Girl of Nightmares

by Kendare Blake

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I never saw my dad.

  After I realized that the blood didn’t matter, it all went so fast. I just cut and cut and didn’t think. And they all left. Around us now, everything feels empty.

  “It’s not empty,” Anna says, even though I’m pretty sure I didn’t say anything out loud. “You set him free. You let him move on.” She puts her hand on my shoulder and I look down at the athame. The blade shines bright, brighter than anything else here.

  “He’s moved on,” I say. But part of me hoped he would stick around. Even if it was just long enough for me to see him. Maybe to tell him—I don’t know what. Maybe just to tell him that we were okay.

  Anna wraps her arms around my waist and rests her chin on my shoulder. She doesn’t say anything comforting. She doesn’t tell me something that she doesn’t know for certain. She’s just here. And that’s enough.

  When I take my eyes off of the athame, everything is different. With the Obeahman gone, the landscape is changing. It wrinkles and reforms around us. Looking up, the dark, bruised void is brighter. It looks clearer, and I can almost make out the faint twinkling of stars. The rocks are gone too, and so are the cliffs. There are no more sharp edges. There are no edges at all. We’re standing together in the middle of something beginning.

  “We should go,” I whisper. “Before Thomas gives me a nosebleed.”

  Anna smiles. The dark goddess is gone, receded back under the skin. She’s just Anna, looking at me curiously in her plain white dress.

  “What’s going to happen now?” she asks.

  “Something better,” I reply, and take her hand. She looks beautiful here. Her eyes sparkle, and the sunlight warms the color of her hair to a shining, chocolate brown.

  “How do we get back?” she asks. I don’t reply. Instead I stare over her shoulder, at the changing landscape. I don’t know if I’ll be able to remember what it was like to see this. If I’ll be able to remember what it was like to watch creation. Maybe it’ll all fade, like a dream after waking.

  The world behind her rises out of the mist, only there was never any mist. It comes upon us, up and around us, like watercolor spilling across a blank page. Sunlight beams down on uncut green grass, grass that I could fall down on and sleep for hours. Maybe days. Farther off are trees, and on the edge of that, there’s the Victorian, Anna’s Victorian, standing white and tall and unbroken. It never looked like this when she lived there. It never, ever looked like this. So bright and straight in the sun. Not even when it was newly built.

  “Cas? Is it Thomas? Do we have to hurry?” She looks into my eyes, starts to follow them. I grab both of her hands.

  “Don’t,” I say. “Don’t look.”

  She doesn’t. Her eyes widen and she listens, trusting me, afraid of what she might see if she does. But I can’t hide the feel of the breeze as it moves through our clothes. I can’t muffle the sound of warm things, of birds singing and insects buzzing in the flowers near the house. So she looks. Her hair falls over her shoulder, and I expect to feel her fingers pull loose from mine any second. This is her place. Her other side. The blemish of the Obeahman is gone. She belongs here.

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t belong here.” She squeezes my hands, tighter than before. “Let’s go back.”

  I smile. She crossed over death to call me. I crossed through Hell to find her.

  “Anna!”

  We both look toward the sound of my voice. There’s a silhouette in the open doorway of the Victorian.

  “Cas?” she asks uncertainly, and the figure steps out into the light. It’s me. It’s impossibly, completely me. Anna smiles and tugs at my hands. A small laugh escapes her throat.

  “Come on,” he calls. “I thought you wanted to go for a walk.”

  She hesitates. When she half turns back and sees me, the real me, she looks confused, and squeezes her eyes shut.

  “Let’s go,” she says. “This place lies. For a minute I—I didn’t remember where we were. I didn’t remember you were here.” She looks back toward the Victorian again, and when she speaks, her voice is far off, almost there already. “For a minute I thought I was home.”

  “Come on,” the other me calls again. “Before we have to go meet Thomas and Carmel.”

  I look back over my shoulder. The candlelit room is still there. I can see Thomas, kneeling on the ground, his hands working frantically. I don’t have much time. But everything is happening too fast.

  If I let go of Anna’s hands, she’ll forget me. She’ll forget everything except what lies across that field. It will all be gone. Her murder, and her curse. She’ll forever live out the life she should have had. The one we might have had together, if everything had been different. This place lies. But it’s a good lie.

  “Anna,” I say. She turns back to me, but her eyes are wide and conflicted. I smile, and let one of her hands go to slide my fingers into her hair. “I have to go.”

  “What?” she asks, but I don’t answer. Instead I kiss her, one time, and try to tell her in that single gesture everything that she’ll forget as soon as she turns away. I tell her I love her. I tell her I’ll miss her. And then I let her go.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  There’s the sound of something shattering, and the feeling of being slammed into something, all without moving. My eyes crack open and see a room filled with candlelight and red robes. There isn’t much sensation in my body that isn’t straight pain. Thomas, Gideon, and Carmel are on me immediately. I hear their voices as three distinct squawks. Someone is applying pressure to my stomach. Other members of the Order stand around looking useless, but when Gideon barks, there are a few red flutters. At least some of them have run off to do something. I stare up at the ceiling that is too high to see, but I know it’s there. I don’t have to look to the right or left to know that I came back alone.

  * * *

  This situation is vaguely familiar. I’m lying in a bed with an IV stuck in my arm and stitches in my guts, both internal and external. My back is propped up by four or five pillows and a tray of uneaten food rests on the bedside table. At least there’s no green Jell-O on it.

  They say I was out for a week, and that my survival was touch and go for most of that. Carmel says that I pushed the limit on blood transfusions, and that I’m incredibly lucky that the Order has basically a fully functioning ER built into their basement. When I woke up, I was surprised by the head of auburn and silver hair zonked out by my bed. Gideon flew my mom into Glasgow.

  There’s a knock at the door, and Thomas, Carmel, and my mom walk in. Mom immediately gestures to the tray of food.

  “You’d better eat that,” she says.

  “I’m taking it easy on my stomach,” I protest. “Come on. It just had a knife in it.”

  Not funny, her narrowed eyes say to me. Okay, Mom. I pick up the bowl of applesauce and slurp it down, just to make her smile, which she does, reluctantly.

  “So, we’ve decided that we’ll all stay on until you’re well enough to travel,” says Carmel, taking a seat on the foot of the bed. “We’ll fly back together, just in time for school to start.”

  “Whoop-de-do, Carmel,” Thomas says, spiraling his finger in the air. He gives me a look. “She’s so damn excited to be a senior. Like she didn’t run the whole school already. Personally, I’m in no rush. Maybe we can take one more swing through the Suicide Forest on the way out, just for kicks.”

  “You’re hilarious,” Carmel says sarcastically, and shoves him.

  One more knock at the door, and Gideon comes in with his hands in his pockets and sits down in the chair. I notice the uncomfortable look traded between him and my mom. I don’t know if things will ever be the same for them after this. But I’ll do my best to explain that it wasn’t Gideon’s fault.

  “I just got off the phone with Colin Burke,” Gideon tells us. “Jestine is apparently doing very well. She’s up and about already.”

  Je
stine didn’t die. The wounds she received at the hands of the Obeahman were no more fatal than mine were. And she came back earlier than I did, so she didn’t lose quite as much blood. She was also apparently more careful about where she took her wound, because she didn’t do as much internal damage to herself as I did either. Maybe someday I’ll get her to come clean with all of her secrets. Or maybe not. Life’s more interesting with gray areas.

  Silence lingers in the room. I’ve been conscious now for three days, but they keep pussyfooting around, and haven’t asked too many questions about what happened over there. But they’re dying to know. I won’t mind telling them. It’s just sort of fun to wait and wonder which one is going to burst first.

  I look around at their uncomfortably curious faces. None of them does anything but give a closed-lip smile.

  “Well, I’m going to see about dinner for the rest of us,” my mom says, and crosses her arms. “You’re still on mushy food for a while, Cas.” She claps Thomas on the shoulder as she leaves. No doubt she knows that I chose him to be my anchor. If she was fond of him before, she might just adopt him now.

  “Did you at least see her?” Thomas asks, and I smile. Finally.

  “Yeah. I saw her.”

  “What … what happened? Was it the Obeahman?” He asks so hesitantly. Carmel’s eyes are bugged out, watching me for signs of stress, ready to jump on Thomas and stop the questions. It’s sort of silly, but I appreciate their worry.

  “It was the Obeahman,” I say. “You were right, Gideon. They were trapped there together.” He nods, and his eyes go dark. He didn’t really want to be right, I suppose. “But he’s finished now. I finished him. And I freed the others. All of the others he took into himself over the years. All those ghosts. And Will and Chase.” I nod at Carmel. “And my dad.” Gideon closes his eyes. “Don’t tell Mom yet,” I say to him. “I will tell her. But—I didn’t see him or anything. I didn’t talk to him. It’s hard to explain.”

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “Tell her in your own time.”

  “What about Anna?” Thomas asks. “Was she all right? Did you free her too?”

  I smile. “I hope I did,” I reply. “I think I did. I think she’ll be all right now. I think she’ll be happy.”

  “I’m glad,” Carmel says. “But are you going to be okay?” She puts her hand on my knee and squeezes it through the sheets. I nod. I’ll be fine.

  “What about the Order?” I ask Gideon. “Jestine brought metal back with her, to forge another athame. Did they tell you that?”

  “They alluded to it.” Gideon nods. “She always was a clever girl.”

  “Another athame?” says Thomas. “Can they do that?”

  “I’m not sure. They seem to think so.”

  “So what,” Carmel groans, sounding exhausted. “Does that mean we’re going to have to take out the entire Order? Not that I’d mind, but seriously?”

  “If they wanted me dead, they had a prime opportunity to do it,” I say. “I was basically dead on that floor. They could have just left me. Denied me care.” I look at Gideon, and he nods agreement. “I don’t think I have anything to worry about from them. They’ll have their athame. And their instrument,” I add bitterly. “They’ll stay off my back.”

  “They got what they wanted,” Gideon agrees. “And they appear to have gone. We’re the only ones left here. The Order departed the moment Jestine was well enough to be moved.” I notice that Gideon refers to the Order as if he wasn’t a member. Good. He reclines in the chair and folds his hands on his chest. “It would seem, Theseus, that your way is clear.”

  I smile, and remember my last moments with Anna. I remember the way she kissed me, and that I could feel her smile, barely restrained in her cheeks. I remember that her lips were so unbelievably warm.

  Thomas and Carmel stand by my bed, looking down on me with bruises and scarred necks. Maybe somewhere my dad is looking on too. Maybe while being batted at by a hair-pulling black cat. My smile stretches wider.

  My way is clear.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Girl of Nightmares owes a lot to my editor, Melissa Frain. As far as editors go, she is the bomb diggity. So thank you, Mel, for having a great eye, and being crazy supportive. Thank you also to my agent, Adriann Ranta, who continues to navigate the publishing waters for me and tell me what’s what. Thank you to Seth Lerner and the artist Nekro for another amazing cover. And thank you to the entire team at Tor Teen for doing all the things it takes to make a book a book.

  Also, the world needs readers, so thank you to all of them, and the reviewers, teachers, librarians, and bloggers who continue to spread the love of books.

  A quick shout-out to my parents, in particular my dad this time, who never doubts, and drives sales in places like Minot, North Dakota. Thanks, Dad!

  And finally, the usual suspects: Ryan VanderVenter, Missy Goldsmith, Susan Murray, and Dylan Zoerb, for luck.

  TOR BOOKS BY KENDARE BLAKE

  Anna Dressed in Blood

  Girl of Nightmares

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  GIRL OF NIGHTMARES

  Copyright © 2012 by Kendare Blake

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor Teen Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-2866-3 (hardcover)

  ISBN 9781429948326 (e-book)

  First Edition: August 2012