Roane’s voice was so far away.
“Roane,” I heard myself whimper.
“She’s going into shock, Lucas.”
That wasn’t Roane. I frowned, but I felt myself falling backwards and then something caught me. I knew it was Roane, but I couldn’t see him. I opened my mouth to talk to him and ask him who had come into the room, but no sound came out.
“Her heart is going crazy. You have to put her out.”
“Shut up, Wren!” Roane snarled.
“Her body is changing, but she’s still with us. Put her out, Lucas! She’s scared right now. Put her out and she’ll be fine when she wakes up.”
I felt Roane’s chest jerk upwards, as if he couldn’t make the decision. I heard the struggle in his voice. “I… the dreams, Wren. I can’t… you don’t know what they go through.”
“No.” The girl was cold. “This girl is not Talia. This girl is the new one and you have to put her out. She has to have those dreams, Lucas. They all have to have those dreams. She has to know what she is. Put her out.”
I felt the surrender in Roane’s arms before he bent over my body. His hand wrapped around my throat and then…
“Welcome.” The voice was harsh and sarcastic, but also upbeat.
I looked up and saw nothing. I was in a black hole.
“You know you’re dreaming. We know you’re dreaming. Everyone knows you’re dreaming.” The words came again. They rushed at me from behind this time.
I sat up, shaken, but was surprised to find strength surge through my body. I flexed my hand slowly and held it in front of me. My hand wasn’t my hand. I saw through my hand, through my skin and my blood. Everything was silver. It ran through my entire body and was pumping into my heart.
Oh my god—Roane! Kates! Anyone!
“Stop whining.” It whipped around me again. I heard a laugh this time.
“Who—what are you?”
“This is the circus, didn’t you know? We’re in Alice’s Wonderland with the seven berry gummy bears. Exciting, right? I know you’re on the edge of your seat. I would be if I had a seat, but I don’t. I’m shapeless. I have no form. I have no solid. I’m the gray in between.” The voice bounced around me.
“You’re psychotic. That’s what you are.” I drew in a breath.
“I like you. I didn’t like the last one. She was weak.”
“Weak?”
“Yeah.”
Suddenly, the girl from the roof stood in front of me. She wasn’t poised on the edge of the roof, not like that night or in my dream. This time she wore a yellow sweater over white jeans. Her red curls hung loosely down to her waist.
“Her.” The voice was disgusted.
“I was there that night.”
“She died because you were there. If you hadn’t shown up on that roof, she couldn’t have died. She could’ve stabbed herself in the artery and she would’ve lived through it. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
I closed my eyes, but I saw the same thing. Blackness. I opened my eyes and the girl was gone.
“It’s annoying when you do that.”
“Do what?” But I didn’t want to know. I wished that I would wake up.
“When something happens that you don’t like, you try to escape it. You should stop. It’s a bad habit. Freaky Cinderella needs to see her toad or she might step wrong and squash him.”
“I’m in a psych hospital, right? I’m having hallucinations and I’m actually schizophrenic. That’s what you are. You’re me talking to me and this doesn’t exist.”
“Little Jack can’t run without his Jill. The pail won’t let them.”
Yep. I was insane. “I need to go right now. I can pinch myself. I’ll wake up. Or I can kill myself. You always wake up before you die, right?”
“There are rules, Jackass.” It screamed this time and with a blink of the eye I saw the girl again. She stood in front of me, looking through me, and I saw the hazel eyes from before. They weren’t sad or content this time. They were terrified and she quaked beneath my stare. Then someone passed me and I saw that she didn’t tremble because of me. She knelt as a black form loomed above her. It was a person, but the shape was too blurry. I couldn’t see who it was. I really wanted to know who it was. “Trees stand on the ground. The sun sets and rises again. The moon beams down. Waves roll back and forth and what’s underneath it all? Rules.”
“Who is that?” I gestured to the black shape. Something was before me and I needed to know what it was. I felt the urgency shoot through my body and I glanced from the corner of my eye to my arm. I screamed as I saw the silver course through all of my body and explode outwards into a blinding light. The black shape was illuminated a man with a scar that ran from his eyebrow down his face to end below his neck. He held a jagged dagger in his hand and blood dripped from the tip.
“Who is that?”
“Would Jack and Jill have run up the hill if they had no pail?”
I felt a poke in my side. “Stop it.”
The voice laughed. “That wasn’t me, Freaky Cinderella.”
“Don’t call me Freaky Cinderella,” I snarled and whirled around. Nothing. Darkness. As I whirled the other way I saw the same girl, but the scarred man was gone. She held the dagger this time and I watched, frozen, as she took the knife to her arm and gritted her teeth. As sweat beaded over her eyebrows, she started to cut her own skin.
“She was the Freaky Cinderella,” the voice whispered in my ear.
“Who are you?”
“The water.”
“Who’s the pail?”
“You.”
Not the answer I was expecting. “And Jack and Jill are...?”
“Wrong answer, Freaky Snow White.”
I was Snow White now. “Could you pick one fairy tale and keep with it? I’m getting confused.”
“You haven’t been kissed yet. The seven berry gummy bears won’t let you be kissed. I wouldn’t like them if I were you.”
“Thank goodness that you’re not me then,” I snapped back.
There was a pause. I felt surprise in the air. “The seven berry gummy bears need to die.”
“I’ll eat them. How about that?” I was nearing the end of my rope. The voice was starting to irritate me. I liked gummy bears and I hated fairy tales. “Reveal yourself. Now.” I felt the resistance in the air. It swirled around me. As I pulled one way, it pulled the other way. Then I screamed, “Reveal!”
The air exploded. I blinked from the force of it and then I saw myself staring back at me. The real me was annoyed. “Who are you?”
“The water.”
Oh yes. I was a sarcastic brat. “No riddles. Who are you and who am I?”
The other me smirked. “I’m the water. You’re the pail, but you need to figure out who Jack and Jill are.”
“Humans and vampires.”