So she summoned up the Voice of command.
“Stay where you are.”
His body shuddered to a stop, muscles quivering and convulsing with the effort to move on while the invisible barrier held him. Her own gut twisted in sympathy, but she held him with her will and did not release.
It only took a minute for him to accept the reality and surrender to his invisible bonds. “I knew you were a sorceress.”
“Only sort of. That’s about the extent of my abilities.”
“Bullshit. What about that whole dragon-woman thing?”
“Different scenario. By the way, I’m also a Dreamshifter.”
“Oh dear God. A trifecta. What the hell do you think you need from me?”
“Knowledge. Experience.”
He snorted. “You’re asking the wrong man.”
“Don’t try to tell me you’re not a Dreamshifter. Your raven and your pendant tell me otherwise.”
“Yes, well. I had that foisted on me. The only Dreamworld I’ve ever been in is the one inflicted on me by the Guardian in the infernal Cave of Dreams. And I’ve just thrown that dreamsphere into hell.”
His words cut her to the heart. “But if you can’t help me, it’s all lost.” She widened her eyes against an unwelcome welling of tears, staring straight ahead, biting her lip. Don’t blink, don’t move, don’t let those tears spill.
“Hell and damnation. You’re going to cry? What kind of sorceress does that?”
Vivian waited until she thought her voice would be steady, not looking at him. “The kind that isn’t a sorceress and has someone she cares about trapped in the Between and no way to get there.”
“You’re a Dreamshifter—”
“Locked out. Somebody locked me out.” All pretense of calm abandoned her and the tears came in a flood. “I thought I was the last of the Dreamshifters; that’s what my grandfather said. He died and left me responsible without teaching me anything. I’m supposed to find the Key, but I don’t even know what it does, or where to find it. And then I found something that made me think you were alive and I started looking but now you’re telling me you can’t help me and you’ve destroyed your dreamsphere and I don’t know what to do.”
It was impossible to weep and keep a hold on the command she’d laid on him. He wriggled out of her control and got to his feet. He glanced over his shoulder at the progress of the destruction he’d created but stayed put. “You’ve lost someone over there? Someone alive? That’s what this is all about?”
Vivian nodded, mopping her face with her sleeve. “That and the Key.”
“What key?”
“The Key to the Forever. Whatever that is—”
“Penance,” he said, interrupting. He sank to the ground and the raven fluttered down onto his shoulder. “That’s what you are. Death would have been too easy, so the fates kindly sent me you.”
“For killing your family, you mean?”
“I didn’t kill them.” His voice was heavy with years and grief.
“But you said you were guilty.”
“I am.”
“So it was your sister, then.”
He just stared at her, his face a mask of misery. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Okay, fine. You didn’t kill them, but you are guilty of their deaths. You’ve lived with this for how many years now—why try to kill yourself today?”
His face darkened and his eyes turned back to the flames. “I also lost somebody in the Dreamworld yesterday.”
“You’re locked out too?”
“I never said that.”
“Then—”
“I never said they were still alive.”
Vivian pressed her face into her hands and rubbed her burning eyes. “I don’t suppose you’d tell me what you were doing there in the first place?”
“Hunting.”
“Of course.”
“Look—a rogue Dreamshifter needs some sort of livelihood. When you’re in and out of the Dreamworld and the Between all the time, you tend to find food. If it’s not in the dreams you enter, you can shift it into being. And because you’re so goldarn special, what you eat in dreams actually nourishes you. But if you’re not going into Dreamworld all the time, then you have these basic needs for food, shelter, and cash.”
This time she just looked the question at him, and he went on. “In the early years I also had to avoid the law. Everybody believed I did it. I wasn’t educated, didn’t have a trade, thanks to Father’s persistent and deluded belief that I would give in and become the Dreamshifter someday. All I knew how to do was hunt. There was wildlife in my dream. Wolves, bears, cougar—and other things, a little more exotic. People paid me as a guide.”
His voice trailed off and his face worked, fighting off some strong emotion.
“And the last hunt went badly.”
“You could say that. Two dead—my fault. One was only a child.” He turned to face her directly. “Please. I’m old. I’m miserable. All I ever wanted in this world was a normal life—wife, kids, to die when the time came. All I ever got was shit. Why would you hold me here?”
“Because there are other lives at stake—maybe everybody’s. Not just the people I love.”
“The Key,” he said, bleak, watching the fire.
“What do you know about it?”
“Father mentioned it once or twice. I tried not to listen, but that I remember. He had a book that talked about the Key . . .” His voice trailed off, watching the fire.
“What else was in that book?”
“Mythology, mostly. About the first Dreamshifter and how she betrayed the dragons, or the dragons betrayed her. A bunch of malarchy about giants and sorcerers. The making of the Black Gates and a sort of pirate treasure map of how to find it.”
“A map. There was a map of the Between.”
Weston flushed. “Well, yes. Oh, and some sort of prophecy connected to the Key—when it would be found, who could use it, and how. I think there was some special incantation.”
Vivian felt a strong desire to pick him up and throw him into the fire herself. “And that book was in this house and has just gone up in flames.”
“I don’t think so. There wasn’t anything left in the house. Somebody emptied it.”
“Oh, come on. Your father would have hidden something like that. Secret cubbyhole? Safe? Something.”
“If he did, Grace would have taken it. She knew all the secrets in that house.”
“When did you see her last?”
“That was it. That day—with everybody lying dead and a little sister who needed me, I got swept away into the Cave of Dreams for an initiation I never wanted. I came back to the house, once, to look for her. She didn’t live here anymore.”
“She stayed with friends for a few days and then went to an orphanage.”
“Is she—oh, she’d have to be dead by now.” His face creased and he rubbed the back of his neck. “Poor Gracie. I hope she died easy of a nice old age.”
Mad as she was, still Vivian tried to protect him by keeping the truth out of her face, but he saw it in her eyes. “Tell me how she died. Tell me!”
“Fire. Her house burned down. She’s buried in the family plot.”
“Right next to my father. She’ll love that.” He rubbed both hands over his face. “You should have let me burn. It’s the only justice.”
“Why didn’t you look for her? After the Cave of Dreams, I mean.”
“The law was after me by then. What good would I be to her?”
There was no good answer to this question, so Vivian shifted on to action. “What would she have done with the book, if she had it?” A book could end up in so many places—used bookstore, library, landfill, fire. Trying to find it would be a hopeless task.
But Weston was taking her rhetorical question seriously. “Probably buried with her. That and my father’s dreamspheres. If I know Gracie, she had the funeral all planned out and the coffin bought long before she died.”