premonition of the visions overwhelming me. He never got a warning premonition of the fog overpowering me.
I also found out that it was the next day. While the Nightmare Eyes had me pinned under their hateful gaze, the sun had set, and risen again.
* * *
Dr. Sheldon, the kind, warm physician who had taken care of me in the Underground, placed one hand behind my neck and her other on my forehead as I sat on the curtained-off cot in the clinic. “Don’t move,” she said. Closing her eyes, she bowed her head.
She’d kept me here overnight while I was lost in the fog. Deirdre and Dennis had stayed until about midnight, and Tristan had stayed the entire night with me, holding my hand. Now he hovered close as Dr. Sheldon determined if I was ready to go back to the Connellys’ house.
“So much fog,” she muttered as she looked into my mind. “But there’s something else...something dark. A starless night. A cavern of coal.” She shuddered, then opened her eyes. “Any idea what that means?”
“That’s just my nightmare,” I said.
Tristan took my hand back. “She gets them every night.” His hair was messy and his button-down shirt was wrinkled from sleeping in it overnight, sitting up in a chair next to my cot.
“I can certainly understand why you have nightmares,” Dr. Sheldon said, “but that darkness is terrifying. It felt...hateful.”
Terrifying. Hateful. Shameful. It all burned through my blood. “It’s just a nightmare,” I muttered.
With a sigh, Dr. Sheldon made a note on her chart. “Well, you’re back in control of that fog of yours, and nightmares are no reason to keep you here.”
“So she can go home?” Tristan asked.
“Yes, she can.” Dr. Sheldon slipped her pen into her white doctor’s coat. Before she left, she put a warm hand on my shoulder. “Be careful with the fog, sweetheart. We don’t want that to happen again.”
“I will.” Relieved I could get out of here, I slipped from the cot. Tristan held out a hand for me to hold in case I was shaky, but I wasn’t. I changed from the blue cotton hospital gown and into the clothes Tristan brought for me—my usual jeans and one of his hoodies.
“I don’t understand why I didn’t get a premonition about you fainting,” Tristan said as we left the facility. A thin layer of snow had fallen while I was unconscious, and it crunched under our feet as we walked to Tristan’s car. Though I didn’t need him to, he held my elbow so I wouldn’t stumble. “I could have called you. I could have warned you and stopped it from happening.”
“It’s not your fault, Tristan,” I said. “I raised the fog. I lost control of the visions. I pulled the fog in too low.”
He stopped short. “Why would you do that?”
I confessed my plan, that I’d been trying to contact Jillian psionically in the hopes that she was trying to develop remote vision again. “I thought maybe the fog was blocking her ability to see though me. So I raised it. Then I lost control.” I sighed. “But I know now that was a stupid idea. Jillian could only piggyback on our dad’s mobile eye. She was never able to move beyond that. Besides, I can’t spend twenty-four hours a day staring at a sign that says Lilybrook, Wisconsin.”
Tristan was still staring at me, incredulous. “How could you put yourself in danger that way?”
“I wasn’t in any danger,” I said. “Your mom’s dream will happen if I leave town to look for my brother and sister. There was nothing in that dream that said I can’t look for them from within Lilybrook.”
“That’s not—” With an exasperated sigh, he scrubbed his hand in his hair. “You raised the fog that high, then pulled it in that low, on purpose. You played with the fog and I wasn’t even with you. That’s exactly why my mom’s dream will happen if you leave Lilybrook.”
The shame burning through my blood was replaced by hot anger, and I yanked my arm from his hand. “I was trying to connect with my sister, who is missing, and scared, and heartbroken. You can’t be mad at me for that. And you didn’t have a premonition about me fainting, so you couldn’t have stopped it from happening anyway.”
He exhaled, his whole body deflating. “You’re right. I promised you that I would keep you safe. I failed you in Twelve Lakes, I’m failing you by not finding Jillian and Logan, and I failed you again yesterday.”
It was usually me who shivered, but this time it was Tristan.
I took his hand and gave it a kiss. “You’re not failing me. I don’t blame you for any of that.”
“Well, you should. I blame myself.”
We reached his car, and he opened the door for me and helped me inside.
We drove back to his house in silence.
Dennis and Deirdre wanted to keep me home from school the next day, but I convinced them to let me go after I’d promised not to play with the fog anymore. I had to triple-promise Tristan. “Please be careful with the fog,” he said. “Please. What if I don’t get a premonition again? Even if I do, I’ll be too far away to stop it from happening.” He raked his hands through his hair. So worried. So anxious.
I took both his hands in mine. “Tristan. I know you want to keep me safe, but you also need to trust me. I will be careful.” I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his lips. “Please don’t worry about me.”
Not at all comforted by my promise or by my kiss, he cupped my face in his hands and brushed his lips on my forehead, then reluctantly left for school.
Twenty minutes later, bundled up in coats and mittens, Ember and I shuffled through a layer of snow on our way to Lilybrook High. Determined to prove to Tristan that he didn’t need to protect me as much as he thought he did, I concentrated on keeping the fog balanced. But as always, Jillian and Logan were in the forefront of my mind.
A blackbird descended from the trees, and while Ember stopped to feed it, I gave Aaron Jacobs a call. “Any progress?” I asked, keeping my tone chipper and optimistic. One negative word from me would discourage him.
“Their l-last known location was in Braddock, Tennessee,” he mumbled, tripping over his words. “S-so I started there, and I’m moving outward.”
“That’s a good plan, Aaron,” I said. “Tristan said you were super-smart, and wow, you are.”
“But I haven’t found anything.”
“You just have to keep looking,” I said. “Don’t let Kellan intimidate you. You can do it.”
He was quiet for a moment, then said, “D-does your sister...I mean, do you think she’d like...”
“She likes guys like you, Aaron,” I said. Jillian had had lots of boyfriends—silly, pretty, empty-headed boyfriends. But the only boy she’d ever loved was Gavin, and she loved him because he was sensitive, sweet and
