And she blew the whistle.
Kane’s mind stumbled. Bubbles of anxiety fizzed in his throat, filling him with the bright sting of excitement. Elliot and Ursula looked just as shocked.
The whistle’s silence cut through the birds’ chirping as though it’d cut through the birds themselves. Then a rushing, whispering discord blew through the mill and the moonlight ahead bruised, dimpled, and peeled apart. A pair of double doors towered before them, finished in a lusterless black, and starkly flat against the drifting river beyond. Kane braced himself for the Dreadmare to fly through but minute after minute passed in glassy stillness.
“It’s a door,” Elliot said.
“Yes, Elliot, we can all see the door,” said Adeline.
“Do we knock?” Ursula asked.
“I think we already rang the bell,” Elliot said.
“The whistle opened up some sort of passage into Helena’s reverie,” Kane said. “Maybe this leads to wherever Poesy came from?”
Adeline marched forward, grasped a massive handle, and pulled the heavy door open a few inches. Mellow light spilled out.
“No one’s here,” she whispered. “Kane, what do you want to do?”
Kane felt absurd relief. He considered the door and all that might be behind it. Something told him fate had dealt them a very rare chance to enter Poesy’s realm when she wasn’t home.
Or it was a trap. Either way, they had to enter to find out. Otherwise, manicured or not, all their hands were covered in the crime of doing nothing to bring Helena home.
“Let’s go,” Kane said.
• Twenty-Six •
TRICK OR TREAT
Kane wasn’t sure what he expected, but it wasn’t this.
They entered a room full of height and golden glow, with curving walls made from glass display cases. Turning around, Kane wasn’t surprised to find that the room was actually circular. The double doors they’d just walked through stood alone and without any discernible wall to lead through. Just a door frame made of the same obsidian as the whistle, gilded with gold filigree. It stood upright like a lone domino upon a circular stage at the room’s center. It almost reached the chandelier.
Elliot propped the door open with Kane’s bat.
“I think we’re okay,” he whispered. “But no one touch anything. This place could be rigged.”
They each picked a different area to explore. Kane sought out the squat coffee table and the tea set. There were a few cups ready for use, but Poesy’s specific cup was absent. He moved on to the cases. They were backed by mirrors so that at first each case appeared to hold nothing but far-flung infinity. Then he looked closer.
Curios. Artifacts. Charms. Small, strange objects that each emanated the same reality-bending aura of the reveries. They whispered to Kane of their mysterious magnitude, their stolen vastness. Some lay in pieces, crushed but then meticulously arranged, like an exotic pinned butterfly made beautiful in its unmaking.
Poesy didn’t fix reveries. She collected them. Kane craned his neck, following the cases all the way up to the ceiling. There must have been thousands in this room alone. How many lay in pieces? How many people were locked away in false realms?
What little hope Kane had for Poesy finally crumbled, and it left him dizzy and drifting. He stumbled back, catching on the corner of a wide desk. The Others glared at him, but no alarms sounded. Nothing changed. They went back to inspecting the charms, Kane’s same grim conclusion hanging over each of them in the silence.
Kane turned to the desk. It was covered in papers and books and odd, sharp instruments. He picked up a scroll full of diagrams and cryptic print. Buried beneath it was a book with a bright red cover. Chills prickled across Kane’s neck. He knew that red.
Kane slid the journal forward and ran his hands across the supple leather. The elastic band slid off smoothly, his eyes filled with his own penmanship. Except not quite; all the words were backward.
Kane made sure no one was watching as he took out the journal Poesy had given him from his backpack. The two books were identical. Experimentally, he flipped them both open to the back-most page and scribbled across one. On the other, like a bruise rising to the skin’s surface, the scribble reappeared in reverse.
Deceit slid through Kane’s heart, oil-thin and burning, amplifying the humiliation he already felt. He’d dutifully recorded every lousy detail of his recovery (even his dreams!) into that journal with no intention of giving it back, but Poesy had been reading along the entire time.
He was sure this is how Poesy had sent her invitation for tea. On this hunch, he put his pen between the pages of one journal, then opened the other. The pen rolled from the spine, a bit warm from its journey.
Kane’s anger gave way to wonder. He did the trick several more times, captivated by the magic. He could feel himself getting carried away, so before anyone noticed he grabbed both journals and shoved them into his backpack.
Then he saw the egg.
On a cleared corner of the desk, nestled within a satin cushion, was a bejeweled egg no bigger than an acorn. Its surface was crammed with exquisite gems of every color. There was no mistaking it: he had found Helena’s reverie.
“It’s here!” Kane called, and the others hurried over.
“You sure?” asked Elliot.
“I’m sure.”
Several other charms were scattered around it, but Helena’s felt different. From it drifted a rumbling, desperate energy, as though it verged on hatching.
“Good. No negotiations needed, then. Someone grab it,” Elliot said.
“How about you grab it, Elliot?”
No one wanted to touch the thing. Then the lights flickered, and everyone looked up. A far-off creaking sent shivers down Kane’s spine.
“Well, that’s ominous,” Elliot whispered.
The lights flickered again. The door vibrated in its frame.
It was Ursula who finally moved. She snatched up a small velvet pouch from the desk and swept the charms—Helena’s and all—into it. Then they were following Elliot to the door, which was still propped open by the bat. The night beyond was a sliver of navy beckoning them from the room’s golden warmth, promising safety, but right before Elliot slipped through Adeline wrenched him back. There was a crack and the door slammed shut, slicing the bat in half.
“Shit,” said Elliot.
Ursula pushed open the door. It showed clearly to the other side of the room. The mill was gone. She closed it again and opened it again. Nothing. On the third try she paused.
“It’s…cold?” she said.
Kane grabbed the handle. It was frigid.