Page 43 of Skalterra By Nightmare
I wanted to say something, anything, to make him feel better about Riley, but the thought of the crumpled flyers in my bedroom turned my empty placations to ash in my mouth.
While Galahad had given me a break for the rest of the night, Liam didn’t look like he’d slept at all by the time we were both up for work the next morning. He stumbled around the shop with a broom, sweeping up dirt that wasn’t there. When his uncle brought us bagel sandwiches, Liam avoided him. I wondered if he was afraid Teddy’s sadness might compound his own.
Gams missed Teddy’s visit, but when she shuffled out of her workshop with more trinkets to sell to tourists, she stopped by my station at the register to pick up the bagel I’d saved her.
“You were tired last night,” she commented, unwrapping the bagel. She looked like a bug, as short as she was and with her magnified eyes behind her work glasses. “Didn’t even wake up when Liam carried you upstairs.”
The shop was busier today. The weekend was approaching and more tourists were on the road. Liam was busy helping a family, and I took the opportunity to lean over the counter and whisper to Gams.
“Mom called yesterday while we were putting up posters.”
Gams nodded, but didn’t meet my eye.
“I told her to. I thought you might want to let her know about Von Leer.” Her tone had gone flat and dismissive, as if she knew what I was about to say.
“Why did she tell me to take down Riley’s posters?”
Gams’s eyes darted up from her bagel to meet mine, and she frowned tightly.
“Did you?”
“Yes,” I said, shame blooming hot in my cheeks, “but—”
“Good girl.” She turned away, as if to escape back to her workshop.
“Gams!” I hissed.
“Wren!” She mimicked my tone.
“Did you know she’d tell me to do that?” When she didn’t respond, I continued. “Is that why you sent me to help yesterday? To do your dirty work?”
“I knew you’d do what needed to be done.” It wasn’t like my grandmother to sound so serious and callous. “The posters will only bring the wrong sorts of people into town, and nothing good ever comes from outsiders poking around Keel Watch Harbor. Riley is a good boy, but if he’s missing, he’s not coming back. Liam and Teddy will move on. The town always moves on.”
She spun around with a finality I didn’t dare question, and she took the rest of her bagel with her to the workshop stairs, dropping a bit of salmon lox for Jonquil as she went.
Her words echoed what Mom had said on the phone, but neither seemed willing to explain themselves.
The Riley business should’ve been the least of my worries, especially after my run-in with the rotsbane. I still didn’t know why I was a lucid Nightmare, and as much as I wanted to believe it was simply because I wasbetterthan everyone else, I knew that couldn’t be it.
Ferrin’s theories on the matter bounced around my head as the day wore on, but one stood out among the others. He’d mentioned genetics might play a role, so between customers, I pulled out my phone to search “Maxwell Brenton, PhD”.
Celebrated geophysicist, Von Leer University alumnus, and my estranged father.
Mom had shown me pictures of them together from when they were college, but I’d never met him. He wasn’t even on my birth certificate, and we’d never received a single penny from him. But I knew he was my father. Tall and willowy, just like me, while Gams and Mom were both short. I had his pointed chin, his passion for geophysics—though I would never dare admit that to Mom—and I saw a bit of me in his creased brow.
If the answer to my Nightmare question wasn’t hiding in a water supply, then maybe it was hiding in my genetics.
I stared at him on my little screen and memorized the dates listed under his picture on the Von Leer site.
His summer lecture circuit would take him through Von Leer in just over a month. All I had to do was nail my phone interview in two weeks, secure my spot at the school, and convince Gams to let me take the train to the campus.
I would tell her it was to get acquainted with the school, take a tour with the admissions team, decide which dorm to apply for.
And maybe while I was there, I would pay a visit to a certain lecturer. And maybe, just maybe, I would get the answers I needed about Nightmares and Skalterra and how I’d ended up at the crux of it all.
12. Library Science
Galahad didn’t call me that night. I made sure to be in bed, determined to be ready this time, but after drifting to sleep without help from any other-worldly summons, my dreams remained my own. They were still stressful, of course, full of teeth falling out of my mouth and chasing after a faceless figure who I knew was Riley, even if I couldn’t get a good look at him.
