Page 134 of Sweet Nightmare

“Where’s the tapestry now?” he asks, and he’s already up and heading for the door. “Is it where we left it?”

“I think it’s lost,” I tell him. “Since it seemed like such a huge deal to you, I gave it to Simon, since I was supposed to go across the portal with my mom. But then the portal broke and—”

“It’s in the ocean?” Jude’s face is blank again, but there’s a look about him that makes me think this is even worse than I imagined. Even before he repeats, “The tapestry is in the ocean?”

“I assume so, since Simon was in the portal when it broke.” I turn to look at Simon, but he’s jogging away. “Hey! Where are you going?” I call after him.

He doesn’t answer, just waves a quick hand in acknowledgment as Jude takes off after him, darting up the main stairs of the dorm.

Only a couple of minutes pass before Simon and Jude are back.

“I stashed it in a closet upstairs after Caspian took you up to the portal,” Simon tells me sheepishly. “I don’t know what kept me from bringing it with me—”

“Common sense, maybe?” Ember comments.

“Pretty much, yeah.” The smile he shoots her lights up his whole face, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “Well, that and a bad feeling that I couldn’t shake.”

“Maybe you’re seeing the future now, too,” Izzy suggests dryly.

I walk over to where Jude has put the tapestry down and is currently unrolling it. Part of me has been hoping that it will be back to normal, that whatever weird thing made it go awry last night has somehow resolved itself.

But I can tell before it’s halfway unrolled that that’s not the case. It looks as strange and eerie as it did last night—maybe more so now that we’re out of the rain.

“So I’m not trying to sound ignorant,” Mozart says as she gets up and comes over to look at the tapestry. “But what is it?”

“It’s a textile,” Simon answers. “A weaving of—”

“Seriously?” she cuts him off. “I know what a tapestry is. I’m asking what this tapestry is, since it’s obviously special or the Jean-Jerks wouldn’t have come looking for it and Clementine wouldn’t have been able to break time or whatever the hell she did.”

“I didn’t do anything!” I object. “I wasn’t even near the tapestry when it happened. I just know that things went off-kilter for me, and then when I picked it up, it was messed up, too.”

Mozart turns to look at Jude. “I saw how freaked out you got when Clementine had the tapestry. So what is it? Why did it bother you so much that she had it?”

Jude stares at her for several seconds, jaw working and face going expressionless like it does when he doesn’t want to talk about something. I see the moment he gives up on prevaricating and decides to just tell the truth.

“It’s a dream tapestry,” he finally tells us reluctantly. “Or, I guess in this case, it’s a nightmare tapestry.”

“A what?” Simon asks as he takes a big step back away from it.

Not that I blame him—after everything that happened in the middle of the night, it’s taking every ounce of courage I’ve got to stand my ground as well.

“A dream tapestry—it’s woven with people’s dreams.”

“Dreams?” Remy asks, moving closer to get a better look. “Or nightmares?”

Jude lets out a long slow breath before saying, “I am the Prince of Nightmares. So you do the math.”

It’s the second time I’ve heard those words, but they still feel like a punch to my stomach. A quick glance around tells me they feel like that to everyone else, too—well, everyone but Izzy, who hasn’t bothered to look up from her nails or her knife.

But before I can ask Jude for a better explanation, a massive crack of thunder rattles the whole dorm—right before we hear the sound of the outer door crashing open.

CHAPTER SEVENTY

TIME SLIP

AND SLIDE

“What the hell was that?” Luis exclaims as he leaps to his feet.

---