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My position as Elysium's linchpin and landlady means no one under this roof is allowed to hurt me, but there's no rule against making my life a living hell.
The trick to surviving as the only human in a preternatural asylum is to pretend at all times that I'm the bigger monster, and I've had years to perfect the act.
"You've gained weight. You should probably invest in a bigger skirt." "You should probably invest in a cup of No one asked you," I shoot back. Her slow smirk says she's unimpressed by my comeback, so I give her a good look at both middle fingers.
Casper says I blink like a vacancy sign, which explains why every ghost along the Savannah River has stopped by to see me at some point over the last sixteen years.
"What?" "He could not have named himself," Rose says. "You are mistaken." "You're mistaken," I say. "He wasn't a Nightmare." "Says the Dream who stakes a hundred claims where there should be none," Rose says with an edge in his voice. "You will learn restraint before we find your Nightmare or you will leave him with no choice but to kill everyone you've linked yourself to. Nightmares cannot share. Our existence depends on
"She birthed the Nightmares: living incarnations of Her corruption, physical manifestations of Her wounds, charged with the single task of clearing the Lymanczyc from this realm. But Gaia exists on a system of balances, and where we are poison we must have a cure. Dreams are the answer to this: a people born to save us from ourselves, to act as anchors for our sanity when our power would otherwise tear us apart. They are what takes our magic from here," he gestures to his temple, then moves his hand out between us with his next words, "to here."
If Adam had ever loved me, he certainly hadn't loved me at the end.
"Our people do not have families. Whatever Pharaoh's parents were to him once, they are not even a footnote in his life now because of me. It creates a conflict of interest," he says when I start to argue. "I must always be the most important person in his world, and he in mine. Once the bond between us is sealed, everything in the world outside of us is background noise." "Because that sounds healthy."
"Your Nightmare is going to kill it," he says. "It cannot keep its claim to you." "I don't want a Nightmare," I point out. "Life is enough of a nightmare already." "Don't be selfish," Rose warns me in a low voice. "Your Nightmare's sanity and survival depend on your acceptance." "If I meant anything to my so-called Nightmare, my happiness and safety would not be afterthoughts," I retort. "You will be happy," Rose promises. "You will love him or her because you will not know how to do anything else." "A, that sounds like brainwashing," I say, "and B, are there female Nightmares?"
He looks at Rose now like Rose is the moon and stars in his sky, a constellation upon which he will hang every fierce wish and whispered prayer.
This is the Guard Betty mentioned; this is the resistance that wants to wrest the gates from the gatekeepers before it's too late. They are worn and tired and spread thinner than paste, but they are here and ready to go.
Mom has always known I'm not fully human. Betrayal is a sick and oily heat low in my gut, and I empty my glass twice more in quick succession.
"I am Evelyn Notte of the fourth-tier Downey clan. Where my feet stand my territory begins. I anchor my corners on the people I've brought with me: the draconian faerie, the ghost, and the Brimstone Nightmare."
I shouldn't have used Adam's name in public, but sincerity and will are the keystones of magic and no matter what Adam did to me I can't think of myself as Evelyn Downey. For better or worse everything I am is grounded in his love and betrayal.
"You saved me," she says. "I don't know how, but I'm not going to question it. Thank you." "I dragged you into this," I say. "That kind of makes you my responsibility." "He doesn't approve." "That has nothing to do with you," I say. When she waits for a better explanation, I sigh and say, "It's a long story." "English teacher," Casper reminds me. "I like stories." I look from her to Rose's now-distant figure and empty my drink. "It starts with a war."
"I have trouble finding both my socks in one room, and you're talking about finding one man on the entire west coast. Didn't think you were an optimist." "I can sense Pharaoh inside three hundred kilometers," Rose says. "I'll know exactly where he is at fifty." "Creepy,"
I suppose it's necessary, considering their survival depends on one another, but it's still weird. Not that I have any room to argue the point, considering what I did to Rose back at Pariah. I can still feel my magic stretching between us like a taut thread.
"Also, we use miles in the US. Just saying." "Your ignorance has been noted."
"You have terrible taste in men, Evelyn." "I noticed," I mutter.
"She's staying here?" I ask. "But—" I don't know how to finish that. I've seen a lot of tenants come and go, but Betty was one of my longest-lasting. Not a friend, not necessarily an ally, but still a constant. Now she is gone without so much as a goodbye.
"I didn't think you could drive," Casper says. "I can. Kind of," I answer in a tight voice, but I get us out of the garage without crashing into anyone else's car. "We're all going to die." "You're already dead," I remind her.
"You were going to let him have you," I accuse him. "You would have rather died than use me, except he threatened Pharaoh's life." Rose doesn't answer, but his silence says enough.
"A Nightmare initiates the bond, but a Dream must accept of his own volition. It is very painful being this close to salvation," he reaches out and stops his hand just a breath from where my fingers are clenched on the steering wheel, "and knowing there is nothing you can do to close the gap. Nothing our power does to us hurts us
"No Dream wants this power. Dreams are born ignorant to the truth of their existence and so create lives outside of us. They know what they are giving up by agreeing to us. It took Pharaoh almost a year to accept me, and I nearly destroyed us both in my desperation to convince him to give in. Do not do to your Nightmare what he did to me. Take this time to come to terms with your purpose in life."
and sugar to rot my teeth. "Road trip?" the clerk asks when I return to him. "Highway to hell," I say. "On a schedule."
We hedged our bets on them being too afraid to summon us, but we will answer if they call." "Why did you do it?" "In all the world there is only one Pharaoh," Rose says. "I will not risk him."
If I can't have answers, I can at least have the last word:
"I thought we were in a hurry." "Being in a hurry does not require we rush," Rose points out. "There is only so much we can do when so many pieces have been scattered to the winds. We must buy time for Pharaoh to make it back to me and for the Nightmares to return to the fight. Moving too quickly without these safety measures in place just ensures our death."
"Evey?" Casper says, slow and careful. "You all right there?" Not in sixteen years, but I settle for a tart, "Peachy."
"Just out of curiosity, do you ever go to nice places?" I ask. "Nightmare," Rose says, with all the intonation of a Duh.
"You are unsubtle in hiding your own needs and wants behind very real problems." "It's a win-win situation."
As much as I desperately want to see my mother again, I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to say to her. I needed her when I lost Ciara. I needed her when the gatekeepers gutted me and when Elysium stole me for its own. I've needed her so many times these awful, many years, and she's been off fighting a war she never once explained to me. I'm as likely to hit her as hug her.
"Going with Rose means letting him pair me up with a Nightmare, and that's an arrangement I'll never be free of. I don't have it in me to be chained to anyone or anything else ever again." "Even you've got to admit that you're being selfish." "He's the gods' favorite, not me. The war doesn't hinge on me being the self-sacrificing one. Now come on,"
I wish I'd taken more of Dean's beer. More than that I wish he'd had something harder to offer us, something that would make it easier to disconnect from everything that's happened these last three days.
"You're afraid of water," I accuse him. "Really, Brimstone? Hellfire and gatekeepers and gods, and this is what you lose your shit over? Water? I'm actually a little disappointed."
"I told you I almost destroyed Pharaoh and me both when he would not agree to be my Dream," Rose says, with a vacant stare aimed past my shoulder. "Notte already knew he could not afford to lose either of us; he knew I was what he needed if he wanted to get his war off the ground. So he made sure I understood where the line was between my needs and Pharaoh's consent. He put me in a dream like this and he let me drown."
"For three days," Rose says, slow and biting like every word is killing him, "he let me drown. I could not die, and I could not wake up."
I can only stare at the tense line of his back as he sets off again, my words a coil of barbed wire and thorns in my throat.
I have daydreamed of beating the life from Adam a hundred thousand times since he left me to die, but right now that need burns with more desperation than anger. I want him dead. I need him dead. I need to know that he can never hurt anyone else again the way he hurt us.
"That outrage you feel on my behalf is a waste of your energy and intrudes on Pharaoh's rights. It is his duty to protect me. It will never be yours." "You can't tell me my husband drowned a child and then tell me not to care." "You are not supposed to care," Rose insists.
"What about me?" I ask. "Does me being a Dream make me an exception?" "You are important to me," Rose says. "I will protect you until protecting you means putting Pharaoh in harm's way." He doesn't outright say he doesn't care about me; he doesn't have to. Rose waits a beat to make sure I understand, then says, "I have told you again and again: you will cease to care about everything and everyone when your Nightmare is found. Your vampire, your ghost, your dead dragons—they are all background noise. You just don't know it yet." "What about you?" "Perhaps you will hate me when you are reborn.
...more
A blade can be nothing but a blade. Only the hand that picks it up knows that there was ever anything else worth holding."
"We have to find dry land." "Hey," I say before he can take that first step. He doesn't look back, but he waits for me. I think of everything I could say, then settle for: "I can swim. I won't let you drown."
I consider his back for a moment as he wades further away from me, then kiss his nickname against my fingertips and bury it under the waves. I leave "Rose" down here with this ice-cold current and dread, and I set off after Sol as quickly as I can move through such deep water.
I'm moving before I honestly trust my body not to give out on me and stretch out half on top of him. I hook an arm around his shoulder, uncaring of the asphalt that eats rivets in my knuckles, and pull him as tight against me as possible. The anxious, prickling knot in my spine is a seesawing mess between anger that he put us both through that and fear over what we survived. I don't know which side is going to win, so I bite my tongue and refuse to speak.
I hesitate for just a moment before taking it, and he pulls me to my feet like I weigh no more than a sack of flour. I wonder if I imagine the brief, tight squeeze of his fingers before he lets go. Maybe it's thanks he can't say, for a promise I couldn't make but didn't break.
fall asleep to the sound of the road, and at least in my own head I don't dream.
"If you get us killed I will come back and haunt you," I warn him. "I can't see ghosts," Sol reminds me. "I'll figure something out."
"Pharaoh hates me," I tell Sol. "If he wants you to hurt me, will you?" "We need you," Sol reminds me. "I will not let him kill you." "I said hurt," I say. "I said kill,"
"Blade, hand. Dreams will always have lead in bonded pairs since it is their total sacrifice that makes our existence possible. If Pharaoh is fully committed to the thought of hurting you there is only so much I can do to restrain him." "He's committed," I say. "He faced down a flock of gatekeepers to get to me."
