IN SPITE OF ALL MY HOPES, September 30, my birthday, dawned as a clear day with a bright blue sky. A fine day straight out of a picture book. After midday, the sun steadily raised the air temperature to over seventy-five degrees, and we weren’t the only ones to have thought of having a picnic in the park. But because Lottie, Florence, Ernest, and Mom, with extra help from Charles, had been busy since early morning moving half the contents of the house to the park, we’d been able to reserve one of the best places, with an impressive view downhill to the city. I wasn’t allowed to arrive until everything was ready, and after I’d wriggled out of Persephone’s warm embrace (her birthday present was a bracelet with the words BEST FRIENDS FOREVER on it; she had the exact counterpart), I had to admit that all that trouble had been worthwhile. The scenario would have done credit to any glossy lifestyle magazine, with a lavish supply of rugs and cushions, helium balloons, and delicious things to eat, skillfully arranged by Lottie on a garden table covered with a white cloth. There was even a matching string of white pennants with letters on them, spelling out SWEET SIXTEEN and waving in the wind between two trees.
Well, maybe they’d overdone a few things.
“Good heavens,” I heard Emily ask Grayson, “are those by any chance your family’s silver candlesticks?”
Yup, they were, and the huge flower arrangement was in a genuine crystal vase. We ate off the Spencers’ good Wedgwood china, and there was champagne standing ready in a silver cooler, to be drunk out of proper champagne flutes, of course.
Grayson rubbed his hand over his forehead. Then he explained, “You’re only sixteen once.” He’d obviously taken Florence’s mantra to heart. Emily sniffed dismissively.
“I don’t like her,” Mia whispered to me, extracting a cucumber and creamed salmon sandwich. “But I’m going to feed her a few bits of false information—and if any of them come up in the Tittle-Tattle blog over the next few days, then we’ll know that she’s Secrecy.”
I was going to say something agreeing with her, but at that moment I saw Charles coming up the slope with a sun umbrella under his arm. Behind him came the tall figure of Henry, and my stomach turned a somersault.
I swallowed. “Would you think it very bad of me not to be immune to boys anymore, Mia?” It was pointless to go on denying it.
Mia gave me a surreptitious glance and sighed. “Is it a good feeling, at least?”
Hard to say. For the moment, yes. Just because Henry was coming straight toward me, over the grass and in the sunshine, and no one else in the whole world had a smile like his. And because …
“Liv, stop it!” hissed Mia. “You look like a lovelorn sheep!”
I gave a start. “As bad as that? Oh, that’s terrible.” I added—and I was to regret it in the course of the day—“If you see me looking like that again, give me a nudge or throw something at me. Promise?”
“With pleasure,” said Mia, and three hours later, because she always kept her promises, I was black and blue around the ribs and had been hit by assorted flying objects: several chestnuts, a spoon, and a blueberry muffin. Or a mooberry bluffin, as Lottie put it when Charles was listening.
And whenever I looked at Lottie, I knew exactly what Mia had meant about the lovelorn sheep.
Apart from that, I caught myself beginning to enjoy the picnic party. The food was fantastic, particularly the scones and the Indian curried chicken morsels that Lottie had conjured up. Thanks to some skillful rearrangement of the seating plan (after all, I was the birthday girl) I had even managed to put Persephone between Mom and Henry as a buffer. That way Mom couldn’t ask Henry any embarrassing questions—or even worse, tell him the gory details of my birth. But anyway, Henry was totally fascinated by Lottie, probably because she was the image of the dream Lottie guarding my green door. When we played a celebrity guessing game, we laughed a lot at Ernest, who thought he was Winston Churchill, although he was really meant to be Britney Spears, and Grayson mimed Frodo surprisingly well. We were all splitting our sides with laughter, except for Emily. But as it turned out, she didn’t know The Lord of the Rings, because she thought fantasy was a sheer waste of time. By now Mia Silver, Private Investigator, had come to the conclusion that Emily didn’t have the charm and lightness of heart that would have made her right for the role of Secrecy. However, maybe that was just a rather stiff and humorless but clever bit of camouflage.
When everyone finally sang “Happy Birthday” for me, and even the people sitting near us with their own picnic joined in, I had to admit that, all things considered, it had been a really successful birthday party. I knew I mustn’t forget to say thank you to Florence later. Although she was overdoing it again now, making everyone get up and start playing croquet.
I decided not to, and instead I helped Charles and Lottie to clear away the dirty plates and pack them in crates, while Mom and Ernest took Buttercup for a walk around the park and Mia and Daisy fed bits of apple to some greedy squirrels.
Charles was pensively examining a half-eaten blueberry muffin. “I can’t say I ever heard of mooberries before, but I definitely like them.”
“Mooberries?” Lottie gave him a puzzled look. “What are they?”
I decided to leave the two of them to work it out together while I collected the empty glasses.
“Can I help?” asked a voice behind me, and I almost dropped a champagne glass with shock. Where on earth had Henry learned to creep up on people like that?
He smiled at me. “It’s not much fun over there playing croquet. Florence isn’t playing very well, Emily is complaining that Grayson holds his mallet the wrong way, and Persephone has just been describing your ball dress to me. In every detail.”
I felt the blood shoot into my cheeks. I hadn’t talked to him about the misunderstanding over the ball yet.…
“Amazing all the stuff that goes into a ball dress. Taffeta, tulle, beads, ruffles, roses, four different shades of smoky blue…” He looked inquiringly at me. “And what the hell is a duchess line?”
“Look, just because I have a ball dress doesn’t mean I really have to go to that ball,” I said hastily. When he raised one eyebrow I added, even more hastily, “It’s just that … because Florence told Mom that you’d invited me … and all of a sudden I somehow had this dress … and I haven’t the faintest idea myself what a duchess line is.” I took a deep breath. No, this wasn’t working. “Anyway,” I said, trying to conclude with dignity, “I just wanted you to know it doesn’t mean a thing. I couldn’t care less about the ball.”
“That’s a pity,” said Henry, “because I’ve already hunted down the medal that my great-grandfather was given for conspicuous gallantry in the face of the enemy. Grayson is terribly envious of me for having such a genuine, stylish accessory to my white tie and tails. The man from the evening-dress rental company and I tried to persuade him to carry a top hat, so that he’d stand out from the common herd as well, but we got nowhere.”
I could only stare at him. A piece of apple promptly flew at my head.
“Sorry!” called Mia.
“How about a walk?” Henry held out his hand, and I took it before Mia could throw another piece of apple. Henry’s hand felt strangely familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. In dreams his physical closeness didn’t make me feel half so self-conscious.
We walked side by side in silence for a while, and I tried to get my breathing under control. Then we turned off along a sandy path leading through the trees. The sun fell through the changing leaves and cast splashes of gold on the ground.
“I’ve missed this,” said Henry suddenly, and cleared his throat. “I’ve missed you.”
If one of Mia’s missiles had hit me at that moment, I wouldn’t even have felt it. I stopped in the middle of the path. Henry turned to me and pushed back a strand of hair from my face.
“Dreaming somehow wasn’t any fun without you,” he said. And then he leaned forward and kissed me carefully on the mouth.
For a few seconds I forgot to breathe, then I felt my arms rising and going around his neck of their own accord to draw him closer. We weren’t kissing so cautiously now, but much more intensely. Henry put one hand on my waist, the other went behind my head and buried itself gently in my hair. I closed my eyes. This was just the way kisses ought to feel, I was sure. My whole body was beginning to tingle when he suddenly let go of me and pushed me a little way off.
“Like I said, I’ve missed you,” he said softly, reaching for my hand again to lead me on.
I couldn’t work out how he could simply go on walking like that as if nothing had happened, while I was having difficulty in standing upright at all. It was as if the kiss had turned the bones in my legs into licorice. Very soft licorice. Luckily Henry was only making for the nearest bench, a few yards away, and I was able to make it that far. I dropped onto the bench beside him in relief.
He put his arm on the back of the bench behind me. “Almost as nice a view as in Berkeley, right?” he said, pointing downhill with his other hand.
“Mmmmm,” I agreed. “We’ve lived in so many parts of the world—this one really isn’t the worst.”
“Better than Oberammergau?” he asked.
“What?” I moved away from him in shock.
He laughed. “Whether he’ll come by way of Oberammergau or by way of Unterammergau or whether he’ll come at all isn’t certain,” he said, but he said it in the German wording of the little folk song that was the puzzle I’d set as a barrier, about a boy called Hans going to see his girlfriend Liesl. Ob er aber über Oberammergau oder aber über Unterammergau oder ob er überhaupt nicht kommt, ist nicht gewiss. He laughed. “Are all German folk songs such tongue twisters? Dream Lottie wanted me to sing it, but then she said it was okay anyway. Hey, don’t look at me as if you were horrified, Liv—did you really think I wouldn’t work it out? After you gave me so many helpful hints? Heut’ kommt der Hans zu mir, freut sich die Liesl.… Did you see that funny video on YouTube, the guy in lederhosen with the mandolin? I’ve thrown myself away.…”
“Then you knew the answer all along?” I asked indignantly.
“Not all along. Only once I typed ‘Hans’ and ‘nicht gewiss’ into the search engine.” He frowned. “Why do I suddenly get the feeling I’m that millipede you met in Hyderabad? I wish you could see your shocked expression.”
I didn’t have to. I really was shocked. And disappointed. And furious. “What’s the idea?” I cried. “Pretending to me that … and then simply going behind my back and…”
Henry leaned back. “Why are you getting so upset? I only solved your puzzle. I thought you wanted me to.”
“Wanted you to?” I glared at him angrily. “Have you lost your marbles? What have you watched me doing in dreams? What have you done to me?”
“I haven’t done anything,” he said, sounding injured. “I didn’t even go through that door.”
“How else would you know about the millipede?”
“Lottie told me. She likes talking about you. I know that you hate to eat bananas, you stopped believing in Santa Claus when you were three, and you always start crying at the same place in Finding Nemo.”
“Lottie?”
“The dream Lottie.” He sighed. “I’m afraid we’ll have to sit out that formation waltz if we don’t want to make idiots of ourselves.”
“So you haven’t been visiting my dreams on the sly?” My fury was subsiding as quickly as it had developed.
He sighed again and shook his head. “No, I haven’t. Ask dream Lottie. I was good and stayed outside the door waiting for you. But you never turned up.” The look in his gray eyes was honest.
“Sorry,” I said remorsefully. “And I’m sorry you were left waiting. It somehow all got to be too much for me. These dreams are so confusing. You begin to doubt your own sound human reason. And I hate it when they throw up more and more questions and there are never any answers.”
“Oh yes? How about psychology and science?” he asked ironically. “Didn’t you say there’s an entirely rational explanation for dreams?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I said it’s about as-yet-unexplored fields of psychology. And to be honest, it’s not the dreams that give me such headaches—it’s not even mysterious creatures rustling in corridors.”
“But?”
“But what really happened. And what hasn’t happened yet.” Now it was my turn to sigh. “People who seriously believe in demons give me a headache.”
“You mean Arthur?”
I nodded. “You may not think that he wanted Tom Holland dead, but I’m sure he did. He thinks the demon cleared Tom out of the way for him. And the reason why he goes on with all this conjuring-up-demons stuff isn’t because he’s uncertain and scared. He goes on with it because he really does want to liberate the demon from the underworld. He’s genuinely passionate about the whole thing—you must have noticed that yourself.”
There was a flicker in his eyes. “I’ll admit that he’s changed since we’ve been playing this game. And the Anabel situation is wearing him out. But he’s not a bad person.”
No, maybe not bad, but possibly in the midst of going crazy. “Anabel hinted that she wasn’t unfaithful to Arthur with Tom Holland, but someone else.” I hesitated, but then I said it all the same. I simply had to be sure. “The Tittle-Tattle blog said you and Anabel got on well, and if it wasn’t Tom…”
Henry’s eyebrows rose. “Are you suggesting that I had a relationship with Anabel?” There was utter disbelief in his voice. “Do you really think I’m someone who’d get involved with his friend’s girlfriend like that?”
Did I? No, not really. On the other hand, Anabel was incredibly attractive; what boy wouldn’t be tempted? “All right, no,” I admitted. “I do believe you. But you were on the same flight as us, and I thought…” Okay, maybe I ought not to do so much thinking.
“I helped Anabel move to Switzerland.” He shook his head. “I was worried about her. She more or less went to pieces after Tom’s death, and then there was what happened to her dog.…”
Children’s voices came from somewhere; two little boys chased past us with a football and disappeared behind a group of trees. I watched them go.
“Arthur’s your friend,” I said. “And you think you know him well. But are you really sure of what goes on inside his head? The way he appointed himself head demon conjuror as if it were perfectly natural—what does he think will happen when that last seal is broken? Does he talk to the rest of you about it?”
“I … all Arthur himself wants is for this to be over at last,” said Henry. But I realized that he wasn’t certain.
He looked thoughtfully down at the city. Suddenly I was sorry we’d talked about it. We should just have gone on kissing. I hesitantly put out my hand and stroked his hair. I’d been wanting to do that for so long. Considering the way it stood out wildly from his head, it felt quite soft.
He immediately turned back to me.
“You have rather lovely eyes,” I said softly.
A smile spread over his face. “And everything about you is rather lovely,” he replied, and he would certainly have kissed me again if, at that very moment, Mia and Daisy Dawn hadn’t suddenly been there in front of us, as if they’d materialized out of the ground.
“We’re going to let the balloons go now!” said Daisy Dawn, and Mia bleated like a sheep. “Baaaa.”
Henry and I didn’t say anything to each other on the way back, but about halfway he firmly took my hand, and a strong, totally irrational feeling of happiness took me over. It had really been the best birthday of all time.
But without those black thoughts in my head, it would have been even better. Much better.
The sun was quite low in the sky, bathing everything in warm, golden light, and I remembered the Berkeley dream again. And how, that night, Henry had said, It’s in dreams more than anywhere else that you get to know people best—along with all their weaknesses and their secrets.
Suddenly it was clear as day what I must do next. There was a perfectly good way of finding out what went on inside Arthur’s head. I just had to steal something from him first.
And declare my abstinence from dreaming over.