Chapter 5
It was not often that Yasmine dreamt.
At least, not since she was a child.
It was hard to remember the exact timeline now, but she knew that she came fully into her powers about three years after her family was killed. The other thing she remembered was that they were an immediate shitshow to control.
For instance, she’d be buying bread in the marketplace when suddenly her eyes would roll back in her skull, and she’d drop her lunch into the dirt. A moment later she’d lurch back into reality to find stray dogs sprinting away with her food, the vendor cursing her out, shouting for the guards.
It was even worse at night. The visions lasted hours, and her throat would get so dry from screaming in her sleep that she sometimes couldn’t breathe.
Her roommates were sometimes helpful in that regard—usually they’d get so angry with her noises that they’d chuck their shoes at her to wake her up—but the dreams were often so engrossing, that physical force wasn’t enough.
Her visions were usually about war. Armies marching.
Young men forking each other through the chest with rusty swords.
Classic medieval activities. For a while, she thought she was having magical premonitions—that was a silver lining, at least, she could predict the future!
She could declare which king would fall and who would take his place!
—but by her two-hundredth birthday, she realized that was a complete misreading of the situation.
Her dreams sometimes came true, sure, but that was only because she kept up with the times, and she was good at predicting how dominoes tended to fall.
If Polymarket had been around back then, she would have made a killing.
In actuality, all Yasmine was really doing was giving herself nightmares. She was unknowingly pickpocketing fears from the heads of peasants and noblemen and casting those terrors into elaborate dramas in her own head.
Essentially, her talent was amplifying the fears of others, and she had made herself the victim of it for decades. A Nightmare vampire—there was no such thing in the vampire canon, so she had to name herself.
Not a particularly powerful skill, nightmares, or so she thought at the time. Fear, as it turned out, was often a much more potent weapon than even violence.
Nevertheless, she eventually figured out how to stop projecting the nightmares inwards, and the visions stopped. She hardly dreamt at all for the next eight hundred years.
Which was why it was exceptionally odd that she found herself doing it now.
It arrived in a short, horrible burst just before her alarm.
She found herself in some sort of tiny darkened closet, the door locked.
Long ballgowns surrounded her on all sides, hung from handcrafted oak hangers.
The dresses looked worse for wear, clearly unworn for decades.
The whole room choked with dust and mothballs.
A powerful and impatient knock came at the closet door, startling her. A striking fear possessed Yasmine just at the mere sound of it. Her whole body trembled like it was remembering something, but Yasmine could not recall what it was.
As she fruitlessly tried to place her location, she found her mouth opening without her own volition, like she was a sock puppet. “Can I leave now?” she said.
“No,” answered a voice from outside the door. It was old and feminine. Almost comforting in its tone. “Two more years.”
Yasmine’s heart lurched in her chest.
Years? Spent in here?
In her panic, everything narrowed. The ballgowns seemed to grow in size and press inward, their previously soft silky fabric now sandpaper against her skin. The tiny spiders haunting the corners of the closet scattered into the cracks in the wall.
Two more years, she caught herself thinking. I can do two more years.
“Okay, mother,” she said, swallowing it down.
And then her alarm went off.
***
“Damn it.”
Yasmine struck her pencil hard against the paper, crossing out her previous attempt at a solution. The nib of the graphite split under the force, and she groaned.
This was the third time now that she’d completely messed up the math on what should have been a very basic calculation.
She leaned back in her chair, and sleepily rubbed her eyes until shapes began to form behind them. This morning is such a complete wash.
She’d missed the Columbia stop twice on her commute, she’d forgotten to bring her laptop to her morning lecture, and then halfway through that very lecture, her students informed her she was giving the same lecture as last week, verbatim.
All thanks to that stupid nightmare.
“I need a walk,” she announced. Not that anyone heard it.
Unlike the other professors, she didn’t share an office.
That was a very important stipulation of her contract.
Still, sometimes she had to speak out loud to herself in order to force a thought through the incessant noise of her subconscious.
And it was certainly one of those days.
She abandoned her work and exited into the crowded hallway. Usually she brought her notes with her everywhere, just in case inspiration struck, but she knew it would be for nothing today. A singular problem occupied her mind, and she would be unable to fixate on anything else until she solved it.
And that problem was, from the sound of it, teaching a seminar down the hall.
As Yasmine stalked towards the familiar voice, she became more and more certain.
The nightmare had to belong to Bella. Yasmine saw no other clear candidate.
Now that she was mature in her powers, she only ever picked up the fears of people she was in close, prolonged proximity to. Not just physically, but… emotionally. It was a big reason why she kept such strict boundaries between herself and anyone who tried to befriend her.
She saw no need in inheriting the trauma of strangers.
And yet, you invited a stranger to live with you.
It was completely inexplicable. She wouldn’t even invite Sylvia over for lunch.
She tried not to dwell on it as she arrived at the door to Lecture Hall 304A.
Thankfully, it was already slightly ajar, so she felt less like a stalker.
You’re not a stalker. She invited you to watch.
She sighed, then tugged the door handle softly so it didn’t creak.
To her shock, Yasmine almost immediately ran into the back of a student.
304A was one of the department’s larger lecture halls, built in tiers that wrapped around the front like an amphitheater, and seated around a hundred and fifty when full.
Today, though, it felt closer to two hundred.
Students sat cross-legged by the stage, while others pressed against the back walls, trying to catch a glimpse.
A glimpse of… Yasmine’s new roommate.
Yasmine grimaced. It was embarrassing how well she understood the mopey, awestruck looks the male students wore as Bella sorted through her lecture notes, her nose scrunching endearingly as she paged through a thick stack of papers.
The blonde had changed out of her work uniform and into a white, deep V-cut blouse that tucked neatly into perfectly ironed blue jeans. The shirt wasn’t revealing enough to be unprofessional, but it was certainly, um…
Jesus Christ. I’m acting like I just got off the Mayflower.
“Professor Sokolov?”
Yasmine’s head snapped up like an owl when someone tapped her on the shoulder.
Her cheeks burned. She felt like she’d been caught in the act, although she wasn’t sure what act that would be, unless going through an internal crisis about a human woman’s cleavage had recently been outlawed in the constitution.
“Yes? What?” she hissed through her teeth. She vaguely recognized the face of the girl who was talking to her. Probably one of her new batch of graduate students. Couldn’t be a notable one, though. She committed the smart ones to memory.
When she spoke, even at the low volume, a few more heads turned to face her. She had pressed herself as far into the wall as possible to avoid people noticing her, but being the single redheaded professor on the staff was not helpful in staying low profile.
“I didn’t realize you were working with Dr. Dragomir,” the girl said.
Yasmine’s mouth opened, then closed. “I’m not. I’m just… dropping in.”
“Oh.” The girl looked very unenthused by this answer.
“That’s too bad. I was hoping your course might engage with some of her research.
I wanted to take her lecture, but it filled up within minutes of the registration going online, so I’m only getting to audit it.
Which is fine, whatever, but some days when I get here it’s so busy I don’t even have some place to stand. ”
Yasmine wanted to feel offended at how this student had very clearly insinuated that she’d rather have taken Bella’s lecture over her own, but her own curiosity overshadowed it.
Classes taught by post-docs weren’t usually very tantalizing for masters students.
They typically preferred getting to work with established professors: the kind of people who could write recommendations that would get them competitive positions down the line.
Post-docs didn’t have that same sort of sway in the world of academia.
Which meant Bella’s research had to be actually interesting.
It also meant they clearly were not paying her enough. Obviously.
“If the room’s this full, why don’t you just watch her lectures online?” Yasmine said, returning her attention to the student. All lectures were recorded for online viewing these days. She let her students choose if they wanted to come in person or not.
“Oh. That’s because Dr. Dragomir doesn’t allow herself to be recorded.”
That got Yasmine’s head to turn again. “What?” She snorted. “She doesn’t have her lectures recorded? Why?”
The girl shrugged. “She’s a little bit strange about cameras in general. She has everyone turn in their phones at the beginning of class.”
Yasmine’s eyebrows lifted comically.
“She takes people’s phones away and her class is still packed? She must be a witch.”
“Eh hem.”