Chapter 11

I findPom in the lobby of my dream palace, shooting a laser gun at targets that remind me of inter-Otherland gates, only with a shimmering bull's eye in the middle.

A pang of guilt bites at me. Before all my problems started, I'd regularly play competitive games with Pom, everything from tennis to fencing. They'd brought my little friend incalculable joy, and were fun for me also. Now I've ignored him for so long, he's been forced to play with himself.

But not in a dirty way.

Probably.

Hopefully.

"Bailey!" Pom makes his game accoutrements disappear and flies around my head with the enthusiasm of an overcaffeinated puppy. "What's going on?"

I take a slow route to the tower of sleepers so I can bring him up to speed.

"And that's her? The dryad?" He looks at the green newcomer in one of the nooks.

"Yep." I fly over to her bed. "Looks like she was able to fall back asleep."

He lands on my shoulder. "Can I join you in her dreams? Doesn't seem like it'll be very scary."

"Just don't give away our presence," I say and make us both invisible as I reach out to touch Erato's forehead.

* * *

Erato is lyingnaked on her bed. A nearby shrub extends a cucumber-like fruit toward her groin.

Before Pom and I witness something we'll never be able to unsee, I change the plant into a giant VR screen.

Despite the incongruity, the dryad doesn't wake up. Good. I put the plant designs from her patents on the screen, and she focuses on them, as I hoped.

With her attention occupied, I change the room around us to be more generic, then clothe her and make sure she's standing upright.

This is it. If this is close enough to a memory—and intuition tells me it is—she'll take care of the rest. And she does. The room starts to look like her living room, except the front door is different.

Suddenly, the door in question breaks into tiny pieces, and a giant wolf leaps through what remains. With a flash, he turns into a naked male with Elvis-like sideburns and a Mohawk hairdo popular with gremlins.

Anger twists Erato's features. She recognizes him.

"Stupid bitch," he growls. "Which part of ‘discreet job' was unclear to you?"

Three strangle vines snake from the ceiling. One wraps around the guy's throat, and two grab his wrists. "Now," Erato says menacingly, "what were you saying?"

The guy sneers. "If something happens to me, the people I work for will have your spleen."

Erato waves a hand, and a poison hogweed coils within a hair's width from his feet. "Given your lack of intellect, I doubt you're as indispensable as you think."

"Test it and see," he snarls.

She waves her hand again, and the acid seed okra pod zeroes in on the guy's torso. "I don't have to kill you, you know. Something tells me if I make you look even uglier, the people you work for will thank me."

Interesting. It doesn't sound like they're part of the same group. Does that mean she's not Icelus?

"The patents," he grits out. "How could—"

"I patent all of my creations," Erato says calmly. "I offered you exclusive rights, but it was outside your budget."

He shows his teeth. "I didn't realize that was what we were talking about."

"Didn't realize. Didn't think." She taps her temple. "Are you beginning to see a pattern here?"

In a flash, the werewolf turns back into his wolf form.

A wall of greenery rises between him and Erato.

"If something happens to me, a letter will go to the Senate," she says. "If you work for who I think you do, that's the last thing you want."

He growls and bounds back through the door, disappearing from sight.

The dream stops being a memory at this point as some of the plants turn into green creatures that don't exist, at least not on Gomorrah.

Figuring I have enough info to share with Valerian, I leave the dream world.

* * *

He's standing right nextto me as I emerge from the trance, close enough that his bacteria could easily jump on me if they wished. And he's staring at my face like a dermatologist looking for a scary mole.

I instinctively step back, flushing all over.

He cocks his head.

I dampen my lips. "Were you staring at me that whole time?"

"Not staring," he murmurs, his gaze briefly dipping to my mouth. "Admiring."

My flush deepens. Clearing my dry throat, I say, "Ready to hear about Erato's dream?"

His expression turns serious, and I tell him what I just saw.

"That makes sense," he says.

I blink at him. "It does?"

"The Senate had two theories for why Erato would file those patents. One was that she's with Icelus, and the filing was designed to give nightmares to the clerks at the patent office and others in the know."

I scratch my eyebrow. "Sounds like too much trouble for relatively few nightmares."

He nods. "This is why I think their second theory must be the right one. She took that job from Icelus but filed the patents to mitigate the damage her work would actually do."

"Oh?"

"If someone were to use those plants for a terrorist attack, the Senate would already have countermeasures in place," Valerian says. "And I bet Erato knew that would be the case—which is why she filed in the first place. No wonder her employer was so pissed."

That does make sense. "So what now?"

"Give me a second." He makes some gestures, querying something in his comms. "I can't seem to find a werewolf matching your description in the Enforcer database," he says after a moment. "He was probably in disguise."

I think back to the sideburns and Mohawk. "That might explain why he looked so odd."

Valerian makes a few more VR gestures. "I'm going to use my powers on you in a second, if you don't mind."

Before I can actually say if I mind or not, the living room goes away, replaced with a giant stadium. All around me stand people with different faces but the same Elvis sideburns and Mohawks as the werewolf in the dream. Each wears a name tag, as though this were an orthodontist convention.

"I'm showing you every werewolf on Gomorrah who has a record." Valerian's disembodied voice seems to be coming from every direction. "I added the hair to make it easier for you to identify the one from the dream."

I nod, and the werewolves begin to parade in front of me, each giving me a good chance to have a look at his face.

After about an hour of this, I yawn.

"I'm sorry," Valerian says from everywhere. "I wish I knew a faster way to do this."

"I could show him to you in a dream," I say, looking at the sky.

"Just a few more suspects," he says. "Then you can go home and rest."

The werewolf parade continues in the same vein until I spot a guy who might be the one.

"Him," I say when he gets closer, and I know for sure. "Hans Stubbe."

"Are you certain?" Valerian asks.

"His sideburns were longer, but it's him. I'm positive."

The stadium and all the werewolves except Hans go away, leaving me back in Valerian's living room.

Valerian shifts his gaze from something in his VR display to me. "Based on his profile, he's probably a hired gun instead of an actual Icelus initiate."

I yawn. "Do you know where we can find him? Because if not, I know a guy."

"Yeah, leave it with me." Valerian makes Hans go away. "By tomorrow night, I'll have the location."

"In that case, I'd better go get my beauty rest," I say, suppressing yet another yawn. "I still owe myself hours and hours of sleep."

"You know," Valerian murmurs, eyes darkening, "you can sleep here."

My throat goes dry. "I'm not sure that's a good idea."

Wait. Why did I say that? It is a good idea. In general, why am I not all over him already? How long can I stay a virgin before it seems creepy? I may alreadybe there, in fact. And if I were to lose it, I can't think of a better person to find it than—

He steps toward me. "I know you want to."

"You do?" I sneak a glance at my coral-pink Pom bracelet.

Is that what gave me away? Or is it something about the way I smell or look?

Instead of replying, he dips his head and presses his lips to mine.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

At first, I'm too shocked to do anything but process the sensations. His lips are soft and warm, their gentle, undemanding pressure making me crave more. But then unwelcome statistics flood my brain, the ones about the millions of bacteria we're already exchanging, even with our mouths closed.

If the kiss gets more intimate, our microbiomes will merge and stay that way forever and ever. And bacteria are just the tip of the frightening iceberg. Viruses such as herpes simplex or papilloma are also real possibilities—depending on who else Valerian has kissed before me.

I don't know if it's the idea that he's kissed others or my dread of germs, but I pull away from the kiss.

There's a hurt expression on his gorgeous face.

Puck. Did I pull away too sharply? And, germs aside, was pulling away what I really wanted?

Feeling like an idiot, I take a step back—and my foot plunges into the cold pond water. I squeal and flail my arms to regain my balance, but my other foot slips off the edge.

Valerian lunges forward and catches me, yanking me to safety.

As soon as I'm steady on my feet, he releases me, his face unreadable.

Mumbling a weak thanks, I beeline for the door, leaving wet footprints behind me.

* * *

My emotions in turmoil,I get into a car. Thank the stars it's self-driving. The last thing I want is to face a sentient being in my current state.

Once we set out, I exhale a frustrated breath. What the puck was that all about? I've wanted to kiss Valerian ever since I first laid eyes on him, yet when he finally made the move, I totally pucked everything up.

Now he knows I'm a freak, the only woman my age who's never kissed anyone. I can only have intimacy in my dreams—and even there, not with a real person but a figment of my own imagination.

This is why I haven't dated. I'd rather face Earth's dentists than explain all this to a guy I like.

Needing to get my mind off the clusterpuck that is my love life, I open Leal's diary. Now that I have reason to believe he wasn't just a paranoid curmudgeon, I read his thoughts on Icelus with a lot more interest.

According to him, someone had been killing Icelus agents on Earth—a mystery person Leal felt great gratitude toward.

I freeze for a second, recalling what Valerian just told me about his parents. Could that have been him? Is he capable of being so ruthless? I picture his expression when he was talking about Icelus and realize the answer is yes.

I can imagine him taking out Icelus agents in all sorts of gruesome ways.

My chest tightens with sympathy again as I think about him dealing with the loss of both of his parents. I can't picture losing my mom. Even now, with her in a hopefully reversible coma, I feel like an orphan. How much worse would it have been for Valerian at that age?

Ugh, I'm a horrible person. He opened up to me, telling me about this tragedy in his past, and I treated him like a leper because of my stupid germ issues.

Glumly, I return to the notes and skim through a bunch of boring stuff. But then I come across something interesting.

Leal claims that Icelus have a drug that puts people into REM sleep. He says it has a dire side effect but doesn't say what it is before going on about how invaluable to him such a drug would be.

Skimming further, I'm not surprised to find him talking about hiring someone to replicate said drug. I know he succeeded in that. Of course, his version also had a side effect, the worst possible kind. Whoever took his drug never woke up. That's what happened to Eduardo, the werewolf on the New York Council.

I continue to skim until a yawn overcomes me. Now that the adrenaline from the kiss is fading, my sleepiness is returning full force, and Leal's boring notes aren't helping.

Closing the journal, I open my messages and find Itzel in my contacts.

I can help you guys look for your grandfather tomorrow, I tell her. Let me know where I can meet everyone.

I send the message just as the car stops next to my building. The ride on the elevator happens in a sleepy haze, as does undressing and treating myself to hygieia all over my body.

When I finally get into bed, I'm asleep before my head touches the pillow.