Chapters (53)
- Front Cover
- Letter from the Author
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- • One •
- • Two •
- • Three •
- • Four •
- • Five •
- • Six •
- • Seven •
- • Eight •
- • Nine •
- • Ten •
- • Eleven •
- • Twelve •
- • Thirteen •
- • Fourteen •
- • Fifteen •
- • Sixteen •
- • Seventeen •
- • Eighteen •
- • Nineteen •
- • Twenty •
- • Twenty-One •
- • Twenty-Two •
- • Twenty-Three •
- • Twenty-Four •
- • Twenty-Five •
- • Twenty-Six •
- • Twenty-Seven •
- • Twenty-Eight •
- • Twenty-Nine •
- • Thirty •
- • Thirty-One •
- • Thirty-Two •
- • Thirty-Three •
- • Thirty-Four •
- • Thirty-Five •
- • Thirty-Six •
- • Thirty-Seven •
- • Thirty-Eight •
- • ∞ •
- • Thirty-Nine •
- • Forty •
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Excerpt from Be Dazzled
- One
- Two
- About the Author
- Back Cover
No one answered.
“Not to what?”
Adeline lowered her voice to a menacing whisper. “You went nuts, Kane.” Elliot and Ursula flinched. “What? It’s true. You became obsessed with finding the source of the reveries, the source of our power. You were convinced it was a weapon that you had to have, or else it was going to be used against you. It’s all you talked about for weeks, and then, in the middle of a reverie, you… I don’t know. Lost it? Like actually, truly lost your grip on reality? You basically tore the whole thing apart in this psychedelic explosion, and we thought you died. Like died died.”
“What about the car crash?”
Adeline picked at the crusts on her plate. “The police saw the explosion and showed up. We needed something quick, so Ursula threw your car into the mill and Elliot created a bunch of fake evidence to make it look like a fire. I filled in the rest with some fake memories while we made sure you got to a hospital. Not our best work, but we needed to use you as a diversion.”
“You threw my dad’s car?”
Ursula had never looked more ashamed, not even when Adeline talked about her mermaid shell bra. “Underhand,” she squeaked.
“And this was a diversion? From what?”
The chill in the booth was back, and now it wouldn’t thaw. It settled resolutely onto Kane’s skin, a frosted lather. He squared his shoulders toward Adeline, who was the most forthcoming, but it was Elliot who spoke up.
“The hero of that night’s reverie was an old painter, and her reverie was a watercolor reimagining of East Amity. It developed as she was setting up to paint the mill, we think. It was huge and intricate, but we never got to its resolution. When you tore the reverie apart, the hero vanished. We don’t know what happened to her. Her name was—”
“Maxine Osman,” Kane said. He didn’t see their reaction. The diner’s fluorescent lights buzzed in the silence. Neither time nor feeling could reach him as the sense of betrayal he’d felt about his past earlier that day returned, filling him to the brim with a pulsing, dark truth. You are a killer, you are a killer, it said. He shoved it down. Kane barely knew these people, and he definitely did not trust them. What if they were creating this story, just like they’d created the crash? Just like they’d created everything else?
“How do I know you’re not lying? How come I don’t remember?”
No one would look at Kane. Adeline seemed miles away when she finally spoke.