Page 222 of In Somnis

I need him to be the one on the outside with his hand on the rope, because I am going somewhere I can’t pull from, and someone has to pull. It has to be someone who loves her enough to reach all the way in.

“Lennon—”

“Get her back.”

I let go of his sleeve.

Then I’m moving, running, because if I stop, something will catch up with me, and I don’t have time for it to catch up with me.

I get to my car, get in, and turn the key. The engine comes up loud in the quiet night, and through the windshield, all four of them turn at the sound. Their faces find me through the glass, one by one, and I can see my name on their mouths, all four of them, at the same time.

I pull out anyway.

I don’t let myself look back again.

My tumbler is in the cupholder, right where I left it. Seraphine’s tea, the herbs still steeping, filled before I left because I’d thought I’d do this carefully, try after the party, go lucid the right way, with a plan, enough sleep, and something resembling sense.

Plans change.

I take a long sip and merge onto the dark road.

Please don’t leave me hanging, Derek.

The Vaughn house is quiet when I get there, dark except for the light above the front door and the faint warm glow of a lamp somewhere upstairs. I sit in the car after I turn off the engine, both hands still on the wheel, the tumbler empty in the cupholder.

Then I get out.

I don’t knock. The door is unlocked, and I slip inside and stand in the hallway, just listening. From somewhere toward the back, muffled by distance and closed doors, I can hear Nora crying.

The sound stops me colder than the dark house does.

I stand there with it for a moment before I go upstairs.

Tessa’s room is dim, the nightlamp casting everything in soft light, and she’s lying there with her eyes closed, but there’s a new oxygen unit beside the bed, with thin tubing running up and disappearing beneath the sheet, two small prongs sitting in her nose, and I hate it. I hate the sight of it so much that I have to stand in the doorway for a full breath before I can make myself cross the threshold.

This is real in a way dreams never are.

I slip off my shoes at the door, then I reach into the pocket of my dress and pull out Jasper’s crystals, all of them, the ones he’d arranged on my stomach on the kitchen floor while I complained about chakras. I arrange them on Tessa’s chest and her forehead as carefully as I can, just like he’d placed them on me.

I don’t know what I’m doing.

I don’t know if it matters, but it feels like something.

And something is better than standing here empty-handed while she disappears.

The last thing in my pocket is the keychain.

I take it out and hold it in my palm. My thumb moves over it before I can stop it, the memory of Nevan’s nose dragging slowly up the bridge of mine.

I touch my lips with two fingers.

Then I close my hand around the keychain, press my fist against my sternum, and push all of it down, somewhere it can’t reach me, before I let the keychain slip into my pocket again.

I get onto the bed beside Tessa, lift the covers, and slide in how I used to in our dorm when one of us had a bad night, and the only solution either of us ever found was to simply be next to each other.

Her shoulder is warm against mine. The oxygen unit hums quietly.

“I’m here, girl.” I take her hand. “I’m coming.”