Only, I froze mid-step as my eyes registered the face of the woman in the chair to the right of Eli’s dad.

My mom.

The crows had eaten the eyes from her skull, leaving behind red, raw pits. As I watched one of them dipping in for another taste, rage exploded out from me. Screaming, I lunged for the birds, all reason forgotten.

As I reached my mother’s body, a cloud of dense fog swooped down, and the world vanished. I once more found myself shrouded by smoke and mist.

“What the hell?” Eli said from some far distance.

Then just as quickly as it had vanished, the world snapped back into place.

We had returned to the tower once more.

“What are you doing, Dusty?” Eli screamed at me from a few feet away. “We have to go back. That dream was important.”

I could only stare at him, my thoughts already giving in to that powerful, obsessive need to reach the plinth and read the word. The first two letters of it seemed to sing to me, beckoning me with a power stronger than any siren. I staggered toward them, struggling against the wind.

“Take us back, Dusty,” Eli said, charging over to me.

I dropped to my knees in front of the plinth and started scratching at the space beyond the E.

Eli stooped and shouted into my ear, “Take us back!”

I flinched away from him, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. Nothing else mattered but that hidden word. Already I could see the shape of the next letter. A vertical straight line with another running horizontally out from its base. It could be an L or a Z or another E.

“If I help you do this will you take us back?” Eli said, his voice loud in my ear, but oddly distant, like the buzz of some far-off machinery. He knelt right next to me, but he might as well have been a thousand miles away. He didn’t matter.

But then he touched the plinth. I screamed, outraged by the violation. My need to defend it rose up so strong I reached out and smacked his hands away with no thought of the consequences.

The dream world disintegrated around us as agony shot through me. A second later my consciousness slammed back into my body. With a garbled cry, I slid off Eli onto the floor. I lay there, unable to move until the pain receded.

Eli rolled over on the sofa, and his face appeared above me. “I can’t believe you touched me on purpose.”

“You and me both,” I said through gritted teeth. I hadn’t done anything that stupid in a dream since my very first time. At least the madness I was under hadn’t followed me into the waking world. But what was wrong with me?

“Are you okay?” From the sound of Eli’s voice, I knew he was wondering the same thing.

I sat up, and he rolled back, making sure our heads didn’t collide. “I’m fine.”

Eli swung his legs over the edge of the sofa, moving into an upright position. He didn’t offer to help me get up, just sat there, staring at me with an expression that made me want to check my face in a mirror to make sure nothing red or hairy had sprouted there.

Vivid memories of our last dream-session came back to me, and I understood why he avoided touching me. He didn’t want the same thing to happen again. Something hot and unpleasant burned behind my eyes for a second.

I pushed myself to my feet, wiping the hair out of my face. “I’m sorry I fumbled it. We’ll try again next time.”

I turned to leave, but Eli jumped up and grabbed my hand, stopping me. It never ceased to amaze me how fast he could move, his reflexes catlike. I faced him, trying to ignore the way my pulse in my wrist danced beneath his touch. His fingers felt like heat-wrapped steel. I didn’t pull away, wondering how long he would keep holding me.

He let go the second my eyes found his.

He didn’t look away but said in a soft voice, “We need to talk about what happened.”

I shook my head.

“What’s going on with you and that stone table thing and those letters? What does B E stand for?”

I folded my arms across my chest and glared at him. “I don’t know. It’s just something I’ve been dreaming about lately.”

“But why did you manipulate the dream? We needed to stay and observe that scene in Senate Hall a helluva lot longer than we did.”

“I didn’t manipulate it. Not on purpose. It just happened.” I took a deep breath, forcing my irrational temper back inside its cage. It was just that stupid plinth affecting me again.

Eli scratched his cheek, thinking it over. “Do you suppose someone’s interfering with us?”

“I guess it’s possible.…” I exhaled, wishing I were better equipped at lying. But I couldn’t. Not about this. Not to him. “But Mr. Deverell thinks I’ve got some kind of block in my brain connected to that dream.”

Eli frowned, his eyebrows drawing closer together. “A block?”

I nodded and then explained it to him.

When I finished, Eli said, “Why didn’t you take him up on the offer to help?”

I bit my lip, searching for any answer other than the truthful one—that I was afraid of anybody else seeing that word, being in that place. “I haven’t had a chance yet. But I will. I promise.”

He stared at me for several long minutes as if unsure whether or not to believe me. I wasn’t sure I believed me—only not getting help was stupid, and I knew it. I just had to get past this inexplicable impulse to protect the plinth and its hidden word.

“Okay,” Eli said. “So what do you make of what we did see in the dream?”