The Cure for Dreaming (4 page)

Almost.

“
SO, TELL ME, LIVIE,” KATE SAID WITH BARELY CONCEALED
excitement after the theater lights stirred us back into reality and we rose to our feet, “what did it feel like when lovely Monsieur Reverie was on top of you?”

“I beg your pardon?” I halted in mid-stretch. “What did you just say, Kate?”

“You heard what I said.” She smiled with a glint in her hazel eyes. “He instructed you to stiffen, and then he laid you out between those two chairs and stood on your stomach to show how rigid you became.”

“What?” I pressed down for signs of bruises below the protective barrier of my corset. “He stood on top of me?”

Frannie nodded and bit her bottom lip. “He did, Livie. That's what I meant by ‘Oh dear.'”

“Didn't you feel him?” asked Kate.

“No.”

She laughed. “You didn't feel a man at least thirty pounds heavier than you standing on your body?”

“No.”

“You were honestly that hypnotized?” Frannie put her hands on her hips. “You didn't hear the cymbals he crashed next to your ears or feel the pins he poked into your wrist to see if you were alert?”

I rubbed my left wrist. “Is that why my skin tingled after I got back to my seat?”

“Oh, Livie.” Kate shook her head, her fair curls wobbling across her forehead. “You're always missing the excitement, even when you're smack-dab in the middle of it.” She swiveled toward the aisle and held up the hem of her skirt. “Come along, ladies. Let's try to pull Agnes away from her suffragist troops and their election-day plotting and remind her she's our chaperone.”

Frannie and I grabbed hands to keep from losing each other in the crowd, and I followed her swaying braid up the aisle, while she followed Kate's bright green-and-black plaid. Strangers stepped on my feet at least three times, and I couldn't help but think everyone was staring at me, the girl who had let a young man balance atop her stomach.

Out in the lobby we had to wait ten minutes to fetch our coats, and then we found ourselves swept along in a warm wave of bodies that pressed toward the theater's exit. On all sides of me people buzzed about Henri Reverie's skills.

“Quite a talented young man.”

“Such persuasion. Such power.”

“I would have liked to see him try that hogwash on me. My mind is far too sharp and alert for that sort of humbug—I can promise you that.”

I glanced over my shoulder, for I thought I heard my name amid the commotion.

“Olivia.” An arm waved, flashing a jeweled cuff link. Auburn hair and a handsome face with fine cheekbones came into view ten feet behind me. “Wait,” called Percy Acklen.

I squeezed Frannie's hand in the crowd's swift-moving current. “I think Percy is calling to me.”

She laughed. “What?”

“Percy Acklen is calling and waving to me.”

She turned as well, and although a parade of elbows and shoulders smacked against us, we stood there, frozen.

Percy made his way to where we waited and stopped two feet from me. I could smell his divine, musky cologne.

“May I drive you home, Olivia?” he asked.

“Drive me home?” I looked to Frannie to ensure I'd heard him correctly.

She gaped, her jaw dangling open enough for me to see the little gap between her bottom front teeth.

A rotund gentleman with a heavy black beard fell against Percy, and the force of the blow knocked Percy's chest against mine. He grabbed my arms to steady himself but carried on with his conversation as though we hadn't just crashed together with our cheeks pressed close. “My father bought
me my own buggy.” He let go of me and stepped back to a more respectable distance. “I'd love to give you a ride.”

I cleared my throat to find my voice. “Didn't you come to the theater with your parents?”

“They brought their own carriage. I drove separately.”

“Frannie? Livie?” called Kate from the exit, bobbing up and down like a buoy. “Where in heaven's name are you?”

“We're coming, Kate,” said Frannie. She glanced my way with concern in her eyes. “You're coming, too, Livie, right?”

My heart pounded. I felt I'd stumbled across a crucial fork in a road after a long journey, and choosing the wrong path might alter my entire life. Going home with my friends as planned would mean safety and comfort and normalcy. Yet driving away with Percy, unchaperoned—Percy who was gazing at me as if I were something rare and enchanting he'd just unearthed—well, that was an entirely new adventure.

I buttoned up my gray wool coat. “I'll go with Percy.”

PERCY'S BUGGY WAS AN ELEGANT BLACK CONTRAPTION
with fresh paint, a curved roof, and a seat, meant for two, upholstered in padded green leather. He stepped in beside me and rocked the vehicle until he got himself situated.

I tucked my gloved hands inside my coat pockets, for the night air was chilled and damp with the type of mist that stung my cheeks and nose.
Fairy kisses
, my mother had called that type of weather when I was small enough to believe in mystical creatures.

Percy fitted his silk top hat over his head. “Where do you live?”

“Twelfth Street, near Main.”

“That shouldn't take long.” He gathered up the reins. “Are you ready?”

I nodded. “I am.”

“Let's be off, then.” He made a clicking sound out of the side of his mouth, and his white ghost of a horse pranced away from the theater with the steady clip-clop of hooves. The carriage bumped and jostled over potholes in the dark, so I grabbed the crisscrossing bars running up to the roof to keep from bouncing out to the muddy street.

“You have a beautiful horse,” I said when we were two blocks west of the theater.

“Thank you. His name is Mandolin.”

“Oh, that's pretty.”

“Thank you.”

I leaned back against the seat and wondered what I was doing with exquisite Percy Acklen and his gorgeous black buggy.

Silence ruled our drive across the city, even though I longed to ask him what books he liked to read outside of school and what he thought of hypnotism . . . and Halloween . . . and bicycling . . . and a dozen other subjects. Words failed me, however—as they were apt to do around attractive boys. All my imagined questions struck me as either dull or nosy.

I focused on the glow of the arc lamps dangling from overhead
wires and the darkened stores, including my absolute favorite, McCorkan's Bicycle Shop, which featured two pairs of ladies' riding bloomers in the front window. We traveled past rows of houses—oversized gingerbread homes with rounded towers and sprawling porches topped with jack-o'-lanterns that reminded me of Henri Reverie leaping out of smoke. The carriage wheels squelched through soupy puddles and clattered across stony patches of road so poorly paved, the surface might as well have been dirt. The air carried the scent of Halloween bonfires and magic.

We turned left, and Percy urged Mandolin into a fast trot, perhaps to impress me. My backside bounced against the seat hard enough to rattle my teeth.

I clutched the buggy. “Is it safe to go this fast in the dark?”

“Are you scared?”

“A little.”

“It's Halloween. You're supposed to be frightened.”

“Frightened of the dead arising . . . not of imminent death.”

“Ha! I'll slow down, then.” He adjusted the reins, and the horse eased back into a walk. The buggy swayed in a gentle rhythm, and I relaxed my stranglehold on the bars. “There, boy,” cooed Percy. “There's a good horse.”

Our narrow, two-story house came into view to the south, its ugly red clapboards too dim to be seen with the clouds blocking the moon.

“My house is the third one on the right,” I said with a nod toward the place. “The skinny one with the big maple in front.”

“All right.”

We drove close enough for me to see a light flickering behind the lace curtains of one of the side windows in the back. Father's study.

Percy called out another “Whoa,” and the buggy rocked to a stop in front of our curb. Mandolin whinnied. Rain pattered against the vehicle's roof, which made me think of poor Frannie and Kate trudging through drizzle and hopping aboard streetcars to get home, and there I was, sitting in the height of luxury on padded green leather.

“Well,” I said, “I should probably—”

“You looked beautiful on that stage tonight, Olivia.” Percy turned toward me, briefly illuminated by a delicate strand of moonlight that stole through the clouds.

I sat up straighter. “I did?”

“Yes.” His eyes—black in the night, a beguiling greenish-brown in the daylight—stayed upon me. “I don't know if you remember it, but that hypnotist laid you out between two chairs. You were as stiff as a board, with only your neck and your ankles supported, and you were as lovely as Sleeping Beauty.”

I snickered. “I was?”

He scooted closer to me on the seat with the soft whisper of leather. “My father leaned over to me and said, ‘Now, that's womanhood perfected, Percy my boy. That's the type of girl you want. Silent. Alluring. Submissive.'”

My stomach lurched. I tried to appear unfazed by his
father's words, but my mouth twisted into an expression that must have looked as if I were swallowing down those milky gray eggs from the courthouse attack.

Percy laughed. “I said those were my father's words. Not mine.”

“Oh.” I sighed. “I'm glad. You don't think women ought to be silent and submissive, then?”

“You
are
silent, Olivia. I've never heard you speak one word in any of the classes we've had together.”

“That doesn't mean I like to be silent.”

Unfortunately, my argument ended there, and I indeed fell silent again. As did Percy.

Down the street, a dog howled. A pitiful wail.

“‘Listen to them—the children of the night,'” I said before I could think to regret quoting
Dracula
in the middle of an already awkward moment.

Percy straightened his neck. “What did you just say?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What about nighttime children?”

“Oh . . .” I wrapped my arms around my middle. “I just . . . I have a strange attraction to horror novels.”

“Which ones?”

“I'm reading
Dracula
. . . for the fourth time.”

“The fourth time?” He whistled and shifted his knees in my direction. “Doesn't the library mind you checking it out so often? I've heard it's all the rage.”

“I saved enough money to buy my own copy as soon as
it showed up in Harrison's Books last year. Have you read it yet?”

“No.” He tugged at his stiff collar. “My father only allows classic literature in the Acklen household. Friends have to sneak me copies of anything new and exciting.”

“I could lend you my copy if you'd like.”

“Really?” He scooted another inch my way. “You'd help corrupt me?”

I sputtered a laugh. “
Dracula
may frighten you, but I doubt it will corrupt you. At least . . . I don't think it will. There are some . . . scenes . . . I suppose some people would find . . .”

“What?” He tilted his head. The right corner of his mouth arched in a wry smile that Frannie would have hated. “What types of scenes are there?”

My face flushed. “I'm not going to say. You'll just have to read them.”

“You'll definitely have to lend me your copy, then. Show me what I'm missing.” He pressed the side of his arm against mine, clearly meaning for me to feel him.

I froze. My heart rate doubled, and I was certain he could detect my pulse jumping about beneath my sleeve, even with all that fabric separating us.

“Well . . .,” he said.

I lifted my eyes. “Yes?”

“I suppose I should help you down before the vampires
crawl out of their graves and drink your sweet, invigorating blood. What do you think?”

I nodded. “I suppose you should. There aren't any Van Helsings in the neighborhood.”

“Who?”

“You'll see.”

He shifted his weight and climbed out his side of the buggy, another smile half hidden on his face in the moonlight. His leather soles squished toward me through the shallow mud; then he stopped below me on the damp sidewalk and hooked his fingers around the crisscrossing metal next to my arm. “Thank you for letting me drive you home.”

I folded my hands in my lap to keep them from trembling. “May I ask you something about that?”

“Yes.”

“Um . . . well . . .” I drew a breath that made my tongue go dry. “You didn't ask to drive me here merely because you liked how I looked when I was in that trance, did you?”

“Well . . .” Percy beamed at me in a way no one ever had before, his head tipped to the left, his dark eyes glassy and wistful. “You really were a beaut up there, Olivia. You should have seen the way the lights shone down on your black hair and your sleeping face.”

“But have you ever felt—” My skin warmed over. Words wilted at my lips, but I forced myself to finish my thought. “You've never seemed to notice me before this evening. Am I
only attractive to you because I was lying unconscious across two chairs on a stage?”

“No . . . that's not . . . I just . . .” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I'd never thought of you that way before. You've always simply been . . . Dr. Mead's daughter.”

“Oh.” I nodded. “I see. You're afraid of my father like everyone else.”

“No, I'm not afraid. It's just . . . well . . . your father has never worked on my teeth, but he certainly took care of my mother's and father's mouths—I can tell you that much. He fitted them with the finest dentures money can buy.”

“And is that so terrible?”