by Kit Alloway
After all, what other station would have reported the arrest of a tall man in a green-black trench coat on charges of anarchistic use of an inter-universal gateway?
The TV screen showed Snitch in steel shackles being dragged down a hallway by two men in Gendarmerie uniforms who strained to force him forward. His gas mask had been removed—curiously, it had been replaced by a white cloth face mask—but he still wore his trench coat, and it looked slick, as if he had just come in from the rain. His glassy black eyes stared vacantly into the camera.
“Is he contagious or something?” Will asked. He was sitting on the couch with Whim and Haley, and Josh was sitting on the floor in front of him, sandwiched between his ankles. She let her hands rest lightly on his shoes, and every so often he gave her shoulders a little squeeze with his knees.
“What’s wrong with his eyes?” Alex asked, still watching the TV.
“I don’t know,” Whim told his father, “but they creep me the hell out.”
“Whim,” Alex said with a tired sigh that suggested he didn’t expect to be heeded, “try to watch the language.”
Josh tried to focus on the reporter’s words as he began the story from the top. “For those of you just joining us, one of the elusive criminals known only as the trench-coat men has been caught. He was apprehended at seven thirty-five this evening by Rhianwen Girstelul in Victoria Town.”
“That’s right near Charle,” Josh said.
“Near your mom’s cabin?” Will asked.
“Yeah,” Josh said, startled by the reminder that Will knew the whole story.
The reporter continued. “Requests for a statement from the man have been denied by the junta until after he’s been questioned by the Gendarmerie. When asked why the man’s gas mask has been replaced with a sterile mask, junta spokesman Elio Havieratyoti declined to comment.”
“Remind me what the Gendarmerie is?” Will asked, pronouncing the word uncertainly.
“Dream-walker police,” Josh said.
“And our only hope if we ever need to revolt against the junta,” Whim added.
“Whim,” Alex said with another sigh, “try to watch the treason talk.”
“We do know,” the reporter said, “that Ms. Girstelul apprehended the man while he was trying to gas her mother in the backyard of their home.”
The camera zoomed in on a canister with carrying straps sitting on a metal table. Josh heard Haley inhale sharply, and he slid down from the couch to sit next to her on the floor. “Josh,” he whispered. “Josh, look.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, distracted by one of Will’s hands weighing on her shoulder. They had been finding little reasons to touch each other all afternoon while pretending that wasn’t what they were doing.
Haley tugged the sleeve of her shirt. “No, look.”
The camera had panned back to Snitch. “What?” Josh asked, tearing her eyes away to look at Haley.
His breathing was fast and shallow. “That’s … that’s…” he began. Then his chest heaved as if he might throw up, and he fumbled for his pad and pen.
A second later Josh had the note in her hand. The lack of date and address alone would have told her how important Haley considered the content.
Winsor is in the canister.
She looked at him, speechless. Haley, of course, couldn’t bring himself to say anything. He dashed off another note.
GET HER!
Josh climbed to her feet, the notes still in her hand. “Will, you want to help me and Haley make some sandwiches?”
“Sandwiches?” Will asked, but when he looked at her, she widened her eyes at him and he added, “Yeah, let’s make everybody sandwiches.”
When the three of them were alone in the kitchen, Josh put the slips of paper into Will’s hand. “Read these,” she said, keeping her voice low.
Will’s face grew pale as he read the notes. Haley’s eyes were wild. His chest throbbed on the verge of hyperventilation. He stood in the kitchen doorway until Will gestured him closer.
“Okay,” Will said to Haley, “it’s good that you told us this. Can you breathe a little slower? Josh, would you get him something to drink?”
Josh was willing to accept that Haley had psychic powers, but she didn’t feel like she had any idea how to help him deal with them. That was Will’s department. She just went to the fridge and poured a cup of the cran-raspberry juice Haley liked.
The glass rattled against Haley’s teeth while he gulped. “You’re going to help her, right?” he asked. “She’s trapped in there. In the canister. It’s like a cage.”
“Yes,” Will told him. “Josh and I are going to help.”
Haley nodded. His eyes never left Will’s face, and Josh was startled to realize that Haley trusted Will. Something had changed dramatically between them.
“So you’re saying that the man in the trench coat, Snitch, put Winsor in the canister?”
“Her soul. Her soul’s in the canister.”
Josh frowned, alarmed by the idea—incredible as it was—of someone messing with Winsor’s soul. “Why did they put her soul in the canister?” Will asked.
Haley struggled, more with understanding than with words, it seemed. “She’s … fuel? Or … power? I don’t know.”
Josh met Will’s eyes. “Having her soul in a canister might explain Winsor’s coma.”
“It might explain all the CSAD patients’ comas,” Will agreed. To Haley, he said, “What do we need to do to help?”
“Get them out,” Haley said without hesitation.
“Out of the canister. Good. By just opening it?”
“I … don’t know.” Haley’s voice rose with panic. “I’m not sure!”
“That’s okay,” Will said soothingly. “We can figure that out once we get a hold of the canister. Do you think you can put the souls back in their bodies?”
Haley shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know if it works like that.”
Will squeezed Haley’s upper arms in one of those guy not-hugs. “It’s gonna be okay. Josh and I are going to help you, right Josh?”
“Definitely,” Josh said. “I’ll call Davita and see if we can get a hold of this canister.” She opened the family address book and shuffled through the mess of business cards, looking for Davita’s.
“Thank you,” Haley said, and he heaved a great sigh. “I need to get a—get ready.” He turned and fled the room.
“Well,” Will said. “That was unexpected.”
“Yeah.”
Josh set down the address book without finding Davita’s card. She turned to face Will. “I need to say something.”
Will’s eyes widened with alarm.
Rather than reassuring him, Josh launched in. “Thank you. For whatever you did that made Haley feel like he can trust you, and he could tell you about the”—she glanced at the kitchen door to make sure they weren’t overheard—“psychic thing, and made him realize he can talk instead of writing notes: thank you.”
Will’s lips were parted and speechless.
“You’re a good friend,” Josh said. “To both of us.”
She hesitated for a moment, then stepped forward and hugged him. His flannel shirt was soft against her cheek.
He tightened his arms around her. “I try to be.”
And he was good—not just to Haley but to her. Since she’d found out that his apprenticeship wasn’t predicted in her scroll, she had begun to realize how much she had held that prediction against him. Her fear had blinded her to the fact that, however he had come into her life, they were learning to be a good team. The way he always saw the best in her made her feel like she didn’t have to be strong and hard and perfect. Maybe, despite her mistakes, she was good enough as she was.
She tilted her head back to smile at him, and he smiled in return, but neither of them made any move to let go of each other. Josh remembered the time she had impulsively hugged him after they’d finished fixing up his bedroom. He hadn’t been sure how to respond then, but this time it
was different. This time he knew her secrets and her faults, and when she let her head fall back the way she had before, this time he kissed her.
A good friend indeed.
He kissed her with careful tenderness at first, cupping her face between his palms like she was a sweet, wild bird he was afraid to spook. Josh felt the fine trembling in the muscles in his hands and knew he was restraining himself the way he had for weeks now.
Well, she’d had enough of that. They both had. Josh pushed his hands away from her face so that she could wrap her arms around his neck, holding him close and deepening the kiss. That was all the permission Will needed; he scooped her up and set her on the counter next to the stove so that they were the same height. Josh locked her ankles behind his knees and he slid one hand under the hem of her sweater and splayed his palm out against the small of her back. Josh shivered, a flush breaking out all over her body, and Will paused just long enough to smile at her reaction. Then they were kissing again, in a thrilling panic, and he—
“Oh—heavens to Betsy!” Deloise cried, and Will jumped back three feet, managing to break out of the circle of Josh’s legs.
“Hey!” Whim protested from the doorway. “You aren’t making us sandwiches!”
“We’re sorry,” Deloise said, regaining her composure. She started backing herself and Whim—both of them grinning—into the living room.
“It’s all right,” Josh told her, although she felt her flush becoming an outright blush.
“Yeah, we’ll go now,” Deloise said, but before she left she couldn’t resist adding, “Looks like you guys are doing some heavy training.” Whim cackled with laughter.
Alone, neither Josh nor Will said anything, but he walked back to the counter, where she sat with her head down. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. He grazed her hot cheek with the backs of his fingers, then ran the tip of his thumb over her lips, and when she smiled he let his forehead fall against hers.
“Was that out of line?” he asked in a voice just above a whisper.
“No.” She put her hands on his shoulders, then slid them onto his neck, feeling the warmth of his skin. She didn’t know how she could feel so shy and so bold at the same time.
“Good. But maybe I should go, because if I don’t…”
“I won’t get around to calling Davita?” Josh asked, daring to look up at him. He smiled at her, and the happiness in his expression caught her off guard. Had she made him that happy?
“Yeah. So maybe I’ll go wait for you.”
“I’ll find you,” she promised, remembering what he’d said the night they met, and they both laughed a little unsteadily. She couldn’t resist laying a kiss on the corner of his mouth.
Still wearing that look of happiness—and what else? Contentment?—Will left her to go wait in the living room. Josh pressed her palms to her burning cheeks.
I hope I’m ready for this, she thought.
Oh, but she’d felt ready in the moment. She’d had no doubts when they were holding each other. Only now did she begin to second-guess herself.
Her heart was still beating quickly when she looked up and saw Haley standing in the other doorway, trying to scramble back into the hallway before Josh noticed him.
His expression was crushed.
“Haley—” she said. Josh dashed after him, but he made it to the stairwell before she caught up.
“Wait a sec.” She grabbed his sleeve, and he shook her off. “Haley, wait.”
She jumped up two stairs and managed to trap him by putting her hands against the wall on either side of his shoulders.
He wouldn’t even look at her. He tried to duck under one of her arms, and she twisted to block him. “Haley, please.”
Still refusing to meet her eyes, he said, “Ian saw you in the kitchen with Will.”
Oh my god.
Her heart couldn’t beat fast enough to keep pace with her panic.
But Haley didn’t go on, and she had to say something. “That wasn’t how it looked.”
Although, of course, it had been.
A transformation ran over Haley. He tilted his head forward and looked at her from beneath his brows. A sardonic smile twisted his mouth. “I suppose you were using him, too?” he asked in a low, dangerous voice.
“No, that’s not…”
Sometimes—Ian gets confused—he thinks this is his body.
Josh had tried to block out Haley’s revelation from the night before. The idea frightened her too much to contemplate it for more than an instant. But now she had to accept that if Haley wasn’t delusional—if he was truly psychic—then these moments when he acted like Ian weren’t the result of a defense mechanism. He really was …
Josh couldn’t deal with the thought. She pushed it away.
“Ian’s dead,” she said. “He died last summer.”
The green flecks in his hazel eyes lit up like mica in firelight. “Is that what you tell yourself when you play the slut?” he hissed.
Josh was too stunned to reply, but when he tried to kiss her, she instinctively ducked. He lost his footing and stumbled down the stairs to the landing; she could almost feel the life rushing out of him as he passed her.
Haley hunched over, breathing hard. A combination of panic, pain, and helplessness made up his expression. Josh was almost afraid to approach him, but she made herself walk down the steps and place her hand on his shoulder.
He was refusing to look at her again. “Sorry.”
Josh wanted to cry. “Can you stop him from doing that?” she asked.
Haley shook his head. “He doesn’t mean to,” he whispered. “He gets confused.”
She stopped doubting Haley right then and there, because however painful losing Ian had been, having him here—like this—was worse. Haley would never have faked, or even subconsciously chosen, such a cruel tease.
“How did this happen?” Josh wondered aloud, and she was surprised when he answered.
“You,” he said.
“Me?”
“You held on to him; you brought him back to the World. But he stays with me because we’re twins. He thinks this is his body.” Haley pressed his lips together and then added, “Sometimes I do too.”
Josh, afraid of what—or whom—a hug might wake up in him, squeezed his shoulder.
“Josh?” Whim called from the kitchen.
After giving Haley one more squeeze, Josh ran down the steps to meet Whim. “I’m here.”
Whim’s cell phone was in his hand. “I just got a call from somebody inside the Gendarmerie who claims he knows Snitch’s real identity.”
Josh struggled to switch from Haley’s paranormal phenomenon to Whim’s conspiracy theories. “Do you believe him?”
“No way to know yet. But I want you to come with me to meet him.”
Josh’s brow furrowed. “Me? Why?”
“Because if he’s telling the truth, you’re going to want to hear what he has to say.”
Thirty-two
Rain shook the sheet-glass windows of the all-night doughnut shop, and the temperature dropped ten degrees near the windows, but Whim had insisted that they sit in the darkest corner.
“He’s going to be freaked out enough that I brought people with me,” Whim had said, referring to his informant.
Will sat next to Josh with his hands wrapped around a giant cup of coffee, which was surprisingly good considering that the doughnut shop was located off a highway exit that also hosted a gas station, an abandoned diner, and exactly nothing else. The doughnuts were so good that they’d torn through six of them and then ordered a dozen more.
Josh was sitting next to Will and drinking a glass of milk so big it had come in a souvenir cup. She was in sugar heaven.
Something big had changed between them, as though once Josh’s defenses had started to crack, they had crumbled completely. She sat close enough to Will that their arms brushed, and every so often she’d given him a private little smile. She was giving him one now as she asked
if he wanted to split a Long John.
“Sure,” Will said, even though he was fairly close to throwing up. He smiled back at her. He couldn’t stop smiling at her.
“You two disgust me,” Whim said. “Why don’t you each start eating one end of the thing, and you can meet in the middle like in that movie with the dogs?”
Will looked at Josh and said, “Okay,” and she gave an acquiescing shrug and stuck one end of the Long John in her mouth.
As Will leaned forward to capture the other end, Whim burst out, “Stop it! What the hell is wrong with you two tonight? If this guy comes in here and sees two people choking to death on the same doughnut, he’s gonna bolt!”
Josh bit off her end of the Long John and, still chewing, said, “You need to chill out, Whim.”
The end of her sentence was punctuated by jangling of the harness of bells attached to the door. “I think that’s him,” Whim hissed.
They waited while the young man who entered bought a cup of coffee and a bagel. “Who comes to Doughnut Heaven and buys a bagel?” Josh whispered. Will ignored the temptation to suck the frosting off her lower lip. Whim used a compact he usually carried into the Dream to covertly watch the man select a table and sit down.
“Okay,” Whim said, snapping the compact shut. “I’m going in.”
While he was at the man’s table, Josh said, “He’s so wound up. He thinks he’s going to break some huge story. I’m sure this guy doesn’t actually know anything.”
Several minutes passed before Whim and the stranger came over to the table in the corner. “Josh, Will,” Whim said, “this is, ah, Serpico.”
Serpico was a short goth kid who couldn’t have been more than twenty. He wore a long black duster, weighty black boots with soles three inches thick, and eyeliner that might actually have been Sharpie. He had a lot of piercings. A lot. Will figured that if somebody had run thread through all the holes in that guy’s face, they probably could have made a dream catcher.