5. Cory
5
CORY
O ld leather and mint.
That was the first thing I was conscious of, before I’d even opened my eyes. The scent of creased but supple leather and the bright green of spearmint threaded through the air. A faint rumble sounded around the edges of my hearing. I was warm, and there was a weight on my chest, but it felt comforting rather than oppressive.
I was very comfortable, actually, and might have slipped back under if my mouth hadn’t been so dry. But thirst scratched my throat like a bramble until I couldn’t ignore it any longer.
I flicked my eyes open and found myself staring at a large gray tabby cat, curled up on my chest. She was purring—that was the rumble I’d heard—and peering at me inquisitively. I blinked. She blinked slowly back at me.
Where was I?
There was an orange wool blanket with a satin edge under my chin, and I could feel a pillow under my head. Probably in a bed, then, though I couldn’t say for sure with the cat in my way. Out of the corner of my vision, I could see the edge of a large bookcase and a window showing dark night sky, but the rest of the room was a dusky blur.
It didn’t look like my room, that was for sure. I shifted, trying to sit up, and the cat rolled over, onto my waist. Before I’d moved six inches, another face popped into view. This one was human, looking at me upside down.
“Oh! You’re awake!”
The face shifted to the side, then gradually righted itself as the person it was attached to moved around to crouch next to the bed. I tried to speak, but all that came out was a croak, so I settled for staring at him instead.
He had blond hair, an upturned nose, and a pointed chin that seemed to be asking a silent question. His hair was a mess, falling into his eyes, and he pushed it back in a gesture that spoke of long practice. One of his eyes was blue, while the other was brown. I’d never met anyone with eyes like that before.
I tried to speak again, but still couldn’t get any words out.
“No, no, don’t do that yet,” the guy said. “Cinda left this with me. She said you were supposed to drink it as soon as you woke up.”
He grabbed something from a table next to my head, and handed me a brown pottery mug with a handle that had been visibly mended. I pushed myself up against an unseen headboard and took the mug with my left hand. The contents were a light green, and the liquid shimmered slightly. I looked back at the guy in front of me.
“Don’t worry, it won’t kill you,” he said with a grin.
I didn’t find that as reassuring as he seemed to think I should. But I wasn’t altogether convinced that this wasn’t a dream, so maybe there was no harm in it.
No, that wasn’t true, actually. My dreams had been pretty fucked up of late. I didn’t entirely trust them, either.
Maybe it was just the cheerful countenance of the guy staring at me. His smile was guileless, his eyes inquisitive but harmless, and I had the strangest sense that I could trust him.
With a shrug, I brought the mug to my lips and drank deeply.
Whatever was in that concoction, it worked fast. As the liquid slipped down my throat, I felt a soothing cool flow in its wake. It left me refreshed, and my throat felt much better. It tasted like mint and lemongrass. I took another sip, and then another.
“See?” said the guy. “Told you.”
“Where am—” I began to ask, but he interrupted me.
“Oh my God, where are my manners? The dean would be so mad at me. I’m Ash. It’s nice to meet you.”
That wasn’t what I’d been planning to ask, but it didn’t seem worth arguing about. Ash stuck his hand out confidently, then withdrew it and waved before I could even pull my right hand free of the blankets. I settled for a wave too.
“I’m—”
“You’re Cory,” Ash continued, his face bright. “I know. Dean Mansur told me when he asked me to stay with him and watch you. You’ve had two people with you at all times since you arrived here. He said he’ll be back in a few minutes, so don’t worry. But in the meantime, it’s just us. Ash, and Cory Dawson, age eighteen, of Churchill, Iowa. What’s Iowa like? I’ve never been there. Is it like Illinois? I drove through there once. Well, I wasn’t technically the one driving, but I was in a car that drove through there, all the way from Chicago down to the southern part where it gets all squiggly and hilly. I guess that’s a stupid question to ask, though—is Iowa like Illinois—when even Illinois isn’t all like one thing. I’m not even sure you can call the southern bit a part of the Midwest, but then, people never seem to agree on the definition of the Midwest anyway. Take Ohio. Nobody knows what to do with Ohio. It’s kind of a liminal space, you know? Maybe that’s why I like it so much.”
I stared at him, just trying to find my way through the waterfall of words. I wasn’t even sure what question to ask first.
“Why do you know so much about me?” I blurted out.
“Ooh, yeah, sorry. That’s probably kind of creepy, isn’t it?” Ash smiled ruefully. He smiled a lot, I was learning. “I swear, that’s the sum total of what I know about you. I don’t even know why you’re here. I mean, obviously I have some idea. No one comes here without a reason. But like, I don’t know what you are or anything. Do you know what haven you’re going to apply to?”
“I’m—I don’t—what? What do you mean, what haven am I going to apply to? What’s a haven? What kind of reason would I have for coming here? I don’t even know where here is. And what do you mean, you don’t know what I am?”
“Oops.” He grinned. “I did it again. Felix always tells me I’d confuse people less if I talked less, but, I mean, you’ve gotta take that with a grain of salt coming from Felix, you know?”
I didn’t know, but Ash didn’t give me a chance to respond.
“Let’s see, one thing at a time. Where we are is Vesperwood Academy, located just outside the bounds of Pointe Claudette, Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Superior. Largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area—there’s a piece of trivia for you. Kind of figures we’d be sandwiched between that and the world’s tiniest town, right? I mean, I’m sure it’s not literally the world’s tiniest town, but let me tell you, after you’ve spent a whole semester here, it feels like it.”
Vesperwood . The word flashed through my mind, bringing back a host of other memories. The dreams. The raven. Those things that had attacked me.
Oh God, and my stop at the Balsam Inn. The bartender coming onto me. Those guys in the bathroom. My mad dash through the snowstorm, and my collapse outside some mysterious, imposing building. It had to be Vesperwood. That was what the voice had said, as I’d passed out in the snow.
Welcome to Vesperwood . We’ve been waiting for you .
I might have preferred not to remember some of that, to be honest.
“As for your reason for coming here, you’re obviously here to study. Vesperwood Academy is North America’s best, though not necessarily the most highly regarded, paranormal university, though I wouldn’t mention the highly regarded bit in front of Dean Mansur. I think it rankles him a little. Anyway, since you’re only eighteen, you’re clearly not here to teach or do research. Ergo, you must be a student, presumably beginning your journey into the occult.”
He drew that last word out— Occuuuuult —and wiggled his fingers spookily, but the joke didn’t land, because I was too busy being kicked in the chest by his explanation. My journey into the occult ? At a paranormal university ? What the actual fuck was I doing here?
I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud until Ash frowned. I drained the rest of the drink to try to cover my embarrassment.
“Do you really not know why you’re here? Is it amnesia or something? Cinda said you might be a little out of it at first, but she didn’t mention anything like that. Do you want me to go get her? Or the dean?”
“I don’t even know who those people are,” I protested. “I’m not trying to be dumb, I’m just honestly confused. The occult ? As in magic and stuff? You want me to believe that Vesperwood Academy is a college of magic?”
“ University ,” Ash said with a nod. “The dean is touchy about that too. It’s mostly undergrads here, but there are some graduate programs, so technically, we’re a university, not just a college. Though you’d think if he cared that much, he’d change the name. Academy makes us sound like some kind of prep school, don’t you think?”
“I guess. I’m having more trouble with the paranormal part, though.”
Ash’s head tilted to the right. “I’m not trying to pry, and I swear, I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. But I thought I heard Dean Mansur tell Professor Romero that there were tenelkiri stalking our wards right before you got here. And something about Professor Kazansky seeing one follow you on your way to the gate. How can you look at the tenelkiri and not think they’re paranormal?”
“ Tenelkiri ?” I said faintly.
“Giant Darth-Vader-y guys, with horns and tails and stuff?”
My breath caught. “That’s what they’re called?”
Ash nodded. “Mercenaries, mostly, but Professor Romero says it’s not unknown for them to act independently. They feed off the pain of other beings.”
It was unnerving, having your worst fears allayed and stoked at the same time. I wasn’t crazy, and I wasn’t imagining the things that had chased me. But if those things were real, it meant they were trying to hurt me. Or kill me, even. It meant I really was in danger.
“Fuck,” I whispered. “So this is all real?”
“Unfortunately!” Ash gave me a half-smile, half-grimace. “But you’re safe here, I promise. Dean Mansur works hard to make sure of that. And Cinda’s an incredible healer. Whatever damage you took on your way here, you’re gonna be okay. It’s only been twenty-four hours, and she said you’ve basically recovered already.”
Ash kept saying people’s names like I should know who they were. I hoped this wasn’t the kind of magical university that went in for pop quizzes, because I wasn’t retaining anything. But something else he’d said stopped me cold.
“Twenty-four hours ?” I repeated, sitting up straighter. The cat kneaded my legs with her paws until I stopped moving. “I’ve been unconscious a whole day? I have to tell people where I am. I have to—I mean, I have a life , I can’t just disappear like this.”
“You didn’t tell people where you were going?”
“There wasn’t exactly time. Jesus, I have a job. I have two jobs. I can’t just abandon them. I need to call some people, then figure out a way out of here.”
Ash winced. “That, um, might be a little difficult. Vesperwood and phones don’t really mix. Most of the time, that’s fine. You’ll get fitted for your vocator soon.”
Saying that, he raised his right arm to display a winding curlicue of metal and stone that curved around his wrist. “You can use that to message other students. And there’s always the tubes for official mail.”
“Tubes?”
“Technically it’s called the Intracampus Scribal System, but everyone just calls it the tubes.”
He gestured over his shoulder at a long, glass and brass tube that came out of the ceiling in one corner of the room, then ran along a wall before dropping down to a small shelf at waist-height right next to the door. There was a small, brass-bound wooden chest there, with two rolled up scrolls of paper sitting inside it.
I shook my head, overwhelmed with all the phrases he was throwing around so casually.
“But if you’re trying to reach people outside,” Ash continued, “that’s a little more complicated. I’m sure the dean can help you with whatever you need, but Cory, now that you’re here, I don’t think you should leave. Not for a little while, at least.”
“Why? I’m only here because of that damn raven, and those weird blogs, and—wait.” I went back over our conversation in my mind. “You never answered my last question. You said you didn’t know what I am. Not who, but what . What does that mean?”
Ash flushed. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. It’s not considered polite to just up and ask someone. With some people, there are signs, and other people will come right out and tell you, but if they don’t volunteer the information, you’re not supposed to ask. I swear I wasn’t trying to be pushy. It was just me being thoughtless. Not that that makes it better, I guess. I should probably just talk less like Felix says. I’m sorry if I offended you.”
“I’m not offended,” I said slowly. I was starting to feel tired, though. Just sifting through everything Ash said was exhausting. “I’m just…lost.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know what I am either.”
The words were barely out of my mouth when a door on the far side of the room swung open. Light spilled in from the hall, silhouetting a tall figure in the doorway. A deep voice spoke.
“What you are, Cory, is in danger. And we don’t have much time left to save you.”
I stared as the stranger walked into the room. He raised a hand and whispered something I couldn’t quite hear, and suddenly a light above the doorway went on. It was a perfect sphere, and I couldn’t see the lightswitch he must have pushed, but that was the least of my worries.
The man was tall and thin. He had warm brown skin and short dark hair with a white streak over his left brow and a prominent widow’s peak. I wasn’t sure if he was angry with me, or if his eyebrows just made him look that way. The look in his dark brown eyes didn’t clear anything up. His lips were a deep red, and currently pressed into a thin line as he gazed at the two of us.
He was dressed way more formally than Ash, in a three-piece suit of charcoal gray that probably cost more than four months’ worth of my wages from the diner. The long, elegant fingers of his right hand pulled a gold pocket watch from his vest pocket. He inspected it for a moment, then snapped it shut and returned it. His left hand was closed over the top of a cane.
Ash hurried to his feet, brushing his hair back from his eyes again and straightening his shirt. He looked nervous, which made me nervous, and I tried to smooth some of the wrinkles out of my sweatshirt. Only the cat was unperturbed.
“Sir,” Ash said, words spilling from his mouth. “I didn’t see you. Not that you’re not allowed to—that is, I was just going to find you. Cory’s awake. I mean, you can see that. I was going to tell you, but then Cory was asking about—well, I wasn’t sure what I should—”
“Relax, Ash.” The man’s voice was cool and measured, but the corner of his mouth curled up in the tiniest hint of amusement. “You did well. But I need to talk to Cory now. You’ll see him again tomorrow morning.”
“Right. Of course. Yeah, no problem.” Ash nodded repeatedly. “Totally no problem.” He turned to me and smiled. “I’ll see you soon, Cory.”
I wanted to tell him to stay, but I was so tired my mouth wouldn’t move when I told it to. Ash was out the door and down the hallway before I’d even formulated my sentence. The man in the suit watched him leave, then flicked his right hand in a smooth gesture. The door shut itself with a creak and a click.
That woke me back up in a hurry.
The man turned to me, and that hint of a smile appeared on his lips again. I followed his gaze down to my lap, where my hands were now gripping the blanket. I flexed them, letting go, but they began to shake, and I decided gripping the blankets was better than obvious shuddering.
The man hadn’t done anything threatening, but he clearly made Ash nervous. And since my mind was still stumbling over the idea of a magic university, I wasn’t exactly calmed by the fact that he could apparently move objects with his mind.
As if to rub that in, he gestured again, and a heavy wooden chair floated away from the desk and came to land next to the bed with a soft thunk . The man sat down and studied me. I felt like a butterfly pinned to a board.
“Who are you?” My words came out breathily, but at least I didn’t stumble over them. I was rather proud of that, all things considered.
“My name is Isaac Mansur. I’m the Dean here at Vesperwood.”
The words were simple, but freighted with power. Or maybe it wasn’t the words, but the man himself. Every move he made was understated, and yet he projected a sense of coiled danger, like a leopard on the verge of pouncing.
As if she could sense the presence of a larger predator, the tabby uncurled herself from my side and leapt into Dean Mansur’s lap. He scratched around her ears, and she rubbed her face against his suit jacket before jumping to the floor and sauntering into the shadows.
“It’s, uh, nice to meet you?” I felt absurd, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Meet again ,” he corrected me. “We met once before, when you first arrived here.”
He paused and waited for that to sink in. My eyes widened. His voice. Of course. His voice was the same one I’d heard when I’d collapsed by the steps in the snow.
I flushed. I was ashamed that he’d seen me like that. Ashamed that anyone had.
“Right.” My cheeks were hot. “I guess I should say thank you, then. For taking care of me.”
The dean waved my thanks away. “What else would I do, after the trouble I took to bring you here?”
“The…trouble? What do you mean, to bring me here?”
He waved his hand again. “What matters is what you do now that you’ve joined us. I meant what I said, Cory. You are in danger. And time is running short. You need to learn to control your powers. The sooner, the better. For you and everyone else.”
“My powers ?”
“Yes.” He held my gaze. “I understand that this is all very new, but I’m afraid we don’t have time to coddle you as you adjust. Vesperwood Academy is a university for the study of the paranormal, by both humans and supernatural beings. That latter category includes you.”
“But I don’t understand!” I protested. “Ash told me what Vesperwood is, but he didn’t say what I’m doing here, just that I shouldn’t leave. And now you come in saying I need to learn to control my powers, but nobody’s actually explained anything. And I’ve been unconscious for an entire day! I have a life back home, you know. I can’t just uproot it and stay here because you people say I should. Besides which, I don’t even know what I am . How the hell am I supposed to control my supposed powers when no one’s told me what my powers are?”
I sounded like a child throwing a temper tantrum, but I couldn’t help it. I was confused and scared and oddly tired, considering I’d just spent an entire day sleeping. I didn’t have the mental or physical energy to make sense of things. If I needed someone to talk to me like I was a kid, well, that was what I needed. So there.
Dean Mansur watched me, his face expressionless. His eyes were dark and liquid, but there was something unsettling about them. I didn’t want to know what lurked in their depths. Finally, he nodded.
“I see we have our work cut out for us.”
He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs at the knee, his right hand idly rolling the top of his cane against his thigh. It was polished gold and carved with a tangle of vines and stars.
“Let’s begin at the beginning. You uprooted your life the minute you left home and set out to find us, Cory.”
I opened my mouth to object, but he held up a hand to forestall me.
“I know you may not enjoy hearing that, but it’s true. And young Ash is quite right. You do need to stay, now that you’re here. For how long, I don’t know,” he added, seeming to sense my question. “But long enough. I will deliver a letter to whomever you request to inform them of your safety, but I won’t let you leave until I’m certain you can handle yourself.”
He paused, waiting to see if I was going to interrupt again. When I didn’t, he continued.
“As for what you are, you are an incubus. Had you truly not figured that out by now?”
I couldn’t tell if he meant to be condescending, or if he just always sounded like that. All I’d figured out was that my life suddenly made no sense, and that I had no idea how to set it to rights. And here he was telling me I was a…
“I’m sorry, a what ?”
“An incubus. A demon from the realm of sleep, who enters the dreams of others in order to copulate and bring forth a surge in life force, both the dreamer’s and their own.”
“A surge in—wait a second, did you say copulate?”
“Do you need me to explain to you what that means?”
“No, that’s not—of course not. I know what the word means. I’m just trying to understand. You’re telling me I’m some sort of…sex demon?
“I wouldn’t use that terminology myself, and there are nuances, but broadly speaking, yes. That’s what you are.”
“But that’s impossible!”
He had to be wrong. It just didn’t make sense. Even allowing that there were such things as sex demons, which I still wasn’t sure I believed, I was positive that I wasn’t one of them. I was the least sexy person on the planet. Just trying to wrap my head around it made me feel woozy.
“Really?” the dean said mildly. “Let me paint you a picture of the past few months, and you can tell me how far off I am. It started when you turned eighteen—October twenty-fourth, in your case. A week later, the changes were already manifesting, but it was easy to ignore them at first. Mornings where you felt exhausted, no matter how much you’d slept the night before. Nights spent in dreams you couldn’t remember later, dreams that left you restless and aching for something you couldn’t put into words.”
His tone was affable, even relaxed, but my stomach clenched as he spoke.
“You brushed it off as long as you could, but the exhaustion kept growing, and the dreams grew more powerful as well. Soon, you remembered them in the morning. Dreams that felt uncannily life-like. Too vivid, too real. Dreams full of desire. Dreams that left you yearning for more when you awoke. Your waking life became a tightrope walk, your desire ever closer to the surface, your dreams ready to pull you under at a moment’s notice. Am I wrong?”
I stared at him, my mouth open. He knew. How could he possibly know ?
“I thought—I thought—” I broke off, my voice cracking. “I didn’t know what was happening. I just wanted the dreams to go away. But they wouldn’t. They kept coming, and coming, and I thought—I was starting to think that I was…”
I trailed off, but Dean Mansur filled in the rest of my sentence.
“Losing your wits?”
I nodded. “I was going to say ‘ crazy ,’ but that’s the gist of it.”
“If you had any idea how many times I’ve heard that. Many of our students react similarly to the awakening of their powers.” His voice was almost gentle now. “I know you might wish you were crazy—whatever that actually means. I’ll be honest with you, your life might be easier if you were. But you’re an incubus, Cory, and it’s imperative that you accept that. It’s the first step to gaining control of your powers.”
“But why? Why does it matter if I control my powers or not?”
“For your own safety. And for that of the people around you. Ever since you turned eighteen, you’ve been in danger, and putting those near you in danger as well.”
“Why? How?”
“Because you’re only part demon, Cory. The other half of you is human.”
I couldn’t control a shiver at his words. If the dean noticed, he gave no indication.
He kept saying demon so casually. Maybe that was how he meant it, but I kept thinking about those monsters that had attacked me. Worse, I kept thinking of my recurring dream, of my mysterious partner who seemed to be everywhere at once. It wasn’t so easy for me to use the word demon innocuously.
“Your human half reached its age of majority at eighteen, which triggered your demon half to manifest. Your powers, undirected and uncontrolled, began to emanate wildly in the world of dreams and the waking world around you.”
“What do you mean, undirected?”
“An incubus in control of their powers is able to visit the dreams of others. To observe undetected, if they wish. To manipulate events as needed. To remain in control of themself. An incubus who’s not in control gets sucked into the dreams of others and experiences them as though they’re real. They may end up subject to the whims of the dreamer. Does any of that sound familiar?”
It sounded too familiar, but I didn’t want to think about that right now.
“An incubus needs dreams to survive. Since you turned eighteen, you’ve needed the dreams of others the way you need food and shelter. An incubus takes their sustenance from dreamers. If they go too long without entering a dream purposefully, they’ll be sucked into one the moment they go to sleep. They won’t be able to control whose dream it is. And it may be difficult to nudge it in the direction they wish. It can be…unpleasant, to say the least.”
Oh, God. I didn’t want to think about that, either. The dreams I’d been having—there were parts of them that were unpleasant. Or, at least, parts that should have been unpleasant, but that I’d enjoyed more than I should have. It was all a mess, and the more I tried to sort it out, the wispier my thoughts got.
“Cory. Cory, look at me. This is important.” The dean’s voice broke through my reverie. I looked at him, blinking slowly. Why did my brain feel like it was swimming through molasses?
“Even being sucked into another’s dream won’t be enough,” the dean continued. “There is an energy the incubus takes from the dreamer whose dream they enter. Energy that can only be created through purposeful interaction between the dreamer and the incubus. If you’re not in control of yourself in the dream, you can’t draw out the energy you need.”
His eyes bored into mine. “Do you understand what I’m saying? Your physical body may be perfectly healthy, but your soul will begin to starve. In a last-ditch attempt to save you, your soul will attempt to recreate the world of dreams in this world, to pull the people around you into waking dreams, but this will only drain you further. You’ll grow weaker and weaker, until you lose the ability to enter dreams at all. You’ll be a husk of your former self, and eventually, the spark inside you will go out.”
I sat with that for a moment, rolling his words around in my head. It sounded dire. Desperate. If he was telling the truth, anyway. But at the same time…
“Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad,” I said slowly.
“Really?” He arched an eyebrow. “You’d rather die than learn to control your powers? You’d rather die than become what you’re meant to be?”
“If controlling my powers means I’d be controlling other people, that doesn’t seem fair. I don’t want to make someone do something they don’t want.”
That kind of thing reminded me too much of my dad. My whole life had been about what he wanted, what he thought was right. He’d been controlling since I was a little kid, always pushing me to be someone I wasn’t.
I never wanted to be like him.
I wrapped my arms around myself. I was so tired, and all this information was overwhelming. Maybe it would be better to just give up. Let all of the stress and fear that had taken over my life drift away.
Dean Mansur tsked under his breath. “I did not make myself clear. An incubus doesn’t control others.”
“Just because they’re asleep doesn’t mean it’s okay,” I said drowsily. “I don’t want to control any part of them.”
I started to sink lower in bed, but the dean’s hand shot out.
“Cory, I need you to stay focused.”
“I’m focused, I’m focused,” I grumbled, letting him pull me upright again. I rubbed the back of my neck. Why was I so tired? A complete stranger was dumping life-changing information on me, and part of me was flabbergasted, but the rest of me could barely stay awake.
“Good. Because you need to understand this. What an incubus controls is themself, and their powers. Nothing else.”
“But you said—”
“I said you could learn to enter a dream purposefully. To manipulate it as needed. But not to control. An incubus can’t force a person to do something in a dream that they’re not interested in. It might be something they’d be unlikely to do while awake, a fantasy they’d never admit to aloud. But in dreams, our barriers are fewer. It’s harder to lie to ourselves. Our desires make themselves known, and the incubus uses those desires, like seeds ready to sprout in the dreamer’s mind.”
Something sour filled my stomach.
“So it can’t—that is, an incubus can’t make someone—I mean, the dreams that I’ve been having—” I spluttered to a stop. This was an uncomfortable conversation for so many reasons, not least of which was that I had never talked about this kind of thing with anyone else. “These aren’t normal dreams that I’ve been having. And they’re with people who—I mean, are you sure I’m not making someone—”
“Gay?” Dean Mansur arched an eyebrow, and when I nodded, he laughed. It wasn’t a cruel laugh, but it made me squirm anyway. “No, an incubus can’t make someone gay, or bisexual, or straight, for that matter. An incubus can’t make someone participate in sex at all if they’re not at least somewhat interested in it, deep down.”
“Oh.”
As if he could read my mind, he spoke again. “The same is true for yourself, of course. The power inside you can only work with your innate desires. What has happened in your dreams may be something you’d be unlikely to do while awake, but it is something in which you are interested.”
My stomach sank. “So if I’ve been dreaming about men…”
“Then there’s a part of you that’s interested in them.” The dean studied me. “Gay and straight—those are only words, Cory. Arbitrary categories that humans create, redefine, discard, and create anew as their world changes. They’re concepts that are only meaningful so long as they serve a purpose. And your purpose goes far beyond navigating petty human concerns. I wouldn’t trouble myself too much over such words, if I were you.”
Easy for him to say. He was the dean of a fucking paranormal university. I was only just learning I wasn’t completely human.
I frowned. “Wait a second. These dreams I’ve been having. How do I know if they’re mine or someone else’s?”
His brows drew down. “Say more.”
This was excruciating. “I mean, if my innate desires are…a certain way. And I go to sleep and dream about—that is, if something happens that’s…moving in that same direction…then how do I—what I’m saying is, I mean—what I’m trying to—oh god, I can’t do this.”
I buried my face in my hands.
“Cory, I can only help you if I know what you’re talking about. I can promise you, what you say in this room will go no further. Now, would you like to try that again?”