Grey Haven (Book 1: The Dreamer Chronicles)

Sully didn’t stay long when we got back to his shop. He’d had enough excitement for one day, and I was eager for him to go. Carrie, Tommy, and I had things to discuss that we couldn’t talk about in front of him. I was worried, though. Sully wasn’t a dreamer, which meant the shade wouldn’t be able to kill him unless Sully learned how to dream in the next two hours, but he could still try to take Sully over. I didn’t want to look in Sully’s eyes and see Bastian. I shivered at the thought.

As Sully said a rushed goodbye at the top of the stairs, I cut off his words with a quick plea to wait. I went inside the room he had loaned us and to my bag. I pulled out a pill bottle and poured out one pill. I returned to Sully and held it out to him. “This will help you sleep,” I told him. “Please take it. It’s important.”

Sully’s hand wrapped around the pill. He nodded and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said.

“Be careful,” Tommy warned.

Sully acknowledged the warning and left with a small wave. I waited until he was safely in his truck before I closed the door.

“You gave him one of your pills?” Carrie asked.

“It’s better if he doesn’t dream at all. I don’t want the shade to find him,” I said.

“Let’s just hope he takes it,” Tommy said.

“After what we just saw, I’m pretty sure he will,” I said.

Tommy sat down on the edge of the mattress. His expression was full of fear and doubt. It was the same fear I felt at seeing a man ripped to pieces.

Carrie paced in front of him. Her hair flashed warmly in the light as she paced from the door to the window. I sat down next to Tommy and put an arm around his shoulders. He smiled tightly but didn’t say anything to try to cheer us up. It would take us a while to get the image of the dead man out of our heads.

“Bastian is back in the dreamworld, so we can’t deal with him here. It’s useless to try without Grey Haven’s support, so we leave that to them. That leaves us with the problem of the traitor at Grey Haven,” Carrie decided. “The traitor has been careful to keep a low profile, so he’s not going to be easy to find. But if we take the traitor out, Bastian won’t have such an easy time doing whatever he has planned next. That should be our focus now.”

“You must really miss Grey Haven’s library,” Tommy said, an attempt at his normal humor. “I’ve never seen you this worked up.”

“I think she misses the teachers,” I said.

“That’s worse,” Tommy said, expression mock horrified.

“Can you two be serious?” Carrie huffed.

“Sure,” Tommy agreed easily. “I’ll be Serious 1, and Jules can be Serious 2.”

“Excuse you?” I complained. “I’m 1 and you’re 2.”

“Guys…” Carrie tried.

“Fine but can Carrie be Barbara? She looks like a Barbara,” Tommy added.

Carrie glared. Tommy grinned cheekily. “Where do we start searching for the traitor?” Carrie asked, glare lingering on him.

“Well, if the shade was alive we could have followed him to the traitor,” I said.

“But he’s not,” Carrie said impatiently, dismissing the idea with a wave.

“We could go back to Grey Haven and find the traitor that way,” I said.

“Too dangerous,” Carrie said.

“Or we could get some sleep and talk about it in the morning,” Tommy suggested.

“I like that plan,” I said, pointing at him. “That’s a good plan.”

Carrie stopped pacing, her eyes dancing with fear. She was afraid to sleep, but not because of the shade. It was because of the man we had seen torn to pieces. She didn’t want the same thing to happen to her. It was the first time I had seen Carrie so scared. Reassuring her came as naturally as it did with Tommy.

“We’ll barricade the door and windows,” I said. “No one will be able to get in.”

“We could use some sleep,” Tommy added.

“Fine,” Carrie decided.

She started shoving boxes over to the door and Tommy and I got up to help her. We used every box and piece of junk in the room to block the door and the small window next to it. Tommy and I then made sure the windows on the opposite wall were locked. Finally, Carrie nodded in approval. She went to her bag, and I was pleased to see that I wasn’t the only one who had thought to bring the pills. Tommy dug into his bag when he caught sight of Carrie’s bottle and pulled out his.

“Here’s to no dreams,” Carrie said, unscrewing the top and downing a pill with a gulp.

Tommy pretended to toast with his bottle, then took his in tandem with me. I kicked my shoes off, got on the bed, and felt my eyes start to close. Still worked up over what we had seen, Carrie and Tommy got in the bed with me, on either side. We didn’t touch, but I knew they needed the comfort of other people close by. No one wanted to sleep alone tonight.

Dreamless sleep took me over.

‡

The next thing I was aware of was the daylight streaming in through the windows and the feeling of pressure on my chest. I opened my eyes, groggy from the pill, and assessed my surroundings.

Carrie and Tommy had taken over the bed. Carrie was on her side and had her back against my side. Her legs were stretched out in front of her as if she were trying to touch her toes. Tommy was curled around me. He had his arm over my stomach and his head on my shoulder. My arm was numb from the weight. Carrie’s snores filled the space, her injured nose making the noise deeper and more guttural than I had ever expected from her.

I laughed at them and gently pushed Tommy off. He shifted away reluctantly, muttering something unintelligible under his breath. Carrie grunted around her snores and rolled so that she was on her stomach. Tommy’s nose twitched. I stretched out the arm Tommy had been sleeping on and tried to keep my laughter from waking them. My arm tingled painfully as it woke up, but the pain was welcome. It was a reminder that I hadn’t died in the night.

I peed in the dingy bathroom, and then pulled the junk blockading the door away and went outside. The air was cool and crisp, invigorating. I sat on the steps to put on my shoes, feeling rejuvenated and less morbid than I had the previous night. I went in search of breakfast and coffee, aware that the others might not be able to push away the fear nearly as quickly. It would take sustenance and time.

When I got back to the apartment, Carrie and Tommy were still asleep. I set their food on the floor and went to the window, to look at the street. It was mostly empty – it was too early for anything beyond coffee shops to be open – but that was fine with me. I watched the sun stretch out over the roads, feeling peace in the quiet that surrounded the city.

Carrie was the first to wake up. She awoke with a jerk, as if she had been electrocuted. She sat up on the bed, her hair sticking out at odd angles and her eyes wide. “Where’s the shade?” she asked, ready for a fight.

“No shade. Just breakfast,” I said.

Carrie blinked heavily a couple of times, refocusing on the present. Her fear turned to sheepish relief. “Oh.” She squirmed over to the edge of the bed and put her head in her hands. I watched her, knowing what was on her mind. She was back in the room with the man who had been torn to pieces.

“Thinking about it won’t make it better,” I said. “We have to focus on what’s next.”

“Have you ever seen anything that awful?” Carrie asked.

I hesitated. There were some truths I hadn’t shared with Carrie and Tommy. They were truths better left buried. “Uh, any ideas on how to track the traitor?” I asked.

“No,” Carrie admitted.

“It’s possible that all we can do is wait for the shade to reform and follow him back to the traitor,” I said.

“That could take years,” Carrie pointed out.

“Going back to Grey Haven might be our only option,” I said. “It might be the only way.”

“Putting yourself close to a traitor who knows you’re on to him is exceptionally stupid,” Carrie said.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” I said. “The traitor has spent his time trying to hide proof of his existence. Instead of killing me, he knocks me out and runs away. He steals and burns books instead of running around stabbing people. He doesn’t exactly strike me as a doer.”

“Your gut feeling doesn’t reassure me,” Carrie snarked back. She took a sip of coffee and stood, stretching out. She joined me and looked out the window. The traffic on the street had increased, bringing with it life and energy. Cars moved to the rhythm of the lights and people walked to work. The sight seemed to wake Carrie up more than the coffee. “We’ll make a list,” she finally decided.

“A list of what?” I asked.

“The people at Grey Haven who have the means and knowledge to betray us,” Carrie said.

I didn’t see how that would help us, but I didn’t argue with her. She needed a plan. A plan was better than thinking about the man who had been murdered. “Sounds good,” I said.

“Then…we can follow the people on the list and find out if they are bad or not,” she added, not hearing me. “People always give away their lies eventually.”

They hadn’t found mine out yet, but again, I said nothing.

She took another sip of coffee, her expression uplifted. As she planned our next move in her head, Tommy woke up. He stretched out like a cat searching for daylight, taking up most of the bed, and gave a funny snort. He slowly blinked open his eyes, eyelashes fluttering, and stared at the ceiling, a smile on his face. His smile fell as whatever happiness he had found in sleep left, and he tilted his head to look at us, to make sure we were safe.

“Morning,” I said. “Breakfast?”

Tommy nodded and crawled over to the food I had placed on the floor. He ate in silence, content to leave Carrie to her plotting and me to my worrying.

“I need some air,” I told them after a minute.

“Company?” Tommy asked, his mouth full of food.

“Nah,” I said. “Eat.”

When I was outside, I realized I didn’t want air as much as I wanted a distraction. I knew there were several alternatives, but most of them were too dangerous. I walked down the stairs and to the back door of Sully’s shop. Sully had a radio in the back, one that Vince listened to during the day. It was a safer distraction than wandering the streets.

I picked the lock on Sully’s shop, went inside, and carefully re-locked the door, so that I didn’t get any surprise visitors. I turned the radio on and sat at Sully’s desk with my feet on his table. Music blared from the tiny speakers; it was an old song but a good one. The song switched to a man’s voice. The man told jokes and tried to be engaging. His voice was grating and not the sort of distraction I was looking for. I switched the channel. A woman’s voice took over. “…Found dead on the front lawn this morning. An officer at the scene said that he had, I quote, ‘never seen anything like it.’ The investigation is ongoing, and we will continue to report additional information as soon as it is available.”

I switched the channel again. A different song came on. It had a hard, electric guitar mixed with a driving drumbeat and a man singing at the top of his vocal range. It was loud and exactly what I needed. A similar song was on when Sully arrived. He opened the door, made a face at my choice of music, and reached out to turn the music down.

“Hey,” I said.

There was a pause. “Hi,” he said eventually.

“How’d you sleep?” I asked.

“I’ve never slept so well in my life,” Sully said. “What was that pill anyway?”

“Sleep medicine. You want to talk about last night?”

“What’s there to talk about?” Sully asked.

“You seemed pretty freaked out,” I said.

“I was…I am,” Sully said. “But that doesn’t solve anything.”

“It’s okay to be scared,” I said.

“I’m…” Sully crossed his arms and leaned against the wall across from me. His expression was a mixture of disgust, hurt, fear, and suspicion. “I want to know why that man was targeting students at Grey Haven. How did you know him?”

“I didn’t really,” I said.

“You called him by name,” Sully said. “Bastian.”

“I saw him in a dream,” I said.

Sully’s frown deepened. “I’m serious, Julie.”

“He has a connection to Grey Haven,” I said. “I saw him there, and my teacher told me his name.”

“And you didn’t know he was the murderer?” Sully asked.

“Not until I saw him at the house,” I said.

Sully wasn’t buying it, but he didn’t seem to know the right question to ask. He switched tactics. “What are you going to do about the guy working at Grey Haven…the man’s accomplice or whatever?” he asked.

“Carrie is going to start a list of suspects, and we’re going to follow them and see if we can catch the traitor in the act,” I said.

“That’s your plan?” Sully asked.

I shrugged. “It’s the best we’ve got right now,” I said.

“I’ll keep my ears open,” Sully said. “But I think there has to be a better way.”

“When you think of something, let me know,” I said.

“I will,” Sully promised.

He bent down and gave me a light kiss. It was sweet, but there was tension behind it. Honestly, I didn’t want to press for details. The stress of the past three days had me willing to turn off my curiosity. I would ask him if the tension grew, not before.

“Don’t mean to kick you out, but I’ve got some paperwork to finish,” Sully added, pointing at his desk.

I stood silently and left him to it. I decided I would go upstairs, take a shower, and help Carrie with her list. It might not be the answer, but it was a better distraction than loud music and tense kisses.

Making the list was less complicated than I thought it would be. Carrie basically put the entire school down as suspects. Tommy groaned when he saw her list and my expression turned skeptical, but Carrie was too determined to care about our opinions. She immediately took the list and started narrowing down the people with logic. Tommy and I watched as she paced from one side of the room to the other, talking to herself and scribbling on the list of names. Occasionally, she would go to her books and look something up, but it wasn’t long before she was back to pacing and the list she had made.

It took her two days to come up with a list that she thought good enough. It was an exhausting two days. Tommy and I spent most of the time helping Vince with orders, staying out of Carrie’s way, and spending time with Sully in the evenings. Sully didn’t hear anything suspicious at the school; things were quiet. The strange occurrences had died down with the shade’s death. The traitor was lying low, probably hoping that no one would make the connection between him and the shade.

When Carrie finally finished her list, we had to wait until the weekend to track down the suspects. It took a lot of patience not to do something rash I would regret later. I trusted her plan, and I would see if it worked out before doing something rash.

On Saturday morning, we awoke with the dawn. Carrie and Sully went to the school in Sully’s truck, while Tommy and I went to opposite sides of the main road in town, to follow the people that Sully and Carrie missed. I knew it would be a long day of waiting around, hoping that the slim chance we would find something worthwhile would pay off.

It wasn’t until lunch that I ran into Ben. He was alone, and though his expression was neutral, his eyes swam with worry. I turned my face away from him when I noticed him, but it was too late. He saw me and stopped walking. “Julie?” he asked.

“Hey,” I said lamely.

“What happened to you?” Ben asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean…you, Carrie, and Tommy disappeared. What’s going on?” he asked.

“We got tired of school,” I said. “You know how it goes.”

Ben was incredulous. “You three don’t seem the type to just ‘get tired of school,’” Ben said, raising his hands to finger quote me, which…rude.

“A week ago, you didn’t know our names,” I said. “Now you know our type?”

He crossed his arms. “You’re wrapped up in what’s going on at Grey Haven. I know you are. I don’t know why you won’t tell me what’s going on, but you can’t hide the truth forever.”

I eyed him suspiciously. His leap in logic seemed profound under the circumstances. Either he knew more than I thought, because he was the bad guy, or my meeting with Mrs. Z. had convinced him I knew more than I was saying. It was foolish to assume it was the latter.

Ben didn’t miss my suspicious glare. “This is more dangerous than Mrs. Z. is letting on, isn’t it?” he asked, watching my expression carefully.

I didn’t reply.

“And now she’s missing too,” Ben added.

“Missing?” I asked sharply.

“Thought that might get your attention,” Ben said, lips curling up smugly. “Tell me what’s going on and I’ll tell you what I know.”

“Extortion will not win you any favors,” I said.

I started to walk away. I hadn’t even told Sully the truth and I trusted him more than I did Ben. Ben watched me for only a minute. “Wait!” he called, giving in first. He caught up to me again and put a pleading hand out to get me to stop. I stopped walking and faced him.

“Monday afternoon the guardian who attacked you woke up,” Ben confessed. “She tore up the infirmary. I was one of the first ones there when it happened. The woman was wild. She kept hissing and throwing medical supplies…She seemed more animal than human. Then Mrs. Z. came and put a stop to it. I’ve never seen anything like it…One second, she wasn’t there, the next she was standing over the unconscious guardian. We got the woman back on her bed and Mrs. Z. ordered us out. No one has seen her at the school since. Bernard is trying to keep a lid on things, but I don’t think he even knows where she is. I tried to ask him to see her and he got weird.”

“Mrs. Z. leaves all the time to find new recruits,” I pointed out.

“This is different,” Ben said.

“She wouldn’t just disappear without leaving someone in charge,” I said.

“She did leave someone in charge,” Ben said. “Harry.”

“Harry?” I laughed.

“It’s supposed to be a secret, but Dana found out. You know how she is with secrets,” Ben said.

“Yeah, I do,” I said.

I frowned as I thought about what Ben was saying. There had to be a reason Mrs. Z. had left the school. She never did anything without a reason. The question was what reason could lead her to abandoning Grey Haven when a traitor and murderer were trying to bring down the school. Was it by choice, or something darker? It was another question I didn’t know how we would answer.

“So, are you looking for her?” I asked.

“Looking for Mrs. Z.? Are you crazy?” Ben asked.

He was right. Mrs. Z. would only be found if she was willing to let us. She wasn’t the type of woman who let dreamers track her down. She was too skilled, too powerful, which meant that if she had been taken against her will, it would be even more difficult to find her.

“So why are you here without Dana and your friends?” I asked. “I thought you guys were a package deal.”

“I needed to get away from them for a while to think,” Ben admitted. “And I thought…I hoped…” He trailed away without finishing his sentence.

“What?” I demanded.

“I had hoped that you, Carrie, and Tommy were still in town. I wanted to find out why you left,” Ben said. “But I can see that you’re not going to trust me.”

“It’s nothing personal,” I said.

“Yes it is,” Ben said.

I frowned and decided to take a risk. It was a risk that Carrie would have never taken. I trusted that I would be able to see the lie on Ben’s face. “We’re tracking down a traitor at Grey Haven,” I said. “That’s why we left.”

Ben’s eyes widened. “One of us?”

“We think so,” I said.

“How…? Why?” Ben asked, flabbergasted.

“A shade,” I said. “A minor one. He’s either turned someone or had willing help.”

“Oh,” Ben said.

“Oh?” I asked.

Ben shrugged, and his expression turned rueful. “Even if I could never see anyone betraying us, I should have put it together.”

“Yeah…Listen, you can’t let anyone know about the traitor. It could get you killed. Understand?” I asked.

“I’m not afraid of a traitor,” Ben said. “I’ve been dreaming for six years, and I’ll be damned if I let someone at Grey Haven scare me from my duty.”

“It’s your neck,” I said, shrugging.

“Do you have any idea who the traitor is?” Ben asked.

I smiled and didn’t answer. Ben sighed heavily. “Fine. If you need anything, let me know,” he said. “Whatever you think of me…I do want to help. Grey Haven is my home.”

I nodded, though reluctantly, and Ben walked away. He turned a corner and disappeared. His departure left me feeling weighted down by the added mystery of Mrs. Z.’s strange absence. I had to wonder if there was more to the story. I knew there had to be. There always was.