I told myself I wouldn’t fall asleep in that attic, wouldn’t give in to exhaustion and lie down on one of the mattresses lined up against one wall, but I couldn’t help it. With all the adrenaline I’d been running on all day, my limbs felt like they were filled with sand. I yawned, and Hayley saw.
“Lie down,” she said. “Get some rest.”
“I have to stay alert, to be ready for him,” I said.
“You can’t be ready for anything if you’re falling asleep on your feet. Don’t worry—I’ll stay awake.”
“Promise you’ll wake me up if he comes back?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
So I walked over to a mattress and flopped onto it. My eyelids fluttered, and just before I drifted off into sleep, thoughts of gold dust, magic, and theHammer of Witchesflashed through my mind. I saw Hayley sitting cross-legged on the floor beside me, gazing at me, keeping watch over me, the way I wished more than anything that I could have kept watch over Eloise. Shades of gold flashed behind my eyelids, and I tumbled into a deep sleep.
Dreams came quickly, and they were full of Matt.
We were on Dauntless Island, and the sun was high overhead. We swam, and climbed out of the sea onto a raft, covered with salt, only the salt was made from diamond fragments. Our hair sparkled, and Matt ran his hand across my shoulders, and his fingertips shimmered.
But then it got dark—not the way night falls slowly in real life, with a sunset and twilight, but all at once, as if someone had pulled a black curtain over the sun. There were stars, though, and it wasn’t diamond dust on our skin but embers falling from burning stars. I was terrified—not just for myself, but for Matt. I thought hard about how we could escape, and my fervor turned the raft into a submarine, and we drifted underwater.
“How will we breathe?” I asked, realizing I had gotten ahead of myself: By creating one solution, I had caused another serious problem.
“We’re like whales,” he said. “We took a big breath of air, and it will last until we need another one.”
“Don’t we need it now?” I asked.
“No, we have each other,” he said. “I’m saving you, and you’re saving me.”
He kissed me then, and I felt a shiver of warmth, of air, of life, and in that weird way of sleep haze, I had the clear thought:I just had my first kiss, but it’s not real, it’s just in your mind, it’s only a dream.
When we pulled apart, we knew we needed to get to the surface. Matt started to swim up, and when he was above me, he glanced back to make sure I was on my way up. But my arms and legs couldn’t move. I stared at the rope bracelet he had given me, wanting it to save me. Matt swam back down and began to gently unravel it. He held one end of the nylon line and tugged it, pulling me up toward the sky.
I had a moment of fear: What if he was leading me to danger?
That’s when I woke up, in a panic. I heard a low pulsing sound filling the attic. I felt my heart racing like the tide, but then I thought about how calm I had been with Matt, how unafraid. How much I had loved his kiss. And then I realized I was silently sobbing because how was it possible that I could trust him so much in my dreams while remembering, now that I was waking up, that he was on Fitch’s side? I wrapped my hand around the Turk’s head bracelet on my other wrist and felt despair, wondering what it really meant, when I had thought it meant he had feelings for me like I had for him.
“Oli!” Hayley whispered, shaking me to make sure I was fully awake. The low buzz was louder.
“What?” I asked.
“Shhh,” she said. “It’s happening.”
“What?” I asked.
“That’s the alarm. Abigail is having one of her spells,” Hayley whispered. She grabbed my hand. I shook off the last vestiges of sleep, then eased myself off the mattress. I followed Hayley, tiptoeing across the attic.
Abigail was lying on her beautiful bed—an actual bed, not a mattress on the floor. It had angels carved into the wood. Tall posts rose almost to the ceiling, and they were draped with a white canopy of fine, delicate lace. It looked as if it had been created for a princess—or a goddess.
Hayley and I inched closer.
“Watch,” Hayley whispered.
Abigail was lying stiff and rigid, as if she was a doll whose limbs couldn’t move or bend. Her hands formed tight fists. Her jaw was clenched, tongue jutting out between her upper and lower teeth.
Her face was pink, then turned bright red, almost as if her blood was coming to a boil. Her fists seemed to swell to twice their size, and her arms shot straight up. Her eyes were wide open, their usual gentle expression flashing with aggression. She looked ready to attack. Her red skin darkened to purple, then shifted to dull blue, and her eyes rolled back into her head so only the whites were visible.
“She’s not breathing,” I said, lurching forward, grabbing her. “Abigail, wake up!” I shouted.
“It won’t help,” Hayley said. “She won’t wake up until the spell is over—until he stops it.”