by Kate Moseman
She’d found Andy in the kitchen when she emerged from the bedroom in the morning. He’d greeted her warmly, handed her a cup of coffee, and returned to the table where he’d already amassed a pile of pens and stacks of scribbled-on paper.
As she turned into the school parking lot, she reflected on the fact that he’d taken what she’d said quite seriously. It was a heady sensation to be listened to. Out of habit, she flipped down the driver’s side sunshade and checked her appearance. She couldn’t help smiling at her own reflection.
What was happening to her?
Erin closed the mirror and stepped out of the car into the summer sunlight. It was already hot and would get hotter.
There were barely any cars in the parking lot. Most teachers, Erin included, took as much advantage as they could of their time away from school. It was too easy to burn out if you didn’t take time to recharge.
Her footsteps echoed in the empty outdoor hallways. She unlocked her old classroom door and stepped into the musty air of the closed-up room. There was so much to move: boxes, computers, books, and stacks upon stacks of files.
She sighed, which turned into a cough thanks to the dust, and decided to see if the school library was unlocked. She could snag a big rolling cart if she was lucky.
It looked dark inside, which wasn’t promising, and the door didn’t budge despite a hard tug. She peered through the window and banged hopefully on the door. Just as she was about to turn away, she heard a voice calling from the depths of the building.
“Hang on, I’m coming!”
A woman pushed open the door from the inside. She wore a black t-shirt with the words, “Come to the Dark Side, We Have Cookies,” emblazoned across the front over a pair of indigo jeans. Her frizzy hair escaped a messy bun held precariously in place by an old stick with a crystal stuck to the end. She looked over her stylish tortoiseshell glasses at Erin. “What are you doing here?”
“Hey, Raya,” said Erin. “I just came in to start moving my classroom.”
“Fair enough. Need a cart?”
“Yeah, a big cart would be great.”
Erin entered the library. Its soaring ceilings disappeared into darkness. A desk lamp and computer provided the only illumination. Erin’s eyes slowly adjusted as she followed Raya to a back room.
“So, what have you been up to this summer?” asked Raya. She turned on the back room lights.
Erin mentally flipped through an assortment of responses and discarded all of them. “Not much.”
Raya began rolling smaller carts out of the way to get to a larger cart. “Not much? You either need to get out more—or you’re leaving out the good stuff.”
“Actually,” said Erin, “I made a new friend.” Raya was more of a work friend than a best friend, but it felt good to open up to someone, and Raya had always been insightful, if a bit unorthodox.
Raya froze in mid-roll and looked over her shoulder at Erin. “What?”
Erin nodded.
“Is this ‘friend’ of the gentleman persuasion?”
Erin nodded again.
“You’re not on the rebound already, are you?”
Erin raised her eyebrows. “Why would you say that?”
Raya chuckled as she pushed a cart over to Erin. “I don’t know.”
“After what Mark did, I’m not exactly eager to get mixed up with someone new,” said Erin.“You want me to take care of him? I know swamps where his body will never be found.” She nodded sagely at Erin. “Except maybe by an alligator.”
Erin was pretty sure Raya was joking—but with Raya, it wasn’t always easy to tell. “It’s okay. Really.”
“All right. You just say the word.” She moved the scattered carts back into place. “So what’s he like, this new friend?”
Erin weighed how much to tell the quirky librarian. “He’s—nice.”
Raya turned off the back room lights and shut the door. “They’re all nice, baby, until they’re not.”
They returned to the library proper and sat down in two reading chairs facing each other.
“I know,” said Erin. “But he’s different. Really different.”
“Like, good-looking? Is he smoking hot? Because that might make it worthwhile.”
Erin laughed. “Yes. No. I don’t know. You’re making me lose my train of thought.” Erin dropped her head into her hands.
“Sorry. Go on. No, wait a second.” Raya leapt up and crossed the library to her personal mini-fridge, retrieved a soda, and snagged a bag of cookies from the cabinet above the fridge. She carried the goodies back and plopped into her seat across from Erin. “Okay, go on.”
“He’s just a friend.”
“Sure, sure. Tell me about Mr. New Hot Friend.” Raya popped a cookie in her mouth and chased it with a swig of soda. “Your family know about him?”
Erin twisted her necklace and looked down at the floor. “Definitely not.”
Raya grinned. “Oh, not bringing the family in on this one, huh? Damn, he must be something special.”
“He wanted to help me move my classroom.”
Raya sat up. “Seriously? Why isn’t he here today?”
“I guess I could bring him in … ”
“Hell, yeah, you will! I gotta meet this guy.”
Erin ignored the tiny voice whispering that this might not be the best plan. After all, moving a whole classroom would be exceptionally difficult for one person. Andy’s help would make it much easier.
“We could even have lunch together tomorrow,” said Raya.
“Lunch?”
“You bet,” said Raya around a mouthful of cookie. “That way I can get to know Mr. New Hot Friend, see if I think he’s any good for you.”
“He’s not my new hot friend. And if you call him that tomorrow, I’ll die. I really will.”
“Okay, okay. Mr. New Hot Friend is our little secret.” Raya raised her soda bottle like she was making a toast.
“He’s not a secret! And he’s not hot.” Erin felt a blush creep over her cheeks.
Raya rolled her eyes. “Fine. He’s not hot, he’s not a secret, and he’s definitely not a rebound.” She brushed the crumbs off her hands and stood. “I gotta get back to the stacks. See you tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” Erin agreed. It was just lunch.
What could go wrong?
8
Erin opened the front door to find the living room transformed.
Andy, with a marker in each hand and one tucked behind his left ear, stood in the center of the chaos.
“You’re home! Don’t mind the mess. It’s part of my process,” he said.
Erin froze just inside the door, unable to take a single step. Papers covered the entire floor. Posters lined every open wall space. A stack of binders teetered on the coffee table.
“Oops,” he said, realizing that she couldn’t move. He hastily gathered up an armful to clear a path for her.
“Thanks,” she said. “What is all this?”
“The Plan.” He gestured grandly, waving the markers through the air. The one tucked behind his ear fell out due to the vigorous motion. He picked it up and balanced it precariously on the stack of binders.
It immediately rolled off and fell to the floor.
Nancy Drew wandered over and sniffed it, then lost interest and sat down on a stack of paper.
Erin picked her way over to the couch. “Did you even sleep last night, Andy?”
“Sleep is for mortals,” he said, adding a few underlines and messy star shapes to a poster titled “CAR-RELATED MISHAPS.”
“You sat up all night?”
“Something like that.” He stuck a fluorescent Post-It note to a poster labeled “UNWANTED PIZZA DELIVERY.”
She stretched out on the couch, put her feet up, and let her eyes close. “I guess demo
ns don’t dream,” she murmured to herself, recalling the strange half-dream she’d had the night of the curse.
“Nope. But I can visit other people’s,” he said casually.
Erin’s eyes flew open. “Really?”
“Yup.” He circled an entry on the “EMBARRASSING MAIL ORDER CATALOGS” poster.
She shifted her position to look more carefully at another poster. “What are ‘Food and Drink Surprises’?”
“You know. Salt in the sugar bowl. Cool Whip in the mayo jar. Then you use the mayo you took out of the jar to replace the cream in some doughnuts.”
Erin nearly gagged at the thought. “That’s hideous.”
“Isn’t it?”
“You are the Michaelangelo of mayhem.”
He acknowledged the compliment with a flourish. “Thank you.”
“Speaking of mayhem, it turns out that my classroom was way worse than I thought. I could use a hand tomorrow, if you’re free.”
He sat on the opposite end of the couch. “You don’t mind if I’m seen?”
“Do you have anything else you can wear?”
Andy feigned outrage. “And abandon my signature outfit?”
“Maybe something a little less conspicuous.”
“If you insist.”He stood up and placed his hands on his shoulders, then ran them slowly over his chest and down his abdomen to the tops of his thighs.
Erin sat up, her gaze tracking the movement of his hands. “What are you doing?”
“Exactly what you asked.”
The fabric of his jacket rippled like a tilted lenticular image, changing from deep red to a professorial brown corduroy, spreading downward until his trousers also transitioned from waist to cuff.
Erin closed her mouth, which had been hanging open. “That’s … very nice. But maybe a little formal for moving boxes in ninety degree weather?”
He cocked his head at her and ran his hands down his torso again, holding eye contact the entire time. This time, his ensemble rippled into a buttoned chambray shirt tucked into artfully distressed blue jeans and a jet-black leather belt.
Erin’s mouth went dry. “Nice,” she croaked.
He smirked. “I’m glad you approve.” He rolled up his sleeves and turned back to his posters.
She felt the urge to do something for him, since he had clearly made such an effort for her. “Are you hungry? Do demons get hungry?”
Andy chuckled. “Not as a physical need, no—but appetite is a sensation of the mind, and in that sense I have hunger to spare.”
“Can I fix you something?”
“Not on your life. You’ve been moving boxes all day. Lie down. I’ll get us something.”
“No, really, I don’t mind.” Erin started up from the couch.
He whirled around and stared her down. “Sit, mortal, before you overexert yourself.”
“I don’t know whether to be insulted or grateful,” said Erin.
“As you please,” he said with a shrug. “As long as you stay put.” He left the living room for the kitchen.
She lay back and listened to the pleasantly domestic sounds of his movements.
“Do you have a tray?” he called.
“In the cabinet on the lower right.”
She heard the cabinet door opening and the rasp of the tray being extracted, followed by a thump.
“Got it—oh.”
“What is it?”
“Something fell out of the cabinet. No big deal.”
Erin jumped off the couch and ran to the kitchen with Nancy Drew belatedly skittering in her wake. She walked in to find Andy closing a white, heavily decorated, oversized photo album.
He shoved it back in the cabinet and quickly slammed the cabinet closed. “See? No big deal.”
“You saw it,” she said.
He stood up and fussed with the fruit on the cutting board. “Saw what?”
“For a demon, you’re a terrible liar.”
Andy loaded the food onto the tray and carried it into the living room without saying anything. He set the tray on the coffee table and sat on the couch without making eye contact.
She followed him and sat on the couch next to him. “It’s okay.” She caught his gaze with her own. “You can talk about it. It’s not like I haven’t seen it before.”
“That was your wedding photo album,” he said.
“It was,” said Erin.
“That woman. Next to you. In your wedding photos. She was at the church yesterday.”
“She was.”
“She was sitting with your ex-husband at church.”
Erin nodded.
“That was Genevieve? One of your bridesmaids?”
Erin nodded again.
“Your friend?”
“Not anymore.”
Andy picked up Nancy Drew, who had followed them into the living room, and held her close. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“Was she your—best friend?” he asked.
“I thought so at the time,” said Erin.
“Oh, Hell,” said Andy. He gently patted Nancy Drew, his hands gliding over her furry back. “Would you like me to make all her hair fall out?”
Erin made a noise like a cross between a sob and a laugh.
“Sign her up on a hundred telemarketing lists?”
“No,” Erin said. She couldn’t help giggling.
“Come on, work with me. Even Nancy wants to help,” he said, holding Nancy Drew up.
Nancy looked about as helpful as a small elderly dog could look.
“I don’t know,” said Erin, sounding doubtful. “Mosquitoes? She hates mosquitoes.”
“See, I knew you could do it!”
Erin managed a half-smile. “It shouldn’t bother me so much. But sometimes it’s hard to stop thinking about it. I can’t even escape it in my sleep.”
“You dream about it?” asked Andy.
“All the time. Like a broken record.”
Andy carefully set Nancy Drew down.“That’s unfortunate.”
“Tell me about it.” Erin plucked a strawberry from the tray and took a bite.
“Have you ever tried lucid dreaming?”
Erin swallowed the bite of strawberry. “What’s lucid dreaming?”
“Lucid dreaming is when you become aware that you’re dreaming. Sometimes, you can even control your dreams.”
“What good would that do?” She selected a piece of cheese to follow the strawberry.
Andy’s eyes lit up. “Let’s see. Well, instead of being tormented by scenes of the past, you could find yourself equipped with an armload of tomatoes to throw at anyone who displeased you in the dream. Or you could just banish them from the dream entirely.”
Erin laughed. “That sounds fun. I can’t imagine being able to do that, though.”
“Maybe I can help.”
His last statement, so casually delivered, hung in the air like a promise.
9
That night, Erin pulled on her pajamas and stepped into her slippers. The red wine had disappeared in the wash. She folded down one side of the bed and fluffed her pillow before dimming the lights in the room, leaving the bathroom light on and the door ajar for a trickle of illumination.
She found Andy on the other side of the house. He sat on the floor of the spare bedroom surrounded by stacks of books he had collected from around the house.
“Hey,” said Erin.
Andy lowered the book he was reading—The Screwtape Letters—and looked up. “Hey.” He placed the book on a stack and stood up gracefully.
“I was going to turn in.”
He approached her softly, as if she were a deer and likely to bolt. “Are you sure about this?”
Erin nodded. “I’m sure.”
“It can be a little strange, going lucid for the first time.”
“I can imagine. But I’m willing to try anything.” Erin paused. “How will you do it?”
“Do what?”
“How will you enter my dreams? What happens?”
“When you’re fast asleep and dreaming, I’ll know. Then I’ll close my eyes and follow you into the dream. I think it’s not unlike what mortals call meditation.” He laid his hand on her cheek as if he were soothing a fevered child. “You’ll see me as a natural part of your dream.”
“Will you have to be in the room with me?”
He lowered his hand. “Being nearby is good enough.”
“That’s good,” said Erin. “I’m not sure I could fall asleep with someone staring at me.”
Andy chuckled. “Goodnight, Erin.”
“Goodnight, Andy.”
Erin returned to her bedroom alone, oddly aware of Andy’s presence even though he was on the other side of the house. She crawled into the bed and drew the covers up.
Falling asleep had been difficult for a long time. Waiting for a demon to show up in her dreams should have made it worse. In a way, the anticipation did make it hard to fall asleep, somewhat like trying to fall asleep the night before a big vacation. Still, it was a far better sensation than the angst-filled nights of tossing and turning and going over every terrible event in her mind until she dropped, exhausted, into a sleep filled with torturous dreams.
She rolled over and sighed. Random images flitted through her mind.
The bed, the room, and the world around faded from her awareness.
She found herself standing alone in the living room of the darkened house. She shivered.
Andy’s voice floated over her shoulder. “Erin,” he said.
Erin turned to look for him. “Andy?”
He appeared out of the darkness, a faint corona of red highlighting him all the way around, even to the tips of his wings, which he extended to full length before folding them behind him like an eagle. “Do you remember? You’re dreaming now.”
“But it feels so real,” said Erin. She looked around and realized that beyond the living room, the scene faded into utter blackness. “This is really weird.”