Chapter 18 #2
Alistair sneers at me, flashing his fangs. I shudder and don’t bother to hide it. He’s hot, and I haven’t forgotten how it felt to have his teeth buried inside me. “We’re attempting to combine our magic. We need someone to test it on.”
Luca adjusts the worn baseball cap on his head, glances between the two of us, and sighs. “I really am a test subject.”
“We won’t hurt you,” I assure him.
“We don’t even know if it will work,” Alistair adds, a muscle in his jaw ticking.
Luca sighs again and drops onto the couch. “Have at it then.” He glances at his phone. “I’ve got to head to the club in two hours.”
“First, we should establish a baseline,” Alistair says.
I mutter a halfhearted agreement. Of course, he wants to make it more boring.
Crouching gracefully in front of the couch, Ali’s arms graze the inside of Luca’s spread legs as he catches his eye. “Lay back,” he whispers.
Luca’s stare goes unfocused, and he sinks deeper into the couch. His entire body relaxes. And the contrast . . . Hovering over Luca, Alistair is coiled to strike—lean muscles bunched, his eyes red and searching.
Compulsion should be creepy, so why am I hard? I squirm, trying to subtly adjust myself without drawing attention.
Alistair blinks twice, and Luca jolts upright. His cheeks are flushed; the silver hoop is caught helplessly between his teeth. “Do you want me to try to keep you out?”
“Not yet,” I say. “We should start easy and work our way up.”
Luca nods. His pupils are blown, with only a sliver of hazel visible.
My stomach flips. This is the opposite of boring, and I’m more excited to show him my magic than I want to admit. That dazed expression on his face . . . the streaks of pink on his tan cheeks . . . I want to be the one putting them there.
I rack my brain for what to show him. He’s a basilisk, so maybe a jungle? That’s not an easy nightmare to pull off, but I want to impress him.
I close my eyes and take myself there.
Waxy leaves dripping dew, the spongy give of a forest floor covered in layers of decomposing plant matter, and the sensation that everything—from the lichen to the air itself—has a pulse.
Once my skin pebbles, I lock in and get to work.
First, I create a thick canopy of towering trees, snaked with vines, connected to the ground by fat, sturdy trunks.
Wispy ferns. Mushrooms that look suspiciously like puddles of vomit.
A flower—fire engine red—bigger and brighter than all the others.
Creeping moss becomes a racetrack for two rival slugs caught in an epic grudge match.
I polish the vibe by peppering in a loud argument between two catty birds and a cunty chimpanzee—he threw a rock at the birds’ nest, and everyone’s sick of his shit—then sculpt a green-striped hammock to drop Luca in.
Chest heaving, I spritz the entire nightmare with wet and nod. It’ll do. I pull back and search for Luca’s mind. I find it right in front of me, active, alert, and pulsing with energy.
I drape the nightmare over his consciousness like a heavy linen tablecloth. His mind quivers with the tiniest shiver of resistance, and I tighten my magic, smoothing any visible wrinkles before he spots them.
Luca gasps, and I pull my focus out of the nightmare enough to watch him experience it. His hazel eyes are wide, his head on a swivel.
“Holy shit,” he murmurs, his fingers grazing the bark of the tree I attached his hammock to. “It feels real.”
I hold my head high and let his reaction soothe my ego. The past few weeks have been hell on my self-esteem. This is exactly what I needed.
“What are you showing him?” Alistair demands.
Instead of answering, I reach for his mind to pull him in and face my first resistance.
If Luca’s head is a beating heart, Alistair’s is a blinding light.
Trying to cover it feels impossible; light keeps getting through.
I grit my teeth and push more magic into the nightmare until it’s less tablecloth and more padded moving blanket.
When I successfully pull him in, Alistair goes completely still.
“This isn’t a nightmare,” he says.
I roll my eyes, more pissed than I should be by his reaction. “Not all nightmares are scary but if that’s what you want . . .”
I split the illusion down the middle, leaving Luca to recline in a tropical paradise while I give Alistair’s cranky ass what he’s asking for. The vines around him morph into snakes. Green, mottled with yellow, I give one red bands—the exact color of his vamped-out eyes.
Each snake is different, but they share one common mission: get Alistair.
An anaconda the size of a food truck comes for him, wrapping around his body. He doesn’t even flinch. If it weren’t for the slight increase in his heart rate, I would think he escaped the nightmare. Alistair studies the snake closely, then grins into its gaping maw. “This is remarkable!”
Those three words feel amazing. All the rejection, being a constant disappointment. Suddenly, the hatred of the other supernaturals in the Fringes is a little easier to take.
I let myself smile, relieved neither of them can see me, then insert myself in the nightmare, banishing the snakes and merging the scenes again.
Shooting Luca a mischievous grin, I add a cocktail to his hand—the same orange one he made for me a lifetime ago at the club. His eyebrows disappear beneath the brim of his baseball cap, and he takes a sip before I can stop him.
“Oh fuck!” He gags. “Dude, this is shit.”
“I know. Sorry!” I scrub my hand over my face. “I’ve never been able to simulate taste.”
Luca shrugs and studies the glass in his hand. “I felt that go down my throat, but I didn’t actually drink anything, did I?”
I shake my head. “My magic is inside your brain. If I stimulate the right places—which is mostly instinctual for me—you will smell, hear, and feel things as if they’re real.
It’s what makes nightmare illusions different from something a fae or witch might do.
They show you a picture. I create the picture with you in it. ”
“That must take a lot of energy,” Alistair says.
I nod. This is an elaborate nightmare, but it’s within my limits. I can weave simple illusions off and on for three to four hours or maintain complex ones for an hour without slipping. I’ll feel like death afterward, but it wouldn’t be the first time.
“I can’t do it forever,” I admit, giving him a nonspecific version of the truth.
I’ll help Alistair with his project, but I’m not going to tell him my weaknesses. That would be idiotic. I’m not desperate enough for his attention to make myself vulnerable.
“Try the combo thing.” Luca takes another sip of the orange drink, then spits it over the side of the hammock. “Still ass,” he tells me cheerfully.
Alistair takes a few steps forward, standing in front of the hammock in the vision and the couch in reality. “Hand me that drink,” he says. Like melted chocolate running down the sides of a fountain made of gold—it’s the most decadent sound I’ve ever heard.
But Luca’s fingers stay firmly wrapped around the drink. “Get your own,” he teases.
Alistair sulks. “I can’t connect to him. There’s a barrier.”
“It’s probably my nightmare,” I say. Thanks to his lighthouse mind, this nightmare is super thick. “You need to get through it without piercing or tearing it down.”
There’s a pause, then Alistair growls, “How the bloody hell am I supposed to do that?”
“Careful, Ali,” I tease, grinning despite the headache creeping along the base of my skull. “Your scone-encrusted past is showing.” I love it when he forgets to hide his British background, but I’ll be damned if I ever let him know it.
He growls again, and I feel sharp pressure on the illusion. I roll my eyes. “You’re bludgeoning it. That’s the literal opposite of going around, dude.”
Alistair tosses his hands up in both realities, creating a double vision effect when I look at him—as if he has twenty fingers instead of ten. It feels like being drunk, and I have to swallow a few times to banish the nausea.
“How am I supposed to go around something with no edges or corners? That makes no sense.” He’s infuriated with me—and I love it.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this, but look for ripples,” I say. “I’m always good but never perfect. They’ll be there.”
I sense his focus; the intense way he studies my nightmare, and shudder. His inspection is fucking intimate. Plenty of people at the compound have used my nightmares to practice their mental walls, but it’s never felt like this before.
“I see one,” Alistair whispers.
A warm, enticing trickle of his magic slithers against mine; it may as well be my bare skin.
When Alistair’s compulsion makes it inside my nightmare, I know immediately.
The sensual magic is almost uncomfortably warm.
It pulses with intensity just like him. It doesn’t feel like he went around either . . . it feels like we’ve merged.
Alistair crouches in front of the hammock again and stares directly into Luca’s eyes. “Can I have a sip?” he purrs. “Give me a taste. Please.”
Luca’s pupils dilate, and his hand shoots forward, offering Alistair the cocktail. Condensation runs down the side of the glass, and their fingers graze. As soon as Luca lets go, Alistair punches the air triumphantly, sloshing the orange drink everywhere.
“We did it,” he shouts.
Heat hums low in my belly. Like the first sip of whiskey trickling down my throat after a long day, mixing my magic with Alistair’s is addictive. Does he sense it? The intimacy?
He still hates you, idiot.
It’s the reality check I need. Hands shaking, I let the nightmare crash around us, revealing the gray, boring apartment. The jungle isn’t real; there are no ass-flavored cocktails, either—only a couch and three supernaturals with more problems than we can count.
“I’ve got to go to work,” Luca says, his throat bobbing. “But great job with that. Both of you. It was . . . cool to experience.”
The raspy tone of his voice makes me wonder how Luca felt being bathed in our magic. I want to ask him if it turned him on. If Alistair weren’t here, maybe I would. But I’m the one on the outside, and I need to stop forgetting it.