Dreamfever (14 page)

Will realized she was asking about his drink. “Ah, the pink plastic one. The glass one was empty.”

“The plastic one has sangria in it,” Kerstel told him.

“Oh,” Will said. Sangria—fruit punch and wine. His brain flatlined; he didn't know what to do, so he just held the glass away from him as if it were an angry cat trying to scratch him. “Ah…”

The conversations around the fire died down for a moment.

“I've got it,” Josh said, and took the glass from Will's hand. She jumped up and headed inside, and everyone started talking again.

Will didn't embarrass too easily, but he was glad his face was hard to see in the firelight. “I'm sorry,” he said to Kerstel.

She reached out from her chair and touched his shoulder. “I wasn't criticizing. I just wanted to make sure you knew what you were drinking.”

“I didn't,” he said firmly.

But of course he had, hadn't he? He'd smelled the contents of the pitcher, but instead of telling him,
Booze,
his brain had just said,
Good. Drink that.

He didn't doubt for a second that, subconsciously, he'd known what he was doing. And that scared the hell out of him.

His first instinct was to pretend nothing had happened, to go off by himself and find a distraction, to go home and work on his stalker wall. Yes, that's exactly what he wanted: to open his files and dig through the articles Feodor had written until he understood what the madman had been doing, how he could be outwitted, outsmarted, outfoxed.

Instead, he left his plate of soufflé on the cooler and went into the house to find Josh.

This is what girlfriends are for,
he reminded himself.
Isolating myself right now is the worst thing I can do.

In the kitchen, Josh was pouring the sugar water from a bottle of maraschino cherries into a glass of soda. “Hey,” she said. “I'm making you a special drink.”

“That's okay,” Will told her.

“It'll be like sangria without the wine,” she insisted, and he watched her mix cream of coconut into the glass. He was pretty sure she didn't know what was in sangria.

“It's fine. I'm not even thirsty. I … I'm kind of freaking out.”

“It's no big deal. You just mixed up the pitchers.”

“No, Josh, Saidy made sure to tell me which one had the sangria in it. I think I … I didn't realize it, but I poured the sangria on purpose.”

Josh opened the refrigerator and hunted around, finally surfacing with a plastic lime full of juice. “You wouldn't do that. Besides, so what if you did drink it? You can have a sip of sangria. You
aren't
an alcoholic.”

The room began to tilt, and Will grabbed on to the countertop. No, technically he wasn't an alcoholic.
Yet.
But hearing Josh brush off his fears frightened him more than pouring the sangria had. She didn't understand—he had to stay ahead of himself. One wrong step—one wrong
sip
—and it could all fall apart.
He
could fall apart.

Josh finished peeling a banana and stuck it in the glass. “Here. Drink this.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “It's all good,” she said. “Come on, let's go make s'mores.”

She didn't notice when Will failed to follow her back outside. In the glass she'd shoved into his hand, one end of the banana rested surrounded by clots of unmixed coconut. Feeling at once panicked and numb, he carried the drink to the sink and poured it down the drain.

Josh had left the glass of sangria sitting on the counter.

Will poured that out, too.

He didn't want to go back outside afterward. He'd reached out for support and hadn't found it; now he wanted to be alone.

One reason Young Ben kept building onto the house, Will reflected as he wandered into the living room, might have had to do with his tendency toward hoarding. He had two complete sets of
Encyclopaedia Britannica,
a laundry basket full of wire hangers, a book called
Social Media for Grandparents
—although he had no computer—a cardboard box labeled “Blankets,” and a display stand for pipes with only one pipe in it.

Will sat down on the couch. The clutter itself was sort of comforting, in a weird way, and he browsed through the mess on the coffee table. Beneath several stained pairs of pants, he found a photo album that must have been fifty years old. The black-and-white photos were glued to black pages, each picture smaller than Will's palm. The book was open to a photo of a beautiful young woman with a man who was a few years older than her, posed together on the porch of a house. She wore a plaid shirt and close-cut shorts, and the man wore high-waisted pants that showed off an infant beer belly. They were both grinning, and the woman had her face turned toward her lifted shoulder.

The pose struck Will. It seemed familiar, as did the woman's figure—

“Oh, my God!” he said aloud. “It's Dustine!”

The woman reminded him of Deloise because she was Deloise's grandmother. Will had known her for only a few months before her death, but now that he had identified her, he couldn't see anyone else. She even had Josh's chin.

If the woman was Dustine, that meant the man with her was probably Young Ben. This was, after all, his photo album. Will recognized him now, too—the height, the square face, the emerging gut.

I didn't realize they had known each other for so long,
Will thought.

He peered more closely at the photo. Behind Ben and Dustine, a blurred figure moved inside the house, crossing the doorway at the moment the photo was snapped. The blurring was bad and the figure's face was turned away so that only part of his profile appeared, but if Will hadn't known better, he would have sworn the man was Feodor.

Ridiculous, of course. But he felt as if Feodor had somehow inserted himself in the photo just for Will's benefit, as though his ghost were infiltrating the edges of everything.

Will shivered, then chastened himself. As he forced his hand to turn the page, Whim, cell phone pressed to his ear, walked hurriedly from the kitchen to the hallway, cutting through one corner of the living room without noticing Will.

Whim loved that phone. He used it so much, he had to charge it twice a day. But something about the speed in his step aroused Will's suspicion that this was not a normal call from one of Whim's legion of friends.

It's none of my business,
Will told himself, but he was already rising from the couch.
I'll just make sure nothing's wrong.…

He followed Whim down the hall and stopped outside the door to Ben's office.

“I have fifteen people waiting on me,” Whim was saying inside, “so this had better be pressing.… Maybe.… Is that what you think of me?… Charming.… Maybe.… If you want to see me, just come out and say it.… See, was that so hard?… Maybe.”

The conversation went on in the same vein for several minutes. Whim seemed to be setting up a meeting, but he did a lot of arguing—the sort of arguing that's flirting at the same time—in the process. By the time he finally hung up, Will had a pretty good idea who had been on the other end of the line.

He was waiting in the hall when Whim emerged.

“Jesus,” Whim said, stopping just short of walking into Will. “Where did you come from?”

“Was that Bayla?” Will demanded.

Whim continued to act startled. “Were you standing here eavesdropping?”

“Yes, I was,” Will said. “And it's a good thing, because you seem to have lost your mind.”

Whim stepped carefully around him, looking less amused. “She just wants to catch up.”

“I thought that's what you two did at the Grey Circle meeting.”

“I have a girlfriend. Bayla has a boyfriend. Remember any of this?”

“I remember that your girlfriend is more than capable of kicking your ass.”

Whim waved the idea away. “Del couldn't kick my ass.”

“You live on salami and Chex Mix,” Will told him. “You're a paper doll.”

Whim laughed and started back down the hall. “Well, this paper doll can dress himself. Worry about your own outfit, Will.”

There was nowhere else for the conversation to go, Will realized. Whim was going to do what he was going to do, and there was nothing Will could do to stop him short of telling Deloise, and he really didn't want to do that.

So he went back outside and sat next to Josh, who held his hand. He watched Deloise and Haley teach Mirren how to make s'mores; Deloise's technique was refined, while Haley preferred to just immolate his marshmallows. He took Kerstel's side in the Kerstel-versus-Lauren baby-name debate.

He hadn't felt so alone since he'd left the county home.

 

Twelve

Davita called Mirren
the morning of her presentation to the junta. She'd called the day before as well, twice in the afternoon, once after brunch and once before, and several times the day before that. So when the clock in Mirren's hotel suite in the Dashiel Winters Building struck 12:30—the presentation began at one o'clock—and Davita had not yet appeared, Mirren's concern became grave.

“She's probably dead,” Josh said.

“Josh!” Will, Deloise, and Haley all cried.

Josh, pacing the floor-to-ceiling windows, said, “It's a logical conclusion.”

“Even I wouldn't go that far,” Whim said. He was sprawled out on the ultramodern couch, eating peanuts from the minibar.

“She's not dead,” Haley told Mirren.

“She hasn't called,” Josh reasoned. “If Davita can't operate her cell phone, she's either unconscious or dead.”

“Or she's stuck on the side of the highway with a flat tire and no bars,” Will said. “There's no reason to assume she's
dead
.”

“Peregrine knows he'll be blamed if anything happened to Mirren, so he's taking out a key element of her support.”

“I can't listen to this,” Mirren muttered, fleeing to the adjoining bedroom. She dropped onto the end of the giant bed and flattened her palms against the skirt of her blue taffeta gown to keep herself from tearing the fabric to shreds.

She loathed the gown, but Davita had insisted that she dress both traditionally and conservatively, and for dream-walker ladies, that meant floor-length dresses with long sleeves. Worse still, Deloise had fluffed and pinned Mirren's hair into a style that made her look like Anne of Green Gables.

Haley appeared in the doorway and leaned against it.

“What do I do if she doesn't show up?” Mirren asked.

Haley didn't hesitate. “Go anyway. You'll do great.”

Mirren didn't know if she wanted to hug him or slug him.

A hard knock on the suite door made them both turn their heads. As Mirren rushed, skirts rustling, into the living room, Josh opened the door and said, “Oh. I guess you aren't dead.”

“Where have you been?” Mirren demanded, and she heard in her voice that she wasn't just anxious but angry.

Davita ignored them both. “I need everyone to leave except Mirren.”

“Why?” Josh asked.

“Leave,” Davita repeated.

“Where are we supposed to go?” Whim complained, but he followed Deloise into the hallway. The hotel suite was located on one of the upper levels of the Dashiel Winters skyscraper in downtown Braxton. A dozen floors below was the junta's amphitheater.

Haley hung back, and Mirren told Davita, “It's fine, he can stay,” but Davita was firm.

“Everyone leaves.”

When they were alone in the suite, Davita threw the dead bolt and fastened the chain on the door. “What's going on?” Mirren asked. “Where have you been?”

Davita sat down on the couch and motioned Mirren to sit beside her.

“I'm sorry I didn't call this morning to tell you I'd be late. I couldn't, because I went to see your aunt and uncle.”

Mirren straightened with surprise, then leaned close again. “You went
into
the Hidden Kingdom?”

“Yes. I received a package from your aunt with a summons and instructions for getting there. As you anticipated, your aunt and uncle are vehemently opposed to your plan. They gave me this, to give to you, in the hope that it will convince you to abandon your ambitions.”

From inside the jacket of her suit, Davita withdrew a bulky linen envelope. She handed it to Mirren, who couldn't prevent a heartbeat of homesickness when she saw the royal seal stamped in orange wax on the back.

“They told me what it is, but not what it says,” Davita explained. “They said there's also something inside to prove that it came from them.”

Mirren began to open the envelope, but Davita grabbed her hands to still them. “No! Wait until I'm gone. If you still want to go through with this after you read the—what's inside, call my cell phone. If not…” Davita paused, and she squeezed Mirren's hands again, not in a forceful way, but as if out of sympathy or even pity. “I'll understand.”

Then she flew out of the room.

Careless of the linen paper, Mirren tore open the envelope. Her family's seal cracked, ruining the imprint of a star tetrahedron.

A flashing piece of sparkle and a torn piece of parchment, folded once in half, fell into her lap.

The sparkle came from a brooch the size of a silver dollar, with a platinum star tetrahedron set against a gold field. The edges were encrusted with her family's gem, the fire opal, deep blood-orange stones outlining the circle. Except near the bottom, where one opal had fallen out.

Someone could have faked the piece, but they couldn't have known that—over the course of years of being treated as a plaything by two little girls—one of the stones had fallen out. Mirren knew for certain now that this envelope had come from her family.

She clutched the pin in one hand, glad for this small relic of home, and used the other hand to unfold the parchment.