And then Helga was there! Sweet, stern Helga. She gave him a look as she put some dishes away. It was a look Michael had seen many times over the years. A look that said he’d better not be trying to pull a fast one on her. A look he normally got when he faked a cough to miss school or lied about his homework.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “This is a dream. I can have as much as I want!” He smiled and took another bite, chewed and swallowed. “I guess Gabby’s still missing, haven’t heard anything from her. It sure is sweet to be back with Sarah and Bryson, though. The Terrible Trio, live and still kickin’. Even if we are crammed into a backseat. Anyway. Who would’ve thought my life could get so weird, huh? Crazy stuff.”

Helga nodded, smiled, bent over the dishwasher; the room filled with the clank of glass and porcelain.

Michael frowned, feeling as if Helga didn’t seem to care one whit. “Maybe you don’t know everything, my little German. Oh, let’s see. Somehow we got tricked into blowing up the VNS systems, pretty much shut the whole thing down. Sarah’s parents—who’d been kidnapped, mind you—show up out of the blue to rescue us from jail, talking about you and a bunch of former Tangents behind it all. You, Helga. Care to enlighten me on that?”

His nanny gave him a guilty shrug, barely pausing from her work. Clinks and clanks rang out, the thumps of cabinet doors closing. Michael knew it was too good to be true—that he could just sit there and enjoy his dream. There wasn’t a place in the universe he could run to escape his thoughts—his own mind less than anywhere else. He stabbed a last few bites of waffle into his mouth, relishing the crisp outside and the soft interior, sensing that the dream was about to end anyway. And Helga had yet to say a single word to him.

“I guess you can’t talk to me in my dreams, can you?” Michael said. “That’s just plain weird. Kaine told me he’d killed you, killed my parents.” Picturing his mom and dad sent a deep ache through his dreaming heart. “Maybe you escaped somehow? I don’t know. Either way, can’t you at least live on in my head? Maybe that’s too much like talking to my—”

Helga turned sharply, her face afire. “The Hallowed Ravine, boy. You know that’s where you’ve got to go. Back to the Hallowed Ravine. End it where it started!”

Michael started to reply, but wouldn’t you know it, that was right when a pothole had the gall to disturb his slumber.

CHAPTER 1

A NICE PLACE IN THE COUNTRY

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