Dream. Something jostled in my memory. Something from last night.
I straightened, but kept our hands joined. “I had a dream. I don’t think it was a dream.”
“What do you think it was?”
“Magic. Old magic. Maybe the Hush.”
Val grunted. “You better tell her about it. I want to hear too.”
Her free hand drifted to the scratch on the side of her neck. “What did they do?”
“I was in a cave. It was impossibly dark. I thought I woke up there. No, wait…” I closed my eyes for a minute, chasing a memory.
“Someone woke me. A voice. Told me to run and to…find her. To save the moon.” I opened my eyes, and Lu was watching me. Waiting for the rest of it.
“That voice was terrified, like it was running too. Trying to hide. Then there were other voices in the shadows. Too many. By the time I got to my feet, I had the attention of a Hush. I’m sure that’s what she was.”
I swallowed and pushed the spike of fear and horror of being so close to that thing out of my mind. “She was a monster. Old.”
“Themonster?” Lu asked, wanting to know if the thing in my dream was the monster that had all but killed Lu and me, turning us both into things not quite living.
“No. This one was…powerful. Unafraid of the gods.”
“Lots of foolish things are unafraid of the gods,” she said.
“She wasn’t foolish. Just…old magic. Ancient.”
“Did she have a name?”
“Mother Hush.”
Lu frowned, but Val whistled, one low note. “That sounds like the Hush. Creatures of magic so old they came from under the earth, soaking through and seeping into ours through cavern and stone.”
“What did Val say?” Lu asked.
“Sounds like the Hush to him.”
“Did she speak to you? Mother Hush in your not-a-dream?”
“It could have just been a dream.”
“It wasn’t,” both Lu and Val said at the same time.
I glared at Val, and he pointed at Lu. “She agrees with me.”
“Brogan, you and I are too old to ignore our gut feelings. It wasn’t a dream. What did Mother Hush do?”
“Threaten me.”
Lu nodded, having expected that. Like she said, we were old enough to know the ways of monsters.
“She wants me to find a—” Air went solid in my lungs. I was choking and couldn’t inhale, couldn’t exhale. I heard Lu’s voice, felt her hands at a distance on my shoulders.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I marveled at how strong she was as she caught me and guided me down to lie on the truck bed.
I drifted, drowning, numb and unable to even panic.
Then, as quickly as the paralysis had gripped me, it was gone. My breath whooshed out, and I sucked in good, clean air.
