Free The Last Dream Keeper by Amber Benson Page B

Gunderson.
    Arrabelle smiled when she saw the small red heart Niamh had used over the
i
in her given name—but the smile faded when she saw that a number of pages had been ripped out of the beginning of the book, jagged chunks of lined notebook paper left behind in the gluey binding.
    â€œDamn,” Arrabelle murmured, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She knew something terrible lurked within these remaining pages.
    Arrabelle stared down at Niamh’s journal. With trepidation, she began to read from the first intact entry, the girl’s halting voice slipping into her head like the beginnings of a dream.
    And then Niamh’s past became Arrabelle’s reality.

Niamh

    T hey came tonight. This time there were so many I couldn’t count them all. The first time they knocked on Yesinia’s door, there had only been two—and I had already predicted their arrival with my tarot cards. They identified themselves as belonging to the enforcement arm of the Greater Council, but they didn’t give their names.
    In retrospect, they never gave their names to us.
    At her urging, I opened the door of Yesinia’s small cottage, a found-wood structure by the beach she’d built herself over one spring and summer, and there on her driftwood porch stood two people I didn’t know. They reminded me of census takers. The man wore his hair so short that I could see the pink of his scalp under his brown hair. He was in his middle age, the paunch of his belly hanging low over the waist of his pants, so that even his black suit could not disguise it. He was so big the suit seemed too small, the buttons straining to stay closed.
    â€œWe’re looking for Yesinia Arroyo. We’re here on official Greater Council business,” the man said. He indicated the woman beside him, who nodded coldly. “May we come in?”
    I turned to Yesinia, and she shrugged.
    What could we do but let them in?
    They sat at the square kitchen table with the yellowed linoleum top, their presence filling the room. I stood in the corner, watching, having quickly scooped up my tarot cards from the tabletop. My instincts had told me to remove the spread—one I’d pulled three times that morning, and the impetus for coming to Yesinia’s house—before the man and woman could see it. The World, The Magician, The Hierophant, The Devil, and The Fool . . . the message was clear: The advent of these two was only the harbinger of worse things to come.
    Yesinia looked small in comparison to these two strangers. And Yesinia had always been the biggest personality I knew.
    â€œWe have a writ from the Council,” the woman said as she spread her stubby, ringless fingers across the tabletop. She lifted her chin and the man took this as his cue, retrieving a folded piece of parchment from the inside of his coat pocket and tossing it at Yesinia.
    I watched the woman pick up the paper, a sneer curling her lips. She was a large creature with hungry gray eyes and thick, fleshy lips that bore no sign of ever having seen a tube of lipstick. The off-putting sneer stayed curled in place for the rest of the conversation.
    â€œRead it,” the woman said, greedy to watch—but Yesinia didn’t oblige her.
    The woman reeked of camphor, as if she’d spread muscle liniment all over her body and then hid her glistening skin underneath her clothing, so no one could see it. Even if they could smell it.
    â€œWhat kind of business is this you bring to me?” Yesinia asked, looking down at the parchment in her hands.
    I knew the clipped cadence of her voice as well as I knew my own. She was born in Guadalajara, and her first language was Spanish. English came to her slowly, her brain forever searching for the correct word or phrase, and often failing.But she’d found that the slower she spoke, the fewer grammatical errors she made.
    â€œWe’ve been asked to bring you this writ of