doubt he would have spent the night back in the county home instead of the hospital. Regardless, he was certain Josh hated him.

“How's Winsor doing?” Will asked Haley.

Haley's eyes darted toward him suspiciously. He shrugged. Will recognized Haley's notepad and pen on the bedside table, so he picked them up and tossed them across the bed. Startled, Haley flipped his chair in an attempt to scramble backward.

“Oh, damn,” Will muttered. He got up and walked to where Haley was sprawled on the floor, disoriented. When he held out his hand, Haley flinched.

“Let me help you up,” Will said.

Their fingers met, and Haley winced again, but he allowed Will to pull him back onto his feet. This time, Will set the notepad carefully on the edge of the mattress in front of Haley. “Want to talk?” he asked.

Haley extended a hand toward the pad, then drew back his trembling fingers. He said breathlessly, “Don't do that.”

Will wasn't sure he'd heard him correctly. “Don't do what?”

“Encourage me,” Haley told him, and then looked away, back at Winsor. “Don't lie.”

“I'm sorry,” Will said, stunned by the mettle in Haley's voice, “did I lie about something?”

“Whim told you about me, about the doctors and the hospitals.”

Had Haley heard them talking downstairs?

“I'm not crazy,” Haley said. “Whim wants to think that. The truth scares him.”

“The truth?”

“That I … see things. That I know things.”

“What things?” Will asked uneasily.

“
I would do anything to help you, if you'd only tell me what to do
,” Haley quoted.

Will had said that to Josh in the school lobby the night before, and he knew Josh would never have related his words to Haley. She was pathologically incapable of gossiping.

Haley must have overheard us,
Will thought.
He must have been eavesdropping.

Oblivious to Will's shock, Haley asked, “Did you mean that?”

It took Will a moment to realize that Haley was asking about what Will had said to Josh, what—in his own mind—he had considered a promise. “I meant it,” he admitted.

“That's good. Josh needs someone to…” He shrugged. “Be nice to her. She's not very nice to herself. She won't admit it, but she's been thinking about you saying that.”

“Haley—” Will said, his throat tight.

“Do you want more proof? I can tell you all sorts of things. I know that Dustine found you in the library and gave you Ian's journal. I know she told you that you'd be an outsider till the day you die. I know your mom liked vodka best, but if she was broke she'd drink mouthwash or hand sanitizer or vanilla extract. I know you accidentally drank cherry schnapps once, because you thought it was cherry syrup and you put it in a Coke.”

Will felt sick and stunned. He had never,
ever
told anyone that he'd drunk cherry schnapps—not even the social workers. His twelve-year-old self had been afraid he'd get sent to Detox.

Whatever excitement Haley had found in proving himself faded, and his voice softened. “I know these things,” he explained. “I saw them when I touched your hand. Ian used to tell me, ‘Be careful when you talk, Haley. Don't let them know.' Now he says, ‘Save them. Save Josh.'”

Will's brain continued to insist that Haley was delusional, but his body shivered. He didn't believe in psychic powers, and yet he couldn't disbelieve Haley. Something about the way Haley's face changed when he spoke—not with the eerie power of Ian's presence, but as if he felt more and more free—unsettled Will. “What do you see when you touch Winsor's hand?”

Haley's expression darkened. “I see the man with the canister putting the gas mask on her. And then … nothing. She's gone. I don't know where she is—I can't find her.” He put his hand on Winsor's as if to see if she had returned. “I keep calling for her, but I think maybe she can't come back.”

“Haley,” Will said again. “How do you know these things?”

“Ian said no one would believe me, back when we were kids, right after Dad left. He said, ‘If your own father won't believe you, no one else will.' But Ian always believed me. ‘Can't tell Mom,' he said. ‘Someday we'll tell Josh.'” Haley shook his head. “But she won't believe me now. It would hurt too much. She's the one who keeps calling him back.” His tone was faintly resentful, but then he looked ashamed of himself and added, “Maybe I do too.”

Either Haley was in the middle of a breakdown, Will decided, or else … had he spent his life writing notes because he was afraid of what he would reveal when he opened his mouth?

“I know all these things,” Haley said again. “I used to tell Ian, but now there's no one. It scares Whim. It would hurt Josh. Winsor won't even speak to me.”

Will watched Haley run his thumb over Winsor's knuckles, not with Ian's boldness but with the tenderness of a former lover. Whim had said he never understood Haley and Winsor's relationship—maybe it had been so simple as to confuse people. Maybe Haley had just loved her.

Haley sighed and set Winsor's hand gently on the bed. He looked at Will, and though he didn't ask aloud, his question was obvious.

“You can tell me,” Will said, coming to a decision. “You need to tell me. You can't carry all that by yourself.”

“Will…” Haley began, and then stopped, and Will wasn't sure if he was asking a question or speaking Will's name. Finally, he asked, “Will you believe me?”

Suspecting that Haley would know if he lied, Will thought the question through before he answered. He saw Haley looking him in the eye, speaking in complete sentences, expressing emotion, free of his notepad and pen … Haley had never appeared more sane.

Delusions make people act less sane, not more.

“I'll believe you,” Will promised.

Haley smiled, and then, suddenly shy again, turned away. He leaned down to kiss Winsor's dark hair. “Come on,” he said. “Let's go home.”

*   *   *

Josh wasn't prepared for the scene. The clock had just struck four in the morning when they finally arrived home, but there was a Forward Cleaning Service van parked in the driveway. Two thick tubes ran from the van through the back door.

The kitchen lights were on, and coffee percolated on the counter. From the living room came the sounds of motion, traffic, industrial equipment. Josh stopped dead in the doorway.

She hadn't slept all night, but she hadn't felt it fully until then, when the world threatened to slip away. Two guys were cleaning the carpet, and her stomach turned at the sight of red froth bubbling out of the rug. A woman stripped bloodied drapes off the windows, and the furniture had been piled haphazardly on one side of the room.

Josh turned as Haley wandered past her into the pantry and, presumably, the archroom. “Whim,” Josh said. “Take Del upstairs. Go through the hallway.”

Neither one asked any questions. Whim just put his arm around Del's shoulders, and she leaned gratefully against him, and they left the kitchen through the doorway that led directly to the hall, bypassing the living room. Whim nodded to Davita Bach, who was hurrying toward Josh. Despite the odd hour, Davita was dressed in a royal-blue suit that set off her red hair and the rubies in her ears. She frowned as if displeased with herself when she saw Josh and Will.

“I'm sorry,” she said, having to raise her voice above the clamor in the living room. “I thought you wouldn't be home until tomorrow and all of this would be finished.”

Josh felt the blood rush to her hands when she saw Davita. She probably would have been angry at Davita regardless, but the fact that the woman looked so put together, so
untouched,
sent Josh into a fury.

“I warned you!” Josh said. “Grandma warned you—she believed me!”

“I know,” Davita said, raising her hands in surrender. “I did what I could—”

“You did
nothing
!”

In that moment, Josh could have been moved to violence. She could have kicked in doors and thrown her fists through walls and shattered windows. But even as she lifted a hand to slap Davita's beautiful face, tears rushed her eyes, and she just stumbled down the hallway instead.

Davita called after her, but Josh didn't turn back. Will followed her, his footsteps a soft echo of hers on the stairs.

She was vividly aware of the emptiness in the third-floor apartment. From far below came the muted sounds of the cleaners. Only the end-table lamp warmed the room.

Will came in after her. He didn't speak, but she felt him behind her, and when she turned to face him, instead of the accusation she expected to find, she saw the same look she'd seen during their fight at the dance, the same longing to be let in, so she threw herself down on the couch and blurted out, “All of this is my fault.”

Will considered a moment before stepping closer and sitting down on the coffee table in front of her. Very calmly, he asked, “How's that work?”

“They used my lighter to leave the Dream. Then they got a mirror somewhere and they came here and hurt everyone.”

Will put his head in his hands as he said, “Josh, you need to go to bed.”

“No, you're not listening to me—”

“No, Josh, I
am
. And now is not the time to talk about this.”

“But it's my fault, don't you see—”

She stood up and brushed past him so that she could pace around the living room. Her need to move was closely tied to her desire to escape her own skin.

“It doesn't matter,” Will told her, rising. “It was an accident; you had no way of knowing what would happen.”

“No, I
knew
they weren't just nightmares.”

“And you told your grandmother and Young Ben and Davita. You warned them—they didn't listen, and that's on them, not you.”

“Grandma listened! She listened and she died!”

The pattern of shadows Josh cast on the floor as she moved was making her dizzy. Will climbed over the coffee table to cut her off as she made another circuit. He grabbed her arm, stopping her pacing. When he spoke, his voice was laden with frustration. “You did what you could. You warned the right people. They didn't believe you, and there was an accident. That doesn't make it your fault. You are exhausted and you need to sleep.”

She tried to shake him off and had to settle for shaking her head vigorously. “What are you doing, Will?” she nearly shouted. “Why are you defending me when this is obviously my fault?”

“Because,” he replied, raising his voice for the first time, “because—
because
—”

And then he kissed her.

Josh was so surprised she barely had time to respond before Will pulled away.

“Because,” he said, and only the lowering of his voice suggested anything had occurred between them, “you're hurting terribly and you want someone to blame, and since you can't get your hands on Snitch and Gloves, you're going to blame yourself.”

Josh stared at him.
Will just kissed me,
she thought.

Then she was kissing him, and he had his hands in her hair and her fists were full of his T-shirt and her body was alive with an exhilaration strangely close to dreamfire. She felt like either one of them might fly apart at any moment, and she clutched him as a way to hold him together, hold herself together—

“Stop, wait,” he said, pulling away. “We can't do this. This is crazy.”

Josh forced herself to let go of him, but her hands ached with the emptiness.

“I can't handle this tonight,” he said.

He looked as drained and weary as Josh felt. His black T-shirt had come untucked from his slacks and his auburn hair was tangled from moments of captured sleep on the hospital couch. His blue eyes were almost as bloodshot as Deloise's, as Josh knew her own must be, and he was shaking. She could tell him that he wasn't part of her life, her family, her problems, but he was going to hurt alongside her anyway.

And apparently he was going to kiss her too.

“Sorry,” she said.

He shook his head. “There's nothing—”

“No, I mean, for last night. For attacking you like that.”

He shrugged slowly, as if even that gesture were exhausting. “Maybe I deserved it. Right now I'm too tired to remember.”

She wanted to reach out to him, pull him close for a minute, long enough to sort out what those kisses had meant. Had he kissed her to shut her up, or had he kissed her because he was too exhausted and broken-down to stop himself?

She didn't want to scare him. She had spent so long pushing him away that now the desire to be close to him terrified her. So instead of kissing him again, she only laid her palm against his cheek. Will turned his face into her touch and closed his eyes, resting there, and Josh let her fingertips stroke his skin. Why had she been so afraid of letting him in when he had never been anything except kind?

Will rolled his face against her hand and placed a very slow kiss on the inside of her wrist.

Oh,
Josh thought, and she shivered.

When he opened his eyes, they had already found hers, as if he had seen her through his eyelids. He said, “Please go to bed, Josh.”

She took a step back and stumbled on her bad knee. He wrapped an arm around her waist and she didn't fight him. “Come on,” he said, leading her into her bedroom.

He didn't turn the light on, but slid her onto the bed. While he tugged off her shoes, she found her voice again and said, “Will?”

“Yeah?”

“I'm going to want to talk soon.”

He dragged a comforter off the floor and covered her with it.