The other raised her head, blue eyes and snarling grin full of malicious amusement. “That’s an excuse for cowardice, nothing else. If you didn’t want it so badly, it would never have happened.”
“Leave me alone.” The attic would stay locked, and she would not go back there. “If I’m such a coward, leave me alone. Go somewhere else.”
“Sometimes I wish,” and the other threw her head up and looked at the ceiling, as if calling out to the gods to answer a prayer, “but that’s not how it works. You and I are bound together, and we better learn how to play nice.”
Amana’s chin jutted forward, false bravado as plans to somehow force the other away began to form, all of them ill-defined and useless. “There’s no reason for you to be here. I want you to go away. I’m never going to use this power again.”
“Yet you’ve said that before, haven’t you?” The other rose, circling the bed but keeping a wary distance from Amana. “You swore it over and over and over, and yet, here I am. Don’t hate yourself, though,” she added with a false soothing quality in her voice. “It was only a matter of time. No one can fight the lure of power.”
“I don’t want power. I want my brother.”
“Wrong,” the other interrupted, triumph lighting her gaze. “You did want your brother. Now you want your brother and you want Merc. You want him safe from whatever is chasing him. Or will you try to tell me you’re fine letting him die?”
“I’m not going to let him die,” said Amana, but even to her own ears her voice held the unknown, the unsure. Not just because of the uncertainty surrounding them, but on the devil’s face, there was an evil gleam that held secrets being teased in a tantalizing display, beckoning Amana to ask…and ultimately, to follow.
“You don’t want him to die, but you have questions, don’t you? You know you’re missing something.” The other went to stand in front of a gorgeous painting of a mountainside in autumn that dominated one wall of the bedroom, the riot of reds and golds almost photo-realistic. “The safe that holds the Spellbook is behind here. Amazing, how attached Merc has become to that book? Very aware of it, though he can’t use it. Why would the book call to him? Aren’t you curious?”
Of course this thing in front of her would know the fears plaguing Amana. Even without the other’s confirmation, she had known the book was here, the way Merc’s eyes kept wandering to this painting. “Are you telling me it can harm him?”
“I’m not telling you anything, unless you’re saying you want my help now.”
Being backed into corner after corner was getting old. “I want nothing more than for you to disappear.”
The other switched topics, the two-step making Amana mentally pivot to keep up. “He talked to someone about us, wanted them to research dream crafters.”
If the other thought this would destroy Amana’s trust in Merc, she was mistaken. “Of course he did. I wouldn’t think otherwise. I’d be disappointed if he was so stupid that he wouldn’t gather as much information as possible.”
“We should see this other person.”
They stood in a dojo, wood floors and bare walls, a lone man kneeling amidst it all in meditation. His head was bald, his features unlined. He had the bearing of a monastic, and power radiated from him even here in the dreamscape.
In slow motion his head rose, eyes opening with the movement, fathomless eyes that had Amana stepping back when they glanced her way. He couldn’t see her. He couldn’t. And yet… “The Dream Crafter?”
Another step back, and Amana’s short puffs of breath echoed loud and clear in her ears, each breath harder and harder to get out around the constriction of her throat. The other cocked her head, speculation in those teal eyes. “Interesting. So nice he knows us. So few do these days.” The doppelganger walked over to him. “I wonder what secrets his mind holds?”
She put her hands on his head, her fingers spread, and pushed her thumbs into his forehead, peeling the top of his head like the skin of an orange. But there was no blood, no gore. Instead, a shining light, and then a change, the landscape becoming…something medieval, something long ago. It wasn’t only the castle in the distance and the sounds of horses and carriages, the people dressed in coarse fabrics, moving around small, roughly built homes. It was the smell, free of modern industry but ripe with earthy layers. It was the starlight, crisp and clear with stars so bright they were within reach if you could find a tall enough ladder.