Dreams for the Dead Read online

  But Dawn hadn’t felt anywhere near safe after coming home and locking herself in. She’d checked the door several times, and all the windows, Tristan’s threats running through her mind. You shouldn’t call the police. Forget about it. And then what he’d said about killing her, or kidnapping her … He was psychotic, obviously. Jared was too.

  Though wide awake after coming home, she’d tried to sleep, knowing it would be good for her. She couldn’t. It was equal parts fear and confusion keeping her up. Finally she’d stuck a sunstone and a Herkimer diamond beneath her pillow and managed to grab a few hours.

  Now, Dawn stood in front of the bathroom mirror and rolled on some nag champa oil. She tied the soft black strings of her favorite pendant around her neck. It was a howlite disk, the strings looped through a hole in the center of it. It was a dull white stone laced with pale gray filaments, like a colorless piece of turquoise. A ghost stone, she’d always thought. It was like her, pallid and empty beside more colorful counterparts.

  She pushed her thick, fuzzy hair behind her broad shoulders and studied her face, pale beneath the lingering summer tan. Her blue-green eyes seemed tired behind her black glasses, but they almost always looked that way. A hasty application of some blush and lip gloss helped her look more alive.

  The events of the night might have happened in a dream, but she knew they hadn’t. Even so, she felt much calmer today. Everything could be fixed. Her fear seemed embarrassing now. Tristan’s threats didn’t mean so much. And, well, she was going to the police, no matter what that psycho said. Of course she was. Leila needed her.

  But once she’d bought a new phone, a cheap prepaid one like she always used, all she could do was hold it and stare at it. She kept thinking about how menacing Jared had looked, how much he’d seemed to hate her even though he didn’t even know her name. And Tristan, with his smooth threats and eyes gleaming at her beneath the grainy sodium lights. She couldn’t possibly call the police. They would know if she did. Somehow, they would know.

  Instead she dialed Leila’s number, the only number besides her own she’d even bothered to memorize. It rang five times and then went to voicemail. Dawn left a quick, urgent message, barely remembering to include her new number. She tried again two times with the same result. On the fourth try, the phone cut off mid ring and went to voicemail. On the fifth, it didn’t ring at all.

  Just call the police already, Dawn told herself, holding the phone with shaking hands.

  Her mind spun out a scenario. She would call them and tell them her twenty-three-year-old roommate had disappeared with a strange man. If they didn’t laugh at Dawn for reporting an adult missing less than twenty-four hours, they would question her and pick apart her story. Had Leila screamed or fought? No? Then hadn’t she gotten into the car willingly?

  Maybe it would have looked and sounded that way to some people. But Dawn knew Leila’s willingness had somehow been insidiously compromised.

  She set the phone down on the counter beside the camera, then walked back to Leila’s room and pushed open the door. Her foot snagged on a dress lying in a heap on the blue carpet. It was a vintage-style thrift store dress Dawn had altered to fit Leila for one of her photography projects. After the project, Leila had gone through a mod phase, teasing up her hair and winging out her eyeliner. She’d recently abandoned the hair but kept the eyeliner.

  Dawn laid the dress out on the cherry blossom comforter and paced around the room. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, just that she needed some kind of evidence Leila was in danger. How long ago had she met Jared? Had she even said? If she’d met him on campus, maybe he and Leila knew some of the same people. Maybe he was involved in a mutual friend’s art project. Maybe Leila had taken his picture …

  Suddenly Dawn remembered the camera. She hurried back out to the kitchen and picked it up. Even after examining it for a few moments, she didn’t feel confident she could get the film out without damaging it. She wasn’t sure what good a picture of Jared would do anyway, except prove he existed. And maybe she could convince a cop to cross-reference it with a national database or something.

  Leila always took her film to a camera store near campus. Dawn had been along a few times and managed to find it without much trouble. She took the camera in and handed it to the clerk.

  “I don’t know how to take out the film,” she explained sheepishly.

  He didn’t even try to disguise his look of disdain, but she ignored it. After stumbling through purposely confusing questions on how she wanted it processed, she went back to the car and prepared herself to wait an hour.

  She looked at her phone, but there were no missed calls. Zach had probably been trying her old number. She started to call him but realized she didn’t know his number by heart. It was eleven o’clock, so he’d be at the garage. He wouldn’t get off until four, so she decided just to drive halfway across town to see him while the film developed. She picked up a soda for him on the way, and an iced coffee for herself.

  Dawn parked in the hot sun and walked into the not-much-cooler shade of the garage. Zach spotted her right away, before her eyes even had time to adjust.

  “Where’ve you been? I tried calling you last night.” He was sweaty and covered in grease, but his thick black hair was still perfectly combed into a rockabilly pomp. He’d pulled his coveralls down to the waist, exposing his muscular shoulders and white tank.

  “My phone broke,” Dawn said, handing over the soda. “I got this new one. What’s your number?”

  After taking a long drink, he made a smacking sound of satisfaction and recited it. “So where were you last night?” he asked as she punched it in.

  Dawn lifted her thick, curly brown hair off her sticky neck and twisted it up behind one ear. With nothing to hold it in place, it unraveled quickly. She frowned as she considered how to begin.

  “Here.” Zach pulled the crumpled red bandana from his back pocket and handed it to her.

  “Thanks.” She set the coffee down and tied her long hair up in a high ponytail. “So … Leila got kidnapped last night.”

  “What?”

  “She was supposed to be meeting some guy at the bar we went to.” Dawn told the rest of the story as coherently as possible, but it was hard when the night seemed so odd and far away. She tried to convey her fear and the meaning behind the threats and the murderous intent in Jared’s green eyes. When she was done, she took a deep breath and glanced at Zach, waiting for his advice.

  He nodded. “Okay … I see why you’re worried, but it sounds like she went with that guy willingly. I mean, she does things like that, right?”

  “Well, sometimes, but that’s not what happened. She hasn’t even called! And when I called her, her phone was off.”

  “She’s probably just having a good time. Girls like Leila—”

  Dawn shook her head, annoyed. “What do you mean, girls like Leila?”

  Zach stretched his neck from side to side, recognizing he’d said something wrong. “You know, she’s … she’s kind of …”

  “What?” Dawn demanded. “What is she?”

  “She’s, uh, a little slutty. I mean, it’s cool with me, but sometimes girls like that …”

  Dawn’s mouth dropped open. “I can’t believe what you’re implying. That’s not even … You know what? I don’t think we should see each other right now. You’re not even taking this seriously.”

  “What? You’re breaking up with me because I said something stupid? Come on, I didn’t mean it.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Something weird is happening and I’m going to help Leila however I can.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I can help you. Just tell me what to do.”

  “I don’t know what you can do,” she said irritably. “I’m just … figuring this out as I go along.”

  “Whatever. Let me know. Thanks for the soda.”

  Her hair fell to her shoulders as she untied the bandana and handed it back to him. “Here.”

  “Keep it
.” He went back to his work, pointedly ignoring her.

  She was too angry and agitated to care that she might have overreacted, so she walked stiffly back to the car without another word. Why couldn’t Zach see how horrible things were? At least he’d confirmed her ideas of what the police would have to say about Leila’s kidnapping.

  The film would be ready by now. It would take fifteen minutes to get through traffic. If she had time before work, Dawn thought she’d go to campus to see if she could find out anything there. But if by some chance Leila had come home, she should swing by the apartment first … No, campus was closer. And her calls to Leila still weren’t going through.

  Dawn reached for her coffee and realized she’d forgotten it at the garage. “God damn it!” she yelled, smacking the steering wheel.

  After picking up the negatives, she sped the couple blocks to Leila’s art school. She didn’t know her way around very well. She wandered aimlessly around the tree-shaded grounds, looking for someone she recognized, any of Leila’s friends whose names she couldn’t even remember. Anyone who might know Jared. Even Jared himself. But none of the faces were familiar, and she didn’t feel entirely comfortable accosting strangers with questions.

  She found a coffee stand and bought another coffee. The sun beat down on her shoulders as she sipped it at the edge of the path, staring discreetly at every student who passed.

  Nothing.

  She had to get to work anyway, and the sensation of being watched from behind the trees was too disconcerting. The unsettling feeling of an unseen stranger's eyes lingered on her back for hours.

  Two

  Endpapers was a store easily overlooked in one of the city’s numerous strip malls. The window was painted with red letters faded from the relentless sun, and Roy was always trying to get Dawn to ask Leila to repaint them. Inside, the brimming shelves stretched nearly to the ceiling. It was Dawn’s job to catalog, alphabetize, shelve, sell, package, and ship the books. Roy owned the store, but he didn’t like to work in it. He sat in his office in the back with the financial papers and watched movies on his laptop.

  Alone on a footstool in a dusty corner of the store, Dawn leaned her forearms on the nearest shelf and rested her forehead between them. The curls of her hair created a barrier between her and the rest of the world.

  Most of the time her shifts at work seemed to last forever. Beyond the dark window, the night was suspended in the surreal amber haze of streetlights that put her on the edge of time. When she looked at the glass, all she could see was a dim reflection of the store. And herself, but she usually avoided her own eyes. She never noticed anything weird in her own bathroom mirror, but in the store, where the light was different, the window showed her eyes as hollow shadows. Their dismal reflection made her feel like the living dead. If she stared closely into her pupils, she could discover the most frightening version of herself.

  Her job was mostly dull, but the dullness suited her. The dullness was her. She worked among stiff pages beneath the hum of the air conditioning. Her feet creaked the floor beneath the thin carpet. Day after day of fuzzy sunlight slanting across her knuckles. Night after long September night, each one cooler than the last.

  Sometimes the wind outside was fierce, buffeting the window and jangling the bell above the door. Those windy nights she felt jumpy and savagely wistful, and she waited and wished for something to happen that never, ever did.

  Until now.

  Dawn got up from the footstool and went to sit behind the register instead. With a sigh, she poked her sunburned shoulders. The tip of her nose had reddened too.

  Uncoiling the strips of negatives from the film canister, she held them up to the light. Leila probably would have yelled at her for getting fingerprints on them.

  The negatives showed nothing important. They were just tiny shots of Leila’s carefully composed, half-blurred vision. There were a few of Dawn. She wondered how Leila chose which ones to develop. Most of them were too abstracted to make sense to her.

  She rolled them back into the canister and glanced at the clock. Almost ten. Time to start counting the drawer.

  It was a quick task, and she walked the drawer back to Roy with three minutes to spare before closing. “I’m going home,” she said.

  He opened the safe and stuck the drawer inside. “Thanks.” Then he pretended he’d been going over the store’s accounts all along, instead of watching The Crow, which was paused on his laptop.

  “See you tomorrow.”

  Though the bookstore was close enough to the apartment for Dawn to walk to and from work, which she had often done when the weather was nice, she hadn’t felt safe doing it tonight. She drove home, still wondering why she didn’t just call the police. It had been twenty-four hours now, or close to it. And Leila wasn’t home. The apartment was dark.

  “All right,” she grumbled as she parked her car and got out. “I’m doing it.” She dialed 911 while walking to the door and was about to hit send.

  Someone stepped in front of her and she looked up, expecting a neighbor. But she’d never seen the man before. It could have been a neighbor, since she didn’t know them that well, and people were always moving in and out. He was tall, with shoulder-length black hair and swarthy features. He was kind of handsome, but she didn’t really have time to think about that. He wore a plain white shirt and holey jeans.

  “Excuse me,” she said, and started to move around him.

  “You’re going to make trouble for us, aren’t you?”

  She stopped again. “What?”

  “I can’t let you make that call.”

  His hand flashed out and he snatched the phone from her. Dawn gaped in astonishment as he crushed it in his fist. Who even did that? For a second she forgot to be afraid, because she was so angry she’d lost two phones in twenty-four hours. No, not lost. Some random assholes had destroyed them.

  And suddenly the fear returned. This wasn’t some weird joke or a coincidence. Something bad had happened to Leila, and now the bad guys had come for her to tie up loose ends. The man’s bottomless dark eyes settled on her as he dropped the mangled phone pieces to the ground.

  “Oh, shit,” she muttered.

  Dawn had never fainted in her life, but she thought she was about to as he stalked toward her with dubious intent. She was breathing so quickly her vision grayed. Her brain was sending signals of danger but the rest of her wasn’t cooperating. Her legs weakened and her sight went fully black. She never even felt herself hit the ground.

  ~

  It was still dark when she opened her eyes. She didn’t think she’d been out for long. She was riding in the front seat of a car and the black-haired guy was driving. They were still in the city, not far from the apartment, but she couldn’t figure out what direction they were heading.

  “Where are you taking me?” Dawn asked. Her voice was slightly hoarse.

  “My father’s house,” the man said brightly.

  Dawn frowned and looked ahead. She wouldn’t make trouble. She wouldn’t give them a reason to want to hurt her before she figured out what they’d done with Leila.

  The house was hidden in an old neighborhood of custom homes built in the sixties or seventies Dawn had never even seen before. The man pulled into a driveway and stopped before an iron gate set into a white stucco wall that probably surrounded the whole property. He rolled down the window to punch in a code that sent the gate rolling open, and they continued up the long, curving drive.

  Somewhat unexpectedly, the property was lush and green, scores of trees and rosebushes scattered across the perfectly manicured lawn. Someone didn’t care about water conservation. A jungle of palms, oleander, red birds of paradise, and fragrant honeysuckle surrounded the house, shielding it from view until the car was right in front of it. It was smooth and white and geometric, low and sprawled. The windows had black shutters. Malachite-green tiles covered the sloping roof. The double front doors were black, gleaming as if wet. Despite its outdated architecture,
the house seemed to have aged well.

  “Get out,” the man said.

  Dawn remained in her seat as he got out and walked around to her door. He flung it open, causing her to flinch, and grabbed hold of her arm. He wasn’t gentle as he jerked her up, but he said nothing as he steered her toward the house.

  Why didn’t I run? Why didn’t I just try?

  Because she knew it would have been useless.

  They entered into a quiet, blue-tiled foyer so empty there was a faint echo. The ceiling was low. Expensively framed but bland landscape paintings adorned the plain white walls. Rounded doorways led off to other rooms. To the right, long purple curtains marked the entrance to what looked like a darkened family room.

  “Branek. You’re home.”

  She didn’t hear the sound of footsteps on the tiled floor, but suddenly a man was standing in front of them. A cold man, Dawn thought. It was as appropriate a description for him as any. He was tall and narrow, with ice-hued hair and slitted eyes the color of molten lead. He was still as fallen snow.

  “I’ve brought something,” her kidnapper—Branek—said.

  “A new toy?”

  “She’s a friend of Jared’s new one. She was going to call the police.”

  The cold man’s eyes froze her in place. “Foolish. Why did you bring her here? Why did you not just kill her?”

  “Would you prefer her dead?”

  “No.”

  The third, passionless voice rang out through the room. Dawn glanced around until she saw a lean, familiar form lounging in one of the doorways. It was Tristan. He looked even paler than he had last night at the bar, his deep brown hair stark against his skin. Dark blue half circles underscored his eyes, suggesting a lack of sleep. Or drugs.

  “I want to play with her,” he said.

  A chill shivered through Dawn. This would not end well for her.

  “It’s been a long time since you took an interest in having a toy,” the cold man said.

  Tristan’s eyes flicked over her with disinterest. “Has it?”