Dreamfever (31 page)

He was furious, but for some reason he was laughing, too, a creepy, high-pitched laugh, and he let Haley coax him to sit down at the picnic table.

This isn't happening,
he tried to tell Haley with his mind.
This can't happen.

Josh knelt in front of him and wrapped her small hands around his fists. “Relax,” she said. “Relax.”

Slowly, he was able to release his clenched fingers, and Josh slipped her hands into his.

“You were right,” she said in a soft voice, “about going after Ian. It was lunacy, and I shouldn't have done it. It was exactly what you said—you told me I was being reckless and I didn't listen. I know that every scar you and Haley have is because of me. I know that you're shaking right now because you haven't gotten over what happened in Warsaw, and I know that's my fault, too, because I haven't been here for you since we got back.” She swallowed. “I'm sorry, Will, that you're hurting because of me. I'm so sorry.”

Will fought tears. He didn't want to break down now, he wanted—he
needed
to stay angry. Seeing Josh wipe her own eyes didn't help.

“I know I've screwed up again. Probably even worse this time than last. And I wish I could go tell my dad what I've done and trust that he and the Gendarmerie would sort it out, but by now Peregrine has probably gotten to all of them. I'm not trying to be a hero this time. But there's no one besides the six of us we can be sure aren't compromised. And there isn't anyone else who can build another set of devices, if it comes to that.”

Will slid his hand up her wrist to gently touch the skin near one of the quarter-sized burns on her arm. “But look what they're doing to you.”

“I know, I know,” she said, choking on tears. “But if you're right about the power my grandfather has now, I don't think these burns will be anything compared to what he'll do to me.”

The thought was too much for Will. “Oh, God—” he said, his voice breaking. He leaned forward until his forehead pressed against hers, and he put his hand on the back of her neck, only to find more sores and burns there.

“I don't want to lose you,” she said. “Please. I can't go through with this knowing it will mean losing you. I need you now more than ever.”

“I can't do this again, Josh. I can't handle it.”

“Please, please. Just hang in there while we figure this out. We will, I swear, and then we'll go away. Anywhere you want, for as long as you want. I don't care if we miss senior year. We can go to Tahiti, or Ireland, or Greece.”

“Therapy,” he said, opening his eyes. “I want to go to therapy with you.”

“We can do that,” she promised. “We can go to therapy every day if you want.”

He was hanging all his hopes on the possibility that they would survive this, and that if they did, whatever new wounds they had acquired would be healable. And he knew those odds were slim, that he should get up and walk away with what he had left of his sanity, but her words kept echoing through his mind:
I need you now more than ever.

“Okay,” he said.

 

Twenty−four

Gravity,
Mirren thought.
It's pulling everything together.

What were the chances that she would read a piece of her scroll that spoke of leading the True Dream Walker into Death, then stumble upon the ritual to do so, and finally discover that she had been walking side by side with the True Dream Walker all along?

These things could not have happened by chance. In all of it, she saw the hand of gravity, drawing her and Peregrine toward their final confrontation, drawing her scroll toward fruition, even drawing Will toward his obsession. She felt herself being pulled along. But she reminded herself, as she followed a weary flashlight beam deep into Iph National Forest, that astronomical odds could only be made more remote by adding one more unlikely scenario to the equation: reason to use the ritual.

This has to be what we're meant to do,
Mirren assured herself again.
For all of these circumstances to have come together … how could gravity not be leading us to this conclusion?

Josh had proposed alternatives. They could bomb the Dashiel Winters Building and hope the blast both killed Peregrine and destroyed the DNA database. Of course, they would kill scores of innocents in the process. They could change their names, dye their hair, and begin new lives somewhere else, but that saved only the six of them, leaving the rest of the World in Peregrine's bloody hands. They could, theoretically, wait until Peregrine surfaced, then stalk and kill him. This was the only practical plan they had. But Peregrine might not surface for weeks or even months, during which time he would be free to stage nightmares for anyone he liked.

So they were going to break into Death, find Feodor, and pray that he could provide a solution. And was willing to tell them what it was.

“This is far enough,” Josh said, and the bobbing flashlights formed a rough circle as the six teenagers came together in a small clearing. “Will, you and Whim mark the doorway. Deloise, can you hold flashlights for them? Mirren and Haley, start setting up the singing bowls.”

From weighty duffel bags, Mirren and Haley unloaded eleven hand-hammered brass bowls. Each sang a different note when a wooden mallet was run around the lip of the bowls. The instructions for the ritual scientifically specified which notes the bowls should produce, and because a number of frequencies weren't part of the Western world's musical scale, Josh and Haley had meticulously hammered the bowls' bellies until they produced the desired, off-key notes.

Will marked out a rough doorway on the ground in salt, and then he dug a firebreak around it with a trowel while Whim filled the doorway with an even layer of gunpowder. Deloise placed extinguishers on each side of the doorway.

She and Whim were staying behind. They had decided this during what should have been a brief, logic-based discussion of who was needed on the trip and had instead turned into an emotionally draining scene complete with tears and threats. Mirren and Josh were going without question. Josh wanted Will to come because she didn't feel she could trust her own judgment; Mirren didn't know how much help Will would be when he couldn't stop trembling. Deloise broke down at the thought of Josh going, claiming that Josh had sworn never to do anything dangerous again after her first encounter with Feodor, and Will backed her up. Mirren still didn't trust Whim and didn't want him to come along, to which Whim had taken offense. He'd finally relented but made the mistake of trying to comfort Deloise, who threw a cup of fruit punch in his face when he put his arm around her.

In the end, Josh, Will, and Haley had agreed to go with Mirren. Whim and Deloise were staying behind to make sure they didn't burn down the forest.

“What time is it?” Josh asked, wiping her hands on her jeans.

“Seven to midnight,” Whim said.

Will pulled on a backpack he'd loaded with protein bars, water, and weapons. The ritual provided almost no information on what they'd encounter once they reached Death, only a few warnings.

“Remember,” Mirren said, “don't eat or drink anything except what comes from Will's pack. Don't accept any gifts. Don't take off your shoes. And
don't
tell anyone your name.”

Haley nodded. Mirren wasn't sure why he was putting on a violet-and-yellow cardigan, since the temperature hovered in the mid-eighties, but she still thought his sweaters were as much sources of comfort as of warmth.

“What do we do after you go?” Whim asked.

Josh glanced at Mirren, who shrugged. “Wait,” Josh said.

“What if you don't come back?” Deloise asked, her voice still gritty from crying.

Josh bent over to check that her knife was secured in its shin strap, but Mirren thought she did it just to avoid meeting her little sister's eyes. “Keep waiting,” Mirren told Deloise.

Mirren didn't doubt that Josh understood the danger of what they were about to do. Mythology was full of stories about heroes who descended to the underworld and never resurfaced.
Beware the tricks of the dead,
read the last line of the ritual. Will understood—he couldn't stop understanding long enough to pull himself together. And Haley was a born seer, who accepted the danger and the inevitability of these risks with his usual grace and gravitas.

The real reason Mirren hadn't wanted Whim to come along was that she wasn't sure he understood the danger. He was having too much fun.

“Let's get started,” Josh said.

Ritual in hand, Mirren took her place at the bottom of the doorway. Gently, she struck the wooden mallet against the rim of the smallest singing bowl, and while it was still ringing out a clear, high A, she began running the mallet around the lip of the bowl. The note continued, coalescing into a golden ribbon of sound, bright and strong.

Three breaths,
Mirren thought, counting as she inhaled and exhaled. After the third release of breath, she nodded to Deloise, who struck another singing bowl, this one an F just lower than the A, and added its voice. Every three breaths, another note joined the chorus, a D, then a G, then a slightly off-key B. Not only did the volume increase, but Mirren felt the vibration of the instruments moving through her body, creating a stir like currents in water. The sensation was not unpleasant, yet it raised an alarm in her, a primordial warning that she was playing with powerful forces.

Another F, a C, a note between D and E-flat. Each successive singing bowl was larger, its voice lower and deeper. When Josh struck the ninth note, the birds roosting in the trees around them took flight. When Will played the tenth note, the ground began to shake. Mirren struggled to keep her mallet in contact with her singing bowl. Almost reluctantly, afraid of what would happen, she nodded to Haley, who struck the last note from a bowl the size of a kitchen sink. It bellowed with the voice of an ancient leviathan, and Mirren felt her bones shake within her.

It's too much,
she thought.
We have to stop—

A sonic boom burst through the clearing. Mirren dropped her mallets and clapped her hands over her ears, and she saw everyone else do the same as a shock wave centered on the doorway sent them all tumbling onto their backs. The gunpowder—which they had assumed they would have to light—exploded into three-foot-high flames.

Holy shit,
Mirren saw Josh mouth, but she didn't hear the words because her ears were stuffy and blocked.

What do we do?
Deloise asked silently.

I can't hear you,
Whim told her.

Josh helped Will up.
Come on!
she mouthed.

Even the orange flames couldn't give Will's face any color. He let Josh take his hand, but he backed away from the burning doorway as she pulled him toward it.

Mirren clutched Haley with one hand and Josh with another, and they descended on the doorway. Will was shaking his head and trying to wrench his hand out of Josh's, and Haley was the one who grabbed him, not by the hand but by the belt, and dragged him forward.

The flames in the doorway vanished as suddenly as they had appeared. Where the earth beneath them had been, now a black hole stretched into the ground. Whim shone a flashlight into it, but the space devoured the light, revealing nothing.

“Ready?” Josh cried, and Mirren could just make her voice out, a buoy of sound in an ocean of white noise. “On three!”

Haley and Mirren counted with her. “One, two—”

Will shook his head desperately. “We can't!”

“Three!”

They jumped, pulling Will with them. Mirren felt herself stretched and compressed at the same time, much as she imagined going through a black hole would feel, a crushing sensation that she escaped only through the distortion of her physical form, and finally a
pop
that restored her to herself.

And then blackness, and the sound of lapping waves.

*   *   *

She didn't know how long she might have been sitting in the boat before she came back to herself. Perhaps the shock of passage had disoriented her. When she became aware of what was going on again, she found that her companions were in a similar state.

She was sitting on a bench in a wooden rowboat beside Josh. Haley and Will sat on a second bench, facing them. At the boat's stern, an old man in gray robes stood beneath a lantern suspended on a hook. He pushed the boat with a long wooden pole.

“Fair,” he said to them.

Mirren blinked at him.

“You're fair,” the old man said, but he sounded irritated.

“Uh,” Josh said.

“The
fare,
” Will told her. His lips were drawn tight and pale with anger, and only when he pulled off his backpack and began digging in one of the pockets did Mirren gather his meaning.

“He wants the boat fare,” Mirren said. “For the passage.”

“Oh.” They all dug into their pockets and offered what they could find. The boat driver chose two nickels from Will's hand, a dime from Josh's, and Haley's quarter, and the forty-five cents must have satisfied him, because he planted his pole in the water and pushed the boat forward.

“Where are we?” Josh whispered, leaning forward. “This doesn't seem right.”

“What, Feodor's education didn't include Greek mythology?” Will muttered. “We're on the river Styx.”

Josh straightened up and looked around as if surprised—whether by the information or Will's tone, Mirren couldn't say.

Haley had his eyes pinched shut. Mirren took his ice-cold hand. “Are you all right?” she asked.

He opened his eyes and gave her a weak smile. “It's so quiet here.”

It
was
quiet. The old man's pole hardly caused a ripple in the water, and not a breath of wind stirred the air. Mirren couldn't even tell where they were—everything beyond the water stretched into blackness, and they might have been crossing a starless ocean or traveling an underground tunnel.