David was sitting on the floor of his room, doodling dejectedly on an empty page of Eddie’s old notebook and brooding on how everything had gone so wrong.
After he’d been escorted from the Map Room, the guards had delivered him and the other dreamwalkers to the Lodge. Dishita had marched directly to the Cave without a word, but David couldn’t bring himself to go there. He could guess the kind of reception he’d get. Instead, he’d hesitated outside his room and had been grateful when Petra paused with him. It had seemed like a good moment to build up to some kind of apology. He’d been wrong about that too.
“I didn’t ask to be part of this,” he said to her. “Let’s face it, I’m hopeless as a dreamwalker. Maybe Roman’s right.”
“Ah, stop feeling sorry for yourself.” The lack of sympathy in Petra’s voice should have warned him to shut up. “You survived, didn’t you? Think of Théo. Your mind is stronger than you realize, David, it’s the way you use it that lets you down. Go get some rest.”
“It’s just that, when you showed me David fighting Goliath, I thought …”
“What?” Petra’s anger finally flared. “Are you trying to blame me? That David still had an army behind him, still put his trust in others. It’s not my fault if you can only think about yourself.”
“No, I didn’t mean …” David began.
“Oh, just forget it.” Petra had given him a look of disgust as she stormed off after Dishita.
And so David had not only messed up his chance to help find Eddie, he’d even managed to anger the only friend he had left. He scribbled furiously across the page. He was about to fling the book across the room when the buzzer rang. He got up and opened the door, hoping it wasn’t Dishita — she’d no doubt go double ballistic if she caught him defacing one of Sir Edmund’s precious notebooks on top of everything else. He was relieved as well as surprised to find Professor Feldrake standing there.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” said the old man. “I just thought I should see how you were. You had quite a shock earlier.”
“How do you think I am?” said David. “I’m not exactly a hero around here.”
The professor gave a wry smile. He came in and sat down in the chair at David’s desk.
“I also thought you should know that I have been formally suspended as director of the Dreamwalker Project. Don’t blame yourself, though; it’s been coming for a while now. There are more than a few people who think an old duffer like me isn’t up to the job. They say I only got it because I was a long-standing colleague of Sir Edmund’s.”
“You worked with Eddie?”
“Oh, yes, almost from the start. He hired me as a historian to help with the very first research missions into the past. But that was years ago. I’m just an old dinosaur myself now, I suppose. It’s good to see you writing in his book, by the way.”
“You put it in my room, didn’t you?”
Professor Feldrake grinned.
“I’m sorry, Professor,” said David.
“Oh, don’t be. You’re his grandson, and a blank page is meant to be written on …”
“No, I mean I’m sorry you’ve been suspended. It’s so unfair.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I still have faith in this place, even with Roman in the driving seat. And so should you, David.”
There was an awkward pause.
“What will happen now?” David asked.
“Well, Roman has reduced the research team looking for Eddie. He says that without help from you it will be impossible to find him anytime soon, so the new focus is firmly on locating Adam and eliminating him. The Map Room sounds more like a military command post right now. Too much fighting talk for an old academic like me.”
“But Adam’s too strong. I saw what he did to Théo. He nearly did it to me. We’ve lost too many dreamwalkers fighting Adam already.”
“We?” said Professor Feldrake. “Are you finally accepting your true part in all this?”
“There was a man behind Eddie with a knife!” David struggled to control his temper. “I’m sorry about what happened, but I thought he was going to die. My part in all this is to save my family. It’s not my fault if no one told me there would be plainclothes policemen there. Trust has to go both ways, doesn’t it? Maybe if people didn’t keep things from me, I would have done things differently.”
“That’s a fair point,” said the professor. “A very fair point indeed. You remind me of someone I used to know.”
“Right,” David said, not very interested in this. “Just as long as it’s someone worth being compared to.”
The professor gave David an unexpectedly bright smile, then removed his glasses. As he cleaned them on his tie, he spoke again.
“You know, this place was never supposed to be like this. The Dreamwalker Project didn’t even have a security advisor in the beginning. We were just a bunch of starry-eyed scientists and wonder kids, opening the lid on history for the first time. And your grandfather was the greatest dreamer of us all. Unsleep House was just the château back then, no need to dig down into the mountain or put soldiers at the gate. But the Haunting have changed all that; they’ve made us paranoid. No one has stars in their eyes now. I just wish you could have seen what we were, David, and not what we’ve become.”
“Misty told me you don’t even know who’s behind it,” said David. “The Haunting, I mean. But how can you not know? Surely you at least know the name of the person Adam’s working for now.”
“The King of the Haunting,” the professor said, almost to himself.
“What?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Just a rumor. There is a word — a name perhaps — that’s come up time and again over the years, but, well, one word isn’t going to get us far, is it?”
“His name is King?” David said. “Or do you mean … ?”
“That he is a king?” the professor chuckled. “Or perhaps that’s just what he calls himself. Or perhaps it’s a code word, or …” The professor replaced his spectacles. “Don’t waste your time thinking about it, David. As I said, it’s just a rumor.”
David stared at the old man, and wondered if the professor knew more about this mysterious king than he was letting on.
“So, what happens next? Does Roman really think we can stop Adam with force?”
“Roman hates Adam more than you can know,” said the professor. “And maybe he’s got it right. We no longer outnumber the Haunting, but some sort of final showdown between us is at least logical. And we still have some pretty talented dreamwalkers on our side. Dishita in particular wants revenge for Carlo and the others. And Petra will no doubt surprise us as usual.”
“Petra?” said David, trying not to sound too interested in one dreamwalker over the others.
“Oh, yes. There’s more to her than meets the eye. She’s fluent in five languages, you know. Or is it six? In any event, she’s very capable.”
“But what good are languages against Adam?” cried David, losing control of his voice.
“I know, I know,” said the professor quietly. “But it’s out of my hands now. The people who fund the Project are desperate for an end to the crisis, and they’re backing Roman all the way. As far as they’re concerned we have an all-out psychic war on our hands, and Petra is just one of the troops.”
David tried to imagine Petra facing Adam in a mind fight. The thought made him feel sick. It wasn’t just the dreamwalkers Adam had recently beaten; in the years when he’d worked for the Project he’d defeated dozens of haunters too. Petra would lose that fight, and David couldn’t shake off a vision of her in a coma, growing old and mindless on life support. And would Dishita really do any better?
“But if we did find Eddie,” David said, “we could still get him to safety, couldn’t we? I mean, well out of London and away from Adam? We could still solve all this without anyone getting hurt?”
“Well, yes, we could move him to some secret spot Adam would never guess. We’ve helped people stay alive before. Why?” The professor looked suddenly hopeful. “Have you remembered something?”
“I don’t know.” David drummed his fingers on the wall. “Like I said, I just have the feeling I’ve seen or heard something that could help. I might remember it …”
The professor gave a weak smile.
“That’s the way. Keep thinking positively. You never know what might turn up. I have to go, but I promise I’ll let you know if anything happens. I’m sure you’ll have a part to play in all this before the end.”
The professor stood to leave, but when he reached the door, he turned with a strange, almost crafty look.
“Oh, and don’t let being under house arrest bother you, David. Since when did a locked door stop a ghost?”
The professor stepped out, but paused in the doorway. He waited for a moment, as if weighing something in his mind, then spoke again.
“After all, whatever you dream you can do, Davy, you can do.”
The door slid shut. David stared at it in astonishment. The professor’s words sounded exactly like something his father used to say. What was the connection between his dad and this place? He rushed to the door and opened it, but the professor had already left the corridor. David ran to the main door from the Dreamwalkers’ Lodge, but his way was barred by two security guards. The professor had gone.
David returned to his room and crashed on the bed. His mind, overloaded, wandered crazily over the events of the last two days. Could he, even now, remember something useful?
He picked up the old notebook again.
“Eddie, where would someone like you hide?”
David thought of his lost friend and tried to visualize him as his own grandfather. It wasn’t easy. After all, David had only ever seen him as a boy. The one picture the professor had shown him of Eddie as an old man was all he had to go on.
David sat up. Something was nagging at his mind again. He went to the Showing Glass and switched it on. It took him just a few moments to find that very same picture, attached with many others to Sir Edmund’s official file. He increased its size so that it filled the whole glass wall.
Sir Edmund Utherwise, distinguished scientist and founder of the Dreamwalker Project, looked back at him, surrounded by shelves, leather spines, and framed photographs. David wondered where the picture had been taken. The base was so modern that this paneled study couldn’t possibly be part of it. Even Professor Feldrake’s office, with all its clutter and books, was obviously built recently. He looked again at the room behind the old man. Books. Photographs …
He reached out and zoomed the image down to one particular black-and-white photo. It showed a small group of people standing on the steps of a large town house. In the center was a man in a Second World War officer’s uniform. Beside him were a woman and a boy. It was Eddie, looking just as David remembered him, except perhaps slightly less sad. So this man must be Eddie’s father, going off to war, and the woman Eddie’s mother. There were five other people around them, some of them at least looked as if they must have been servants.
And one of these was a girl.
David zoomed in closer. She had a strong, defiant gaze that didn’t quite fit the housemaid’s pinafore she was wearing. When he tried enlarging her image even more, the picture became too much of a blur, but he was left with the strong feeling that he’d seen this girl somewhere before. Who was she?
And finally it came to him.
He knew then that at all costs he had to get a closer look at this photograph.