Caitlyn smiled. “Given that there are some people walking around Spring Creek right now who claim to have seen her, I don’t think so!”
“Why does it always seem to be,” Amalia asked, addressing the room in general, “that female ghosts spend all their time looking for men they can’t find?”
“They can’t take no for an answer?” Caitlyn said, and earned a chuckle from the girls.
“Because there’s nothing on TV?” Daniela suggested.
“Because the male ghosts are out drinking with their friends?” Brigitte offered.
They all laughed.
“If any of you die an untimely death,” Amalia said, “make me one promise.”
“Anything!” Caitlyn said.
“Promise me you won’t spend eternity looking for a guy who doesn’t want to be found!”
CHAPTER
Fifteen
MARCH 8
Three weeks later, Caitlyn sat in the library surrounded by a pile of books on the de’ Medicis and felt like she
was
spending eternity hunting a guy who didn’t want to be found. She hadn’t dreamed of him in twenty-one nights, and there was not a single mention of Raphael in anything she’d read.
The reading wasn’t a complete waste, though, as it was research for the term paper she was writing on Bianca de’ Medici, for her world history class. It gave her a perfect excuse to spend endless hours in the library, poring through old mildewed books whose contents had never reached the Internet. What she wouldn’t give for a Search function on some of those books.
Each night that went by without a dream of Raphael, his face in her memory grew a little fainter, even as she found him consuming more and more of her thoughts.
Was
he a ghost?
If so, had he lost interest in haunting her?
If he wasn’t a ghost, what
was
he, and why did she feel such a strong pull toward him?
Whatever he was, when would she see him again?
She wished she had more control over her dreams. Maybe Raphael was impatiently waiting for her in the dream world, and
she
was the one who was somehow failing him by not appearing. She knew nothing of how to dream herself into a place on purpose.
Neither had she had any of those cryptomnesiac dreams that Madame Snowe was so interested in, where she learned to ride horses or do useful things like master quadratic equations or keep straight the difference between metamorphic and igneous rocks. The dream fragments she remembered were vivid, but unremarkable, barely worth a few quick sketches in her journal.
The Screechers had made two appearances, though. The first one had come while Caitlyn dreamed she was walking down a wooded path at twilight, her bare feet silent on the earth. The next moment a guttural roar had shaken her, and a massive thing had dashed at her, swinging a blade three feet long. Caitlyn screamed as the thing shouted and grunted, its figure whirling. She’d caught only a glimpse of its face—male, and covered in dark hair—before Amalia’s hand on her shoulder woke her.
The second appearance had left fewer details in Caitlyn’s memory, but was no less horrible for that. All she could recall of the dream was lying on a bed, and then a furious banshee appearing, screeching, and flailing at Caitlyn as if trying to destroy a demon from Hell.
With these disturbances, Caitlyn was spending more nights staying up late in the Grand Salon, to allow Amalia to sleep. Naomi was often there with her for a couple hours, and they would chat or study, or do a little of both, and then Naomi would go back to her room and Caitlyn would crash on the couch. She’d come close, several times, to telling Naomi about her obsession with the dreams of Raphael, but had then chickened out at the last minute. She didn’t want to mess up the friendship it felt like they were slowly building between their art and geology classes, and the nightly hanging out in the Grand Salon. She couldn’t believe that Naomi would still like her, if she knew how little Caitlyn’s thoughts were grounded in present-day reality.
“I’m starving,” Brigitte whispered across the library table, startling Caitlyn out of her thoughts. Brigitte sat surrounded by a pile of books on the early history of French cuisine, which was the subject of her own term paper. The entire class was in the library, doing research the old-fashioned way, with books.
“Forty-five minutes till lunch.”
Brigitte groaned under her breath. “And me here, reading about the history of bread. It’s unbearable.”
Caitlyn chuckled, and went back to her books.
In her attempts to find Raphael, her reading had taken her on a long, circuitous route through the Knights Templar, de’ Medici family history, and the history of Château de la Fortune itself. Her notes were a jumbled mass of information more about those things than about Bianca herself, who had made only a small impression in the pages of history.
Caitlyn went back over her notes, trying to pick out the bits of information that might be pertinent to her search for Raphael.
Her notes on Bianca’s distant cousin, Catherine de’ Medici, were extensive. Catherine had been married off to the future Henry II, King of France, when she was only fourteen years old. Henry fathered nine children with her but otherwise shunned her, devoting all his attention to his mistress. When Henry died during a freak jousting accident, there were some who accused Catherine of witchcraft.
After Henry’s death Catherine’s sons inherited the throne of France, but she controlled her sons and was the ruling force of France almost until her death in 1589. She ruled, however, over a country at war with itself over religion, Catholic versus Protestant Huguenots. Her ruthlessness became legendary as she struggled to maintain control of her country and keep her sons on the throne, using any means necessary, no matter how underhanded.
Caitlyn’s research on the history of Château de la Fortune, however, turned up only a single mention of the treasure of the Knights Templar, and the legend that it was hidden somewhere within the castle.
The last lord of the castle to hold the secret, Gerard, died without issue in the fourteenth century. He had bankrupted the château with an extravagant refurbishment of the fortress and its chapel, using Christian motifs throughout in an apparent attempt to expiate unnamed family sins. Shortly before he died he wrote a letter to a friend saying, “Only the light of God will guide you to the true treasure,” the true treasure being salvation.
An unusual sundial had been the most notable element of Gerard’s refurbishment, although the information on the Web neglected to mention what made it so fascinating. Caitlyn had spent an entire weekend searching all over the château and grounds and found nary a sundial.
Poor Gerard. His one achievement of note had been erased from the earth. Perhaps the treasure
was
cursed, after all.
Caitlyn got up to stretch, feeling an ache in her back from hunching over books and notes. She went to a window to lean her hands against its stone sill as she gently stretched the backs of her calves. Brigitte soon joined her, apparently glad of a distraction. The other students were beginning to stir, gathering together books and notebooks: the clock said they had only five minutes of class time left.
“I love these panels of stained glass, don’t you?” Brigitte asked.
Caitlyn followed Brigitte’s gaze to the square of painted, fired glass set into the center of the window whose sill she was using to stretch. It depicted a brilliant yellow sun over painted blue waves, with the Latin words
Fiat Lux
in the corners. Caitlyn had no idea what the words meant.
“My favorite is the one in the chemistry lab,” Brigitte went on. “It’s a woman in a gown, spreading flowers on a path.”
“I haven’t seen that one yet.” The painted panes were only a foot tall and about eight inches wide, each one set in the center of a leaded-glass window. There were dozens of them throughout the castle, each one different: a portrait of a man, a city on a hill, a shield and sword, a griffin. “I feel like they all have meanings I can’t decipher.”
“Most are probably religious,” Brigitte said. “I think they’re more mysterious and beautiful if you don’t know what they mean.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
They were both quiet for a moment, and Caitlyn got the feeling that Brigitte was working up the courage to say something.
“Amalia tells me that your nightmares are still bothering you,” she finally said.
Caitlyn grimaced . “Yeah. I feel bad for her, having to put up with me.”
“I might know of something that could help.”
“Really?” Caitlyn asked with interest. “What?”
“My parents sent me to a therapist in Paris for a time, when I was having bad dreams and … trying to deal with some other things.” She picked at the leaves of the potted plant on the stone windowsill beneath the stained-glass sun. “She had me try something that in English is called ‘lucid dreaming.’ Have you heard of it?”
“No. What is it?”
“When you are dreaming, you try to realize that you are dreaming. And then, without waking up, you change the dream so that it goes the way you want.”
“But how do you realize you’re dreaming? I never figure it out until I wake up!”
Brigitte ceased her abuse of the potted plant. “There are tests you can do in your dream, like looking at your face in a mirror: if your reflection is not normal, you’re dreaming. Or pinch your nose shut,” she said, demonstrating. “If you’re asleep, you’ll still be able to breathe without opening your mouth.”
“But I’d have to know I was dreaming before I could try the tests,” Caitlyn said doubtfully. Nor did she think she’d have the presence of mind to try them when the Screechers came.
“There is another way to try it.”
“Yeah?”
“It works best if you’re not too sleepy, so the middle of the day works well. You try to go from awake to dreaming, keeping your mind conscious the whole time.”
“How do you do that?”
“It’s hard to explain, but when you try for yourself, you will see. When you’re trying to fall asleep, aren’t you aware for a few moments when you start to have strange, dreamlike thoughts or visions?”
Caitlyn nodded. “Yeah.”
“That is the feeling you must hold on to. Let yourself go deeper into dreams, but keep a small part of yourself awake, and watching. Remind yourself to stay in control. With practice, you can master this. Once you do, you can change anything that happens in the dream. When you start to have a nightmare, you can stop it and change it to something happy.”
Caitlyn tilted her head, considering. It seemed barely possible. If it was, then not only could she control the Screechers, but she might be able to find Raphael! She wouldn’t have to wait for dreams of him to come to her:
she
could go to
them
. A fresh wave of excitement went through her. “Were you ever able to have a lucid dream?”
Brigitte bobbed her head this way and that, and leaned back, resting her elbows on the windowsill. “Yes and no. When a dream started that I didn’t want, I told myself that I wasn’t going to dream that; I was going to dream that I was decorating a big house, instead. Sometimes it worked.” She smiled. “I decorated a lot of houses in my sleep.”
“You had a lot of bad dreams that needed redecorating?”
She nodded slowly. “My brother, Thierry. He almost died this past September. It has been very hard on my family.”
“What happened?”
Brigitte straightened, knocking the plant off the windowsill in the process. It hit the stone floor and disgorged half its dirt.
“Merde!”
Both girls crouched to scoop the dirt back into the plastic pot. “It was an accident,” Caitlyn said, meaning the plant.
“My poor brother. Yes, it had to have been an accident.” Brigitte shook her head, tears starting in her eyes. “He didn’t try to kill himself. It was an accident, his falling into the
gouffre
.”
Caitlyn looked up. The
gouffre
. Caitlyn felt a chill run over her skin. The one time Caitlyn had had a chance to speak to Daniela alone and ask her to finish what she’d been saying about the abyss in the forest, Daniela had pressed her lips tight together and shaken her head. “I should not have said that. Please don’t mention it to Brigitte.”
“What happened to Thierry at the
gouffre
?” Caitlyn asked softly.
Brigitte’s jaw tightened. “He’d come down here with some of his friends, to hang out with me and Amalia and Daniela, before classes started in September. One of his friends had heard about the
gouffre
, and they decided to go see it—there’s a path from the château that goes right to it. His friends tell me that when they got there, they messed around throwing things in and listening to the distant splash, normal things like that, and then they noticed that Thierry was standing right at the edge of the
gouffre
. Just standing, for a long time, staring into the depths. And then, without warning, he tilted forward and fell.” Brigitte met Caitlyn’s eyes. “He didn’t jump. He didn’t scream. He just … tilted, and fell. One of his friends said it was like watching a tree fall.”