I lean up on my elbows, my lips trembling as I relive the whole ordeal. The woman brushes my hair off my shoulder, a tender, unusual gesture for her. We sit there like that, quiet. I should know her. Our pasts are intertwined. She saved my life. But even having possession of the truth doesn’t make me feel connected to any of it.
“Looks like he found me after all,” I finally murmur. Because of Nightmare, I’ve been alone for thirteen years, empty and surrounded by a web of lies.
She hops to her feet. “I’m sorry you went through all this,” she says abruptly. And I know she means it. She never intended for any of this to happen. For a few more minutes, we stay there in comfortable silence, sharing the overwhelming knowledge that it’s over. It’s all over. There are more questions I’d like to ask her, of course, so many more. For now, though, I let us simply exist.
Then the woman ruins the moment by saying, “But I can’t believe that none of it broke the fucking illusion. You still look like Elizabeth, and I still can’t talk about anything.”
Sighing, I think of the day Landon died. The pain of remembering isn’t quite as strong now as it was in the shack; the illusion is attempting to realign, to hold on. I find myself falling back to my old ways, thinking of the facts. And they’re simple: I am Rebecca. Landon was my brother … my twin. Fear loved me. I lived in that house by the ocean. I am something more than mortal. And to run from Nightmare—to deal with my twin’s death—I asked this woman to do the impossible: make me human.
The thought of my family urges me to ask one question. “So you can’t tell me where Rebecca’s—” I stop, correct myself. “Where my mother is? She wasn’t killed; I know that much.” Moss appears on my shoulder, humming, and I touch her cheek. She giggles.
The woman—I still don’t know what Emotion or Element she is—just shakes her head.
I purse my lips, wishing I didn’t have to accept this. And I still don’t even know what I am. Later, something says inside my head. Later. I settle back on my elbows, deliberately emptying my mind. “So what now?” I murmur.
Still standing, my companion looks up at the sky, and I follow her gaze. The stars stare back down at us—cold, timeless rocks. They make me think of Fear, and a pang of longing consumes me.
After a moment, she just shrugs. “Now, you live.”
“Wake up. We’re almost there.”
The woman’s profile swims into view. It’s still night, so the moon’s shadows hide her features, but I recognize the slope of her lip, the lines of her chin and jaw. I blink up at her, my cheek resting on a cracked leather seat. Is this one of the dreams?
When the woman hisses impatiently and reaches over to smack my cheek, I know it’s no illusion. The hours before drift back: we’re in her car, on our way back to Edson. We’d been over eighty miles away, she told me.
I sit up in the passenger seat and my body protests. “Almost where?” I ask. A road sign flashes by, bright green: 10th Avenue. “This isn’t where I live … what’s wrong?” I’ve suddenly noticed how fast she’s going; the speedometer is inching past seventy. As if we have somewhere we need to be. As if there’s not much time. But isn’t the danger, everything we’ve been running from, gone? The answer occurs to me before she has a chance to answer. Fear.
“Where is he?” I ask next. There’s no panic or worry, just a need to get to him. The windows are rolled down, and the air is curiously warm now, the stillness disrupted by gunshots rather than the moans of the lonely wind. Hunting season. I wonder if Winter knows the threat is gone, that the way is safe for her.
This leads me to thoughts of Nightmare, and I go rigid, clenching my jaw so hard it hurts.
The woman still doesn’t answer. She stares out at the expanse of black sky. Remembering that she’d once said Fear was too injured to take far, I’d guess that we’re heading toward the outskirts of town. For once, I don’t pepper her with endless questions.
I’ve never been on these back roads, and the headlights sweep past foreign trees and unknown houses. It isn’t until we pass an old windmill that I know where we are. The Halversons’ place. It’s a farm that’s been abandoned for years. Presumably a huge family used to live there and they all died from some sort of plague. Kids come out here on Halloween and dare each other to go inside for five minutes. It’s a rickety house with gray paint, a drooping wrap-around porch, and falling shutters.
The woman shifts into park and kills the engine. Still silent, she swings out of the car. I follow. The grass is long and uncut all the way up to the front door, and the hinges moan as she pulls it open. Inside, the air is musty and thick with dust. This was probably the only place she could bring Fear without being noticed. Tense, I follow her through a grimy kitchen and an empty, moonlit living room. There’s a single table in the dining room, and as soon as we round the corner I draw up short.
There … there lies the Emotion who’s taunted and tormented and loved me almost my entire life. Both my lives. The white moonlight slants down on him, making him glow, his flawlessness more pronounced. Even now, he’s beautiful. But his eyes, usually so sharp and vibrant, are closed. His chest is barely rising and falling, and his skin glistens with sweat. I’ve never seen Fear sweat before. My own breathing grows uneven.
“He’s dying,” I observe quietly, and it’s as if his wound is mine, because my stomach feels like a knife has been thrust into it. He tried to save me. This happened to him because of his unhealthy obsession with me. Stop saying that, my mental voice snaps. It wasn’t obsession. And now I have to admit that the voice is right—it was something so much more. And I should have done more to discourage him. I knew what happened to those around me. Even without the knowledge I have now, I knew.
I drown in a battle of detachment. And it’s while I’m standing there staring down at him that it occurs to me: this is Fear’s consequence for interfering the day Tim attacked me in the barn.
“You’re going to help him,” the woman says matter-of-factly, interrupting my thoughts.
I look at her, trembling. “What can I possibly—”
She tries to snatch my hand and I jerk back, a reflex. She rolls her eyes, letting out an annoyed breath. “I just need you to touch him,” she growls. “Put your damn palm on his forehead and keep it there until I tell you otherwise. Think you can do that?”
I do it without an instant more of protest. He’s freezing to the touch, even colder than usual. We wait, and it’s hard to keep still. Ten seconds. Twenty. Nothing happens. I don’t know what I expected, but something inside of me sinks. Fear is slipping away. No. No. This can’t happen. He isn’t mine anymore, and I’ve pushed him away for so long, and he loves someone that doesn’t exist, but all of that is so insignificant now. My grip tightens so much that if he were conscious, it would hurt. I close my eyes and strive to cope with the knot inside me.
“Damn it,” the woman says through her teeth. “I thought the illusion had faded enough that … ” She stops mid-sentence, and I immediately see why. Before our very eyes, the wound in Fear’s stomach is folding, drying, closing, until the skin is smooth and unblemished. My throat clogs with more questions, but instead of voicing them, I kneel so I’m right by Fear’s head. With trembling fingers, I smooth his hair back, and it occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve actually touched it in this life. It’s just as silky as I imagined it would be.
The woman watches for a moment. Then she rests her own hand on my shoulder. “He’ll be fine,” she tells me. “I’ll take you back, if you want. Or I could make up a bed for you here.”