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“Are the both of you okay?” Chatter asked.
We nodded. I glanced overhead. The sky was hazy, and no sun shone. I didn’t even know if they had a sun here, but the land was bathed in a mix of shadows and the colors of sunset. Trees, straggly and barren, dotted the landscape, and boulders jutted out from the fog that swept across the ground as far as I could see.
“Follow me, and do not speak to any who pass you unless I give the go-ahead. There are dangers here I cannot even begin to describe.” He looked around, gauging our whereabouts, then motioned for us to follow him to the right.
We moved through the mist, cautiously, unable to see the ground. I was afraid of tripping over a root or a rock, but for the most part, the lay of the land was even and level and Chatter seemed to instinctively skirt obstacles in the path. I followed his lead carefully, and Peyton followed mine.
As we came to a fork in the road, Chatter turned to the left, but something to the right caught my eye. I turned to look and gasped.
Krystal, my mother, was standing there, holding out her arms.
“How . . . what . . .” I stared at her, wanting to believe, wanting so badly to think it was her, and yet I knew she was dead. How could this be? Was she a spirit? Was I hallucinating?
I found myself walking off the path, mesmerized by her sudden appearance. Krystal, my mother. Krystal, the woman who was never a mother to me. But now she was wearing a loose-fitting dress that seemed as ethereal as the fog. Her hair hung loose, but no longer stringy. She laughed when she saw me and her eyes were welcoming, no longer jaded with crack and horse.
“Honey, I’ve missed you so much. I’m so sorry I had to leave you; please forgive me. Please, give me a chance to make all those unhappy years up to you.”
I gazed at her face and thought, My mother is beautiful, but then I stopped. Something was off.
Cicely! Cicely—can you hear me? Cicely!
Far in the distance, someone was calling me. But my mother’s face filled my vision and I moved toward her, wanting to run into her arms. I was five again, and she was smiling and I felt for the first time in my life that I lit up her world, and I ran into her embrace. She wrapped her arms around me, so strong and caring, and I melted into the love she had never, ever shown me and burst into tears.
Blink. Wait . . . no, I’m twenty-six, not five . . .
Blink. Stay with me forever; you are my little girl. You just dreamed a long, strange dream that you’re all grown up. But you don’t have to be a grown-up, Cicely. You’re my little girl and you can stay with me.
Thank you, Mama . . . I wanted to love you so much, I wanted to be your little girl but you never would let me. Am I your little girl? Mama?
You’re forever and always my baby.
A faint sound in the distance . . .
Cicely! Cicely! A different voice, calling to me, but there was nothing in my field of vision save for Krystal.
Krystal let out a long, happy sigh, and I wondered what she’d say next—all those things I’d waited all those years to hear. But then she smiled, and her teeth were needle sharp, and her eyes burned crimson—the crimson of blood.
The spell began to break, slowly, dreams crashing to the ground.
“Krystal, no—Mother! Mother!” I began to struggle, trying to free myself, but Krystal was strong—a lot stronger than I remembered. And then I realized that Krystal’s arms were long and sinuous and she wasn’t really my mother.
Cicely! Break free, child. Break free of the illusion! A sudden gust of wind blew away the fog in the area in which we were standing and I gasped, for it blew away illusion, too. Instead of my mother, I was in the clutches of a short, squat, reptilian creature with tentacles waving. I screamed, shattering the last shards of the spell.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t happy, and the grip around my arms and waist grew tighter as I pushed away from it. I could no longer understand what it was saying, and I struggled, trying to pry my way free from its grasp.
I felt something jar against my back and glanced over my shoulder. Peyton was stabbing one of the tentacles with a butcher knife. And Chatter was holding his hands out and—Whoosh!—a white-hot flame shot out to envelop the creature. The thing made a noise sounding like a scream and let go of me. Peyton grabbed hold of my arm and ran, dragging me along behind her. There was another shriek from behind, and something grabbed my ankle.
I tripped, falling forward, and looked back to see one of the scaly arms wrapping itself around my foot, and I twisted around, lunging forward as I whipped out my switchblade and drove it into the creature’s flesh. It uncurled from my ankle and then, with a final thrashing slap, it slammed against me, knocking me down, then retreated.
I lay in the gathering fog, gasping for breath. Peyton and Chatter knelt beside me and helped me stand. Thoroughly confused, I glanced around. We seemed to be right back where we were when I’d seen . . . Krystal? Everything came flooding back.
“Krystal? I know she’s dead—what the hell possessed me to go over to that thing? What the fuck was that? What happened?” Furious at myself, and bewildered, I looked from Chatter to Peyton, then back to Chatter again.
He rubbed my shoulder gently. “Don’t blame yourself—you stumbled over a dreamweaver. They feed on the dreams and secret wishes of others and can look into your mind. The demons live primarily in the Court of Dreams, but now and then you might find one slipping over into our world as well. They tend to haunt the wild places. We don’t know what they are, only that they aren’t Fae.”
Nerve-racked, I cleared my throat. “What would it have done to me?”
“Sucked your mind clean. Left you a vegetable.” The offhand way he said it chilled me to the bone.
