Realm of Dreams & Shadows (Dreambound #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

The freshman tour guide won’t stop talking about ghosts.

“St. Augustine College holds the distinction of being the most haunted university in America,” she announces to our group, her voice pitched with practiced enthusiasm.

“Over the centuries, more than two hundred supernatural encounters have been documented within these walls, and even more on the grounds. We can only guess how many have gone undocumented.”

I fight the urge to roll my eyes as several of my fellow freshmen exchange uneasy glances. Of course, they believe in ghosts. Everyone wants to believe in something beyond the mundane reality of everyday life.

Everyone except me.

I know better. The scary things that haunt the darkness aren’t harmless tricks of the light. They’re the seeds of nightmares. And some nightmares aren’t just scary dreams. Some nightmares can kill you.

Or, at least, they can kill me.

“Our most famous resident is the Woman in White,” the guide continues, gesturing toward the arched windows of the main hall.

“Legend says she was a nurse during the 1918 Spanish Influenza who worked herself to death caring for the sick. Students report seeing her wandering the dormitories during finals week, offering comfort to the stressed and struggling.”

My new roommate, Tia Mendez, nudges me with her elbow, her rainbow hair gleaming in the dappled sunlight streaming through the canopy of trees.

“Spooky, right? Bet you’re glad you’re rooming with a witch,” she adds, her fingers toying with the six crystals she wears on various chains around her neck.

I’m significantly less sparkly. Just a simple chain with my mom’s silver-set lapis lazuli ring dangling from it.

I reach up and touch the ring, smiling at the contrast between me and my new roomie.

I’ve only known Tia for about half a minute—just since we met earlier in the day as we hauled our stuff into the room—and already, I know that she’s a practicing Wiccan, pansexual, and allergic to both cats and small talk.

Like me, she lost a parent young. Both of hers, actually. And my mom…well, the story I tell is that she died in her sleep.

I don’t usually dump my family drama on people I just met, but Tia and I immediately hit it off, and pretty much spewed our life stories at each other as we took a chocolate chip cookie break amidst the move-in tedium.

“If the Lady in White shows up during finals, I’ll direct her your way,” I promise. “I’ll be too busy studying to bother with ghosts.”

Tia’s eyes go comically wide. “Wait—you’re here to study? I have so got to find a new roomie.”

I laugh as she grins.

“You can be a sceptic all you want,” she adds, waggling her fingers so her silver and bronze rings flash in the late afternoon sunlight. “I’ll still protect you.”

If only she could.

As the sun beats down on the ancient cobblestones, I tune out our tour guide’s stream of spooky stories. Really not what I need right now.

Instead, I focus on the stunning Spanish colonial buildings with their red-tiled roofs, sweeping arches, and intricately carved stonework. The campus is beautiful in an old-fashioned way, with vines climbing the sides of structures that have stood for over three centuries.

In another life—a normal life—I might have fallen in love with the place immediately. Instead, all I can think about is how many shadows lurk in those elegant archways.

A chill races up my spine.

To these students, this spooky courtyard is just a dark and atmospheric place. A location to gather and tell scary stories.

To me, it’s a breeding ground for nightmares.

None of them get it. Not the guide, not the students. Not even Tia.

But I do.

I know what lurks in sleep. I know that’s where the real horrors gather, patiently waiting for their prey to come.

And I know that sleep isn’t the only place where nightmares hide.

They’re always waiting, always watching.

Always devising new ways to bring terror to each dreamer.

They wait for sleep, then slide into dreams, sometimes only to torment. Sometimes to kill.

They’re after me now, and soon they’re going to kill me. Just like they killed my mother and my grandmother and my great-aunt and my great-grandmother, and back and back and back for forever.

“Yo, Cora!” Tia stage whispers, making me jump. “You look pale.”

“It’s nothing,” I lie. “Just the humidity getting to me.”

“I bet it’s this place,” she says. “It’s thin here.”

“Thin?”

“You know. Where the boundary between worlds is the weakest. Easier to do magic where the veil is thin.” She wiggles her fingers. “And lots more spooky stuff happens too.”

I shiver. Thin. Why is that word so familiar?

It takes me a minute, but then I remember—that’s how Mom had once described St. Augustine too.

We’d come to visit Uncle Finn back when he was a professor, not yet the dean.

We’d been staying in his apartment, me sleeping on a couch, and Mom’s screams from the guest room had sent both Finn and me bolting out of bed to find Mom cowering in a corner.

She waved our concern away, saying it was just a bad dream, but later she told me that she should have anticipated it. That St. Augustine was a thin place. And the nightmares are always worse where the veil is thin.

I curse the memory as I stifle a groan. Why, why, why the hell did I think coming to school here was a good idea?

Oh, right—free tuition and housing. Plus—bonus!—dodging death in my sleep will help me stay in good cardiovascular shape.

Always the cock-eyed optimist—that’s me.

As our group reaches the dorms, the guide pauses dramatically in front of a twisted oak that dominates the center of the quad. Its massive branches stretch in all directions, some dipping low enough to touch the ground before curving upward again like arthritic fingers.

“This is the Widow Maker,” she announces, her voice dropping an octave for effect. “The oldest living oak in St. Augustine.” She points upward. “On moonless nights, students have reported seeing the shadows of hanged men swinging from those limbs.”

A few kids in our group shudder and step back. I stare up at the gnarled branches, thinking not about ghosts, but about those limbs reaching for me in a dream, then closing around me tighter and tighter and tighter until my ribs crack and I can’t breathe and—

“Cora!”

The familiar voice washes over me, and I take a moment to shake off the nightmare fantasy.

Only when I’m certain I’ve locked in my Happy Cora persona, do I turn toward my uncle, who’s striding across the courtyard toward me.

At forty-nine, he’s tall and trim, and he still moves like one of the college kids he oversees.

His salt-and-pepper hair is the only indicator of his age, and on another coast, he could easily pass as a movie star.

For most of my life, he was the shiny beacon I’d clung to when my mom went away.

Not physically—she was physically there for me until the day she died.

But the rest of her? I didn’t get it before, but I do now.

The rest of her was lost in the confusion and fear of living halfway in a world where dreams can kill you.

Whenever Mom had gone into one of those dark moods, Uncle Finn had been there, assuring me that Mom loved me, but that she was ill, and I needed to remember that her poor sleep made her weak and exhausted and touchy.

Over and over, he’d promised to always be there for me, and I’d believed him. Why not? Hadn’t he always been my rock?

But that rock had become a bludgeon when he’d shoved me into a hideous boarding school after Mom died.

I’m over it now, though. Hell, maybe I should even thank him. That place was like a prison, and doesn’t everyone say that prison toughens a girl up?

And you have to be tough to survive when nightmares stalk you.

So, yeah. I’m over it.

“There’s my girl,” he says, wrapping me in a hug that I quickly shimmy out of.

Okay, well, maybe I’m not so over it, after all.

His brow furrows. “Everything okay?”

“What? Yes? It’s great.” And since it mostly is—and since I really don’t want to do a deep dive into the past—I slide back in for a sideways hug, letting myself remember all the butterfly kisses and piggyback rides we’d shared when I was little.

By the time we separate, my smile is genuine. I mean, the past is the past, right? He’s not going to use his almighty powers as the dean to fuck me over again. Especially since I’m a grownup now. All shiny and legal and badass at nineteen.

“How was the tour?” he asks, snapping me back to the moment. “See any ghosts?”

“Just a lot of suggestible freshmen.”

He chuckles, and I’m about to introduce him to Tia, but that’s when I see her talking with a cluster of guys. Probably not the time for an introduction, so I turn back to Finn.

Growing up, he’d been the eccentric academic who brought me strange gifts from his travels to “educate subtly.” He’s also the one who suggested I come here on a full scholarship. “A fresh start,” he’d said.

What he doesn’t understand is that a fresh start means nothing if your nightmares follow you.

Still, I’d seen it as the truce offer it was. And no way was I walking away from a chance to study for free where no one knew me as “that poor girl whose mother died so violently in her sleep.”

Uncle Finn grimaces as he checks his watch. “Faculty meeting in ten minutes. But dinner tonight? My place at seven?”

“Deal.”

As he hurries away, Tia sidles up beside me. “So that’s Dean Lyte. He’s seriously hot for an old guy.”

“Please never say that again.”

“Just stating facts,” she says with a shrug. “Back to our room? I decorated my half while you were out, but I left your side completely boring and sterile, just like you asked.”

“I didn’t ask for sterile,” I say as we break away from the tour. “I just said to keep it minimal.”

“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. And don’t worry, you can borrow some of my fairy lights if the emptiness gets too depressing.”