Chapter 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

PIPER

" Y ou have got to be shitting me." I stood outside a warehouse in the middle of nowhere. The outside was covered in simple tan, metal panels with grooves in them. There were no windows and the only doors were a set of glass double doors in the front that had black paper over the windows. But that wasn't the most alarming part of this whole thing. A huge sign sat on the top of the building with bright-red block letters that read, ‘ Sleep Matters! '

"I shit you not." Tuck sighed. "He's a bit eccentric."

"Aren't all the Greeks?" Astrid rolled her eyes. "At least in my experience they all are."

"And temperamental, and touchy, and think they're just the greatest at everything," Zinnia grumbled.

"So, this is gonna just be greattttt." I took a step forward, and the others all filled in behind me as Beckett closed our portal.

The parking lot was empty. At this time of day I wondered if the warehouse would already be closed.I reached for the door, yanked it open, and stepped into a waiting room—a very, very small waiting room. The chairs were old and broken down with ripped vinyl and chipped wooden arms. The carpet was torn and worn in different spots. I walked up to the window where a receptionist sat flipping through a magazine. She didn't bother to look up at me as I approached her.

"Umm, excuse me?"

"Yeah?" She flipped the page and chewed her gum loudly.

"We're here to see," I lowered my voice, "Morpheus."

She pointed toward the waiting room. "You don't have an appointment, so you'll have to wait."

I didn't want to sit in those miserable chairs. "How long is the wait?"

"Until I say so." She popped her gum and flipped another page.

I didn't have time or patience for this. We were here to help Grayson, and with barely two days left, I felt seconds ticking by. When I glanced back at the others, they all seemed to read my mind. Zinnia gave me a single nod while Astrid smirked and gave me a wink. Tuck and Beckett took up positions at the back of our little group, acting as lookouts.

I lifted my hand and let my blood magic flow from it to land on her in a fine, misty cloud. "We want to go in now. Let us in."

"I'm going to let you in." She reached under her desk and pressed a button.

The lock on the door on the other side of the room buzzed, and I moved toward it, pulling it open. Beckett gave a dark chuckle from right behind me. "That little power of yours really comes in handy."

"For now." I marched through the door and into a huge, open warehouse. I paused, trying to get my bearings.

There were mattresses spread in perfectly even rows one after the other over a space the size of a football field. White machines with robotic arms all hovered next to each mattress, and they were testing everything. To one side, a bowling ball was being dropped on a mattress repeatedly. In another row, tiny robots jumped up and down on foam-topped mattresses with glasses of wine sitting on them. Some remained pristine while others spilled instantly. I kept walking, trying not to get too distracted by how weird this all was.

"So, he quality-tests mattresses?"

Tuck groaned. "Yeah, but that's not all."

"What else is there?" I turned down a row of waterbeds and froze. "Wow."

All those robotic arms held long, sharp blades, and they repeatedly stabbed the waterbeds. In the middle of the aisle stood Morpheus. He was taller than expected, with broad shoulders and long muscles. He had one of those travel pillows wrapped around his neck and wore silky baby blue pajamas with sleeping pandas all over them. Bright-pink water shoes finished out the outfit, and I found myself staring at him.

Just then the bed he was standing at the foot of popped from one stab and water sloshed over the floor and onto his shoes. "Damn it! The lack of quality is astounding. Honestly, how is anyone supposed to hit the REM cycle with utter crap?"

He turned away from that disappointing bed and moved to the next. I startled at his bat-like wings and couldn't look away. It appeared he had knitted covers for each wing that had black feathers sewn on to them. When he swung around, feathers fell to the floor around him and floated in the puddles on the floor. He marked something off on his clipboard and shook his head with a disappointed sigh.

I lowered my voice. "Should I just go up and talk to him?"

"Give it a minute." Tucker crossed his arms over his chest.

"Why do you know this guy so well?" This whole time Tucker did not seem thrilled to be here or to be dealing with Morpheus, and the curiosity was killing me.

"TUCKERRRR!" Morpheus boomed in our direction. He spread his arms wide, and his wings extended out, the motion littering the floor with more of those feathers. "What brings you here to visit me?"

Tucker motioned to me. "This is Piper, and she needs your help."

He looked me up and down, then turned away to walk in the opposite direction from us. "I don't have time for vampires."

"Umm, why not?" I followed behind him as he moved toward a door at the back of the warehouse. I was trying not to be offended by the fact he was straight-up rude and said no based solely on the fact that I was a vampire.

"Talk to your girl, Phoenix. Nighttime waits for no one, and I have things to do." He opened the door and walked down a long hallway with windows lining it on each side. I tried not to look in them as we passed, but it was kind of like walking down the hallway in a hospital. I couldn't help but look through and see what was going on. In each room there was a person lying in bed with those electrodes strapped to their heads. The wires ran from their heads over the edge of the bed to a machine that seemed to be tracking something and scrawling on paper. It reminded me of a lie detector.

Tucker took big steps as we followed behind Morpheus. "He thinks vampires don't dream enough. Hence the saying, sleep like the dead ."

Morpheus whirled around on us. "That's right. You're boring. I find most vampires to be so. Their dreams lack . . . imagination or anything fun. They hardly rest. Tell me this, as a human, how many hours a night did you sleep?"

I glanced around at the others. "Umm, I don't know? Maybe six or seven hours I guess?"

He made a sound of disgust in the back of his throat. "You know women need like ten to twelve hours. If you want your mind to function, sleep matters. Stupid mortals really know how to ruin my fun."

"Really? I thought it was eight hours?"

"I'm not impressed with your friends, Tucker." He rolled his eyes. "That ridiculous study was conducted by men and only on men, when in reality, women do so much more throughout the day, so they require more rest . . . which means more time with me. Which means more fun. Which means better REM sleep."

"Oh, umm, good to know. I'll make more of an effort to sleep?" I shrugged, not really sure what to say or how to get back on topic. I wasn't here to discuss sleep or how much I needed or how it worked. The way I saw it, I wasn't going to be sleeping any time soon anyways, at least not until Grayson was back to himself, safe, and with me.

"We're not here for that," Tucker snapped at Morpheus. "We need your help, and we need it now."

"Of course you need my help. Look at the bags under your eyes." He pressed his hand to his chest. "Everyone needs my help."

"Greeks," Beckett muttered like it was a vicious curse.

Astrid elbowed him in his ribs. "Not helping."

Tuck cleared his throat, getting Morpheus' attention. "Look, I'm going to be straight-up with you. We have a vampire who's been cursed and he's gone mad. We need to get into his mind through his dreams to figure out who or what might be doing this to him so we can break it."

"Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?" Morpheus gave Tuck a wide smile for a split second before he dropped it and glared at him. "No."

"You owe me." Tuck crossed his arms and arched his eyebrows at him.

Morpheus shrugged. "You put someone to sleep for one week, and suddenly they think you owe them."

"My family thought I was in a coma. You fill the Phoenix Queen with panic and tell me it's not a big deal." Tuck turned to Zinnia. "You know how moms are, imagine mine hovering over me for a week because I didn't wake up."

"Admit it." Morpheus wagged his eyebrows at Tuck. "It was a lot of fun. Dreams are pleasurable."

"I thought one night hanging out was like a single night of sleep, not a week!" Tuck threw his hands up.

Morpheus stepped into one of the rooms and walked over to the machine. He ripped the paper off and began to read it. He strolled back out into the hall and didn't look up from his paper. "Time can move differently in dreams sometimes. Sometimes not."

"Wait, so I could be in there for a week?" I didn't have a week to spend frolicking in the. dreamworld. I barely had two days. I wouldn't put it past Atlas to kill Gray in his sleep and think it was a kindness. "I don't have a week."

"No." Morpheus crumpled up the paper and tossed it over his shoulder. "Because I'm not going to help you."

"Enough of this," Astrid snapped. "If there's one thing I know, it's that everyone has a price. So, what's yours?"

"Feisty thing." He made a clawing motion between him and Astrid as he hissed. "I like it. The socialite has balls."

Astrid put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot impatiently. "And yet I'm still not hearing your price just for you to play tour guide."

"Tour guide? Ah, I'm offended. It takes a lot of power to navigate such difficult worlds like dreams." He snickered as he tapped his finger on his lips. "But there is one thing I'm dying to do . . ."

As if on cue, Beckett's cell phone began to ring. When he pulled it out, he raised his eyebrows in surprise but quickly answered it. "Maze? What's up?"

His brow furrowed in confusion, then he held his phone out in front of him and pressed the speaker button. "Go ahead. We can all hear you."

Maze cleared his throat and said one word, "Deal."

Morpheus clapped his hands together. "You'll let me walk your dreams then?"

"For one night and one night only in exchange for your help with Grayson." Maze's voice sounded more amused than serious.

"Deal." Morpheus leaned closer to the phone. "Oh to see the things you've seen and will see."

The sound of something crunching in Maze's mouth filled the silence and then he spoke with food in his mouth. "I'm not finished."

"Please, of course, proceed." Morpheus nodded toward the phone as if Maze could see him.

"This will be your one and only time in my head. And you will stop trying to enter my dreams from here on out. I find it exhausting keeping you out."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Morpheus' eyes darted to the side while his words were met with only silence. I found myself holding my breath, waiting for Maze to say something, anything, to get this done. Still silence. Morpheus made a sound of impatience and fidgeted. "Finnneeee. You have yourself a deal."

Beckett held the phone closer to his mouth. "Maze, are you sure about this?"

Maze gave a dark chuckle. "Yeah, I'm sure."

"That is one ride I would not want to get on," Zinnia muttered to Tuck.

"Me either," he whispered back.

"Have fun, Morpheus." The line went dead, and Maze was gone.

Morpheus turned toward me and smiled. "Are you ready to find your little friend, vampire?"

"Absolutely." I didn't trust this guy as far as I could throw him.