“Well, I landed here myself after I fell asleep.” Henry looked really pleased with that. He seemed to be in high spirits. “Like you, I woke up yesterday while I was still looking around Muriel’s dream. I didn’t imagine I could land back here again tonight. You should have seen my face! Luckily I’d thought ahead and had put the christening necklace around my wrist so that I could walk through the door and out of the dream.” He was looking at me thoughtfully. “But you obviously couldn’t.”
I shook my head. “In my version of the dream, there wasn’t even a door there at all. And absolutely no way of getting out—believe me, I tried everything. The only thing that worked was waking again. But then, after I went to sleep for the second time, I was back here.”
Henry seemed even more pleased to hear that. “Do you know what that means?” he asked.
“It means I’ll have to spend every night on the beach now, does it?” I retorted.
“No, don’t worry,” he reassured me. “Once you’re out of here, everything will be back to normal. I tried it just now.”
“But you have the christening necklace,” I said, shaking the door nervously. “I’d rather try it for myself.”
Henry reached past me, pressed the handle down, and opened the door. “There you go!” He pointed to the corridor outside.
“Thanks.” I heaved a deep sigh of relief once I was out in the corridor and Henry was closing the yellow door after us. “If you ask me, sunsets are really overrated.”
21
“IT’TH HIGH TIME we tried getting Anabel on board with uth,” said Grayson with his mouth so full that I could hardly make out what he was saying.
I moved Lottie’s leek and bacon tart out of his reach. “Sorry, I don’t speak greedyguts-ish,” I said as Grayson grunted in protest.
It was Tuesday evening, and at Grayson’s own suggestion, he, Henry, and I had broken with our usual habit and were holding a crisis meeting in real time instead of in Mrs. Honeycutt’s dreams. I’d had no objection; I really did need a break from all those nocturnal meetings. No one could dissolve into thin air here, and we weren’t likely to be disturbed by murderers armed with flowered cushions stepping through invisible doors in the wallpaper when we least wanted them. However, there was plenty of good food in the house, and as Grayson had skipped supper because of the research he’d told us he was doing, for the last fifteen minutes he had been stuffing himself with everything he could find in the fridge.
“No more tart until we know what you’ve found out,” I said sternly. “And please say it’s some way of thwarting Arthur.”
“That would be really good.” Henry balanced a mini-basketball on his finger, rotating it. He had been very nervous all evening. “Arthur…” He cleared his throat. “Arthur is obviously planning something. And I hate to admit it, but the thought of him sends cold shivers down my spine.”
Arthur had indeed been back in school that day with his bandaged arm, accepting congratulations like a war hero coming home. Which he obviously was, in the eyes of the other students. After all, when Persephone was running amok, he’d stopped her in her tracks, and then he’d survived the bite of a dangerous venomous snake—by this time they all thought he was the bravest person in the world. They acted as if he had self-sacrificingly thrown himself in front of the snake to save all the students of Frognal Academy from certain death.
Many of the girls, particularly the younger ones, had already been close to fainting away when Arthur came near them, but since last weekend, there’d been an official Arthur Hamilton fan club, with its own Internet page and cards to print out and collect. I was sure that, in secret, Persephone was already a signed-up member.
I’d seen Arthur only once today, and then he’d been besieged by girls wanting him to autograph the cards they were collecting. He didn’t look exactly enthusiastic, more as if he thought it was all a terrible nuisance, but any private satisfaction I felt about that was short-lived. In fact, it lasted only until I imagined a horror scenario in which I saw forty giggling girl zombies rushing toward me with the cards they’d collected and tearing me to pieces. I was sure Arthur would really like that.
But in spite of the stress of dealing with all the hero worship, he’d somehow managed to get Henry and Grayson on their own. It annoyed me that I’d not been there to hear the conversation, particularly as neither of them would tell me exactly what was said.
“Only the usual,” Grayson had told me when I pressed him. “How he can make dreadful things happen anytime he likes, and he wouldn’t spare even those who had once been his best friends, blah, blah, blah.”
The longer our meeting went on this evening, the more certain I felt that they were keeping the details from me on purpose, probably because my name had come up in connection with a particularly nasty kind of death. Or it could have been something else, but hard as they were trying to be as casual as usual, whatever Arthur said to them had clearly scared both Henry and Grayson.
“I’ve found out a good deal more about the demon business.” Grayson could speak more clearly without a mouthful of tart, so now we finally got to hear about the latest stage of his research.
First of all, he held up the plastic bag of feathers. “Marabou. Down feathers dyed black. They cost twenty-five pounds per hundred grams in the handicrafts trade, considerably less wholesale. But I can tell you, a hundred grams of feathers comes to a good many.”
Marabou. Aha. Okay, so that didn’t explain how the darn things got into Grayson’s room, but it was reassuring to know that they hadn’t come wafting down on us from another world. Demons who had to buy the feathers for their terrifying wings in crafts shops couldn’t really be taken seriously.
And that wasn’t all that Grayson had found out.
“I won’t bore you with the details, but it looks like I have a date tomorrow to meet BloodySword66,” he said, looking obviously pleased when our jaws dropped. “Don’t worry, it’s not dangerous. The guy works as an aide in a senior citizens residential home in Islington, and he sounds pleasant enough on the phone.”
“What on earth did you say to get him to agree to meet you?” I stared at Grayson.
“Like I said, I don’t want to bore you with details.” Grayson smiled with becoming modesty. “I can only repeat that with a little psychological empathy, much can be done without trespassing on other people’s dreams.” He paused for a moment, and then sighed and said, “Well, either that, or I just struck lucky. Sometimes it’s an advantage to have a life-size battle droid robot from Star Wars: Episode I … Anyway, tomorrow I hope I’ll be able to tell you how BloodySword66’s novel connects up with Anabel’s demon. By the way, BloodySword66’s real name is Harry Triggs, and he comes from—wait for it!—Liverpool!”
“Like the roofer who founded that sect.” This sounded good. At least one of his discoveries was getting us somewhere.
But Henry wasn’t so optimistic. “I’m afraid it’s far too late for Anabel,” he said, frowning. “We’d better work out how to deal with Arthur without her support. She’s sure that the demon has forgiven him because he survived the snakebite—and I’m afraid she’s going to try out that theory on the three of us next.”
“Are you still sure it was Anabel who left the snake in Arthur’s locker?” I asked.
Henry shrugged. “Who else would it have been? I don’t know any other person who’d be crazy enough to do such a thing.”
He had a good point there.
“As long as she thinks that the demon wants to punish us, Anabel is as much of a danger as Arthur,” Henry went on gloomily. “Who knows what the voices in her head will be whispering to her next?”
“Nothing to do with snakes, I hope,” I murmured.
“But we need Anabel,” said Grayson. “And I’m sure that once she realizes all that demon stuff has no foundation at all—”
Henry didn’t let him finish what he was saying. “I know you still believe that Anabel can see reason, and you think she’d be free of her
delusions if you can show her firm evidence that she’s wrong. But I don’t.” He looked down at his shoes. “I can still see her before me in that mausoleum in the cemetery, with the dagger in her hand, about to cut Liv’s carotid artery.…” He stopped and said no more for a moment. Then he raised his head and looked straight at Grayson. “I don’t mind all that much what Anabel does in her dreams, but I’d feel a lot safer if she was still having psychiatric treatment.”
Grayson shook his head. “I’ve gone so far that I’m not giving up now.”
“But suppose it turns out impossible to cure Anabel?” Henry folded his arms, and for the first time I realized that for Grayson the whole operation wasn’t so much designed to get Anabel’s support against Arthur, but to save her from herself. Henry, who knew Grayson much better than I did, had seen that all along.
For a while they looked at one another in silence.
“I think it’s worth a try,” said Grayson at last. “And it’s the only thing I can do. You two are welcome to work out a plan B. So that we don’t have to embark on plan C.”
“What’s plan C?” I asked.
“Plan C is dealing with Arthur before he can deal with us,” said Grayson vaguely, and there was a small growl from Henry.
I looked from one to the other. They were keeping something from me.
“What did Arthur really say, damn him?” I asked, trying for the last time as Henry said good-bye to me at the front door later. I had to whisper because Florence was looking for something in the cupboard on the wall only a few feet away—something that she had obviously hidden well. “You don’t have to spare my feelings, if that’s what you were thinking.”
“No, I know you have nerves of steel.” Henry kissed me, although Florence promptly cleared her throat, even though she was really searching the cupboard. “Yes, damn Arthur—he’s spoiling everything,” Henry whispered. “Can’t we just talk about something else? Next Saturday, for instance, when I’ve taken my mother, Milo, and Amy to the airport.” His breath was tickling the skin behind my ear. “I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it. And then, I promise, I’ll make sure you forget Arthur and the whole wretched thing.”
Yes, I certainly would if my whole structure of lies collapsed around me. Henry didn’t notice me stiffening in his arms, because at that moment Florence triumphantly held up a perfumed sachet, with a triumphant cry of, “I knew it was here somewhere!” When Henry looked at her inquiringly, she embarked on an explanation, but to be honest I didn’t hear a word of it, I was so busy worrying about Saturday. (So to this day I don’t know why the perfumed sachet was so important.) Henry kissed me good-bye and left me, rigid with shock, in the front hall, where it became clear to me again that there was only one thing for it: tonight I must try getting together with Matt again, and this time I wouldn’t let my subconscious mind kit me out in flesh-colored horror underwear. This time I must go through with it.
Crazily, Matt turned out to be dreaming of flying when I entered his dream. I hadn’t stepped into a flight simulator, however, but the cabin of a fully occupied airbus, ten seats to each row, three by each window side and four in the central aisle. A glance out of the plane, and the soft drone of engines, told me that we were airborne and far above the clouds. And Matt wasn’t the pilot but obviously a passenger. I saw him farther forward in a seat by the aisle, this time in casual clothes and with a beard at least a week old, scribbling something on a newspaper. His red dream door had planted itself right by the door to the toilets, where it fitted in well in spite of its bright color. At least if, like Matt, you didn’t have it right in your line of vision.
To get my first idea of what kind of dream this was, I made a fat woman disappear from the seat by the aisle in the central row, diagonally behind Matt, and sat down in it myself without attracting any attention. Ah, so Matt was dreaming of sitting in a plane and solving a crossword puzzle. Well, why not? I’d once dreamed all night of clearing out a bookcase. In principle, this wasn’t a bad starting point, even if I didn’t necessarily want my first time to be in a crowded aircraft. But I could always change the location once Matt had taken my bait. It might be best to get myself a flight attendant’s uniform and serve him a glass of champagne that he hadn’t asked for. It was a terrible cliché, but I was sure that it wouldn’t bother Matt in a dream.
A flight attendant happened to be coming down the aisle at that moment with a serving cart, and Matt was still concentrating on his newspaper, so I didn’t stop to think for long. A second later, I was the one pushing the cart, and I was a little proud of myself, because no one had noticed me taking over. In fact, I looked a good deal better than the attendant I’d replaced. Not only was I wearing about four kilos less makeup, I had also modified the uniform a bit. It was shorter now, it fitted more closely, and it had a plunging neckline—if those were more clichés, I hoped they were the right ones. I’d added to the contents of the serving cart a bucket of ice with a bottle of champagne in it, as usually reserved for passengers in first and business class, and before I stopped next to Matt and bent down to him, I looked down my own neckline to make sure I was wearing a dark-blue lace bra, and not armored flesh-colored underwear like last time.
“A glass of champagne, sir?” I said in dulcet tones, giving Matt my most charming smile. “Or perhaps something from our exquisite whiskey collection?” I added, when he didn’t reply at once. “We have this twenty-five-year-old single malt, aged in a silver-oak cask … oh!”
Matt had grabbed my wrist and drew me down on the empty seat beside him. He put a finger to his lips. “Psst! Don’t say a word, don’t let anyone notice anything, just listen to me. This is a matter of life and death.”
I stared at him with my eyes wide open. Obviously he didn’t recognize me.
“There are terrorists on board this aircraft,” he went on in a whisper. “They are armed, and they are probably carrying explosives.”
“But that’s impossible,” I whispered back, forgetting for a moment that I wasn’t a real flight attendant. “Our security checks are very rigorous, and…”
Matt shook his head impatiently. “Security men can be bought, and it’s too late for such discussions. Here!” He tore a page out of his paper, and I saw that he hadn’t been solving a crossword but noting down numbers and letters. “These are the numbers of the seats occupied by the terrorists that I’ve spotted so far. But we can assume there are more of them on the upper deck too. It’s up to you to inform the captain. I hope there’s more than one sky marshal on board.”
“Er…” At something of a loss, I took the piece of paper and rolled it up. I didn’t really know my way around this kind of dream. In feature films where terrorists hijack planes, I either went to sleep or changed to another channel. But I knew it wasn’t usually the sky marshal who saved everyone in the end (or everyone who had survived that long), but a brave civilian, a retired police officer, or a recently traumatized FBI agent who just happened to be on the plane. And generally there was a courageous girl flight attendant as well, but she often didn’t believe in the plot and was either flung out of the plane or bled to death from a gunshot wound. Maybe I’d do better to turn into the pregnant woman who was guaranteed to go into premature labor during the movie and had her baby in the midst of the chaos—she usually survived.…
“What are you waiting for?” Matt looked at me impatiently. “The captain must summon help. And I need something I can use as a weapon.” He picked up a bottle of whiskey from my serving cart.
I stood up, smiling as naturally as I could at the rows of seats. Hmm, the guy in 64D did look suspicious.
“Okay,” I murmured, while I wondered how to give this dream a new turn, make it a love story instead of a disaster action thriller. Or even a romantic comedy; that would be okay too. “One more thing: who are you, and how come you know all this?”
“Never mind,” said Matt roughly. “We must get out of here alive, that’s all that matters.”
“A
nd it could be tricky,” the passenger in the seat behind Matt intervened. My heart missed a beat when I recognized Henry. I was sure he hadn’t been there just now. The seat had been occupied by a little boy stuffing himself with M&M’s … aaaarrgh!
“Keep calm, or you’ll endanger the whole operation,” Matt told Henry.
“You don’t understand,” said Henry, winking at me. He looked so damn good that, if this had been a real movie, he’d surely have been the leading man. “Our Liv, in that wildly sexy outfit, is really an undercover agent from MI6, and I’m her colleague. So you’re not on your own.”
I hadn’t recovered from my fright yet, but I was able to breathe again. I wondered feverishly how I could get out of this without giving myself away. The main thing was to keep calm. Henry couldn’t be sure it was the real me—it was equally possible for Matt to be simply dreaming about me. So I stared at him, frowning. “What are you talking about? My name is Marianne Dashwood, and I’m not an agent. And you are clearly mentally disturbed.”
“Let the girl go and see the captain,” hissed Matt. “We don’t know how much time we have left.”
“Liv, Marianne Dashwood is a character in a Jane Austen novel.” Henry stood up and looked straight at me. I was glad we had the serving cart between us. And annoyed that I hadn’t had the presence of mind to give myself a large mole on my cheek or a gap in my teeth—such little details changed your appearance no end and would have made me look much less like myself.
“What kind of sick person are you?” Matt’s subconscious mind could just as well have invented the name, so I looked as haughty as possible. “I don’t know any Jenny Auster, and now kindly let me go to the cockpit!” I turned on my heel and stalked away along the aisle, leaving the serving cart to bar Henry’s way. All the same, he followed me.
“Wait, Liv!”