“Of all the dimensions I explored, this one remains the most stable, aside from a few … inconveniences. It seems Cruce’s curse had little effect on this realm, other than to splinter dimensions that are easily avoided.”

I call them IFPs but I do not tell him this. It made Barrons smile. Little made Barrons smile.

I think I’m under control, that I’ve stripped away all weaknesses. That committing to my mission has made me impervious. I’m wrong. The thought of Barrons smiling brings other thoughts.

Barrons naked.

Dancing.

Dark head thrown back.

Laughing.

The image doesn’t “gently swim up in my mind” in a dreamy sort of way, like I’ve seen in movies. No, this one slams into my head like a nuclear missile, exploding in my brain in graphic detail. I suffocate in a mushroom cloud of pain.

I can’t breathe. I squeeze my eyes shut.

White teeth flashing in his dark face: I get knocked down but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down.

I stagger.

But he didn’t get up, the bastard. He stayed down.

With my spear in his back. How am I supposed to find my way each day without him here to help me? I don’t know what to do, how to make decisions.

I can’t survive this grief! I stumble and go down on one knee. I clutch my head.

Darroc is at my side, helping me stand. His arms are around me.

I open my eyes.

He is so close that I see gold speckles in his coppery eyes. Wrinkles crease the corners. Faint lines bracket his mouth. Has he laughed so often in his time as a mortal? My hands curl into fists.

His hands are gentle on my face when he pushes my hair back. “What happened?”

Neither image nor pain is gone from my brain. I cannot function in this state. In moments, I will be on my knees, screaming with grief and fury, and my mission will go straight to hell. Darroc will see my weakness and kill me, or worse. Somehow I have to survive. I have no idea how long it will take me to find the Book and learn how to use it. I wet my lips. “Kiss me,” I say. “Hard.”

His mouth tightens. “I am not a fool, MacKayla.”

“Just do it,” I snarl.

I watch him weigh the idea. Two scorpions. He is skeptical. He is fascinated.

When he kisses me, Barrons vanishes from my head. The pain recedes.

On the lips of my enemy, my sister’s lover, my lover’s killer, I taste the punishment I deserve. I taste oblivion.

It makes me cold and strong again.

I have dreamed of houses all my life. I have an entire neighborhood in my subconscious that I can get to only while sleeping. But I can’t control my nocturnal visits any more than I’ve ever been able to avoid my Cold Place dreams. Sometimes I’m granted passage and sometimes I’m not. Certain nights the doors open easily, while others I stand outside, denied entrance, longing for the wonders that lie within.

I don’t understand people who say they can’t recall their dreams. With the exception of the Cold Place dream, which I began blocking long ago, I recall all the others. When I wake in the morning, they’re floating through my mind in fragments, and I can either spring out of bed and forget them or gather up the pieces and examine them.

I read somewhere that dreams about houses are dreams of our souls. In those dwellings of our psyche, we store our innermost secrets and desires. Perhaps that’s why some people don’t remember them—they don’t want to. A girl I knew in high school once told me she dreamed of houses, too, but they were always pitch black and she could never find the light switch. She hated those dreams. She wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box.

My houses are endless, filled with sunshine and music, gardens and fountains. And for some reason there are always a lot of beds. Big beds. Way more than any house needs. I don’t know what the deal is with that, but I think it might mean I think about sex a lot.

Sometimes I worry that there’s not enough room in my brain for both my dreams and reality, that I’m a hard drive with limited gigabytes and one day I won’t be able to maintain the firewall between them. I wonder if that’s what senility is.

Over the years, I’ve begun to suspect that all the houses of which I’ve been dreaming are just different wings of the same great house.

Today I realize it’s true.

Why have I been dreaming of the White Mansion all these years?

How could I possibly have known it existed?

Now that I’m a little over the edge anyway, I can admit something: My whole life, I’ve secretly been afraid that beneath my fiercely focused grooming and accessorizing, I’m, well … psychotic.

Never underestimate a well-dressed bimbo.

The real thinkers of the world aren’t the best dressed. Staying on top of the latest fashions, accessorizing, and presenting oneself is time consuming. It takes a lot of effort, energy, and concentration to be incessantly happy and perfectly groomed. You meet somebody like that—ask yourself what they’re running from.

Back in high school, I began to suspect I was bipolar. There were times when, for no good reason at all, I felt downright, well … homicidal was the only word for it. I learned that the busier I stayed, the less time I had to feel it.

I sometimes wonder if before I was born someone showed me the script or filled me in on the highlights. It’s déjà vu to the worst extreme. I refuse to believe I would have auditioned for this role.

As I stare at the White Mansion and I know what parts of it look like inside—and I know there’s no way I could know those things—I wonder if I’m a serious nutcase. If none of this is happening, because I’m really locked up in a padded cell somewhere, hallucinating. If so, I hope they change my drugs soon. Whatever I’m on isn’t working.

I don’t want to go in there.

I want to go in there and never leave.

Duality is me.

The House has countless entrances, through elaborately manicured gardens.

Darroc and I enter one of the gardens. It’s so lovely it’s almost painful to look at. Paths of glistening gold pavers unfurl through exotic, perfumed bushes and circle clusters of willowy silver-leafed trees. Dazzling pearl benches offer respite from the sun beneath lacy leaves, and silk chaises dot outdoor rooms of billowing chiffon. Flowers bend and sway in a light, perfect breeze, the precise degree of sultry—not too hot or moist but warm and wet, like sex is warm and wet.