Shireen gave me a wave. “Hey, Alex! Long time no see.”
“Shut up,” Rachel said in irritation. “You know why he’s here.”
“We don’t know why he’s here,” Shireen pointed out reasonably.
Rachel snarled. “Belthas couldn’t get what he wanted while we were awake. Now he’s trying dreams.”
“You know that’s not how this place works. Just because he’s here doesn’t mean he’s there.”
“Um,” I said.
“You think we should give up?” Rachel said. “Tell him what we know?”
“I didn’t say that,” Shireen said mildly.
“That’s what it means!”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“You know he’s probably already got all he needs,” Shireen said. “Otherwise he would have been back by now.”
“Maybe he wouldn’t have what he needs if you didn’t-”
“HEY!” I shouted.
Shireen and Rachel turned to me in faint surprise as if they’d forgotten I was there. “Oh, right,” Shireen said. “Sorry.”
Luna was looking between Shireen and Rachel with the expression of someone who’s reconsidering whether this was a good idea. I was just as confused as she was but didn’t let myself show it. Why was Shireen in Rachel’s dreams? I mean, I knew why she could be in her dreams, but-I shook it off. This wasn’t the time. “Rachel-”
“That’s not my name.”
I sighed inwardly. “Deleo. I need to know where you are.”
Rachel looked at me. “Is that supposed to be funny?”
I looked back at her.
“You’re working for Belthas,” Rachel said coldly. “Go ask him.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not working for Belthas anymore.”
“Good.” Rachel took a step back.
“Wait!” I called. “Look, Rachel, I’m trying to help you. If I was working for Belthas, why would I need to know where you are? I’d just ask him!”
Shireen cocked her head at Rachel. She’d kept pace with Rachel, and the darkness was starting to shroud the two of them again. “He’s got a point.”
“Shut up,” Rachel said. “He led them to us! It’s a trick!”
“I hate to point this out,” Shireen said, “but we’re not really in a position to turn down help.”
Rachel hesitated, then looked to her left at the shadow and her face hardened. “No.”
I knew Rachel was about to step back into the darkness, and once she was in there, she wouldn’t come out. “Cinder’s with me.”
Luna looked at me. Rachel paused. “What?”
“We made a deal,” I said. “I’m going there for Luna, he’s going there for you, and we’ve both got a score to settle with Belthas. He’s with me back in the real world. We’re coming but we need to know where Belthas is.”
Rachel hesitated. “Look, what have you got to lose?” I said. “If I’m working for Belthas, it doesn’t make any difference to you if I know where his base is. But if I’m telling the truth, this is the best chance you’ll get of letting Cinder find you.”
I could see Rachel thinking about it. Shireen waited, silent; maybe she knew trying to push Rachel now wouldn’t help. The shadow didn’t move but I could feel it watching me.
“Scotland,” Rachel said at last. “Northern Highlands.”
“You saw it?”
“I know it. An old manor on the Black Craeg mountain.”
“Does Cinder know where it is?”
“You’ve got the name.”
“Anything else?”
“How would I know? It’s a manor. It’s got cells. Belthas is there and so are his soldiers.”
I nodded. “All right. We’ll be there soon.”
“Then if you’re telling the truth,” Rachel said, “you might want to hurry up. Belthas has started the ritual. Once it’s done he won’t need me or your precious little apprentice.”
I felt Luna flinch but didn’t look at her. “Can you help us find a way out?”
Rachel laughed. “In your dreams.”
“We die, you die.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m going with you. You found a way in. You find the way out.” She glanced from me to Luna. “Don’t come back.” Rachel stepped back; the darkness flowed over her and she was gone. Shireen had time for a quick wave before she vanished too. Silently and smoothly, the black crystal door swung closed, shutting with a click. The last wisps of darkness faded and we were alone.
“Well,” I said after a moment. “That went about as well as could be expected.”
“You’re working with Cinder?” Luna asked.
“For now … We got what we came for. Time to go.”
Luna looked around at the doorways. “So where …?”
I looked down at her, eyebrows raised. Luna sighed. “I get it, I get it. Up to me, right?”
Luna thought for a minute, then crossed the hall, heading for one of the doors. “But word of warning,” I said. “Finding someone’s dreams in Elsewhere isn’t hard. Leaving is.”
The door Luna had picked was blue crystal. It opened at a touch to reveal a rounded corridor lit with a pale light. I waited for Luna to step in, then shut the door behind us, taking a quick look around before I did. “You know, if there’s anything else you know about this place,” Luna said as I caught her up, “now might be a good time to tell me.”
“I don’t know how Elsewhere works,” I said. “Nobody does. There are books about it but they’re not much more than guesses.”
“You’ve been here before, right?” Luna said. “How did you get out?”
I shrugged. “Instinct? Luck? I don’t know. There are a few rules that work for me but I don’t know if they’ll work for you.”
“I think I need all the help I can get.”
“All right,” I said. “Don’t stray off the path. Don’t strike the first blow. And always look before you leap.”
Luna looked at me. “That’s not really all that specific.”
“Sorry.”
We walked for a little while. The corridor was growing lighter and there were slit windows appearing in the side alcoves, bright light streaming through them. “Maybe there’s one more thing,” I said. “I read a few chapters once out of a much longer book about Elsewhere. The author spent years studying it, getting stories from people who’d been there, and he never found a constant. In the end he decided Elsewhere was shaped by the traveller: What you found there would always link back to you. He found something else as well. How much power a mage had didn’t seem to have anything to do with how well he did in Elsewhere. The ones who did best were the ones with the most … self-awareness, I guess. The ones most comfortable with who they were.”
“Oh,” Luna said. She thought about it briefly. “What happens if you … don’t do well in Elsewhere?”
“Nobody knows.”
“Why?”
“Because they never wake up.”
Luna fell silent. We kept walking.
“Who was she?” Luna asked.
I knew who she meant. “Shireen.”
“You know her?”
“Yes.”
“And … she was in Deleo’s dreams, right?”
I didn’t answer.
“Is that supposed to happen?”
“No.”
“You … knew her from before?”
“Luna, I don’t want to talk about this,” I said. “Not now. Focus on getting us out of here.”
Luna looked like she was about to argue, but she didn’t. It didn’t help me get the same thing out of my head. Why had Shireen been there and what had that shadow been?
The corridor ended in another door. Luna opened it without asking-
And we stepped into a city street. Semidetached houses, yellow brick with hedges and front gardens, formed a line in front of us with hatchbacks and sedans parked by the side of the road. Instead of the unnatural silence of Elsewhere or the whispers of before, I could hear the familiar low buzz of city traffic, though the street itself was still. The sky overhead was still cloudy but lighter, the sun glowing through the white canopy. I looked back to see more houses behind us. The door had vanished.
Looking around, I realised that the city felt like London. It’s hard to say exactly what it was-it’s not as though city houses look all that different-but I’ve lived all my life in London and something about the bricks and the trees made me think of a London suburb, though not one I’d ever been to. “Huh.”