Page 170 of Sweet Nightmare

ALL IS NOT

FLOSSED

Above us, the sky gives one more giant burst of thunder and then everything goes quiet. The rain stops. The wind grows still. And the lightning and thunder cease in an instant.

“What the fuck?” Luis exclaims. “Did the storm just…stop?”

“My bad,” says the man from the tapestry. “My friends can be a little overly enthusiastic, and they’ve been looking for me for a while.”

“What does that mean?” Ember demands.

“You didn’t actually think that was a hurricane, did you?” He tsk-tsks, then turns to Simon. “I thought a mermaid would know better.”

Simon’s teeth clench. “Siren.”

The man waves his hand. “Tomato, to-mah-toe,” he says as he breezes by us.

“Umm, excuse me,” Mozart starts, but the man ignores her.

So Izzy steps in, putting herself right in his path and demanding, “Who the fuck are you?”

“Come now, Isadora.” He shakes his head, looking to all the world like a disappointed father. “A difficult childhood is no excuse to be profane.”

“Yeah, well, jumping out of a tapestry is no excuse to be a dick, but that doesn’t seem to bother you any,” she shoots back.

He just laughs. “You always were quick on the uptake.”

I wait for him to say something else, but instead he just crosses to the table in the middle of the room and picks up Luis’s backpack. Then he pulls out the bottle of water he’s got tucked into a side pocket and drains the whole thing in one long gulp.

“I apologize.” He gives Luis a rueful look. “It’s been ten years since I had a glass of water. Or anything else, for that matter.”

“Ten years?” I repeat. “Is that how long you’ve been trapped in that tapestry?”

His face grows contemplative as he looks me over from head to toe. At first, I think it’s because of the question I asked, but then he steps forward, hand extended. “There you are, my darling Clementine. I’ve been waiting to meet you for a long time.”

“Ten years, perhaps?” I ask dryly. But I make no move to shake his hand. Call me suspicious, but shaggy-haired men who pop out of tapestries definitely don’t rank high on my list of people to trust. To be fair, it’s never been a long list, and it was shrinking even before this guy showed up.

“Perhaps.” He scans the faces of everyone else, but his gaze lingers longest on Jude. “It’s good to see you, my old friend.”

I expect Jude to be as flummoxed as the rest of us, but he actually seems the most chill. Or maybe a better description would be the least disturbed. “That picture of the manticores playing poker was genius,” he tells him.

“Wasn’t it?” The man laughs. “Too bad I can’t take credit for it. That was all Clementine’s idea. She is a clever one.” He beams at me like a teacher with a star pupil.

I don’t even know how to respond, so I just keep watching him. To be fair, we all do.

Though, after a minute, he does say, “Will you excuse me for a moment, please?”

“It’s a one-room cellar,” I tell him. “There’s not a lot of places to excuse yourself to.”

He just smiles at me before walking into the corner and disappearing. Well, not really disappearing. It’s more like he’s hiding himself behind a blurry curtain.

Seconds later, the sound of him turning on a faucet fills the room. “What. The. Fuck?” Simon looks back and forth between the blurry corner and Jude. “Who the hell is that guy?

And why the fuck is he gargling in here?”

“Beats me,” Jude answers.

“What do you mean? He just called you ‘old friend’!” I tell him.

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