I have dreamed of houses all my life. I have an entire neighborhood in my subconscious that I can get to only while sleeping. But I can’t control my nocturnal visits any more than I’ve ever been able to avoid my Cold Place dreams. Sometimes I’m granted passage and sometimes I’m not. Certain nights the doors open easily, while others I stand outside, denied entrance, longing for the wonders that lie within.
I don’t understand people who say they can’t recall their dreams. With the exception of the Cold Place dream, which I began blocking long ago, I recall all the others. When I wake in the morning, they’re floating through my mind in fragments, and I can either spring out of bed and forget them or gather up the pieces and examine them.
I read somewhere that dreams about houses are dreams of our souls. In those dwellings of our psyche, we store our innermost secrets and desires. Perhaps that’s why some people don’t remember them—they don’t want to. A girl I knew in high school once told me she dreamed of houses, too, but they were always pitch black and she could never find the light switch. She hated those dreams. She wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box.
My houses are endless, filled with sunshine and music, gardens and fountains. And for some reason there are always a lot of beds. Big beds. Way more than any house needs. I don’t know what the deal is with that, but I think it might mean I think about sex a lot.
Sometimes I worry that there’s not enough room in my brain for both my dreams and reality, that I’m a hard drive with limited gigabytes and one day I won’t be able to maintain the firewall between them. I wonder if that’s what senility is.
Over the years, I’ve begun to suspect that all the houses of which I’ve been dreaming are just different wings of the same great house.
Today I realize it’s true.
Why have I been dreaming of the White Mansion all these years?
How could I possibly have known it existed?
Now that I’m a little over the edge anyway, I can admit something: My whole life, I’ve secretly been afraid that beneath my fiercely focused grooming and accessorizing, I’m, well … psychotic.
Never underestimate a well-dressed bimbo.
The real thinkers of the world aren’t the best dressed. Staying on top of the latest fashions, accessorizing, and presenting oneself is time consuming. It takes a lot of effort, energy, and concentration to be incessantly happy and perfectly groomed. You meet somebody like that—ask yourself what they’re running from.
Back in high school, I began to suspect I was bipolar. There were times when, for no good reason at all, I felt downright, well … homicidal was the only word for it. I learned that the busier I stayed, the less time I had to feel it.
I sometimes wonder if before I was born someone showed me the script or filled me in on the highlights. It’s déjà vu to the worst extreme. I refuse to believe I would have auditioned for this role.
As I stare at the White Mansion and I know what parts of it look like inside—and I know there’s no way I could know those things—I wonder if I’m a serious nutcase. If none of this is happening, because I’m really locked up in a padded cell somewhere, hallucinating. If so, I hope they change my drugs soon. Whatever I’m on isn’t working.
I don’t want to go in there.
I want to go in there and never leave.
Duality is me.
The House has countless entrances, through elaborately manicured gardens.
Darroc and I enter one of the gardens. It’s so lovely it’s almost painful to look at. Paths of glistening gold pavers unfurl through exotic, perfumed bushes and circle clusters of willowy silver-leafed trees. Dazzling pearl benches offer respite from the sun beneath lacy leaves, and silk chaises dot outdoor rooms of billowing chiffon. Flowers bend and sway in a light, perfect breeze, the precise degree of sultry—not too hot or moist but warm and wet, like sex is warm and wet.
I have dreamed of a garden like this. Small differences but not many.
We pass a fountain that sprays rainbows of shimmery water into the air. Thousands of flowers in every dazzling shade of yellow circle it: velvety buttercups and waxy tulips, creamy lilies and blossoms that do not exist in our world. For a moment I think of Alina, because she loves yellow, but that thought reeks of death and brings other thoughts with it, so I turn away from the beauty of the fountain and focus on the hated face and voice of my companion.
He begins to give me instructions. He tells me we’re looking for a room with an ornate gilt-framed mirror that is approximately ten feet tall by five feet wide. The last time he saw the room, it was empty of all furnishings, save the mirror. The corridor off which the room opened was light, airy, and had a floor of unbroken white marble. The walls of the corridor were also white and adorned with brilliant murals between tall windows.
Keep an eye out for white marble floors, he instructs me, because only two of the wings—as of the last time he was here—have them. The floors in other wings are gold, bronze, silver, iridescent, pink, mint, yellow, lavender, and other pastels. The rare wing is crimson. If I see a black floor, I am to turn back immediately.
We enter a circular foyer with a high glass ceiling that collects the sunny day. The walls and floor are translucent silver and reflect the sky above in such vivid detail that, when a cream-puff cloud scoots overhead, I feel as if I’m walking through it. What a clever design! A room in the sky. Did the concubine create it? Did the Unseelie King design it for her? Could a being capable of creating such horrors as the Unseelie also create such delights? Sunlight bathes me from above, bounces back at me from the wall and floors.
Mac 1.0 would have hooked up an iPod and stretched out here for hours.
Mac 5.0 shivers. Not even this much sun can warm the part of her that has gone cold.
I realize I’ve forgotten my enemy. I tune him back in.
Assuming, of course, Darroc is saying, that the room we seek still opens off one of those white-marbled halls.
That gets my attention. “Assuming?”
“The mansion rearranges itself. One of those inconveniences I mentioned.”
“What is with you fairies, anyway?” I explode. “Why does everything have to change? Why can’t things just be what they are? Why can’t a house be a normal house and a book a normal book? Why does it all have to be so complicated?” I want to get back to Dublin now, find the Book, figure out what needs to be done, and escape this damned reality!
He doesn’t answer, but I don’t need him to. If a Fae were to ask me why an apple eventually rots or humans eventually die, I would shrug and say it was the nature of human things.
Change is the nature of Fae things. They are always becoming something else. That’s a critical thing to remember when dealing with anything Fae, as I learned from the Shades. I wonder how much further they’ve evolved since I last saw them.
“Sometimes it rearranges itself on a grand scale,” Darroc continues, “while other times it merely swaps a few things around. Only once did it take me several days to find the room I seek. I usually find it more quickly.”
Days? My head swivels and I stare. I could be stuck in here with him for days?
The sooner we get started, the better.
A dozen halls open off the foyer, some well lit, others soothingly dim. Nothing is frightening. The House exudes a sense of well-being and peace. Still, it is a grand labyrinth, and I wait for him to choose our path. Although I have long been dreaming of this place, I do not know this foyer. I suspect the House is so large that an entire human life of dreams would not be enough to explore it all.
“There are several rooms in the mansion that house Silvers. The one we seek holds a single mirror.” He gives me a sharp look. “Avoid the other mirrors if you stumble upon them. Do not gaze into them. I am not forbidding you knowledge, merely trying to protect you.”
Right. And the White Mansion is really black. “You make it sound as if we’re splitting up.” I’m surprised. He worked so hard to get me at his side. Now he’s letting me go? Have I been so convincing? Or does he have an ace up his sleeve I don’t know about?
“We cannot afford to waste time here. The longer I’m here, the more chance there is for someone else to find my book.”
“My book,” I correct.
He laughs. “Our book.”
I say nothing. My book—and he’s dead the moment I’ve got it and know how to use it. Sooner, if he’s no longer useful.
He leans back against the wall and crosses his arms over his chest. In this room of sky, he is a golden angel, shoulders propped against a cloud. “We can both have everything we want, MacKayla. With you and I allied, there are no limits. Nothing and no one can stop us. Do you realize that?”
“I get to use it first.” He won’t exist to use it by the time I’m done with it. No, wait, unmaking him would be too easy a death.
I want to murder him.
“We have plenty of time to decide who does what with it first. But, for now, are we friends or not?”
It is on the tip of my tongue to mock him, to tell him words mean nothing. Why does he ask me absurd questions? I can so easily lie. He should judge my actions, but I don’t share advice with the enemy. “We are friends,” I say easily.
He gestures for me to take the nearest corridor on my right, one with a dusky-rose floor, and turns for the first one on his left, which gleams deep bronze.
“What do I do if I find it?” I ask. It’s not like we have cell phones programmed with nifty little acronyms.
“I branded you at the base of your skull. Press your fingers to the mark and call for me.”
He has already turned away and begun walking down his hall. I hiss at his back. The day will come, and soon, when I remove his brand, if I have to scrape my skull down to bare bone. I’d do it now, except I don’t want to run the risk of damaging Barrons’. It’s all I have left of him. His hands were on me there, gentle, possessive.
There is a smile in Darroc’s voice when he warns, “If you find the Silver and return to Dublin without me, I will hunt you.”
“Right back at you, Darroc,” I say in the same light, warning tone. “Don’t even think of leaving without me. I may not have a mark on you, but I’ll find you. I’ll always find you.” I mean it. The hunter is now the hunted. I have him in my sights and will keep him there. Until I decide to pull the trigger. No more running. From anything.
He stops and glances over his shoulder at me. The tiny gold flecks in his eyes flare brighter, and he inhales sharply.
If I know Fae as well as I think I do, I just turned him on.