Page 15 of Strength of Desire

“Did you feel in more control this time?” Romero pressed. “Any awareness that you were dreaming, while you were in it?”

“No,” I said, feeling suddenly exhausted. The tugging in my middle was gone, but I was just so tired. So tired of doing this every two nights, so tired of facing parts of myself I didn’t want to acknowledge. “No, I still had no idea what was…”

But I trailed off again, remembering something. I hadn’t had any idea that I was dreaming, but Ihadretained a little bit of my memories from the waking world.

Sean. I’d remembered him, even though I hadn’t known why. And Noah, at the end. I definitely knew who he was.

Shivers rolled over my body. I’d had such a realistic vision of Noah, it almost felt like he’d been in the dream with me. I’dwantedhim. Even there. Even in the middle of someone else’s dream.

For all the good that had done me.

“It’ll get easier,” Romero said, his voice reassuring.

I wondered if he really believed that, or if he was just saying it to make me feel better. It wasn’t working, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him, so I nodded.

“Yeah. I know.”

I barely remembered the walk back to my room that night. I still felt dazed from the dream, from wondering what it all meant. The bell tolled the end of fifth hour two minutes after I reached my room. We’d cut it close tonight.

I was so tired, I just collapsed into bed without bothering to change out of my clothes. I’d deal with them in the morning. For now, I just wanted to sleep—regular sleep, with regular dreams. Or, if I was lucky, no dreams at all.

And I was lucky, or so it seemed at first. When I awoke early the next morning, the sky still filled with the pearly gray light of the pre-dawn hours, I felt surprisingly refreshed. But the great bell that tolled out the hours at Vesperwood hadn’t rung its first peal of the day yet. So what had woken me up?

Then I heard it—a tap, tap, tap against my window—and I realizedthatwas the sound that had pulled me from sleep. I sat there dumbly, just listening for a moment, before realizing that if I wanted to know what it was, I’d have to get out of bed and see for myself.

Tap, tap, tap.

The sound clacked into the room as I threw back the covers and stood, my clothes wrinkled from being slept in. I stretched and padded to the window, then stopped and stared.

The raven was sitting on the little ledge outside, tapping its beak against the glass. I just watched it for a minute, goggle-eyed. It watched me back, clearly expecting something.

After a moment, I stretched out a hand and opened the window. The raven fluttered into the air as the glass panes moved outwards, then flapped inside and landed on my pillow.

“Hello, again,” I said to it, cold air streaming in from the window. I felt silly, talking to a bird, but it was so early that nothing felt quite real yet. Besides, it seemed to be listening to me. “You turn up at the oddest times, you know that. Am I about to get attacked by another monster? Or are you here to give me more inscrutable messages?”

The raven tilted its head to one side, opened its beak, and croaked.

“Noah.”

5

NOAH

It was 9:10 p.m., and I wanted to be in bed.

Not because I was tired, but because in bed, I would be alone. I was still trying to make sense of the attack this afternoon, but the faculty lounge was bursting at the seams with all the people crammed into it. There was so much conversation that I couldn’t hear myself think.

The meeting should have started ten minutes ago, but Isaac was nowhere to be seen. Nat sat crowded around a tiny table with Ayah Naji, the head of Harmony, and Mauro Linhares, who was a Hexer like Nat. Hans Stahl from Harvest and Autumn Zhu from Hex took up the sofa, while Sunny Verma, the head of History, sat on the wingback chair nearby, with Sarah Balian of Heal perching on one arm.

Teresa Molina, the head of Hex, and Leon Zi, the only Hunt faculty member, stood in the kitchenette, talking animatedly with Claire Rosato, the head of Harvest, Orlando Moyano, the head of Heal, and Eddie Rybakov from Hearth. Lidia Ramos of History, Alex Ilves of Heal, and Manish Karve of Hearth were clustered near the door. I leaned back against a window and watched them all.

The room was never meant to hold this many people all at once. Isaac, as the dean of Vesperwood, had asked for one representative from each haven, but most had sent more. The buzz of conversation was all about the moraghin and Erika’s recovery. The faculty sounded as uncertain and full of wild theories as the students were.

Fabrizio Gallo and a number of other professors were absent, posted at positions around the campus, keeping watch. Isaac had never called for that before, in all the time I’d been at Vesperwood. The wards should have removed the need for it. But then again, the wards had never failed before either.

Seb was gone too, though he wasn’t on guard duty. I’d been standing next to Isaac when he’d enumerated who would be on watch tonight. I wondered where he was instead. Maybe with Isaac?

A commotion by the door drew my attention, and I saw the group there part to let in Ismene Cooke, the only representative from Horizon so far. The Haunts were so reclusive, I was surprised one of them had shown up at all.

---