She was breathing heavily, blinking in the light of my bedside lamp. Then she uttered a bloodcurdling scream. Well, maybe it was bloodcurdling only because she was screaming straight into my ear. Or loud enough, anyway, to bring Grayson on the scene. He rushed through the doorway in a pair of granddad flannel pants with a large check pattern, part of the granddad pajamas that the Boker had given him for Christmas. She didn’t know that on principle Grayson wore no pajama top at night, so that the outfit didn’t really look very grandfatherly at all.
“What’s the matter?”
I was very glad I’d had time to get the T-shirt on, even if it was back to front, as I now noticed. “She was sleepwalking again,” I said.
Mia seemed rather confused, staring in turn at me and the cushion in her hands, and her breathing was still unsteady. “I’ve been sleepwalking again?” she repeated. “I had such a horrible dream. Liv had a clone, a sneaky creature who wanted to kill her and take her place … but you got away in time, Livvy, and I hid you in my room. All the others thought the clone was the real Liv.” She looked reproachfully at Grayson. “Even you!”
“Er … should I apologize?” said Grayson. Luckily he seemed to be the only one we’d woken. I quickly closed the door so that it would stay that way.
Mia gulped. “Anyway, we had to wait until the false Liv was asleep. Then we came into your room and—” She broke off.
“And tried smothering the false Liv with a cushion,” I went on in her place, shaking my pillow back into shape. “This pillow is lucky you didn’t want to stab it with a knife.…”
“You mean I came into your room in my dream and picked up a cushion to … Oh God!” Mia stared at me, horrified. “That’s terrible!”
“It’s okay. Nothing happened.”
“But if you’d been lying in bed…” Mia’s eyes filled with tears. That happened so seldom—and when it did they were usually tears of rage—that I reached for her hand in alarm.
“Hey, it’s all right, Mia.” I gently pushed her down on the edge of my bed and sat down beside her.
“Nothing’s all right,” said Mia.
Grayson stood there in front of us looking undecided. “She tried to smother you with a cushion?”
“No, she smothered my pillow with a cushion, that’s all.” I darted him a nasty look. Did he have to go on about it now, when Mia was so upset, anyway?
But Grayson wasn’t impressed by my nasty look. He sat down on the bed, too, on Mia’s other side. “Can you remember whose idea it was in your dream for you to smother Liv?”
“She wasn’t trying to smother me—it was my horrible clone, wasn’t it? The one you thought was real,” I said, still trying to meet Grayson’s eyes over the top of Mia’s bowed head, but he wouldn’t look at me. “Anyway, to be honest, who cares? There are some dreams you don’t want to analyze; you just want to forget them as soon as you can.” For instance, dreams when there’s a root growing out of your feet and branches and leaves out of your fingertips. “I suggest we take Mia back to her bed.”
Mia shook her head. “No, I never want to sleep again. I do dreadful things in my sleep.”
“I’ll come to bed with you and keep watch,” I said, glancing at the clock. “We don’t have much of tonight left, anyway.”
“Can I just stay here?” Mia didn’t wait for my answer. She crawled under the duvet and snuggled under it.
“Yes, of course you can do that too,” I said.
Grayson sighed. “Don’t you think this sleepwalking is odd, Liv? And her trying to murder you in your sleep?”
“You’re exaggerating.” I straightened the duvet over Mia. “It was only my clone she was after.”
“I really don’t ever want to sleep again,” murmured Mia, but she had already closed her eyes. “Only for a little while now, because I’m so tired.…” The rest of what she was saying turned into incomprehensible murmurs, and the next second she was breathing deeply and peacefully.
Grayson and I looked at her in silence. Suddenly I felt aware of how close he was, and I wished he’d put a T-shirt on. His bare chest was unsettling me.
“Isn’t this the moment when you ought to leave the room?” I asked, realizing as I spoke that it sounded a little too snide. He hadn’t really done anything except look at me with a disappointed expression, but all the same, I went on. “Or have you forgotten that Mia and I are under the Spencer family curse? No getting up close and personal with girls who murder bushes.”
Grayson reached for my arm and forced me to look at him. “Liv, you have to take this seriously. Suppose Mia didn’t have that dream of her own accord? Suppose there’s someone manipulating her dreams to harm you?”
I swallowed. “That’s…” Out of the question, I’d been going to say. But was it really?
“Think about it. How does Secrecy come to know so much about you?”
Yes, how? All the little hairs stood up on my arms, and Grayson saw it. “Things that only you knew,” he said urgently. “You and Mia.”
And Henry.
“No idea,” I whispered. “Mia for one would never have given them away.”
“Not of her own accord. But couldn’t someone else have slipped into Mia’s dreams at night and found out all those things?” Grayson’s brown eyes looked much darker than usual in the light of my bedside lamp. He seemed to be seriously worried, and so sympathetic that I suddenly wanted to lean against him and have a good cry. I was so exhausted. But of course I didn’t—on the contrary, I moved a little farther away from him.
“You think Secrecy was spying on Mia in her dreams?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “More likely someone who passed what they found out on to Secrecy.”
“And that someone would also make Mia go sleepwalking?” I shook my head and stroked a lock of hair back from my sister’s face. “I sometimes walked in my sleep as a child myself—it runs in our family. We all have vivid dreams.”
“You certainly do.” Grayson sighed. “Liv, please tell me honestly—you and Henry are still doing it, aren’t you?”
Oh no, not that again. But Grayson wasn’t letting me get away with just looking at him blankly.
“You’re still roaming around that corridor, right?”
“Well…” This was really difficult. I’d have loved to keep the truth from him, if only to spare myself his disappointed look. “Not … er … necessarily,” I stammered.
And there it was: the disappointed look. Grayson was better at it than anyone else I knew.
“I thought so. I could tell from the dark shadows under your eyes. Somehow I’d have been surprised if you two could leave it alone. Not Henry and not you either. Leaving Arthur out of this entirely…” With another deep sigh, he finally let go of my arm. “I just don’t understand you—it’s so unreasonable, and thoughtless, and … Well, it’s not the way to behave! Dreams are like thoughts: they have to be free, and no one should go spying on them. Certainly not for fun.”
“But … but we’re not doing it, anyway,” I said defensively. “We don’t go slinking into other people’s dreams.” Except in emergencies. When Senator Tod is chasing us and your door happens to be the only way of escape … “We only meet in our own dreams. There’s nothing bad about that.”
“Apart from the fact that you two have no idea how and why this dream thing works, anyway? After all we saw last year?” Grayson’s whisper was so loud now that it could hardly be called a whisper at all.
“I thought we’d agreed last year that demons don’t exist either in general or in particular,” I said.
“That doesn’t change the fact that you don’t know what you’re getting yourselves in for. It’s unpredictable, it’s immoral, it’s unhealthy, it’s—”
“Shh!” I interrupted him. This argument at five on a Friday morning, combined with my inexplicable wish to throw myself in tears on Grayson’s bare chest, was just too much for me at this moment. “You’ll wake Mia again. She needs her sleep. And I need mine.” I po
inted to my bed.
“Exactly.” Grayson went to the door—or stomped to the door was more like it. He was angrier than I’d ever seen him before. He turned back again on his way out. “Do you think I haven’t seen the state you’re in? Leaving aside the huge quantities of coffee you put away every morning. How much longer do you think you can go on like this?” He didn’t wait for an answer, just added a distinctly unfriendly “Sleep well,” and closed the door behind him. At least he didn’t slam it.
“Same to you! And kindly put more clothes on next time,” I muttered. Then I switched off the bedside lamp and lay down carefully under my duvet with Mia, feeling terrible.
Of course I couldn’t drop off to sleep again. Instead I thought about what Grayson had said. Suppose someone really was stealing into Mia’s dreams on the sly? But who could have any interest in doing that? Was it someone who wanted to hurt me, as Grayson suspected? The only person who really came to mind was Anabel. Maybe she could make someone start sleepwalking. But she’d have to possess some personal item belonging to Mia to open her dream door. And how could she have laid hands on that when she was in the hospital in Surrey? Or was the real explanation, as Arthur had suggested, that Anabel knew people who had it in for us in the real world? People we might even know ourselves?
Beside me, Mia moved slightly. She still looked totally relaxed. I gave up trying to go to sleep, carefully got out of bed, put on a thick woolen cardigan to keep warm, and sat down on the upholstered window seat, my favorite place for thinking ever since we’d moved in with the Spencers. It had a view of the garden that Ernest tended so lovingly. Not that it was a particularly pretty sight at this season, with its trees and bushes bare of leaves, but you could imagine what it would be like in spring, when the cherry tree and the magnolias were flowering, with a carpet of forget-me-nots spreading under them. Tonight, however, spring seemed to me infinitely far away.
Mia turned on her other side and made a happy sound. At least one of us was sleeping deeply. I sighed. I could just be imagining things, but no way was I going to let someone walk around in my sister’s dreams. Only, how could I keep watch on her door? That was the question on which everything ultimately turned. Would I be able to increase the security precautions on it, or would I have to tell her what seemed to be going on so that she could protect herself?
I hadn’t found an answer to that question by the time my alarm clock rang. The only certainty was that I was going to need an enormous amount of coffee again.
14
EVEN ON THE way downstairs, I could hear the argument going on in the kitchen. Mia was standing in the middle of the staircase, leaning over the banisters. When she saw me, she raised a hand in warning and put her forefinger to her lips.
“Really, Florence, this time you’re going too far,” Ernest was ranting down on the first floor.
“It’s my eighteenth birthday, and I want this party to be special!” his daughter spat back. “I can’t celebrate it in this house, not under the same roof as those … those monsters!”
“That’s us,” whispered Mia.
“So what do you have against holding the party at Granny’s house?” Florence went on. “She offered to have it there herself, she has plenty of room, and she’d love to help with the preparations! It’s all for the best so far as you’re concerned, Dad—remember what this house looked like after our last birthday party?”
“But that’s not your reason,” said Ernest.
“No,” Florence admitted at once. “I just want to celebrate my eighteenth birthday in a place where those creatures—”
“That’s us,” whispered Mia again.
“—where those creatures aren’t welcome!”
“Florence Cecilia Elizabeth Spencer!” Ernest sounded really angry, listing all Florence’s names like that. “I let you get away with a good deal, but this…”
“What about it?” snapped Florence. “You can’t force us to have our party here. It’s bad enough to have you making us live here with those foul fiends.”
I almost whispered, “That’s us,” myself this time. Foul fiends? What century did she think we were living in?
At that moment Lottie came running down from the very top of the house, trying to get past us. “I overslept!” she gasped. “The first time in five years I—”
“Shhhh!” Mia barred Lottie’s way and put a hand over her mouth.
“Muft fqueeth grapefruit!” said Lottie indistinctly, trying to free herself, but Mia wasn’t letting go.
“No one down there is agitating for grapefruit juice right now, believe me!” I whispered, and then Lottie stopped struggling, squished herself in between us, and leaned over the banisters herself, straining her ears.
The argument in the kitchen was still going on.
“Grayson, say something!” Florence demanded.
Yes, exactly, I thought. Say something, Grayson.
“I can’t say I fancy having a birthday party at Granny’s,” said Grayson. As he was the only one not shouting, we had to lean far over the banisters to hear him. Luckily the kitchen door was open. “You can’t even turn around there without knocking something valuable over. Not a very cool location, if you ask me.”
“Absolutely,” Mia whispered.
“Eavesdropping isn’t right,” Lottie whispered back. “We ought to let them know we’re here.”
“No way!” said Mia and I at the same time.
“Of course we’ll clear Granny’s china collection away first,” Florence was protesting in the kitchen. “And I’m not asking you, anyway. I made up my mind about this ages ago.”
“Florence Cecilia Eli…” Obviously Ernest couldn’t think of anything else to say.
By now Mom had joined us, and was leaning over the banisters herself a few steps higher up. Her face showed that she was suffering pangs of conscience, but she clearly didn’t dare go any farther down the stairs with Florence shouting in that shrill voice. Or was she developing unsuspected mother-lioness instincts and staying with her babies to defend them tooth and claw if necessary?
“Oh yes?” Now we could hear Grayson perfectly well. “If that’s so, then we’ll just have separate birthday parties, little sister: you have yours at Granny’s house and I’ll have mine here. And we’ll see which of us gets more guests!”
There was a brief silence. Then Florence cried furiously, “You wouldn’t do a thing like that to me!”
“Yes, I would. You’re just being silly.”
“Me, silly? Did I go slinking out of the house by night to destroy a cultural monument?”
At this point, Mom gave us her familiar look, the one that said, Now see what you’ve done. So much for her mother-lioness instincts—she didn’t have any.
“Oh, Florence, do shut up,” said Grayson in the kitchen. “I’m sick and tired of all this fuss. It was only a tree, for God’s sake!” He came marching out of the kitchen so fast that we didn’t have time to take cover.
We must have been an odd sight, all four of us hanging over the banisters side by side (only Buttercup was missing, but she’d probably been sitting in the kitchen beside Ernest’s chair for some time, waiting for the slice of cold roast beef he usually gave her). However, Grayson just glanced wearily up at us and then went to the coat stand to put on his jacket.
“Now see what you’ve done, Dad!” snapped Florence in the kitchen. The mixture of fury and tears in her voice was perfectly calibrated. Could you learn to do a thing like that? “You’ve managed to drive a wedge between us. Between me and my twin.”
Now she too came rushing out of the kitchen, and with great presence of mind, we abandoned our listening position and acted as if we were all just that minute coming downstairs. In the process, unfortunately, Lottie and Mia bumped their heads together.
“Ouch,” said Mia reproachfully.
Florence didn’t favor any of us with a glance, but simply shot by on her way upstairs. We could hear the bathroom door slam and the sound of the key turning
in the lock.
So at long last, the way to the coffee machine was clear.
Or no, not quite clear yet. Grayson was still standing by the coat stand. My guilty conscience forced me to stop in front of him while Mom and Lottie went into the kitchen.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, and I meant it. I was sorry we’d sawed Mr. Snuggles down. I was sorry they were quarreling because of us. And I was sorry that Grayson looked so unhappy.
“What for?” he snapped at me, sounding more like his twin sister than he presumably thought.
“Well, for being such monsters, creatures, and foul fiends,” Mia replied instead of me.
I was pretty sure that Grayson didn’t mean to, but the grim expression on his face gave way to a spontaneous smile. Relieved, I smiled back. He abruptly pulled up the zipper of his jacket and put a knitted cap on his head. He was the only one of us to cycle to school in the morning, come rain or shine. Ernest had been going the long way around on his way to work so as to drop Florence, Mia, and me off at Frognal Academy. But since Florence had been putting as much distance as possible between herself and us, Mia and I had taken to going by bus instead. After all, we didn’t want the poor girl having to rush out of a moving vehicle just to escape our presence.
The next bus would leave in ten minutes, and if we wanted to catch it and get to school on time, we’d have to hurry.
Grayson had seen me look at the big clock on the wall, and his smile got wider. “Too bad, the foul, fiendish, monstrous creature will have to do without her coffee today,” he said.
“Oh, that’s okay,” I said. “I have plenty of adrenaline running through my veins to keep me going.”
Which was true, but unfortunately the effect lasted only until lessons began. I had great difficulty in staying awake during Mrs. Lawrence’s French lesson. As an experiment, I put my head down on my arms. I’d just close my eyes for a moment. Now would be the perfect time for a little nap. I was left alone at last. That would be the solution: sleep during the day when everyone else was awake. Pure relaxation.