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We moved on. Another quiet evening of dissecting Yoli’s dreams and mapping dimensions I’d never get to see. From what I could tell, she hadn’t found my mother’s dimension yet. I knew every detail of that dream. Well, not dream. Inter-dimensional trip to the world that had become her cage. If Yolanda found it, I would know in a second. I remembered Morningstar’s house, the fence I’d climbed to see inside, his neighbors, even the people walking their dogs down the street. I remembered the wooden table on the patio and the coffee his pixie had served. I remembered my mom sitting by the pool, reading her book. Her golden hair in the sunlight… No, Yoli hadn’t found her yet. But she would. She had to.
“Your mother can still dream jump, can’t she?” Yoli asked out of the blue.
“I think so.”
“Maybe she’s looking for you right now, as we’re looking for her.”
That reminded me… I’d had so much on my mind lately, that I’d completely forgotten to ask Corri what she’d meant when she’d said she knew why Katia hadn’t been able to find her way back.
“Corri, when I sent you to Bulgaria, you said you found something.”
“Oh, oh! Haven’t I told you?” When I shook my head, she continued, but not before throwing Yoli a concerned glance. “It’s not pretty. And I’m sorry it happened this way.”
“What happened?”
“Your father did something… awful.”
“What a surprise!” I said sarcastically. “Just tell me what he did.”
She gulped. “Well, we know that the most gifted dream jumpers can switch places with their versions of themselves in parallel universes, and Katerina Angelov was one of them. For that, she was believed to be a schizophrenic, probably because she was normal today, then tomorrow she’d act like an entirely different person. Because she was a different person, technically. There’s one condition to making the switch: the dream jumper must also exist in the universe he or she jumps to.”
“It doesn’t make any sense. Valentine forced my mother to switch places with the other Katia when she was already dead. In her parallel universe, Katia died while giving birth to me. Well, a very much dead me.”
“I know! And that’s what I don’t understand! Somehow, your mother was able to take over her body in the other universe. So, naturally, I was thinking that she could have returned to her own body in this universe, if she wanted to. I poked around and found the record of her death at the clinic. It appears that one morning, the nurse just found she’d passed away in her sleep. Naturally, the clinic was supposed to hand her remains to her family. Morningstar showed up. I saw his signature on the release papers, and I followed the trail. He didn’t bury her, as is the custom of the Orthodox people. He cremated her.”
“Oh my God. But why?”
“My only guess is that he wanted to make sure your mother would never be able to return to this universe. Without a body, how could she?”
We were all silent for a long while. I was strugg
ling to wrap my mind around what Corri had just revealed. I had to find out how Katia had been able to switch places with herself when she was already dead in the other dimension. I felt like there was something there… Maybe the key to understanding all of this.
“Do you know what this means, Mila?” Lorna broke the silence reluctantly. “That even if you could travel to her universe, you couldn’t stay. You don’t exist there.”
I nodded. That was another thing that was just dawning on me. And it wasn’t pretty. To know that we were separated like this. That he’d done everything in his power to keep us separated. I was boiling inside.
Yolanda reached over the mess that was on the floor and took my hands in hers.
“I will find her for you, sister. Don’t worry. And I will find him, too. I’m not afraid of him. He can’t hurt me. He doesn’t even know me.”
I looked into her eyes. Blue met blue. We really did look like we were sisters, not second cousins.
“Be careful.”
This time, I didn’t tell her to keep away from him. Even though she was just a kid, she was strong. And I needed her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Colossi Valley was just a fancy name for the Valley of the Giants. We entered through a portal in the Andes of Peru, and at first, it didn’t seem like we’d stepped into a pocket universe. The terrain was the same. Then we saw the mountains around us move, and we understood they weren’t mountains at all. They were people. Giants. Their skin looked like stone, and their hair was of a dark, muddy color. They moved slowly and deliberately. Every step they made sent shivers through the crust of the earth.
“Class, let’s stick together,” Professor Maat said. “Pay attention to your surroundings and be prepared to teleport away.”
The giants were friendly. They knew the Violent Death Cabal was visiting today, so most of them crouched down to watch us, some even lied down on their huge bellies to get a better look. But they were heavy and clumsy, so they could hurt us by mistake. It was out job to be careful.
I felt GC next to me, his body giving off the familiar heat that used to bring me to my knees. Used to, because I was resisting him with all my might now. One of the giants leaned over to get a better look at my strange blue hair, and GC grabbed my hand and pulled me away.
“It’s fine. He wasn’t going to do anything.”
