Page 176 of Sweet Nightmare

That’s what I was afraid of. We can’t risk the chance that even one monster comes at us again or escapes—so I do the only thing I can think of.

I walk up to the nearest monster, ignoring Jude’s startled objection. It’s the squid monster that Izzy and I fought. I go inside my mind and find the stained glass window my brain has created for it.

I open the green window first, but the creature’s future is completely absent.

So I move onto the second window—the red one that covers the past. Maybe if I can see how it was made, I can figure out how to get it back into the tapestry.

I brace myself for seeing our fight from its point of view. I scroll backward, past the gym. Definitely past the attack on Izzy and me in its cell. Past days and days of blood hunger and nothing else, until I finally spot my mom.

I slow down and let what works a lot like a video play back slowly as I try to find the moment when the monster came into being.

I pause for a second, try to assimilate what—and who—I just saw on the screen. My mother, yes. The squid thing, yes. But also a person who I’m pretty sure is Jean-Luc’s father. He’s definitely fae, definitely mafia, and has the same orange eyes as Jean-Luc.

But what the hell would he be doing at Calder Academy? And what the hell would he be doing with the monsters? It doesn’t make any sense.

I wave a hand, and the video of the past starts playing again. I watch as he and my mother open a briefcase full of money, watch as seconds before, Jean-Luc’s dad hands it to her, and then seconds before that, when they shake hands.

Suddenly, all of the snippets I’ve seen before start to make sense.

Except…instinct has me fast-forwarding a little past the handshake. And that’s when I see Camilla catch a glimpse of Carolina hiding in the shadows as the dark deal unfolds.

I watch as the woman I thought was my mother doesn’t flinch, doesn’t let on by so much as a sideways glance that they’re not alone. But I can see the fury in her eyes—and the fear.

But something is off. Carolina is off. I pause the “video.” Look closer and closer and closer still. And then I see it—the strange glitter that trails behind every flicker. My mother isn’t seeing Carolina. She’s seeing a flicker of a future where she might have seen Carolina.

And that’s when I know.

This is the night Jude kissed me in ninth grade. The night he was so afraid that a nightmare got loose. But there was no nightmare—and no mistake.

At least not on his part.

We kissed, and time cracked just for a moment. I saw my birth mother. And Camilla saw something she never should have seen, something that may never have even happened. And Carolina paid the ultimate price.

Everyone wants control—over themselves, over their lives, over the school they go to and the world they live in. But there’s a fine line between control and chaos, and where you end up can often take you by surprise.

Tears well up inside me—sorrow, rage, pain. I beat them back, at least for now, because another vision is playing out in front of me.

Because everything is happening in reverse, I back the memories up further into the past and watch straight through as the squid creature is taken away. And how right before that, it’s wrapped in a straitjacket-type garment.

Then I do it again, just to make sure I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing.

By the time I’ve seen it twice, I realize a few things. One, the creature I’m watching isn’t the creature in front of me. I’m actually seeing things through this creature’s eyes. Which means my mother made more of these squid things. Two, I’ve been very naive—and so has Jude. And three—my mother has been lying. A lot.

Because she didn’t put these monsters back in the tapestry at all. No, from the time Jude was a little boy, she’s been conning him into letting her make these monsters with his nightmares and selling them to the most dangerous paranormal organization in the country, maybe even in the world.

My stomach roils at the realization, and it takes every ounce of strength I’ve got not to throw up right here, right now.

So I swallow down the sickness that’s destroying my insides and focus on the problem at hand. Namely that we have a whole hell of a lot of monsters here and no idea of how to get them back into the tapestry. We don’t know if they can even go into the tapestry. I realize now that could have been just one more lie my mother told Jude.

Not knowing what else to do, I scroll back further and further, but I find no other clues.

“Did you find anything?” Jude asks, and for the first time I realize he’s aware of what I’ve been doing.

“No,” I answer, because now is not the time to explain what I just saw. “Except I don’t think the monsters go into the tapestry fully formed.”

“What do you mean?” He glances at me then, eyes filled with confusion. “That’s how it’s always been.”

“No, that’s how they always told you it was. But that’s not how it actually is.”

---