Senator Tod laughed again. “Oh, no! I have many names, my boy. I told you some of them at our first meeting.”
“You’re not a demon, by any chance?” I inquired as casually as possible. “From ancient times, Lord of Shadows and Darkness and all that?”
Both Henry and Arthur shot me glances of annoyance.
“Well, I was only wondering…,” I murmured. “He talks in that high-flown way, he says he has many names—I just wanted to be on the safe side.”
“A demon, no, I’m not a demon,” said Senator Tod, and he sounded almost regretful. “But Dona dents rotor!” He pointed behind him. “Tornado, nerd, sot—I have all those in me!”
He was starting all that confused stuff again.
“And your door is in this corridor, is it?” Arthur pointed to a yellow wooden door. “Is it that one?”
“Nice try,” said Senator Tod. He slowly took aim with his guns, fixing his pale-blue eyes on us. “What happens if you shoot people in here? Do they really die?”
“Of course not,” I said, scratching my arm uncomfortably.
“They don’t?” Senator Tod smiled. “But you’re not sure, are you, Goldilocks? Why don’t we try it? Bang bang.” He cocked one of the triggers. “Which of you shall I take out first? The girl?”
Okay, so this was the moment to turn into a dragonfly. Or better still, a killer hornet.
“But you’d need a gun for that,” said Henry before I’d made up my mind which. Taken aback, Senator Tod glanced left and then right. Instead of his guns, he was now holding two wriggling leopard cubs under his arms. And the knives in his belt had turned into long sausages.
“Wow!” I said admiringly. “Did you do that, Henry?”
“Bang bang,” said Henry, and Arthur laughed out loud.
“Ouch, they have sharp claws, right? But do you know what’s worse?” Arthur pointed behind him. “Here comes Mommy!”
Sure enough, a huge leopardess was prowling along the corridor toward us, growling even more fiercely than me just now.
Senator Tod was trying in vain to shake the leopard cubs off. “Get them away from here!” he cried, squeezing his eyes shut. But when he opened them, the little leopards were still there. And there was no sign of a gun anywhere.
“Come on, you guys, let’s go,” said Arthur, linking arms with both of us and leading us through his doorway. The last thing we saw before we closed the door was the leopardess crouching to spring.
12
I DON’T KNOW what I’d expected—maybe that we’d land in some kind of bat cave, or in Arthur’s parents’ grand house with its swimming pool and private cinema, but this surprised me. We were standing in a huge library. The place was flooded with light, and high above us was a mighty white-and-gold domed roof. The room was circular and surrounded by bookshelves three floors high, with galleries running around it for access to the books. Long tables with brass reading lamps and workstations, enough of them for dozens of school classes, branched out in a star shape from a central area where you presumably borrowed books. It all looked both modern and wonderfully old-fashioned, and a quiet “Wow!” escaped me.
“The Reading Room of the British Library,” said Henry, obviously not quite as impressed as I was.
“Yup. I like having it all to myself.” Arthur swung himself up on one of the tables. “So what do you think of our big game hunter?”
“Is he being torn to pieces out there at the moment?” I asked. Glancing at Henry’s feet, which were now in ordinary shoes, I switched from my Rollerblades to sneakers.
“Depends how far he’s in control of himself,” said Arthur, shrugging his shoulders. “He wasn’t doing too well against Henry’s and my powers of imagination—so now either he’ll have accepted the leopards as real and is terrified, or he’s taken over at the wheel and he’s running things himself.”
“Or he’s waking up.” Henry yawned and leaned against the table. “One way or another, I don’t think he’s particularly terrifying.”
“Well, you should,” said Arthur. “The fact that he knows our names and is out and about in these corridors shows that he’s closer to us than we’d like.”
I looked at Arthur. “You think he’s someone we know in real life?” That was a creepy idea.
Arthur shrugged his shoulders again. “In any case, he knows who we are, and I don’t like that one little bit.”
“Nor do I,” Henry admitted. “I’m pretty sure I’ve never met the guy before.”
“But couldn’t it just be coincidence? Maybe he eavesdropped on us and got to know our names that way? I mean, why would we be the only ones walking around in these corridors?” My theory was that anyone could be here who found his or her door in a dream, tried to open it and go through. Except that most people didn’t seem to see their doors. Or simply didn’t try to go through them. Otherwise this place would be teeming with crowds of people.
Arthur gave a snort of amusement. “So Senator Tod—someone we’ve none of us seen in our lives—just happens to be roaming around outside our dream doors, just happens to call us by our right names, and just happens to utter these mysterious threats of his?”
Er, well, presumably not. Someone who knew us must have shown Senator Tod the way here. And that could really be only one person.
Damn.
“Anabel!” I said. “She could have put him on our trail.”
Arthur nodded slowly. “I’ve come to that conclusion myself. I just wanted to be sure it wasn’t any of you. I guess we can rule out Grayson and Jasper. And it wasn’t me either.” He pushed a lock of hair back from his face. His hair was longer than usual and rather untidy—intriguing. I’d never known Arthur’s hair to be anything but perfectly styled. But it didn’t make any difference to his staggering good looks.
“Maybe he’s some friend or relation of Anabel’s, and she told him the whole story. Or a member of the sect who believed in that silly demon’s handbook,” I said thoughtfully, while Henry folded his arms and said nothing. But I could tell when his brain was working overtime.
“Friend? He’s at least in his midthirties. And not at all Anabel’s type.” Arthur bit his lower lip, perhaps thinking of the time when he had still been Anabel’s type. “He’s not a relation either. She doesn’t have many relations, and I know all of those she does have. As for the sect—she was out of there by the time she was three years old, and the community was broken up. She wasn’t in touch with any of them after that. And her mother was in the nuthouse until her death.… No, I don’t think it’s anyone from her past.”
“It’s ages since I saw Anabel’s door.” Henry looked at Arthur keenly. “Do you know where it is now?”
Good question! Anabel’s door had been very striking: a huge double door with gold fittings and a Gothic pointed arch, like a church porch. In the past, you could always rely on finding it opposite Arthur’s door. But since Anabel had been in the psychiatric hospital, the door had disappeared without a trace, and there was another door where it used to be.
Arthur shook his head. “No idea. I assume that Anabel completely changed the look of it so that we won’t find it. In principle, it could be any door.”
“Including the door opposite?” I asked.
Embarrassed, Arthur examined the toes of his shoes. “That one belongs to my mum.”
Oh. How … er … how sweet.
“You’re not trying to tell me you aren’t seeing Anabel anymore, are you?” Henry gave his former best friend a cool look.
“Well—well, I’m not. I’ve only seen her twice since she’s been in the hospital. Right at the start.” Arthur stared at the toes of his shoes again. “She turned up outside my door, but I’d changed the code of the lock.” He raised his chin and looked first me and then Henry straight in the eyes. “Can you imagine what it’s like being manipulated by your own girlfriend? How awful you feel knowing that you’ve been exploited and that she was telling you lies?”
“I hope that was a rhetorical que
stion.” Henry had raised one eyebrow.
“The second time Anabel and I met, I ended it,” Arthur went on, undeterred. “Or rather … Well, the fact is, she ended it. Anyway, it wasn’t an edifying occasion. She accused me of all sorts of things.” He fell silent for a moment, before saying, “Don’t look so suspicious, Henry!”
“Oh, you’ll have to excuse me.” Henry’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “I could never imagine what it’s like being manipulated and told lies by your own friend, and how awful that makes a person feel.”
Arthur raised both hands. “Please—goodness knows I’ve apologized often enough.”
Really? Not to me. Still, maybe he thought that after I broke his jawbone we were even.
Henry and Arthur were staring fiercely at each other.
“There are some things that can’t be forgiven,” said Henry.
I sighed. Any moment now, they’d be at each other’s throats. Or turning into animals of some kind to tear each other to pieces.
“Listen, you two, why don’t you stop it and we’ll think what to do about this Senator Tod instead?” I suggested. “What could make Anabel want to set him on our trail? And what can he actually do apart from running around in weird disguises and letting his deranged laughter echo down the corridors … Hang on a moment!” Excitedly, I gasped for air. “The man’s out of his mind! He’s a patient in the same hospital as Anabel! That would account for his ramblings about rotors and tornadoes and so on.”
Arthur raised his head, and then nodded. “That could be right.”
“Yes, it could,” Henry agreed. “Although I get the impression that there’s method behind his madness, if that’s what it is. I just don’t know what the method is yet.”
“Even if he was a psychopathic killer—I don’t feel there’s any way he can hurt us here,” I said. “He’s just rather a nuisance.”
“So far, maybe,” said Arthur. “But you shouldn’t underestimate Anabel. She’s still dangerous.”
“She’s been sectioned,” I said. “She’s in a psychiatric hospital in Surrey, and they’ll be keeping her there.”
“You’ve no idea what she’s capable of, Liv,” said Arthur.
“I don’t?” I shot him a furious glance. “She was going to cut my throat with a hunting knife, so I have a very good idea what she’s capable of. However, while she’s in that hospital, I suppose we don’t have to be afraid of her. Or of that weirdo outside the door. Right, Henry?”
But Henry’s mind seemed to be on something else. “Rodents,” he murmured. “Tornado … rondo … stranded on root … could that be a code?”
I sighed. “If so, we’ll work it out. But what I was really going to say is—”
“Senator Tod may not know a lot about these things yet, but you yourselves know how quickly we’ve learned to deal with the situation,” Arthur said, interrupting me. “I think I’m pretty good at it myself, and Henry could even be…” He hesitated, but it seemed like he couldn’t bring himself to say that his ex–best buddy Henry could even be better at it than he was. “But the real point is: none of us are a match for Anabel.”
“Dona dents rotor,” Henry murmured. “Was that it? Or did he say Mona?”
“But—” I was going to point out, for the fourth time, that Anabel couldn’t do anything to hurt us, but Arthur wouldn’t let me finish my sentence.
“Don’t you get it, Liv?” He slid off his table. “It’s not about what happens in the real world. It’s here”—and he pointed to his door, which was jammed between two bookshelves on the second floor, looking as if it belonged permanently in this Reading Room—“it’s here that danger threatens. We know far too little about it. I guess we don’t know even a fraction of the possibilities. Whereas Anabel has crossed boundaries that you two don’t have the faintest inkling about. Believe me, this thing isn’t over yet.”
That, or something like it, was what Anabel herself had said at our last meeting several months ago. It’s only just begun—those had been her words.
Henry seemed to have given up on puzzling out Senator Tod’s peculiar remarks. “So what?” he said, looking at Arthur. “Even if Anabel is planning something, our doors are secure. We just have to go carefully outside them.” He moved away from the table where he had been standing. “And by we I mean, in this case, Liv and me. To be honest, I’m not so interested in what happens to you.” His gaze became if anything a little more piercing. “I don’t trust you, Arthur.”
“You don’t trust anyone, Henry,” replied Arthur heatedly. “That’s why you can’t give all this up.” He made a sweeping gesture at the room around us. “You’re addicted to slipping into the dreams of anyone you don’t trust an inch. I know you’re good at it. And I know you think you’re ruthless. But compared to Anabel, you’re an innocent choirboy.”
It was Henry’s turn to shrug his shoulders. “Compared to you too,” he said coolly. “Come on, Liv, let’s go. This is likely to be a short night.…”
He put his hand out to me, but when I was about to take it, it suddenly wasn’t there anymore. It had disappeared, along with the rest of Henry.
I groaned. “Oh no, not again!”
Arthur looked at me. “Does that happen often?”
“All the time. His brother and sister wake him almost every night. They have some kind of stomach bug going around.”
“And yet again his mother’s in no fit state to do anything for them. Poor old Henry—my own family are a bit weird, but I really wouldn’t swap with Henry.” Arthur stretched his legs and gave me a broad grin. “Though mind you, he does have a cute girlfriend,” he added casually.
“And this is the moment when, I’m very sorry to say, I really have to be going,” I said, looking around for the door into the corridor. Yes, it was still hanging in the same place between the two bookshelves. I went up the steps to the gallery, with Arthur following at a suitable distance, very much the courteous host. If I’d had a coat with me, I’m sure he’d have helped me into it. I’ll admit that I wouldn’t have minded chatting to Arthur a little longer, particularly now that things were getting interesting. But for one thing, he suddenly had a rather arrogant glint in his eyes, and for another, it didn’t seem fair to Henry to ask his former best friend questions about him.
I cautiously looked through the doorway and out into the corridor. I almost expected to see pools of blood on the floor, but the corridor was empty and spotlessly clean.
“Like me to escort you to your door?” asked Arthur. Light was falling directly on him from the domed roof, and only now could I see that he looked kind of exhausted. Not like the old Arthur, not quite so self-confident, although he still came out with the same smart remarks. And suddenly what he’d said about Anabel didn’t seem to me quite so absurd. Okay, so I didn’t trust him an inch myself—after all, this was Arthur, right?—but on the other hand, I didn’t entirely understand why Henry had simply dismissed his misgivings like that.
“Well, how about it?” Arthur seemed to have noticed my hesitation.
I shook my head. All I wanted right now was to be in my bed. Even better, in my bed after a few hours of dreamless sleep. “I can make it on my own. I bet Senator Tod has had enough for today too. Thanks for … er…” Well, thanks for nothing, really.
“Okay,” said Arthur, adding all the same, “Even if Henry doesn’t agree, I think we should all stick together. Together we may be strong enough.”
Yes. Maybe. Strong enough for whatever was going to happen.
“Good night.” I was about to set off, but then I turned around after all, almost as if I was steered by remote control. I simply had to ask, even if it was Arthur I was asking, and that gave me a horrible sense that I was betraying Henry. “What did you mean a moment ago? About Henry not trusting anyone, and slipping into other people’s dreams by night? Whose dreams?”
“Well, if he hasn’t even told you that…” Arthur didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t have to.
13
I WOKE WITH a start, bathed in sweat. Oh, damn it! I’d mutated into a plant again, right in the middle of the park. But one good thing was that I’d woken just as the Boker approached me with a huge pair of scissors. This really couldn’t go on—I did need at least a few hours’ sleep. Maybe I should try the herbal tea that Lottie swore by. Even if it had a nasty smell of valerian. (Which was probably why Spot the cat always sat on Lottie’s lap while she drank it, gazing lovingly at her.)
A look at my alarm clock showed me there were only two hours left before it was time to get up, that was all, and I probably wouldn’t get any sleep if I kept my sweaty things on. So I switched on the bedside lamp, got out of bed, and put on a clean pair of pajama pants and a clean T-shirt. Or rather, I was going to put them on, but as I reached for them, the door of my room opened. I let out a small squeak of alarm and crossed my arms over my breasts—heaven knows who I thought was coming in, but it was only Mia. And she didn’t look at me, but walked slowly past me and toward my bed, staring at it.
“Yes,” she said out loud. “Yes, she’s lying there.”
“No, she isn’t,” I said. “She’s standing here. Right here in front of the wardrobe!”
But Mia didn’t seem to hear me. She reached out her arms as if to feel for something. I quickly pulled the clean T-shirt over my head, went up to her, and cautiously touched her arm.
“Hey.”
“She looks just like you, Liv,” whispered Mia, her gaze fixed on my pillow, which was all out of shape. She hadn’t blinked once since coming through the doorway. “Yes, I’ll do it,” she added firmly, and before I could react, she had snatched up one of my decorative cushions (it had a squirrel on it) and was pressing it down firmly on my pillow with both hands.
“Mia!” I said, rather more sharply this time. This was crazy. My sister was trying to smother a pillow with a cushion. On the other hand—if I hadn’t happened to be out of bed, she’d probably be in the middle of smothering me. “Wake up! At once!” I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her hard. “Mia! That’ll do, the pillow’s dead now!”