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
“I covered for you,” she said finally. “Mom and Dad think you’ve been asleep since you got home right after school. Made me bring dinner up to your room. I dumped it out the window and brought back the plates. Make sure you clean that up.”
Kane pursed his lips. He knew he should thank her, but it hadn’t exactly been his choice to be abducted into a rogue nightmare. He stopped himself from saying anything at all, knowing it’d be used against him.
With a curt nod Sophia dragged herself off the recliner, her blanket sweeping behind her like a rich cape. Halfway up the stairs she stopped. “In the morning, you’re going to tell me where you’ve been. If you lie, I will expose you to Mom and Dad. I’d rather have you in jail than lost again, Kane. Those are my conditions.”
And then he was alone again. His backpack slumped to the floor, and soon he was there alongside it, just sitting in the pool of golden lamplight.
He was still there an hour later, and an hour after that, too afraid to sleep, to dream. He was too afraid that if he looked away his house might dissolve into the ether, like the arena. He felt like he did whenever he glimpsed the Cobalt Complex through the thin forest that hid it from the roads; like he was flirting with a hidden vastness folded into the fabric of reality, like if he stared for too long, he’d lose himself within it, belong to it, and he’d never find his way back out.
What the hell was he going to tell Sophia?
Oh, I put on a magical device in a dreamworld and it caused my powers to go haywire. Oh, also, I have powers.
He kept his hands decidedly clenched.
When morning arrived, it arrived in fringes, just a rosy nuisance tickling Kane’s bloodshot eyes. Then the light was somehow everywhere. Soon the house would be awake.
Kane stretched his stiff legs, then flopped back onto the carpet, crushing his backpack in the process, and that’s when he remembered the red journal.
It took only a second to dig it out of the bag. He eyed it like it was edible, like he was about to flay it open and devour its pages. In the rush of escaping the Others, Kane’s mind had kept itself purposefully blank. Now the memories of Dean Flores burst like fireworks, one after the other. Boom, boom!
“‘You must never tell your friends about me,’” Kane recited. “‘If you do, they will hurt you, then they will hurt me.’”