Chapter 22

22

MINA

The Present

"Mina," I heard, just as I was about to grab hold of the trellis. I woke up, and I knew Sylas was in the room with me.

"Were you just watching me sleep?"

"It's not like I have anything better to do," he confessed. My room was dark now, and I didn't have any idea where his voice was coming from. "You were having a nightmare again. Do you have them often?"

I frowned. It wasn't a nightmare . . . yet.

But sometimes, yeah, it was—I'd grab hold of the trellis, ivy and all, and then have to climb up like I was Jack on the Beanstalk, only I'd never, ever get to anywhere.

Other times I'd reach out, climb aboard, and the ivy would just eat me whole .

I could still remember what'd really happened. How I'd gotten splinters as long as my fingernails into the bottoms of my feet and?—

"Mina?" Sylas asked again, sounding concerned.

I turned over, pulling my pillow over my face to shout, "Go away!" at him from beneath it.

He didn't leave. I could feel his presence.

Waiting.

"I'm not going to tell you anything," I said, with a muffled sound.

"Fine. Have it your way," he said. "Just know that I'll lick the next man's memories out of his skull before I kill him."

I removed the pillow and sat up. "What?"

"When people are close to death, their lives become liminal things—like dreams almost. And then I can read them, if I want." Each phrase of his statement came from different parts of the room, like he was everywhere at the same time—or like he was speaking with different parts of himself. "And when you are dying in my arms," he went on, "I will be able to read you, too. So you might as well tell me."

I pulled my knees into my chest. I just had a T-shirt and underwear on so I made sure my sheets were hitched high—then again, Sylas had probably been around since before the invention of bras. "Are you saying you can read my dreams?"

"I am a Nightmare, after all."

"Then shouldn't you want me to have them?" Nothing about this moment with him was making sense.

"No. I only like it when I am hurting you. But you, my queen, are not allowed to hurt yourself. "

I wiped my hands against my face. "This is like the world's strangest therapy," I said, and he laughed—it washed around my bedroom like a tide. "Just let me have a few things to myself, Sylas."

"Fine then—when the dawn comes, what else shall we talk about?" He rattled the blinds like he was looking outside, even though I couldn't see him. "It looks like a fine season for you to die in. Shall we speak of the weather? Or, maybe we'll watch TV?" The small television in the corner of my room turned on, but only to show static—which should've been impossible, because I only used it for streaming. "Which show would you like to be your last? Did you have anything you needed to polish off, that was worth spending one of your final handful of hours on Earth on?" The contents of my desk were next—he scattered the papers, notes from my stalking mostly, all around like a stiff breeze. "Should you write your parents a letter, or call them?"

"I get what you're doing," I said with a frown. I already knew that every moment I was experiencing now legitimately was, with absolute certainty, one of the last I would have. "But my parents are dead."

He paused in his poltergeisting. "Aunts, uncles, cousins?"

"Not really. No one worth baring my soul too, at least. It was just me—and her," I said, jerking my chin towards Ella's empty room.

"And would she want you doing this?"

"Isn't it a little too late now, to be asking?" I gave a shallow laugh. "No, I have your number now, Mister Smoke. I'm the only toy you have to play with." I knew I was right by the silence he surrounded me with. "You're so omnipotent, but in the end, there's only you and me, and after I go away, you have to go back to be alone in your sandbox inside the hourglass, just like one of the toddlers at the play park. "

I could feel his attention on me, but otherwise the room was so quiet you could've heard a pin drop.

And then my phone buzzed.

My teeth ground at once. "Are you kidding me?" I asked, snatching it up off my nightstand, to finally go through all the texts Brad Kirk had sent me. I scrolled and scrolled—it looked like he'd been counting off prime numbers of eggplants until I responded.

But I didn't need his fucking key card anymore.

"Are you still hungry?" I asked the room at large, wondering if Sylas would respond.

To my surprise, he condensed at once, so close it made me jump. "Always."

I flung my sheets off my bed—and they went right through him. "Give me five minutes, and then we'll ride."