Chapters (38)
- Front Cover
- 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
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Back Cover
Beside it lay a single hairpin. Though it was just a piece of metal, it felt like a piece of Lishta. Maren squeezed it tight inside her fist, as if this could somehow keep her grandmother safe.
“She’s got Gran-Gran,” she said.
“Wait, the lady from the hospital took your gran?” Amos looked like he didn’t know what to believe anymore.
“Yes,” said Maren impatiently. She typed the note’s address into her phone. “I need to go there right now. The 79 bus stop isn’t far.”
“Are you kidding?” said Amos. “We need to call the police.”
Maren waved the note in Amos’s face, and he flinched. “Did you not read this? She said we can’t tell anybody. Amos, she is really, very scary, and I don’t know what she’ll do to Gran-Gran.” Maren’s voice came out so shrill that she had to stop and swallow a few times before continuing. “You don’t have to come with me, but you can’t tell anybody. You have to promise me you won’t.”
“I’m not going to let you go running off after some criminal by yourself,” said Amos. “But don’t kidnappers always say you can’t tell the cops? What makes you think you can rescue her better than they can?”
Tapping Lishta’s hairpin against her nose, Maren scanned the shelves. Lots of ingredients were missing, in addition to the dreams. But the square jar full of dreamsalt sat untouched on its shelf.
“Because I have something she needs.” Maren unzipped her backpack and stuck the jar inside. The safe door had been opened. At least half of the nightmares were gone, and so was the whispering dust. Maren couldn’t begin to imagine the awful things Obscura might do with that dust. Shuddering, she took a paper bag, filled it with the rest of the nightmares, and folded the top closed. “Honestly, you don’t have to come,” she said. “But you have to let me go.”
“I’m coming.” Amos took the bag full of dreams and stuffed it inside his backpack. “But only if you tell me everything.”
“I will,” said Maren. “On the way there.”
* * *
By the time the 79 bus—painted with green horses and seahorses—navigated through approximately four hundred detours and picked up roughly nine thousand festivalgoers, the rain had turned to a deluge. The windshield wipers couldn’t keep up with the downpour, and the driver hunched over the steering wheel, muttering and cursing Mother Nature and pedestrians alike.