Dream a Little Dream (The Silver Trilogy) (F) (19 page)

“What’s the idea?” I hissed at Grayson. My hair had fallen over my face, and when I pushed it back I realized that my butterfly barrette had gone missing. I must have lost it somewhere.

“What do you mean?” Grayson crouched down to tickle Buttercup’s tummy. The treacherous dog had rolled over on her back in front of him. “I suppose I’m allowed to eat a few blueberry muffins with my new family.”

“Of course you are,” said Mom, who had made it to the fourth floor too, without ruining her hairstyle and almost without getting breathless. “We’re very glad to see you.”

That was not entirely true. Only Mom was glad to see him. Lottie and Mia didn’t look glad so much as embarrassed to see Grayson when they set eyes on him. They were in their bathrobes and had covered their faces with greenish-gray face masks, which made them look a little like zombies.

“Nice apartment,” said Grayson politely while Lottie and Mia took refuge in the bathroom.

I laughed out loud. “You’re such a hypocrite!”

Mom looked sternly at me. “I have no idea why you two have quarreled, but I hope you’ll make up again soon.” She put her head to one side. “Muffins?”

“Yes, please,” said Grayson. “Can Liv and I maybe eat them in her room? So that we can make up the quarrel at our leisure?”

What in the world did he mean?

“Of course.” Deeply moved, Mom put a hand to her breast. “You know, Liv has always wanted a big brother. Oh, this is all so … I really must call Ernest.” And with one last, emotional sigh, she disappeared into her bedroom. I stared after her, left speechless.

Grayson was strolling down the corridor. “Which is your room?” he asked. “This one?”

“Yes, but … can you please tell me what all this is in aid of? Isn’t Emily waiting for you back at the party?”

“Presumably.” He was getting his iPhone out of his jeans with one hand and already opening the door of my room with the other. “Are you going to get us those muffins?”

I was taken by surprise, and I almost switched on too late. But then I felt boiling hot as I thought of my dream reports. They were lying on the chest of drawers in my room, and I definitely didn’t want Grayson seeing them. So I pushed them aside and put the notebook and any loose sheets of paper together before he could get a look. However, that wasn’t his idea at all. He was making purposefully for my bed—or, to be exact, the foot of my bed. I had put his hooded sweater there, carefully folded, so that Lottie wouldn’t think of washing it until I’d finished my empirical investigations. He picked it up with a satisfied smile.

I saw it all at once. “Oh, so
that’s
why you’re carrying on like this!” I said. “You want your silly sweater back.”

Bloody hell. I really had underestimated him. I’d never have expected him to be so cunning.

Grayson was checking his iPhone. “That’s right,” he said casually, looking at the display. “I kind of had an idea you weren’t going to give it back of your own accord.… Hey, there’s a lot going on at the party. Looks like Jasper is just trying to drown poor Nathan in the pool. I’d better get straight back. Don’t want to miss this! Sweet dreams, Liv.”

The self-satisfied grin on his face was more than I could stand. Ditto the feeling that I’d been hoodwinked.

“Not so fast!” I threw myself against the door, barring his way out. “We haven’t made up yet!”

He obviously hadn’t expected that. He stared at me in surprise, looking more like his usual self already.

I gave him one of my sugary-sweet smiles. “Want me to fetch Mom to help us do it? She’s really good at that kind of thing.”

“Very funny. I really do have to get back there now,” said Grayson, and I was pleased to see that he didn’t seem so casual anymore.

I didn’t move from the spot. “You ought to have thought of that before. I mean, before you started on about the crime rate in London. Does Emily know you meet your friends in cemeteries at night to conjure up demons?”

“We don’t meet to—no. No, she doesn’t know.” He began pacing restlessly up and down the room. He clearly realized that he wasn’t going to get past me without the use of violence. “And she must never know. Emily is the most rational person I’ve ever met. She wouldn’t understand how anyone can get mixed up with something like this. She’d simply say I was out of my mind. Emily doesn’t even believe her horoscope.”

“Nor do I, to be honest. Any more than I believe in demons.”

“I suppose you think I believed in that sort of thing, do you?” he asked, heatedly. “Even now I don’t really believe in it. It’s just that … well, a few odd and really bad things happened, and I simply don’t have a logical explanation for all that.”

I was still feeling pretty cross, but unfortunately I understood exactly what he meant. “If you eliminate all the logical solutions to a problem, then the illogical solution—even though it’s impossible—has to be the right one,” I said, and he smiled.

“Sherlock Holmes, right?”

Surprised, I nodded.

For a moment there was silence between us. Grayson sat down on the edge of my bed and looked at me as if he were expecting something.

I hesitated for a moment. Then I asked, “Will you tell me about it? I mean, so that I have a chance of understanding it all?”

“I don’t know.…” Doubtfully, Grayson pushed his hair back from his forehead. “I’m still angry with you for not listening to me.”

“But don’t you think it would be better to explain than go on bawling me out? After all, I’ve promised to help you and your friends.”

“You could still change your mind.” A glimmer of hope came into his face.

I just shook my head and dropped onto the bed beside him. “Start with the dreams,” I said.

He didn’t start with the dreams—he went even farther back. But at least he started. He told me about Jasper, Arthur, Henry, and himself, how they’d been friends ever since elementary school; he told me about the heights and depths of their friendship, and all the silly things they’d seen and done together over the years. Finally he came to that strange night at Halloween last year. The way he told the story, it sounded just as ridiculous as Jasper’s version, and I made a great effort to keep as straight a face as I could, in case he jumped up again and ran for it. I have to admit, that was a real challenge (keeping a straight face, I mean), especially when Grayson finally and reluctantly went into detail.

Anabel had shown them a dusty old book with sealed pages that had apparently been in her family’s possession for generations. If you followed the rituals in this book, Anabel claimed, you could conjure up an ancient demon from the underworld—a demon that could help you to gain immeasurable power and grant your dearest wishes.

I only just managed to bite back the words, “Yup, and I expect immortality was on offer too?” Extraordinary. Surely they couldn’t have been as drunk as that. Although they obviously had been, because after they’d performed the gruesome ritual of initiation, if I was to believe what Grayson said, they’d really gone all out for the rest of it. After breaking the first seal, they drew magic symbols on the floor in chalk, scribbled mysterious words on each other’s skin, and recited the spells and oaths that Anabel read out to them—half of them in Latin. They promised, in high-flown terms, to keep the rules laid down in the book all the way to the end and free the demon from the underworld if he, in return, granted their secret wishes, which they wrote down on paper and then solemnly burned. They sealed the whole agreement in their blood, letting drops of it fall into a chalice, mixing it with red wine, and drank from the chalice in turn. In short, they behaved like kids in nursery school. Well, like kids in vampire nursery school.

I wasn’t in the least surprised when, at this point in his story, Grayson gave vent to an ashamed kind of sound, like a mixture of a groan and a howl.

“So did your demon appear?” I could finally forget about keeping a straight face. “Or did you just wake with frightful hangovers the next day?”

Grayson glowered at me. “Okay, I know how ridiculous it sounds. And I’d have forgotten the whole thing again right away—so would the others. But those dreams began the very next night.…” He shuddered. “In my dream, the demon reminded me of the promise we’d given him in exchange for granting our wishes.”

“That’s only logical. Your unconscious mind had to process that idiotic stuff somehow or other,” I said.

“Could be.” Grayson rubbed his forehead. Suddenly his expression was just like Mom’s when she’s desperately searching for something she put down somewhere. “But then how would you explain the fact that we all dreamed exactly the same thing that night? All of us without exception. The demon insisted that we must break the second seal and go on to the next ritual—”

There was a beep somewhere in Grayson’s jeans pocket, clearly his cell phone announcing a text message coming in. He didn’t take the phone out, but I was glad of the short diversion, because for a moment I really had felt rather queasy in the pit of my stomach.

“So you all dreamed of a demon?” I wanted to know more of the details. “What did he look like?”

Grayson made a vague gesture. “I think he took visible shape only in Jasper’s dreams—he swears to this day that the demon looked like Saruman the White, except with horns and a black cloak. For the rest of us he was only a shadow, a whispering voice, a bodiless presence, although that wasn’t as frightening as it sounds, it was more—I don’t know how to put it—more
seductive
.” He sighed. “An extraordinary coincidence? We weren’t sure. We opened the second seal in Anabel’s book.”

I’d probably have done exactly the same.

“This time I was stone-cold sober, so the ritual seemed to me a bit more ridiculous than before, if anything, but we went through with it.”

“Then what?” I realized that by now I was listening to Grayson intently. Maybe rather
too
intently.

“Nothing much at first. Except that our dreams got more and more lifelike and vivid. We dreamed of the demon and each other, of doors and corridors, and the next day we could remember exactly what we’d said to one another in those dreams.” He bit his lower lip. “As if we really had met. That was … was frightening. Well, to me and Anabel, anyway. Henry thought it was interesting, Arthur thought it was exhilarating, and Jasper—oh, I think Jasper just thought it was funny.”

I sensed that we were coming to the point of the story, and I had that queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach again. “So you could dream together,” I summed it up. “And not having any logical explanation for that, you started believing in the demon’s existence.”

He managed to shake his head and nod at the same time. “Let’s say we were getting more and more inclined to believe that he did exist outside our imagination. So we went on and broke the next seals, one after another. Several rituals from the book were carried out only in our dreams, on a night of the new moon, and the fascinating thing was that we could do it anywhere we liked. In places where you wouldn’t normally go at night.”

Like Highgate Cemetery
, I almost said. But I still wasn’t sure whether Grayson really knew that I’d been with them during the cemetery dream, or whether he was only considering the possibility because of his sweater.

“Arthur, Henry, and Anabel were fascinated by the dreams and the possibilities they opened up—they got positively addicted to trying out all sorts of things, and visiting other people’s dreams.”

I could understand that. “How about you and Jasper?”

He shrugged. “Jasper thought it was all too confusing and too much of a strain, I guess, and in time I somehow … I came to feel it wasn’t right. Apart from the fact that I’m not particularly interested in what other people dream.”

“You
really aren’t
? You’re not interested in anyone else’s dreams?” That had just slipped out before I could stop myself.

“The exception proves the rule.” A fleeting smile passed over Grayson’s face. “One way or another, it doesn’t seem fair to spy on people in their dreams,” he said, and I couldn’t help feeling a little bit ashamed of myself. His voice turned serious again. “But that way, the demon had already fulfilled part of our pact. Because if you can get into other people’s dreams, knowing their most secret fears and longings means nothing less than—”

“Immeasurable power,” I whispered, trying to ignore the goose bumps crawling up my arms. To take my mind off them, I went over to the window and stared at the outline of a maple tree growing in the backyard of the building. I had to concentrate. “Right. So far we don’t have any logical explanation for those dreams,” I said in a firm voice. “But then again, if we’re going to be objective about it, there’s no well-founded evidence that a demon of any kind really exists. Yours appeared, if at all, only in your dreams.”

“Right,” Grayson admitted. “And I was clinging to that idea myself. Until…” And here he paused for a moment. “Until our wishes began coming true. First Jasper’s, then mine, then Arthur’s.…”

I turned around and looked at him incredulously. “The most secret wishes of your hearts?”

He nodded. “Yes. What we’d written on those pieces of paper at Halloween actually happened.”

“And you simply told each other those wishes? I mean, they were secret, weren’t they?”

“That’s right, but when you’ve known each other as well and as long as we have, you also know what your friends really want, what they long for.…” For a moment he couldn’t go on; then he seemed to pull himself together. “Well, and you know Jasper a bit by now yourself. He’s not the type to keep his own secrets very long. He lasted exactly a day before telling us his wish. Sure enough, the Frognal Flames did win the schools’ basketball championship, even though we were still way down in the rankings on Halloween, so that when we won, it really did seem like a miracle.”

I felt a liberating urge to laugh rise in me, and it simply couldn’t be stopped. Admittedly, I’d let myself be carried away a little too far by the story over the last few minutes, especially all that about the dreams, but now my mind was perfectly clear again. The schools’ basketball championship?
Hello?
“I guess it couldn’t get much more demonic than that,” I said, still laughing. “Couldn’t it be just that your team played well?”