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again, but instead of it feeling like a violation, it was strangely intimate. Like he was bypassing her skull and whispering into the folds of her brain. She shivered, but the heatand nearness of Temistocles’s body was a good antidote to the terror she was feeling.
    Who are “they”?
she thought.
    â€”The Flood. The bad guys, as you humans like to say. Always looking to put things in perfect little black-and-white boxes.
    There was a tremendous crash above them, and then the rush of running water filled Lizbeth’s ears.
    What the—
Lizbeth started to think, but then Temistocles removed his hand from her mouth and leaned down, pressing his lips to her ear.
    â€œYou’ll wake up with the book in your hands. Hold on to it tightly, my little half-caste love,” he whispered before covering her mouth with his lips.
    The rush of water, metric tons of the freezing stuff, hit them both at once—that and the kiss taking Lizbeth’s breath away.
    Temistocles?!
she thought frantically.
    â€”We will meet again. I promise you that.
    Lizbeth opened her eyes to find she was underwater. She could see nothing for the moment . . . but then something bone white caught her attention and she screamed, water filling her mouth and lungs.
    She was holding on to a skeleton. One clothed in a long, green leather coat.
    *   *   *
    Lizbeth woke from the nightmare feeling trapped, her mind spinning faster and faster as it tried to come up with a way to escape the lockdown her body had begun in its sleep.
    I will not have an episode,
she thought, anger shooting through her.
    It was as if there were two parts of her, both acting of their own accord. Her brain was cognizant of everything and wanted to stay engaged in the real world—
save me from the dreamlands, where poor Temistocles is only a skeleton
—while at the first sign of trouble, her body battened down the hatches and went into survival mode.
    This problem had started when she was a small child. Not long after her mother died. Now just thinking about the time “before,” when her beautiful young mother had loved and protected her, made her shut down. It was hard to believe, but somehow the good memories were more difficult to handle than the bad ones.
    No, you can’t hide the past away anymore,
Lizbeth thought.
If you want to stop all of this and break the cycle, then you have to remember. You have to embrace the good times. Own them and break the spell they hold over you.
    Remembering was so painful she could hardly stand it. But to remember her mother, and the good life she’d had before the institution, was the most important thing—
    This was when reality intruded, and she felt Daniela’s bare hand hovering inches above her face.

Arrabelle

    A rrabelle woke late, dark dreams dogging her sleep. She felt unrested, her brain lost in a fog, eyes bleary. The last few weeks had been painful for her. So hard to process that she found her dreams doing the bulk of the lifting. Because when it came to rebalancing her emotional state, she just couldn’t bear to deal with it in her waking hours.
    All her life she’d prided herself on being immune to emotions. Not that she didn’t feel them—she did—she just didn’t let them control her life or influence how she saw the world. But ever since Eleanora’s death, her ability to remain calm in any situation had begun to unravel.
    It started with small things. Like burning her hand on her espresso maker and knocking its aluminum pot over in anger, or dropping a carton of milk onto the tiled floor, or stubbing her toe on the leg of the kitchen table and crumpling to the ground in tears.
    It was adolescent angst behavior. Not at all appropriate for an adult woman. But she found she couldn’t help herself. She was a pot boiling over on the stove, a totally out-of-controlemotional wreck—and the poor sleep she was getting