Messenger of Fear (Messenger of Fear 1)

And yet, I knew, he was as trapped as I was myself, as unable to escape. A fellow penitent.

I woke in darkness, rolled over, and stared up at the ceiling. What had Messenger done to earn this punishment? What did it have to do with the mysterious Ariadne? Was he even from my own time and space or was he a traveler from long ago or a long time yet to come? Was he the age he appeared to be, or was he older, maybe even much older? It was clear enough that I could not trust entirely the evidence of my eyes. This was a universe of illusion, of distortion and deception.

I thought of Oriax, pictured her, a beautiful young woman, but was she the mesmerizing, unforgettable, unequaled beauty I felt her to be when I was in her presence? Messenger had told her to let me go. Had she held some power over me?

What was Daniel? How had he known—if he did know—that poor Manolo was doomed? How had he known with a touch that Derek would be lost to sanity for at least a while?

What was the Shoals? And what, in the name of all that was either holy or rational, was this ridiculous Heptarchy and what’s her name? Isthil.

I held my mind to these speculations for fear that, without a task on which to focus, my thoughts would veer toward darker, more awful things. Derek. Samantha Early. The fate that must befall Kayla.

No. Had befallen her.

That’s what Messenger had said, though I wasn’t sure I’d heard him properly when he said it. I strained to recall his exact words but could not get my fingers around them. Yet I was fairly certain, fairly, that he had said that whatever Kayla’s punishment was, it had already been carried out.

This at least was a relief, for I could not imagine what buried fear I might find if tasked to enter her twisted mind.

Her motives at least I thought I could guess. Samantha Early had been a writer. So was Kayla, since she had the NaNoWriMo ribbon on her bulletin board. And if she was serious about it, if she saw herself as an author someday, she must have been devastated when Samantha Early, a girl Kayla despised as weak and weird, had suddenly shot from nowhere to publication.

Jealousy. That would have been it, or at least part of it. Jealousy coming at a time when Kayla was still coping with her father’s death and her mother’s renewed interest in the opposite sex. A time when Kayla would have been feeling vulnerable and alone despite her circle of friends.

That did not excuse the cruelty. Nothing excused, nothing ever could excuse, driving a girl to take her own life.

I wondered if Kayla had played Messenger’s game or refused. Almost certainly she would have played. She seemed arrogant enough to imagine she would win. If she played, had she won? If she won, had she learned anything from the experience? Had she become a better person?

And if she had lost the game and faced the penalty, what had she endured? What was the terror she pushed way down into the darkest ratholes of her memory? What had she feared from the Messenger of Fear?

And with that I was dangerously close to asking that same question of myself: What was my deepest fear? How had I been punished for whatever wrong I was supposed to have committed?

“Food,” I said to the darkness. “I am hungry.”

I climbed from the bed that was not my own bed, used the bathroom, and showered, finding shampoo and conditioner and even the lotion I liked.

I looked at myself in the mirror. My face seemed unfamiliar to me, haunted by too much weariness, too much terror, too much guilt. I lived in a world now where nothing was as it had been, where nothing could be counted as set and certain.

I saw it all in my eyes, in the dark swelling beneath them that was so pronounced it almost looked like bruising. But even as I took that in, I was surprised by the way I looked, for the gauntness of my cheeks, the dullness of my normally glossy hair—always my best feature—the furrows beginning to etch permanent lines into my forehead, surely all these physical signs of stress had not manifested in just the short time I had been with Messenger. It occurred to me that my troubles in life might not have begun just forty-eight hours ago when I woke beneath the mist. And as I considered this, it became obvious that of course I must have been in trouble much earlier, else why would I have attracted Messenger’s attentions?

“What did you do?” I asked my reflection. “What did you do, Mara?”

21

MESSENGER WAS IN MY KITCHEN. THIS FACT WAS deeply unsettling to me, for I had come in a very short time and on the basis of very little evidence, to imagine that this space, this false echo of my home or Kayla’s home, or whatever this was meant to be, was mine and mine alone. I had thought it was a sanctuary. If Messenger could simply appear in the kitchen, then he could equally appear in my bedroom. And if all of that, then was I safe from Daniel or Oriax or whatever other beings may choose to intrude uninvited?

Messenger saw my annoyance.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I intruded.”

“It’s okay,” I snapped. “I’m going to make some coffee if there is any coffee. Do you want some? Do you drink? Eat?”

“Coffee. Black.”

“Of course black,” I said.

I think he would have smiled then, had he been just a bit less Messenger.

There was coffee, a bag of it from Marin Coffee Roasters. I scooped it into the filter, added water, and started the machine running. Marin Coffee is my favorite coffee shop, and I sometimes go there after school to do my homework. . . . How did I know that? How had I, without trying, remembered sitting in that coffee shop? I could see it quite clearly. The front was often open to the fresh air. There were two rickety tables out on the narrow sidewalk, lots of tempting and fattening cookies and bars at the counter, a cooler in the corner, a bathroom at the back, big chalkboard menus high on the wall behind the baristas.

It was perhaps the clearest memory I had accessed, but it could hardly have been as familiar to me as my own home, none of which I could remember without confusing it with Kayla’s house. Certainly I should have recalled my mother’s face before I recalled a coffee shop.