by Dima Zales
I smile reassuringly. “Just start somewhere, see how it goes.”
She fiddles with her nose ring. “I’m Leal’s dead man’s switch.”
“You’re what?”
She takes a deep breath. “I allowed Leal to make it so that if he dies, I’d know damaging information about his killer.”
I gape at her. “You know who killed him?”
“That’s just the thing.” She plays with a stud above her lip before touching the one above her chin. “Until I know for sure who did it, the information won’t reveal itself to me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I thought you knew about black windows,” she says. “You’re a dreamwalker like him.”
“I kind of do,” I say cautiously. At least I do now, having read his notes. “They’re a way to hide a dream.”
She nods. “A dream that can be someone’s memory. Or my own.”
“So the black windows I saw in your—”
“One contains something I desperately wanted to forget. Whatever it was, forgetting it was the payment for letting Leal use my subconscious as a safe.” She wraps her arms around her slim frame.
“And the other windows?”
“Each will be about something someone on the Council didn’t want anyone else to know,” she says. “Those windows are programmed to show me a dream about someone that I believe caused Leal harm.”
I sit up straighter. “What if you had killed him?”
“My own memory would come back to me.” She visibly shudders.
“A memory of what?” I ask, frowning.
“I don’t know,” she says softly. “That’s the whole point. After Leal did his thing, I forgot what it was. All I remember is that I don’t want to remember whatever it was.”
Huh. So I was right when I thought she might have a trauma loop. After Leal created her black window, she forgot whatever it was—not the healthiest way to deal with problems. Then again, if the memory was truly impossible to live with, repressing it might’ve been her only good option.
Nina extends her hand, and I feel myself levitate. Before I can blink, my back is brushing the ceiling.
“Hey!” I flail my arms and legs—to no avail. “What are you doing?”
She stares at me unblinkingly. “I want to make sure you really hear what I say next.”
I stop flailing and give her my full attention.
“If you go into my dream and make me recall whatever Leal locked away, I will kill you when I wake up,” she says evenly.
Whew. I was worried she’d demand something impossible. Relieved, I bob my head. “Got it. That really got through, I swear. For good measure, I’ll stay out of your dreams, period.”
She lowers me to my feet, and I sink into the chair, knees shaking.
“You may want to enter my dreams,” she says as if nothing has happened. “It’s worth taking a look at the other windows. They might contain clues as to who the killer is.”
I lay my palm over Pom’s black fur to calm my racing heartbeat. “Do you know which window is which? I wouldn’t want to accidentally—”
“I know the one to avoid.”
Pom’s fur goes from black to light orange.
“How would I even—”
“Leal would fly into the windows from time to time,” she says. “I remember seeing dreams when he’d do it, but I would forget them when I woke up.”
Interesting. I’m learning something about dreamwalker craft after all. “He’d just fly into them?”
“That’s what it looked like to me, but it might be more involved than that. He said he risked losing his power for the day each time. A few times it even happened, and we’d have to resume our dream collaboration the next day.”
Oh, puck. That could be seriously problematic. “In my current position, losing my power for a day would be tantamount to suicide. You were there for that vote. You know that.”
She shrugs. “Perhaps consider the black windows your last resort?”
I nod slowly. She’s right; I don’t have to try some crazy, unproven technique. Yet. “Let’s see if I can find the killer without them. Speaking of, I should probably start soon.”
She stands up. “I’ll get Kit for you.”
“Thanks.” I give her what I hope is a warm smile. “And if you could go to sleep afterward, so I have the option to check out those windows, I’d appreciate it.”
“Remember what I said about my own black window.” She glances at the spot on the ceiling where she’d pinned me, then at the table I would’ve crashed into if she’d dropped me.
I gulp. “Don’t worry. I remember.”
“Great.”
She leaves, and I resume pacing.
When Kit doesn’t immediately return, I decide to go into the dream world to see if some of the sleepers I haven’t cleared are ready for me.
I ignore Felix and the still-sleeping werewolf and locate one of the Councilors from the list of those who voted to kill me. According to the papers Kit brought, this guy was having cocktails with a few other Council members. Since I’ve already seen the room, I go into his dream to check if he was really there.
He was indeed. In one fell swoop, I clear him and everyone else sharing cocktails.
When I wake up, it’s to the sight of a large male orangutan eating a banana.
“Kit?” I say to the ape. “Please tell me that’s you.”
The orangutan morphs into Kit and tosses the half-eaten banana into the trash. “I wanted to see if it would taste better when I’m in that form.” She grimaces. “It didn’t.”
She leads me to the bedroom of an older guy. I wait an hour for him to reach REM sleep before swiftly ascertaining he’s not the murderer. I clear the next Councilor the same way, and the next five as well.
With each not guilty verdict, I grow more and more worried. What will the Council do when I tell them I couldn’t figure out who the murderer is?
Nothing good.
“What time is it?” I ask Kit. “How many people are left?”
She looks at her watch. “It’s eight in the morning. Vickie, the siren, is our last suspect.”
The last suspect. What will I do if she’s not guilty? I guess that will be the time to risk either my sanity with the werewolf or my power for the day with Nina.
Vickie is in REM sleep when we arrive, as expected. REM periods become more prolonged toward morning. I touch the siren’s forehead and end up in the dream world. Most of the Councilors are gone from the tower of sleepers, but Nina, my possible plan B, is still sleeping. So is the werewolf, who’s plan C, where c stands for crazy.
I check the siren. She really had been playing the piano, as she told Kain.
I exit the dream world, and Kit and I leave the siren’s apartment—only to bump straight into Kain.
“Update,” he demands.
Kit keeps moving. “I’ll be in my room, getting my beauty sleep.”
“Can you give me five minutes?” I ask Kain.
He grudgingly agrees. I turn away from him and use Pom to go back into the dream world.
Pom greets me, and I tell him what happened on the way to the tower of sleepers.
“So by process of elimination,” he says, “it’s the werewolf.”
I nod mournfully. “Which blows. They’ll make me go into his dream to check, and he’ll make me go insane.”
“It’s all moot now.” Pom points behind me, and I whirl around. “He woke up.”
He’s right. The werewolf isn’t in his nook anymore.
I exhale the breath I was holding. “It’s just a stay of execution. They can ask him to go to sleep again.”
Pom’s fur darkens. “Maybe whatever you find inside Nina’s black windows will be so damning you won’t need to dreamwalk in him in the first place.”
“Maybe,” I say and seek out Nina.
She’s still asleep.
Oh, well.
Here goes plan B.
Chapter Thir
ty
This time, Nina’s dreaming about eating sushi. She doesn’t use chopsticks like the customers nearby. Instead, pieces of raw fish dip themselves into soy sauce and fly into her mouth.
The windows in the restaurant are black, just like the windows from her other dreams.
“Remember me?” I slide into the booth across from her, pick up a piece of raw salmon, and plop it onto my tongue. If someone were to put a gun to my head in the waking world to make me repeat that action, I’d probably refuse. Death by gun is certain but less painful than having your brain eaten by the parasites that live in raw fish on Earth.
Nina looks around. “This is a dream?”
“I imagine the Mandate would prevent you from using your powers in a human restaurant,” I say.
“You’re right.” She looks at the windows. “I think I remember what you’ve come here to do.”
“Yep.” I follow her gaze. “Now which is the one to avoid?”
“That one.” She points at the black window nearest the restaurant entrance.
“Got it.” I eat a piece of fatty tuna. “So I just fly in?”
“That’s what Leal did.”
I stand up, already bobbing a few inches off the ground. “Before I go, I was wondering… Why didn’t you tell me about the black windows earlier?”
“I needed you to know I wasn’t guilty. After all, my black window is a motive for me to kill Leal.”
I lift my eyebrows.
“I would’ve killed him if he’d tried to use whatever I forgot against me,” she explains with the calmness of someone discussing the weather. “Same if he’d tried to make me remember whatever I forgot.”
Note to self: Definitely don’t piss off Nina.
“Makes sense,” I say. “But why do you think Leal set up a dead man’s switch in the first place? Why use your dreams?”
A piece of squid sails into her mouth, and she looks thoughtful as she chews. “For all we know, he might have another fail-safe besides me. Or many. When I asked the same question, he said computers could be hacked and that lots of hackers would be eager for that job. But dreamwalkers are rare, and dreamwalkers who know about black windows are rarer still.”
She’s got me there. I nod wisely.
“You know what? Try that window.” She points at the black glass to my left.
“Why?” I float higher.
“I don’t know.” She studies the window intently. “I’m hoping that on some level I know which ones have something to do with the murders.”
That’s good enough for me. “Let’s go for that one, then.” I confidently torpedo into the black window she just chose.
I half expect the onyx glass to shatter around me, slicing my skin, but instead I end up plunging into a freezing black lake. Struggling to swim, I will myself to become lighter than water.
It doesn’t work.
I will the water to become saltier and thus heavier, but that doesn’t work either—nor does willing myself a life vest.
My ragged breathing speeds up. What the hell? I try exiting my body so I can strategize, but I’m stuck inside myself as much as I’m stuck in this lake.
Fine. I’ll just swim.
Stroke after stroke, I edge closer to the nearest shore, testing my powers as I go. Changing water to clouds doesn’t work. Teleportation doesn’t, either. I call out to Pom but get no answer. So odd.
Unlike the times I’m in a subdream, I know that I’m in the dream world now. It’s just that my powers don’t work. I guess I’ll have to do the obvious—just keep swimming.
I focus on swimming, only swimming. And swimming. And swimming. My breathing grows labored, yet the shore is still far away. After what feels like an hour, every muscle is aching, even some I didn’t know I had.
The shore is still a mile away, and I feel like giving up.
But I can’t sink. Sinking will either kill me—and make me go insane—or it might be the way one “fails to enter” a black window, which carries the penalty of losing power for the day.
Gasping for air, I let the motions of my arms and legs become my whole world. With every excruciating stroke, I tell myself that my muscles aren’t really burning, that it’s not real air I’m greedily gulping. Everything around me is as real as a mirage.
The moment my hand touches the dirt of the shore, the lake—and my exhaustion—disappears.
I find myself in a dream where Gemma is alive and standing in a well-lit gym. One of the windows is black. Perhaps my way back?
In front of her, a donkey-sized wolf is running on a treadmill nearby. Must be a werewolf. He or she is going cheetah fast, working the machine so hard it creaks under the strain.
“Don’t stop,” Gemma orders. “I want to see what your kind’s really capable of.”
Foaming at the mouth, the werewolf keeps running until the machine starts to smoke and stops on its own.
“Good boy,” Gemma says. “Now let’s see if you can use the elliptical.”
Moving as if under glamour, the werewolf attempts to mount a machine clearly not designed for an animal with paws. Gemma watches his struggles with amusement.
This is weird. Why did Leal store this dream as blackmail? Also, is this an actual memory he stole from Gemma or just a figment of his imagination? My usual sense of “memory or not” isn’t working, but that could be because the dream is stored in Nina’s dream space, not Gemma’s.
The wolf looks to be in pain as he futilely tries to climb onto the elliptical, over and over.
Then it hits me.
Gemma’s power was controlling animals, regular animals, yet here in this dream she’s able to control werewolves in animal form, too. This must be something only the most powerful of her kind are able to do; I had no idea it was even possible.
Maybe Eduardo, as alpha of the pack, found out and disapproved. Having been subjected to glamour, I can say without a shadow of doubt that if I were a werewolf, I’d very much disapprove. Puck, maybe this is his friend she’s putting through hell, or even Eduardo himself.
In other words, this could be a motive for Eduardo to kill Gemma—a solid motive, at that.
I watch Gemma put the poor wolf through a half-dozen more cruel ordeals before I end up back in the sushi place.
Nina blinks at me with an amazed expression.
“You saw that?” I ask.
“I think I saw through your eyes. It’s so strange to know that I’ll forget it as soon as I wake up. It’s so clear in my mind now.”
I steal another piece of salmon from her plate. “Do you think Eduardo would’ve killed Gemma over what I just saw?”
She traces circles on her napkin with a fingernail. “If someone on the Council had that sort of power over me, I’m not sure I’d let them live.”
That note not to mess with this woman? I mentally underline it as well.
“I’m going to check another black window,” I say. “Which one do you want me to try next?”
“How about that one?” She gestures across the bar. “I have a feeling that will also be about Eduardo, though no idea how I know.”
I gulp down a glass of water and launch myself into the window she chose. This time, I pay closer attention to what happens during the process.
As soon as the tip of my head touches the glass, I’m plunging into the cold water, only this lake is much larger, so I have to swim at least a mile farther. Only curiosity and iron will prevent me from drowning.
When my hand touches the shore, a new dream starts.
I find myself in a bedroom with a black window. Tatum is in this dream, making the room smell yummy in the disturbingly sexual way typical of her kind. And she is very much alive. Entwined with Eduardo in his human form, she’s going at it with the enthusiasm of a teenage male bunny, but all the skills of a courtesan.
It’s a shame someone this good at something is no longer alive. I bet she could’ve written a book that would make the Kama Sutra seem dry.
When they’re d
one with all the gymnastics, Eduardo wraps himself around her sweat-covered body. Licking her delicate earlobe, he murmurs, “I love you. Leave the wimp… please.”
Tatum stretches in his arms like a cat. “You don’t really love me, my pet. You’re just under my spell.”
He lets her go, his eyes turning wolfish. “I’m not under anyone’s spell. I just want you—and I get what I want.”
“Of course,” she purrs. “Big bad alpha is always in control.”
The room smells yummier than ever, and Eduardo’s pupils dilate. Soon, other parts of his anatomy fill up with new vigor.
Wow.
The next session is more impressive than the last, and more such sessions follow. After Tatum uses her powers to make him go crazy with lust five more times, the dream stops.
Nina is blushing when I get back to the sushi place, and I can’t really blame her.
“Well, that just happened,” I say lightly.
“I know.” She sips her plum wine. “Tatum was also controlling Eduardo with her powers—a grave offense.”
“When he said she should leave the wimp, he meant her husband, Ryan the elf, right?”
“Without a doubt,” she says. “Eduardo sometimes called him that when they disagreed.”
Finally, a promising lead. “So what happened? Did Ryan find out about the affair, get pissed, and plant an arrow in Tatum? Or did the werewolf learn how to use a bow like an elf?”
“I imagine the latter,” she says. “He could easily have pushed Ryan off the cliff. In his wolf form, he could’ve gotten close enough before Ryan realized what was happening.”
“But I don’t understand why he’d kill them both. I mean, I can see why he’d kill the husband of the woman he desired, but—”
“He probably killed her to regain control. There was pressure within the pack for him to take a mate, and that has to be another werewolf. He could’ve killed the elf to cover his tracks. Or he could just as easily have done it in a jealous rage—and that kind of thing doesn’t follow logic,” she adds with a shrug.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It feels too premeditated for a jealous rage. But let’s say Eduardo’s the killer. Why would he kill Leal too?”