Dreamfever (35 page)

“Try to stay together!” Josh called over the din. She led them along the edge of the court until they reached a corner, where she crouched down beside what appeared to be an aerosol can on the ground. “This is one of the towers.”

“That?” Whim asked. “When you said towers, I thought you meant
towers,
not a can of hair spray.”

“We called them towers because they work like cell phone towers,” Josh told him. “Watch.”

She pulled a transmitter out of her fanny pack and duct-taped it to the side of the tower. “Done.”

“That's it?” Deloise asked.

“That's it.”

Although Feodor claimed their plan was a terrible one, Will actually thought it was sort of clever. Once they had a dozen or so of the towers fitted with them, Josh would press that activator and send a signal that would deactivate not only the towers that were fitted with transmitters, but all of the towers.

Assuming, of course, that Peregrine and Bash hadn't increased the grid to include forty or more towers, in which case the signal would be too weak to destroy them all. And assuming Peregrine wasn't wearing the devices and didn't catch them installing the transmitters.

Will had been gung ho about the plan when they were back at the campsite. Now that they were in the Dream, he felt less certain. Especially because Josh knew the location of only the four towers that marked the corners of the basketball court, and the number of people around would make it difficult to find small cans.

As they crossed the basketball court, they discovered that the frozen area of the Dream extended into a formal garden. They began searching for more towers hidden beneath the ornamental shrubs and within flower beds. Unfortunately, the garden was as densely populated as the basketball court had been, and they struggled just to stay within sight of one another.

“I found one!” Deloise cried triumphantly.

We've been wandering around for at least twenty minutes,
Will thought,
and we've only found five towers, and four of them were the ones Josh placed.

Slowly, they made their way through the crowds. Will got jostled, elbowed, and even shoved, and more people stepped on his feet than he could count. The nightmares around him seemed to share a theme: interpersonal conflict. With the Dream unable to shift to accommodate the specifics of nightmares, everyone was just dreaming that they were in a mob full of strangers they didn't like.

Will estimated they'd been in the Dream for an hour by the time they found a sixth tower. Over the commotion of the dreamers, Josh called everyone to her. They huddled beside a fountain with a statue of an angry old man vomiting water into the pool.

“This isn't working,” Josh said.

“Maybe we should split up,” Deloise suggested. “We could cover more ground if we weren't trying to stay together.”

“I'll stay with Feodor,” Whim offered.

Will didn't like the idea of splitting up. He wanted to be able to keep an eye on everyone, to warn them if Bash or Peregrine showed up.

But it was already too late for that.

The first thing that caught his attention was the quieting of the mob. Rising on his toes, he saw that an entire section of the garden had not only fallen quiet, but gone motionless. The silence and stillness were moving toward him with the speed of an ocean wave, and he had just opened his mouth to warn the others when Josh screamed, “Abort!”

By then, the inertia was already overcoming them. Will watched in slow motion as Josh thrust her hand out, her movement growing slower the farther out she reached, and he waited for the archway to burst forth from her palm, and waited … and waited …

He felt himself still. He didn't so much go numb as terribly heavy, so heavy that he could no longer move, not even to breathe, and it was only by chance that his field of vision at that moment included Bash standing by the gazing pool.

“Look who I found,” he said.

And then Will knew that this had been a very poor plan indeed.

 

Twenty−seven

Bash looked crazy.

From where Josh stood frozen, her arm thrust uselessly forward, she could see Bash almost directly ahead of her. He stood with his hands on his hips, wearing a button-down and khakis so wrinkled that he must have slept in them. He'd torn one sleeve off to make room for the vambrace, and above the circlet his black hair stuck up in greasy clumps.

What worried Josh most, though, was the crazy look in his eyes. They were bloodshot and overly wide, and they moved constantly, as if they were bouncing around in his head. Against Bash's pallor, his wet, red lips were parted as if with wonder.

Josh recalled Feodor saying that the devices would eventually kill the wearer. From the look of him, Bash had been wearing those devices since the moment he'd stolen them almost a week before.

“Josh,” he said with a little giggle, and he stepped closer. He sniffed, then wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and Josh saw red smears on his skin. Now that he was only two feet away, she noticed blood crusted around the edges of the vambrace. “Wow, you brought the whole gang.”

No one answered. They were all as frozen as Josh was, Will with his mouth half-open, Whim scratching the back of his neck, Deloise's mouth a perfect
O
.

Bash walked over to Whim and raised his fists. “She never loved you, you tool.” He took a few quick steps on the balls of his feet before jabbing Whim in the face. Whim didn't move, didn't even rock back like a dummy would have. Bash might as well have been punching a marble statue.

“Ow!” he cried, and rubbed his knuckles. “Stupid, stupid.”

As he flexed his fingers, he caught sight of Feodor, who had flung his arm protectively in front of Mirren. “Who is this?” Bash pondered. “A friend, or just a dreamer who wandered by? Tell me your name.”

“Feodor Kajażkołski,” Feodor said, only his mouth moving.

“What?” Bash cried. He released a hysterical laugh, high-pitched and wavering. “He's dead. Tell me your real name.”

“Feodorik Jambulira Bronisławorin Kajażkołskiosci,” Feodor repeated.

Bash stepped closer. “You do look just like him.” He giggled, blinking his bloodshot eyes. “I guess I'll take you to Peregrine and let him sort it out.”

Then he lifted his metal-clad arm and wafted his fingers through the air. An archway appeared a few feet before him, complete with a gray brick frame. Josh felt herself rise from the ground and shoot through the archway. As soon as she passed through the Veil, her paralysis lifted, and she stumbled out of midair and into …

A very fancy living room.

Bash deposited the rest of her party around her, and their feet had hardly touched the marble floor before he was walking out of the room.

“Welcome home, Princess,” he called over his shoulder with another quivering giggle.

“Where is my family?” Mirren asked.

He didn't answer, and as soon as he was out of sight, Josh turned to Mirren. “Where are we?”

Mirren swallowed. “This is the formal living room in my house.”

“Why would he bring us to the Hidden Kingdom?” Josh asked.

“I don't know. He shouldn't even know this universe exists.”

Before Josh could ask another question, Will grabbed her shoulder and spun her to face him. “Why didn't you open an archway?” he demanded.

She couldn't believe he was asking her such a stupid question, and her palms grew hot with anger. Shoving his hand off of her, she said, “Because I was frozen just like you were! This is why I told you this plan sucked. I warned you that this exact thing could happen!”

“We were all immobilized,” Feodor pointed out. “She could not have opened an archway.”

His head was tilted as if in confusion, which reminded Josh that he didn't know she was the True Dream Walker.

We aren't going to be able to hide that from him if we want to get out of here,
she thought.

She dismissed the thought. What did it matter if Feodor knew her secret? Hopefully he'd be dead again in a couple of days. Assuming they could get out of here.

Even so, she waited until Feodor turned away to peer out the window before extending her arm and trying to open another archway. A handful of Veil dust glimmered in the air, then vanished.

“Bash must be stopping you,” Mirren said quietly. “Maybe we can reach the archway to the World. It's in the stables.”

“We should move now, before Bash comes back,” Josh said. “Which way, Mirren?”

“Left at the door.”

But the living room door was as far as they got. Josh tried to walk through and cracked her face so hard on an invisible barrier that she was knocked back. If Whim hadn't grabbed her shoulder, she would have fallen to the floor.

“Easy now,” he said.

“There's something there,” Josh told him.

They took turns banging on the invisible obstruction in the doorway. Their blows didn't even make a sound.

“Try another archway,” Will said.

With no choice but to ignore Feodor's presence, Josh threw another archway. This time a shimmer like sunlit mist burst from her palm, but it faded away almost instantly.

“I am unclea—” Feodor began to say, but he was interrupted by Bayla's appearance at the doorway.

“That won't work,” she said, and she giggled.

Bayla looked as bad as Bash, and all the worse because she normally appeared so put-together. Her designer jeans were stained with grease and soot, and she wore a dress on top of them, a color-block day dress that she'd zipped up only partway. Papery skin revealed bulging veins crisscrossing her face, and all her fingernails had turned purple. Her former beauty was almost unfathomable now.

“What happened to you?” Deloise asked, as though her shock had overcome her animosity.

“This is Peregrine's castle now,” Bayla said. “He's going to make me a princess!”

Then she tried to do a little spin, but she lost her balance and careened into the hallway wall.

“What's wrong with her?” Mirren asked.

“I'm the star of the play!” Bayla told them. “I play Princess Mirren.”

“She was fine last week,” Whim said, swallowing.

“We traded, but not anymore. No more trades,” Bayla said, frowning at him.

“Trades?” Whim sounded baffled.

“Secrets,” she said, swaying from side to side like a little kid who couldn't stay still. “Secrets for kisses.”

She made a loud smacking sound as she kissed the air.

“You were just using me to find out about Mirren?” Whim demanded. “You were spying on us for Peregrine?”

Bayla smiled as though he'd complimented her. “He wanted to know about Josh. But then I told him about Mirren and he got all …
excited
.” She shivered at the word.

Josh cringed. Her grandfather had always wanted to know for certain that Josh was the True Dream Walker. He must have sent Bayla to seduce Whim, knowing that Whim was close to Josh and incapable of keeping a secret. But instead of dishing about Josh—or perhaps
in addition
to dishing about Josh—Whim had told Bayla everything about Mirren.

“But why are you helping Peregrine?” Whim asked. “It doesn't make sense!”

Bayla shrugged. “I had a dream.…” She picked at a scab on her arm. “I had so many dreams.…”

Will laughed queerly. “He staged nightmares for her.”

“Who? Peregrine?” Deloise asked.

“Yes. He staged nightmares until he had control of her, and then he told her to seduce Whim and get him to talk about Josh.”

Bayla stage-whispered, “He's my real father!”

“Your father!” Whim burst out. “He's not your father! I've met your father! He yelled at me for forty-five minutes once! You know who your father is, Bayla!”

“Shh,” Deloise said, putting her hand on Whim's arm. “Calm down. She's not rational right now.”

Deloise coaxed him to sit down on one of the white brocade couches. He was trembling, and his face and neck had flushed the way they did when he was really upset. Josh could count on one hand the number of times she'd seen him flush like that.

“She was fine a week ago,” he repeated.

“Staging would have allowed Peregrine to control her,” Feodor said, “but it would not have led to this level of mental confusion. Obviously she has been wearing the devices.”

Josh had already guessed as much. The burns down Bayla's forearm, the wounds that resembled leech bites, the black-and-red skin at her temples—they had all been inflicted by the devices. Josh touched one of her own burns in recognition.

“It's my turn next,” Bayla said proudly. “After Bash.”

“Those things are going to kill her,” Whim said. “We have to do something.”

“We'll be lucky to get out of here alive—” Will told him, and then broke off at the sound of footsteps in the hall.

Bash and Peregrine strode through the doorway as if the barrier didn't exist, and Bayla followed in her bare feet.

Peregrine smiled broadly at the sight of his guests. Although Josh had seen him only two weeks before, she was always startled anew by the painful imbalance of his features—the oversize lips and bulbous nose, the frighteningly large eyes. His face lit up when he saw Feodor.

“Kajażkołski!” he cried. “I didn't believe it when Bash said you were here!”

He offered his hand, but Feodor ignored it and opened his arms.

“It has been too long for a handshake, old friend,” he said.

Josh watched in disbelief as they embraced.

“
What?
” Will burst out.

Feodor smiled coyly. “‘Don't praise the day before sunset,'” he said, quoting an old Polish proverb.

“I knew we couldn't trust him!” Will cried.

He turned to Josh, his gaze blazing with fury, and she shook her head helplessly.