Page 141 of Sweet Nightmare

“What do you mean, you don’t make them?” Ember asks. “Who the fuck would you trust to whip up shit that goes bump in the night?”

“Again, I was seven when I first got here,” he reminds her. “Would you trust a seven-year-old making those monsters? So Clementine’s mom took on the job, and she’s been doing it ever since.”

I thought I was beyond being shocked, thought everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours had already rendered me unshockable. But it turns out I was wrong, because there’s a part of me that can’t process what he just said.

My mother makes monsters out of Jude’s nightmares?

My mother creates those nasty, terrible things in the dungeon using magic from the guy she knows I’ve hated for the last three years and then sends me down there to clean up after them?

Because wow. There’s diabolical, and then there’s just completely fucked up. My mother definitely falls into the latter category, especially when I add in all the lies she had to tell me through the years to keep the whole system going. She doesn’t board monsters short term for money for the school. She houses them until Jude can put them back in the tapestry, where they apparently dissolve back into nightmares.

My mind boggles, the pieces of this very complex puzzle swirling around in my head, and I have no idea how they fit together.

I cut the thought off as another question occurs to me. One that has nothing to do with my mother, because I’m definitely not ready to deal with her part in this mess yet. I know I’ll have to eventually, because there has to be more to the story of Carolina being sent away than Jude knows. After all, my mom’s not really the type to be motivated by nightmares—hers or mine. But not yet.

“If the nightmares are condensed into monsters for the sole purpose of putting them back into the tapestry, why do those monsters stay in the dungeon for so long?” I ask Jude. “Some of them are there for months.”

“Because the tapestry only accepts them four times a year,” Jude answers grimly. “We have to wait for when magic is at its most powerful to put them back into the tapestry.”

“The solstices?” Luis guesses.

Jude nods. “And the equinoxes.”

I can tell by the look on Remy’s face that he’s already come to the same realization I have.

“Tonight’s the equinox,” he says slowly.

And Jude looks even more grim than he did a few seconds ago.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

OH NO

BAN-SHE DIDN’T

No wonder he was freaking out about me taking the tapestry yesterday—and about it being broken now. He needs it for tonight or those monsters are going to have to wait around for another three months.

“So what do we do?” Ember asks, looking back and forth between Jude, the tapestry, and me.

“We fix it. What else can we do?” Simon shoves a frustrated hand through his hair.

“And you think fixing the tapestry will also fix Clementine?” Luis taps a nervous finger on his knee. “She can’t go through another incident like that again.”

I shoot him a grateful smile.

He returns my smile, but he’s still got that look in his eyes—that eventually we are going to be talking about what happened.

The thought makes my stomach ache, so I hold on to what Remy told me. That the past is set, but the future isn’t. I don’t know what I have to do to make sure Luis doesn’t end up like that flicker, but somehow, I’m going to find out.

“If Clementine is right and the tapestry is talking to her because her new power is related to it, then it stands to reason that fixing the tapestry should also fix whatever’s going on with her,” Remy says. “But if it isn’t…”

“What do you mean if it isn’t?” I sit forward, alarmed now. “I absolutely cannot go through the rest of my life seeing everyone and everything in triplicate. I just can’t!”

Jude takes my hand and strokes a soothing thumb over my knuckles. “We’ll figure it out,” he tells me with such confidence that I almost believe him.

Of course, the fact that he looks as stressed as I feel doesn’t help with that.

Luis leans down next to the tapestry, and as if to prove he means business, he tugs on a couple loose threads at the corner of the tapestry. Instead of unraveling that little section, the tapestry lights up. It goes into some kind of defense mode, and all four of its edges roll under so that no one can get to any of its end threads.

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