Dayside, she probably would have managed a calm answer that obscured her emotions. But they weren’t dayside. She burst into tears.
He pulled her to him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered over and over until she cut him off with a bruising kiss to make him stop. In every “sorry” she heardsorry I don’t love you, never loved you, never will. She popped stitches in his pants in her haste to get them off—fake pants in a fake reality, fake lust coursing through their fake veins—and wondered if the Vows had already driven her mad.
CHAPTER 23
When she woke up and tiptoed downstairs, she found her sister in the sitting room, pen and paper in hand. She looked at the message Lydia had written:What has OB decided?
Beatrix stared at her. Did Lydia know about dreamside? She couldn’t. Could she?
She wrote,I won’t see him again until 8, and got an impatient shake of the head from her sister.
He told me about the dreams. What did he say last night?
Beatrix, whiplashed between surprise that Peter let the secret out and guilt for not telling her sister in the first place, took the pen back.He’s staying.
Her sister relaxed.Thank goodness!
Beatrix sank onto the couch, the paper lying forgotten on her lap, as Lydia started breakfast. Her sister’s happy reliefbrought an uncomfortable question to mind: Did Lydia have feelings for Peter?
She wondered if Peter would have returned them, if not for the Vows.
After a moment, she tipped her head back and squeezed her eyes shut. Could there be anything more ridiculous than jealousy over feelings her sister might or might not have for a man who contractually could not return them, and whom she loved purely because of spells gone wrong? Good God, the police would soon be investigating Garrett’s death. Peter might be arrested. She had real things to worry about.
A tap on the shoulder. She opened her eyes. Before her stood Ella, attention caught by the paper in her lap.
Uh oh. She picked it up, the side with the messages to her chest, and hoped Ella hadn’t seen what it said. But Ella took a notepad and pen from her workbag and wrote,What is Lydia talking about?Whatdreams?
And then, as Beatrix hesitated, Ella added a postscript:It’s the Vows, isn’t it.
Beatrix nodded. She should have told Ella long before. She should have told hersisterlong before, and Rosemarie, too, because they were all in this together. The explanation she wrote out for Ella included almost all the key elements: the simultaneous dreams, the ability to (more or less) control what they said and did, the absence of other people.
As soon as Ella finished reading, she narrowed in on what had been intentionally left out:What happens there? What does he do?
She didn’t want Ella to know—didn’t want her blaming Peter, didn’t want to acknowledge that her own force of will was so weak. But before she could write down a half-truth about how they mostly talked, she was undone by the blood rushing hot to her face.
Ella’s eyes widened. Her lips tightened.
“Breakfast!” Lydia called.
It’s not what you think—not exactly—I’ll explain later, Beatrix scrawled out desperately and dashed into the confused muddle of everyone trying to sort out eggs, toast and drinks. Ella handed off the coffee to Rosemarie and Lydia with an uncharacteristically grim expression and stood with her back to the table, staring at the still-steeping tea on the counter, clutching her workbag with a death grip. But a minute later when she gave Beatrix her cup, she looked as if she’d come to terms with the news.
“It’s OK,” she murmured, squeezing Beatrix’s shoulder. “Don’t worry.”
No time for explanations after breakfast—Beatrix had to rush back upstairs to pin up her hair. Then they had to leave. She was crossing into the forest, trying to work out what she could safely tell Ella, when Ella said, “Are you ill? You look pale.”
She did feel off. Not ill, but wrung out, which was little wonder. She turned to answer Ella and her head spun. She stumbled. If not for Ella’s quick reflexes, she might have fallen.
“Beatrix?” Ella peered at her. “You’re exhausted, aren’t you.”
Yes. Yes, she was. She leaned against Ella. Her eyelids felt so heavy. But she had to get to Peter’s—she had to call the police.
“We’d better go home,” Ella said.
That was a good argument. Yes, they had better go home. She turned and swayed.
Ella took her by the arm. “This way. I’ll help you.”
They barely made it back, her legs moving under duress. Ella got her into the sitting room and onto the couch, helping her out of her coat.
