Page 136 of Sweet Nightmare

“Clementine! Are you all right?” The perfectly healthy Luis standing next to me looks totally freaked out as he grabs my arm. “What’s going on?”

Pain ricochets through me the second I connect with flicker Luis, but it’s nothing compared to the emotional devastation rampaging through me.

Not Luis.

Not Luis.

Please, please, please, not Luis, too.

I can’t take it. I can’t—

A sob tears from my throat, and even though I know it’s impossible, I try to grab him, try to hold on to him, try to help him. But when I do, my hand goes straight through the bleeding, oozing hole in the center of his chest, and he collapses.

I start to catch him, but he falls straight through me, and that’s when I scream. I scream and scream and scream as my legs go out from under me and I hit the ground, hard.

Not Luis.

Not Luis.

Please not Luis.

He’s writhing on the ground now, his body convulsing right in front of me, and I try to get to him. Try to fix him. But this time when I touch him, he blinks out as quickly as he came.

Real Luis grabs onto me, tries to pull me up. But I can’t even look at him, because every time I do I see him on the ground in front of me, dying.

“Damn it, Clementine!” he yells, sounding as freaked out as I feel. “You’ve got to tell me what’s happening here. You have to—”

He breaks off as Remy skids to a stop in front of us.

“Hey,” he says, crouching down in front of me.

I try to answer him, but all that comes out is another sob. And I know it hasn’t happened yet, I know Luis is alive and healthy and whole right beside me, but I can’t get the picture of him, bleeding and broken, out of my head.

It blends with the last image I have of Eva, the last image I have of Serena, the last image I have of Carolina, and I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t do anything but sit here and cry.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” I babble to Remy as he takes my shoulders in his hands. “I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this. I can’t—”

“Clementine.” Remy’s voice is firm but composed as he calls my name, but I’m too far gone to listen. So he does it again, and this time he grabs my chin between his thumb and his index finger when he does, tilting my face up until I have no choice but to look him in his calm, dark eyes.

“The past is set, but the future can change,” he tells me, his tone low and urgent.

“I don’t—I can’t—”

“Listen to me,” he repeats, and there’s a look in his dark eyes I can’t help but respond to. “The past is set, but the future can change. Nothing that hasn’t happened yet is set in stone.”

“You don’t know,” I tell him, my voice breaking on the last word. “You don’t—”

“I do,” he says. “I swear I do.”

And this time when I meet his eyes, I see it in there—the knowledge and the understanding of exactly what I’m going through.

“How?” I whisper, the word raw and broken in my too-tight throat.

And even though I know the answer, even though I can see it as clearly as I can see Luis and Jude and Mozart standing right behind him with worried looks on their faces, I still need him to say it.

Remy must see that I need it, too, because present Remy leans forward and very quietly answers, “Because I can see the future, too.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

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