Distant Lives//Book Two of the Separate Entities Trilogy

Chapter Ten

"As sad and sweet as that story was, what does this mean for me?" I asked Millard, who had just finished reading one of the Tales to me and Emma - Jacob had fallen asleep a little while ago, and we hadn't the heart to wake him up for a story that didn't really apply to him. It was about a woman named Hildy who could see ghosts, just like me, though her experience varied widely from mine. While I could see both ghosts and invisible people, Hildy could only see ghosts.

"I don't quite know," Millard began, looking a bit sheepish, "but I felt you'd like to hear about it. It could mean nothing, as the same peculiarity can manifest in different ways - for instance, Emma, you can control fire with your hands, but there have been other peculiars who can breathe fire. On the other hand, it could mean that seeing ghosts as a peculiarity has evolved over the years. Or it could mean you have an entirely different peculiarity altogether, Kallie."

I had to stop and think for a minute after Millard finished speaking. What if he was right? Up until the hollowgast encounter in Miss Wren's menagerie, I had just assumed that my peculiarity meant I could see anything invisible, but I couldn't see the hollow - not really. It was like faint little heatwaves. A barely-there sort of thing, like I could see the negative space surrounding the hollow, just not the hollow itself.

I was about to respond when Jacob began talking in his sleep, twitching and muttering unintelligible words. Emma placed a hand gingerly on his shoulder, but he only squirmed more and my eyebrows knit together with worry. It wasn't until she'd grabbed him firmly by both shoulders that Jacob jolted awake, sweat beginning to bead on his brow. He took a couple heaving breaths before Emma spoke.

"Jacob! Thank God, you're alright. You gave us all a scare!"

"I-I did?" he stuttered, still trying to get his wits about him, then looked at me and Millard - or the suit Millard was wearing.

"You were having a nightmare," Millard informed him, worry laced in his voice. "Talking, too."

"Really?" Jake replied as Emma dabbed the sweat from his forehead with a napkin.

Emma sighed and set the cloth down, searching Jake's face - for what, I couldn't tell. "Really, though it sounded like a baby's babbling. I couldn't understand a thing."

Jake looked around and seemed relieved to discover that no one else had noticed.

"Do you have nightmares often?" Millard asked, but Jacob said nothing. Regardless, Millard continued. "I suggest describing them to Horace. He's good at deciphering meanings from dreams."

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" I asked as Emma rubbed Jake's arm in a comforting way.

"I'm fine, I promise," he said, then looked around a little before changing the subject to the still-open Tales of the Peculiar. "Doing some light reading, I see."

Millard closed the book and kept his hands resting on the cover. "Studying, actually. I can't believe I once dismissed these as children's stories. Once one looks deeper into them, one can see how complex they are - and cunning, too, in the ways that they conceal secrets and clues about peculiardom. It would take me months - years, even - just to decipher them all, and this is just one volume!"

"But what good will that do now that we know loops can be breached by hollows? Even the secret ones the book mentions will be discovered, someday," Emma pointed out, but Millard didn't seem put off by her words.

"Well, like we were just discussing, we can use it for other things, like learning the history of certain peculiarities," said Millard.

"And maybe it was just that loop the hollows breached," Jacob said, a hopeful tone in his voice. "Maybe the hollow was just a freak. Well, even more of a freak than the other ones."