But Vivian opened it with her free hand, and through it he saw not the couch and the other side of his sitting room, but a thick forest with old-growth trees.
“You’re going to show us what your dream self did with the Key,” Zee said.
Jared wanted to say that he didn’t know what they were talking about but didn’t trust himself to speak, let alone to formulate a believable lie. Because everything they said was true. The minute that strange door opened, the dream memories seemed more real than this scenario playing out in his living room.
And if those dream memories were true, if what he’d written off as nightmare was real, then he was in the sort of trouble from which there would be no coming back.
Seven
Zee wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting to find on the other side of the door, but it wasn’t this. The part with the trees was all right, even vaguely familiar. What was unexpected was the sudden weight of memory that didn’t belong to him.
He knew full well that he’d never stood in a forest that looked anything like this one, populated by fairy-tale trees older than any tree had a right to be. Vines wrapped around their trunks; sheets of gray-green moss hung down over their branches. The undergrowth was thick and impenetrable, save for one path wending its way between the massive trunks. He caught himself expecting the sudden appearance of Ents.
Jared twisted his arm free of Vivian’s grip and began puking up his guts into some bushes. Zee watched without sympathy, entertaining the image of his sword at the man’s throat. One swift cut and whatever the asshole had done to hurt Vivian was avenged. Except that dead Jared was of absolutely no use to anybody, and it probably wasn’t fair to punish a man for what he’d done in his dreams, asshole or not.
“What is it?” Vivian asked, her hand on his arm, gray eyes wide with concern, and Zee realized that he had forgotten to hide his own distress.
“It feels like I’ve been here before; done things here before. But that isn’t possible.”
“The Warlord,” she said, matter-of-fact. “Your alter ego, as the Chancellor is Jared’s. He could have been here—I don’t think we’re far from Surmise.”
That made sense, and simply understanding the problem eased Zee’s discomfort. The Warlord was dead, so there should be no weird encounter of self with self, and his memories could be valuable.
“Which way do we go?” he asked. Surmise was off to the left, if memory served, but there was no path leading in that direction.
Vivian shook her head. “I don’t know. Paths shift all the time in the Between—every time somebody dreams a new dream, or an old dream dies.”
“Make it stop,” Jared said. “Please.” He looked like he was about to faint, his eyes taking on the dazed look of shock. “Something’s messing with my brain.”
“There is one Dreamworld we all know,” Vivian went on, not even looking at him. Her voice was very quiet, and Zee guessed where this was going with a jolt of apprehension.
When she turned to Jared, he held up both hands as though to ward off an evil. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never been in any Dreamworld . . .”
“You’re lying. But it doesn’t matter. Think of a garden, Jared, one where there is a fountain, and a stone bench.”
He shook his head. “No—”
“If it helps, you can think about a penguin skewered on a sword. Maybe that will make you feel big and powerful and you won’t be so scared. Zee?” She grasped Jared’s limp hand in one of hers and held out the other.
“Got it,” Zee said. He’d expected her hand to be cold, but it burned with heat like fever. The pattern of scales had spread up her neck and touched her jaw. The golden eyes burned.
A sense of loss came over him for the gray-eyed girl who had slipped into his store a few weeks ago, pursued only by the wind, but there was no time, not now.
“Close your eyes,” she said, and it was a quiet command.
Zee waited for Jared to comply. Dreamworld or Wakeworld, he was an unreliable bastard who required watching.
An elbow in his ribs from Vivian reminded him to follow suit.
“Think about that garden, the fountain, whatever brings the place to mind.”
Zee closed his eyes, let himself slide into a memory of a place he had never been.
Darkness, with a red and bloated moon overhead. The garden had a light of its own, though, enough to see the blood on the stone bench, the bruise blossoming on Vivian’s cheek, the penguin lying dead in the grass. And in his own heart a mixture of rage and grief and shame that nearly sent him to his knees with the weight of actions both done and undone.
“Keep your eyes closed. Hold the focus.” A tug on his hand followed the words and he followed, walking blind, holding the image with both mind and soul. He felt the shift as they stepped through the door. Heard the splash of water on water from the fountain, smelled the roses.
Vivian let out a little gasp and her hand tightened convulsively. Zee’s eyes sprang open, all senses on alert.
For a moment everything was a muddled swirl of reality and dream that stole his breath. He knew he stood holding Vivian’s hand. Jared stood on the other side of her, and at their feet was a penguin, alive and well and making a hissing sound like a small steam engine.
In the garden, equally solid and real, lay a dead penguin and a man that looked like Jared, except that he had long hair and was dressed like a prince in a fairy tale. All strange and surreal, but it was the warrior in chain mail who threatened to derail Zee’s sanity. The man’s face, scarred by so many knife cuts it barely looked human, was inhabited by a pair of agate eyes that had looked back at Zee out of the mirror for thirty-five years.
Zee rubbed his eyes. The Warlord was dead. Had taken a knife meant for Vivian’s heart in his own. Even as he entertained this thought, the Warlord began to fade, growing wraithlike and insubstantial so that the fountain showed through him. Then he was gone. The dead penguin dissolved an instant later, but Gareth the Chancellor remained, all too solid, all too real.
Jared was puking again. This time Zee really didn’t blame him. At least with his own dead alter ego out of the way he was able to pull himself together enough to fight if necessary.
The Chancellor looked them all over with a condescending stare. “Well, this is interesting.”
“I hoped to find you here,” Vivian said. “I had no idea whether it would work—whether Jared’s vision of this place would summon you.”
“That’s his name? Jared? What is wrong with him?”
“Seeing you, I suspect. Being hit with memories of all of the things you have done.”
“Why don’t I have memories of the things he has done?”
“You do. Think of your dreams, Gareth.”
The man’s face altered.
Vivian seemed taller. The pattern of scales on her skin had deepened and darkened. Zee could feel waves of heat wafting off her. His nostrils caught a hint of hot, clean stone. Dragon. His heart beat the word with rage and hate. But this was Vivian, who hadn’t asked to be Dragon, or even Dreamshifter. He couldn’t stand by and watch what would follow if she changed; time after time he had seen it in dream, and always it tore the heart out of him.
She took a step toward the Chancellor.
He took a step back, his eyes wide.
“You killed my penguin, right here. You tried to rape me . . .”
“No,” Jared moaned, off to the side. “No, no. I didn’t. I wouldn’t. What is happening? I don’t understand . . .”
“You.” Vivian’s head turned in Jared’s direction, all predator now, even her body posture changing as the scales spread. Only an instant and it would be too late. “You dared—”