“The Investigations Team has their hands full with the increasing number of Nightmare events occurring,” Caspian explained soothingly. “But they’ll catch the thief, especially if there’s a link between the crimes like they’re beginning to suspect.”
My heart hammered wildly. I’d known the Council suspected the thief was a Nightmare, but their suspicions took on a whole new horrific meaning now that I realized I was the thief. But…I couldn’t be a Nightmare. After all, Nightmares were devious beings who plotted their crimes and delighted in wickedness and mayhem, and that certainly didn’t describe me.
And yet the doubts which had been present ever since I’d inadvertently created the nightmare plant lingered, sharp and poisonous. No one had ever told me I was a Dreamer. What if I was wrong, and the Dream Realm wasn’t where I belonged after all?
Angel wiped away her angry tears. “I won’t stand by and do nothing. I want justice.”
“Which you’ll receive when the culprit is caught.” Caspian tried to caress her again but she swatted his hands away.
“Stop trying to console me,” she snapped. “This is the worst theft yet. Last night’s dream was spectacular, the best I’ve ever created. It took me hours to plan it and weeks to gather the flowers, but the effort was worth it when the dream yielded me more magic than I’ve ever earned. Blaze was extra furious for losing, and shortly afterwards my winnings disappeared. Other than Blaze, I saw no one between the Weaving and the theft. There’s no one else it could have possibly been.”
I nervously reached into my bag and stroked the jar containing Angel’s magnum opus before pulling it out to stare at the golden dream swirling inside. Angel’s dreams had always been my favorite to bottle for my expanding dream jar collection, which explained why she’d suffered the most from my unintentional crime. The thought only deepened my horror, as did the thought that my attempts to do something to help had turned into a disaster, one that had caused me to unintentionally hurt so many.
My mind whirled, foggy with confusion and uncertainty. What should I do now? I couldn’t return the dream; then she’d know I was the one who’d been stealing her magic. With her current thirst for revenge, I’d be back on Earth before I could even create an adequate defense.
My panic rose. That couldn’t happen. I had to fix this. My desperate thoughts latched onto an idea: perhaps I could go somewhere secluded and release the dream in hopes that the magic would return to the one I’d stolen it from.
But I’d no sooner considered this than I realized how foolish that would be. If a released dream really returned its magic to its original owner, surely I’d have heard about it after releasing the fire and water dreams. I was more likely to make a bigger mess unleashing an unpredictable dream; it would undoubtedly result in my getting caught, which was the last thing I wanted…yet it felt inevitable. The thought tightened the anxiety knotting my stomach.
“Eden?” Iris finally noticed me trying to edge around the room away from the encounter and hurried over. “Have you heard? The dream dust thief has struck again. It’s positively awful.” She kept her voice low, as if afraid to trigger more tears from Angel, then staggered back as she took in my lemonade-stained appearance with wide eyes. “Goodness, what happened to you?” Her gaze lingered on my own puffy eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. “Are you alright?”
I flinched, as if her question was a direct accusation. Iris frowned as her gaze lowered to Alice’s dream, still bottled in the jar I clutched in my death grip. “What’s that?”
I quickly hid it behind my back, momentarily forgetting she couldn’t see what was inside. More guilt, thick and smothering, tightened in my chest. Even after knowing my crime, I was actively trying to hide it.
Iris wrapped her arm around me. “Are you ill?”
The nausea that churned my stomach and the guilt that burned in my veins was the sickest I’d ever felt. Please let this be a nightmare.
Angel and Caspian joined Iris, Angel’s anger momentarily eclipsed by her soft inquiries into whether I was well; her concern only intensified my guilt that this entire time I’d been the one who’d stolen from her.
Her words passed through my ears without my hearing them, and the guilt swirling through me boiled anew, impossible to quench. I willed myself to confess, but I couldn’t make myself say the words. Confessing would result in losing the only friends I’d ever known and tear me away from my true home, the only place I’d ever fit in.
It was as if my friends’ innocent questions were damning accusations. I broke away and ran to my room, slamming the door behind me.
I spent the remainder of the long day locked away in my room, clutching a pillow to my chest as I stared numbly up at the ceiling. With each passing hour my guilt only deepened; by the time my next Weaving arrived, I feared it’d consume me.
“I’m not going,” I said hollowly.
“But you have to,” Stardust protested. “You can’t skip a Weaving. Mortals are supposed to dream every night, and Spiderweb isn’t allowed to weave without you.”
“I don’t care.”
Stardust and I had been arguing back and forth for the past hour, her concern over my behavior having rapidly escalated into annoyance at my refusal to confide in her what was wrong. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her; it was her reaction that worried me.
For months, she and the entire Dream World had been struggling to solve the dream dust theft mystery. Although Stardust was loyal, the thought of confessing that I was the criminal she’d been searching
