The Children of Hypnos

[Vol. 2] Chapter 21: Infection

There had, in fact, been four horsemen.

It was PESTILENCE, not Conquest, on the note that showed up pinned to the front door of the sleep research facility, dusted with a coating of sleeping sand that Lana pegged as Klaus's "special brew": a fine-grained sand made of the turbulent and disturbing nightmares of growing children. Klaus had perfected it while he was still in school, but it had been banned by the State and never used.

DEATH was written on a fourth slip of paper Wes found under his own door, the writing nearly illegible. Few of the lines between the letters connected.

The four horsemen had all been to Fenhallow, and Klaus was gone. He'd taken none of his few possessions, and there were no traces of him, even footprints in the snow, to mark his exit from the faculty housing. His shoes were still in Marcia's room. When Emery learned that detail, what would have been an endless taunting of Marcia became instead a hollow, thudding heartache.

Marcia insisted he'd been taken by his own doppelgänger, but his reputation worked against him. His guard had been poisoned by Klaus's Dream-toxins. The Ward was calling for a hunting party to find Klaus and terminate him, and Moxie was doing all she could to delay the process. The rumors of his "escape" spread so fast Emery couldn't keep up with them, and after a few days she no longer wanted to. All that mattered was the truth.

And the truth was that Klaus was in trouble.

Since the gala, a warning had been sent out to the city news stations like a severe weather watch. No one was certain the storm was coming, but there was a chance it might, so parents watched their children carefully as they slept, and the streets were a little emptier at night. Many people were taking early vacations and clogging the highways out of the city.

All dreamhunter students were removed from their active missions. Only full-time dreamhunters were allowed out into the city, which meant requests went unfilled. The respite of Trevor van der Gelt's mansion by the lake was gone, but Emery felt she no longer deserved it. I spent too much time trying to distract myself. If Morrigan has anything to do with all these doppelgängers being active, then this is my fault. I should have killed her when I had the chance.

For the first time, she skipped her classes. All of them, every day. Instead, she went to Lana, to Stainer, to Marcia, to the cafeteria workers, to the gate guards, to the denmothers, to every staff member in the administration building, everyone she knew who might have any scrap of information about what was happening or what had transpired on the night of the gala. Lana was always busy in one of her labs, and none of her assistants or the other staff members would tell Emery what with. Stainer was being run ragged, having to complete all the extra cleanup crew requests now that she had no students to fill her teams. The other employees of the school were of little help; they usually knew more about what was being decided by the school's administration, but they were as saturated with rumors as the rest of campus.

Marcia had shoved the evidence of her doppelgänger in her father's face, and then declared herself part of the hunting teams looking for Klaus. With her resistance to DreamLess and her ability to destroy dreamforms, there was little anyone could do to detain her short of putting her in handcuffs, and Emery wasn't sure Fenhallow had real handcuffs. Marcia had stalked off campus that day with her battle axe clutched in one hand, and Emery hadn't seen her since.

So, exhausted and out of options, Emery swallowed her pride and turned to the one person who definitely knew what was going on, and who would definitely listen to her if she said just the right thing.

"He's not here." David, the receptionist in the administration building, gave Emery a sorry look and continued scanning documents on the copier behind his desk. "He actually hasn't made any available office hours for several days. He's been too busy."