Call Spirits in Your Past **Book Two**

Chapter 45 (Monday)

Verspri had told everyone he'd met Ve-Are, but nobody totally believed him, except possibly Kessa, since he appeared out of thin air in front of her. He could nearly believe the whole thing had been a dream except for that incident; it'd been three days since Ve-Are had spoken to him.

Though, Verspri kept having a dream, waking him in the middle of the night, about the same turquoise beach, clear waves frozen in place, sand falling sideways instead of up.

He rolled over, staring into the darkness. "Come find me!" she'd said. And Verspri had searched. He went back to the transporter room, a few times, finding a crack in the outer wall that made the trip shorter--and less dangerous, with the ruined gymnasium--but she was never there. The mysterious hole he'd crawled through never reappeared either, and he didn't trust himself to fiddle with the control table without accidentally stranding himself on some random turquoise beach, or the giant field.

He also returned to the academics building where he and Tara had found the bunny hat, but left empty-handed and covered in dust.

At least Isaac had finally found a shower stall with running warm water, even though he'd ran a quarter way across campus to some other district's dorms to find it.

Sitting up in the dark, Verspri silently slipped out of his sleeping bag. Kessa had located a storage closet full of them in one spy classroom, and Verspri didn't question it. They got to sleep in sleeping bags instead of on the floor, so who cared why a spy classroom had sleeping bags?

He crept past Razón, into the hallway. Hardly a few steps later, Segundo burst out beside him in a shower of blinding sparks. "You really shouldn't be taking walks in the middle of the night," his clone crossed his arms.

Verspri sighed, glancing between his clone and the door. "I know. I should be sleeping in the middle of the night, but since that's not happening..." he motioned vaguely outside, to the moon faintly glimmering through the cracks in the bricks.

Segund raised an eyebrow. "You decided a walk was a perfectly safe idea instead?"

Verspri didn't really care. "It's not like it's any less safe than during the day," he shrugged, approaching the exit.

"Actually, you could miss a hole and fall into it."

Verspri kept walking. Segundo sighed, but jogged to catch up with him, glancing around nervously. Verspri just focused on the sidewalk, really only a width of space slightly less gray than his other surroundings.

"Do you think the desert will cover everything?" Segundo whispered.

"Eventually," Verspri kept walking, turning left wherever the sidewalk forked.

"But do you think," Segundo muttered, "the grass and trees will stay here?"

Verspri tried to recall what the grass had looked like the day before, with little success. "Isn't the grass mostly dead already?"

"Beneath all the ash and dust, I think it's perfectly fine."

Verspri gave him a puzzled glance, not sure if Segundo could make it out in the darkness. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Segundo's silhouette shrugged. "I don't know. What does taking walks in the middle of the night have to do with anything?"

Verspri stopped in his tracks, and Segundo did too, nearly simultaneously. "It's called insomnia. Because of this dream that won't leave me alone."

"That beach Ve-Are took you too in her strange world?" Segundo asked.

"Yes," Verspri said, "and then I keep waking up as Ve-Are's about to take me somewhere else, except I never get to see where the somewhere else is."