The Dream Thief by Kari Kilgore (books for 10th graders txt) 📕

for now, that she'd return with allies to seek her revenge upon him and everyone he held dear, should give the man fits.

Halfway between Karl's building and the iron fence, Loretta froze.

This part of the lawn was pitch dark, right between two weak lights. It was silent, too, but she was positive she'd heard something moving.

She drew both of her belt knives and turned to her right, skin rippling with gooseflesh. That sounded like...fabric, like a sheet rippled across a bed.

She held the knives in front of her face, expecting a sack thrown across her head at any second.

Loretta whirled, hearing the same thing from behind her and higher up.

Was she hearing more than one of them, or were her nerves more frayed than she’d realized? This useless dress didn't have anywhere to carry her revolver, and she was afraid to take the time to dig into her pack.

Rullin flashed through her mind again, somehow escaped from Bill and bringing his own allies to force her into submission at last.

The fabric rustled again, this time much closer and directly overhead.

"Come on, then, damn you! What are you waiting for!"

Strong arms grabbed Loretta from behind, squeezing too tight for her to turn.

Before she could swing the knives back, her feet left the ground, and she dropped one of the blades. Some kind of harness, her attacker suspended in the trees, it had to be.

Only she was above the trees and getting higher, the noise of the fabric flapping all around her.

Loretta looked down and saw thick, muscled arms holding her. Pure white arms, glowing in the faint light of a crescent moon, arms that ended in hands with heavy claws.

Loretta screamed, holding the knife she hadn't dropped above the monster's arm but too afraid to use it. They had to be over a hundred feet off the ground already.

She could see the buildings of Joffrey Columns dropping away, the lights of the village beyond the lake in the distance. If she hurt the thing, it might drop her.

Why hadn’t the reek of the monster warned her?

Now they were higher than any airship and rising. She'd never survive the fall. The roaring wind made it hard to breathe, but she shouted as loud as she could.

"Stop, please! Someone help!"

The creature banked, heading away from the lights, and Loretta screamed again.

The Fog rose up before her, faint in the darkness but making a barricade around the water as far as she could see.

She wouldn't survive in there; no one could.

As the white wall drew closer, she tried to pull the monster's hands away despite the fall.

It was like trying to move stone.

She screamed one last time as the Fog swallowed them.

Chapter 59

Karl opened the front door of Loretta's house to Gemma humming and talking to herself in the kitchen. He grunted, shaking his head a little. No, this was Gemma's house now, not Loretta's.

Thinking anything else wasn't going to help him get over those violet eyes.

"Mind if I work around you, Karl?" George said from behind him. "Wouldn't want to interrupt your staring-into-thin-air time."

George pushed the bundle he was carrying against Karl's back. Karl walked into Gemma's workroom, found one of the few remaining empty spaces, and waited for his friend to do the same.

"Is that what she was doing before, Georgie? The way she's talking to herself?"

"No, not even close," George said. "She sounded like one of the patients that day, like she couldn't stop herself. If my own grandmother is any indication, she's working up a hell of a to-do list for us in there."

Karl stretched with his hands pressed against the small of his back.

"Is that the last of it?" he said.

"That's it. Unless someone bothers to inspect the chimney enough to find her filters, no one will ever know she was there. The ’sters will have some nice, fat rabbits once they get done with what's left of her garden."

Gemma spoke from the doorway.

"Oh, thank you for bringing all of this inside!"

Her good color and high spirits went a long way toward convincing Karl that she'd recovered. Sometimes a few days of sleep, and less stress, was enough.

"I'm sorry we had to move you again," George said, sitting down and wiping sweat from his face. "Once that well started to fail, the repairs were more than I could handle."

"It's just as well, dears," Gemma said. "Someone really should keep up Loretta's lovely house until she gets back."

She bustled out of the room, already muttering again. George raised his eyebrows and half smiled at Karl.

"I guess someone should be optimistic around here," he said. "Sorry, Karl. I know this only makes it worse."

"Have they found anything yet?" Karl said.

Karl didn't want to admit what he was really asking.

Had they found a body? Her body?

"They might not find her or anyone else," George said. "You know that. People scream out there all the damned time."

"Yeah, but not right outside the residences like that," Karl said. "And not half an hour after she left the house. You told me yourself someone pushed a key under my door just a couple of minutes before the scream. The ’sters went crazy that night, and the patients did too. They even found her knife."

George scowled. "They found a knife, man. Solid black, copper wire, no initials or anything on it. And you told me you set it up so she'd have to leave, then made sure she knew you weren't kidding. I know this stinks, but don't let your mind make it worse than it already is." Karl shook his head and looked away. "Come on. Let's go see how long our list is going to be."

Gemma hadn't been daunted by the small hearths once she figured out how the gas lines worked. Karl and George had already carried her electrical supplies into the kitchen, and she was well on the way to getting everything reassembled.

She looked up when they walked in, and she did indeed have a long handwritten list on the