Winter's Dream (The Hemlock Bay Series)

WINTER’S DREAM

by AMBER JAEGER

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Copyright © 2012 by Amber Jaeger. All rights reserved.

First Amazon Edition: October 2012

Proofreader:
Diana Cox

Cover and Formatting:
Streetlight Graphics

All rights reserved. This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the original purchaser only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

Dedication

For my husband, who encourages me

For my family, who love me

For my friends, who challenge me

Chapter One

I
ran out of the dusty
attic and leapt down the narrow stairwell, crashing into the door at the bottom. Clint thundered behind me and I frantically twisted the door handle. His reeking breath wheezed from his chest and through his slack, slobbery mouth. It filled the narrow hallway and gagged me. He was big and slow but very, very angry and the knob under my hand refused to turn. With a frantic jerk it finally spun in my hand and I crashed through the door and slammed it shut behind me.

My footsteps echoed down the dark hallway as I raced to the light ahead. I could hear Clint struggle with the knob and pound on the door before bursting through it. My heart thrummed as I forced my legs to run faster.

“Ya effing bitch!” Clint was gasping. I said another little prayer of thanks for his severe asthma and turned the corner. The classroom doors were shut and surprised faces peeked through the wire crossed windows as I flew past. Finally I slid to a stop in front of the last door on the left and jerked it open.

“Bixby,” Mr. Jenkins snapped. “Get in here! Why the hell do you have to be late every day?” He pointed at the clock, as if I didn’t know class had started ten minutes ago. “Well, you’re just going to have to stay late again and help me clean up.”

With a tiny sigh of relief and what was hopefully not a grateful look on my face, I took my seat.

“Clint again?” Minnie whispered, hiding her mouth behind a hand with badly chewed nails.

I gave a tiny nod as I pretended to focus on the math book in front of me that could have only passed for remedial in a real school.

“You have to stop antagonizing him,” she whispered.

I gritted my teeth and ignored her advice. Not antagonizing Clint meant either hiding and praying he never noticed me or just letting him do whatever he wanted. I tried my best at the first and wasn’t going to let the second happen.

After class Mr. Jenkins made me stack the chairs and clean the chalkboards, sweep the floors and empty the trash while he checked his e-mail. When I was finally done he looked down at his watch, exasperated. “Why does that always take you so long?”

I shrugged and happily followed him down to the cafeteria for dinner. Without a wave or any parting words he kept going to the front of the building, to the front door and out to the real world. Jealousy flared up and was tamped down by something else—sadness. It had been a month since I had walked in those front doors—or even been outside—and I had a feeling it was going to be a very long time until I too got leave through them again, climb in a car and drive away to freedom.

His footsteps echoed back towards me down the hollow, cave-like hall and I realized I was standing there lost in homesickness—a perfect target.

I hurried into the cafeteria and got in line. The servers loaded my plate with what actually wasn’t too terrible of food. That was one of only two redeeming qualities of the grey cinderblock room. It had decent food and was the only place Clint or Eva and her brood wouldn’t mess with anyone else. There were too many staff members there.

Minnie waved me over to our table and I settled in with my plate of meatloaf and potatoes. “You think Jenkins will ever catch on that it takes you so long to clean chalkboards just so he has to walk down here with you?”

“No, he’s an idiot. And they all are if they can’t see what a monster Clint is.” Not for the first time I wished I had actually managed to land myself in a real juvenile detention center where the boys and girls were separated and there were more guards to actually keep an eye on things. Instead I had landed in a “youth rehabilitation program,” where the predators like Clint had free reign over his victims because the people supposed to be watching us were young, clueless teachers. Minnie had been tossed around the system for years and was able to explain why places like this hellhole were even allowed to be open: money. Bunking all the bad kids up together, making them do their own cleaning and hiring people just fresh out of college was cheaper than actual juvie.

A crash of dishes snapped my attention back to the cafeteria and Minnie was nodding, her short hair barely bobbing over her ears. “They all baby him because of his asthma, they don’t think he could possibly be running around after all of us trying to … ugh,” she shuddered.

“You would think he would eventually figure out I run him through the attics every time he chases me just so I can set his asthma off with all that dust.”

“He’s a caveman,” she said dismissively.

We finished our meal in silence, the din of silverware and cheap chairs being scraped across the floor filling the room. There were no windows, no decorations and no smiles on anyone’s face. It was exactly like a prison cafeteria except for the fact the furniture wasn’t bolted to the floor and we were all children.

Dread began to fill me again as we finished our supper. Minnie’s dark eyes echoed it as well. “Shower time,” she finally said when only empty plates sat between us.

Eva and her girls were much smarter than Clint. Come late, come early, it didn’t matter, because once they had singled a girl out, they didn’t give up till they got what they wanted. Sometimes it was just to hide her clothes, other times it was a full on beat down. I had managed to stay out of their way since the first day when they had cut my hair off but after a month they were running out of other girls to torment. Minnie confirmed it had been about a month between her haircutting and her new black eye.

She and I showered quickly, watching each other’s backs. We barely dried off and jerked our dry clothes over our wet skin. It gripped and grabbed, refusing to slide into place but we hurried anyway. Nobody wanted to be caught in an empty shower room by Eva.

Towels in hand, we snuck through the door, down the hall and to our beds in the middle of the dormitory. Someone further down was crying. I assumed it was Eva’s victim of the night.

“Night,” Minnie and I whispered to each other, crawling in to hide under our covers.

It was only eight o’clock but the morning buzzer went off at five a.m. and sleeping in a dormitory with nineteen other girls wasn’t exactly restful.

Stars were barely visible through the window at the end of the long room. I squeezed my eyes shut, praying tonight would be the night I finally made it back to Nightmare Town or even to Jordan’s world. One month I had been in the detention center and I had not gone back to either place in that time.

I traced the thin, white scar around my wrist and wondered for the hundredth time if I would ever see Jordan again.

Morning came after another peaceless night. Nine hours of listening to snoring, crying, fighting and farting did not make for restful sleep. No wonder I couldn’t dream.

The orange tinged stinky water and caustic soap was less than refreshing and I winced as I carefully dried off my face with a thin, scratchy towel. Girls lined up in front sinks and mirrors, brushing their teeth, combing their hair and very purposely not looking in the mirror. A glance at my own reflection was almost painful. My coppery hair had faded to a color worse than it was before Jordan had worked his magic and it stuck up in uneven patches. The bags under my eyes were almost as dark as Minnie’s black eye and my skin looked as if it hadn’t seen the sun in a month—which I guess it hadn’t. Whatever little spell Jordan had spun to turn me into a beauty queen must have shattered along with the bracelets that had kept me tethered to him.

The second buzzer of the morning went off, sending everyone scurrying out of the bathrooms back to make their beds. Along with everyone else I spent the next hour cleaning and sweeping and scrubbing. Not cleaning meant not eating. My dull blue scrubs were streaked with grime when I went down to breakfast. My heart fluttered as I went down to the cafeteria with Minnie. Mail was passed out during breakfast. I prayed today would finally be the day I heard from Lincoln or my dad. Or anyone.

The headmaster made her way from table to table with a depressingly small canvas bag as we all sat down to eat the standard oatmeal, scrambled eggs and toast. I sat frozen in my seat with my fork over my plate until, just like all the other mornings, I was passed over.

One month.

“Sorry,” Minnie said, when the headmaster left with an empty mail bag.

I shrugged, trying not to cry.

“At least you get to talk to your caseworker today,” she said with a little smile on her lips. I loved Minnie for her sweet and naively hopeful personality but her words did not cheer me up.

“What good is that going to do?” I asked, pushing food around on my plate. “Every time she just grills me about where Lincoln is, like I freaking know. She doesn’t even tell me how my grandma is doing or when my dad is going to get me out of this place.”

“Student seven sixteen!” blared out of the antique bullhorns mounted in every room.

“Speak of the devil,” I muttered.

A security guard met me at the cafeteria door and led me to the front of the building. “Students,” as we were called, weren’t allowed up there without a chaperone. The people who ran the place were trying to sell it as a rehabilitation center for troubled children and wanted everything perfect looking in the public area. But the place was really just a cheap jail for kids—some bad and some not.

Sophie, clothed in one of her signature poorly fitting pants suits, was waiting for me in a visitor room. The cement walls and high barred windows made it less than welcoming.

“Good morning.”

“Morning,” I replied, hoping this visit wouldn’t go as badly as all the others had. I fixed a smile on my face. “Do you have any news about my grandma?”

“Do you have any news about Lincoln?” She took off her obnoxious red glasses and gave me a fake smile of her own.

I stifled a sigh but couldn’t control my annoyance. “Sophie, I don’t know how many times, how many ways I can tell you—
I don’t know where Lincoln is
. The last time I saw him was the night this whole thing started.” I closed my eyes, trying to fight back the images of whirling blue and red lights, Grandma terrified and fighting, hail shredding and ruining the beautiful fall leaves.

“Bixby,” she said in a tone just as exasperated as mine, “I just know that can’t be true. After all, this is his second disappearing act; he’s quite good at it. You realize this makes him a repeat offender? We can’t just ignore that.”

“He didn’t run away that first time, he was—” I almost said “taken.”

I gritted my teeth and started over. “He was in a bad accident, with a head injury and everything. And knowing some other kid had died and was in his grave really messed him up. If you do find him he needs help, not to be put in this hellhole.”

“Well,” she sighed. “I don’t think we are going to find him. It’s like he just disappeared. Again.”

The fear that was always with me gripped a little tighter. Jordan had taken my brother once to get close to me and I wouldn’t put it past him to do it again, this time as punishment. One month of not sleeping well meant one month of not dreaming well. How could I know if Jordan had him if I couldn’t dream? Not that I was planning on asking him; everything that came out of his mouth was a lie. No, I was going to ask dream Lincoln—

“Hello?” Sophie was snapping. “Seriously, I can’t believe this is your first time in trouble. You’re insolent, a liar, you ignore authority.” She gave this laundry list of my supposed sins every time she saw me, as if to convince me, or herself, that I really belonged in juvie.

My smile had turned to an angry sneer and I struggled to fix it. “How is my grandma?”

Sophie began putting papers back into her oversized knock off bag. “Much better, now that she’s getting proper care.”

“I did the best I could,” I said quietly.

“I’m not saying you didn’t. It just wasn’t good enough.” That stung.

I hesitated to ask my last question, knowing the answer would hurt no matter what it was. “And my dad?”

She snapped the ugly bag shut and stood up. “Missed the hearing yesterday. Probably for the best. Even if he could properly supervise you I doubt he could control all your other behavioral problems.” And with that, my latest meeting with the woman who was supposed to be looking out for my best interests was over.

I fumed all the way back to the main “school.” Sophie had to be the worst social worker on the planet. She was more than just mean; it was as if everything she said was designed to hurt. And she was more interested in finding Linc to put him in here than she was with helping me. Not for the first time I wondered if she got kickbacks for putting and keeping kids in this hellhole.

The guard left me at the door to the cafeteria and it was totally empty. A clock mounted on the wall in a little cage showed I was fifteen minutes late for my first class. Not good.

I ran down the hall quietly, listening for any footsteps.

Nothing.

Peeking around each corner revealed another empty hallway and finally, with a sigh of relief I turned the last corner to get to class.

And there he was waiting for me.

Calling for help did no good in this place. If anyone even came Clint pretended to be having a full-blown asthma attack so the teachers would think the girl had been yelling for help
for
him, not because of him. Not that any of them would hear me so far down the hall and with all the classroom doors shut.

I whipped back around the corner, tearing down the dark hall for the stairs to the attic. Clint’s feet were slapping close behind when I reached the door and slammed it shut behind me.