She stuck her tongue out at me and sat up. “Thank you. For this.”
I kissed her again, cupping her neck, and sighed against her lips. “I miss you.”
“I miss you too.” She reached up and plucked at one of my curls. “It feels like we haven’t talked in a long time.”
It was true, but I hated hearing it. Talking was what brought us together. Lately, our conversations centered around rogue nightmares, training, and all the problems in between. I still hadn’t told her about the attack on the Dream Realm for fear of overwhelming her. It was over and done with, and soon they would have their Lady to set things right.
“I—I met someone last night,” she said quietly.
I reared back as if she had slapped me. There was no way she meant another guy—Nora was a lot of things, but unfaithful wasn’t one of them. “Someone?” I asked, my head tilted.
“A nightmare,” she clarified.
The blood drained from my face. “That’s impossible. I killed everyone the Weaver let out before I bound him.”
“She told me that, but I don’t think she’s technically one of his. She felt… different.” She rubbed her forehead as if she had a headache. “She claims to be stuck here because she came before the Day and Night Worlds were separate.”
“Before…” My hands shook. “Mare was here?”
“She said her name was Mara, but—”
“What did she say to you? Did she do anything? Did she hurt you?” I asked in a rush.
“I’m fine. A little surprised, obviously.”
So was I. Mare was banished so long ago that she should’ve withered away under the stress of the Day World by now. Or, at the very least, been too weak to do any damage. If she tracked Nora down from halfway across the world where the Weaver and I left her, she had to be in minimally decent condition. Unless she had drifted this way without my noticing.
“What did she want?” I asked carefully.
“To go back home.” Nora touched my fists thoughtfully. “It’ll be okay. We’ll take her back with us before she—”
I took Nora’s hands, squeezing them hard to make sure she knew I was serious. Enough horrible things had happened because she took my warnings too lightly. “Stay away from her. Promise me.”
She frowned. “I don’t think we should leave her here. What if she hurts someone? Katie’s still here. Paul, my mom—”
“She’s been relatively harmless for ages while there’s been nothing and no one here to stop her.” At least, I thought so. Belief in Mare faded away so long ago that it had to be true. Even her myth wasn’t well-known anymore, but I wasn’t sure Nora would forgive me for setting Mare loose in the Day World to protect myself. Ourselves. The Weaver and I banished her together to protect everything we’d built, though we had no way of knowing the consequences then. Cleaving our worlds in two is what eventually turned us against each other. That set the scales. Light and dark. Dream and nightmare. Good and bad. We each became what we had to become after that.
But at least we existed.
In the Day World, Mare was worn down and nearly powerless, killing Dreamers by sitting on their chest while they slept. She was different in the Night World—a ferocious creature that delighted in tearing things apart with her bare hands and using their bones to pick their flesh from her teeth. People, places. Nightmares. If the Weaver and I hadn’t expelled her, there wouldn’t be any world at all.
“She’s not stuck,” I reluctantly told Nora. “The Weaver and I banished her here. If Mare goes back, she’ll destroy the Night World, and the Day World will die along with it.”
She cringed away from me. “Again with the balance.”
“Yes. Always.” Fury curled unbidden from my center. “Was becoming the Weaver not proof enough for you?”
“Obviously the balance exists,” she snapped back. “But I don’t think the consequence of destroying one world will be the destruction of another. The Weaver’s death didn’t kill you.”
“Yes, it did,” I shouted. Heat licked up my neck, scalding me with shock. “It almost did,” I corrected myself, softer. I never wanted her to know what happened to me that day, but maybe it was wrong to keep it a secret. Still, meeting her eyes as I spoke the truth tempered my anger and crushed my soul. “I felt as if I broke into a thousand pieces outside the Weaver’s keep that day. I was a single breath away from death. I’m not sure what stopped it, but Nora… We can’t take that kind of risk. Mare’s not worth it.”
“You—” Nora’s voice stuck. The color drained from her face until she was as white as snow beneath her freckles. She clutched at her stomach and swayed. “I—” She lunged for the ladder but overshot.
I looped an arm around her waist before she fell from the roof. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” She shook beneath my arm. “What could you possibly be sorry for? I almost killed you. And you spent the last five months pretending I didn’t.”
I winced. “I don’t blame you, Nora.”
“You should blame me.” She shoved my arm away and slid down the ladder.
I fought the urge to run after her and tell her that I forgave her, but it wasn’t entirely true. She didn’t fully trust me—that’s what hurt the most. She trusted Rowan and Kail, two strangers, two nightmares, more than she trusted me to rebind the Weaver. So, while I understood her actions, the ache they caused still lingered. Hopefully digesting the information would dissuade her from wanting to bring Mare back, not that I would ever allow it.
The Weaver and I had given up too much to get Mare here. Our friendship was destroyed when we bled white and black from grey. We were destroyed. And still, it killed me to know that Nora was hurting. I slammed a hand down on the roof, dissolving our nest of blankets. She was the leader of nightmares now, and if she was going to survive, I had to stop coddling her. She needed to understand. But the look of intense pain on her face as I spoke the truth would never fade from my memory.
My lungs struggled to expand, my muscles to move. It was as if my very existence was weighed down by the growing mound of trouble. First, the Weaver killed Nora’s loved ones, then Nora killed him, then Rowan took the Keep. Inside, the loom—Nora’s source of power—was held hostage. Now Mare. I groaned and gave into the magic, letting it pull me home to the Dream Realm. The quiet serenity of the beach swallowed my thoughts and projected them back tenfold. If I stayed here with my warring feelings of love and hate, anger and understanding, I knew which emotions would win. So, instead of grappling with the desire to make peace with Nora, I forced myself to cross into the Nightmare Realm without looking back.
A narrow path led away from a landscape of open graves, some stacked with rotting corpses, others empty and waiting. I followed where the packed dirt twisted through a crooked cemetery gate with the wails of unseen mourners following at my heel. Before me, tall, skeletal trees lined the walkway as far as the eye could see, reaching into the sky where the tops disappeared in a thin red mist. Red berries lay scattered at their roots. It was silent here. I strained my ears in hopes of hearing a Dreamer in need of saving. Not that I wanted someone to be in danger, but I needed to let off some steam.
“Sandman.”
I froze and squinted ahead of me. A figure sat at the very edge of the hazy path. I stepped closer, one hand sliding into my satchel. “Show yourself,” I demanded.
“You don’t recognize me?” the voice answered, taunting. “I’m wounded.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I groaned to myself and took another three steps forward. It wasn’t the voice itself that I recognized but the attitude behind it.
Kail perched on a jagged stump, the only tree not identical to the rest. His white pointed mask gleamed in the shadows. An easy smirk played on his lips beneath the curved beak as he picked at his embroidered sleeve, and I closed a fist around my sand. If it wasn’t for him, Nora would’ve gone along with my plan and everything would’ve gone back to normal. I took a breath, preparing to throw every wea
pon I could think of at him, but then I paused. This wasn’t right. I was looking for a fight, but not this one. At least not until I could get confirmation from my spies if he was still working with Rowan or not. And if he was, I couldn’t touch him because Nora needed to avenge herself. I turned and began walking away.
“You’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
“Doubtful,” I said with ire.
“All right, all right. You win. I’ll give you a free swing at me first.” When I didn’t stop walking away, he added, “I know how to help her.”
“Help her?” I spun and stormed back down the path before I could stop myself, each step reverberating through my core. “If it wasn’t for you and Rowan, Nora wouldn’t need help.” I gripped the collar of his black jacket. “How did you get the knife?”
“I don’t know how Rowan got it.” He studied his fingernails, seemingly unfazed by my unspoken threats. “But speaking of Rowan—” He brushed my hands away. The tip of his mask skimmed his chest as he smoothed out the wrinkles my clenched fists had left behind. “This used to be her.”
I opened my mouth to demand the truth about the blade, but curiosity won out instead. “What used to be who?”
“Rowan. As in the tree.” Kail kicked the jagged stump with the toe of his boot. “The Weaver liked to recycle things on occasion. Seems irrelevant, I know.”
“Completely irrelevant,” I agreed. “What am I supposed to do with that information?”
Kail shrugged. “Just planting a bug in your ear.”
“You said you could help Nora,” I snarled. It didn’t matter if Rowan started as a tree or a speck of dirt. She was what she was now, and she would pay for what she did. “Why would you want to?”
One blue eye bored into mine while the other flickered through various colors. A small seed of satisfaction grew inside me, knowing that the steady iris was Nora’s handiwork.
“When Nora comes back, I think it’s only fair she has a fighting chance.” Kail shrugged.
“You don’t care about her.”
“Who said I cared?” Kail laughed. “Maybe I’m just curious what she’ll do, given the chance. As an outsider. As a Dreamer.”
I swung a fist into his jaw. He stumbled back and looked up at me from behind his mask. “Stay away from her,” I warned.
Kail rolled his eyes. “Her magic is too different from yours. You can’t help her with this.”
“Don’t tell me what I can or cannot do. She—”
“But I can,” he shouted over me, then stormed away before I could punch him again.
I wanted to run after him and rage. Hit him. Break him. Instead, I shouted wordlessly at the empty space he’d occupied a moment ago, spittle flying. Kail would pay for everything he was part of from the moment Nora fell into the Nightmare Realm.
Him and Rowan.
I glowered at the jagged stump and imagined it as the woman herself. Imagined white hot flames licking up the sides, crackling the bark. And then they were. My sand fed the conjured blaze, urging it higher and higher, until the exact moment I realized I had lost control of my thoughts. The sand acted on instinct, enacting my will. I pressed the heels of my hands against the throbbing in my temples. Calm down. I had to calm down.
After a handful of long, deep breaths, the fire flickered out of existence, and I turned for the Dream World without looking back.
6
Nora
The whirlwind of the mall nearly swept me away. People moved in currents, brushing past me where I stood as if I were a boulder in their river. Some grumbled at me to move, but most moved with silent purpose. My body shook in response to the sensory overload. The people, the lights, the crushing noise. My skin felt raw beneath my layers of clothing. But I was almost done. With this place and this world. If I could just hang on a little longer.
I slid my sunglasses up my nose and clutched the list in my hand. All three presents were checked off. A picture frame for my mother with a family photo inside and an engraved flask for Paul—he would need it after I left. For Katie, I found a pair of black tassel earrings with gold caps. Perhaps gifting my sister a reminder of the Weaver’s threads was a bit petty, especially since I braved the same shop where we had watched the cashier stab herself to death to buy them, but she deserved petty. She should remember, her eyes should stay open, so she could look out for herself if she ever needed to.
“Nora?”
My back tightened at the familiar voice. The last time I saw Detective Bell, he was asking my mother for a chance to apologize while I was in the hospital. Her vehement no was a relief. I never expected to run into him again, but there he was, cutting through the crowd until he stood in front of me. Instead of his usual shirt and tie, he wore a black hoodie with a jaguar head screen-printed on the front. His silver-framed glasses were missing, but had left seemingly permanent divots in the sides of his nose, and his jaw was sprinkled with faint grey stubble.
I forced a small smile and held up my bags. “I’m just on my way out.”
“Wait.” He cleared his throat. “Please. I only need a minute.”
“I’m sort of in a rush, so…” I glanced around him to my final stop—a dollar store where I planned on grabbing something colorful to wrap everything in, but the white tissue paper we had at home would serve the same purpose if it meant avoiding the detective. “See you.”
He reached out to stop me, but dropped his arm at the last moment. “I want to apologize for everything.”
“Are you referring to the interrogations, the threats, or just suspecting me in general?” I cringed at my own tone and for opening the door to a conversation by asking the question. I wanted to get away from him, not hear him out. Besides, he wasn’t wrong in thinking I was involved. I pressed my arms to my sides and inched further into the flow of the crowd.
“I should never have focused on you,” he admitted without hesitation. “You weren’t capable of most of those things and obviously had nothing to do with the death you witnessed firsthand, but you were the only link to all the murders. The graphic nature of the crimes affected me more than I’d like to admit. I was exhausted and seeing things by the time everything ended.” He paused to draw a long breath.
Exhausted. Seeing things. The internal grin curled in amusement at the words, and I shifted my shopping bags to my other hand. “What kind of things were you seeing?”
“It’s not important. I only wanted you to know how sorry I am.” He hunched his shoulders, shaking his head as if to clear it, and turned away.
The grin continued to spread, smug. It was almost like the dark part of me recognized something in him. Almost like—More than one sleepwalker, the Weaver told me once. It would’ve been just like him to use the police as another way to pressure me into giving him the dream. It was more than enough that people around me were dying and my sister was missing, but not to him. To the Weaver, it wasn’t working. I was still resisting. If life in prison loomed over my head as well… It made sense. Everything the Weaver did made sense.
“Detective Bell?” I called.
He stopped. “I’m not a detective anymore. I resigned.”
I scowled, deflating a bit. Another life ruined. “Did anything you imagined actually happen?”
“How did you—” He rubbed a hand over his bald head. “Take care of yourself, Miss Gallagher.”
I watched him walk away a different man than I knew over the summer. Gone was his confidence, his anger, but something else had taken their place. Confusion. Guilt. It wafted off him like bad cologne. He locked Katie in the storage unit. The thought came and went so fast, it barely had time to register. The residue it left was sticky with truth. He did it.
“Hey,” the Sandman whispered.
My heart jumped, one hand flying to my chest, and I spun toward the Sandman while keeping my eyes on Bell. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“Sorry.” He took my bags and wove his fingers between mine.
I stared at his hand, fel
t the warmth of him, and fought the urge to rip myself free. To run back home and hide under the covers. How could he dare to touch me after I went behind his back to kill the Weaver? After my brash act nearly killed him? The tell-tale pressure of tears began behind my eyes, and here I thought I had cried them all out in the shower this morning after leaving him on the roof.
His grip tightened as if he sensed my thoughts. “Wasn’t that the detective that covered all the murders? He isn’t still bothering you, is he?”
I nodded, then realized that only answered one of his questions honestly. With a deep steadying breath, I said, “That’s him, but he wasn’t bothering me. I think the Weaver used him.”
“Used him how?”
“He—” I swallowed hard and looked up into the Sandman’s earnest face. He didn’t know about the grin I carted around. Mainly because I didn’t know how to explain it, but also because I didn’t want him to stop looking at me the way he did. There was precisely one person in the entire world—in both worlds—that put me first in their heart, and I selfishly didn’t want that to go away. Each breath became hard won, and the crowd felt as if it was closing in on us. I’d done enough to give him reason to hate me—how much more would it take until he did?
“I can’t explain how I know,” I said carefully. “But the Weaver made him sleepwalk. He’s the one who locked Katie in the storage unit and did who knows what else.”
“What do you mean you can’t explain it?” the Sandman asked, his voice sounding uncertain.
“It’s just something I know.” I shifted on my feet, desperate for him to drop it and focus on the more pressing revelation: that Bell had been the one to lock Katie up.
“Right.” His scowl deepened. “Anyway, we need to talk about something important.”
More important than the Weaver using Bell against me? Though I supposed that was a moot point now. “What happened?” I asked warily.
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