I feared the same thing myself. But as I said goodnight to her and went to get ready for bed, I had no idea how crazy things would get before the end of my time in the Winter Court.
89
I had the worst dream that night.
Part of it was probably sleeping all alone in that big, spooky room in a vast bed that could have held five people with ease. My bed back at Nocturne Academy was a modest twin and I always felt snug as a bug in it, as Avery said. Here, I felt like I was being swallowed up by the enormous bed and its freezing cold sheets that wouldn’t get warm, no matter how long I laid there.
There was also the little matter of the extremely creepy painting hanging on the bedroom wall, right across from the bed. It was a picture of a door—just a plain, wooden door with a brass knob. There were vines growing around it, which made me think it was an outside door, and blood-red roses were blooming on some of the dark green tendrils.
That might not sound very creepy, but the painting was one of those hyper-realistic ones, where it almost looks like the picture is real. I could see the faint shine on the doorknob and the shadows of the roses and every single grain of wood on the door.
It looked so real, I halfway felt like the door might open in the middle of the night and something might come out of it. Which you have to admit, was a horrible, creepy thought. I even touched the door to make sure it wasn’t real, but all I felt was flat canvas and paint.
I thought about taking the painting off the wall and turning it around, so I couldn’t see it but when I tried, I found I couldn’t so much as budge it. It felt like it was glued to the wall. So, reluctantly, I had to leave it where it was and get into bed.
I told myself I was being foolish—the painting was just a painting and I was just letting the haunted house feeling of the palace get to me. I couldn’t even see the door painting with the lights out so I should just try to get some sleep.
I curled up into a tight ball—it was the only way to stay warm in the ice-cold sheets—and turned on my side. Despite the creepiness of sleeping by myself in the weird castle, it had been a full, exhausting day and I finally drifted off to sleep.
Which was when I had the awful dream.
In my dream, I was looking at the picture again. As I watched, the doorknob turned and the door slowly creaked open. My heart was pounding and my mouth was dry. I wanted to close the door or run from the room. But since it was a dream, I was frozen in place with no way to hide or get away.
I had no idea what was coming through that door. A monster? A serial killer? Or something that had been dead for a long, long time—something that still hungered for living flesh? I was so frightened it felt like every one of my heartbeats was shaking my entire body and the blood was rushing in my ears as loudly as a freight train.
But when the door finally opened, I didn’t see an ogre or a zombie or any kind of scary, evil looking guy with a chainsaw standing there. It was just a little old lady with a kindly, wrinkled face and grey hair in the doorway.
My heart rate began to slow and I felt a measure of relief. Surely this nice looking little old lady wouldn’t hurt me!
“Well, hello child.” She smiled at me and I saw that she was missing a few teeth and that a few more of them were rotten. But she seemed really nice and maybe it was hard to get dentures around here. Also, I had been raised to respect my elders, so I smiled back and nodded at her.
“You look hungry,” she said to me. “Would you like a little snack?”
“Oh, no thank you,” I said politely and added, “There’s nothing to eat here, anyway.”
“But of course, there is!” She nodded at the red roses and I saw that they had turned into red apples instead. The old lady picked one and shined it on the sleeve of her homespun brown dress before climbing down out of the picture frame and approaching me.
“Oh,” I said, when she pressed the apple into my hands. “Thank you, but I don’t think I’m hungry.”
It seemed to me that someone had told me I mustn’t eat for some reason, but I couldn’t remember why. I only had a strong feeling it was wrong and I needed to avoid it.
But the old lady refused to be put off.
“Come, child,” she said, plucking the shiny, blood-red apple from my hands and pressing it to my lips. “Just take a bite and see how sweet and juicy it is! I promise you’ve never tasted anything so sweet and good in your life.”
I opened my mouth to refuse again but she took the opportunity to push the apple between my teeth. I tried to yank away from her, but she was surprisingly strong and fast—she pushed harder and I felt my teeth sinking into the apple.
“Just a single bite will do it,” she muttered, as though to herself. “Even some of the juice will be enough…”
As she spoke, a tiny dribble of juice and a little bit of the apple’s flesh dribbled onto my tongue from the place where my teeth had broken through the fruit’s skin. I swallowed reflexively, though I didn’t want to. The bit of apple tasted bitter and acrid, burning my tongue as it slid down my throat.
“Hey!” I gasped, pushing the apple away with my hands. “No, I told you I don’t want any!”
“Too late now, my sweet.” The old lady’s eyes gleamed as she withdrew the apple and looked at the damage my teeth had done. “Too late, for you’ve had some now. You’ve had some and there’s no going back…”
Suddenly her face changed from that of a kindly old woman to a horrible old crone. Her teeth were blackened stumps and her features sagged. Her eyes, which had been a faded but kindly blue, turned pure black—even the whites—and she began to laugh a terrible laugh that was somehow familiar…
“Too late!” she screeched in my face. “Too late…too late…too late!”
90
I woke myself up screaming. There was a bitter, burning taste in the back of my throat and I was so frightened tears were streaming from my eyes.
“Emma? Emma, what’s wrong?”
“What happened, little one?”
Suddenly Bran and Lachlan were on either side of me, both of them scanning the dark room for danger.
“The painting!” I sobbed, my heart racing in terror. “I…I dreamed it came to life! And something…someone came through the door.”
Now that I was awake, the dream was already fading, as nightmares often do. I couldn’t quite remember all the details—I just knew it was horribly frightening and my heart was still racing like an out-of-control train with no brakes.
“There’s nothing there,” Lachlan said, after examining the painting thoroughly. Bran finished checking the dark corners and under the bed and then both of them came to sit on either side of me.
“It’s all right, Emma—it was just a bad dream,” Bran said soothingly. He put an arm around my shoulders and Lachlan slipped an arm around my waist.
“We probably shouldn’t have left you to sleep by yourself,” he said.
“But we weren’t sure you’d think it was proper for us to sleep with you,” Bran added. “Even though we would really only be sleeping—nothing more.”
I thought of what my mom or Queen Elia, my non-crazy grandmother, would say about me spending the night with not one, but two guys in my bed. But as Bran had pointed out, we really would only be sleeping and all of us had on clothes. I had a long black nightgown that had been laid out on the bed for me and both of the guys had been provided with pajamas.