The Crystal Key: The Dream Rider Saga, Book 2: The Dream Rider Saga, #2

THE CRYSTAL KEY

Book 2 in the Dream Rider Saga

Sequel to the multi-award-winning The Hollow Boys

Give me the Crystal Key!

Will Dreycott is the Dream Rider, the agoraphobic teenage superhero who can walk in our dreams but never in the streets of his city. Case is his girlfriend, a survivor of those streets who hears voices that warn her of danger. Fader is her brother, who is very good at disappearing. Together, they defeated a body swapper and a witch to save the world (The Hollow Boys).

Now, Case battles guilt over living sheltered in Will’s tower home while her street friends still struggle. Blaming his affliction for Case’s sadness, Will searches for a way to live a normal life with the girl he loves—a way to go outside.

But his efforts draw the attention of dark forces. Sinister figures hunt Will in Dream. Intruders scour the vast warehouse of antiquities acquired by Will’s missing parents. And a masked swordswoman attacks Will, demanding the Crystal Key before disappearing into thin air.

Are they all searching for the same thing? Something from Will’s parents’ shady past? For the swordswoman leaves behind a flowery scent, Will’s only memory from the lost expedition eight years ago that gave him powers in Dream but cost him his parents and his freedom.

A trail of dark secrets leads Will, Case, and Fader to a mysterious world. Trapped between warring cults willing to kill for the Crystal Key, the three friends must master strange new powers that grow stronger and wilder the closer they draw to the truth.

This time it’s not just the fate of the world at stake…but the multiverse.

~~

Indiana Jones meets Teen Titans in The Dream Rider Saga, a fast-paced urban fantasy trilogy from one of Canada’s most original writers of speculative fiction (Library Journal).

Praise

Praise for The Hollow Boys (The Dream Rider Saga, #1)

Winner of 2023 Aurora Award for Best Young Adult Novel

Winner of 2023 Juried IAP Award for Best Young Adult Novel

This arresting series kickoff grips from the start as it introduces its inventive milieu, its flawed but fantastically powered hero, its playful worldbuilding, and a host of tantalizing mysteries. … [A] vigorously imaginative scenario. ... Takeaway: Thrilling YA fantasy —BookLife (Editor’s Pick)

An assured, confident novel... A must-read story for YA fantasy fans. —Blueink Review (Starred review)

Inventive, engaging, and boundless fun. —The Ottawa Review of Books

A fun supernatural tale with well-developed characters and a touch of romance. —Kirkus Reviews

Mystery and action ... with a balanced dose of romance stylishly rounding off this lovely work of genius. —Reader’s Favorite Book Reviews (5-star review)

Praise for The Crystal Key (The Dream Rider Saga, #2)

"The richly inventive Dream Rider adventure continues in this second appealing entry…of Smith’s epic YA series. … An exciting plot…always enlivened by the Smith hallmarks of crack dialogue, fun sleuthing and puzzle-solving, a strong through-line of emotion, a swift pace…and a principled refusal to settle for the familiar. … This thrilling superpowered urban fantasy series continues to grip." —BookLife (Editor’s Pick)

Smith continues to demonstrate an ability to expertly weave multiple complex fantasy elements into a cohesive whole. … This fast-paced story delivers in a big way—and Smith has all his ducks lined up for an explosive conclusion that readers won’t want to miss. —Blueink Review (Starred review)

"Smith’s take on superheroes and serials is both modern and original, but it recreates the same energy, the same yearning for superpowers, the same subconscious fear of dark places and boogeymen as the best stories of our own remembered youth. High adventure leavened with romance and mystery. … The Crystal Key has everything that made The Hollow Boys work and turns it up a few notches. I can’t wait for the conclusion in The Lost Expedition." —Ottawa Review of Books

A fun and engrossing superhero sequel. —Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Douglas Smith

One of Canada’s most original writers of speculative fiction. —Library Journal

The man is Sturgeon good. Zelazny good. I don’t give those up easy. —Spider Robinson, Hugo & Nebula Awards winner

A great storyteller with a gifted and individual voice. —Charles de Lint, World Fantasy Award winner

His stories are a treasure trove of riches that touch your heart while making you think. —Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo & Nebula Awards winner

Stories you can’t forget, even years later. —Julie Czerneda, multi-award-winning author and editor

How to Read This Series

The short answer to the above question is, In order (please)!!

There are two types of series: those meant to be read in order, and those where the reader can dip into the books anywhere along the line.

The Dream Rider Saga is the first type. It is one large mystery, one single story, told over the course of three books (The Hollow Boys, The Crystal Key, and The Lost Expedition), with each book building on what went before.

Reading The Dream Rider Saga out of order will leave you confused and disappointed, two things I take great pains to avoid for my readers. It also may result in a Mara hunting you down in Dream. And if you didn’t get the Mara reference, then you haven’t read The Hollow Boys, book 1 in the series, and just made my case for including this foreword.

So if this is the first Dream Rider title you plan to read...STOP!

Seriously, please stop.

Put this book aside and go read The Hollow Boys first. Then you can come back to The Crystal Key fully informed and prepared to enjoy this story as I intended.

Thanks for listening and for your interest in my writing.

— Douglas Smith

To my family.

Because, at their heart, that’s what these books are about—family.

The family we’re born into. The family we find.

The family we make. The family we choose.

And the family we stitch together from all those pieces.

Table of Contents

Book Description

Praise

How to Read This Series

Title Page

Dedication

ACT 1: EVERYBODY HAS A TALENT

Chapter 1: Front Row

Chapter 2: Trouble in Paradise

Chapter 3: Talk to Me

Chapter 4: Culture War

Chapter 5: When the Weight Comes Down

Chapter 6: Black Sheep

Chapter 7: Fade Away

Chapter 8: When You Dance

Chapter 9: Help, I’m Alive

Chapter 10: Call Me Home

Chapter 11: Counting Stars on the Ceiling

Chapter 12: You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving

ACT 2: HUNTER OF INVISIBLE GAME

Chapter 13: Runaway

Chapter 14: Speed the Collapse

Chapter 15: Souls of the Departed

Chapter 16: Brothers Under the Bridges

Chapter 17: Those Spaces In-Between

Chapter 18: Livin’ in the Future

Chapter 19: Nautical Disaster

Chapter 20: Spirits in the Night

Chapter 21: Take the Long Way Home

Chapter 22: Not My Cross to Bear

Chapter 23: Too Little, Too Late

Chapter 24: Reason to Believe

Chapter 25: Everybody’s Got a Story

Chapter 26: Doors Unlocked and Open

Chapter 27: Space Oddity

Chapter 28: Live it Out

ACT 3: LOST IN A LOST WORLD

Chapter 29: Rescue Me

Chapter 30: Subway

Chapter 31: Greasy Jungle

Chapter 32: Join the Gang

Chapter 33: Break on Through

Chapter 34: The Tower of Song

Chapter 35: Pyramid Fighting Woman

Chapter 36: The Last of the Unplucked Gems

Chapter 37: Do Anything You Say

Chapter 38: Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed

Chapter 39: Further on up the Road

Chapter 40: Run Through the Jungle

Chapter 41: Code of Silence

Chapter 42: Ending Start

EPILOG: UNINVITED

AFTERWORD

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY DOUGLAS SMITH

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

LIST OF SONGS USED FOR CHAPTER TITLES

COPYRIGHT PAGE

ACT 1: EVERYBODY HAS A TALENT

Chapter 1: Front Row

LAWRENCE KINLAND WAS

afraid. Ridiculous, he told himself. He had no reason for fear. He was exactly where he wanted to be.

Even if he had no idea where he was. Or how he came to be here. Or why he wanted to be here.

He sat alone at a round white-clothed table in the largest banquet hall he’d ever seen. And the strangest.

The room was a huge cavern, carved from a shining black stone, running at least fifty paces by a hundred and rising to a high vaulted ceiling. At scores of tables throughout, men in tuxedos and women in evening gowns talked and laughed, ate and drank. All wore animal-headed masks.

Servers, male and female, dressed only in loin cloths and leopard masks, wove between the tables. Each balanced a tray laden with a steaming roast of an unknown meat on their heads and carried a wine flask in one hand. On the cavern walls, torches burned with scarlet flames, washing the room in a bloody light.

Why was this scene so familiar? Had he been here before? If so, he couldn’t remember. Just as he couldn’t remember how he’d arrived here tonight.

Tonight? Was it night?

An oval dance floor of polished hardwood filled the middle of the cavern, large enough for a hundred couples, but currently empty. Circling that space, every twenty paces or so, flames leaped from bronze pots squatting waist-high on clawed feet, their smoke mixing with the torches and the smell of cooked meat.

Kinland’s table sat at the end of the room on the edge of the dining area. Beside him, the dance floor ended at a semicircular dais a meter high and ten across, sculpted from the black stone. The dais jutted from the cavern wall, tall red curtains hiding whatever lay behind. Two men dressed as Victorian footmen flanked the curtains, each holding draw ropes. They wore bear-head masks and sword scabbards.

Concentric circles lay carved into the platform, with spokes radiating outwards from the innermost circle. On the floor below where each spoke ended, a golden goblet rested, as if waiting to be filled.

Masked guests occupied every seat at every table in the room. Except at his. He sat alone, unmasked. The other diners paid him no notice, yet his isolation and proximity to the dais felt both threatening and ominous. He felt exposed, naked, unwanted.

At the opposite end of the cavern, a broad red-carpeted staircase led up from the dance floor to a tapestry-draped landing. A movement on the staircase caught his eye. A man wearing the formal attire of a Victorian gentleman and a boar’s head mask descended the stairs. Walking the length of the room, the man seated himself across from Kinland and removed the mask. Long white hair. Blue eyes, bright and cold. A hooked nose under snowy eyebrows.

Another jolt of surprise shook Kinland. They’d met before. Here. In this place. His memories rushed back.

The man’s name was…Beroald. He was a powerful man. A man who had offered to share that power with him—if Kinland performed a certain task.

Cold sweat trickled down his back. He remembered more now. Remembered the agreement he had made, the task he had promised to do.

Remembered, too, that he had failed in that task.

You disappointed us, Lawrence, Beroald said, as if reading his mind. He spoke with an upper-class English accent, his voice deep and rich with a softness that didn’t hide the threat in his words.

Kinland swallowed, his mouth dry. Beroald, please, sir, give me another chance. I will try again. I—

Beroald cut him off with a raised hand. How, Lawrence? How will you try again? You no longer have access to the White Tower. You, therefore, no longer have access to where the artifact lies hidden. In short, the reasons which prompted us to approach you no longer apply.

Kinland could think of no reply.

Worse, Beroald continued, you made an enemy of Adrienne Archambeault with your treatment of her ward, the Dreycott boy. And roused her suspicions with your actions. The woman is no fool. Far from it. My people tell me she is making inquiries. Into the front company you used to shield your search. Into the individuals you employed for that search. Beroald paused, his blue eyes piercing Kinland, pinning him to his chair. Into you.

I…I can make amends. Please…

Beroald flicked his hand at him as if shooing away a fly. No, Lawrence. After we tie up a few loose ends, we shall adopt a different approach for our quest. This will be our last conversation, you and I.

Which meant, Kinland knew, his last time in this strange room. And his last opportunity to share in the power Beroald had offered.

A masked server set a plate heaped with steaming slices of beef before them, then filled both their glasses with a ruby wine.

Beroald lifted his glass. I’m sorry it didn’t work out, Lawrence. For both our sakes. You would have fit in well here. But enjoy your dinner. A last meal, so to speak. Someone will guide you from here… He nodded at the red curtains. …after tonight’s ceremony. He clapped his hands.

Four musicians in harlequin masks and dressed as Elizabethan minstrels emerged from a tunnel to the left of the dais. Two carried mandolins, one a saxophone, and the last a set of bongos. Each bore a wooden stool. Reaching the dais, they sat on their stools beside the platform and took up their instruments.

Beroald clapped again.

The curtains drew back, revealing a dark opening in the black stone wall, like the mouth of a cave. In that mouth, Kinland sensed more than saw something watching, waiting.

And finally… Beroald gestured towards the far end of the room.

Kinland turned to look. Two figures appeared at the top of the carpeted staircase. One was a broad-chested giant, dressed like the two men flanking the red curtains—Victorian footman garb, bear mask, and sword. In his hands, he held a heavy chain of gray metal. The chain ran to a collar around the neck of a woman who stood beside him, her eyes downcast.

The woman was young and, even from this distance, the most beautiful Kinland had ever seen, with hair so white and skin so pale she seemed to glow. She wore only a diaphanous gown that changed color and shape when he tried to focus on it, sometimes concealing, sometimes revealing, sometimes seeming to disappear. The body it revealed was slim and lithe, with long arms and legs.

Her masked guard unfastened the collar from her neck. Freed, she raised her head to gaze around the room, transforming that simple movement into an act of defiance. The guard gestured to the stairs with an arm. Turning from him with a sneer, her chin held high, she glided down the staircase.

As she reached the bottom, the torches on the walls died, and Kinland realized the woman was glowing with some inner light. As if to match her light, the flames in the burners surrounding the dance floor sprang higher. Shadows writhed over the masked diners who now watched only this woman as she stepped onto the floor. She rose on her toes, her arms above her in a delicate arc, fingertips touching. Then she sprang forward.

And began to dance.

She leaped, she spun, she whirled down the floor, ever moving, ever graceful, but as one apart, as if she were the only person in the vast room. The band did not play. She seemed to dance to music only she heard. Kinland couldn’t take his eyes from her.

She moved past where he sat with Beroald. At the end of the dance floor, she stopped. No longer moving, no longer dancing, her earlier glow faded.

With downcast gaze, the Dancer (for that is what he now called this woman) crossed the stone semicircle with a slow precise gait. She halted two paces in front of the dais that lay before the darkened opening in the wall. She raised her hands above her head. The minstrel band began to play.

Kinland sucked in his breath, shivering with a thrill of surprise. He knew this tune. It was a song he’d heard before.

No. Not a song.

The Song.

As the Song played, the cave opening quivered like a black membrane, vomiting a thick fog onto the dais. Inside that murk, a misshapen, many-legged form loomed.

The Dancer began to dance again. And glow again. Her glow grew with each spin she made, each leap she took, until it lit the room and, finally, penetrated the thick mist.

And Kinland saw the thing that had emerged from the opening, drawn here, he knew, by the Song.

The creature resembled a monstrous elongated beetle crossed with a scorpion. It skittered forward on six multi-jointed legs set below a black and shiny carapace. Dark scales protected a short neck and a bulbous head. Long pincers extended from each side of a slit-like mouth writhing in a horrible parody of human lips. The beast measured at least three meters from its head to the end of a jointed, barbed tail.

Four red multifaceted eyes took in the diners. It scrambled forward on the dais.

Wanting to flee but fearing any movement would attract the creature’s attention, Kinland remained frozen in his seat. The Dancer spun closer to the dais. The creature scuttled towards her, its many feet clicking and clacking on the stone. It stopped. The music played, and the Dancer danced. As she moved, the thing stood transfixed, swaying, red eyes locked on her, as if hypnotized by the spell she wove with her body.

The two curtain attendants slid long blades from their scabbards. They crept toward the beast. The nearest drew his arm back and, with a sudden but sure motion, slipped his blade between the scales surrounding the beast’s neck. The creature spasmed once, then slumped to the floor.

Blood spewed from the wound, thick and black, flowing along the channels carved in the stone into the waiting goblets. As the goblets filled, table attendants collected them and set more in place. The attendants then circulated amongst the tables with the filled goblets.

Her head lowered, the Dancer now knelt before the dais. Her masked guard refastened the metal collar with its chain around her neck. He then led the Dancer, her head down and a prisoner once more, the length of the room to the staircase. Climbing the stairs, the man and the Dancer disappeared through a side archway.

Kinland sat trembling, again fighting an urge to run. A leopard-headed woman arrived to pour blood from the goblet she carried into Beroald’s glass. She inclined her masked head toward Kinland, but Beroald waved a hand. The woman bowed and left.

Beroald raised his glass. Excuse me, Lawrence, but the efficacy of the blood lasts but a short while. He took a deep drink.

The sweet smell of the black liquid reached Kinland. And he remembered being here before. Remembered drinking the black blood. Remembered, too, what happened to him after.

Sweetness. Heat. Then…

A dam bursting inside him…a hidden lake released…his being flooded with rivers of vitality…freed from every bodily pain.

Over the following days, he’d experienced astounding energy, a vigor he hadn’t known for decades. A host of minor ailments that had plagued him for years disappeared. He’d felt wonderful. He’d felt strong. He’d felt powerful. It had been as if…

As if he had become young again.

Staring at Beroald and the man’s now empty glass, he licked his lips. He would never feel that way again, he realized. He’d had his chance. And lost it. Forever.

Beroald smiled sadly at him. The man now shone with a youthful vitality that belied his white hair. Ah, you remember, don’t you? What we offered you. The taste you had of it.

Kinland swallowed, still staring at Beroald’s glass, where a single dark drop clung to its lip.

Beroald rose. Again, my regrets our arrangement did not work out. Now I must pay my respects to my other guests. Someone will lead you from here to… He paused, then shrugged. …to where you need to go. Turning his back on Kinland, Beroald joined a nearby table where he began talking with a thin woman wearing a bare-shouldered gown and a gazelle-head mask.

Kinland fought back his resentment at this abrupt dismissal. Not even a handshake. He had become something to cast off, forgotten. A hand fell on his shoulder, and he jumped.

A footman in a bear mask towered over him. The man was a head taller than Kinland, broad and muscular. Sir, the man rumbled in a bass voice, please follow me.

Kinland rose on shaking legs, numbed still by the growing realization of what he had lost. Yes, yes. You will lead me from this place.

From behind the mask, the man stared at Kinland for a breath, then strode towards the tunnel opening from which the musicians had emerged. With one last look at Beroald’s empty glass, Kinland followed, avoiding even a glance at the dead creature on the dais.

The torch-lit tunnel twisted and snaked, branching again and again. The giant footman never hesitated, selecting their route at each branch without a pause. Still brooding over his failure, Kinland followed unthinking, just wanting to be away from here and home again.

The footman stopped. Ahead, this tunnel branch ended at a dark wooden door, reinforced with horizontal metal bands and barred with a heavy beam. A black iron handle sat above a large keyhole. With obvious effort, the footman lifted the beam from its slots and set it against the wall. Removing a ring of keys from his belt, the man selected one, inserted it and twisted, unlocking the door with a loud click that echoed in the tunnel.

Unlocking, too, something in Kinland’s memories. He now recalled coming to the strange banquet hall, both tonight and on his prior visit, via the red-carpeted staircase.

So why was he leaving by this route tonight?

He was about to ask that when his silent guide yanked the door open. In the dim shadows beyond, Kinland glimpsed figures turning toward him.

Wait, why are we—?

He never finished the question. Seizing him by the front of his shirt with one huge hand, the footman flung him into the chamber. Kinland screamed in pure terror, a scream cut off by his impact with the stone floor. The door slammed shut again.

Panicked, he scrambled to his feet. Throwing himself at the door, he pounded on it with both fists. Wait! Let me out! Don’t leave me here. I want to go home.

On the other side of the door, a key turned in the lock and something heavy thudded. The beam being reset in place, he realized. Footsteps receded into the distance.

Mr. Kinland? came a woman’s voice from behind him. Is that you?

He spun around, his eyes adjusting to the dimmer light. A single torch burnt in a sconce beside the door. He stood in a round domed chamber, rough-hewn from the black rock, about ten paces across.

And filled with at least two dozen people. Surprise jolted him as he scanned their frightened faces. He knew them.

He’d hired these men and women to search the warehouse floors in the Dream Rider tower. They crowded toward him, all talking at once, firing confused and fearful questions at him.

A rusty metallic clanking silenced them all. Kinland turned toward the sound as did his new companions. It came, he realized, from a tunnel opening he could now see at the opposite end of the chamber. A barred metal gate blocked the opening—a gate now slowly rising.

The gate stopped. The tunnel stood unblocked.

Kinland relaxed, gasping out an audible sigh of relief. His terror had been unfounded. Now he could leave. Go home and…

Another sound cut off his thought. A sound he’d heard before, earlier this evening.

The sound of something large with many legs skittering over a stone floor. Skittering closer.

After we tie up a few loose ends…

Beroald’s words.

A shape moved in the tunnel mouth. As screams rose around him, Lawrence Kinland realized he wasn’t going home.

IN THE GREAT

banquet hall, Beroald sat again at his table nearest the ceremonial dais. The diners had departed, each now on their return journey to their respective homes around the world. Throughout the room, masked servants scurried, resetting tables. Tables that would sit empty and waiting until the next feast.

A feast that would be a repeat of tonight’s. As tonight’s had been a repeat of the one before, and the one before that. As each feast had been for centuries.

And would be for centuries to come, he supposed, as he considered the dark film coating his now empty glass. So long as there were those who could hear the Song and follow it here. So long as the Escarabajos de la Sangre Negra—the Scarabs of the Black Blood—answered the call of the Song. And so long as the Dancer danced.

Sighing, he rose. He could delay no longer. Time to report to the Chambelán.

He left the banquet hall by the same torch-lit tunnel Lawrence Kinland had taken earlier. But at the first junction, he took a different turn, one sloping upward. After several minutes and a maze of tunnels, he reached the foot of an unlit stone stairway spiraling still higher. Taking a burning torch from a wall sconce, he began to climb.

His reluctance for these nightly meetings stemmed from two emotions. One was pride. The other fear.

Pride because, until recently, he had been the Chambelán.

Fear because of the new Chambelán. Of the strange power his successor wielded. A power that, coupled with the black blood, made it unlikely that La Cámara de la Puerta Roja—The Chamber of the Red Door—would see a new Chambelán for many, many years.

The stairway ahead showed a growing brightness, and moments later he reached the first window in the tower, circular and carved through the black stone. Winded from his climb despite his recent beverage, he paused and gazed out.

Pale moonlight lit gently rolling farmland and countryside, much like the England of his youth. An England that, like his youth, lay in a dim and distant past.

No land so far away as yesterday, he whispered.

A sudden homesickness seized him. Even with his ingestion of the blood tonight, he felt old, older than his many years. He felt tired, used up. He caught himself. Stop it. You can’t show weakness. Not here. There is no path but the one before you.

He resumed his climb. He passed another window, through which he glimpsed a barren and snow-covered plain. The next showed a spired cityscape, neon-bright and smog-choked. He kept climbing.

More windows. A dark jungle. A rocky valley cradling a twisting river. A rolling, storm-tossed sea.

The windows ended. His torch once again provided his only light. Another minute of climbing brought him to a wooden door set into the surrounding stone of the tower. Reaching for its black iron handle, he stopped. He sighed. Old habits die hard.

He chewed on his resentment then swallowed it. The door held a knocker, also of black iron and shaped like a scarab. He lifted it, surprised as always by how warm it was. He let it drop. The sound echoed in the stairway. But no answer came.

You heard me, damn you, he thought. You’re making me wait. Reminding me of my new place in La Cámara. As if he could ever forget. He knocked again.

This time, a reply followed. Enter, Beroald.

Pushing open the door, he stepped into the room that sat atop the Black Tower. The tower room was a rough oval, thirty paces by twenty, divided into two sections. At this end lay the living quarters of the Chambelán—quarters that had once been his. A four-poster bed. Comfortable high-backed chairs. A mahogany desk. An eclectic library of leather-bound books filling rich oak bookcases along the walls. Thick, hand-woven rugs on the stone floor.

The only illumination came from oil lamps on tables and torches lining the walls. For all our power, he thought, we still huddle around fires in caves. During his long term as Chambelán, he had tried to introduce technology here. It never worked. Different laws governed this place.

A circular pool dominated the far half of the tower room, sitting off to the left. The liquid in the pool was a black that reflected no light and, when disturbed, moved in sluggish waves as if thicker than mere water. The pool sat in a recession in the stone less than a meter deep. Yet much taller objects, such as an upright human body struggling against its bonds, would disappear entirely beneath its dull surface when immersed in it.

Around the dark pool knelt the seven Watchers. Motionless and silent as always.

Each was female, each with identical garb. The green scaled skin of some huge serpent, sewn into leggings, covered them from the hips down. Jackets, golden yellow, made from the furred pelt of a great cat, concealed their torsos and arms. Their hands sat unseen inside clawed paws. They wore masks resembling the head of a vulture-like bird, with black feathered wings sweeping back from the temples. The masks hid every feature of their faces.

Hid their eyes, too, for which Beroald was grateful.

The women knelt at seven of the eight points of the compass. One position remained vacant. Still missing the last.

Beyond the black pool and silent Watchers squatted the Obsidian Throne, carved from the very stone of the Black Tower. It was a simple design—high and straight-backed with rounded arms and rounded crown. And, he remembered, damned uncomfortable.

In it, sat the Chambelán. The new leader of La Cámara de la Puerta Roja sat upright, concealed in a red robe—full-armed, ankle-length, and hooded. Behind the throne, deep shadows hid the far reaches of the room.

Beroald walked past the pool to stand before the robed figure. He dropped to one knee. I live only to serve La Cámara, he said as per custom.

You honor La Cámara with your service, came the formal reply. The Chambelán’s voice rang, as always, with musical tones of the Song, as if a hidden celestial choir echoed each word. Report, Beroald.

Rising, Beroald let out the breath he’d been holding. Considering recent events, he had feared the Chambelán might refuse his continued service—the equivalent of a death sentence.

He hesitated, trying not to glance at the pool. We have disposed of Lawrence Kinland and his people. He represents no further danger.

Beyond the danger to which he and your little plan already exposed us, you mean?

Pride brought a retort to his lips, but he bit it back. As you say, Chambelán. I can, if you wish, recruit another contact within the White Tower.

No. You’ve done enough damage. I will send my own agent.

Here was a development. What agents did the Chambelán have access to?

However, the hooded figure continued, a task remains for you tonight.

I live only to serve, Beroald repeated, an unease tickling between his shoulder blades.

Turning, the Chambelán called to the murky shadows behind the throne. Come!

Two figures appeared. The first was a uniformed footman carrying a waist-high brazier filled with glowing coals. Two short pokers with grips shaped like scarabs sat thrust into the embers.

Behind the footman strode a woman dressed the same as the seven who knelt by the pool. Beroald raised one bushy white eyebrow to the Chambelán.

The hooded head nodded. Yes, the circle of Watchers is now complete. Or will be once you perform your task.

The footman set the brazier down before him. Beroald considered it. Two pokers?

The Chambelán shrugged. No need to wait as it reheats. An improvement I’d hoped you’d appreciate.

Beroald bowed his head. Your thoughtfulness knows no bounds.

The woman knelt facing him. Raising her cat-pawed hands, she removed her mask and tilted her head up, eyes open but unfocused. Olive-brown skin. Long shining black hair.

And a face so young, he thought. Barely more than a child.

You hesitate, old man?

No, my Chambelán, Beroald replied. Grasping the handle of the nearest poker, he pulled it from the coals. Its tip glowed white hot. The woman remained kneeling motionless before him, her eyes unblinking.

Holding the poker before the woman’s face, he lowered its glowing tip toward her right eye. He always started with the right.

Later that night, as he lay in bed, the woman’s screams still ringing in his head, he clung to the small pride that his hand had never trembled.

Chapter 2: Trouble in Paradise

IN THE LIVING

room of a small and sparsely furnished apartment, Will Dreycott watched as Case and Fader ran to hug their mother, Ellie Cootes.

Their long-lost mother.

A tiny evergreen tree sat in one corner, clothed in flaking ornaments and flickering lights. Torn wrapping paper from opened presents littered the thread-bare carpet. A typical Christmas morning.

Except it wasn’t Christmas. Not in the real world. There, it was late June.

This was Dream.

Will wore the costume of the Dream Rider, his hood pulled back. At his side, Case and Fader watched with him. Watched themselves—younger versions of themselves.

Will stared at the younger Case in the scene before them. A smiling and happy Case with none of the hardness that so often defined her expressions now. Eight years old, she’d said, when she’d first shown him this in Dream, a memory of hers from just before their mother had disappeared.

The mother that Case claimed she now hated. The mother who’d left her children and never returned. For no reason.

At least, no reason she’d shared with those children. Or, it seemed, with anyone else.

Beside him, Case was hugging herself. Why are you showing us this?

He heard the accusation in her voice. He knew this was hard on her. Because I promised we’d search for your mom—

This isn’t our mom. It’s just a memory of her.

I don’t remember this, Fader said.

You were only four, Case said, her fists clenching and unclenching, her eyes locked on their mother.

It’s Case’s memory, Will said. Before them, the scene flickered, then began playing again from the start.

Why? she snapped, turning her back on the display. Why are we looking at my memory? Why not her dreams?

He hesitated. He’d been searching for Ellie Cootes in Dream for the past four nights, but he didn’t want to tell them that. I thought this might help you remember something else.

You can’t find her, can you?

Well, I’ve just started—

"Have you found anyone dreaming about her? Have you found any of her dreams?"

Will swallowed. No.

Fader’s eyes widened. But if Mom’s not dreaming, doesn’t that mean she’s—?

No, it doesn’t, Will said. He hadn’t wanted the conversation to take this turn. Stone’s team is searching in the real world, too. Winstone ‘Stone’ Zhang headed Will’s security and investigation group.

And? Case said, her arms folded.

Will sighed. So far all their leads… He hesitated.

Have been dead ends, too, she finished. Emphasis on dead.

Don’t say that, Fader said, his voice breaking.

Case, we don’t know that.

You haven’t found her in Dream. Stone hasn’t found her in real life. What else can it mean?

"It means we haven’t found her yet. We don’t have much to go on."

That was an understatement. What Stone’s team had discovered about Ellie Cootes was barely a sketch. Her name, home address, schools she’d attended, a list of classmates, her tenure as a professor at U of T, her faculty co-workers, students she taught. That was it, beyond Stone’s contacts in border security reporting no use of her passport in the year she’d disappeared or since.

Her parents—Case and Fader’s grandparents—were dead. Neither Case nor Fader knew the name of their father, who’d left just before Fader was born. And he hadn’t put his name on Case’s birth certificate—something Will would never share with her. Ellie Cootes had no brothers, sisters, or close cousins. And no known friends outside her faculty.

Stone and I both need to know more about your mom, Will said.

Case was already shaking her head.

Case, he said, as gently as he could, you’re our best hope. Fader can barely remember her. You have to tell me more about her.

No, she said, turning away from him and Fader, from the family celebration still playing out behind them. I really don’t. She vanished.

Fader looked around. Where’d she go?

Will snapped his fingers. In the Christmas scene, the younger versions of Case, Fader, and their mother froze, mid-group hug. He dropped onto the sagging couch across from the motionless tableau. Running his hand through his shaggy black hair, he sighed. She woke up. Or left this dream.

Fader plopped down beside him. She doesn’t like to talk about mom.

You think?

She says it’s because she hates Mom for leaving. But I think it hurts too much. I think Case still loves her but… Fader shrugged.

But can’t understand why she left. So she hates her, too. He could relate. He still loved his parents, or at least the fuzzy memories he had of them. But he also blamed them for whatever had happened to him on that doomed expedition in Peru. For whatever had left him with crippling agoraphobia, left him a prisoner in his own home.

I’ll talk to her. She’ll do it for me, Fader said, his eyes on his mother in the Dream sequence before them. She’s my mom, too.

Thanks, dude. And don’t give up. We’ll find her.

Something caught Will’s eye. On a round wooden table in the middle of the living room, a single sheet of folded paper lay beside a torn envelope, both face up.

That’s new, Will said, standing and walking to the table past the hugging family. I’ve studied this scene for four nights, and that’s never been there.

The table? Fader said, joining him.

The letter. Case’s subconscious must’ve added it tonight when she saw this memory.

You think it’s important?

Table’s in the middle of the room. Letter’s in the middle of the table. Nothing else on the table. So, yeah, important. At least to Case. To this memory of hers. He picked up the envelope. It was addressed to Elenora Cootes. Elenora? Your family is seriously name-challenged.

Dropping the