Chapter 23 Oneiros
Oneiros
Maybe Jake had been yelled at, because there were no more field trips for about two weeks.
Instead, Liv was confined to the suite, and her temper rose in direct proportion to the number of days spent looking at the same however-many walls.
Outside the mercury plunged, ice spreading flowery traceries over mullioned windows; the temperature inside never varied.
Meals came like clockwork on those silver trays. Ignatius visited every evening for at least a few moments, trying to convince her they weren’t so bad but giving no further explanations.
Of the three of them, only the dark-haired guy escaped her ire, mostly because he didn’t try to sugarcoat her captivity.
He was also the one who would answer the most questions, though that was faint praise.
Every time she asked about “sealing” Ignatius all but blushed, and she was getting a very bad feeling about the whole thing.
Especially since she was dreaming again. Every damn night, as a matter of fact, vivid color-soaked fantasies and nightmares striking the moment she closed her eyes. There was nothing to do but sleep; pride wouldn’t let her ask for a television so at least she could keep up with daily soap operas.
Her grandmother had called them my stories, gotta have my stories; Liv was thinking Gramma Poe, who got her first job at fifty-five because Gramps was retired and hanging around the house all day driving her crazy, had understated what living in a confined space did to your ability to watch ridiculous programming.
She was at the window when Erik tapped tentatively at the door; Liv was even distinguishing between the different emotional content of knocking now.
“You might as well come in,” she muttered, staring at the icy quad below—naked frostbitten trees, slippery stone paths, frozen grass, shivering bushes. It looked like the lowest circle of Dante’s hell.
At least they brought her books. She suspected she was going to have a helluva library by the time this finished—if there was, indeed, a finish line in sight.
She was getting used to handing Ignatius lists with increasingly rare and recondite legal textbooks; if they couldn’t find an edition right away one of them would apologize like a ma?tre d’ faced with an irate but very influential food critic.
If this kept up, she might even read a few of the deliveries. Brooding only took her so far, and maybe she could find some sort of legal remedy for after her escape.
That first step’s a lulu, Mom would have laughed.
Liv half-turned; it was indeed Erik, in his usual dark T-shirt, dark jacket, jeans, and a gun’s grip peeking out from under his left armpit. One of his hands was behind his back, and she eyed him warily.
If she could just get out of the room without a chaperone, she might have a chance at getting into one of those gun cabinets. Or maybe there was a back door in the kitchen.
Outside was where those things were, sure. But if she had a weapon, maybe that “potential” they were always talking about would wake up and do something supernatural?
It wasn’t a bad assumption, but how could she ask?
“Ma’am?” Erik didn’t stutter, but it was close. She’d never heard any of them sound so tentative. “I mean, uh, Miz—”
“It’s Liv. Just Liv.” God, they were all irritating as fuck. She had to get out of here somehow. “What do you want?”
“I just… you know…” He produced a small, brightly wrapped box—silver paper, plus a floppy blue bow which clearly wasn’t professionally done. In fact, he thrust it at her as if it contained a bomb. “Happy Yule.”
“Yule?” The package went blurry for a moment as her eyes filled with hot water; the box was heavy, resting in her numb fingers. “You mean Christmas?”
“A little before. It’s the solstice.” He took a catlike half-step back, giving her space.
Jake liked moving in on her and seeing if he could herd, while Ignatius kept a certain distance, probably more out of pride than any consideration for her comfort.
But Erik paid attention, and she almost liked that about him. “Longest night of the year.”
“Great.” She blinked several times, because the salt water in her eyes wouldn’t go away. She had to sniff hard, too. “Uh, I didn’t get you anything.” Not that she could have, trapped in here.
“You don’t have to. A lirai is a gift all by themselves.” It sounded like a quotation; Erik paused. “Well, you can open it. If you want. You don’t have to. I just thought—”
“No, it’s great. It really is.” She rubbed at her right eye with the heel of her free hand, swallowed hard, and tried a smile.
Erik examined her face. It was weird—he was so much bigger, armed, and inhumanly strong. But right now he looked like an anxious preschooler searching for his teacher’s approval. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It’s just that I’ve been here a while. And I didn’t get you anything.
” Were her friends having Christmas parties?
Mika had been talking about flying back to Los Angeles to visit her brother, Jada usually had a “refugee’s Christmas” at her apartment in Hana Heights, Lou and his husband would be celebrating an anniversary—God, she missed them all so, so much.
Was anyone thinking about her? That was probably the worst thing about being kidnapped—wondering if you’d ever be found, if anyone at all was still looking.
“You don’t have to,” Erik repeated.
The paper crumpled easily. Mika was an inveterate smash-and-tear; Liv preferred to carefully work taped edges free and save ribbons or bows.
She never reused them but she kept the nicest ones; the blue bow on this box was kind of childish.
Erik took the discarded wrapping paper, carefully avoiding her fingertips, and if he was bored at her slow unveiling of his present, it didn’t show.
A plain white box. She exhaled in wonder when the top came off.
Nestled on a pad of white cotton was a necklace—the gem was milky-translucent, the dull grey iron setting like twisted branches, and the chain a little thicker than she usually wore because of the pendant’s sheer size.
“Oh, wow.” She touched the stone with a fingertip and almost dropped it, because vivid colors spread from that single point of contact.
Now it looked like a fire opal, so bright it seemed unreal.
“Every lirai should have their own oneiros.”
“Oneiros.” It sounded vaguely French, but nothing she’d ever heard before. Would they tell her if she asked? It was always after the Flame, you’ll see. “Is that what this is?”
“Yeah.” Erik’s mouth twitched, a tentative smile. “A dreamstone in a meteorite iron setting. Made the old way.”
Meteoric iron sounded intense. And she didn’t know the difference between an old way and a new way; they probably wouldn’t tell her either. “Guess I won’t be going through any metal detectors with this on.”
“Mostly, when lirai travel…” He trailed off when she frowned slightly. “Well, anyway, it’s a protection. When you meet the Flame it’ll become a tool, too.”
“It’s beautiful.” At least she could be polite. The thing looked too heavy to wear, but she should at least try it on. The chain was too short to fit over her head, and there was no clasp. “How do I put it on?”
“I can. Just take it out of the box and hold it to your, um, to your neck. Wherever you want it to rest.”
She settled the nestlike setting against her breastbone, over the black sweater. “Like this?”
“Yeah. We can shorten or lengthen the chain. It just takes a second.” He reached out, halted, glanced at her face, and let his fingertips hover just over the gem.
His eyes narrowed slightly before a strange warmth slid from her crown to her soles, nailing her in place.
The chain twitched, rose, moved like a snake, and finally fastened around her neck, seamless and whole.
Liv let out a short, garbled blurt of surprise, but Erik didn’t move. The necklace settled against black cashmere, warm and oddly familiar, and it wasn’t heavy at all.
Light as a feather, in fact.
The stone flushed again, colors she knew and others she couldn’t quite name moving in lazy swirls under its surface. “Wow,” she breathed, tucking her chin, and the idea that she was staring basically at her own tits wasn’t as funny as it should have been. “Do they all do that?”
“On a lirai, yeah.” Erik was busy refolding the wrapping paper into smaller and smaller squares. “Do you like it?”
“It’s weird. But beautiful.” She could afford to be polite, even if she suspected this was some kind of trap or one of their weird little games. “So how do I take it off?”
“Just tell me, and I’ll take it off for you.” For once, his anxiety seemed to match hers. “Do you want me to?”
Strangely, she didn’t. “No, it’s okay.” Liv found herself touching the stone’s surface, warm and hard, watching the coruscating colors.
The gem rested against her breastbone like it belonged there, and the iron setting wasn’t scratchy.
The chain didn’t grab at her hair, either, which was a miracle. “I like it. Thank you.”
He nodded. The folded-up paper went back into the box, but he didn’t try to take the bow. “My pleasure, lirai.”
“Liv,” she corrected, and his dark gaze flew to hers.
“Liv.” Another twitch of his lips, a suppressed smile. “Dinner should be up in a little while. I’ll, uh, just be outside.”
“Okay.” She watched the gem as he left, closing the door with a quiet click. “Oneiros,” she said, testing the word. The swirling colors were almost hypnotic; she probably shouldn’t have accepted the damn thing.
But it was pretty, and it felt nice against her sweater. If the gift had some hidden cost, she’d find a way to tear it off. And it went without saying that as soon as she found a way to escape, she could take some bolt cutters to the chain.
The icy wasteland outside her window didn’t look quite so forbidding now.
Neither did the room—the table laden with neatly stacked paper and the huge collection of multicolored gel pens, the bed neatly made, the bathroom just as painfully clean as when she’d been deposited here.
All the sludge of daily living just seemed to disappear.
These guys could hire themselves out to clean houses, I bet. It was a good thought, a strong, sane thought, and she was startled into a laugh.
Liv clapped a hand over her mouth, horrified at herself. It was probably all part of their plan—give the trapped girl a pretty piece of gimcrack jewelry, and watch her be so pathetically grateful. She had to stay strong, watch for her moment…
…and then what? Fight monsters by herself?
Liv stared at the frostflowers at the window, wondering if that was a better or worse prospect than being held in these rooms for however much longer.
The sun, having better things to do, slid down from its apex toward the horizon’s grim swallowing line.
* * *
Liv hid in the bathroom while Jake dropped off the usual domed silver tray, trying not to feel like an errant child.
She did it again when Ignatius, again as usual, visited, and told herself hunger was a reasonable punishment for accepting anything from them at all.
Curling up in the bed was a welcome reprieve, though she probably should have slept in the bathtub or somewhere else uncomfortable just to drive the point home.
The necklace didn’t catch in her hair or try to strangle her. It simply lay quietly where it was supposed to, warm metal light and comforting. Was it a tracking device? Some kind of weird ritual?
Was she beginning to bend toward what they wanted, isolation and fear chipping away at her personality? Humans were social creatures, and it was only a matter of time before she lost all sense of reality and started believing whatever crazy shit they could come up with.
It didn’t help that she’d seen the monsters. Once your own eyes were on a kidnapper’s side, what chance did the rest of you have?
Liv thought she’d have trouble sleeping, but she was out as soon as her head touched the pillow—that is, until past midnight, when the strip of light under the bathroom door dimmed and a sharp icy wind scraped the windows.
A formless mutter crossed her lips, fingers turning into claws at a signal from her dreaming brain, and she tossed restlessly, the oneiros glowing against her breastbone.
Small, swift-moving shadows dappled the walls.
Skritch-scratch. Another shadow brushed the window, rubbing like a cat. The light under the bathroom door dimmed further, sputtered out; mullioned glass creaked, an uneasy murmur like her dreaming.
More scratching, and the oneiros’s glow was a single dim star in the room’s thickening gloom. It flashed once, a pale stiletto.
Liv Stellack sat bolt upright amid tangled, sweat-damp blankets, her eyes wide and wild, and screamed.