Page 2 of Skalterra By Nightmare (The Skalterra Duology #1)

Sharp fire in my belly brought me to the waking world, upright and with one arm outstretched in a desperate attempt at self-defense. For a moment, the searing, gut-wrenching pain lingered, but then it dissipated into nothing more than the ghost of a dull ache.

A sleepy hiss issued from the foot of my bed, and I strained against the early morning dark to make out the shapeless form of Jonquil where she curled up in the folds of my quilt.

It had been a dream.

A weird, terrible dream that I couldn’t quite shake but had escaped all the same.

I fell back against my pillow in shaky relief, but jolted up when I found my sheets wet with cool sweat.

Nice. Night sweats. An early sign of leukemia.

“You don’t have leukemia,”

I mumbled to myself as one hand fumbled for my phone. I needed to check the internet if obnoxiously vivid dreams about blue hair and Grimguards, whatever a Grimguard might be, were also signs of blood cancer.

My free hand found its familiar resting place on my cheek as I waited for the search results to populate the screen. The feeling of eyelashes between my fingertips usually helped to calm my nerves, but the memory of the long lashes I’d had in my dream stayed my wandering fingers. I knew I’d pulled them out far too many times to ever hope to achieve that kind of length again, but still. I could dream.

After the internet assured me that I was probably okay, I swung my legs over the side of the bed to stretch. It was only just past three AM, but maybe I’d get a head start on chores in the shop. Even if I could fall back asleep, I definitely didn’t want to risk falling back into the same nightmare.

Jonquil’s flat face was fixed in what looked like a permanent glare, but the look she gave me when I flicked on the lights was extra icy. The poor thing wasn’t yet used to sharing the guest room above the shop, and she clearly saw being awake before sunrise to be an affront to her Persian nature.

“Can cats smell cancer?”

I asked her, pulling my hair into a bun and exposing the undercut at the base of my head. Disguising my neurotic hair pulling habit as a trendy haircut was one of my more recent strokes of genius.

“You would tell me if I had cancer, wouldn’t you?”

Jonquil jumped off the bed to hide in the dark shadows beneath it.

“That’s fine,”

I called after her.

“Let me rot. We both know you want the room to yourself again.”

I tiptoed across uneven floorboards in the hall, trying not to wake Gams. I’d thought getting out of the dusty bedroom might make me feel farther from the dream, but its remnants hung off me. The distant orange glow of the rising sun through the windows that overlooked the street looked too much like the arcing balls of orange that had destroyed the parapet. The dark, narrow staircase that led down to the shop felt too much like the spiraling steps of the turret.

And the light spilling out from under the door to the shop looked too much like I wasn’t the first one awake.

“Gams?”

I asked the empty shop aisles as I pushed my way inside. The lights of early morning fishermen twinkled out in the harbor through the massive windows that Gams refused to replace—no matter how much they drove up heating and cooling costs.

Knick-knacks and bare-essential groceries lined the shelves, and as I traipsed through them, I noticed Gams had added to the growing collection of painted ceramic chickens that she kept front and center near the entrance. Near the back of the shop, meanwhile, the glow under the basement door told me she was busy in her workshop, toiling away to bring even more chickens to the shelves.

“Gams?”

I asked again, pushing open the basement door.

“Did you sleep in again?”

Gams called back. She appeared from around the corner at the base of the wooden staircase. Her silver and gray hair was pulled back, and her massive glasses magnified her eyes. The blue glaze on her hands confirmed she’d been painting more chickens.

“It’s not even four yet,”

I laughed.

“Like I said,”

she tutted.

“Sleeping in. Stay there, I’m coming up.”

I stepped aside as she hurried up the steps with surprising agility for a woman her age. The fly-away hairs from her bun caught the glow of the workshop lights behind her, and she grinned wide, pushing the shoebox she carried into my arms.

“Add those to the shelf, please.”

“All blue?”

I stared down at the ceramic chickens in the box, each painted in different shades and patterns of blue.

“Von Leer colors! For luck!”

She beamed, going to wash her hands in the sink behind the ice-cream station.

“Speaking of, any news yet?”

I looked at the chickens with new, bitter distaste. I’d rather be back on the exploding parapet in my dream than talk about school.

“I wouldn’t know. Your wifi is so bad they could’ve emailed me a week ago, and it still won’t have loaded in my inbox.”

Gams looked at me with scandal in her eyes.

“My wifi is fine. Your phone is the problem.”

“I would show you your online reviews of customers saying otherwise, but they won’t load for some reason.”

I set the last chicken on the shelf by the front door.

“But no, I haven’t heard from Von Leer.”

Graduation had only been two weeks ago. Summer was still young. There was still time for Von Leer University to take me off the waitlist, but my hopes weren’t high. With every passing day of continued silence from the admissions office, they sunk ever lower.

Mom and Gams had both insisted on me accepting the offer my safety school had sent me, but I’d rather take the year off and reapply. I only got to go to college once, and Von Leer had the best biochemistry program on the west coast.

More importantly, they also had the best geophysics program, which was what I was actually interested in, but geophysicists were something of a taboo in our tiny family thanks to my father.

“Their loss,”

Gams sniffed, now restocking the cereal selection. It was a favorite aisle of the touring families who came through Keel Watch Harbor.

“Though I suppose if you don’t get in, that’s an extra year of free labor I get from you.”

That was a joke. I hoped. Gams had told me I was getting paid, though I felt bad taking money from my grandmother.

“I don’t know how they wouldn’t take me.”

I grabbed the broom from behind the register.

“My application essay was textbook.”

“The ‘absentee father’ bit doesn’t work, dear, when the school is on said absentee father’s lecture circuit.”

“Then that rules out just about every college of any caliber!”

I growled.

“Maybe, but he’s only an alumnus of one of them, and that’s the one you’re trying to impress.”

“And maybe it was my bravado at calling him out on being a deadbeat dad that got me waitlisted instead of going straight into their reject pile.”

Gams sighed and beckoned for me to stoop lower so she could kiss my cheek.

“Absentee father or no, they’re missing out on a bright student like you. If I ran a school, I’d admit you for sure. Even if you do sleep in.”

I looked at the clock behind the register. It still wasn’t four.

“Are you usually up this early?” I asked.

“Prime chicken painting time.”

Gams winked.

“Plus, Teddy will be by with bagels soon. I made sure to tell him to bring you one. He’s such a nice young man.”

I snorted. Teddy was well into his forties, if not fifties, already.

“Thanks.”

I leaned against the register, checking my email again.

It was no wonder I’d had weird dreams last night. The stress of waiting to hear from Von Leer was weighing on me, and after everything that had happened graduation night, I was in need of some good news.

Teddy did eventually come by with spare bagels from his shop down the street, and while the man would never dream of charging Gams, she tipped him with her newest favorite chicken. He took it happily, pocketing it in his puffy vest. I wondered how many of her chickens he already had in his bagel shop.

It was a slow morning, but Tuesdays usually were, since most tourists came through on weekends. Of course, we still got the occasional stragglers searching for Keel Watch Harbor hoodies. The cool ocean air tended to catch tourists off guard, and they were always happy to shell out a few extra bucks if it meant staying warm.

I was refreshing my email again, hoping that maybe it was an issue of wifi and not the Von Leer University admissions team. It gave me something to focus on, at least. The lingering feelings of doom and stress from my nightmare had faded a bit with the rising sun, but I rubbed the spot below my sternum where the old man had run me through.

“Wren Warrender, are you there?”

I looked up at the sound of my name, but the only people in the shop were a young, pregnant couple poking through the hoodie selection on the far wall.

“Gams?”

I asked, but she’d long since returned to her workshop in the basement. Jonquil came bounding down the apartment staircase, chirping with each step. She peeked out at me from the stairwell.

“You’re not Gams.”

She meowed, as if offended I didn’t see her as an equally important figure of authority in the shop, and went to find Gams in the basement.

“Blue?”

I jumped at the voice, thinking back to the Grimguard and his dumb nickname for me on battlements.

But it wasn’t a Grimguard standing in the doorway of the shop. It was a young man, roughly my age, holding a ceramic chicken in his hand.

“Can I help you?”

His smile was crooked and boyish and stupid under his messy blond hair. My eyes narrowed at his hoodie wit.

“Von Leer University”

plastered over the university’s coat of arms on his chest.

“I’m looking for Ethel. Is she downstairs?”

He set the chicken back on the shelf.

“Basement is for employees only.”

I was being difficult on purpose, if only to punish him for his offensive attire.

“She might be up in a bit, or I can give her a message for you.”

“That’s okay.”

He pulled his hoodie off as he crossed to the ice-cream station.

“I’ll let her paint in peace. She’ll see me when she comes up.”

He went to stand behind the ice-cream station, and my warning o.

“employees only”

died on my lips when he pulled on an apron with an embroidered name tag.

I didn’t even have an apron with my name embroidered on it.

The pregnant couple brought a couple of hoodies and a small collection of chickens up to the counter. I tried to smile as I wrapped them in tissue paper, but the young man, my apparent coworker, grinned at me with an impish smile from behind the couple.

Neither Gams nor Mom had warned me about a coworker.

The young couple left, leaving me alone with the boy.

“I take it Ethel didn’t tell you I was starting today?”

“That’s Miss Warrender to you.”

I pressed my lips together, suddenly a bit more sympathetic to Jonquil’s plight of having me invade her living space.

“And if it’s your first day, how’d you get that apron?”

“She hasn’t been Miss Warrender to me in years.”

The boy laughed. He was laughing at me. He was mocking me.

“And this apron is old. I’ve worked for Ethel the last three summers.”

“Fan of Von Leer?”

My eyes darted to his hoodie hanging on the wall hook behind him.

“Student. Just wrapped up freshman year. Go Vikings.”

Of course he was a student. It was a good school. It attracted all kinds of kids, but why did it seem the only ones to get in were the people I actively disliked? The geophysicist father I’d never met, Linsey Harper, and now this guy…

Not that Linsey Harper would be going there in the fall, and I didn’t really have any grounds to hate my surprise coworker other than the fact that it was easier to dislike new people and rob them of the chance of disliking me first.

“You’ll mess up your make-up if you do that.”

Gams came out of the basement, drying freshly washed hands on her apron. My hand snapped away from my face where my fingers had been inching towards my eyelashes.

“I wasn’t touching them.”

It was a lie. I knew it. She knew it. She nodded approvingly anyways.

“And you!”

The grin that broke across her face deepened the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth yet somehow made her look younger.

“Returned after all these months! Are you smarter yet? And when’s that lazy cousin of yours getting in?”

“Don’t worry, Riley’s on his way. I know he’s your favorite.”

The young man with the stupid smile stepped out from behind his ice-cream barricade to hug Gams, and my dislike for him grew. I wasn’t just an only child, but an only grandchild too. I didn’t like suddenly having to share my grandmother.

Even Jonquil seemed to like him, trotting after Gams with her fluffy tail held high.

“I take it you’ve introduced yourself to Wren already.”

Gams released him, and he turned that infuriating, quirked smile back to me.

“Sort of.”

He dipped his head.

“It’s Liam.”

“Teddy’s nephew.”

Gams patted Liam’s shoulder, which was eye-level for her.

“Why scoop bagels when you can scoop ice-cream?”

“You shouldn’t be scooping bagels at all.”

I scoffed.

“If you’re going to spoon all the bread out of a bagel to make room for more cream cheese, just eat cream cheese.”

“Exactly.”

Liam nodded, and I fumed inwardly. I pretended to recount the cash in the register while Liam recounted his freshman year to an enraptured Gams. As much as I loved my grandmother, I was secretly relieved when she disappeared back to her basement.

I couldn’t stand the absolute betrayal of it all. Jonquil took pity on me, and brushed up against my calf in a rare display of affection.

I would have to learn to stomach Liam. It wasn’t like I could stay at home alone while Mom traveled abroad. Not after what Linsey had done.

My palms turned sweaty, and my chest tightened.

Linsey was far away. I was never going to see her again, even if I did make it off the waitlist. I’d seen to that personally, whether that had been my intention or not.

“Wren Warrender.”

It was that voice again. Gravely, old, and familiar, but not in a good way.

“What?”

I blurted, scanning the empty shop for the source of the voice. Liam looked back at me, confused.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

I knew I’d heard it this time, the voice saying my name. Maybe I was overtired from my night of poor sleep, but I didn’t like the concern on Liam’s face.

“It’s nothing, I—”

My phone screen lit up next to the register, and it was as if the uneven floorboards had dropped away, leaving me suspended in the salty, dusty air of the shop.

I had an email from the admissions office of Von Leer University.

“Wren Warrender, I know you’re there.”

“Wren?”

Liam asked, just as the voice said my full name a third time.

“Leave me alone!”

I snapped, more at the voice in my head than Liam.

“Ah,”

it replied.

“I knew I’d found you.”

The last thing I saw was Liam lunging across the shop floor to catch me.