Chapter 26
26
Miya
Bastien placed a serving plate the size of a flying saucer on the bar in front of Caelan. Three perfectly golden crab cakes and a mountain of fries awaited the teen’s shrunken stomach, the fluffernutters from the night before long gone.
“Eat up, kid.” He slid her a fork and knife wrapped in a turquoise napkin, followed by a pint of cola.
She didn’t need to be told twice. Foregoing the utensils, Caelan dug in with her hands, ignoring the ketchup and remoulade. Miya had never seen someone so ravenous—except maybe Kai, who could endure days without food but griped every hour that passed without snacks. His and Ama’s metabolisms adjusted to accommodate their intake, keeping their bodies robust regardless of their environment.
Caelan, on the other hand, was just starved.
Bastien shot Miya a questioning look, and she responded with a rueful smile. Caelan had slept until noon, and after stocking up on junk food from Marty’s and buying a pair of cheap sneakers, Miya opted to get the teen some fresh air. It’d taken a while to find clothes that fit her—an old pair of leggings and a cashmere sweater that’d shriveled after a bad stint in the dryer. In the meantime, Connor dropped off Ripper, shrugging noncommittally when Miya asked after Kai. The orange munchkin hid under the couch for another hour before emerging to scarf down some newly acquired cat food. Bolder than the night before, he sniffed at Miya and Caelan, then squatted atop the counter, tail flicking to-and-fro.
Now at the King of Spades, Miya watched Caelan eat her weight in French fries. The bar wouldn’t open until four, giving them time to mill about.
“You need anything else, you let me know,” said Bastien. “Girl looks too weak to whip a gnat.”
“These are really good,” Caelan mumbled, her eyes tracking the Gullah chef.
“Those are southern crab cakes. My Mawmaw made those for me any time I was feeling afflicted.” His shoulders pulled back proudly. “New England could learn a thing or two about good comfort food.”
“We have crab cakes too,” Caelan pointed out.
Bastien threw his head back and guffawed. “Not like these, you don’t.”
Caelan’s gaze trailed the length of the bar, then fixed on the shadows beneath the antique mirror.
Bastien’s laugh came to a hiccupping halt. “What’re you staring at over there?”
Miya glanced over her shoulder. The domovoy sat quietly under the heavy brass frame, staring at the newcomer. His rotund, furry head canted like he was trying to make sense of her, and he chittered softly.
“You can see him?” Miya turned back to Caelan, who nodded curtly.
Bastien threw his arms up. “Shit, no. I’m out. Going to that white lady’s crystal shop to buy some overpriced sage.” He paused mid-step and squeezed his eyes shut. “…After I finish prepping.” Sighing, he bee-lined for the kitchen doors. “Holler if you need anything!”
Miya leaned back to leave the line of sight between the domovoy and Caelan unbroken.
“You can see him too?” Caelan polished off the crab cakes, but the pile of fries was insurmountable.
“He’s a house spirit.” Miya had never met anyone capable of peering right through the boundary between worlds. Ama and Kai came close—both liminal, both able to sense things beyond the earthly plane. They interacted with the domovoy from behind the veil, tossing hair clippings and breadcrumbs his way, but they couldn’t truly see and experience what Miya did.
Caelan was the first.
The teen beamed a smile—something she hadn’t shown before. “I thought I was the only one who saw things. I thought I was sick.”
Miya clasped her hands together under the bar. Her palms were clammy, anxiety wringing her into restlessness as she wracked her brain for how to engage a traumatized teen. She couldn’t approach her like she did Kai, bludgeoning him with what he avoided to force him to look.
So far, so good , she reassured herself, bolstered by Caelan’s infectious smile. They were building rapport through the one thing they had in common: contact with the dreamscape.
“I once thought I was being spirited away,” Miya told her. “Insomnia, sleepwalking, panic attacks, hallucinations—all of it. Figured I was losing my mind. But I know now there are things out there that don’t fit most people’s idea of what’s real and what isn’t. Doesn’t matter if you call it madness or haunting ; the experience is real.”
Caelan fell silent as she dropped her gaze to her lap. Ocher hair brushed against her brows, obscuring her face. Miya wondered if she was weighing the wisdom of disclosure, but when the lull yawned out into a gaping maw, she snapped it shut with a question.
“Have you ever gone to a place that feels different? Like a dream that isn’t a dream?”
“This place used to feel like a dream.” Caelan’s voice was barely audible. She shifted in the stool, then took a slurp of her soda. “Every place feels that way to me, whether I’m awake or asleep.” Her eyes strayed to Miya’s face. “I saw you in one of my dreams—a bad one. When you showed up at the warehouse, I wasn’t sure if I was still in that nightmare.”
It sounded like a riddle, and Miya didn’t have the clues to puzzle it out, but the teen clearly recognized her from the hellscape with the doll factory. Miya’s own life had once been a waking nightmare, and her conviction that a supernatural entity was out to kidnap her only heightened the unreality of it all, but Caelan didn’t seem to suffer the same burden. She wasn’t afraid of the dreamscape like Miya had been. Perhaps she simply couldn’t decide which world better suited her difference. Whatever the case, she was clearly acquainted with the ethereal plane.
“Do you remember anything from before you were found three years ago?” A direct question, but one that’d been burning on Miya’s tongue. Caelan seemed perfectly socialized, yet she’d appeared out of thin air according to the report Ama dug up.
Caelan ducked a nod. “Sort of. I remember being in a different place. I remember a friend—a spirit who took care of me. We watched this side, learned about it. It’s a haze, but once I was here, everything came pretty naturally. I just copied those around me.”
The spirit who cared for her must’ve been the leshy, yet Miya couldn’t wrap her head around what, exactly, Caelan was supposed to be. She’d clearly come to the waking world with some knowledge of it, and what she lacked, she learned through mimicry . “What about your parents? They probably miss you.”
Caelan worried her lower lip. “I can’t go back there.”
“Why not?” Miya pressed.
“It’s complicated.”
“Were you having problems with them?”
“No!” Caelan’s head snapped up. “No, nothing like that. They were trying so hard to help me, but…I don’t think I can be helped.”
“Helped…” Miya ventured. “What do you need help with?”
“Her…” A half-whisper, half-hiss, as though the mere utterance could conjure a ghost.
Miya recalled the presence Caelan had mentioned in her diary. The one calling her. “Is she chasing you?”
Hesitation, nervous writhing. “ Pulling more like…”
Was there really a distinction between chasing and pulling where haunting was concerned? “And who is she ?”
A frantic shake of the head. “I don’t know. All I know is that if I listen to the call—if I find her—something terrible will happen.” The teen released a shaky breath. “I don’t want to talk about this. Not right now.” She poked at a fry. “How did you find me, anyway?”
“Your friend hired me,” Miya said after cudgeling her urge to push the matter. “A tall, elderly man who…” She measured her next words carefully. “He’s a foreigner in this plane.”
Caelan nodded, drawing figure eights with the French fry. “He cared for me on the other side. The…place you say isn’t like anywhere else.”
“When did you meet him?”
She paused her tracing on the plate. “I don’t know. Time isn’t the same over there, but I feel like I’ve known him for a long time.”
“The leshy?—”
“Is that what he is?” Caelan sat up straighter. “He doesn’t have a name, though it doesn’t seem to matter to him.” She swung her legs and huffed, her countenance finally loosening. “Either way, I came to this side because I had to, but he—the leshy—he couldn’t follow. I miss him.”
Alarm spangled through Miya’s skull. “What do you mean you had to come to this side?”
Caelan’s face twisted like a barbed knot had lodged in her throat. “The call,” she said, voice wobbling. “I couldn’t fight it anymore.”
Miya placed a gentle hand on the girl’s back, the motion spurring a choked sob. “I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about it.” Guilt silenced her, though she’d finally woven several pieces of the story together.
Caelan wasn’t being called to the dreamscape; she’d been summoned by something on this side. Did she slip into the ethereal plane to escape? To resist this call ? The leshy may have protected her, given her an anchor so she could battle whatever was trying to bait her. Yet Miya had never heard of spirits trying to lay snares from the earthly realm; they spun their webs in the dreamscape, threading their lures through the cracks between worlds and into the nightmares of their victims, entangling them from afar.
The Carvers said Caelan had been looking for a door. Miya initially suspected that she was re-tracing her steps to the park where she’d first appeared, searching for a way back to her friend. But her pursuer was tempting her to that very spot, as if she knew that intercepting Caelan at the gateway between worlds was the easiest way to corner her.
Hinges screeched from the entryway of the King of Spades, interrupting the tense exchange.
“Miya—I thought you’d be at home.” Ama tapped her nails against her belt as the door squealed to a stop behind her, a disapproving frown curving her mouth.
“I decided to take Caelan out for some fresh air,” Miya replied, rotating on her stool.
The white wolf’s amber gaze slid to the teen, then back to Miya. “That was reckless. What if someone’s out looking for her? They might’ve spotted you.”
“She’s been cooped up long enough. She deserves to get out a bit.” Needled by Ama’s admonition, Miya hopped out of her seat. “Would you be scolding Kai if he was the one with Caelan?”
Taken aback, Ama’s hand dropped from her hip and flopped against her thigh. “Anyone would tell you this is a bad idea.”
“Kai wouldn’t.”
Ama’s stare iced over. “I wouldn’t expect otherwise.”
An underhanded insult. Miya pursed her lips as Caelan quietly observed the exchange. “I suppose we should go back.”
“Who’s that?” Caelan leaned over to get a better look. “She was with you that night.”
Miya hesitated as the white wolf simmered. “This is my friend Ama. She helped me find you.”
Ama crossed her arms over her chest and shifted her weight as Caelan continued to peer at her, unblinking. Finally, she twitched under the scrutiny.
“She’s like him,” Caelan concluded, severing whatever invisible cord she’d used to reach inside Ama.
“How could you tell?” Miya asked.
“I don’t know.” Caelan shrugged. “They’re just…different. It’s like telling cats from dogs.”
Ama batted her eyelashes. “Who’re the cats in this analogy?”
Caelan puffed up her cheeks, then gave a noncommittal croak. “I don’t know what you are. Just that you’re not human.”
Clearly displeased at the prospect of being either, Ama returned her attention to Miya. “I wanted to make sure you’re all right after what happened last night. You seemed…upset.”
“We’re working it out,” Miya said evasively.
The white wolf squinted, unconvinced. “Are you?”
Miya silenced her with a stern yes . She didn’t want Ama prying—not now. The wolves had always been at each other’s throats, though they’d reached a tenuous peace over the last few years. Still, that didn’t stop Ama from sniffing out Kai’s blunders like a wounded deer’s blood trail. The huntress wouldn’t dare forego the opportunity for an easy kill.
“I’m taking things slow,” Miya said, watching Caelan polish off her remaining fries. “Just keep your eyes peeled for anything…weird, I guess.”
Ama arched a perfectly groomed eyebrow. “ Everything is weird if you stare hard enough.”
A chuckle worked its way up Miya’s throat, her tone softening. “You know what I mean.”
The white wolf half-smiled. “I’ll call you later. Try not to get too adventurous.” She glanced at Caelan. “Not until we know more.”
Miya didn’t have the heart to ask the teen about her captivity. She hoped, perhaps foolishly, that Kai would do the work on that front, sparing Miya the uncomfortable task of weeding the truth from Caelan’s bleak recollections. She stiffly put on her mauve leather jacket, watching as Caelan layered up with a scarf and a spare coat they’d found collecting dust in the closet.
Offering Ama a reconciliatory hug, Miya led Caelan out the door, the hinges whirring as the King of Spades bid them farewell.