Chapter 4

Except nothing happenswhen I will myself to go in.

Wait, no. Something is happening. Something odd.

The more I strain my powers, the more I get the feeling that I have a small voice in my head. It reminds me of how Pom communicates with me when he's awake; only it doesn't sound like my furry friend.

The voice seems to be saying, Who are you, and what do you want?

Feeling silly, I do what I'd do if it were Pom. Mentally, I reply, I'm Bailey. You asked me to visit your dreams.

No mental reply comes; instead, something yields, and with a whiff of ozone, I plummet into the gnome's dream world.

* * *

As soon asI show up in my dream palace, I teleport to the tower of sleepers.

"How did it go with Lidia?" Pom's voice inquires. Then he appears bit by bit, in a Cheshire cat fashion.

"Not great," I say and bring him up to speed on what happened.

He glances at a nook nearby. "And that's the gnome doctor?"

"That's him." I fly to my target, with Pom next to me.

As soon as he notices the scar on Dr. Cipactli's face, his ears turn black. "I'm going to stay out."

"Fair enough." I touch the gnome's forearm and will myself to go in.

This time, there's no voice in my head. I simply fall into the gnome's dream.

* * *

For a moment,I think I accidentally woke up.

We're back in the exact same room where Dr. Cipactli went to sleep.

Of course, if it were the waking world, there wouldn't be two of me here. The second me is wearing a cruel expression and holding Dr. Cipactli's neck in a death grip.

"You leave me no choice," the gnome croaks out, forming a ball of lightning with his hands.

Boom.

Her chest a charred mess, the second me smashes into a wall and slides down, dead.

Hey now. Why is everyone dreaming about killing me?

The dream world changes again.

Maskless and without his scar, a younger Dr. Cipactli is standing next to a ginormous machine made up of steam engines, levers, and pistons indicative of technology even more primitive than that of Earth.

An older gnome shoots a section of the device with a lightning ball—powering devices is how gnomes usually use that ability of theirs.

"The number values will be represented by gear wheels," the elder says as the ball flies at its target. "Each digit of a number has its own—"

As the ball lands, something explodes.

"Oh, no!" the elder gnome shouts.

A hissing liquid splashes Dr. Cipactli in the face.

As he screams, I realize this nightmare is a memory. This is how he got hurt.

The dream changes yet again.

This time, Dr. Cipactli is his current age, but still without the mask and scar. Nightmarish creatures that look like the images in his office appear all around us. This isn't a memory, at all.

"This is enough." I turn the nightmare beings into fluffy kittens. "You wanted a demonstration of my power, so here it is."

Dr. Cipactli gapes at me, openmouthed.

"This is a dream." I turn the kittens into tiger cubs to illustrate my point.

He rubs his eyes. "I can't believe it."

"Don't you remember giving me consent to go into your dreams? I heard you ask me who I was and what I wanted."

"I asked what?" He shakes his head. "This is so much stranger than I thought."

"Yeah." I take us to my cloud office and gesture for him to sit where my clients usually would. "Now, about my mom."

"Right." He sits and assumes his usual professional demeanor. "I reviewed all the records and concur that she needs to be awakened from inside her dreams."

I plop into my own chair. "As in, by me?"

"Not necessarily." Probably without realizing it, he makes his scar reappear on his face, followed by the mask. "We can use the same medicine on her as I used on myself."

I sit up straighter. "The one that puts you into REM sleep?"

"Right. What I forgot to tell you is that it does more than that." He pauses. "As you noticed, I had nightmares. That's not a coincidence. The medication—Koshmar—is very consistent in eliciting that response."

"Your drug gives its users nightmares?" I make my hair fiery.

His eyes widen, but he quickly composes himself and nods. "Koshmar was specifically formulated for that purpose, so it's much more potent than a drug that merely has that as a side effect. It's invaluable to my research."

I frown. "You want to give my mom a potent nightmare?"

"Yes," he says eagerly. "Koshmarnightmares get progressively worse until the sleeper wakes up, which is what we want in this case. Furthermore, an interesting aspect of these specific nightmares is that the first one always features whatever the sleeper experienced last—in your mom's case, a bad car crash. I bet she'd wake up just from that."

I regard him thoughtfully. "So this is why your first nightmare was set in the room where you fell asleep. It was your last experience—and the starting point of a nightmare where the dream version of me was choking you."

"Exactly. I didn't even realize I was sleeping. It was as though my brain had erased the memory of spraying myself with the drug, and then my surroundings took a dark turn. That's how it works every time."

"And you're suggesting I give this horrible drug to my mother?"

He shrugs. "If she can be scared into waking up, this would do it."

"But what if she can't wake up? With the nightmares escalating, she'll end up in the worst hell imaginable, with no way out."

"Then you have to wake her using your power, after all." He doesn't bother hiding the disappointment in his voice. He must've wanted another subject to test the drug on. "Speaking of your power," he continues, "do you mind another experiment?"

I stare at him warily. "Like what?"

He stands up. "I'd like to see what happens if I withdraw my consent."

"Oh, that's fine."

He nods and scrunches his face, tensing—

* * *

I findmyself back in the waking world, in the empty room where Dr. Cipactli is lying on the bed.

Looks like gnomes can take away their consent for dreamwalking—impressive.

Dr. Cipactli opens his eyes and sits up. "That was fascinating."

"Yeah," I say with a lot less enthusiasm.

"Can we do another experiment?"

I gesture to activate my comms and glance at my messages.

Valerian just replied, and I'm eager to know what he said.

"I'm sorry, maybe another time," I tell Dr. Cipactli. "I hope what we did thus far is payment enough for your time." Especially considering how unhelpful you were, is what I don't add.

"Fair enough," he says. "If you ever need a job, please keep us in mind. Someone with your powers could be invaluable when—"

"Thanks. I appreciate the offer. First, though, I need my mom safe and sound."

"Of course. If I can think of anything that might help her, I'll let you know."

We exchange contact details, and he leads me out.

As I walk out of the building, I finally read Valerian's terse response:

Let's talk. Can you meet me at Erato's at four?

Responding in the affirmative, I jump into a car and have it drop me at the hyperloop station. Erato's is on the other side of the city, so I need a speedier mode of transportation.

The hyperloop station in the Health District is typical for Gomorrah, in that it would put the poshest airport on Earth to shame, both in terms of the sleekness of its design and the comfort for the waiting passengers.

Not that we have to wait long. The train arrives every few seconds.

When I get on it, it's pretty empty. As usual, I can barely feel anything as it zooms forward and transports me the distance of ten Manhattans in an eyeblink.

Another car ride later, I step into Erato's building and ride the glass elevator to the top.

Erato is a powerful dryad who channeled her love of plants into vertical farming, making it something of an art form. The glass walls of the elevator allow me to ogle plants of every color and shape that cover every surface of the building. They're not just visually pleasing; the scents are divine as well, and the gorgeous nuts, fruits, and vegetables that peek out of the foliage make my mouth water.

I've got to hand it to Valerian. He picked a great place for our meeting—and a romantic one at that.

Maybe I'm not the only one affected by that crazy chemistry I've been feeling.

When I step out of the elevator into the restaurant, I feel like I'm in a magical forest. A green-skinned dryad dressed in a leaf bikini greets me with a smile that reveals her tree-root-like teeth. "Bailey?" she asks in a voice that sounds like autumn leaves falling.

I nod, looking into her chlorophyll-filled eyes.

"Come this way." She leads me through the thick greenery, her powers effortlessly commanding the branches to move out of our way.

The booth she leads me to looks like a miniature forest meadow with a large tree stump serving as the table, and smaller ones as chairs.

Valerian is already here, sitting on a stump and sipping a beaker of tea. Spotting me, he stands up and smiles.

I suddenly feel overly warm. Those sensual lips should be illegal, along with that chin dimple and the rest of that perfectly proportioned face. Not to mention that tall, muscled body… I remember the illusion he gave me the last time we met—that of him naked and covered by a glistening liquid—and it's all I can do to contain my drool. Thankfully, he's not naked right now, though the green tunic he's wearing might as well have been painted on. Not that he didn't look crazy hot in the bespoke suit he sported on Earth. He looks hot in everything—but especially in nothing.

That's actually a flaw in the idea that occurred to me earlier.

He's going to be a massive distraction.

He notices my staring, and his ocean-blue eyes gleam brighter, his grin turning wicked. "I'm glad you reached out," he murmurs as I plop gracelessly on the nearest stump. Even his voice brims with sex appeal. "I was afraid that after the clusterpuck that was the last job, I'd never hear from you again."

I swallow to moisten my dry throat. "Well… I appreciated the double payment." I'm still staring at him, I know, but I can't help it. Something about him looks familiar, always has. I have no idea where I could've met him, though. Initially, I'd thought that as an illusionist, he made himself look like a mix of celebrities, but then I learned that's not the case.

This is the true Valerian in all his mouth—and other body part—watering glory.

Finally tearing my gaze away from him, I activate my comms, so I can see the augmented reality menu through my new contacts. After a few seconds of deliberation, I select a mix of different teas and an appetizer fruit sample bowl—all species unique to this place.

"Hazard pay," he says dismissively when I'm done. "Did you already spend it and need more?"

"Not exactly." I disable the comms so nothing obscures my view of him. Immediately, my drooling resumes, so I hide it under a brisk, businesslike tone. "I'd like to run a theory by you."

His dark eyebrows arch.

"In Bernard's dream, I saw you speaking to your VR company and had an epiphany. You're planning to leverage giving VR to humans to grow your illusionist powers, right?"

His eyebrows rise higher. "An impressive deduction. No wonder you solved the case of the murdered Councilors."

I think I solved that case because I got lucky, but I'm not going to tell him that—the higher his opinion of me, the better. "So you don't deny it?"

A dryad arrives with a tray and puts a beaker of tea next to me, then sets down two identical fruit bowls.

Valerian grins. "We got the same thing. Great minds think alike."

I wait for the dryad to leave and for my heart to recover from the hormone-induced spike. Talk about a killer grin—if I were elderly and frail, I might've keeled over already. "So am I right about your plans?" I press when my voice is steady enough.

"More or less." He takes a round fruit that looks like Earth's guava and bites into it with gusto.

I fight an uncharacteristic urge to lick up the fruit juices from around his mouth. "In that case, I want in," I say and grab my own version of the same fruit before I can do something totally unprofessional, not to mention unsanitary.

Biting into the fruit, I taste its sweet, yet somehow savory goodness, and my heart resumes racing as I notice him eyeing the juices around my mouth with a hungry expression.

My licking-things-up idea must be contagious.

"What do you mean?" he murmurs, his attention still on my lips.

I pick up my tea beaker with unsteady hands. "I want to grow my powers with the help of your VR company." I take a deep breath as his gaze snaps to mine and sharpens. "Your plan is to become associated with the illusory worlds of VR so that you become, in a way, a lord of illusions in human minds. I want you to let me do the same. Virtual reality can be dreamlike, so with the right game or app, I can be seen as a mistress of dreams—and therefore, my powers should grow. In theory."

I half expect him to laugh in my face and walk away, but he looks thoughtful instead. "One of the games we're developing features an illusionist hero," he says slowly. "Given how similar our powers are, that means the nuts and bolts for a dreamwalker character already exist. If we added some dream-related levels and your likeness as an alternate character…"

Oh, puck. I almost jump up in excitement. "You'll do it?"

His eyes gleam like blue diamonds. "I could—but it is a big ask. As beautiful as you are, I'll need something in return."