Soulcleaver, p.22
Soulcleaver, page 22
part #2 of Dreamwalker Chronicles Series
“Well, it will be if Jack will release the couch from the wards on the ceiling.”
At Marshall’s enquiring look, Jack said, “Hey, the girl needed convincing.”
“And I need somewhere comfy to do magic.”
“I guess you don’t need convincing anymore, huh?”
Nova cast a narrowed eye at the glowing portal behind him. “Not so much, no.”
Smirking, Jack pushed past her. “I guess I can put the couch back, then.” As he sauntered down the hallway, he called over his shoulder, “Samantha, can you ask Clayton to bring some of those phyllo cheese things from the other day. I’m going to need about fifty of them.”
“You got it.”
“Any other requests?”
“Sushi.” Nova hadn’t been fed since her escape attempt, and she was officially starving.
“Pringles.” Adelle glared at Nova as if daring her to comment on her food choices.
“Roast beef sandwiches. At least ten.”
The last was Marshall. Nova looked at him in bemusement. Either he and Jack really liked to eat, or they really liked to share.
By the time Nova, Marshall, and Adelle made it to the dreaming room, Jack had put it back to rights. There was now only one sofa, and it was properly positioned on the floor like the rest of the furnishings. She looked around and took in the posh digs for the first time. If possible, it was even more richly decorated than her own house, so clearly these people had money. At least she wasn’t slumming it while she waited for the insanity around her to unfold.
Nova purposely chose to sit in the armchair next to the couch. While she was certain Jack could put her on the ceiling no matter where she chose to sit, the idea of sitting on the couch again made her feel sick to her stomach, so it was best to avoid it. Marshall planted himself on the floor in front of her and began to pull ice-blue crystals from his pockets. Once he had accumulated a small pile of them, he humphed in satisfaction.
“That’s all of them. It’s less than you deserve to have, but better than nothing, I suppose.”
She wrinkled her forehead in confusion. “Thanks?”
“Sorry, I’m starting at the end of the story.” Marshall ran a hand through his hair in a gesture that seemed familiar to Nova.
In fact, everything he did seemed familiar to her, now that she thought of it. She turned her attention to Jack where he hovered behind Marshall, looking serious in a way that seemed totally opposite to what she felt he should be. Then she saw Adelle sitting perched on the arm of the couch, seemingly uninterested in what was happening in the room, but something about the bored, angry expression on her face made Nova think, This isn’t Adelle. She’s not always so angry.
“Do I . . . Do I know you guys from somewhere?” She waved a hand in the air trying to erase the words. “I mean, from more than the dream we shared. Do I actually know you in real life, or was that just something you told me to trick me into staying?”
The tension in the room became tangible as Adelle gave up all pretense of ignoring her. Jack’s frown deepened, and Marshall’s face became so inscrutable he seemed carved from stone.
When Marshall finally spoke, it was without inflection. “We’ve known you since you were a child, Nova.”
“Then why don’t I remember you?”
“Because your father had a monster eat your memories.”
Adelle gave a choked gasp, and Jack left Marshall’s back to wrap an arm around her, whispering something into her ear Nova couldn’t hear.
“These are all the memories I was able to salvage after I killed it.” Marshall held the pile of crystals up to her as if in supplication.
“My father did . . . why would he do that?”
“I don’t know for certain, but I think it was so he could control you more easily. If you couldn’t remember your old life, you’d be more tractable for his purposes.”
“And what are those?”
Marshall shook his head. “I’ve never known why he took you. Your mother would never say.”
“My mother? You knew my mother?”
A wry smile. “I know her very well.”
“Wait. She’s still alive?”
“Alive and still incredibly angry at us for losing her only daughter.”
Nova’s mind was reeling. Her mother was still alive? Any lingering belief she’d had that she was being held hostage by rivals of her father had shattered. If they could produce her mother for her, this was beyond anything she could imagine.
“I want to see her.”
“Trust me, you will. I contacted her right after Marshall brought you here. If I know her, she’ll be here by tonight. Tomorrow at the latest,” Jack said.
Nova brought a trembling hand to the crystals being offered her and touched one. “What do I do?”
Marshall grinned in a self-deprecating fashion. “I’m not exactly sure. I mean, they are a part of you, so they should want to be, um, in you again. If you were like us, you could just imagine them back into you. But since you’re not, maybe one of us can do it for you.”
“Actually, she is one of us.”
Marshall whipped his head to look at Adelle. “What?”
Jack’s face drained of all color, and he hissed. “No . . .”
“Why do you think I hit you when I saw you? Aeyli spilled the beans on you, I know what you did, Marshall. Tell me you were able to fix it. Tell me it wasn’t too late.”
Instead of answering, Marshall stared at the crystals in his hands.
“Jack?” Adelle’s voice had taken on a note of hysteria.
“He couldn’t get it free again. And neither could I. Maybe the two of us—”
“This isn’t important right now, you two.”
“Not important? How can you say that?”
“Because it’s already done. I can’t go back and undo it, but I can do this. Just let me have this, okay?”
Nova looked between the three and felt a wave of familiarity flow over her when she realized she had no idea what they were talking about. Something about being left in the dark made her feel . . . nostalgic? She shook her head.
“I don’t know what drama is causing this fight, but since none of you seem to want to clue me in, maybe we could steer the subject back to the topic at hand? Adelle, this is the second time you’ve claimed I have magic. What did you mean by that?”
“I can see it in you. And if these two knuckleheads looked closely, they could see it in you too, instead of seeing what they expect to see. Honestly, you’d think two seasoned guardians would know better—”
“Addy,” Marshall said in warning, then turned to focus on Nova.
At first Nova thought he was staring at her chest, and she flushed, but realized he was looking a little bit lower. It didn’t take long before the confusion on his face turned to surprise and worry.
“The magic was yours.” Marshall bit his lip in consternation. “When I was in the ’Scape, I checked you over to make sure you were okay. Once I cleared the dissonance blocking your memories of the dream, I went to retrieve the chunk of my soul I stuck onto yours so I could find you—”
“You actually did that?”
Marshall waved her words away impatiently. “It was the only way to find you. Anyway, when I went to retrieve it, I saw a foreign magic attached to it, binding it tightly to your essence. In my arrogance, I never considered the magic could actually be yours.” Marshall fell back on his heels.
“What does that mean.”
“It means my brother is fucked.” Adelle snapped. “You soul is going to eat his unless we can find a way to get his free from you.”
Nova was speechless. She had no point of reference in her life to even begin to comprehend what was happening. She was eating some random guy’s soul? Or not so random, if she believed what they were telling her. And he’d done it so he could find her and rescue her from her father?
What if they were telling her the truth? What if her father had kidnapped her and stolen her memories? What if these people were actually her friends? The only way she was going to know what was going on was if she could remember what they were talking about.
“I want them.” She blurted out. “My memories, I want them back. Right now. How do I do this?”
Marshall sat back up, looking happy to have the topic shift from him and his impending doom. “Well, like I said before, if you were a dreamwalker—and you might well be—all you need to do is hold them in your hand and imagine them being a part of yourself.”
Nova reached out and took a small one, marveling at how right it felt against her skin. She enjoyed the hum of it and imagined it sinking into her, becoming one with her and—
Her mother smiled down at her with her secret smile as they sat outside the bank.
“Don’t worry, Nova-chan, this is a big bank, they’ll never miss it.”
Nova nodded, trusting her Okaa-san implicitly. She would never steal if it wasn’t okay.
Her mother closed her fingers around a handful of dried leaves, and when she opened them, they were replaced with a wad of hundred dollar bills.
Nova smiled. “Does this mean we get to eat today?”
Her mother smiled back and nodded, and Nova noticed a sheen in her eyes.
Nova opened her eyes to see three other pairs staring at her expectantly. “Another.”
This time, Nova went for a bigger one.
“Look at me! Look at me!” One of the new boys was currently hanging upside down and backward from the stairs at the top of the slide.
Adelle, Nova’s new best friend, stood at the bottom of the stairs with her arms up ready to try and catch him if he fell. “Your mom is going to kill you if she catches you, Jack,” she called up to him.
Jack just laughed and pretended like he was about to slip.
“Oh for . . . Marshall, make him stop!” Adelle yelled to her brother
Marshall climbed up the stairs, but instead of making Jack come down, he climbed up and over him. Once he reached the top he shouted, “That’s nothing, wanna see me go down on my head?”
Adelle threw him an acid look, and Nova covered her eyes but left enough space to peek between her fingers
Jack scrambled around until he was right side up. “Do it! I dare you!”
“Well, if you dare me . . .” Marshall laughed and slid down on his back with his head pointing down. He shot off the end of the slide faster than he had anticipated and flew through the air for a couple of feet before slamming back down to the earth, knocking the wind out of him.
“My turn!” Jack followed suit and would have landed on top of him if Marshall hadn’t rolled out of the way at the last moment. They lay side by side, choking, wheezing, and laughing like maniacs.
“Look at that, we didn’t die.”
“That was stupid.” Adelle said, sounding so grown up, Nova did a double take.
“But it looked like fun.” Nova said quickly so the boy wouldn’t get his feelings hurt.
He sat up and looked up with sparkling and mischievous eyes. “It was totally both. Hi, I’m Marshall.” He reached out his hand.
She took his hand and shook it. “I’m Nova. Will you show me how to do that?”
“I don’t know, won’t your mom get mad?”
“She’s already left for the day, and the teachers aren’t watching. See? Tommy got his toe stuck in the drinking fountain again.” She pointed at several adults huddled around a small dark-haired boy standing on one leg and looking perplexed. “If we’re quick, they won’t notice.”
He looked at Adelle, who shook her head, then he looked at Jack, who nodded emphatically. “Sure, why not?”
This time it took longer for her head to clear. “You were kids. I knew you when we were kids?”
“Well, we knew you when you were a kid. We’re a bit older than you. Marshall here is a hundred and forty-two.”
“What? But you looked like kids!”
“Dreamwalkers can Craft their bodies to look however they want. Our job was to protect you, and the best way to do it was to be around you all the time. You mother wanted you to have a normal childhood, so we became kids.”
“That makes sense.”
“Really?”
Nova realized all three of them were looking at her warily.
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“It’s just,” Marshall said, “you didn’t take it as well last time we told you.”
“Oh.” Nova bit her lip. “I’m sorry?”
Jack laughed, and Adelle cracked the ghost of a smile.
Marshall looked confounded.
There was so much she didn’t know, and she hated the way it made her feel. “I want another one.” Nova snatched up the biggest one she could find and absorbed it.
He was lost. Nova could tell just by looking at the stranger sitting in the garden. His face looked like Okaa-san’s when she was trying to remember where she had parked the car, or when she was trying to find their newest ‘home.’
The stranger wasn’t wandering around though, or asking anyone for directions. No, he was only staring blankly at the frogs in the pond, but she could tell he was definitely lost. He looked so confused, and no one was stopping to help.
Why weren’t the grown-ups doing anything?
The garden was quiet, but hardly deserted. Most people seemed to use it as a path to get from one part of the complex to another, so a fair number of people had passed by the lost stranger. Oddly enough, everyone fell silent when they came near him but started whispering furiously to one another once they had walked by.
Was it a game? No, grown-ups didn’t play games as far as she could tell. Maybe it was a test and he was supposed to figure something out all alone and no one was allowed to help.
Well. No one had told her she wasn’t allowed to help. Okaa-san told her to stay in the garden during her meeting with the fancy man with the shiny buttons, but she hadn’t told her not to help anyone. With that decided, she marched forward and presented herself.
“Do you at least have a map?” Nova knew the best place to start would be from the beginning. And you couldn’t find the beginning without a map.
“A . . . what?” The stranger’s voice was soft like the velvet pillow her mother had made for her when the nightmares began. It made her instantly like him.
“I can’t help you find where you are going without a map, silly.” She nudged him over and plopped down beside him, paying no mind to the stares from other people.
His generous mouth twitched at one corner. It was obviously a mouth made for smiling. She decided she would help him get unlost so he could get back to smiling again. Then told him as much.
The storm clouds resting on his brow lifted a little. “What is your name, Galaxy Girl?” He tapped the nebula she had painstakingly painted on her blue sneakers with the tip of his boot.
“It’s Nova, sir.”
“Nice to meet you, Miss Nova. I’m sorry to say that my . . . map is lost. Gone for good, I’m afraid.” His gentle brownish-green eyes clouded over even more. Nova though he was lucky to have multicolored eyes.
“Can’t you get another one? They have tons of them at the gas station. When Okaa-san comes back we’ll go and get you one.” She bounced in place, eager for her mama to return. This would be easy after all.
“It was the only one of its kind. I think I’m going to have to let it go.”
“Is there anything I can do to help you find your way?”
“Don’t worry about me, Galaxy Girl. I’ll draw a new map if I have to.” The stranger’s face was breaking her heart. There must be something she could do to help.
“Nova!” She could hear her mother’s worried voice calling for her.
“Be right there! I’d better go.” She looked anxiously at the sad stranger, then she had an idea. Her mother had told her to save this treat until she was so bored she couldn’t stand it, but her mother was out of the meeting, so she didn’t need it any more. “Take this, you need it more than I do.”
Nova handed the stranger the heart-shaped cookie her mama had given her. In the center, there was a shooting star drawn in icing. The stranger didn’t say anything, but he did look much less lost than before, so she counted it as a win.
She skipped up to Mama. “All done?”
“Yes, love. For now anyway. What did you do while I was gone?”
“I tried to help someone who looked lost. I don’t know if I was any help or not.” Nova pointed at the stranger now staring at the cookie in his hands.
“You were so sad.” Nova blinked back tears.
Before she could stop herself, she reached out and put a hand on Marshall’s cheek. He closed his eyes and went very still.
“Was that day—the one in the garden with the cookie—the day you became my bodyguard.”
Marshall opened his eyes and gave a sad smile. “Yes.”
Any resentment Nova had been holding onto from the kidnapping picked that moment to pack up its bags and take off for parts unknown. Now she was left with a seething cauldron of confusion in its place. She remembered loving her mom. Hell, she actually had a mom. And the man kneeling before her so brokenly was a man she’d developed an instant crush on when she was six years old.
Who was also over a hundred years older than her.
Who she was still petting.
She did her best to recover her wayward hand as subtly as she could, without drawing attention to it, but couldn’t help notice Adelle narrowing her eyes as she tracked the action.
Trying to distract everyone—and herself—from this new revelation, Nova leapt on a new thought and ran with it. “Wait, so if you guys are bodyguards, what were you doing fighting fake zombies in my dreams?”
“Now she’s asking the real questions.” Jack propped a hip on the edge of chair, looking much more relaxed than he had moments ago.
“Were you . . .” Nova searched for the right word. “Tracking me through my dreams?”
“We haven’t been able to find you in the ’Scape since you were taken.” Marshall said. “When we found you the other night, it was a complete surprise to us, which is why I attached my soul to yours.”
