Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 89023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
I just stare at my stomach for a moment, trying to find a way for this to make sense.
I mean, none of it makes sense. And the easy answer, of course, is that it’s just an illusion. I’m not pregnant with a demon baby, was never pregnant.
It’s a nice thought, I’m just not convinced it’s true. I think I really am pregnant. I think there really is something very, very sick and bad growing inside me.
But it’s such a relief to not see the proof that I can easily push that problem aside to concentrate on the other one.
Which is Paul. I need to find him. He knows what’s going on and he doesn’t seem as committed to keeping his secrets as the Paul I know in my own time.
I need those secrets. Desperately need those secrets.
So I stare at the mist. I squint my eyes, I cross them, I let them go lazy… but nothing works.
“Come on!” I say this out loud as I rub my hands down my face. “Where is Lucia when I need her?”
I look around, hoping that my wish becomes manifest and Lucia appears, but she doesn’t.
But a shape does begin to form. I stand still as the mist bonds and more and more rectangles appear. But when I approach, there’s something wrong with them.
They aren’t doors, they’re… I lean forward, squinting, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. Some of them are easy. They show bedrooms, or hallways, or the interior of cars. But some of them show sky and the boughs of trees. Some of them are a blur, like everything is moving. And some of them are the ceiling of a bathroom.
Mirrors. The doors have become mirrors that show the human world. They are all places, obviously, but none of them are Paul.
An idea hits me—maybe that’s how I got to the Roman bath? There was water in there. And the Coyrah was out on the ice.
It’s the water!
The dreamwalk belongs to the vampires. Purple is the earth. The dirt. A highway across the present or a vision of the past.
But gold is the mist. Water. Doorways through time. And it belongs to me.
I turn my head and finally see something familiar. A pink-haired girl on the other side of a rippling pool of water.
And she is standing in a cave.
17 - Echo
How much do you know about mirrors?
I duck my head under the pillow and wrap it around my ears, but it’s no use. I can still hear them. I sit up, pissed off and hungover, and scream at the top of my lungs. “Will you two shut the fuck up! Get a divorce already!”
If they even hear me, which is doubtful, they don’t respond. They just keep fighting.
“Parents,” I mumble.
I’m still kinda fucked up from last night and need at least a whole day of sleep before I can function properly, so I lean over my bed, fish underneath it with a grabby hand, and search for the bottle of pills.
It’s not oxy—I kicked that shit, I really did. It’s something else. Something this woman was selling at the club a couple weeks ago. They don’t get you high, not the way I’m used to anyway. They take you places in your sleep.
It’s like acid, but you’re not awake. She called it the dreamwalk. Says it’s spiritual and shit.
It’s an OK trip, I guess, but not something I’d do more than once or twice a year. No one wants to sleep while they’re partying.
But I’m not partying right now and sleep is the only thing I want.
So I shake two out into my palm, grab a stale can of soda, and down them.
Downstairs, my mother is crying now, which means the fight is almost over. They fight like this so much, there’s a pattern to it. They don’t even realize that fighting is a part of them now.
I side-eye my bedroom door. I will never be like them. I will do anything—whatever it takes—to stay free. Because if they weren’t married, they wouldn’t stay together. And they’re not here for me. That’s a joke. They stopped paying attention to me when I was thirteen. My mother made me get a job cleaning houses with her so I could buy my own school clothes and food.
It’s not me that keeps them stuck in this rut.
It’s the pattern. And the familiarity of it.
I’m not gonna get stuck. I won’t fall into this trap.
I will never…
My eyes open and all I see is the ceiling of a cave. It’s not one of those moments where one has to try and remember where they are. I fully understand where I am. It’s just one of those moments where one needs to pause and reflect on how they got here.
It was my parents.
I’m the one who took Lucia’s dreamwalk pills, that’s a fact. But I wouldn’t have done that if someone had cared about me. If someone was looking out for me, I wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.