Dreamfire (38 page)

“Haley started screaming. I tried to go back through the archway, but Winsor grabbed me. I fought her, even after I realized that the lantern had caught the insulation on fire. I kept trying to get back through the archway until the smoke overwhelmed me.

“Whim came downstairs and dragged us all to the floor. But when he started crawling toward the stairs, I realized we were leaving the basement. We were giving up on Ian, and tomorrow Ian would be dead, and the day after, and the day after … I just passed out.

“Whim got us out. Winsor and Haley probably would have made it outside, but not me. He saved my life.

“The week after that is a blur. I was in the hospital for a while and then I was at home, but I don't remember much except listening to Winsor cry in the room below mine. And some Gendarmerie detectives asking me questions. The first time things came into focus, I was standing in the archroom downstairs with my hand on the looking stone. Nightmares were flying past so quickly I couldn't even register one before I lost it to the next. I've never been able to do it again, but I knew that I was looking for Ian, running some kind of search for him. Three hours later, I was sure he wasn't in the Dream. I gave up hoping right then and there. I knew Ian was gone.

“The next morning when I woke up, I thought I heard him say, ‘I saw a gate beyond the arch.' And I've been hearing those words ever since, even though I can't imagine what they mean.”

*   *   *

The rain had fallen off to a patter. Thunder growled sullenly in the distance, and the cabin of the limousine began to fill with light in an afternoon dawn.

Josh wiped at her cheeks with the edge of the chenille blanket. She had been crying freely as she spoke, amazed at how quickly the words came, how easy sharing all of this with Will was.

“And, see,” she went on, when he didn't speak, “the horrible thing is how I've picked myself up again. When I realized I couldn't find Ian in the Dream, I jumped in, resolved six nightmares, and then went to bed. I miss him, every day, but I came out stronger. Do you see that? You didn't know me before—you saw me at school but you never knew how unsure I was. Ian showed me how strong I am. When we broke up, that was why I didn't freak out.

“I
used
Ian. I used him for years, and then when I didn't need him anymore…”

Will—who had perhaps seen before she had that she wasn't finished speaking and now saw that she was—said, “When you realized you didn't need him anymore, you let go of his hand. Is that what you think, Josh?”

There was enough light in the limo by then that she could see his face. His hair had dried in loose waves around his cheeks, and his jeans and gray shirt were damp. His expression was carefully neutral, but she saw a deep sadness in his eyes.

When she didn't answer, he went on, “When people rebound after a relationship ends, a lot of them do it like Ian did. He wanted to prove that he didn't need you, so he turned to Winsor. But other people might rebound differently. They might, say, delve into work and fill the holes in their lives very quickly. It's a different way of rebounding, but it doesn't make you a murderer.”

His words surprised her into speechlessness. “I get the feeling,” Will said, “that Ian gave you a lot. But Whim made it clear that you gave Ian a lot in return. His death was an accident, no two ways about it. I know you well enough to know that you wouldn't have let go of him by choice, no matter how much he had hurt you.”

“You don't think I'm…” She struggled for the right word. “Cold?”

He gave her a small smile. “I think you're afraid of being vulnerable again. And also afraid of your own strength. Maybe you want to believe that you still need Ian because it helps you reassure yourself that you didn't kill him.”

More tears filled her eyes. “You're going to be a great therapist,” she told Will, laughing a little and wiping her face with the back of her hand. She should have realized weeks ago that he would respond to her story with calm psychological insight rather than judgment.

Josh hoped she wasn't too late to right things between them. “So where does that put … you and me?”

Will shook his head. “Don't ask me. This is why shrinks have shrinks.”

Somehow, she knew he was holding back. “Don't deflect,” she said, using another term she'd learned from him.

He scoffed at her, but with a smile. Then he grew sober again. “I completely understand why you didn't feel comfortable telling me, but if I had known this when I got here, I would have given you more room. I think it would have been better for you. Now that I know … it seems more obvious than ever that I'm in the wrong place.”

“That's not—”

“Does Schaffer know?” Will interrupted. “About Ian? Would he have understood why you can't trust anyone right now? Would you have felt so completely responsible for his safety?”

Josh's back straightened, and her voice lost its gravelly crying sound. “Will, forget Schaffer Sounclouse. You want to look at all this from a psychological standpoint? Here you go: Schaffer represents all your insecurities now. You've never even asked me if I would have rather had him for an apprentice!”

The calmness left Will's face, revealing a desperate fear held beneath it. He leaned so far forward that his elbows touched his knees. “Would you?”

“No!” It wasn't even a question in her mind. “Schaffer's untrainable! He can't keep focused for more than thirty seconds, he misses obvious clues, and he still doesn't know right from left. Whereas you are so sharp, and so interested, and you remember everything I tell you. You never complain, and I've never met anyone with as much looking-stone talent as you. I couldn't have asked for a better apprentice.”

He gave her that small smile again, the one full of fondness but lacking any hope. “What about in your life?” he asked in a calmer voice. “Because the way this works, I'm not just a pupil—I'm the guy living in the room next to yours who you have to see at every meal.”

“Who kisses me in the middle of a sentence for no apparent reason?” Josh couldn't resist adding.

Will looked down, but he was laughing a little. “Yeah. I guess I might want to be that guy too.”

Josh didn't know what to say next. She dug her fingernails into the knees of her jeans.

Don't hurt him, Josh. Don't you dare hurt him.

She wetted her lips. “Maybe it's just been bad timing. You're a … great. It's not your fault I'm in a messed-up place. But I don't know that I can—I don't know if I can even be a decent friend to you right now.”

Will reached across the limo and touched her clenched hand. This time his smile was genuine, as worn-out as her own but affectionate. “Let's just give this a rest for a while, okay?” he asked. “We'll figure out later whether or not we can keep working together.”

She hadn't realized that the stakes were so high, and she knew as soon as the words were out of his mouth that she didn't want him to leave, that he meant more to her than she had admitted to either one of them. But until she could offer him something more, what could she say?

“All right,” she agreed.

 

Thirty

Davita had ordered
them to go straight home, but Josh told the limo driver to take them to the hospital first. If she was going to get arrested, she wanted to see Winsor and Kerstel first.

They visited Winsor, but her friend's silence and sightless eyes unnerved Josh. Kerstel was hooked up to machines and covered in bruises, but at least her face changed when she saw her stepdaughter enter her room. At least her fingers squeezed when Josh took her hand. Winsor's hand had lain as limp as a dead kitten.

To Josh's surprise, Will brushed the wires and tubes aside so he could kiss Kerstel's cheek.

“I had a dream about you,” Kerstel told him.

“I know,” Will said.

Josh wasn't sure what he meant, only that he and Kerstel were smiling at each other in a way that made her faintly jealous. Kerstel and Lauren had only taken Will in because he was Josh's apprentice, but now Josh saw that Will had won his own place in Kerstel's affection.

She wondered if Louis Poston would have managed that.

When she and Will got home from the hospital, he collapsed on the apartment couch in front of a soccer game. The house below them was unusually quiet, Josh thought, lingering in the apartment doorway. It felt empty—she sensed Dustine's absence from the first floor, Winsor's from the second, Kerstel's from the third.

“You okay?” Will asked her.

“Yeah. I just need a nap.”

Will, stretched over the length of the couch, closed his eyes. “I might do the same.”

Josh went to her bedroom, opened the door, and hit the switch on the wall, which caused the overhead light to come on, which caused Haley—who had been sleeping soundly in Josh's bed—to fly upright as if he were rising from a tank of ice-cold water. Anyone else would have shouted, but Haley just gaped at her with an expression of astonished betrayal, as if she'd woken him by kicking him in the gut.

She had forgotten that Haley had taken over her bedroom recently. “You can't—” she began, and then she saw her scroll spread out on the floor just as it had been two days before, a textbook at each end to keep the parchment from rolling. If Winsor had put it away, Haley had gotten it out again.

“What are you
doing
with this?” Josh hissed, and shut the door behind her to keep from waking Will.

She darted toward the scroll, but Haley was closer and faster and ended up holding it over his head like a trophy. He climbed onto her bed, feet mired in her comforter.

“Give me that,” Josh said, the anger from her initial discovery returning. “You never should have opened it!”

Haley changed his grip on the scroll, holding the top edge in both fists. He bit his lip as if thinking, and then his mouth hardened resolutely.

He tore the scroll in half.

“What are you
doing
?!” Josh asked again, and she struggled to keep from shouting. She grabbed at his hands but only came away with a corner of parchment. Haley began ripping the rest into strips. “Haley! Stop it!”

He tore the strips in half and then, much to Josh's astonishment, threw them at her like confetti. As bits floated down around her, he said, “It's a fake.”

Josh stopped trying to catch the flakes of parchment and stared at him. “What?”

He sank back against the wall behind her bed. Josh looked at the pieces in her hand and then at him, and finally she just shook her head.

“It's a fake,” Haley repeated.

“How do you know?”

“I … know.”

“How?”

He shrugged helplessly. “I touched it. And I just … knew. I … know lots of things.”

That had probably been the longest statement Josh had heard Haley make—when he wasn't acting like Ian—since he'd returned to town. That fact alone made her uncertain.

“Young Ben wrote it to protect you,” Haley continued. “He's trying to protect you. We…” And here his voice faltered and faded. “We all are.”

Maybe.
Something in his expression looked genuine. Josh had a hard time disbelieving him. And although she couldn't make the pieces fit together—literally or figuratively—somehow the idea of a fake scroll seemed in keeping with her grandfather's strange desire to possess it. Winsor had said that the writing style seemed off, too.

Except that the idea of a fake scroll was so preposterous that Josh couldn't even conceive of it. The whole idea of a scroll was to tell truths. It served no other purpose.

“Protect me from what?”

Haley considered the bits of scroll scattered on the ground. Finally, he said, “From yourself.”

He spoke as though the words hurt him. Josh didn't know why, or even what his answer meant, but she saw a clarity in Haley that was rare.

None of that, of course, meant that he wasn't crazy.

“All right,” she said, shrugging. She began collecting the shreds of parchment. “Whatever. Can you please find somewhere else to sleep?”

His face sharpened with anger, and for a moment he looked so much like Ian that Josh's breath caught. Then he darted past her, slamming the door on his way out.

A moment later, the door burst open again, and this time Haley was dragging Will—who was blinking rapidly at the sudden onslaught of light—by the wrist. “Tell her!” Haley demanded.

Josh had just gotten an envelope and was putting the torn-up pieces of scroll in it. She paused to watch Will say, “Tell her what?”

Haley had gone from looking like Ian to looking like a very angry Haley, which was an expression Josh had never seen before. It involved pursed lips and drawn brows and, after Will's question, an actual foot stomp. Then he whispered in Will's ear.

Will ran a hand through his curls, which were even more unruly than usual from his brief nap on the couch. “Oh, yeah. He did ask me to tell you that he's psychic.”

Josh didn't know which was more ridiculous. “He's
psychic
? And
you,
the guy who wants to be a psychiatrist, believe him?”

“Haley, maybe you could give Josh some sort of demonstration.”

Haley looked uncomfortable, like a little kid being teased by adults, but he took Josh's hand. Josh was still too stunned to protest.

“You told Will about the fight at the cabin on the drive home from Braxton,” Haley said. “But you didn't tell him how Ian threw the mug at the wall and it broke, or how Winsor slapped you, or how when you went into the basement you threw up behind the radiator.”

Josh pulled her hand out of Haley's grasp. Not because she didn't believe him—because in one brutal, revelatory instant she did—but because she was afraid of what else he would see. “Why didn't you tell me?” she asked, more stunned by his silence than the news. “I've known you my whole life.”