And of course there was the girl, her long blond hair clipped back with oversize hairpins with pink rhinestones. She was wearing a black tank top and a green skirt over black and blue striped stockings. She sat perched upon a white stool in the middle of one of those swirling pools, while dark shadowy figures reached for her.
The figures gave Brent a chill, but he made himself look away from them. This was just a dream, after all; he wouldn’t let it become a nightmare. Instead, he looked down, focused, and brought pants and a T-shirt into the dream.
More suitably dressed, he asked the girl, “Are you here to lend me a pencil?”
She tilted her head, looking curious. “You know you’re dreaming?” she asked.
“I lucid dream a lot these days,” he answered.
“Do you see ghosts a lot, too?”
He straightened up, now intrigued. “Are you Cooper’s ghost?”
She frowned. “His? I’m not a new kitten or something. I’m just … me. Samantha. It’s totally not my decision that he’s the only person who can see me. But you saw me for a little while, too. How did you do that?”
“How did Cooper do whatever he did to me?”
“There isn’t time to explain everything,” she said, shaking her head. “And I don’t know the answer to that one anyway. But you’ve got to come see us. Can you help him?”
“I was going to call,” he lied, unable to admit to her that he had kind of planned to foist the entire problem off on Ryan without ever getting personally involved.
“You can come by the coffee shop! The one in the center of town. Cooper works there every morning before school, starting at four-thirty, and then on the weekends until noon. He’s shy, but I’ll make him talk to you. And let you in if the shop isn’t open yet.”
“I don’t actually know a lot about real ghosts,” Brent admitted. “I know a lot of stories and legends, but none that are like the way he described you.” Wondering if he might have better luck with Samantha than with Cooper, he asked, “Do you know what happened that triggered his being able to see you?”
She paused, chewing on her lower lip.
“There was an accident,” she answered. “He doesn’t talk about it. But he was in the hospital a long time. I only harassed him about it because I thought maybe … you know … it would be relevant to me? But we looked into it. It wasn’t how we … you know … met.”
“Accident?” Brent asked. “Like a car accident, or something weirder?”
“Car,” she responded tersely. “It freaks him out to think about it. And he’s the only one I’ve got, really, so I don’t like to think about it, either.” He was just thinking that he could probably look it up in the local paper when she added, “Please don’t tell him I told you. And don’t tell anyone else.”
“Even if it means I can help him, or you?”
“Do you really think you can help?” she asked. She stopped again, looking pensive. “Even if you don’t know about real ghosts, maybe you could help with research? Books aren’t Cooper’s strong suit.”
“I can probably do more than that,” Brent answered. “I kind of have an unusual ability. There’s a guy who taught me how to use that ability without it hurting me. He’s the one who taught me how to lucid dream, for instance, since I need to be able to do so in order to keep out of other people’s heads while I sleep. He might be able to—”
This time, Brent knew he was awake, as he slammed the snooze button on his alarm clock before realizing the offensive sound was coming from his neighbor’s car alarm instead. His clock and a pile of books tumbled to the floor.
“Sorry,” he said out loud, in case Samantha was still there, listening.
He lay back down, but sleep eluded him. It was only 3:47 in the morning, but now that he was awake, the images from his dream felt more threatening, not less. He remembered the worst part of Cooper pushing him in the library—not the sensation of losing control over his body, of maybe even losing his flesh entirely, but the sight of the hungry darkness that had come for him during the instant he had been in that helpless state.
If Cooper’s ghost was real, then those things were real, too.
The dark, which hadn’t frightened him since he had been a little kid, suddenly seemed menacing, and it wasn’t until he stood up and turned on the light that he could get his heart to stop pounding.
He leaned back against the wall, trying to feel under control. He could hear it in his ears, the beat of his heart and the swish of frantically flowing blood. He bowed his head, dizzy, and then lifted it again as he heard someone say, Damn neighbors. That car makes a ruckus every night. Someone should do something—
No, that wasn’t out loud; that was someone across the street, thinking angry thoughts as he tossed in bed.
I am so dead. The first night they let me take the car and now it’s hours after curfew. Maybe I can tell them I had to be the designated—
—never going to let her take the car again. Grounded for the rest of her—
—maybe I should just call. I don’t even care if I wake him up. I should break this off now, before—
—nothing rhymes with that. I’m never going to finish this—
Brent collapsed to his knees, squeezed his eyes shut, and pressed his hands to his temples as if warding off a headache. He struggled to pull his mind inward, and push everyone else out.
He could do this. He had spent months with Ryan learning how to do this. He just needed to focus.
What is all that noise? Banging at all times of night and day.
He struggled to his feet as he picked up on his mother’s waspish thoughts. The combination of the clock falling and his knees hitting the floor must have woken her. If he was lucky, her sleeping pills still had enough of a grip on her that she would roll over and fall back asleep, but Brent had learned better than to trust his fate to luck.
He made it to his bedroom door, which he locked before grabbing clothes and almost falling through the first-story window and out of their tiny house. Woods. He wanted to be away from people for a little while. Mum could pound on the door and cuss at an empty room for as long as she liked.
He fought back the onslaught of strangers’ and friends’ thoughts long enough to make it under the cool canopy of the forest.
As he finally managed to breathe again, he looked up and realized he had come to the same spot where he had first met Delilah last fall. He had stayed away since they had broken up in March, partially in an attempt to avoid her, and partially because he hadn’t needed to come to the forest since she had introduced him to Ryan. It was a nice spot. Quiet. It was Delilah’s private ritual space, and she had wrapped it in magics that blocked out other, invasive powers. She hadn’t specifically warded it for telepathy, a power she lacked, but it helped a little, anyway. Now, it also kept the voices that tormented him at bay, and allowed him to clear his head.
It was probably also designed to keep out the shadowy forms he had seen in the library and in his room. Delilah hadn’t talked to him much about the dangers witches faced when they did magic, but he knew there were things she was afraid of in the dark, no matter how much she tried to pretend otherwise.
It was time to leave. Delilah came here enough nights that he was risking a run-in.
Maybe he should try to catch Cooper, as the ghost had suggested. He could always go back to sleep later, after the other kids were at school, and his mother had given up on him and gone back to bed. After the sun was up, when he could stand to close his eyes.
9
Cooper had managed to avoid dreaming again, but that mostly just meant he hadn’t slept long enough to get to that stage of sleep, which meant he hadn’t slept long enough, period. The third time his father caught him staring into space at the espresso machine, he had been told to go to the front and set up, and leave anything hot, sharp or complicated alone.
He jumped at the sudden banging now, only to realize that it was just someone knocking on the door. He glanced at the clock—still half an hour until they opened—and called, “We’re closed!”
When the next round of knocking started, Cooper dropped coffee grounds all over the counter. At least he
