Read Dreams Underfoot: A Newford Collection for Free Online Page A

didn’t have the time to appreciate the contact of her skin against his. He wanted to say, this is what you were looking for, lady, but things weren’t so cut and dried now. Ellen wasn’t some nameless cipher anymore—just a part of a crowd that he could sneer at—and she wasn’t just something he had the hots for either. She was a person, just like him. An individual. Someone he could actually relate to.
    “Can—can’t you stop it?” Ellen cried.
    The booger was getting close now. Its sewer reek was strong enough to drown out the salty tang of the ocean. It was like some-thing had died there on the beach and was now getting up and coming for them.
    Stop it? Reece thought. Maybe the thing had been created out of his frustrated anger, the way Ellen’s friend made out it could happen in that book of his, but Reece knew as sure as shit that he didn’t control the booger.

    Another wave came down upon them and Reece pushed at the sand so that it pulled them partway out from the shore on its way back out. Getting to his knees in the rimy water, he got in front of Ellen so that he was between her and the booger. Could the sucker swim?
    The booger hesitated at the water’s edge. It lifted its paws fastidi-ously from the wet sand like a cat crossing a damp lawn and relief went through Reece. When another wave came in, the booger backstepped quickly out of its reach.
    Ellen was leaning against him, face near his as she peered over his shoulder.
    “It can’t handle the water,” Reece said. He turned his face to hers when she didn’t say anything. Her clear eyes were open wide, gaze fixed on the booger. “Ellen ... ?” he began.
    “I can’t believe that it’s really there,” she said finally in a small voice.
    “But you’re the one—you said ...” He drew a little away from her so that he could see her better.
    “I know what I said,” Ellen replied. She hugged herself, trem-bling at the stir of dark wings inside her.
    “It’s just ... I wanted to believe, but ... wanting to and having it be real ...” There was a pressure in the center of her chest now, like something inside push-ing to get out. “I ...”
    The pain lanced sharp and sudden. She heard Reece gasp. Look-ing down, she saw what he had seen, a bird’s head poking gossamer from between her breasts. It was a dark smudge against the white of her swimsuit, not one of Uncle Dobbin’s parrots, but a crow’s head, with eyes like the pair she’d seen looking back at her from the mirror. Her own magic, leaving her because she didn’t believe. Because she couldn’t believe, but
    It didn’t make sense. She’d always believed. And now, with Reece’s booger standing there on the shore, how could she help but believe?
    The booger howled then, as though to underscore her thoughts. She looked to the shore and saw it stepping into the waves, crying out at the pain of the salt water on its flesh, but determined to get at them.
    To get at her. Reece’s magic, given life. While her own magic ... She pressed at the half-formed crow coming from her chest, trying to force it back in.
    “I believe, I believe,” she muttered through clenched teeth. But just like Uncle Dobbin’s assistant in Christy’s story, she could feel that swelling ache of loss rise up in her. She turned despairing eyes to Reece.
    She didn’t need a light to see the horror in his eyes—horror at the booger’s approach, at the crow’s head sticking out of her chest. But he didn’t draw away from her. Instead, he reached out and caught hold of her shoulders.
    “Stop fighting it!” he cried.
    “But—”
    He shot a glance shoreward. They were bracing themselves against the waves, but a large swell had just caught the booger and sent it howling back to shore in a tumble of limbs.
    “It was your needing proof,” he said. “Your needing to see the booger, to know that it’s real—that’s what’s making you lose it. Stop trying so hard.”
    But she knew he was right. She