But the light was… blurred. Smudgy.
Another draggy knock sounded on it.
In what seemed like slow motion, I went over and reached out to open the door, but as I looked down, the soft light showed me something I hadn’t expected.
I had a hand.
Even though fear struck me—was I actually in another part of the star place? Was fake Dean the one knocking?—I went ahead and opened that door, letting in a flood of blinding light.
It washed over me, and girding myself, I walked through it.
Once I was on the other side, the light drew back, revealing the most fucked-up thing I’d ever experienced, even as a ghost.
Everything was in slow motion, from the walls that moved upward like golden waves, to the sky that rolled with contained fire. And in that sky were things that made no sense whatsoever—a Victorian-looking air machine that was being piloted by a little dark-haired girl in goggles and a leather jacket. A big black bird winging just above the machine, casting a shadow over it.
Before I could even say, “Huh?” something more surreal reared up on my left.
A dragon rising out of the water wall, bellowing.
Just get out of here, I thought, but my brain and my body seemed to have been reduced to the same twisted lack of speed that was affecting this entire dream room.
Then I saw the worst part of all—the dragon had the face of an older man but sort of crushed, unrecognizable.
I absorbed that just before the thing plunged back into the moving ocean wall.
If the star place was almost heaven, this was almost hell, with brimstone and a sky of fire.
At least I had the presence of mind to glance down at myself, just to make sure I hadn’t turned into something strange, too.
But I was me. With a body.
Just like in the star place.
What was the connection here? I didn’t get it. I didn’t have the brainpower right now… .
It took me a few moments to realize that I wasn’t alone, either. Someone… something… was behind me.
Fake Dean?
As in a dream, it felt like forever and a day had passed by as I turned around to see who it was.
When I spied Gavin Edgett, with his startling blue eyes, short brown hair, and accusing expression, I wasn’t sure if he was better or worse than fake Dean.
“What are you doing in here?” Dream Gavin asked, his words stretched, echoing like a god’s.
It was like he couldn’t give a crap about the chaos going on around him. I was the big problem.
I searched for an answer, but came up empty.
In dream time, his hand reached out, then rested on my shoulder. A flood of sparks burned me, and I bit down on any response I might’ve had.
“You’re… real,” he said.
Above us, in the flaming sky, the air machine sputtered. When I pulled my gaze up to it, the little girl pilot was peering down at us, her long, dark hair trailing out from under her leather helmet, a worshipful expression on her goggle-hidden face as she lavished a look on Gavin.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked, my words dragging together as I finally backed away from his hand. I didn’t want him touching me.
He ignored the dragon as it resurfaced again behind him, then dove underwater.
“It’s a game.” He kept watching me, his gaze so intense that I thought he could see everything about me.
Something in my chest clenched.
“A game,” I repeated. Then I understood. “Your game?”
Was this the project he’d been working on when he was falling asleep? Flying machines… big ugly birds… dragons with human faces?
Where were the blood and blades from his other games?
Just as the question faded in my mind, the dragon thrust itself out of the water wall again, but it was going for the sky this time.
Its neck was so endlessly long that the monster’s teeth would be able to crunch down on the air machine that the little girl was flying.
Just as I started to slow-scream for her to watch out, I felt Gavin covering my eyes with his rough-skinned hand, like he didn’t want me to see.
I heard the sound of steel being unsheathed.
Then, in a flash of black, we were someplace else.
A room stacked with books on heaven-high shelves, but one wall was missing, and it opened to the lagoon-shaped pool just outside the Edgetts’ mansion.
Gavin was sitting across from me in the same chair he’d been seated in last night, both feet planted on the carpet as his hands clutched the armrests. Blood from his fingers trailed down the creamy leather, and he had a pearl-handled gun on his lap.
Now he talked in normal time, his voice deep and a little raspy as he checked me out.
“You’re so familiar,” he whispered. “Have I seen you before?”
Along with his speech, my thoughts were up to speed, too. So was my heartbeat.
Was he talking about last night, when I might’ve accidentally appeared to him during the haunting? Had he seen me then?
But this was a dream, and nothing made sense. Why should he?
“You just saw me in that other room,” I said. “Remember?”
The way he was staring me down made me shift, and I realized that I was perched on the edge of a desk in the study that I’d visited during a tour of the mansion. One of my legs was crossed over the other, and I had my hands braced on the edges.
He slowly leaned forward, too, and I felt locked in his sights.
“Who are you?” he asked.
Outside, the pool water splashed, like someone was swimming. From the open wall, I could see gentle waves lapping out of the pool and against the concrete.
“I’m just a figment of your imagination,” I said.
Then I had an idea.
Could I make even better use of my time in his dreamland? Could I actually plant a seed in his subconscious—if that’s where we were—for all the odd things he would be experiencing about Elizabeth while I drove him to a confession?
Hell, I’d just seen Inception on HBO about a week ago. It’d sure worked there.
He rested his forearms on his thighs and stared me down with those pale blue eyes. They were such a deep, dream-enhanced extra-blue that I had to tell myself not to fall in.
Then he stood, coming toward me with a deliberation that made my stomach flip. The gun had disappeared from his lap.
“I know you,” he said.
Outside, it sounded like someone was getting out of the pool, water smacking concrete.
Gavin got close enough to me so I could hear him breathing, even in a dreamland. And every breath made my dream heart beat louder.
Danger, I thought. But that didn’t make me back away from him.
Just as he was opening his mouth to say something else, someone entered through the empty wall.
“Gavin?”
A light, bright voice. A woman.
And as he turned around, I saw that Elizabeth Dalton was standing there in a one-piece white bathing suit that would’ve been right at home in the ’fifties, when movie stars still shone with glamour and mystery.
Her short, wet blond hair was slicked back, her mouth lipstick red as she held a towel in one hand.
As Gavin began walking toward her, he fisted his hands at his sides, his body stiff.
Then Elizabeth disappeared into thin air, her towel dropping to the carpet.
But instead of a towel, it was a fashionable white scarf, lying prone on the floor like a corpse. And now…
Now there was blood all over it.
In slow motion—yeah, it was back, slower and more terrible than ever—Gavin turned to me.
He was wearing a mask.