Chapter 13 #2
She hip-butts me. “Good point.”
I can’t help smiling. Tia’s enthusiasm might be misplaced and manic, but it’s also infectious.
“About our outfits,” she begins, and I’m grateful for the change to a more mundane subject than, oh, whoever is trying to kill me. “You need something with an I’m approachable but also slightly mysterious vibe.”
“I think Prada has that as prêt-à-porter.”
“Ha, ha,” she says. “But it happens to be my specialty.” She pulls out her phone, continuing to walk as she scrolls through photos.
“I was thinking something like this for you. See? You’ve got the jeans, and if it fits, you can borrow my burgundy shirt.
It would show off your tits in a totally non-slutty way. ”
“I don’t get to be slutty?”
She tilts her head, peering at me over her sunglasses. “This is a mission. You can be slutty when the party is only a party.”
“Fair enough,” I say, glad she can’t tell the way my stomach is twisting. I want to go—I want answers—but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit, even if only to myself, that I’m both nervous and more than a little freaked out.
Backbone, Lyte. There’s a Hunter in your dreams, and you’ve got a target on your ass. So grab your answers while you can because tomorrow may be too late.
That’s one hell of a depressing pep talk, but hopefully, what I learn tonight will make it all worthwhile.
“—my boots?”
“What?”
She cocks her head. “Mind wandering?”
“Well, duh.”
She laughs. “That’s fair. I asked if you had your own, or if you need to borrow my ankle boots.”
“I’d have to cut off my toes to wear your shoes. But I’ve got some.”
I’d said it as a joke, but now I’m stuck with a mental image of bloody feet. It feels like a bad omen.
“What?” Tia says, shooting me a sideways look.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go.”
“Are you kidding?”
“I just…” I trail off with a shrug.
“No.” She actually waggles a finger at me. “Stop second-guessing yourself. This is your chance to get answers.”
“Do you really think I’ll get some answers tonight? Or are you just dying to hit a Whitehall party?”
“We won’t know unless we go. Besides,” she adds, “when a hot, mysterious guy warns you away from a party? That’s practically a signed invitation from the universe to go.”
“Or a legitimate warning about potential danger.”
“Please.” She waves a dismissive hand. “What’s the worst that could happen? You have to talk to boring finance majors about cryptocurrency? It’s not as if they’re going to stab you in the middle of the dance floor. Besides, I’ll be with you the whole time.”
She has a point, sort of. The party may not be on campus, but there will be other students around.
“Okay, but we stick together,” I finally say. “Like glue. No, like epoxy. And if anything feels off, we leave immediately.”
“Epoxy’s honor.” Tia makes a gesture that might be a salute. “Now, about your hair…”
We spend the next hour in our room, perfecting our outfits in a bubble of surreal girly normalcy that almost makes me forget about nightmare creatures and golden-eyed warriors.
Almost.
I’ve just donned Tia’s burgundy shirt when she curses. “Dammit, I totally forgot that I have a Wicca meeting like right now.”
She scowls as she puts some crystals into a velvet bag and grabs a deck of Tarot cards. Then she points at me. “Don’t leave this room. Promise? Not until I’m back. We’ll walk over together. Promise.”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” I say, whipping off a little salute.
She hurries to the door, then turns to me. “Back soon,” she calls out as she rushes into the hall, leaving me alone with thoughts of dreams and Hunters and golden eyes, all twined together with the danger that stalks me.
I shiver, almost wishing I didn’t know the truth. That I still believed this was just my mind playing tricks.
It isn’t. And I never really believed that, anyway.
Something happened to my mother. Something is happening to me. Something I don’t yet understand.
I’m terrified. Truly terrified. And all I can hope is that tonight I’ll find an answer or a clue or something to give me hope that I won’t end up dying the same way she did.
I can’t concentrate on picking out funky jewelry for the party. My mind is determined to stay entirely on my mother and her dreams. So instead of pawing through the plastic shoebox I’ve used for jewelry since I was seven, I pull out my mother’s one dream journal.
I flip through the pages as fast as I can without ripping them, my eyes skimming my mother’s neat text for anything about barriers being thin, because I want—no, I need—to better understand what that means.
I find the reference early in the journal on my second, slower look.
I walked between worlds again last night.
The veil is thinning, the barriers between realms growing weaker even as I am going deeper, staying longer.
It’s both exhilarating and terrifying, especially since I don’t know why he watches me.
Only that he does. And I don’t know if he is hunting me, only that someone is.
Does he seek to kill me? Does he seek to have me?
I don’t know. All I know is that this world of dreams calls to me, and the dark man seeks to claim me.
The king bound in shadows who both exhilarates and entices me, perhaps even beyond all reason.
I read the passage three times. Entices. Exhilarates. Calls to me. Passionate words, and with each read, I become more curious. Because right now, I can’t help but wonder if my father lived in the dreamscape.
Is that even possible?
I shiver.
Honestly, the idea is just a little too freaky.
Idly, I flip through the pages, skimming the words, trying to gather my memories of my mom. I’d loved her, and we’d been a team. There was just the two of us, after all. But at the same time, she was always a little distant. The neighborhood mom who the other kids said was just a little off.
I never understood why. Not until my own nightmares started. Not until after she died, and I found her journal.
Mom, why didn’t you tell me?
With a shudder, I flip through the pages, stopping about three-quarters of the way through.
Her last entry.
I run my finger over the ink, reading the words I know so well. How many times have I found myself lost in the nightmares? No more.
She’d figured out a way to stay grounded—I’m certain of it. To stop this horrible, inevitable tumble into another world. A terrifying world.
She’d found an answer, but it didn’t matter. That was the night she died so horribly, writhing and crying out.
The mares, I’m sure. The nightmare creatures had finally killed her in the dreamscape, and her heart had given out.