All the colour drained from Gabriella’s face. “What?”
“I’ve been dreaming about this thing for weeks! But I haven’t been able to remember them until now. Ella, why am I dreaming about The Sorrow?”
Her legs buckled and she slid down the wall.
“ No, no, no, please god no. Not you too.” She buried her face in her hands. “This can’t be happening.”
Her reaction made my blood run cold. I tried to pull her face towards me, but she refused. My hand came away damp with her tears.
“Gabriella talk to me,” I pleaded. “Why is The Sorrow in my dreams?”
It was no use, she had descended into convulsive sobs. Seeing her so upset made me feel like I was dying — her unhappiness was worse than any form of torture I could think of. Feeling useless, I could only rub her back while she wept. The normally pleasant charges had morphed into nasty little electric shocks, which made every part of my hand singe with pain. I didn’t stop comforting her. I stayed in the same position for several minutes — my own heart thumping away in my chest — before trying again.
“Please tell me what’s going on. Why is it in my dreams?” I whispered into her ear.
This time my words seemed to register. Gabriella lifted her head up and turned towards me. Her eyes were swollen and red. She swallowed hard before replying.
“Because it’s tracking you.”
23
Fear wrapped around my throat, choking me. “W-what do you mean it’s tracking me?” I managed to croak.
Gabriella stared up at me, her eyes bloodshot. “That’s how it tracks, using your dreams as a scent.” She took a few sharp breaths before continuing. “If you’re dreaming about it, then it’s trying to find you.”
A lump rose in my throat, which wouldn’t go away, no matter how much I swallowed. “Oh god, in the last dream I had, it found me.”
Gabriella pushed herself onto her feet and seized my arms. “We have to go and speak to Faru, he’ll know what to do next.” She was already at the door before she’d finished the sentence.
“We can’t.”
She whirled around. “What are you going on about? This is serious! We have to speak to him now.” I moved ahead of her and closed the door. “I already know what he’ll do next.” A deep frown appeared on her face. “And that is?” “He’s going to seal the Veil to stop The Sorrow reaching Earth. That’s why the other Sages were here. To vote on it.” Gabriella shook her head in bewilderment. “Alex, how could you possibly know that?” I took a deep breath. “Because I spied on their meeting.”
Her voice was so shrill it hit my ears like a knife. “You did what?”
“I know. I shouldn’t have. I’m so sorry Ella. It’s just I accidently overheard him speaking to Sage Asmund and he said that the meeting may have something to do with me. I had to find out, so I followed them and spied on the meeting. That’s why I can’t go and see him now; I’m too drunk and scared. If he gets inside my head, he’ll know I was there for sure.”
Gabriella drew her lips together. Her eyes were burning with such intense anger that I felt about an inch tall. “Tell me everything,” she demanded.
I told her, including how we’d almost been caught.
“You selfish idiota!” she screamed. “Do you have any idea the amount of trouble you could have caused? Everyone involved could have been banished from the Alliance!”
“I didn’t realise, I’m so sorry-”
“Forget your apologies! You put everyone in a terrible position by asking them to do what you did! Not to mention that you went and did the exact opposite of what I told you to do! Like it or not Alex, I am the leader of Orion. So when I order you not to do something, you damn well listen!” She stormed past me into the lounge. I followed her like a chastised puppy.
“Plus your little plan made Midnight believe that a girl he sees like a daughter was slipping away from him! God knows that man has been through enough in his life already.” “But, Rachel told her to do that, I didn’t-” “It doesn’t matter!” she yelled, coiling her hands into fists. “It was you that started this mess!” I held out my hands in an appeasing gesture. “Ella please calm down,”
“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down!” she screamed, swiping a vase of flowers off a side unit. It smashed against the far wall in an explosion of water and glass. Fresh tears were streaming down her face. “I thought we were meant to be friends. How can I trust you now, when you hide things from me?”
A sudden burst of anger surged through me. “Are you seriously talking about trust? After the number of times you lied to me?” I thrust out a finger towards the photograph on the mantelpiece. “You even lied about your dead parents!”
As soon as the words had spilled from my mouth, I knew I’d gone too far.
Gabriella slapped me across the face.
A sharp streak of pain swept across my cheek. I tasted blood in my mouth. I stared at her in utter disbelief. She looked down at her own hand as if it had acted without her permission. “Gabriella, I-“ “Just go home,” she said in a voice completely devoid of emotion. “But-” “Go home,” she repeated. Without another word I left the apartment.
I didn’t sleep at all.
When my alarm finally buzzed, I couldn’t even bring myself to pull the photograph out of the handbook — making it the first time I’d ever consciously not spoken to Dad’s picture. The fear of The Sorrow tracking me mixed with the regret of the conversation I’d had with Gabriella. It settled into a feeling of malaise that hung over me like a cloud.
I broke my promise of telling Mikey, because frankly I didn’t have the energy to deal with the barrage of questions that would follow. He seemed to know that it wasn’t the right time to ask, so we settled engaged in stilted small talk on the drive to school. He tried to cheer me up by telling me about an amazing new girl — some redhead he’d met at the party he’d gone to, but I was barely listening. I gripped the steering wheel, trying to shake the images of my fight with Gabriella from my mind. Eventually Mikey got the message and switched on the CD player, sinking into his seat with a glum expression on his face.
The day dragged. The worst part of it was that Gabriella wasn’t there. I spent English throwing constant hopeful looks at the door, whilst Mr Hanley rattled on about the lack of self-belief the narrator had in Rebecca. All the way through the lesson, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that something was wrong.
Afterwards, I couldn’t stop myself from ringing her. It rang until the voicemail kicked in. I hung up and slammed a hand into a nearby locker, creating a palm shaped dent in the metal.
Luckily no one was watching.
During my lunch break, I tried to track down Rachel. I asked the sinewy secretary at the front desk to help me locate my Science teacher. After clicking the mouse a few times, she informed me that Mrs Steel was off sick. The feeling continued to gnaw at my stomach.
By the time the afternoon came around, my malaise had grown into an almost overwhelming sense of dread. I tried dialling Gabriella a dozen more times and each time it rang out. Something’s wrong. I knew she was probably still furious at me and rightly so, but to completely ignore me after what I’d told her? It was too extreme. I inwardly cursed myself for not taking the numbers of the rest of Orion.
Mrs Carter was late for History. Whilst the drone of conversation buzzed around me, I stared down at my phone, willing a call or a message to come through.
I sensed someone standing over me.
“Ella,” I said, snapping my head up. Instead I saw an uncomfortable looking Grace standing by my table. Of course it isn’t Gabriella idiot, she doesn’t even take History. “Sorry,” I apologised, putting my phone away in my pocket. “I thought you were someone else.”
“Clearly,” she said, fiddling with a pink ring on her thumb. “Anyway, I uh- I thought you were going to text me over the weekend.”
I remembered the promise I’d made to text her after the night out. A knot of guilt twisted inside my stomach, adding to the growing amount of discomfort there.