Dreamfever

by Kit Alloway

  “Are you at Josh and Deloise’s house?”

  Again, something … was Davita’s tone too intense? Mirren couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.

  “No,” she lied. “We’re on our way to brunch someplace downtown. Fat Mac’s, I think Josh said? And then Deloise is going to take me makeup shopping.”

  “That’s fine, then,” Davita said. “Call me when you get back to the house.”

  “I will,” Mirren promised, but she frowned at the phone as she ended the call.

  Why does Davita want to know where I am?

  What if Peregrine had already gotten to her?

  Josh, Haley, and Will returned from the basement much sooner than Mirren had expected, and from their faces, she knew they had brought bad news.

  Josh dropped like a stone onto the couch. “Bash lied to me,” she said in a voice so quiet and flat that Mirren drew closer to hear. “He told me he had come up with a way to fix the towers to the fabric of the Dream. Something about simo pulsations … I thought he knew more than me, that I just wasn’t following, and that’s why it didn’t make sense. But what he really did was burn holes in the Veil and jam the towers in like corks.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Deloise, who had rejoined them to hear the news.

  “It means I can’t remove them,” Josh told her. “At least, not without tearing the Veil. I can’t even disable them, because I’m not sure how they work.” She shook her head. “This is all my fault.”

  Mirren sat down beside Josh. She wanted to say something comforting, but the truth was she agreed that much of their current situation was Josh’s fault. So she just patted Josh’s shoulder and said, “If we can’t remove the towers, then we’re going to have to fight Peregrine on the battlefield he’s chosen: the Dream. The question is, can you make a new set of devices stronger than the set Bash has?”

  “Possibly,” Josh said, and she looked at Mirren with a respect that was new. “Although, given what this set did to me, a stronger set might kill me.”

  We’re not so different, Mirren thought, Josh and I.

  “I’ll start working,” Josh said, rising.

  “No,” Will said, speaking for the first time since they had returned, and they all looked at him.

  “If Bash can alter the Dream at will,” Josh said, “then I’ll need something even more powerful to stop him.”

  “No,” Will repeated, and then his voice, which had been so weak and frightened, exploded like a piñata full of gunpowder. “This is an awful, absurd plan,” he said. “I don’t want to be part of this. The only thing we’re going to do is go to the Gendarmerie, and we’re going to tell them everything, Josh, including what the devices do and that Feodor invented them, because when they hear that, they’re going to have a fit and send a small army to find them. They’ll have Bash in custody by sundown.”

  Josh stood frozen, her lips parted, as if Will had never criticized her before or as if she had suddenly realized he was right, and Mirren felt she had to step between them, to break whatever hold Will had over Josh.

  “What if the Gendarmerie doesn’t catch Bash?” Mirren asked. “What if they do catch him and he’s already given the devices to Peregrine? We don’t have any evidence that Peregrine is involved. All he has to do is hide the devices and play innocent. What if Josh is detained or even arrested and can’t build a new set of devices, and Peregrine starts staging dreams? How are we going to stop him then? The first thing I would do, in Peregrine’s position, is stage dreams for the gendarmes themselves to make them unfailingly loyal to me. What if Peregrine builds dozens more devices, and starts handing them out to those loyal guards?”

  Will looked at Mirren with something like hate in his eyes.

  Whatever is between him and Josh, she thought, it is very complicated.

  “Fine,” he muttered. “Fine. I’m hungry.” He barked, “Is anybody else hungry?”

  Then he stormed out of the apartment.

  “Oh, my God,” Josh said—mostly, it seemed, to herself—and went after him.

  Mirren felt an emotion she hadn’t experienced in a long time and realized it was embarrassment. “I handled that badly,” she said.

  Deloise gave her a sympathetic smile. “Will is hungover and emotionally exhausted. Don’t take him too seriously.” She sighed. “But I am hungry. Let’s go find something to eat.”

  Mirren let Haley wrap his arm around her waist and lead her toward the stairs. Deloise followed them.

  Mirren was still lost in thoughts about the difficulty of navigating other people’s issues when she followed Will and Josh into the kitchen. She saw only a flash of movement beside her and heard Deloise cry, “Knife!” before Haley used the arm he had wrapped around her waist to yank her backward into the hallway.

  Whim’s father, Alex, lunged toward her with a large, serrated knife. As Haley yanked Mirren out of the way, Josh pushed Alex’s arm to the side so that the blade missed Mirren’s torso and instead pierced the refrigerator door.

  Mirren couldn’t help screaming as she scrambled across the hallway carpeting. She lost sight of the kitchen, but she heard something big hit the floor, and then Will cried, “Stay down or I’ll break your arm!”

  Silence filled the hallway. Deloise and Haley stood between Mirren and the kitchen door, both of them in fighting stances as if ready for another attacker.

  “What—the shit—was that?” Mirren heard Josh demand.

  Mirren’s heartbeat sounded like a roulette wheel in her ears, but she made herself climb to her feet. She was determined to meet the first attack on her life with dignity.

  “She has to die!” Alex cried from the kitchen.

  When Mirren entered the kitchen, Will had Alex on the floor and was kneeling on the older man’s back, keeping both his arms in a lock.

  “Three weeks ago you were professing your family’s undying loyalty to the monarchy,” Josh was saying. “What happened?”

  “I was duped!” Alex cried. “She’s lying to you! She’s lying to all of us!”

  “About what?” Will asked skeptically.

  In a hushed, creepy voice, Alex said, “There’s sorcery in her eyes.”

  “Ah, right,” Josh said. “Del, we’re gonna need some rope in here.”

  “You’re under her spell,” Alex warned Will, trying to crane his neck to look behind him. “She’ll lead all of you to Death.”

  “Why do you think that?” Will asked.

  “I had a vision. I saw the royal crown upon the skull of Death, I saw the wine she drank spill from her bare ribs, I saw emerald rings slip from her finger bones. Her woman form rotted away and revealed the soul-carcass beneath.”

  Mirren’s family had been accused of many things: greed, secrecy, pride. But this was the first time Mirren could recall “undead” being thrown into the mix.

  “What?” Josh finally asked.

  “Hold on,” Will said. “Alex, when did you have this vision?”

  “Last night.”

  “You mean your vision was a dream?”

  “A foretelling!”

  Mirren took a quick step back as she realized what had happened. Will must have realized it at the same moment, because he said, “Peregrine got to him.”

  “No,” Josh swore, but it sounded more like an emotional denial than a logical one. “But then why not one of us? You or me—or Haley?”

  “I slept like the dead last night,” Will said. “Maybe the Veil dust knocked me out too deeply to dream. Whim, too.”

  “And Del and I were at the hospital all night,” Josh said, “so we didn’t sleep at all. Mirren doesn’t have a DNA sample on file.”

  That left only Haley to account for. “I’m immune,” he said, tapping the center of his forehead. “And I never gave the junta my blood.”

  “Why not?” Josh asked.

  He shrugged. “Ian said not to bother.”

  Will squinted at him like he didn’t understand, and Josh rolled her eyes. Mirren s
till didn’t know enough about Ian to understand what either reaction meant, and she was distracted from wondering when the back door opened and Whim walked in, carrying a bouquet of two dozen pale pink calla lilies. He stopped short on the kitchen’s threshold and took the scene in with wide eyes.

  “Free me, son!” Alex cried.

  “So,” Whim said slowly, “if this is some sort of payback, I’m gonna say it’s already gone too far.”

  “Where’s your mom?” Josh asked.

  “Seriously, Josh, do what you want to me, but leave my family out of this.” Only then did he stiffen with alarm. “Oh God, what happened to the fridge?”

  They secured Alex to a chair, and after a long debate over Whim’s trustworthiness, they realized they had little choice but to explain the situation to him.

  “So, not only did I cheat on my girlfriend and force Will to lie about it for me and leak some info about Mirren, I actually made Peregrine aware that Josh had built a very dangerous device and more or less helped him steal it and brainwash my father to commit murder?” Whim clarified at the end.

  “That’s about the square of it,” Josh said. “Now, back to my original question: Where’s your mom? And where are Dad and Kerstel?”

  If Peregrine had gotten to Alex, he could have gotten to Saidy or to Lauren and Kerstel. And convincing them that Mirren was a threat wasn’t even the worst he could do; Mirren felt sick at the thought that he might hurt Kerstel’s baby.

  Lauren was apparently at work, and thankfully, Kerstel was asleep in bed. After a long, tense search, they found Saidy hiding under a tarp in the back of Haley’s truck with a syringe containing enough morphine to ensure that Mirren never felt pain again.

  “You aren’t safe here,” Josh told Mirren flatly after wrestling Saidy to the ground.

  Mirren’s chest hurt at the idea of leaving the house, and only then did she realize how comfortable she had become there. The old Greek Revival had been her home since she’d left the Hidden Kingdom. The world outside it still felt big and scary.

  But she knew Josh was right. “Where should I go?” she asked.

  At that moment, Whim’s cell phone rang. He held it out to Deloise so that she could see the caller’s name, but she turned away.

  Watching them, Josh said, “I think you should go camping.”

  Through a Veil Darkly

  Message board: Is everybody dreaming about Princess Mirren?

  Jacobean says: Maybe all these dreams about her are a sign. Like, the True Dream Walker is trying to let us know what will happen if we vote for her.

  dirtybird says: If she is planning an overthrow with the Gendarmerie, why bother with the AC?

  spoooore says: Maybe the overthrow is a backup plan in case she loses.

  dirtybird says: Um, it’s kind of obvious she’s going to lose. If she has a backup plan, she should have used it already.

  YashaGottleib says: You’re all just making this up to make her look bad.

  jshg_hammer says: I’m not making it up! I totally dreamed about her.

  WMRyna47 says: She already looks bad.

  JillKramer says: You’re all just dreaming about her because she’s on DWTV every night. Media influences nightmares. Dream Walking 101, bozos.

  Jacobean says: It’s possible. I read this page before I had the first nightmare.

  WMRyna47 says: Nightmares aside, she’s still completely corrupt.

  prancingpony says: HAIR BLOOD! HAIR BLOOD! HAIR BLOOD!

  YashaGottleib says: I agree with Jill. This is all just media influence. She isn’t planning a secret overthrow and she doesn’t have a secret army.

  WMRyna47 says: She turned Josh Weaver against us!

  gilandsons says: Yeah! Josh is ours!

  JillKramer says: What does that even mean? Turned against who?

  brigby9j9j9 says: We gotta save Josh! The princess will use her as a hostage!

  WMRyna47 says: Where’s she live?

  SmokeythePear says: Tanith. Message me for the address.

  JillKramer says: Has everybody on this board just gone totally crazy?! I’m calling the Gendarmerie.

  gilandsons says: You’re aiding the enemy!

  prancingpony says: I want in. HAIR BLOOD!!!!!!!!

  Jacobean says: I just called Josh’s house, Jill. No

  answer.

  JillKramer says: I hope we aren’t too late.

  Twenty−three

  While everyone else frantically packed, Will risked waking Kerstel up and explaining what was happening. Josh had explicitly told him not to because she wasn’t certain that Peregrine hadn’t brainwashed her stepmother, but after the morning’s revelations, Will had decided he didn’t have to listen to Josh anymore.

  “I was up and down all night peeing,” she admitted when he asked how she’d slept. “I think the hormones are giving me insomnia.”

  “Well, you might thank the baby for that once you’ve heard what’s going on,” Will said, and he filled her in on as much as he thought he safely could. He didn’t say where they were going, but at least she knew enough to be able to protect herself, Lauren, and her unborn son.

  Before he left, she pulled him into a tight hug. “Come back safe.”

  “I’ll try. I mean, we will.”

  As he headed downstairs to pack, she added, “And Will? Take care of each other.”

  “I’ll try,” he said again, but he knew she could tell he was hurting.

  * * *

  Just as the sun began to set over Iph Lake, Josh pulled into a camping space at the campground’s far end. Although Iph Lake was overrun with people enjoying the summer fishing and the opportunity to cool off in blue waters, Josh had picked a site so far from a bathroom that they had the block to themselves.

  Haley pulled in behind them, and Whim parked in the next spot over. They set up two tents with a speed that surprised Will; he’d never been camping before, but it was a favorite activity of the Weaver-Avish-McKarr household. After raiding the basement for equipment, they’d hardly had to buy anything besides food and soda.

  Josh’s idea was simple: They had to disconnect. If no one could find Mirren, no one could kill her. Their camping trip would be free from cell phones, computers, and communication with the dream-walker world, and they’d stay off radar until they came up with a better plan.

  There had been some debate over who would travel with Mirren. Josh had insisted on going along to protect Mirren, and she’d wanted Will to go with her. Will had been relieved by the idea of getting away—he wanted Josh as far from an archway as possible. Deloise was coming, but she hadn’t wanted Whim to come, and when he’d insisted, Deloise had responded by running the calla lilies through the garbage disposal.

  Thanks to his psychic powers, Haley was the only one who was entirely safe from Peregrine’s influence, but he believed he could protect the others. To that end, he and Mirren had made a detour to buy semiprecious stones, tiny mirrors, five pounds of Himalayan pink salt, and a lot of string. Once Whim got the fire going and Deloise began mixing up a big pot of Velveeta Shells & Cheese, Haley used the string to hang dozens of crystals and quarter-sized mirrors from the tree branches arching over their tents.

  “These will help?” Josh asked, peering up at the rocks as they spun slowly in the breeze. “What are they?”

  “Moonstone, malachite, black tourmaline, and amethyst. They’ll help.”

  Before bed, Haley gave them each a dose of over-the-counter sleeping pills. “So you’ll sleep too deeply to dream,” he explained. “And wear these. If the bone breaks in the night, we’ll know Peregrine got to you.”

  He then handed out greasy chicken bones with pieces of string tied to them.

  “Are they necklaces?” Deloise asked, putting hers on.

  “Are they lunch?” Whim asked. They’d stopped at a fast-food chicken place during the drive.

  Haley just smiled.

  They set up a girls’ tent and a boys’ tent. Will was happy to turn in early and climbed i
nto his sleeping bag as soon as he began feeling the effects of the sleeping pills.

  “Um, Haley?” Whim said, lying down beside Will. “I understand that salt circles are supposed to protect people from evil and all that, but why the hell did you draw one inside the tent?”

  Haley giggled. “I didn’t want to kill the plants outside. This is a forest.”

  “Dude, there is so much salt in my sleeping bag. Wait … chicken bones, salt … It’s a stew! Run, Will, run!”

  Will didn’t laugh, but he couldn’t hold back a smile. “Why is it so hard to stay mad at you?”

  “Because God knew that if he made me any other way, I would have very little chance of survival,” Whim quipped.

  Will chuckled, but he couldn’t resist saying, “For a guy who just got dumped, you’re awfully chipper.”

  “Have no fear, my friend. No woman can resist the charms of the Whimarian. By this time next week, Deloise will be back in my arms and all will be right with the World.”

  That’s a nice thought, Will reflected as he sank into sleep.

  But it will never happen.

  * * *

  The next three days were strangely calm for Will. He gave up on the idea that he might be able to help the others sort out their problems and instead began exploring the campground. Leaving Josh and Mirren to pore over a sketchbook full of equations and fret about the devices Josh had built, he pretended he was as carefree as the rest of the campers. He swam with Haley; he kayaked with Deloise; he fished with Whim. If tensions ever arose at the campsite, he just wandered off on his own to hike through the forest and enjoy the quiet. He even bought a cheap digital camera from the camp store and used it to take photographs of the water, the trees, the birds that soared overhead.

  He tried to ignore the fact that Josh’s and Mirren’s stress levels were obviously increasing. The first night, he woke briefly to the sound of Josh thrashing around in the girls’ tent, calling out for help, but he was so tired that he fell back to sleep as soon as he heard Deloise calming her. The second night, Josh woke them all up with shrill, animal-like screams that caused Whim to try to leap to his feet. He ended up with his legs mired in his sleeping bag and fell over on top of Haley.