Dreamfire (35 page)

“You know where to find me,” he told her. When he went back into the living room, he left her door open, just a crack.

 

Twenty-eight

The next morning,
Josh woke Will to tell him that they had been summoned to testify before the junta. He had a bad feeling about it, but he started getting dressed.

He had just pulled on his pants when he remembered that he'd kissed Josh the night before.

“Oh, man,” he muttered, rubbing his head. “What was I thinking?”

He'd been thinking that he was so tired, and so sad, and so sick of listening to Josh beat herself up, and that kissing her was as close as he could get to saying, “Shut up, I don't care what you've done, I think you're amazing.” Then as soon as he started kissing her he panicked because maybe he'd gone too far, and he'd finished by babbling some sort of argument for why she was too hard on herself.

“Not smooth, Will,” he told himself in the bathroom mirror. “Not smooth at all.”

He supposed some sort of explanation was in order, but Josh didn't ask for one as they ate a quick breakfast. Whole-grain toast and eggs for Will, hot chocolate and cherry Pop Tarts for Josh. She didn't say anything except that Kerstel had made it through surgery.

The limo was chilly within, and rain threatened without. As they rolled down the long driveway, Davita flipped open a laptop. She looked just as put together as she had the night before, but her fingers were sluggish on the keys. “What's your full name, Will?” she asked.

He looked at Josh. She shrugged. “I'm not sure yet,” he said.

“Well, we have eighty minutes to figure it out. Name some of the men from your mother's side of the family.”

“Paul, John, Ralph, Luke, Neal, Mark—”

“Isn't there anyone in your family with a name that isn't one syllable?” Davita interrupted.

Will had to think. “I have a distant cousin named Toly, which I think is short for Anatoly.”

Davita nodded her approval. “It's close to Anatolijus, which is an old dream-walker name. Do you have a historical figure yet?”

“Sigmund.”

She glanced up. “What the hell is Sigmund?”

Will explained and her brows furrowed in exasperation. “Fine, you're William Anatolijus Sigismondo Kansas. No, Kansisuvth.”

He gave up. The atrocity she had just made of his name was one he should have expected. Glancing out the window, he reminded himself,
You aren't really one of them.

“Josh,” Davita said. “Does Will know what people will expect of him?”

Have you taught him any manners?
Will translated.

A lock of light-brown hair fell onto Josh's forehead as she turned to look at the older woman. “He'll be fine.” She had hardly spoken to Davita since they got in the limo.

Davita tilted her head skeptically. “Does he know how to greet elders? Does he know how the amphitheater will be set up and where to sit when he enters? Does he know whom he'll be meeting and what subjects can and cannot be discussed?”

“No,” Will said. “He does not.”

Josh sighed. “Let's go over some things.”

Over the next hour, she attempted to explain how the junta worked and the protocol for speaking before it, but she obviously had little interest in politics and social niceties. Davita made frequent interjections. While Will felt uncomfortable at having been singled out, he was also relieved that someone had thought to tell him these things. Josh was an amazing teacher of how to be a dream walker
in
-Dream—less so out of it.

“And, naturally, my grandfather will be there,” Josh added as they exited the highway and plunged into downtown Braxton. “Probably waving sparklers and drinking Champagne.”

“Josh,” Davita said, her voice full of disapproval.

“You know he hated Grandma. I'm telling you, if he makes one smart remark about—” Josh's voice caught in her throat and she had to clear it before she went on. “I'm gonna kick him, just like I did when I was six.”

“You kicked him?” Will asked.

“Yeah.” Josh broke into her lopsided smile. “He made Deloise cry, so I side-kicked him, right in the chest. Knocked him over, too.” Her pleasure at the memory faded. “Every time I see him I want to do it again.”

“There will be no kicking today,” Davita said sternly. “This is a serious matter, Josh.”

An hour later, they arrived at the junta's headquarters. Maybe it was just the rain, but the gray skyscraper seemed more sinister than Will remembered from his first visit.

On the ride up to the nineteenth floor, Will examined himself critically in the elevator's mirrored walls. Whim had loaned him a gray robe to wear, and Deloise had pinned it so that Will didn't trail a foot of fabric behind himself, but somehow he still looked like a little kid dressed as a priest for Halloween. The only thing he liked about the outfit was the pin he wore over his heart with the Weavaros family emblem—an arched foot wrought in silver, set against a field of peridot gems.

“We were having one made up for you, but…” Josh had said as she pinned it to Will's robe that morning.

She was almost finished before he realized what she meant. “This was Dustine's?”

Josh gave him a sad smile. “She'd want you to have it. She liked you, you know.”

Will touched the pin and felt the cool stones and silver beneath his fingertips. “I was beginning to think that maybe she did. We had a lot in common.”

Josh gave him a curious look, but he didn't explain. To her, Dustine had never been an outsider, and he decided not to change that.

The elevator opened onto a carpeted lobby where several dozen dream walkers made small talk and drank coffee. Josh led Will through it to the amphitheater.

The room was a circular ocean of seating with rows of chairs climbing the walls. But despite the hardwood stage, the golden velvet upholstery, and the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, there was no mistaking the courtroom for a theater; armed guards hovered on either side of the door and heavy-duty steel rings for manacles protruded from the polished floor.

A row of regal, high-backed chairs cut through the first two rows of seating and dominated the room. “That's where the junta sits,” Josh said. She gestured to several ottomans, covered in studded leather and standing on legs carved of black marble, set on the stage floor before the junta's thrones. “Those are for witnesses.”

Josh and Will took seats in the second row near an aisle, and Davita sat in a reserved area to the side of the junta. “I wonder where Young Ben is,” Josh murmured, scanning the room.

The members of the junta were elegant and smiling figures, wholly unremarkable in a way that unsettled Will. None of them looked particularly wise or enlightened or significantly different from anyone else in the crowd.

Except, of course, for Peregrine, who was moving from one cluster of people to the next, greeting everyone. His robe was the same as Will's except that it was red shot through with black and gold thread, and it shimmered when he walked.

“Your grandpa looks like a Vegas act,” Will whispered to Josh, and he got her to laugh.

Once the junta was seated, the room quieted around them, finally falling completely silent. Will's nervousness turned to impatience as the junta spent the next hour dealing with unrelated matters. Finally, Josh and Will were called, and he followed her up to the row of ottomans arranged onstage and tried not to look like an idiot in a borrowed dress.

“Journeyer Weavaros.” A female member of the junta rose, and Will was sitting close enough to the junta's thrones to read the large brass nameplates set on the table before them. Anivay la Grue was elderly, of Native American descent, and she had thick black hair cut short around her chin. She smiled with her greeting and then added, “I believe we have not yet met your apprentice.”

Josh said, “Your Eminences, fellow dream walkers, may I present Will Anatoly Sigmund Kansas?”

For a moment, Will completely forgot that anyone else was in the room, although he could hear Minister la Grue saying, “Welcome to the fold, Apprentice Kansas. May you always walk safely.”

He looked at Josh, and she gave him a tiny, private smile.

He could have kissed her right then.

“Thank you,” Will said, speaking as much to Josh as to the junta minister.

They sat down, and the interrogation began.

“We have asked you here today,” Minister la Grue said, “to discuss those known only as ‘the men in trench coats,' whom many in this room have witnessed. Would you please describe your encounters with them?”

Will let Josh do the talking; she might hate social situations and feel uncomfortable in her own skin at times, but she knew dreams. She told the junta and the witnesses of her three encounters, beginning with a description of the nightmare she was in at the time. She relayed in detail each of the trench-coat men's actions, their gas masks, their canisters, Gloves's gloves. She even told them about the bitter smell of chemicals that clung to them.

When Josh finished, Peregrine Borgenitch rose from his seat. What might have been intended to be a stately motion looked more like a first-grader jumping at the recess bell. Will was sitting close enough to Josh to feel her tense as her grandfather walked around the table to Minister la Grue.

“Minister la Grue,” he said, “if I may…”

She looked displeased, but she acquiesced and returned to her chair.

“Josh,” Peregrine said, and then added, “my dear,” in a strange, smarmy voice. “You were in-Dream when you saw this man—this man you call Snitch—
apparently
alter the Dream.”

“There was no ‘apparently' about it,” Josh said. “He looked right at the exit Will had opened, and the doorway vanished.”

“He didn't, I don't know, wave a wand at it?”

“No,” Josh said through gritted teeth. “He didn't have a wand.”

“Did he make any signs with his hands, any gestures?”

“No.”

“So all he actually did was glance at the doorway?”

“He…” Josh struggled with her words. “He looked at it, intensely. His eyes narrowed.”

“And did lightning bolts shoot out of them?”

“No, I told you—he didn't have to do anything. He just looked at the doorway and it vanished.”

Will restrained himself from putting a hand on Josh's back. Her whole body was vibrating with anger.
What is this guy trying to prove?
Will wondered.
Aren't we here because Snitch and Gloves turned out to be real people? Why keep trying to disprove their abilities?

“How far away from him were you at this point?” Peregrine asked Josh.

“Four feet.”

“And after he glanced at the doorway, he went back to trying to put a gas mask on Haley Micharainosa?”

“Yes.”

“And why was he doing that?”

“I have no idea.”

“Because, as I recall, you said this man, Snitch, was
wearing
a gas mask. Was there gas in the nightmare?”

“Not that I noticed.”

“Hmm.” Peregrine paced a few idle steps, his hands clasped behind his back, before turning sharply—and somewhat melodramatically—back to Josh and Will and asking, “And he identified you?”

Josh nodded. “He said, ‘You're Jona's daughter.'”

“Did he recognize Haley?”

“I don't know. He didn't speak to Haley.”

Peregrine didn't ask about Will. Will hadn't expected him to.

“But he recognized you. Just
you,
Josh.”

“Yes.” Although Will doubted that Josh had any more idea than he did what Peregrine was trying to prove, she was upset enough to say, “So what? Lots of people know who I am.”

Peregrine made an embarrassed expression, like Josh had just said something arrogant. “Well, they certainly do now.”

One of Josh's hands clenched, and Will thought for a moment that he was going to have to stop her from jumping off her ottoman and attacking Peregrine. Luckily, her grandfather suddenly sat down.

Minister la Grue stood up again. “Thank you, Journeyer Weavaros, I think we've heard enough. Unless you have something else to add?”

Josh's voice sighed with relief. “No.”

“Good day, then. May you walk safely.”

Will stood up with her and was stepping down from the platform when Minister la Grue added, “Apprentice Kansas, please stay a moment.”

“Wait—what?” Josh asked. One of her feet was already on the ground and the other was still on the platform, giving her a half-frozen appearance.

“The junta would like to speak to Apprentice Kansas alone for a moment.”

Josh and Will looked at each other, equally surprised. “Is that necessary?” Josh asked.

Peregrine smiled. “Yes.”

“As his teacher, I request permission to stay.”

“Denied.” Peregrine smiled wider.

Will saw the fury in Josh's eyes when she looked at her grandfather, but she forced it down as she turned back to Will. “I'll be right outside,” she promised in a whisper.

The room was perfectly still except for Josh as she left. When the doors closed behind her, Will felt cold and hyperaware of everything—the patterns of light on the polished floor, the aftertaste of coffee in his mouth, the way the legs of his ottoman weren't quite even, causing it to rock when he shifted. The junta must have been fifteen feet away, but he could see their faces as if they were at arm's length.

“Apprentice Kansas,” Peregrine said, and Will started. A few soft chuckles came from the crowd, and Peregrine grinned big. He liked catching Will off-guard.

“Apprentice Kansas, did you ever see the men in trench coats when Journeyer Weavaros wasn't with you?”

“No, but I've never dream walked without her.”