The Illusionists Read online

  ‘Well, why can’t we lucid dream in the Castle? It’s the same thing. Just because we’re afraid of it, doesn’t mean we can’t control it. So when we’re there, couldn’t we just try to control what happens? Couldn’t we think, “I want to close the Castle?”’

  White shook his head. ‘No. No. It doesn’t seem possible. It can’t be that easy. I don’t think anyone has that power.’

  ‘I think you do,’ said Rue, quietly. ‘You’re the best in the world at it.’

  But I don’t know what I’m doing! he screamed in his head. I can’t save everyone! I can’t do that!

  Rue reached out and touched his face. Cho looked away, uncomfortable.

  ‘We work together,’ she said firmly, as if she could read his mind. ‘And we won’t be alone. The more Talented we have there, the better. We’ll be stronger.’

  White looked into her eyes. Then he dropped his gaze. She seemed to reach inside him and he felt open, wide open.

  ‘Who do you propose taking with us?’ he said.

  Rue leaned back.

  ‘Some people we both know.’

  She talked.

  She really had thought it through. While he’d been busy tying himself up in knots over everything he’d failed at, over Wren, she’d come up with it all. He had no faith at all that any of it would work. Neither did she. But it was better than doing nothing. It was better to try than to hide away and hope someone else took care of it. It was courage. He could feel it leaking from her to him.

  At some point, Livie wandered into the room. She and Cho left, and then came back with food. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so hungry. Did hope bring appetite back? They thrashed arguments back and forth. They made lists.

  It felt good. It felt insane, and ridiculous. It didn’t feel real.

  ‘Cho,’ said White, when it was all laid out. His whole head felt heavy – they’d been at it for over two hours. ‘We need you again.’

  It was the right thing to say. She was like him – she hated feeling powerless. She wanted to do.

  ‘Just as long as I don’t have to go anywhere near that Hammond bitch,’ she said.

  White wanted to reach out and touch her somehow. Touch her shoulder, or lift the spike of hair she always had dangling in her eyes and tuck it back. But they had never been that way.

  ‘Not this time,’ he replied.

  Cho took Livie’s hand, grasping it tight. ‘What do you need?’

  It had taken two days to arrange everything.

  In the meantime, the news got worse. Rue stopped looking it up. They all did. Greta seemed to be holding up her end for now – there were no visits from the police, despite the fact that she must know exactly where they all were.

  Everything was in place for tonight.

  It had gone too far to back out now. If this didn’t work, if more people died, it was all on her. Rue felt sick, as if her fear were rotting inside her, poisoning her blood and her mind.

  Livie’s guest bathroom had a steam function. Rue filled the room with it until it choked her. She sat in it until her clothes stuck to her in moist folds, and then she stripped. She was hot. Her skin was hot. Her head was hot. But she still felt cold.

  ‘Rue?’ came a voice outside the room. ‘Rue!’

  White opened the door.

  She looked up as the steam was sucked away, billowing past his lean figure.

  He didn’t say, oh gods, sorry, or even Rue, you’re totally naked. He just stood there, looking at her. She liked that. Maybe he finally knew that she was his, and that he didn’t need to apologise for it.

  ‘The temperature alarm was going off,’ he said. ‘You’ve got it on too high.’

  She just gazed up at him, sat on the floor with her knees hugged to her chest.

  ‘I can’t get warm,’ she said.

  ‘It’s horrible in here.’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  The concern in his voice broke her. He was supposed to be cold and unfeeling. What was wrong with him? More to the point, what was wrong with her? This was a life she had in front of her, a living breathing person. You couldn’t play around with that.

  ‘White,’ she said, her voice sharp and jagged. ‘What are we doing? What are we doing?’

  He crossed to her and crouched. He slid his arms around her, and then sat down awkwardly, folding himself around her hunched figure.

  ‘We’re no one,’ she said against his chest. She could feel his heart beating. It was too meaty for her, that reminder of the blood that was pushed around his system in rhythmic pumps, the muscle and bone that caged it. She hated hearing his heart beat. What if it stopped?

  ‘We’re not no one,’ he said into her hair.

  ‘We are. We’re just these stupid kids. Why would anyone listen to us? I wouldn’t listen to us.’

  ‘You wouldn’t listen to anyone.’

  Her laugh came out more like a sob.

  ‘They’re all coming,’ he said, quietly.

  ‘Because of you.’

  ‘Because of what they believe in.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  He was silent for a moment.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I just thought it sounded good.’

  She kicked her shoulder into his. ‘Idiot.’

  She settled. She felt warmer already, against him.

  ‘They’re afraid,’ White continued, his chin resting gently on the top of her head. ‘It’s happening to the Talented in Angle Tar, too. Then I come back and tell them there might be a way to stop it all.’

  ‘We could get them all killed.’

  ‘They’ll die anyway, Rue. We will, too, if we don’t close it.’

  Her heart plummeted.

  ‘What if we’re wrong? What if it’s all … one big dream? One mass illusion?’

  ‘You know it’s not. You just want it to be because that’s easier than dealing with reality. But it’s time for reality now.’ He paused. ‘You showed me that.’

  She shifted and he spread his arms, releasing her. She pulled herself up and knelt before him, carefully. She saw his eyes move down to her chest.

  ‘This is real,’ she said.

  White looked like a startled rabbit.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ he replied. His cool voice had a funny little catch to it. She knew that catch.

  ‘Dream me, or real me?’ said Rue.

  He knew what she meant. ‘Real you. A thousand times over.’

  ‘Dream me was easier.’

  ‘Dreams are always easier.’

  Her heart was racing, hammering, joyful and terrified. Everything around them was darker somehow, shadowed out. There was only him, and where she was making this go.

  ‘We have time,’ she offered. ‘Before you have to go and start fetching people.’

  He was silent. His eyes moved back up to hers.

  ‘Now?’ he said. ‘Like this?’

  ‘When else?’

  Her message hit home. His mouth thinned. Maybe tomorrow would be too late.

  ‘Door lock,’ he said.

  The bathroom door slid closed and clicked.

  Rue gasped. ‘I didn’t know they did that,’ she said accusingly. ‘No one ever told me.’

  ‘Rue.’

  She looked at him. He was leaning back against the wall, his legs still flanking her. Gods, he was lovely. So awkward and so magical and lovely.

  There weren’t any more words left. Slowly, delicately, her fingers trembling just once, she reached down and began to undo his belt.

  CHAPTER 32

  WORLD

  RUE

  ‘Come on,’ said Cho quietly. ‘Let’s go in.’

  ‘Give me a second.’

  ‘The longer you leave it, the harder it’s going to be.’

  Rue crossed her arms. The sickness was back, roiling inside her, telling her that she did not know what she was doing. She was not a leader.

  I can’t do this.

&nbs
p; ‘Hey,’ said Cho, touching her hesitantly on the shoulder. ‘I have some advice for you.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘Don’t let them see your fear. If they think you’re uncertain, they’ll lose it. It’ll all fall apart.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘No, listen. You have to act a little cocky, a little bossy. Basically, you know … just be yourself.’

  Rue shot her a glance.

  Cho held up her hands. ‘The truth hurts, right?’ she said with a shadow of a grin. ‘But in this case it’ll help you. Remember cocky, bossy you? The one who burst into my bedroom and demanded that I help her? The one who shouted at me in the safety hall? The difficult girl from old Angle Tar who cut her own path. Be her.’

  Rue breathed out.

  Easy. Pretend you’re fearless and totally, utterly in the right. This is all going to work.

  How do people do this?

  ‘Come on,’ said Cho, taking her arm and dragging her towards the social-room door. ‘No more time for thinking.’

  But the door opened before Cho could touch it, and Livie slipped out. A slice of humming noise slipped out with her before it slid closed again.

  Livie looked shell-shocked. ‘They just keep turning up out of thin air. Out of nothing he steps, holding someone’s hand, pulling them out of nothing too behind him. He’s been at it for hours. I think that’s everyone now. He said it was. I hope so, because there’s bloody loads of them in there.’

  Rue had frozen on the word ‘loads’. ‘How many?’ she said.

  Livie opened the door. ‘See for yourself.’

  The noise rolled over her. Rue peeked inside the room.

  ‘Oh gods,’ she said in Angle Tarain.

  White had been really quite busy.

  He’d spent the last two days Jumping back and forth to Angle Tar, visiting every Talented he knew and asking them for their help. She’d expected him to persuade a handful at most; Lea, maybe Lufe, plus a couple of his students that she’d never met. It was an insane kind of request.

  She had underestimated how frightened they all were.

  ‘How many?’ she said to Cho.

  ‘Twenty-three.’ Cho had a freakish ability with numbers.

  They were clumped into little groups, talking. Some of them were as old as Fernie. She stopped, doubt flooding her mind. What would they think when they saw her?

  A girl had peeled off from her cluster and was coming towards Rue at speed. It was Lea. In her wake trailed Lufe, Marches and Tulsent. She couldn’t believe it. They were all here.

  Lea stopped in front of her.

  ‘Hi again,’ she said.

  ‘You … You came.’

  ‘You said,’ Lea replied, looking nervous. ‘You said that you might need us. So I got everyone ready. We were waiting around for you to come back. Then Mussyer White shows up in Red House last night and he tells us everything.’

  Mussyer White, thought Rue, fighting a grin.

  ‘He says we’re to come to World, and that he’ll come back and get us, lead us in a Jump. I was fine,’ Lea said proudly. ‘But Marches threw up when he got here.’

  ‘I did not,’ protested Marches. ‘I retired to the bathroom to acclimatise to the situation.’

  ‘I heard you retching!’

  They began to argue. Rue’s gaze landed on Lufe. He gave her a small smile. He looked tired, and so much older than before.

  ‘No one in Angle Tar knows how to handle what’s going on,’ he said. ‘I trust us more than I trust them. We’ve got to try, haven’t we?’

  ‘I missed you,’ blurted Rue. She looked at Tulsent, who blushed and glanced at the far wall. He’d got taller since she’d been away. ‘I missed you all, and I’m sorry I left.’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said Lea. ‘All of that’s past. What happens now?’

  ‘Rue will explain,’ said White. He had come up behind the group. His accent twanged in Angle Tarain. She’d almost forgotten how he used to sound.

  ‘Not by myself, I won’t,’ she retorted.

  He gave her a serious look. ‘You will not be by yourself. Ever again.’

  She saw Lea nudge Lufe.

  Still as subtle as a hammer, she thought drily.

  Her heart had swollen with them here. She already felt better.

  ‘This is all I could find,’ said White. ‘There are more but they were not on campus.’

  Rue scanned the crowd.

  ‘What about Frith?’ she said.

  ‘Frith’s still away,’ Lea replied. ‘No one’s told us where, as usual. I don’t think he’s supposed to be back for weeks.’

  Rue tried not to let her disappointment show. He wasn’t Talented, but just him being here would have made her feel more courageous. But then, maybe it was better that it was only Talented here. He wouldn’t have believed them about the Castle, and everything that was at stake.

  ‘We should begin,’ White said to her, quietly. ‘We must explain everything, so there can be no misunderstanding. So they can make a choice.’

  So they did.

  It took a while, but between them both, they laid it all out.

  Then the questions began.

  ‘You’re saying that you can get us all to this Castle? All of us?’ said someone. It was a woman Rue didn’t recognise, heavy set.

  Remember, Rue. Cocky. Certain.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve practised before with a group, and it’s easy.’

  She didn’t mention that the group had consisted of just Cho, White and Livie. Perversely, it seemed to be easier if she was physically close to the people she was trying to pull in. They’d slept in Livie’s ridiculously huge bedroom together a couple of nights ago, and she’d done it easily, taking them all to an empty room in the Castle for a few seconds before pushing them out again.

  ‘It’s a shared dream,’ she went on, raising her voice. ‘I pull you all into my dream of the Castle. Then we close it.’

  ‘You still haven’t told us how we close it.’

  This was the troubling bit. Because neither of them had any idea.

  ‘I think we must make it closed,’ said White. There were puzzled looks. He glanced at Rue.

  ‘Put your hand up if you’ve had a dream before where you could control what happened in it,’ she said. ‘What they call … ’ she fumbled for the best translation of the word, ‘ … lucid dreaming.’

  After a moment, every hand went up.

  ‘I thought that was normal for us,’ said Lea. ‘A sign of the Talent.’

  White nodded. ‘It is a question on the Talented recruitment test in Angle Tar.’

  ‘Now please put your hand up if you’ve been to the Castle,’ Rue continued.

  Far fewer. Less than half. But more than she’d dared to think of.

  ‘And when you were in the Castle,’ she said, ‘could you control anything that happened?’

  No hand went up.

  Play your card.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I can. So that means you can, too.’

  Or at least, I think I can.

  Murmurings. The beast of the crowd shifted before her, its ears pricked.

  ‘And we need you – all of you – to help us.’

  ‘What about the things that have already got through? The ones that are here, right now, causing mayhem?’ said a greying man at the front. He was Mussyer Joan, the Angle Tarain Minister for Transport (‘Andrew, please,’ he’d said, when White had introduced him).

  ‘That is for the authorities to deal with,’ said White. There was a snort of derision from the back. It sounded like Cho.

  To anyone else, this whole plan would have sounded ridiculous. Not for the first time, Rue felt a kinship with her Talented. Not one of them looked like they didn’t believe. They simply accepted. They’d been simply accepting the extraordinary their whole lives. Their minds were made for it.

  In the end, no one backed out. There were some dubious looks, and there were many, many more questions. But no one backed o
ut, not even the older Talented. Mussyer Joan was government, authority, and even he looked at White like it was natural that they follow him.

  What was even more terrifying was that some of them were starting to look at her that way.

  It had begun.

  The entire group was lying or sitting as comfortably as they could on the floor. Their hands clutched two little pills each. The lights were set to dark. Livie had dragged every cushion, pillow, blanket and sheet from the house and had made a giant nest of sorts in the middle of the social room. Twenty-six people made an intimate kind of space. The sound of so much soft breathing was driving Rue to distraction.

  ‘Lie down,’ said White, next to her. They had reverted back to speaking in World between them. The people closest were giving them strange looks.

  ‘I can’t. It’s not working.’

  ‘You took enough sleepers to down a man twice your size. You can’t have any more. You have to go first. We won’t take ours until you’re asleep and we can be as sure as possible that you’re dreaming in the Castle. Try to relax.’

  She laughed. Everything was starting to feel slow and thick, like the world was made of syrup, but somehow adrenaline was still keeping her upright. Everyone was trying not to watch, but she felt eyes on her, a constant stream of eyes. Waiting.

  ‘Come here,’ said White, finally. Rue looked at him. He held a hand out. ‘Lie down on me.’

  ‘You want to do this in front of everyone?’

  ‘They already know.’

  ‘You told them all?’ said Rue, astonished.

  White looked away. His posture was stiff and uncomfortable.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘They can see it. The way I look at you. The way I am around you. All right? I can tell they see it. They stare at the both of us.’

  ‘Because we’re the freaks standing up in front of them telling them we can save them all,’ Rue muttered.

  ‘Everyone is a freak here,’ he said. His arm was still out. She turned reluctantly, leaning her back into it, and he pulled her against him.

  Better already. His heat, the side of his body solid against hers. A soft sound in her ears as people murmured to each other.