Just Dreaming Page 17

  On Monday she baked fluffy madeleines as light as air; on Tuesday she experimented with seven different flavors of macaroons, each more delicious than the last; on Wednesday we were devouring the best lemon tarts that any human being has ever eaten. Not until Thursday, when crisp butter croissants and strawberry jam were on the menu, did it strike me that these delicacies were all typically French. And when, on Friday, Lottie put tiny little cakes on the table, saying, “Voilà, mes enfants! Cannelés bordelais. Bon appétit,” we could no longer help noticing that Pascal, the wedding planner, had done more than just inspire her. She obviously thought his fixed smile as charming as his accent and not at all sinister. As bridesmaid-to-be, and empowered by Mom to make all the decisions, she had phoned him several times, and next week she had a date at the florist’s. She wouldn’t admit that her phase of French baking had anything to do with Pascal. But the notice saying CLOSED BECAUSE OF UNREQUITED LOVE was no longer on her dream door, and instead there was a message saying DON’T EXPECT MIRACLES—LIVE FOR THE DAY, as Grayson and I both noticed. Much too late, he remembered his boastful promise to pair his uncle off with Lottie.

  “What’s wrong between you and Charles?” he had asked her yesterday when she was busy kneading the dough for French baguettes, and humming “La Marseillaise” to herself. “I thought you liked each other.”

  “We do,” replied Lottie. “I think Charles is a very good dentist.”

  Hmm. Even Grayson had to admit that things didn’t look good for Charles. I think he’s a good dentist came high on the list of the most disillusioned, unromantic remarks ever made, almost on a par with Let’s stay friends.

  But Grayson wasn’t defeated yet. “It’s not as bad as all that about the wedding planner,” he said. “Competition is good for business. Some people don’t realize what they want until they can’t have it anymore.”

  I guessed he was referring to Emily. Twice that week, I’d seen her standing outside Grayson’s dream door, shouting at poor Frightful Freddy and calling him silly goose and pompous chicken when he wouldn’t let her in.

  Watching that had been the secret highlight of my week. Otherwise, I’d spent most of my time suspiciously checking out anyone who came near me. Almost any of them could, without knowing it, have been programmed by Arthur to murder me, by pushing me down the flight of steps outside school or hitting me with a medicine ball—I kept thinking of new methods of murder every minute. Very likely Arthur was observing me from a distance, tremendously amused to see how often I looked around or jumped nervously.

  “How pale you are,” said Anabel now, in passing.

  Well, not all of us needed to conjure up such a flattering sunset light in soft focus. But I didn’t feel like quarreling with her. If I had to talk to her, I could at least try appealing to the reason that, according to Grayson, was still slumbering somewhere under her insanity.

  “I know,” I admitted. “I’m not feeling too well. I’m afraid. Of what Arthur will think up next. And a little afraid of you too.”

  For some reason, that seemed to flatter Anabel, like the soft-focus effect. “Afraid of me—or him?” she asked.

  A cool breath of air fell on my arms, and it turned a little darker. I suppressed a sigh. Here we went again. I just wanted to get into Mrs. Honeycutt’s dream. Preferably before going down all these damn endless corridors first. Was that too much to ask?

  “Are you afraid of me or him?” Anabel repeated. “The Lord of Shadows and Darkness. You swore to be true to him, and then you broke your oath.”

  Well, in view of the fact that the Lord of Shadows and Darkness had picked me as a blood sacrifice from the first, I didn’t consider breaking my oath such a terrible thing to do, even apart from the fact that in a way I’d been cheating when I swore it in the first place. But it probably wouldn’t be a great idea to tell Anabel what I was thinking.

  “Both of you,” I said instead. Because you’re one and the same person, you crazy girl. When will you finally grasp that? There. Are. No. Demons. And it doesn’t scare me a bit that this corridor is getting darker, and there are shadows lurking in the corners.…

  Hell. It did scare me. I concentrated entirely on Anabel’s face, which was still shining. “What was that about the eclipse of the sun? Didn’t you say we might not live to see it?”

  Anabel shook her head. “I didn’t say that myself. I only passed on what the Dark Lord told me: faithless blood will flow when the sun moves into the shadow of the moon, the one hundred and twentieth year on the Saros Cycle governing eclipses.”

  Or maybe you’re just having your period? I quickly shook my head. Whenever Anabel spoke in such a sententious tone of voice, I was inclined to get really silly ideas.

  But they were going away again. Even the warm radiance of Anabel’s face was beginning to fade now. She leaned slightly forward. “It could equally well be my blood—after all, I have disappointed the Feathered Commander of the Night more than all the rest of you put together.”

  Correct. She hadn’t succeeded in cutting my throat, although she had certainly done her best to. I could bear witness to that.

  “Feathered?” This was new. “Does that mean you’ve seen him?” I asked, rubbing my arms. It had turned even colder by a couple of degrees.

  Anabel shook her head again. It could well be fear reflected in her eyes, but whether mine or her own I had no idea. “I only saw his shadow on the wall. And he had wings. Huge black pinions on which he can soar through dreams and the night. And through time and space.”

  As she spoke, something dark came floating down between us. It was a shining black feather, and it landed on my outstretched hand. I looked up. More feathers were falling on us, spinning through the twilight and falling on the floor as soundlessly as snowflakes.

  Looks like the Lord of Shadows and Darkness is molting. The more sinister all this felt, the sillier my thoughts were. And the more Anabel’s eyes shone. More and more feathers came drifting down from the nonexistent ceiling. Anabel had stretched out her arms as if she were enjoying a warm summer shower of rain. I had a sinking feeling that nothing was going to come of my plan to meet Henry in Mrs. Honeycutt’s room today. It would probably be more sensible to awaken before things became even more sinister. On the other hand, I must take this chance to get as much out of Anabel as possible. That damn solar eclipse was due on Friday.

  I cleared my throat. “And … did he give you any orders?”

  Anabel cast me a scornful glance. “You still don’t believe he exists, do you? You think I’m mentally ill, hearing voices and seeing hallucinations, right?”

  Yes, absolutely right. “At least it’s a possibility that we should consider,” I said, trying to sound casual and unimpressed, and not breathe in any of the feathers that were falling faster and more densely all the time. “It’s only since you stopped taking the medicine that you’ve been seeing and hearing the de … the Winged Prince of Darkness again.”

  “You sound exactly like Grayson,” replied Anabel. By now the feathers covered large areas of the floor, and many of them had landed on Anabel and me too. Anabel’s arms were still outstretched, so she looked as if she were sprouting wings. “Did you know that he came to visit me at home today? Kind of sweet. He thinks if he can only prove to me that there’s no demon, I’d show you all where Dr. Anderson’s dream door is and tell you how I took him out of circulation.” She gave me a fleeting smile. “The only problem is that he can’t prove it. Do you really think I excluded the possibility that it might all be just the product of my sick imagination from the first? I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid. If I didn’t have incontrovertible evidence of his existence, you and I wouldn’t be talking like this.…”

  I wanted to ask her what kind of evidence, but a feather drifted into my mouth, and I had to retch until I’d spat it out again. After that I kept my lips pressed together. The feathers were now falling so thickly that I could hardly see through them, and I could only guess where Anabel was. Another few minut
es and we’d be entirely covered with feathers; my ankles were already buried in a soft black sea of them. This was the right moment to end the nightmare.

  “I sense his power!” I couldn’t work out how Anabel could talk without breathing feathers in. I felt I was being slowly smothered, although I kept my mouth firmly closed. But it wasn’t possible to breathe properly even through my nose; there were feathers everywhere. I had to close my eyes as well. There was nothing to be seen, anyway, apart from swirling darkness.

  High time to awaken. But it wasn’t so easy to concentrate on that if you couldn’t breathe normally.

  “And if you listen to yourself, deep down inside, Liv, you will feel it too,” I heard Anabel saying in her soft, melodious voice. “You know in your heart that he exists.”

  I knew in my heart one thing above all others: this was only a dream, and I was lying in my bed at home in Hampstead.…

  This time it worked. I sat up, gasping. Damn Anabel! I breathed in and out deeply, trying to slow my racing pulse, and then I looked at the illuminated numbers on my alarm clock. Three thirty. Henry was probably waiting for me in Mrs. Honeycutt’s dream, but I couldn’t be sure of dropping off to sleep again at once. I still felt as if I had feathers on my body. And the one that had landed in my mouth …

  I quickly got out of bed and went over to open the window. Damp, cold night air streamed into the room. The fine spring weather seemed to be over for now; it was pouring with rain outside. Ernest would be glad; the garden badly needed rain.

  Back in bed, my heart was still beating faster than usual. It was no good—Henry would have to wait until I had calmed down. I switched my bedside light on, propped myself up on the pillows, and looked at the pile of books on my bedside table, including Matt’s copy of The Hotel New Hampshire. It was lying under a volume of Emily Dickinson’s poems, and they seemed to me just the right medicine. After a few pages, I might feel tired enough to get back to sleep.

  When I opened the book at random and began to read, something dropped out of my hair, floated down, and lay on the pages.

  It was a shining black feather.

  * * *

  TITTLE-TATTLE BLOG

  The Frognal Academy Tittle-Tattle Blog, with all the latest gossip, the best rumors, and the hottest scandals from our school.

  ABOUT ME:

  My name is Secrecy—I’m right here among you, and I know all your secrets.

  16 March

  You have to give Mrs. Cook one thing; she never makes the same mistake twice. For instance, like engaging attractive women teachers who will embark on affairs with their colleagues and end up climbing on tables to do a striptease act. There was no chance at all of Mrs. Fatsourakis, the substitute teacher who is taking over French classes from Mrs. Lawrence (officially for the rest of the school year, unofficially forever), doing that kind of thing, as anyone who has seen her rolling around school will agree. If she ever climbed on a table, that would be the end of the table. And for heaven’s sake, what kind of name is that? Okay, so the lady is of Turkish and Greek origin, but surely people who call their bouncing baby Fatima when her surname is Fatsourakis can’t have thought of the consequences? I guess that FatFat can’t have been a very happy child. It’s about 101 percent likely that she was teased mercilessly by the other kids, and so is the probability that FatFat has hated children to this day. You don’t need to be a psychologist to suspect that she became a teacher only to avenge herself on kids. Thanks a bundle, Mrs. Cook. That’s just the kind of teacher we need these days.

  See you soon!

  Love from Secrecy

  PS—That entry has been online for only twenty minutes, and there are already twenty-four comments telling me how primitive and nasty fatso-bashing is, and what an incredibly nice teacher Mrs. Fatsourakis is, after she even brought muffins she’d baked herself to her first class. Speaking personally, I’d sooner be mean than fat. Well, thank goodness I gave up French!

  Tittletattleblog.com

  * * *

  16

  “THE NEXT SUCH total eclipse of the sun can be seen in Central Europe in the year 2081,” said our physics teacher, Mr. Osborne. “If you lead a healthy life, you may even get to see it yourselves, but I’m unlikely to live to be a hundred and twenty, so today is a very special day for me.”

  He had pushed his table over to the door of the physics lab, and we had to file past him as we went out so that he could check whether we all had our eclipse-viewing glasses and our parents’ permission to leave the building during the eclipse. These precautions seemed doubly ridiculous in view of the cloudy sky—we couldn’t even guess where the sun might be. Although the lab had huge windows, we’d had to switch on the light as if it were a gloomy November morning.

  “Poor thing,” Persephone whispered to me as we stood in line. “The last solar eclipse of his life, and then the weather turns out miserable. At least it isn’t raining. How do I look?”

  “Fine,” I said without glancing at her. Just now, Mr. Osborne had proudly revealed that we had the honor of using the limited space on the school roof for our observations, along with the physics classes of the two years just above us. Which meant that we’d also join Henry, Grayson, and Jasper up there.

  And Arthur.

  Unlike Persephone, I was not overjoyed at this prospect, if anything the opposite. The idea of standing on a high roof near Arthur, who boasted that he could dispose of me anytime he liked, was uncomfortable enough even without a solar eclipse. Faithless blood will flow when the sun moves into the shadow of the moon.…

  “Really?” Persephone was still thinking about her appearance. “Have I overdone the blush? Somehow that brush always picks up too much powder.”

  “No, you look great.” I glanced at the sky outside again. That monotonous pale-gray cloud cover obstinately hiding the sun reminded me only too well of the absence of any ceiling in the dream corridor. And not just that: I saw a large black-bird perching in one of the three trees in the schoolyard. I swallowed. It hadn’t been there just now, had it? It seemed to be staring at me, boding no good. And the tree was a copper beech, with leaves the color of blood. Surely it couldn’t be just coincidence.

  Persephone gave me a small shove to make me walk on. “The blush is nude velvet. It looks orange in the jar, but when you put it on, it suits your own skin tone. Absolutely natural. I’ll show it to you later. I think you look rather pale.”

  “Yes, I know.” And at that moment I felt quite sure that there wasn’t going to be any “later.” Something terrible would happen up on that roof. The schoolyard would soak up my blood, and black feathers would rain down from the sky.…

  I was grateful to Persephone for pushing me again and interrupting my train of thought. What was the matter with me? A crow sitting in a tree, and I felt like throwing a fit!

  Okay, so that feather had been weird. But not weird enough to make me believe in demons and their prophecies. There were any number of logical ways to explain a black feather getting into my hair. Henry and Grayson had said so when I told them about it. After all, a keen blackbird hunter lived in our house and also liked to sleep on my bed—and blackbirds, surprise, surprise, have black feathers. One of them could easily have been caught in my hair.

  Even if it was a strange coincidence, it would take more than a silly feather to convince me that demons existed.

  “Your turn!” Persephone dug me in the ribs and pointed to Mr. Osborne, who was looking at us expectantly. We handed him our letters of permission and showed him our glasses.

  Mr. Osborne nodded, satisfied. “And the camera obscura?”

  Persephone held out the thing we’d made from a shoe box and some wax paper. To keep it from looking too plain and simple by comparison with the structures, some of them very complex, made by the other teams, and because we got so bored in physics class, Persephone and I had beautified it with a great many strips of decorative sticky tape. We’d taken a lot of trouble, and now it paid off.

  “B p
lus,” said Mr. Osborne, making a note of the grade in his little red book and smiling at us. “See you up on the roof. Next, please.”

  Persephone could hardly believe it. When we were out of earshot, she hugged me. “B plus! For a shoe box covered with sticky tape, like in elementary school. I think this is our lucky day.”

  Chance would be a fine thing. But her good humor was kind of catching. On the way up to the roof, my gloomy thoughts seemed to me rather silly. It was like this: if you were looking for bad omens, you really did see them everywhere and you immediately suspected every innocent crow that crossed your path.

  There was plenty of traffic going the other way because of the classes who were going to watch the eclipse from the schoolyard. Mia waved cheerfully to me from the middle of the crowd. The general mood was happy, almost relaxed. Presumably because a solar eclipse, even under a cloudy sky, was more fun than learning math or French.

  However, it’s the exception that proves the rule. Sam Clark, standing near the door to the rooftop, looked miserable as sin. Especially when he caught sight of Persephone and me.

  “Should be ashamed of yourself. Should be ashamed of yourself,” he said emphatically, casting us a scornful glance.

  “Or you could put the whole thing into the plural,” I told him. “Then it would do for both of us at once. Just say You should be ashamed of yourselves. Much more effective, and a little less ridiculous.”

  “Exactly,” said Persephone. “But maybe saying everything twice is your idea of fun, is it, Spotty Sam, is it, Spotty Sam?”

  Sam frowned. “And what do my skin problems have to do with you two and your moral depravity?” He liked to talk in a rather pretentious way, just like his sister. Or the Boker.

  “Nothing at all, nothing at all,” replied Persephone cheerfully. “Your spots aren’t our business any more than our moral depravity is yours.”

  She made me go on.

  “Huh. Sounds like someone doesn’t understand the difference between the common good and the rights of the individual,” nagged Sam, behind us. “You two really ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”