by Dima Zales
I make a mental note to check on what The Mirage’s casino looks like. “As soon as Chester goes to sleep, I’ll check those alibis.”
“Until then, you’re to stay in my quarters so I can keep an eye on you,” Kain says. “We’re not going to discuss any of this, in case your paranoia is right. You’re also not going to eat or drink anything. We want to avoid any unfortunate accidents.”
I solemnly nod and wake us up.
Opening his eyes, Kain jackknifes from the bed and heads toward his dining area without a second glance.
Fighting the urge to lie down on the fuzzy coverlet, I follow him and plop onto a barstool by the kitchen counter. He’s already on his laptop and ignores me completely.
I take out my phone and look up the casino to note a few key details. Then I put my phone away and just sit there, too tired to do anything else. After a while, the last remnants of adrenaline trickle out of my system, and the strongest drowsiness I’ve ever experienced hits me.
I jump up and begin to pace—but I still feel on the verge of falling asleep.
This is why humans on this world use sleep deprivation as torture. It is. I’d do anything to get some shut-eye. Well, evening is only a few hours away. Maybe I could nap? If I’m lucky, it’ll be dreamless. But even if it isn’t, at this point I’m willing to face my worst nightmares just to make this feeling stop.
“Can I use your bed?” I ask, stifling a yawn.
Kain looks up from his laptop. “To sleep? What about your vice?”
I drop my gaze. “It’s been some time since I drank. There’s a chance I might be able to fall asleep—a small one, but—”
“Be my guest.” He returns his attention to the screen. “I’ll wake you when I need you.”
What a relief. I go into the bedroom, and ignoring the BDSM paraphernalia all around me, I hurl myself into the bed.
Of course, now that I’m horizontal, sleep doesn’t come—typical of how this works on vampire blood.
I give it a good attempt anyway by counting moofts.
At 5,407, Kain walks into the room. “It’s time.”
I wearily roll to my feet. “You think Chester is sleeping?”
“I know it. Do what you must,” Kain says and heads out of the room.
Without further deliberation, I touch Pom and enter the dream world.
The looft appears in front of me, turns purple, and squeals as if he’s not seen me in forever. Then again, since he’s in the dream world so much, his sense of time might be warped.
“Hey, bud,” I say as I head to the tower of sleepers. “How are things going?”
“I’m happy to see you.” He flies circles around me. “I was worried.”
My adrenaline spike must’ve affected him. As a parasite—I mean, symbiont—he gets all my hormones.
His ears turn red. “You thought that P-word again.”
“And you read my thoughts again. If you’d read them carefully, you’d know I mentally corrected myself.”
“Still,” he says grumpily. “You wouldn’t like it if I thought of you as a meanie-poo and then reminded myself that you’re just having PMS and it’s your hormones to blame.”
“I don’t even know where to start with that.” Reaching the tower, I skim the nooks for Chester. “You realize that thanks to your symbiont nature, when I have PMS, you do as well?”
Pom’s enormous eyes grow wider. “I do?”
“You’re flooded with the same hormones—and get just as cranky.”
He wiggles his ears. “I think you’re just so irritable you perceive me as cranky.”
Ignoring him, I fly over to Chester’s bed, where a cloud gathers above his head. “Puck.”
Pom sniffs the cloud. “It’s bad. Like rotten eggs.”
I reach for Chester’s forehead. “I’m going in anyway.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Sweetheart?” Chester shouts from his office. “Sweetheart, the baby is crying.”
No response.
He frowns and goes to the infant. Stopping next to the crib, he smiles at her, and the little girl stops wailing immediately. Either she’s missed her dad, or he’s using his power to increase the chances of her feeling soothed.
“I’m going to look for Mommy,” he croons. “It’s strange she didn’t hear you. Her earsies are as sensitive as the Big Bad Wolf’s.”
The baby gives him a toothless grin. He reluctantly exits the nursery and starts searching the house room by room.
“Matilda?” he calls out by the master bathroom door. “You in there?”
No reply.
He tries the handle. It’s locked. “Sweetheart, everything okay in there?”
Silence.
Frown returning, he tugs on the door handle. A strange click sounds, and the door unlocks—no doubt the probability of its doing so just got boosted.
He peers inside.
There’s a razor blade on the tile floor and water spilling over the sides of a bathtub. Reddish water.
Pom was right. This is a bad one.
Face losing all color, Chester rushes in.
In the tub lies a gorgeous woman with flawless skin that resembles white chocolate melted over silk. Flawless skin that’s marred by the no-longer-bleeding cuts on her wrists.
Frantically, he checks her pulse. “No!” He grabs her naked body and pulls it out of the tub. “No. Please no.”
He points at the body with his hand and strains, using his power to its fullest potential.
It doesn’t work. There must be zero chance for this woman to come back to life.
“How could this happen?” he wails.
I wish Pom were here now so I could squeeze him. A mother gone forever—it hits too close to home. Would it be so bad to run back to my dream palace to recover and come back to deal with Chester later?
I steel myself. The investigation awaits—and it’s a means to save my mother, who, unlike Chester’s wife, still can be saved.
I force my attention back to the dream at hand. The trauma loop is now over, but some intuition forces me to let the next set of dreams play out anyway.
Chester is sitting in his living room, the baby in his arms. “I’m going to find out what happened to Mommy.” He readjusts his grip on the warm milk bottle. His voice turns grim. “When I do, whoever’s responsible will pay.”
The rest of the dream doesn’t seem to have any answers, and neither does the one after that.
Then I hit the jackpot.
Around us is the lab with cannibal doves, and Chester is there, speaking with Leal the dreamwalker.
“Our dear seer colleague, Darian, prophesied that if my wife didn’t die, our child would,” Chester says in a low, furious voice. “But of course you already knew that.”
Leal stands up. “I didn’t. I mean, we all know how much you hate Darian, but—”
Chester rises as well. “She learned that foul prophecy from a dreamwalker. How many of you scum can there be?”
“It wasn’t me.” Leal backs away in the direction of the bird cages. “I have no reason to lie.”
“You have all the reasons.” Chester’s jaw flexes menacingly.
“I don’t.” Stopping his retreat, Leal straightens his spine. “I uncovered some interesting things in your dreams. If something were to happen to me—even by accident—everyone would learn what you did.”
“You threaten me?” In his fury, Chester’s face looks eerily like that of a puck.
“I’m just reminding you of the consequences of rash action,” Leal says. “And driving home a simple point: I have no reason to lie to you. If your wife had asked for something I thought you’d disapprove of, I’d have come to you first. You’re my fellow Councilor. She wasn’t.”
The dream cuts off here, and the next one isn’t a memory. I let it play out in the background as I process what I’ve learned.
Chester had a dispute with Leal. He also had to be careful about antagonizing him. Leal had something on him, s
omething that would’ve come out in case of his death. Could it be that Chester went ahead and killed him anyway? Or is my earlier theory correct, and Chester has been killing those who voted him off the Council? But then why didn’t Leal make good on his threat? Why didn’t his secrets about Chester get out?
Also, why did Chester kill Hekima?
In any case, this explains Chester’s vote against me. It sounds as though his wife’s suicide drove him to dislike seers and dreamwalkers, and I’m one of the latter.
Well, he’ll hate me even more once I reveal him as the killer.
I observe his dreams flickering by until I see his lion viciously killing a man. I shift that dream into the lion walking outside the castle in a fog, Chester close behind him. I set the date and time to match Gemma’s murder and wait for Chester to fill in the details.
They amble peaceably down the trail.
What the hell? This dream is a memory. Neither Chester nor his lion ripped Gemma in half.
What about shooting Tatum with the arrow?
I set the date and time to match that murder and replace the castle grounds with a casino. Chester fills in the details again, and I see him winning a small jackpot—again, a memory. If he was in Las Vegas, he couldn’t have shot Tatum with an arrow in New York, probability powers or not.
“Are you satisfied now?” Chester says, looking right at me.
I stare at him openmouthed.
“You forgot to make yourself invisible.” He grins. “As luck would have it, so to speak.”
He’s right. I indeed forgot.
“I just proved you’re not guilty,” I say quickly, before he decides to give me cancer or worse.
He puts a coin into a nearby slot machine and wins again. “Which is why I made sure I was in REM sleep when you needed me to be.”
I use my powers to make myself look smaller and frailer. “I didn’t learn anything… overly personal.”
He chuckles humorlessly. “Let’s cut to the chase. I know that you know that I voted to kill you.” He feeds a coin into yet another slot machine and gets a river of them back. “I did that because I dislike dreamwalkers on general principle—and now you have an idea why.”
I nod warily.
He grins as he pokes through a handful of coins for the one he wants. “When my power brought us together in the library, I realized you might actually be useful. I was right, of course—you just cleared me of any wrongdoing. I think Kain suspected me somewhat, so make sure to set him straight.”
“I will. Are we cool now?” Do I have to worry about DNA mutations and things like that? is what I want to add, but I don’t in case that gives him the idea.
“If you stay out of my dreams from this moment forward, you won’t need to worry about me,” he says magnanimously. “Now wake up.”
I do.
Locating Kain, I tell him Chester isn’t guilty.
“Because of Hekima, I didn’t think so either,” Kain says. “So, what’s next?”
“I think I should make dream connections with Eduardo and Nina to verify their alibis. After that, I can link up with the rest of the Council.”
Kain nods and leads me to Nina’s quarters.
The stone slab isn’t blocking the way—she’s expecting us.
I sweep my gaze over the area where she’d indicated she does yoga, memorizing a few key details, and follow Kain into the bedroom.
I’m in luck.
Nina’s in REM sleep, so I quickly enter her dream world.
Pom greets me as I speed to the tower of sleepers. “Who are you working on now?”
“Nina. And I fear she’ll have a trauma loop.”
“Oh?” He turns a light orange color.
I shrug. “Something about her.”
When I locate Dream Nina, I breathe a sigh of relief.
“No cloud,” Pom says. “I guess she’s not as troubled as you thought.”
“Yeah.” I make sure to turn invisible. “It’s your call if you want to join me or not.”
“I will,” he says conspiratorially and turns invisible also. “Can we talk telepathically?”
Fine, I think pointedly. But don’t get used to reading my thoughts.
I won’t, Pom says as a voice in my head. Thank you.
I touch the space between Nina’s sharply defined dark eyebrows.
The tennis ball machine shoots balls at Nina at a machine-gun clip. She catches each ball using her telepathy and throws it into a basket. Another ball gun starts shooting at her from a different angle, and she diverts those projectiles just as easily.
What’s she doing? Pom asks.
Training her power, I think back. Please let me concentrate.
I look around the tennis court for a way to turn it into Nina’s apartment.
Something odd catches my attention: The windows of this building are solid black. Shrugging it off, I settle in to wait until Nina tires of practice.
She finally gathers up her things and heads for the locker room. I set the date and time to Gemma’s murder and shift the location. Instead of a bathroom, Nina walks off the court into her own apartment—and as so often happens with dreamers, she doesn’t blink an eye at the switcheroo.
The windows here are black as well, an odd detail I can’t recall adding.
It doesn’t matter, though.
Nina levitates the furniture, unrolls a mat, and flows into her first yoga pose.
Puck, I think for Pom’s benefit. This is a memory.
So she’s not guilty?
Appears that way. I’m going to wake up now. See you soon.
Before Pom can protest, I come out of the trance.
After I update Kain on my finding, we set off to Eduardo’s quarters. When we get there, the bed is empty.
Kain’s fangs emerge. “He said he’d be here tonight.”
“Maybe he goes to bed later?” I look around the spartan bedroom for any hints.
“We’ll give him a few hours,” Kain growls.
For a while after that, we walk around the castle, and I enter people’s bedrooms and make connections—going down the remaining list of Councilors who voted to kill me. When we get to the last on that list, I recognize the living room we enter.
This is the dwelling of Albina, the Councilor who’d left a note apologizing for missing her dream link the last time.
I perk up. Avoiding me that time was shady. Maybe she should be higher on my list of suspects.
Kain sniffs the air, his face darkening. Fangs out in full force, he rushes into Albina’s bedroom.
I sprint into the room after him, only to halt abruptly.
On my wrist, Pom turns black.
On the bed lies Albina, or so I assume. Her naked body is vampire pale, with hideous bruises on her neck. Given her disheveled appearance, it’s not difficult to work out a case of erotic asphyxiation gone wrong—or worse.
Kain checks the pulse on her wrist, and I hold my breath, preparing for what he’s about to say.
“Nothing.” He releases her wrist. “She’s dead.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A surge of adrenaline wipes away all traces of my earlier sleepiness. Kain said if more people die, I would follow—and now two have died on my watch.
Moving so fast he almost blurs, Kain rips open his wrist with his teeth and forces blood into Albina’s mouth.
Nothing happens.
Actually, that’s not true. Something happens, but not to Albina—to me. I stare hypnotically at the blood as Kain checks Albina’s pulse again, curses, and blurs out of the room.
Stumbling out of the bedroom, I locate the kitchen and heave half-digested bananas into the sink.
Where did Kain go? What should I do? Questions swirl through my mind, but not a single answer. I grope for a glass, pour some probably contaminated tap water into it, and gulp it down.
With yet another dead body on my watch, I’m unlikely to live long enough to get sick.
On every level possible, I fe
el horrible. I’m shaking, my mouth and throat are on fire, and I crave sleep the way a man craves water in a desert.
The walls around me close in.
I’m having trouble breathing.
Did I just discover another dead body? Did I really witness Hekima being eaten?
Could the sleep deprivation be giving me hallucinations?
I reach for the vial of diluted vampire blood. Am I craving this? Seeing Kain’s blood pour out of his body didn’t gross me out as it should have. It fascinated me. Is that the first stage of addiction? Some later stage?
Then again, if I don’t want to collapse and fall asleep this very second, I need to do something.
I can try severely limiting my dose. I pour a droplet of the watered blood into my glass and fill it again with water. Pocketing the vial, I dip my finger into the glass and flick off most of the moisture. It doesn’t get more diluted than this.
I lick the finger.
The pleasure is as intense as the last time, maybe even more so. I moan and smash my forehead into the refrigerator.
I can barely feel the pain.
Pucking puck, something’s trickling down my forehead.
I swipe at it and stare at the red liquid staining my fingers. Blood. Unlike before, my wounds aren’t healing. I guess my medicine was too diluted for that particular effect.
Worse still, I feel almost as sleep deprived as before.
Kain barges into the apartment with a disheveled Isis in tow.
Of course—when his blood didn’t work, he went to get a healer.
Isis narrows her sleepy eyes at me and points a finger at my forehead, shooting it with golden energy.
The healing warmth feels good, but not as intensely as vampire blood.
I touch my forehead.
The wound is closed.
“Don’t bother with her,” Kain growls. “Your patient’s in there.” He drags her into the bedroom.
I follow them in just as Isis hits Albina with a beam of golden energy, which she maintains as she checks the dead woman’s vitals.
The beam stops.
“I’m sorry,” she says in a sleep-raspy voice. “She was beyond healing.”