Dreamfever (39 page)

It's my ego,
she realized.
I can't access the power with my ego in the way. I can't decide what should be.

She was a servant to a greater power, and only when she was facilitating that power's intentions could she act as the True Dream Walker. It wasn't a god she served, or even a consciousness. It was the way of things, an inevitability, a current guiding souls.

Except mine,
she thought. No path lay before her soul; she was forging it herself, every day, every moment.

She stared at the egg, feeling its heat in her palm, and within it she saw her own body, splayed on the floor with manacles attached to every limb. She saw Whim and Deloise cowering beside her with drawers over their heads to protect themselves from falling debris, and Mirren's aunt and uncle crouched beneath a mattress torn off the bed.

Stop,
Josh thought, and the warmth within the egg increased.
Go back.

She watched the bedroom walls straighten, the ceiling flatten itself out, and the plaster dust rise from the floor.

Get rid of those,
she added, and the manacles vanished, along with the chains and the cement block to which they had been attached.

She felt the castle rise upright, like a pop-up tent opening. The Hidden Kingdom reordered itself neatly.

Josh's attention turned to the file room, floors below. Will, Mirren, and Katia lay curled in balls beside Feodor's bleeding body. Near the first row of files, Bayla's headless body was sprawled lifeless on the floor, and Josh passed her by without interest. There was nothing she could do for Bayla now.

Instead, she went to Feodor's limp form. He lay like a child, his small limbs heavy with the sleep of impending death. Josh touched him and waited, listening in a way she never had before.

Not yet,
she thought.
Not yet.

This wasn't Feodor's time. Not quite.

In his ear, she whispered, “All things grow toward the light. Even you.”

His eyes flicked open, and he sucked in a great breath of air as the wound in his abdomen closed and blood rushed to his cheeks.

Josh ran her fingertips over Katia's leg, and those wounds, too, were healed.

There was one more person in the room, and even unconscious, pain and rage radiated from him. He'd lost his left hand, and the skin on his arm had burned away, leaving charred muscle visible, raw bones exposed to the air. But even more horrifying was the tangled mess of his mind. It was as twisted and thorny as an overgrown thicket from which no berries grew, and Josh knew she could heal him with a word.

Not yet,
she thought again, this time with a different meaning.
He has to play out his purpose.

But for the first time she felt something other than peaceful acceptance of the way things were meant to be. She didn't want to let Peregrine go on hurting people, and she struggled against the knowledge that she wasn't meant to change him. Maybe the wisdom was wrong—

In that instant, she lost the confidence and comfort that had come with holding the egg.

And she woke up standing in the bedroom.

Every cell in her body was alive, almost too alive, vibrating with energy.

“Josh?” Deloise asked. She was still crouched on the floor with a dresser drawer held over her head. “Wait—where are your chains?”

“Where are
all
the chains?” Whim asked. He gazed up at the perfect, smooth ceiling.

“What happened?” Mirren's aunt asked, peeking out from beneath the mattress.

Collena,
Josh thought. She'd seen her in the vision and known her name. Also beneath the mattress was Mirren's uncle, Fel.

Josh didn't wonder how she knew these things or how the manacles had disappeared. When she had held the egg, all knowledge had been available.

“Peregrine's in the file room,” she said. “We have to decide what to do with him.”

She started for the door, ignoring Whim's and Deloise's protests of confusion. “Josh, what happened?” Deloise asked as she followed her sister down the hallway. “You were barely alive, and then the house started coming down.”

“I'm alive now,” was all Josh said.

How could she explain? For a brief moment, the way of all things had been clear to her, and she had been part of the stream of time, her own current helping to move it forward. But what could she tell Deloise except that she had left her body and held an egg? That she had somehow healed Feodor and Katia?

Except Josh was fairly certain she hadn't been the one to heal either of them. She had been the tool, but not the power.

She ran down the hallway and then down the stairs. She had no trouble finding her way, despite having been to the Hidden Kingdom only once. The house's layout seemed to be part of the knowledge she now had.

“Josh,” Will said when she burst into the file room, and the relief in his face was so real that Josh felt she could wrap it around her hand.

She threw herself into his arms, but he hugged her for only an instant before pushing her away by the shoulders.

“You gave Feodor the activator,” he said.

Somehow she couldn't quite believe he was going to complain about that when Feodor's plan had likely saved both their lives.
I killed Bash for
you, Josh thought, but Will's expression contained no gratitude, only more accusations waiting to be voiced. There was no love in the look he gave her, and Josh wondered what direction their path took and whether they would walk it together or alone.

“I'm sorry,” she said, and he shook his head, as if he couldn't believe how weak her answer was.

She turned away to escape his anger, and Mirren hugged her. Katia hugged her, too, even though they hadn't yet been introduced. Josh barely felt their embraces.

“Did you heal my leg?” Katia asked.

“Sort of,” Josh admitted.

Feodor was standing with his blood-soaked shirt pulled up so he could examine his unblemished torso. Josh didn't hug him, of course, and he certainly made no move to hug her. In fact, he looked irritated.

“Thanks for your help,” Josh told him. She knew exactly what he'd done.

“I demand an explanation,” he said.

“Maybe later. Right now, we have to decide what to do with Peregrine before he wakes up.”

Behind her, Whim was throwing up at the sight of Bayla's corpse. Feodor was pulling a bullet from his belly button, where his body had spit it out while healing. Mirren was examining her cousin's leg with gentle fingers, but she ran to her aunt and uncle when they entered the file room.

Josh ignored them all and sat down on the floor next to her unconscious grandfather. She had hoped that being near him would help her decide what to do, but if anything, it made the sense of peace she had brought back with her fade faster. Instead of seeing the path he was meant to take, all she could feel was her own fear that he would come after her again.

Will stood on Peregrine's other side. He used the toe of his shoe to nudge the gun across the floor and toward Josh. “Shoot him.”

Deloise gasped.

Killing Peregrine was an option, Josh knew. Maybe the best option.

“He's insane,” Will said. “If we don't kill him, he'll keep coming after us.”

“I'm siding with this guy,” Katia said. Will glanced at her and then did a double take, as if he hadn't realized she was in the room.

“You can't kill him!” Deloise cried.

Recalling the thicket that was Peregrine's mind, Josh said, “He's going to keep staging nightmares. We don't even know what World we're going back to, what he might have done to it. He could have turned Dad and Kerstel against us or convinced them to kill each other or to burn the house down.”

Safety, that was all Josh had ever wanted. Safety for the dreamers, safety for her family. Safety for herself.

The same uncertainty that had snapped her out of her vision filled her now, and she wished she had been able to control her anger and fear long enough to see the path intended for Peregrine.

“So we'll put him in jail,” Deloise said. “There are dream-walker jails!”

“Yeah, minimum security jails,” Whim said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “He'll break out the first day.”

“Will is right,” Feodor added. “This incident will only strengthen his ambitions.”

“I agree,” Mirren said, but then her eyes widened, and she grabbed the giant key ring off its hook and dashed into the maze of file cabinets. “Wait—maybe—”

“You can't kill him!” Deloise repeated, shouting it this time.

Josh tightened her hand around the gun, but she couldn't bring herself to point it at Peregrine. “He was going to kill us all, or turn us into slaves like Bash and Bayla.”

“Josh, he's our grandfather,” Deloise said, her eyes full of tears.

“I know,” Josh said. She glanced at Mirren's aunt and uncle, who were standing near the doorway holding their daughter. “He hurt you, too. What do you think we should do?”

“Kill him,” Katia said.

Fel and Collena exchanged a long look. Finally, Collena said, “The monarchy has never practiced capital punishment. Neither do we.”

“Not even for him,” Fel added, although the look on his face suggested he thought that maybe it was time to break with tradition.

They all want him dead,
Josh thought. Carefully, she opened Peregrine's mouth and stuck the barrel of the gun between his teeth. The surest way to kill him was to shoot into the base of his brain. He was deep in shock, sweaty and pale. He'd never know what had happened; he'd never even wake up.

But the egg's wisdom tugged at her.
Not yet,
she kept thinking.
Not yet.

“Josh!” Deloise shouted.

Will said, “Whim, take her upstairs so we can do this.”

When Whim tried to grab Deloise, she hit him with a left punch so fast and sure that it would have made Muhammad Ali proud. Whim stumbled backward and careened into a row of file cabinets.

“Touch me again!” Deloise dared him. “Josh, don't do this!”

“I don't know what else to do,” Josh told her sister. “How are we going to defend ourselves from him?”

She didn't know what else to do, but she didn't know if she could do it, either. Why couldn't she have seen his path? The weight of the gun was making her hand tremble, and she was afraid she'd shoot by accident.

“Josh, you have to stop him while you have the chance,” Will said, a frantic note entering his voice.

“Wait,” Mirren said. She emerged from the stacks holding up a photocopy of a clay tablet with what appeared to be orderly chicken scratches on it. “We can banish him from the Dream forever.”

“What?” Josh asked.

“How?” Deloise asked.

“This symbol. If you carve it into a person's skin, their soul can't enter the Dream.”

Feodor took the photocopy and studied it.

“He won't be able to go into the Dream at all?” Josh asked. “Not even when he sleeps?”

“Neither body nor soul,” Mirren said. “You understand … it's a forbidden act. To stop someone from entering the Dream … it's sacrilege.”

“How will keeping him out of the Dream help?” Will demanded. “He'll just kill us when we're awake!”

“It'll keep him from staging,” Deloise told Will. “Maybe if he can't enter the Dream, he'll lose interest in controlling Josh.”

“Or maybe he'll sneak into the house and murder us while we sleep!”

Josh wondered if Will was right. Peregrine's interest had always been in determining the extent of Josh's powers as the True Dream Walker. He'd never borne her a particular enmity—although that would probably change after they turned his chest into scratch art.

“This appears to be from the Muzat School,” Feodor said. “Impressive.”

He held the page out to Josh, and she stared at the scratches. “We'd have to carve this into his skin? With a knife?”

“Josh!” Will protested in a near shout. His lips were pale with anger.

“Yes,” Mirren said. “But … we wouldn't have to kill him.”

Josh shook her head. “After what he did to us, I always thought it would be easy to kill him. But maybe it just isn't easy to kill someone.”

“Maybe it shouldn't be,” Deloise said.

“He's a murderer and a psychopath,” Will said desperately.

Josh ran a hand through her hair. “I know,” she assured Will. “I know exactly what he is.”

Not yet,
her mind said.
Not yet.

She looked at her sister. “Can you live with using this symbol on him?”

“Being unable to dream could drive him mad,” Mirren warned.

Deloise sighed. “He's already mad. At least this way he gets to live.”

“Will,” Josh said. “Can you live with it?”

She was almost afraid to ask, knowing how angry he was at her.

“I think we should shoot him in the head,” Will said. “He
deserves
to die! How do you even know this symbol thing will work?”

“The Muzat School created a number of such symbols,” Feodor told him. “The others have proven effective.”

This information only enraged Will further. “I don't care!” he shouted. “He's criminally insane! Why can't we just kill him?”

“Because we aren't killers,” Josh said.

Will gave her a look then that scared her. He wasn't the Will she knew, the one who had thought things through so carefully, who had been able to examine his own desires and emotions with such a rational eye.

“Josh, if you don't do this…”

He trailed off, and Josh didn't know if he couldn't think of a threat bad enough or just couldn't speak.

He's going to break up with me,
she thought,
if I don't kill my grandfather.