Mum stood beside me at the kitchen bench, staring at the bag, which bulged with dead moths. Their tiny carcasses were barely visible through the plastic; I’d double-bagged them, just in case. I would have triple-bagged them if we’d had enough spare plastic bags. Still, it was easy for me to imagine them, crammed in together, brittle carapaces crumbling under the weight of their fellows. “Are you sure you got them all?” she asked.
“I think so?” I wiped my hands down the front of my jumper. I’d been about to take the bag outside to the bin when Mum had come home, and I still really wanted to get rid of it. Even though I’d washed my hands, I could still recall those dry, dusty bodies beneath my fingers. “I mean, it was dark. Hopefully if there are any left, they won’t make the magpies sick. The surface spray said it was animal friendly…”
“It was good thinking, spraying the vents too.” Mum’s eyes were narrowed but her head was cocked to the side, a mixture of suspicion and interest.
“I think they came through a vent that time at Serenity’s. At her old shop, I mean.” I shuddered, hugging my arms.
“Are you sure the mara can’t use the bugs now?”
“Relatively sure. At least, the ones that attacked us before stayed dead.” Those bugs had been killed when I’d disrupted the hold the mara had over them, smashing each of the monsters in the head with a lamp. The memory of the two doughy-fleshed figures exploding into a mass of writhing, dying insects all over me and Brad made the skin on the back of my neck crawl with revulsion.
There’d been a lot more moths to clean up that time. This bag barely contained enough for one. But who knew how many the birds had eaten before I’d noticed?
“Good. Still, let’s get rid of these, shall we?” Mum reached for the plastic handle on the exterior bag, and I flinched, stomach clenching. My cheeks burned as her gaze flicked back to my face, and she drew her fingers back. “What’s the matter, sweetheart? The mara died. The surface spray worked.”
I shook my head, biting my lip. “The insects died,” I said finally. “The mara is still around somewhere. They’re mostly incorporeal, like blights.”
“Still, it can’t get us here. And you sprayed the shop.”
“I know.”
“Then what’s the matter?”
I didn’t want to worry her, but ignorance wouldn’t do her any favours, especially not now we were living together. It felt like I had a giant target painted on my back. I’d have preferred wings. “Last time this happened, Leander told me mara can’t manifest like this unless an Oneiroi gives them the power to.” My voice was barely above a whisper in the quiet room. Mum gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. I forced myself to continue. “They aren’t as intelligent as blights, and usually they just wander from dream to dream, creating nightmares to feed off.” I stared at the bag, feeling numb. “But if an Oneiroi gives them a boost, they can use insects to manifest a real body, using them as a sort of framework to build on. Then they can track down a specific person, someone the Oneiroi directs them to find, and create more serious nightmares. When they attacked Brad and me, they weren’t just looking for a snack. They were trying to kill us. Stop our hearts.”
“That wouldn’t have worked.” Was she trying to convince me, or herself?
“Mum…” I met her hazel eyes. They were tight with concern. Guilt was a heavy lump in my stomach and tried to freeze the words on my tongue, but the fear was worse. I swallowed. “I didn’t tell you, after everything that happened. I didn’t want to upset you.”
Her knuckles curved around the edge of the bench, growing pale with the strength of her grip. She was holding on to steady herself. “Tell me what, Melaina?”
“That’s how Uncle Ian died.”
“What?”
“The coroner said it was a heart attack while he was sleeping. But Jat told me they found bugs in his bed. He didn’t know what it meant, and I think Lacey has convinced herself that Uncle Ian brought a snack to bed and attracted them. But it has to have been a mara.”
“Oh.” Mum reached down and pulled a stool out, easing herself onto it. “Oh,” she said again.
“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner,” I blurted, wringing my hands. “It happened while you were in that coma, and then Ollie got arrested and … well, it didn’t seem to matter anymore how Uncle Ian had died.” Mum had been upset enough at the news her beloved brother was dead and, even worse, that she’d missed the funeral. Why tell her he’d been murdered too? Even though she hadn’t known it at the time, she and I had already avenged Uncle Ian when we’d dropped Ikelos in that lava.
Ikelos…
And there it was. The reason I kept staring at that bag of poor bugs like it was watching me with a thousand dead eyes. Because, if a mara had tried to enter our house, someone had sent it. And who else could it be but Ikelos?
At first, I’d assumed Ikelos was dead. I’d wanted to believe he was dead. But that bag of bugs meant an Oneiroi was hunting me, and I’d only ever met four, total. One of those was in jail. Another was heading back to Europe with an entire retinue for an alibi. One was Leander, who I’d once again grown to trust. And the fourth… Ikelos had to have sent the mara. He was the only one with a motive, and he’d done it before.
Mum was talking, I realised. I tore my gaze away from the bag. “…but I understand why you didn’t. It just makes it worse, somehow.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated. The words sounded almost as hollow as they felt.
“Have you warned Jen and Brad yet?”
“No.” The thought hadn’t even occurred to me, and that made me feel guilty all over again.
“Well, you do that while I get rid of this rubbish.” She stood, jaw tight and eyes narrowed as she took the bag by the handle and lifted it off the bench. The plastic bag bulged as the tiny corpses shifted, pattering against one another. “Ikelos infected both of them with blights—or, at least, Ewan did on his behalf. If Ikelos is still around, they need to know about it.”
I nodded, reaching for the phone.
Jen was still at the library and would be there until late, but she promised to buy herself a small can of fly spray, joking that she’d keep it in her handbag instead of mace. Brad was horrified and volunteered to come back over, but I told him to stay at home with his sister. He promised to respray the exterior of his house straight away; it had been months since I’d done it for him.
When I hung up, feeling a little better after my best friend’s good humour and my boyfriend’s concern, I fixed dinner, a simple creamy carbonara that would leave us with enough leftovers for Jen to have some when she got home. But as I chopped and stirred, I considered Mum’s comment about Ewan. No matter how I turned the ideas around in my head, I kept coming to the same infuriating conclusion.
Mum joined me in the lounge room for dinner, wearing a fluffy lilac dressing gown and matching slippers, her long hair caught up in a towel. The cream-and-garlic aroma riding the steam from my bowl made me realise how hungry I was.
I didn’t want to consider that Mum and I were about to eat dinner on the same couch where Brad and I had—
Gah!
“Can I run something past you?” I said after shovelling the first couple of mouthfuls into my mouth. The pasta was a little undercooked, but the sauce was delicious. “I’m hoping you can spot a flaw in my logic.”
Mum nodded. “Go for it.”
“Ikelos was using the nursing home to try to breed himself a horde of blights. A swarm?” I tipped my head to the side, wondering what the correct collective noun was, and then shrugged. “Ewan had access to Brad’s grandfather and therefore to the breeder blight, which let him harvest the blight larvae.”
“Have you ever wondered how Ewan did that?” Mum regarded the silent television as if it might switch on and reveal the answer. “Get the larvae from Mr Peterson, I mean?”
I stared at her with open-mouthed horror. “No. Gross, Mum!”
“What?” She took a sip of orange juice.
“It’s just … my boyfriend and Jen both ate one of those things, and I’ve been trying really hard not to think about the details. It’s not sanitary.”
Her gaze dropped to her food like that of a chastised child. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“It’s fine,” I said, clearing my throat and trying to shove the mental image away. Ew. “Anyway, Ewan slipped the larvae to people who visited the home, like Larry. His aunt works there.”
“Mim. I’ve met her. She’s a Pets as Therapy volunteer.”
I’d never been introduced to Larry’s aunt, but I’d seen her before. She’d been unmistakable, with her brightly patterned cloak, wild hair and miniature poodle. “Right. And once I ran across Larry, I attracted Ikelos’s attention, which led him to you.” I still felt bad about that, even though, logically, I knew there was nothing I could’ve done to prevent it. “Leander said Ikelos might have left the city by now, given the Morpheus was here. Maybe he did. For all I know, Ikelos could’ve sent a mara after me from halfway across Australia. But what if he didn’t leave?”
“We’ll deal with it.” Mum put a reassuring hand on the back of one of mine. They’d gone still against my bowl, my fork sitting idle amidst a twist of fettucine.
I wondered how Mum imagined we’d deal with it, but decided against asking. “It’s not that,” I said instead. “It’s just … with Ewan in the mental health unit, unable to access Mr Peterson anymore, I’d assumed he was no longer of any use to Ikelos. But what if he’s been hosting the exiled Oneiroi all this time?”
Thinking about the chain of events in this new light, I couldn’t shake the conviction I was right. Ikelos had seen how effectively Ollie was able to hide from Leander in Mum’s mind. After we’d thrown the exiled Oneiroi into the ephemeral lava, he’d been badly injured, and had retreated into a sleeping mind nearby. That night, after I’d put them under, we’d left both Ewan and Daniel in the recreation room at the nursing home; it made sense Ikelos would retreat to the mind he was most familiar with. What was it Brad had said to me afterwards? That when the police arrived Ewan had been raving about nightmare monsters and his dark lord and how he’d get us all.
Ikelos would have been mad with pain. Ewan had probably gone temporarily mad too. And once they’d both regained their sanity, they had already been in the mental health unit.
How long had it taken them to regain their senses? I recalled Ewan’s nervous tic, the way it had abruptly disappeared. He’d seemed steely, in control. Like a whole new person.
Did Ikelos somehow take over Ewan’s body? The idea sent a shudder down my spine, a prickly feeling as if a swarm of ants was crawling and biting along my skin. I’d always assumed possession was a blight-only power and, as far as I knew, Ollie had never been able to possess my mother. But then, he wasn’t a power-mad exile from a powerful familial line. Would it have even occurred to him to try?
Mum finally spoke, dragging me from my own dark thoughts. “I think you’re right.”
“Oh.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I am. I was hoping you’d point out a flaw in my logic, tell me why it’s silly. You were meant to assure me that Ikelos is dead, and maybe that Santa is real too.”
Mum laughed. “I wish I could, sweetheart. Unfortunately, you know I’d be lying.”
“Except about Santa, right?”
“Except for that.” A smile twinkled in her eyes, but vanished with her next words. “We should visit Ewan tomorrow, see if we can figure out whether Ikelos is lurking in there. And you need to talk to Leander as soon as possible. Maybe he can get the Morpheus to come back.”
“Nelson will freak if he hears that I’ve been out to the hospital again,” I said. Hang on … Nelson! My eyes widened. When I’d discovered the moths, I’d clean forgotten about the napping police officer in his car outside. Swearing, I put my bowl on the coffee table and knelt on the couch, peering through the blinds. Nelson’s car was gone. “Huh.” When he woke, I’d half-expected him to come up to the house, pound on the door and accuse me of goodness knows what. That he’d left instead was a relief.
“Huh?” Mum raised an eyebrow at me.
Leaving out the sex part, I told her about our second visit from the constable, and what I’d done. “I know it was risky, but I was sure he was possessed. He was acting so strangely. And he had this nervous tic, like…” My suddenly racing heart leapt into my throat and blocked my ability to speak.
Senior Constable Nelson’s obsessive pursuit of me had begun after he’d been to see the former nurse in the mental health unit.
“Like what?”
“Like Ewan,” I managed to choke out. “He was acting like Ewan.”