Wildblood

Chapter 15

15

Miya couldn’t decide what to make of the stranger’s appearance. Had he alerted them to the Carvers’ return to help them escape, or was he cautioning them that the sand in the hourglass had drained to a few precious grains?

Miya groaned and rubbed her palms over her cheeks. She was seeing question marks on the walls, her brain rattling around her skull as the mysteries prodded her. Gavran, for his part, was sulking on a beer tap, using the Guinness as his moping roost.

“Blind bird!” he croaked over and over, staring at his reflection in the brassy handle.

“It’s okay,” Miya assuaged, giving his neck a thorough scratch. “No harm, no foul.”

The raven dipped his head and trilled softly. Miya returned to Caelan’s journal, open in front of her on the bar top. She’d flipped through every page, reading the entries multiple times. Caelan’s accounts were identical to Miya’s experience of the Dreamwalker’s haunting: nightmares, sleepwalking, memory loss, visions that blurred the lines between fantasy and reality. The teen recounted terrifying her adoptive parents one night after they awoke to a strange tapping noise in the kitchen.

My forehead was pressed against the backyard door. Apparently, I was in a daze, my eyes open but glazed over. Mom says I was clawing at the glass until my fingernails bled, streaks of red everywhere. I’m so scared, and I feel like a complete freak. I have no idea how I even got downstairs. Mom thinks I was trying to get outside, but I suck at directions. I don’t know which way that door faces, but when I checked online, I knew where I’d tried to go: Boston Common.

This morning, Dad installed a bell on my bedroom door.

Miya remembered that bell. Clearly, it hadn’t done its job. Had Caelan let herself out by some other means? Miya had seen the stranger through Caelan’s window, which offered a view of the street. The roof sloped gently enough that she could’ve climbed down without injury. Perhaps she’d been lured out. Had the stranger not requested Miya’s help, she would've considered him a suspect. His relationship to the teen was unclear, though Miya reckoned it was supernatural in nature.

The kitchen doors swung open, and Ama leaned out. “Would you like some pecans with your seared Ahi tuna?”

Miya blinked up from the journal. “Sure. And leave a few strips for Gavran.” She poked his tail feather, and he twitched. “He’s feeling glum.”

Ama pouted. “Still?” She shook her head and tutted as she slid back into the kitchen. “So dramatic…”

Gavran gargled in protest, but they both knew he wouldn’t refuse a juicy strip of fish. Crowbar had gone to her upstairs apartment for a nap while Ama prepared a quick meal in the kitchen. Even though the King of Spades was closed on Mondays, Miya enjoyed having company on the nights Kai was busy. She preferred the domovoy and her friends to the stillness of her empty home with the occasional cockroach.

Moments later, Ama emerged with dinner, deftly balancing two plates on each arm. She set one down in front of Miya, the perfectly crisped tuna accompanied by a generous portion of spinach risotto. After placing her own serving on the counter, Ama slid a saucer with five strips of fish toward Gavran. He stared at the pick-me-up from his beer tap, his beak hanging open.

The final addition was for the domovoy—a bowl filled to the brim with spinach risotto. Oddly, the house spirit loved his carbs, preferring a vegetarian diet. While Miya was the only one who could see the domovoy, Ama and Kai had a sixth sense for locating him.

“Here you are.” The white wolf smiled as she knelt with her offering.

The domovoy made quick work of the food, shoving fistfuls into his mouth until his cheeks were puffed. Miya took a moment to savor his mirth before digging in, the meal perfectly crafted to Ama’s exacting standards.

“She was definitely scared,” said Miya, leafing through Caelan’s journal with one hand.

Ama pushed the risotto around with her fork. “Anything specific about what she was seeing?”

Miya shook her head. “She was struggling to remember things, which I guess tracks. When I went through this, I couldn’t remember my own town’s folklore. It’d been cudgeled into my brain since childhood, but when I started having nightmares”—she threw her arms up—“poof! Gone.” She paused, chewing thoughtfully. “Caelan did mention a shadow self in a few of the entries.”

“A shadow self?” Ama hummed, tapping her fork against the plate. “Some oppressive force impersonating its victim, perhaps?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Miya agreed. Malevolent spirits loved taking the shape of those they tormented.

Ama sighed and waved the fork around. “It doesn’t matter. The journal offers clues to her experience, but it won’t help us find her.”

She was right. Dreamwalking was the only way.

The rest of their meal passed in silence. Miya stacked the plates and returned them to the kitchen, then joined Ama by the bar, her fingers tracing the journal’s outer edge.

Ama rose from her stool. “It’s been a day. I think I’m going to check on my sleeping beauty upstairs, maybe join her.”

“Sounds good.” Night had fallen hours ago, and like Kai, Ama kept an irregular sleep schedule.

“You going to hang out here for a bit?” Ama hesitated as she made for the stairs against the back wall—unusual for a bar, but the building hadn’t been renovated in decades. They’d installed a door at the top to keep patrons from wandering into Crowbar’s living quarters.

“Yeah,” Miya replied after a lull, scratching under Gavran’s chin. “I might pour myself a drink and peruse the journal a little longer.”

Ama nodded. “Let me know if you decide to head home. It’s already quite late.” Then, she retreated upstairs.

The domovoy’s head swiveled as he tracked Ama’s footsteps, the floorboards creaking under her weight. She must’ve been tired; normally, she was silent as a butterfly’s wings.

Miya re-focused on Caelan’s words. One particular entry kept snagging her attention—a testament to the girl’s silent terror, unbeknownst to her parents. Of course, they’d known something was up, but the extent of it was lost on them, impossible to internalize. It didn’t matter that Gabe thought Caelan’s distress was psychological while Lisbeth believed it was something other . In the end, locating a cause wouldn’t have mattered if Caelan didn’t feel understood.

I’m running out of time to find the door. Every night, I dream of the shadow. It’s shaped like me. It’s my height and has my way of moving, but it’s not mine. It doesn’t follow me the way a shadow should. It doesn’t follow me at all.

I follow it. I can’t stop myself. The shadow scares me, but every time I wake up inside my dreams (weird, I know), I see it in the distance. I walk toward it, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t turn around and walk the other way. Sometimes, I can’t see the shadow at all, and I panic trying to find it. I’m scared that if I don’t catch the shadow, it will catch me. But I don’t want to catch it. When I look at her—that dark thing stealing my shape—I’m filled with an awful feeling.

Then, I wake up. Always somewhere I’m not supposed to be. Always confused and with a spotty memory. What else did I see in my dream? I can’t fucking remember.

Dad wants me to go to a sleep clinic or a psychiatrist, but we don’t have the money. He says he’ll take out a loan, but I know the doctors won’t find anything. It’ll just put us in debt. Mom wants to take me to a psychic, but those people are scammers. I don’t trust them.

They think they can fix it if they find the right doctor or the right psychic, but doctors and psychics can’t help me. Whatever’s wrong with me is bigger than what they know—bigger than what they can grasp without breaking.

I know because I’m already broken, and they just can’t see it.

Miya’s heart squeezed in her chest. Caelan was searching for a way out all on her own. Her parents bickered over which story explained their daughter’s struggles, but they were asking the wrong questions, looking in the wrong places. Gabe wanted to know what was wrong with his daughter while Lisbeth wanted to know what was wrong with the world. The truth, however, was somewhere in between. Not every soul could be healed by exorcizing monsters, and not every monster could be placated by a mended soul. Miya knew this all too well. Kai had spent most of his life haunted by specters both literal and metaphorical, and the obsession with carving out a clean division between them was the reason he’d never found the help he needed. Sure, he was traumatized and mentally ill—and that was besides the ADHD—but no one acknowledged that his experiences were real . The haunting couldn’t be excised from the other things that lingered.

It wasn’t one or the other; it was both.

Miya’s heel tapped against the stool leg. She was antsy, eager to get to the bottom of Caelan’s disappearance. Whether Caelan’s shadow was sinister mattered less and less; the teen was obviously afraid, and now she was missing.

Meanwhile, Miya sat comfortably at her favorite bar after enjoying her gourmet dinner when she should’ve been busting her ass to find a lost girl. Slapping the journal shut, she slid out of her seat. Judging by the entries, the journey into Caelan’s inner world would be harrowing.

A shiver raveled up her spine as she recalled Kai’s nightmare. The dreamscape laid bare a person’s psychological reality; it was completely unfiltered, the mind stripped of its usual defenses. The more intense the denial and repression, the more frightening the visions conjured in the dreamscape, and the harder it became for Miya to resist their pull. Minds were dark places when people harbored secrets, and Caelan seemed to have a few. Just as Kai did.

“We’re doing this,” Miya said resolutely, her eyes fixed on Gavran.

His head canted to a near ninety-degree angle, and from the corner of the bar, the domovoy mimicked him with a rattling chirp. They weren’t so sure, but Miya was. Ama would’ve wanted her to wait until they were all together, but urgency had its claws against Miya’s throat. Sure, it was a little reckless to dreamwalk into unknown territory with only Gavran as backup, but Miya couldn’t always depend on others to keep her safe. Caelan needed help, and Miya was the only person with the power to do something. She had to try.

Kai would’ve done the same.

Miya snatched the journal and strode behind the bar. In Ama’s absence, she liked the feeling of being closed in by the counter. Crowbar kept a throw and small pillow for her; it wasn’t her first time frolicking around the ethereal realm while at the King of Spades, albeit in less treacherous territory than another person’s nightmare. After spreading the blanket on the floor, Miya lay down on her back and fixed the pillow behind her head. Gavran quickly joined her, croaking softly as he hopped around her prostrate form.

“You want to come with?” Miya asked, placing the journal on her abdomen and wrapping an arm around her midsection to keep it secure.

Gavran’s head jerked up toward the ceiling as though he were listening for footsteps. When Ama didn’t burst through the chandelier, he helped himself to Miya’s forearm, using it as a perch. The domovoy too ambled over and nestled in next to Miya, his palms squished into the throw as he kneaded through the soft fabric. He was staring at her, his wide planetoid eyes unblinking, his ears flat against his feline skull.

“I’ll be fine,” Miya reassured him with a smile. “Just the usual Dreamwalker shenanigans.”

It occurred to Miya that foisting her spirit into another realm must’ve been quite alarming to everyone around her. Even Ama, who’d guided her when she was still a fledgling, treated her out-of-body excursions as a perilous undertaking.

The little house guardian squirmed closer, his shoulders slumped as he watched her warily. He’d grown attached to Miya. She and Gavran were the only ones who could properly interact with him.

“Gavran’s coming with me, so I won’t be alone,” she reasoned. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

The domovoy huffed in resignation and cast Gavran a sideways glance. Confident she’d quelled his dissent, Miya settled into her throw and closed her eyes, her fingers digging into the journal. Silence rose like a shield, cradling her as the world fell away piece by piece. She focused on the book—her anchor to Caelan. The girl’s energy was woven into the ink on the pages, the words vestiges of a stolen soul. As Miya faded, something stirred beneath the earth—phantom roots plying through the fabric of reality. They reached for her, coiling around her limbs, around the journal.

She squeezed Caelan’s memories tighter, waiting to be consumed.