In Dreams (25 page)

Nico and Aphrodite bought a house on the next block—halfway between Annie’s house and ours. I see them every day and can’t
wait
to have a baby cousin to spoil. Though I wonder what we will tell the kid about his or her family tree.

Henry Wu and Annie are nauseating. In a good way. He dotes on her. Respects her. He makes her feel like a goddess. And that’s a good thing, Aphrodite is always telling us. Never settle, she says. And Annie admires Henry’s brilliant brain and loves being treated as if she belongs on Mount Olympus. The funniest thing was when they returned to school as a couple after Christmas break. No one could believe it. Beanpole Henry and one of the hottest girls in the whole school. And nothing thrills Annie more than parading by guys who are jerks, the ones who want to hook up as friends with benefits and then brag about it, the ones who think she is so hot—but there she is with her totally awesome boyfriend.

Uncle Koi is still a hypnotherapist in New Jersey. He comes for Sunday dinners, and he has a new obsession: the Yankees. He and Grandpa go to every home game. He even schedules his patients’ appointments around them.

Grandpa is still Grandpa, cash drawer and all.
He bid on a new prize bat, and it hangs above the mantel. He keeps the piece of the old one, I think, to remind us all of what we went through. Like we’d ever forget.

Mom doesn’t have Sleeping Beauty syndrome anymore. Not that she ever really did. But she doesn’t sleep all the time anymore. It’s all still complicated. As part of the deal struck with Hades and Zeus, my father comes to spend one day a week with us. On those nights? Everyone in the world has some ordinary or recurring dream. The missed-connection-at-the-airport or the teeth-falling-out one. Being chased. Or sometimes, he fixes it so that’s the night no one remembers their dreams. Anything that doesn’t require his full attention.

That first visit after the fight, when he came back to the house, I told him that I just said those horrible things to make Epiales stop. That I really
did
want a father, even if he’s not exactly a normal one. As Aphrodite says, normal is overrated anyway. My father understood. He’s determined to be a part of my world now, no matter what it takes. We’ve spent these months getting to know each other. And I’m getting used to having a father around some of the time. He actually took my cell phone from me for
a week because I was texting at the dinner table. Which was totally ridiculous, if you ask me, but I kind of like that he cares.

And Sebastian? He lives with Aphrodite and Nico and is excited to be an “uncle” once the baby arrives. Becoming mortal wasn’t easy. It wasn’t magic. I couldn’t do some goddess trick like Nyx and make everything all better. For one thing, school was too hard for him. Trig was bad enough for me, let alone someone who’d never walked in a classroom before. So Henry tutored him, and Sebastian got his GED. Nico and Aphrodite worked with him and trained him. First he was a dishwasher, then a busboy, then a waiter. Nico taught him how to bake and how to make everything on the menu. So now he manages Aphrodite’s restaurant—which is called Aphrodite’s, of course.

I still feel like the girl in my dreams every time I hear his voice, or hold his hand, or kiss him. He is the man of my dreams. My stomach still does flip-flops. I could kiss him for hours. Just touching him, holding his hand, it all still feels magical to me.

Sometimes, when I go to sleep, I still go down the hallway of many doors. But the hallway is off-limits to Epiales and his kind now. The gods have properly chastised him, and he’s stuck in his realm. Hopefully,
no new power plays from him for a few centuries.

And when I do dream, when I go down the hallway now, I don’t need keys. Sconces
always
light my way. I am always certain of what is behind each door I choose.

After all, I am Iris, the daughter of Morpheus.

And I know my power.

Turn the page to read a preview of Erica Orloff’s

Illuminated
!

1

I had another dream . . .

—
A
.

L
ike the breath of a ghost against an icy window, the scrawl whispered to us across the centuries.

“Even a book has its secrets. Come on, then, tell us more,” Uncle Harry spoke to the manuscript, as if willing it to illuminate. He leaned over its fragile pages like an ancient scholar, staring intently at the parchment.

“Secrets?” I asked him, my voice echoing in the cavernous room of the auction house, its marble floors and twenty-foot-high ceilings carrying even a soft hush like a tree rustling its leaves.

“Callie, everyone, everything, has secrets. Even books. My job is to coax them out.” He aimed the ultraviolet light more closely and exhaled audibly.

“What is it?” I whispered, and peered over his shoulder, feeling a tingle like the delicate legs of a spider skittering up my neck and across my shoulders.

He pointed. “In the margin!”

And there, in a spidery scrawl, ethereal words emerged under the bluish light.

“It looks like someone wrote over old handwriting,” I said softly, squinting to make out the words. I knew that as the medieval illuminated manuscripts expert at Manhattan’s Royal Auction House, Uncle Harry lived for these parchment books, illustrated by monks, that whispered stories from across the centuries. He talked about them over breakfast and over dinner. He read about them. He wrote about them. Whatever that writing was in the margin, it was the stuff of Uncle Harry’s dreams.

“Do you know what this means?”

“Not really.”

“It’s a palimpsest.”

“A what?”

He grinned at me. About six feet tall, with pale blue eyes and dimples, and just the first hints of silver strands in his sandy blond hair, Uncle Harry is the smartest man I know. He has a photographic memory and an encyclopedic knowledge of history. But he’s not boring. With him, history is alive.

“A palimpsest! Centuries ago, a
thousand
years ago, paper was rare. So people wrote on papyrus or on goat skin or on vellum. They wrote on parchment and scrolls. Then, when they didn’t need that book or information anymore, they washed out the old writing with oat bran and milk or some kind of wash, or sometimes a pumice stone. Then they would write on the parchment or vellum again. And the old writing was lost. They thought forever.”

I stared at the feathery script in the margin barely visible in the glow of the bluish ultraviolet light.

“So I’m looking at hidden writing from a thousand years ago? That someone covered over. Secret writing?”

He nodded. “Sometimes we get lucky. The stars align, princess, and you get a gift . . . one of these. They’re priceless. Usually time and the elements disintegrate them.”

I stared at the book. The strokes in ink were precise, elegant, and each one perfect. No letter was higher than the other—they aligned, no ink blotches, each a work of art. The picture on the page was gilded, the gold not faded by time, and deep blues and greens depicted a knight and a lady, the colors as rich as a peacock’s feathers.

“It is beautiful,” I said.

“But what makes this even more extraordinary is the hidden writing. Secrets don’t stay shrouded forever, Callie. Not really. They always leave a trail, even a thousand years later.”

“Did the collector who brought it to the auction house know it was a palimpsest?”

He shook his head. “No. He inherited his father’s collection of rare books and manuscripts. The son just wants the cash.” Uncle Harry stared wistfully at the manuscript. “Little did he even imagine what secrets were on these pages. The auction for this will go into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions. I’ll have a better idea once I know more about the manuscript’s history.” He paused and shook his head. “It’s rather sad, really.”

“Why?”

“A person spends their whole life amassing a collection of books or antiques. They think it will help them live on forever. And then it gets sold by their kids, who don’t really care one way or the other about their parents’ stuff. Maybe an obsession can never be shared.”

“Maybe. But then . . . here we are,” I said. “The words in the margin have lived on.
You
care.”

“I still can’t believe it. And I know someone else who’s going to be elated. I need to go call Dr. Peter Sokolov.”

“Who’s that?”

“He’s a rare-book dealer. The world’s foremost expert on medieval manuscripts.”

“More of an expert than you? That’s hard to believe.”

“He was my mentor. And yes, he knows more than even I do. He’s someone who understands your crazy old uncle and his love of these ancient papers.” Uncle Harry kissed the top of my head. “I told you this was going to be a good summer.”

I rolled my eyes. “All right. You found an old manuscript. A
really
old one. One that has secrets. But still I don’t think you can count this as a good summer—yet. My father ditched me and took off for Europe with his latest blond girlfriend. Is it me or do they seem to be getting younger and blonder?”

“It’s not you. I’ve never understood your father. Never understood why my sister married him in the first place.” Uncle Harry frowned. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not? It’s true. And as
exciting
as this is, it’s, well, a dusty old manuscript.” Could I tell him I was hoping for a summer romance? Or an adventure?

“Patience, Callie.” He winked at me. “Secrets . . .”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You never know where a secret will take you. It’s like playing hide-and-seek throughout history.” He said it in a mysterious, yet playfully obnoxious kind of way. “I’ve got to go make some calls. You can look at the palimpsest. But don’t touch it.” He walked to his office, and with a backward glance added, “Or breathe on it.”

I leaned over and stared at the tiny scrawl that was just barely visible. I squinted. The script was old-fashioned. I couldn’t really make out any words.

Then I saw it. At the bottom it was signed.

I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.