Grave Visions(66)

Well, at least I had names to work with. Now to track down a couple of bogeymen who liked to eat kids. Yikes.





Chapter 18





Of course, having a couple of names didn’t mean I could accomplish much tonight. By the time my father dropped me off back at home it was nearly three a.m. I all but stumbled up the stairs, my exhausted legs protesting the climb. Even PC didn’t bother to greet me at the door, just lifted his head from where he was curled up on one of my pillows, gave me a look like “what took you so long?” and then closed his eyes, going back to sleep.

“You’re a very loyal dog,” I told him as I took off my boots.

He snored in response.

Right. I stripped off my pants and left them in a pile by the boots, and then, in just my shirt and underwear, collapsed into bed.

• • •

I woke standing in a plane of endless sand and darkness.

“A most interesting outfit, planeweaver,” a voice said behind me.

I whirled around. Where there had been unbroken sand before, there was now an enormous obsidian throne. A fae lounged across it, one black-leather-clad leg kicked up over one armrest and his elbow on the other, his head balanced on his knuckles.

“Kyran,” I said, recognizing the nightmare kingling.

“At your service, my dear.” He gave one of those elaborate hand gestures where he rolled his wrist, pantomiming a bow, even though the rest of his body didn’t move. He leered, a small secret smile at the edges of his mouth.

The first thing he’d said, about my outfit, finally registered and I looked down. I was wearing only the shirt and panties I’d crawled in bed wearing. No boots. No pants. No dagger.

“Shit.” I pulled at the edges of the shirt, trying to tug it down, but it was a fitted top, hitting right at my hipbones, and there wasn’t any stretch in it.

Kyran laughed, a boisterous full-bellied sound of mirth. I glared, which didn’t quiet his laugh at all. Well, glad I could amuse him.

“So I guess you can chalk this up to being one of those awkward dreams when you show up to work naked?”

“Why am I here?” I asked, trying to decide which was worse, trying and failing to cover myself better, or just saying screw it and pretending I didn’t care I was in my underwear. Tugging at the shirt was gaining me nothing, so I went for the latter, crossing my arms over my chest and ignoring the heat in my cheeks—the ones on my face, that was. The other cheeks were a little chilly.

“You’re the one who asked to see me, my dear.”

True. But . . . “I asked you to meet me at the Eternal Bloom—not drag me off to this creepy nightmare realm.” And speaking of the nightmares, where were they? The darkness around me was unending, but nothing seemed to be moving inside it. That was good, but how long would that last?

Kyran made a dismissive sound and lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “Why fuss with all that political red tape when you come here nightly?”

Nightly? The first time I visited the realm of dreams and nightmares I’d been having trouble maintaining my shields during sleep, and as I’d already been in Faerie, my planeweaving had caused me to literally fall into a recurring nightmare, landing me physically in this realm. But, the way he’d worded his sentence . . .

“Do you mean this is a dream?”

“Of course. I simply pulled you out of the mundane imagery your exhausted mind typically conjures.”

I looked around at the endless, empty landscape. “If this is a dream, that means I can direct it, doesn’t it?”

“What, like lucid dreaming? Don’t do that. It’s annoying. You know that actually steals magic back from this place. Plain frustrating.”

Which didn’t mean I couldn’t do it. And that meant I didn’t have to stand here half naked. I imagined the black pants I’d been wearing before I’d gone to bed, the way they looked, the softness of the leather. The sand crawled up my legs, which was a totally weird sensation, but between one blink and the next I went from half naked to wearing pants. Well, mostly. Something was wrong with the pants that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The way things are sometimes just off in a dream. Like I was looking at them through distorted glass. Still, at least I wasn’t half naked anymore.

I looked up to find Kyran frowning at me. He’d taken his legs off the arm of the chair and rotated forward, focused. “Didn’t I say not to do that.”

“What? You do. Or are you going to say that intimidating throne that follows you around isn’t made completely out of dream sand?”

“Yeah, but I live here.”

Point. I bowed my head, acknowledging that I was in the wrong, but I didn’t apologize. I’d needed the pants, damn it.