Excerpt: Familiar

“Elisabeth? Who’s Elisabeth?”

“You still don’t know about Elisabeth?” She shook her head. “I can’t say I’m surprised.” Halo tsked. “Your familiar isn’t doing a very good job of keeping you informed, and after our last chat, too. You’re going to fail again… what a pity.”

He didn’t sound like it was much of a pity at all.

Remembering what Shoo had explained to her about being a dreamwalker and how she could manipulate her dreams if she wanted to, Sarah balled up her hands into fists and set her jaw in determination. She willed him to answer her question. If Shoo, for whatever reason, wasn’t going to give her the knowledge she needed to have, then Sarah wasn’t leaving until she got the answers from Halo.

“Who was Elisabeth?” she asked again.

Halo’s queer eyes flashed red; Sarah dropped her gaze as if the flames licking at his pupils had burned her.

“Who was my Elisabeth? Why, Sarah, she was everything you’re not. She was lovely and kind and always willing to help her fellow neighbors. She was smart, absolutely beautiful, entirely selfless. She would never have dreamt of shutting the door on any creature in need.”

The silky way he spoke, the nice words he had for this Elisabeth… it all made Sarah feel terrible. She had the feeling that that had been his intent, and rather than feel alarmed that he knew about the time she tried to lock Shoo out of the house, she was guilty that she had ever done such a selfish thing.

She could feel herself pouting and knew it was a result of the poison in his voice. “If she’s so great,” she countered, miffed though she would rather give in to Halo then admit that to him, “then why don’t you haunt her dreams?”

“Because I love you, Sarah,” Halo said simply, a faux sort of innocence making his handsome face seem to come alive. He sounded genuine—Sarah had to work hard to remember that he was the bad guy. His next words went a long way to help: “And, of course, because Elisabeth is dead.”

That wasn’t what she was expecting to hear.

“Dead?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, his voice light and conversational. “I had her burned at the stake for witchcraft many, many years ago.”

Sarah took a step back. Aware that he was watching every move she made and not quite caring, she turned and looked at Shoo. Like a particularly bad ventriloquist, she spoke to the cat out of the corner of her mouth, moving her lips as she did so. “This guy is crazy. Why didn’t you tell me he was nuts?”

“Not nuts,” interrupted Halo, his white teeth gleaming in the moonlight. “Just in love with you.”

Her heart was beating triple-time; her entire chest felt like it was being squeezed. She’d read about people getting hysterical and not being able to breathe and she was pretty sure that was happening to her. It was like the time that dark stranger had approached her in the part but worse. Hundreds of times worse.

She wasn’t kidding with Halo anymore. She had the terrifying understanding that he’d never been kidding with her at all.

“You can’t be in love with me,” she said, her voice creeping higher and higher with every word. What was it with people lately? First West, now this? When did the world stop ignoring Sarah Graves? “You don’t even know me!”

“Of course I do. I know everything there is to know about you.”

“How?” she demanded.

His answer was as simple as it was chilling: “I’m the shadows. I’ve seen everything, hidden in the dark, watching your every move.”

Sarah shook her head so hard she thought she might’ve sent her brain spinning. “Uh-uh. No. I don’t believe you.”

“Believe it, Sarah,” he hissed, the words coming out as if from between a serpent’s lips. “Who was there when you were alone, daydreaming or lost in a world of pencil and ink? Who was there when you fell off of the monkey bars, who tried to lift you back up? Who was there when the little girls teased you and made you cry? Who was there when your father ran off with that harlot, leaving you and your mother alone? I was there. I’ll always be there.”

Each instance of pain he listed was like a punch to her gut. She received each blow, feeling more awake and alive than she ever had before. It stung and it hurt and she wished he would just shut up. Sarah had worked hard to put all that behind her, to forget the shadows that haunted her in the sunlight, to pretend she didn’t care what her classmates thought of her, to believe her father’s betrayal meant nothing.

She’d kept it all in, growing more distant, more detached and more bitter than any seventeen year old girl should. Then, to top it all off, a strange cat—a strange talking cat—insisted she was a witch and, suddenly, her very dreams, the one sanctuary she had, were being overrun by a shadow man who was always there.

Despite it all being a dream, she knew it was very real. Suddenly, she understood exactly what being a dreamwalker really meant. Her stomach tightened and she thought she just might throw up. It would serve him right if she did. His shoes looked expensive.

Her mind started whirring at a pace she never experienced before. Shoo wasn’t being any help, and she doubted she could count on him, familiar or not. But one thing he had told her stuck with her and she decided it was high time to listen to him. A dreamwalker, he had told her, was as much of a witch as a nature witch or a witch with the gift of precognition. Magic was all about manipulation.

All she had to do was manipulate the dream.

Sarah lifted her arms, holding her hands out in front of her. With steely determination, and a good amount of fear too, she lifted her eyes and focused on the bridge of his nose. Just like she did with West—if for another reason entirely—she refused to meet his gaze. She drew in a deep breath and whispered, “I don’t want you.”

She gave her wrists the smallest of twitches, willing something to happen. She never really accepted the fact that she was a witch until the next moment when, to her surprise and that of both Halo and Shoo, something did happen.

A light turned on.

In the middle of the night, in the middle of the outside where this meeting was taking place, a glaringly bright light appeared out of nowhere. So strong, it managed to scatter the shadows that clung to Halo like morning dew on blades of grass. Even Halo seemed to fade under its power.

“Go away,” she said through gritted teeth before shoving outward with her hands.

The light increased, blinding her. She closed her eyes; reacting without really thinking about what she was doing, Sarah covered her face with her hands before the intensity of the light blinded her forever. As soon as she dropped the pose, the light vanished. Carefully, hesitantly, not knowing what she would find, she opened her eyes slowly.

Halo was gone.