Chapter 19

Appearingin the lobby of my dream palace, I come face to face with a gray-colored Pom, who's looking up at me somberly.

"Guess whose dreams I'm about to walk in?" I say, figuring that will help lift his mood.

The tips of Pom's ears go from gray to a light shade of orange. "Oprah?"

I look at those guileless eyes in confusion. "You mean that nice lady from Earth?"

He nods.

"Why the puck would I dreamwalk in her?"

The orange in the ears reddens. "It was my guess. No need to be mean."

"Sorry." I make Oprah appear next to us, then have her slowly morph into Valerian. "The right answer was Valerian." I resist the urge to snidely add, "You know, the guy I was actually with when you were awake."

Pom flies over. "In that case, what are we waiting for?"

Shaking my head, I teleport us to the tower of sleepers and locate Valerian there.

Score. There he is. I half expected to see trauma loop clouds above him—he did mention his parents getting killed—but thankfully, all is clear.

"You mind staying out this time?" I ask Pom, following an intuition.

His ears wiggle. "Okay. But you have to introduce me once he's comfortable in the dream world."

"Deal."

I lean over Valerian, and since there are no cooties here, I give him a not-so-chaste kiss on the lips to enter his dreams.

* * *

For a moment,I think I failed and got jerked out of the dream world because I find myself in Valerian's bedroom.

Then I notice a bunch of discrepancies. One is that both windows leading into the bedroom are black—something to look into later. The other discrepancy is much bigger: There's a second version of me on the bed.

A version Valerian is dreaming about.

A naked version who seems to be very bendy and more experienced than I am.

I thank the stars I left Pom out of this; he doesn't need psychological trauma.

Peeling my eyes away from my doppelg?nger, I watch Valerian's perfect glutes—which are flexing in action. A part of me wants to use my powers to swap places with the other me; Valerian wouldn't know the difference.

Except we have things we have to do.

I clear my throat.

Valerian stops mid-thrust and looks my way.

"Ah." He makes the naked me go away. "This is a dream."

That was the quickest adjustment to the reality of dreaming I've ever come across.

"Ready to deal with the werewolf?" I ask.

He nods, and without my assistance, he clothes himself.

Second example of his mastery of lucid dreaming. Interesting.

I take his hand—mostly because I want to—and teleport us over to the tower of sleepers.

"What's that?" Valerian stares in fascination at Pom, who lands on my shoulder with a Cheshire cat grin on his face. "A dream manifestation?"

"Not a manifestation. He's real. Sort of. He's my companion." I fluff up the looft's fur. "Pom, meet Valerian."

Pom leaps down and lands at Valerian's feet. Looking the man up and down, he says, "The version you kissed looked just like him."

I redden. "Pom, that was private."

Valerian smirks. "Nice to meet you, Pom."

"What kind of Cognizant are you?" Pom asks.

Valerian uses his power to make our surroundings look like his living room. At least he tries to. I see double: a ghostly version of what he's trying to show me and the tower of sleepers underneath.

The tips of Pom's ears turn purple. "Another dreamwalker?"

"An illusionist." Valerian takes the vision away. "But I'm an experienced lucid dreamer as well." He makes a couple of packets of manna appear in the air before handing one to Pom and another to me.

I taste the treat. Yep. He is good at lucid dreaming. So was Hekima, the illusionist behind the New York Council murders. He learned about lucid dreaming because he'd grown up side by side with "my kind" in a mysterious place called Soma.

My heartbeat accelerates.

Could that be where Valerian learned it too? Is that why he got so cagey when I asked him about it?

Pom shovels his manna into his mouth without unwrapping it. After chewing mindfully and swallowing, he says, "Just like the one Bailey made for me when I was trying to understand why everyone in the waking world is so obsessed with eating."

I look at Valerian. "He doesn't need to eat because he gets sustenance from my blood." I make Pom's furry bracelet form temporarily show up on my wrist. "In the waking world, he's a looft."

Valerian examines Pom with even greater curiosity. "You mean like the para—"

"A symbiont creature that lives on moofts," I say quickly. The last thing I need is Pom freaking out over the use of the p-word.

Valerian nods sagely, catching on. "That's what I was about to say."

I beam at him. "Exactly."

"And Pom is how you jump into dreams so readily," Valerian says. "Clever."

"Yep." Keeping my tone as casual as I can, I ask, "How did you know?"

Valerian frowns. "A lucky guess."

Right. Sure. Nothing to do with the forbidden topic of Soma.

"The werewolf." Valerian looks around. "He'll show up here when he's in REM sleep?"

"Yes," I say and don't bother adding, "Another very lucky guess?"

"Where would he be?" Valerian examines the sleepers in the nooks around us.

On a hunch, I teleport myself to the floor where the nooks have been empty for a while now.

Yep. "There." I point at the one where Hans showed up, still in wolf form.

Valerian takes the spiral stairs in the middle of the tower, which probably means he can't teleport like I do.

"Do you know how this part works?" I ask when he reaches me.

He smiles. "You touch me and him at the same time, then go in."

More proof he's known some dreamwalkers—and this time, he's inadvertently taught me something I've never tried. Normally, I'd jump into the dream of person A, come back to the tower of sleepers with said person, then jump into the dream of person B.

If this way works, it will be more efficient.

He closes the distance between us and stands in such a way that I can reach him and the wolf with ease.

My heart rate picks up the pace again, my physical awareness of his proximity as intense as it is in the waking world—only here, there are no germs, and I'm fully in control.

I run my tongue over my lips. "So I can touch you anywhere, right?"

His ocean-blue eyes kindle with dark heat as he leans in. "Actually"—his voice deepens—"there's a specific way I'd like you to touch me."

"Pom, sweetie, can you give us some privacy?" I ask, my eyes not leaving those sensual lips just a few inches away. "The thing with the werewolf will be scary anyway."

"Fine," Pom huffs and disappears.

Valerian clasps my hand and places it on the werewolf; then, before I can have a coherent thought, he kisses me.

Wow. It must be the knowledge that he can feel the kiss this time that makes this hotter… because it is. More than once, I feel like we're beginning to float off the ground—a hazard of the dream world.

After what feels like an hour of bliss, he pulls away. "He might leave REM sleep," he murmurs, gazing down at me with heavy-lidded eyes. "It's important that we go in."

Right. Dreamwalking.

Without letting go of the werewolf's fur, I slide my hand under Valerian's shirt and reluctantly plummet into the wolf's dreams.

* * *

Just like thelast werewolf I did this with, this one is having two dreams at the same time—one for each of his natures. I'm not sure what Valerian sees, but from my point of view, the two dreams are juxtaposed, like two hologram flicks.

One dream is like a violent nature show. Hans is in wolf form, ripping a mooft into shreds.

What an asshole. Moofts are protected species that are pretty much extinct—no good werewolf would hunt them, even in their sleep.

In the other dream, Hans the man is wearing a mooft mask and is in a meeting room, talking to more masked people.

The interesting thing here is that this feels like a memory.

First things first. I can't deal with two dreams at once.

Just like I did when I fought Hekima, I float out of my body and create a second Bailey, this one with fiery hair. Straining my bodiless self, I will myself to enter both bodies.

Wow. It's easier this time. Much easier. I guess that power boost is a gift that keeps on giving.

Wolf Hans stops eating, raises his bloodied muzzle, and sniffs the air.

Puck. The last time, a werewolf was able to detect me this way.

Luckily, Hans shakes his head and resumes eating.

Valerian appears next to the version of me watching the werewolf.

"I'm making sure he doesn't detect us," he says in a conversational tone.

Right. I almost forgot about Valerian, but he didn't forget to make himself useful.

He gestures at Hans. "Can you make sure he keeps dreaming this for a long time to come?"

I nod and set the dream on a loop.

"Good," Valerian says. "Now can you take me to the more interesting dream?"

So he's only here in the wolf's part of the dream. Interesting.

The me in the conference room dream teleports over to where Valerian and the other me stand.

Looking at my fiery-haired self, I wink.

She/I wink back at me.

The feeling is weird because I'm conscious of both winking and looking at myself doing it.

Then the me who was already here notices a hungry expression on Valerian's face when he looks at each version of me in turn. His purely male thoughts aren't difficult to read: One Bailey is great, two are even better.

Well, if he's a good boy, one day I might use my power to have a sort of threesome with him. It might be fun to enjoy him from different perspectives like this. So fun, in fact, that I feel distinctly warm at the thought.

Suppressing the distracting notion, I leave the fiery-haired me to supervise the wolf's dream and teleport Valerian to the meeting-room dream.

Now that the two-dream juxtaposition isn't confusing things, I get a good look around the room.

Hmm. The masks are all the cheapo crap you can get in any store. All the popular choices at costume parties are represented, from real monsters like drekavacs to fictional creatures like Pac-Man.

One specific mask catches my attention, that of a puck's face.

Could it be?

It is a very common mask.

But it's not just the mask by itself. This man is tall and thin, like the one in the dream of Vas, the orc from the Filthy Bastards gang.

Except that would mean Itzel's grandfather's disappearance is somehow linked to Icelus.

"The High Priest couldn't make it," the guy in the puck mask says in the same creaking-floorboards voice I heard before, confirming it is indeed the same person. "I'll be the one to head today's gathering." He waits to see if anyone has any objections, then opens a hologram map of Gomorrah and waves his hands around until a huge chunk of the map is colored in red.

Everyone's eyes gleam with fear and curiosity.

"As you've probably surmised, this represents the blast radius," the puck-masked guy says. "For the foreseeable future, you'll want to stay far away from those neighborhoods."

My eyes widen. "Blast radius?" I exclaim so that only Valerian can hear. Millions live in the highlighted area, not to mention the Health District is there too—the location where Mom's hospital resides.

Let's talk after, Valerian tells me via LEGO letters.

"Has the date been set?" the werewolf growls.

The puck-masked guy gives him a cold look. "Only the Grandmaster will have that information. What we don't know can't be tortured out of us."

Everyone at the table nods somberly.

"Speaking of capture and torture." The puck mask takes out an unfamiliar device, presses it to his right finger, and winces as the device beeps. "I've just implanted a delivery system." He extends his other hand and taps his index finger and thumb in a Morse-code-like pattern. "That gesture will activate the system. The medicine is painless. Use it if you're captured."

Valerian and I exchange worried glances.

The puck mask walks around the room, implanting the devices into everyone's index fingers. Afterward, he spends a while making sure the group remembers the suicidal finger-tapping sequence.

Returning to his seat, he sweeps his gaze over the room. "I know how committed all of you are to our cause, so stating this is unnecessary." His eyes glint darkly. "If you're captured and don't use the precaution you've just received, Phobetor will deal with you personally."

Everyone looks a lot more frightened than they did at the talk of torture, or when a death-dealing device entered their fingers.

Valerian was right. These people really believe in this nightmare deity, to the point where they might actually kill themselves to avoid its wrath. In fact, the mere mention of Phobetor has a profound impact on Hans. In this dream, his shoulders droop, sweat beads on the back of his neck, and he adjusts his shirt collar.

The version of me who's watching the werewolf notices him reacting as well. He stops eating and tucks his tail between his legs.

Puck. I can tell this thing is about to become a nightmare he'll wake up from. Well, not with me around. I change the dream so that there's a knock on the door leading to the meeting room.

Hans looks in that direction—and I instantly feel the dream is no longer a memory, something I expected.

The door opens, revealing a mooft standing there.

As Hans gapes at the benign cow-like creature, I start to make everyone in the room disappear. Before I get around to the puck mask guy, Hans turns from the mooft, likely to ask his co-conspirators what the hell is going on.

Seeing the puck mask alone, he frowns. "Where's everyone?"

"What are you talking about?" the puck mask asks.

Valerian grabs my elbow. "Use your powers to make our surroundings more generic," he whispers. "We want the dream to merge into the one where the two of them spoke alone."

More proof he knows how dreamwalking works—but I don't have time to challenge him on it, or ask why he can't accomplish the same thing by using his own powers.

Actually, I think I know why he doesn't do it himself—he's probably too busy making the two of us invisible to Hans.

I cover the room in fog and cross my fingers.

Valerian nods at the guy in the puck mask. "Now have the pucker say something about Erato."

I chuckle internally. Pucker is a great nickname for that guy.

Taking over, I have the pucker say, "The dryad filed patents that could expose everything."

Holding my breath, I watch the werewolf's jaw muscles twitch as the room around us transforms.

Valerian and I look around.

"Is this a morgue?" I ask Valerian in a voice only he can hear.

He nods.

Hans curses under his breath. "I'm going to pay that bitch a visit."

"Discretion is paramount," the pucker says, crossing the room to lean over a corpse. "Phobetor is merciless to those who betray us."

This time, the spooky surroundings and mention of Phobetor have an even stronger impact on Hans. He backs away, his elbows pressing into his sides as if he's trying to make his body as small as possible.

His wolf self stops eating again and whimpers.

Before I can rein in the dream once more, I find myself back in the tower of sleepers, Valerian at my side.

We look at the empty bed where the werewolf was a moment ago.

Well, puck.