Lair of Dreams (The Diviners #2)

Evie looked up at Sam, defiant but slightly pleading, too. Her voice was nearly a whisper. “Why not?”

She pulled her hand free of Sam’s grasp, and he let her go, watching as she ran headlong toward the hedonistic throng.

As Henry stepped into the tunnel, he was aware of vague shapes in the dark above, and he knew these creatures traveled between worlds—supernatural and natural, dream and reality. Glowing eyes watched his every step. Those same shapes sniffed the air around him, taking in his scent, but for some reason they didn’t follow, and Henry stepped out into the forest and made his way to the bayou, calling Louis’s name. But when he got to the cabin, everything was gray and dull. No sunlight on the river. No smoke coming from the chimney. No sweet music to greet him. He peeked into the cabin’s windows, but it was too dark to see. When he tried to open the door, his hand moved through it like water. A thread of panic wove itself into Henry’s heart.

“Louis Rene Bernard—you better answer me, dammit!” Henry kicked at a tree, but it was like kicking at air. He slumped down on the still-solid ground and let himself cry angry tears.

“Henry?”

At the sound of Wai-Mae’s voice, Henry startled. She stood just inside the mouth of the tunnel. Her dress wavered between states, shifting from an old-fashioned gown to her usual plain tunic. Everything about her seemed ephemeral.

“Is Ling with you?” Wai-Mae asked.

“No. I came by myself. I needed… I need to find Louis. To ask him why he didn’t come to the station today. I waited all day. He never showed.”

Wai-Mae stepped over the threshold into the dead grass. Her cheeks were pale, but her eyes sparkled. “Poor Henry. You want to be with him very much, don’t you?”

“Yes. It’s all I want.”

Wai-Mae put her hands on the lifeless Spanish elm. Where she touched the tree, it blossomed. “It takes so much energy to make dreams.”

She ran a hand through the grass. It sparked with color and spread all the way to the river, a rippling carpet of green. “To make things the way you wish.” Wai-Mae exhaled—three short, fierce breaths—and the air filled with birdsong and dragonflies and blue sky. Slowly, the bayou dreamscape came to life, like a carousel starting up. “To keep the hurt out.”

Wai-Mae stared back at the tunnel, frowning. “Sometimes, I—she—remembers. She remembers that they promised her everything—a husband, a home, a new life in a new country—only to break her heart. But they can’t stop her dream now. She wants to help you, Henry. Yes,” Wai-Mae said, blinking, as if she’d just remembered something very important that had been lost for some time. “She wants me to help you be with Louis. Do you want to see him?”

Henry felt woozy. The dream blurred around the edges. “Yes,” he said.

From inside her dress, Wai-Mae took out a music box. “What would you give to see him again? To have your dream?”

Dreams. That was what Henry had been living on for most of his life. Never really here, always somewhere in his mind. He was as much of a dream walker awake as he was asleep. He didn’t want to think anymore.

“Anything,” he said.

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

“Then dream with me,” Wai-Mae said, offering the music box.

Henry turned the little crank of the music box. The tinny song drifted out and Henry whisper-sang along. “Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me. Starlight and dewdrops are waiting… f-for thee.…”

The alcohol and the exhaustion took hold. As the song played, Henry thought of all he had lost: The loving, strong parents he’d longed for but knew were nothing more than a child’s wish. The easy way things used to be with Theta. The music inside him that he’d never finish, never put out into the world as his story. He cried for poor, sweet Gaspard and those summer-still nights at Celeste’s, the boys with their arms flung carelessly over each other’s slender shoulders. Most of all, Henry cried for Louis. How could Louis have left him like that? How were you supposed to go on if you knew love was that fragile?

“Forget.” Wai-Mae kissed Henry’s cheek. “Forget,” she said, and kissed the other. She raised the dagger high. “Forget.”

Sweetly, she kissed his lips, and then she plunged the slim blade into Henry’s chest, just above his heart. Henry gasped from pain, and she breathed her dream into his open mouth. It flowed into Henry, siphoning away his memory and cares and will, along with his life. For a moment Henry thought about fighting back, but it all seemed inevitable, like finally giving in to drowning after a fruitless, exhausting swim. Already the iciness was spreading through his veins, weighting his limbs, filling him with an aching hunger that could only be fed by more dreams. Henry felt as if he were falling into a deep, deep well. The music-box song came to him, distorted and slow. As his eyes fluttered, he could see glimpses of those radium-bright, broken creatures watching him from the dark.