“Do you see those people?” I point at the crowd that’s chasing after my parents. “That’s Davu and his son, Valerian. You remember what their power is, right?”
Maxwell stills, his jaw working. “Illusions… A lot of people in that crowd are illusionists.”
“Stop!” Davu screams at my parents in the memory.
They don’t respond, just keep chasing the girls.
Asha trips over a root.
Maxwell reels. “Please, no.”
The young me keeps running for a few moments, then looks back, panting. “Asha, no!” she gasps and rushes to her.
Asha is crying.
Little Bailey tries to lift her.
The parents close in.
“This is all an illusion,” I say as current-day Maxwell continues to fall apart. “It was meant to fool Phobetor through you.”
Max faces the crowd while Mom raises her machete.
“Mommy, no!” the little me screams.
Maxwell clamps his hands over his ears and squeezes his eyes shut, as if that can block the events from playing out in his mind.
The machete whooshes by little Bailey’s cheek and slices into Asha’s neck.
Blood gushes out of the wound, spraying my young self all over.
Asha’s severed head rolls away.
Little Bailey screams.
Maxwell drops to his knees, mumbling something unintelligible as he rocks back and forth.
I reiterate that this is an illusion, but I can’t blame him for freaking out. I’ve experienced this twice now and I know it’s fake, yet it still makes me feel nauseated.
Mom’s strange eyes gaze at the young me, who’s sobbing uncontrollably. Her whole body tenses, her face twisting with alternating expressions of blankness and horror. Then her eyes begin to flicker between the magma fire and her normal brown, and her left hand grabs her right, as if trying to steal the machete from it. Finally, her eyes stay brown, and horror eclipses all else on her face.
“She banished Phobetor,” Maxwell mutters, confirming my earlier suspicion. “Same thing happened to me… after I…”
Mom looks at the bloody machete in her hands. Then at headless Asha.
With a raw, guttural moan, she spins around—just as the younger version of my father smashes a fist into her temple.
“Don’t do it,” Maxwell yells at Max in a hoarse voice.
His younger self doesn’t listen. He stalks over to little Bailey and swings the machete.
A primal scream is wrenched from Maxwell’s throat.
“It didn’t happen,” I say as soothingly as I can—though, having never seen this part of the scenario, I’m a little shaken by the fact that he actually went through with it. He killed me.
Phobetor or not, illusion or not, he swung a weapon at my neck. The neck of my more adorable seven-year-old self. If he were to become Overtaken again, he’d probably kill the grown me in a heartbeat.
Was it too much to wish that parental love would somehow triumph despite all the odds? Did he not love me enough to snap out of it? Did Mom not love Asha enough?
Max’s body tenses the way Mom’s did, his face also morphing from blankness to horror as his eyes begin to flicker between fiery and amber.
He’s beating Phobetor, like she did. Only he, too, has done it when it was too late. Or maybe Phobetor has released them both, thinking that the twins are dead.
That’s a scary thought, actually. Could he take over Maxwell again now that he knows I’m alive?
In the memory, Max falls to his knees and screams—which is when the crowd reaches him and Davu knocks him out.
This new memory runs faster.
Max is hugging his knees, catatonic. He’s inside a padded room while Valerian’s parents are standing outside, behind a glass door. Whatever they’re saying to each other is impossible to hear. If this is the time when Valerian spied on them, they’re talking about how my mom has escaped from a similar room, grabbing me along the way.
“I remember being in that cell,” Maxwell says, glaring at his younger self.
“Why a cell?” I ask, though I can guess.
“They didn’t trust that I’d beaten Phobetor for good,” Maxwell says, confirming my suspicion. “I didn’t trust myself either.”
“But you did beat him, right?” I ask warily. “You’re not a ticking bomb?”
His gaze loses focus. “As you’ve probably guessed, when a dreamwalker is Overtaken, we’re fully aware of what Phobetor makes us do. After I did…. what I thought I did, the pain drove me to banish Phobetor from my dream world.”
I shift from foot to foot. “Or maybe he just didn’t need you enough to push the issue?”
His shoulders slump. “That’s also possible, but I doubt it. He’s been trying to get back in. In fact, it’s been a battle to keep him out all these years—a battle I’ve gotten better at with time. But you’re right. There are no guarantees. It might be wise to always keep a careful eye on me.”
That’s exactly what I plan to do, but there’s no reason to belabor it. Instead, I say, “He’s back in Mom’s dreams.”