Emery hadn't passed out.
It would have been more merciful if she had. She had laid on the ground, staring up at the sky, until Wes had shambled over to her. There was yelling. She remembered moaning for Joel, for Wes to let her go so she could get Joel out of that horrible house on the hill. Then crying for Edgar until Wes told her that Edgar was okay, that he'd be okay, even though she knew he wasn't okay at all.
Grandpa Al had shown up some time later, then Ares Montgomery, and they cleared off the other students.
Emery remembered being led back down the hill, stumbling through her headache and her throbbing leg. The brightness of Klaus's storm had dimmed, the clouds dispersing, the night settled over Fenhallow once again. then she remembered sitting in Grandpa Al's office staring at the edge of his desk. Wes sat in the chair beside her, his knee touching hers, neither of them saying anything. Grandpa Al on the phone, surveying the grounds outside the window. Grandpa Al hanging up and saying, "The police," and "investigate" and "it won't be a question—so much Dream activity tonight."
Emery got the details from Wes later. The police came out, and so did several Hypnos cleanup crews. It was Stainer, the highest ranking of any of the cleanup crew members and now completely sober, who confirmed Joel's death had been caused by a nightmare. Everyone in the city knew about the storm of nightmares that had cloaked the school for nearly half an hour, and news crews swarmed the campus like flies. All the students now knew most of the story. Queen Emery had a doppelgänger. Queen Emery couldn't defeat it. Queen Emery, top of her class, had finally been knocked off her pedestal.
That such a large outbreak of nightmares had been allowed to form was a possible violation of several Hypnos State laws, but information had been kept under wraps.
"They're calling in the head of the North American Ward," Wes said later, when they sat together in the clinic. Emery was in her pajamas, curled against the headboard of the clinic bed. Wes had changed out of his clothes and showered, and his damp hair was curling around his head. Two nasty bruises formed around the bandage over his nose. The clinic windows were closed against the midmorning sun so that Emery could be knocked out and sleep in darkness. "Marcia thinks they're going to try to pin it on Klaus."
"They're going to say he fell asleep on purpose?"
They both looked down the clinic, where Klaus lay cuffed to the last bed in the row, staring blankly at the ceiling. Marcia sat in the chair beside his bed, her back to Emery and Wes, quieter than she'd ever been.
"He knew how powerful his nightmares would be," Emery said. "He wanted his water."
"Hopefully enough people know that and can fight against the accusation when it comes up."
"I will."
"So will I. So will Marcia, and probably Lana, too."
Emery rubbed her palms across her face. Her tears had dried, but her whole head felt like it was packed with cotton. Images of Joel spread-eagle on the ballroom floor had burned themselves into her mind. She could still hear the tearing of Morrigan's hand through his abdomen. It had been hours ago, but it felt like seconds. It felt like she was still there, experiencing it for the first time. She stared at the empty bed across from hers, imagining Joel there. Bandaged up, only sleeping, and he'd wake up and she could curl up beside him and watch reruns of Golden Girls while he healed.
Her insides twisted horribly. She started to imagine Edgar in the bed, instead.
Edgar had not been on the news reports. Edgar had not been brought to the clinic. After Grandpa Al learned what had happened to him, he'd sent Edgar straight to the sleep research center. Emery had refused the nurse's sleeping sand until they told her what had happened to him. The only update she received was from Grandpa Al via one of the clinic nurses: Edgar was alive, but comatose. He had killed his doppelgänger too early.
They weren't sure if he'd wake up.
"I talked to Ares, too," Wes said after a long moment. "I told him you shot her in the head, and she disappeared back into the Dream. He says you wouldn't have killed her, but you probably weakened her enough to keep her away for a while."
For a while. For a while until she was more prepared. Or for a while until she was still as weak as she was now. For a while, until Morrigan returned to kill more of the people she cared about.
Until then she would think about the fact that it was her hand, her arm, that had gutted Joel. She would think about the expression on her own face right before she did it.
When she felt herself about to cry again, she called the nurse over for her sleeping sand and left the waking world behind.
~
Her dream was white.
She stood on a snowy hill. Boots, leggings, a warm sweater, a scarf. Moscow in the distance. The air smelled like pine and gingerbread. Peace settled in her chest, still and silent. Snow began to fall from the milky white sky. She held her hands out to catch it.
"Em!"
She turned. A boy came up the hill to meet her. He had a bright-eyed smile and a bouquet of weedy red poppies. He kissed her hello, but somehow it also felt like goodbye. Snow caught in his hair. She reached up to brush it out.
He handed her the poppies. They were dead.
He coughed blood in her face.
~
Emery jerked awake, already crying. Even the clinic's sleeping sand hadn't been able to keep out the nightmares. The clock on the clinic wall said six hours had passed. Jacqueline, her arms primly folded beneath her head, lay asleep on the mattress, sitting in the chair by the bed. Emery half expected to see Lewis and Kris there, too, but they were nowhere in sight. Wes sat on the end of the bed, facing the room, leaning slightly on his hammer. Ridley sat on the floor beside his legs, her hair just poking up over the bedframe.
Wes had turned his head only slightly when Emery woke up.
She hid her face in her pillow and pulled the blanket over herself.
~
The outbreak and the ensuing death were news for a week. The story played on every local news channel and reporters lurked around campus, trying to interview students and staff. Apart from a few uncredited sources, no one leaked information. The Hypnos State issued an official statement saying that the storm was the result of a possible attack on the city that the dreamhunters of Fenhallow had contained to the school; the death of a Fenhallow student had occurred in the process of protecting another student from harm, a terrible tragedy that had saved lives.
Joel Cullweather was a hero.
Emery was glad that was what Joel's parents heard, at least, when they visited the school after that night. She met them in Grandpa Al's office, and she stood in the corner behind his desk while Grandpa Al explained what happened.
Joel's father sobbed into his hand and his mother sat in shellshocked silence.
"Your son was a brave boy." Grandpa Al used his warm voice, his soothing voice, the one he'd once used to get Emery to go to sleep when she'd first come to Fenhallow and was still scared of her own nightmares. He leaned on the edge of his desk, offering Joel's father a box of tissues. Joel's mother took one and nudged her husband until he took it. "He knew better than many of the students here what it means to be part of the Hypnos State, and he will be remembered. He saved lives. Not only that, I owe him a special debt, one that I can never repay. He died protecting my grandson."
Joel had died protecting Emery, too, but no one could say that. If a non-dreamhunter died protecting a dreamhunter from a nightmare, then she was a terrible excuse for a dreamhunter, and should be stripped of everything she had. His death had violated everything she was supposed to stand for, everything she'd been made to uphold. But if Joel died protecting a child...
Grandpa Al said some more, but Emery had stopped listening. Joel's mother had started staring at her. Stare at her hard, like someone who knew the unspoken truth, the secret to be hidden forever. The guilt ripped at Emery's stomach. It had to be written on her face, as well.
When Joel's parents left, led out by a Hypnos State counselor, Grandpa Al said, "Stay here for a moment, Em. I need to talk to you."
She stood in the center of the room, waiting, wishing numbness could overtake her so she didn't have to feel anymore. Grandpa Al took her face in his hands. They were rough and hot and made her flush with anger. He smelled like spiced tea.
"Your month is almost up."
"What?"
"Our deal. A month's worth of missions and then you can decide if you want a new partner."
She pulled her head away from him. "Of course I want to keep Wes as a partner. He helped me when everyone else was lying and using me as bait."
Grandpa Al flinched at that. If she had blinked, she would have missed it. He seemed to gather his thoughts, then said, "When the director of the Ward arrives, she's going to investigate what happened here. I will report to her the entire story. She will have your termination papers served to you, and your time will begin to hunt down your doppelgänger."
"Morrigan."
He frowned.
"Her name is Morrigan," Emery said. "That's what she calls herself."
"Doppelgängers don't have names," he said.
"Just because you don't want them to doesn't mean they won't."
He took a deep breath and exhaled ahrd through his nose. For the first time, she realized how tense he was. "Emery. I tried to explain this before. You're young. This is a security matter on a scale you can't comprehend. I didn't want to do what I did—"
"I don't care!" She couldn't breathe anymore, but she yelled anyway. "I don't care if you didn't want to! You did it, and now Joel is dead and Edgar is in a coma and how many more people could have died tonight? I could have died tonight! You would have let her kill me!"
He started toward her. "No, Em, I would never let anything—"
Emery didn't let him finish. She fled the room and the building, making it halfway down the quote-engraved steps before realizing there was nowhere for her to go. It was still more dangerous off campus than on. She didn't want to be alone, but Joel was gone, and Lewis and Kris had sold her out to her grandfather and Ares, and Jacqueline—even if she weren't still being detained for using her dreamseeker abilities—would just remind her that Joel was gone.
Emery took out her phone.
Where are you?
Wes texted back a few minutes later.
Working out so I forget how much my face hurts. Why?
Let's get food.
He met her at the atrium of the Crossing, wearing his ratty blue sweater and some old jeans. Emery ignored the looks they got as they went in and sat down with their food in a far corner, away from everyone else.
Not far away, Kris and Lewis sat together at a table. Kris looked up when they came in. Said something. Lewis glanced over his shoulder. Both of them had dark bags under their eyes. After a moment, Kris got up and shuffled over.
"Hi, Emery," she said, voice small and meek. It had never seemed put-on, like she was using it to make herself look fragile, but it seemed like that now. "Lewis and I—we're so sorry for telling your grandpa about everything. We were worried about you. We thought—we thought he would help."
"Yeah," Emery said, without looking up from her cottage cheese.
"We miss Joel too. We're really, really sorry."
Kris was crying now. Emery could hear it in her voice without looking up at her face.
"Yeah," she said again.
Another long pause. Kris shuffled away.
Wes watched her go, but didn't say anything. Emery knew it wasn't her fault, or Lewis's fault; Morrigan had always been a known variable to Grandpa Al and the Hypnos State. And not just a variable, but the goal. Kris and Lewis telling Grandpa Al had only lost them some time. Klaus still would have fallen asleep. Morrigan still would have used the storm as a distraction to grab Edgar. Emery still would've run out of bullets.
As soon as Kris was out of earshot, Emery said, "Wes. I have to tell you something."
She explained, as quickly and with as little emotion as she could, how they had been used as bait.
It was a small consolation that the look of betrayal on his face matched what she felt inside.
~
Joel's funeral took place the following Saturday. Fenhallow students, teachers, and staff packed the funeral home. Yael, the ice sculptor from the kitchens. The maintenance staff who'd lent Joel their keys. Alice, the front gate guard. All of them wore the gold-and-silver pin of the closed eye of Hypnos over their hearts, setting them apart from Joel's family members.
Only the top half of the casket was open. Joel looked like wax. Emery forced herself to it on stiff legs so she could pin Hypnos's eye onto his lapel. He didn't look like he was sleeping. The awake lived in the waking world. The asleep lived in the Dream. He looked dead, and dead people didn't live in either.
You were right, Jojo, she thought. We should have run away.
She wanted to lean down and kiss his forehead, but instead she stepped away, because Joel's mother was standing there beside his head, and Emery had never felt so hated.
The burial took place that afternoon in Poppy Hill, the Sleeping City's largest cemetery, where Fabian Fenhallow had been buried. Old trees and a tall stone wall bordered its rolling lawns. The beautiful October foliage had begun to fall in the face of November, and an early frost blanketed the grass and tombstones. The graveyard was mostly empty. After the casket was lowered, the Fenhallow crowd slipped off into the waning light.
Emery remained in the shadow of a nearby tree with Wes. Her coat came up high around her jaw and swept out around her knees. She had worn it to look imperious. If there was any way at all Morrigan was watching her, she would make it clear that she would not be so easy to defeat, limited number of bullets or not. Wes was just there, stoic and stony, like a cemetery statue. At the bottom of the hill, Grandpa Al waited by a black Fenhallow car. He looked strange without Edgar at his side. Edgar, who Emery still wasn't allowed to see. Edgar, who had been locked away in the deepest recesses of the sleep research center until the Ward director arrived.
Emery kept her gaze away from Grandpa Al and the car. She watched the cemetery workers pile dirt into Joel's grave. There was no creeping pressure of the Dream here. The dead did not sleep.
A deep furrow had formed between Wes's eyebrows. His gaze fixed on the graves in the far distance, where a man in a hoodie and jacket was milling around the path.
"What's wrong?" Emery said.
"I know what happens to people who can't kill their doppelgängers," he said. "The Ward throws you into a tiny, dark cell far underground, shoots you up with DreamLess, then cuts your connection to the Dream and lets your brain fracture into pieces. They say it's humane because they're not killing you, they're just stopping your subconscious from forming anything dangerous. But you aren't anything after that. Your body is alive but your brain is dead. You're gone.
"My parents went through dream death three months apart. My dad went first, and I saw my mom once afterward. It's the only memory I have of her—they took me to the hospital where she was and she held me and cried. It was more like screaming." His stare never wavered. "They didn't bring Ridley. I guess she was too young."
"I'm sorry, Wes."
He shook his head. "I didn't want that to happen. To me. To Ridley. When I realized how dreamforming came easier to me than it did to the others, I knew I was in trouble. But I've looked through the records, and the dreamhunters whose partners helped them fight their doppelgängers had a higher rate of survival. Much higher. It seems obvious, but the State doesn't like it. Just another chance to lose a hunter they've been training for two decades."
He paused and looked at her. "We're partners. We stick together."
"I'll do the fighting. You do the dreamforming. We're like two halves of a whole hunter."
"Morrigan isn't going to beat us."
But the Hypnos State might, Emery thought, then pushed the idea down. There would be time to worry about the State when the more immediate threat was handled.
"What brought this on?" she asked.
Wes nodded back toward the man in the hoodie in the distance. The man had paused on the path as they talked, but now turned smoothly and started walking away.
"That guy," Wes said. "He was watching us."
"For how long?"
"I noticed him when they started lowering the casket."
"Did you sense the Dream on him?"
"He's too far away."
"What did he look like?"
"He was wearing a mask," (Emery scoffed. Masks.) "under his hood. There were no eyeholes that I could see. No mouth. Just...dark. Nondescript clothes. No showing skin."
Emery looked again. The man had disappeared.
"You think he's...?"
"I don't know," Wes said, "but I'm not leaving anything up to chance anymore."
A pause.
With a deep sigh, Emery straightened her back against the endless exhaustion of the past few weeks.
"Whatever," she said. She flipped her collar up and scooped her hair over one shoulder so it cascaded past her face like a rolling black wave. "If any more doppelgängers want to screw with us, they're welcome to try. Come on. We have training to do."
She turned back for the car. Wes followed her, and they descended the hill together.
The End
(?)