In Between Dreams (16 page)

“Bailey Regan,” Jason answered the phone with a spring in his voice. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Hey, Jas,” she answered back with a laugh. “Nothing at all, I missed you.” Bailey lay back on her bed dramatically.

“I miss you. How is everything?”

“It’s good. It’s been a little bumpy. But things are looking up,” Bailey said. “Although, I am a little hungover.”

“You drank?” Jason gasped dramatically. “I’m shocked.” Jason knew that Bailey didn’t venture outside of red wine very often.

“I needed a night out. It was fun. I’ve been having a hard time ever since my last sleep attack, and Sierra wanted to cheer me up.”

“How have your dreams been?” Jason asked knowingly. “Have you had dream sex with that hot Australian since we last talked?” he teased.

Bailey laughed loudly and covered herself with her blankets. “This is why I love you, J. You are the only person I can talk to about my dreams, and you don’t think I’m crazy.”

“
Oh!
I think you’re crazy. I don’t judge you because I’m crazy too,” Jason stated with a snotty tone. Jason was the first person she ever told about the dreams the plagued her during the sleep attack. At first, he didn’t believe that they were so detailed. He thought that they must be something she was making up. He was the first person to suggest that she should become a writer.

After a couple years, Jason realized that the dreams weren’t going away, and he, like most of the professionals that she had seen, believed that they were something her subconscious created to help her through her sleep attacks.

Bailey felt for the remote on her side table. “My last dream was a little off the rails. We were in
China
.”

“Oh, that’s because you wanted to see Sam! You
love
Sam. He speaks Chinese. Right?”

“Mandarin,” Bailey corrected him. “And, yes, he does. But here was the crazy part: we got shot at. That’s how the dream ended.”

“Is Daniel okay?”

“You are aware he’s a figment of
my
imagination, not yours. Right?”

“I don’t care. You described him to me, and he sounds like a dreamboat. He is what keeps me warm when Robert is gone.”

“Oh,
kill me now
. You’re kidding, right?”

“Sure, yeah…I’m joking…” Jason lied. “Is he okay or not?”

“He made it through. He wasn’t in the room. It was only me and Sam,” she explained. “And then I woke up. I think I got shot in the shoulder.”

“The dream didn’t
end
end?”

“
No
. I just woke up. And I haven’t been back since. It was…off-put-ting,” Bailey explained with a sigh. “I feel weird about it.” Bailey felt awkward about this because it was the first time she’d ever woken up from a dream without a conclusion. The sleep attack was clearly over; however, the dream was not. They were normally connected completely.

“Why is this different than the other times?”

Bailey turned on her TV and played her DVD. She heard Walter’s voice and yawned. “It was different, because there was no resolution. Good or bad, there is always a resolution. But not this time, there was this gunman who broke down the door, and then I was awake.”

“Broke down the door? Your subconscious is such a drama queen,” Jason barked inside of a laugh. “I’m sure it was a fluke.”

Bailey shrugged. “It’s not a big deal, I mean…it’s only a dream.”

“Yeah, more like a series of dreams that has taken over most of your adult life,” Jason remarked. “Side note, Christopher called me yesterday.
He’s in LA, and he wants to do lunch. Apparently he is in the middle of a divorce from that prude of a wife, Margie.”

“You’re only calling her a prude, because she wouldn’t let you have a threesome with them.”

“Well, it’s only fair. I introduced them. I should get something out of it.”

When Bailey was about to respond, she felt a familiar feeling. Her eyes began to droop, and she felt the feeling of falling into darkness. “Oh shit. Jas, I think I’m losing you. It’s happening again.” Bailey was dreading the slip back into the dark. She knew she had no choice, and she was drifting quickly. It was the too-familiar feeling of a sleep attack.

“What do you mean? You just got back.”

“I know, I know. Listen, I need you to call my mom and tell her. She’ll let my boss and everyone else know.”

“You should have a bat signal for this shit by now,” Jason half joked. “Okay. Sleep well. Tell Daniel I say—”

Bailey couldn’t keep her eyes opened any longer. She quickly slipped into a deep sleep.

eleven.

“H
aaaaaaaay,”
Bailey heard a discreet imitation of her voice coming from her mind. It sounded like Jason’s voice. She sat up from an unfamiliar couch, looking quickly behind her. Her eyes studied her surroundings. This was not an unfamiliar feeling, waking up seeing strange surroundings. This was the protocol for the beginning of a dream sequence. She swallowed hard; her throat felt dry. She rolled her neck to stretch her tired body back, looking up to see a high ceiling that was coated with heavy textured paint. The paint covered a tiled ceiling with trim borders that immediately telegraphed French architecture to Bailey. She looked around the small living room, which was adorned with ornate end tables and colorful vases filled with pink flowers. The room was small and tastefully decorated. The drapes were heavy and pulled back to show Europeanlike rooftops behind a thin drapery lining.

As she began to return to a normal posture from her stretch, she was struck with a short pain and stiffness in her right shoulder. She massaged it gently, feeling tenderness under her clothes. The sensation was not extreme, only uncomfortable, and she began rub the area softly as she reviewed her surroundings.

She was alone but could hear voices coming from behind the wall next to her. There were mirrors everywhere accenting the space, giving the appearance of a much larger area. She looked at herself the full-length mirror across from her in behind the small dining room. She noted for a moment how odd she looked.

Her dark hair was pulled up in a tight bun, and she was wearing a red miniskirt over brown leggings. Her turtleneck was brown to match. She wore bright red flats that looked like ballerina shoes, and she cringed in the mirror. She looked terrible. She looked healthy and a lot better than she did in Seattle. But her clothes looked unkempt and wrinkled.

She pulled the ponytail holder out of her hair and let it fall to the ground. She glared at herself in the mirror. Her hair was suddenly short. She had always kept it long on purpose—why was it so short? She groaned and moved closer to the mirror, and as she did, the swinging door to her right opened abruptly and Daniel walked in with a kettle of tea.

“Where are we?” Bailey asked quickly. “And why does my hair look like this? And why do you have a floral teakettle?” Bailey thought Daniel’s appearance to be totally out of character. The thought of him waiting on anyone was a strange paradigm shift for her.

Daniel looked Bailey up and down a couple times and let out a chuckle. “Looks like you got a haircut,” Daniel noted. “Is that blond? That’s new, yeah?” He was acting playful, edging closely to the obnoxious side of his personality. She had entered a new setting in her dream. Not uncommon but always uncomfortable. The new space meant that they had a new mission. Someone new that needed saving.

Bailey furrowed her eyebrows at him and moved closer to the mirror. There were blond highlights throughout her dark brown hair. She whimpered a little and stomped back to the couch and flopped down on it and crossed her arms like a child being scolded for her behavior. “I look like a sixth grader,” she mumbled to herself. “You still haven’t answered half of my questions,” she growled, and Daniel shrugged with a light teasing grin on his face. Daniel loved tormenting Bailey. Daniel loved teasing anyone, but he was particularly fond of messing with Bailey.

“Don’t screw with me, Daniel.”

“Are you a little out of sorts, Bales?” He pursed his lips, imitating a mother teasing an infant. Bailey was in no mood to be messed with. She wanted to find out why they were here. Her mind flicked to Mei for an instant. She scrunched her forehead together in frustration. Were they in China again? It didn’t look like China.

Bailey shot him a quick glare as he handed her a cup of newly poured tea. She grabbed it firmly enough to display her disdain but gently enough not to spill the tea. She then stood and walked to the window. They were in what looked like a sprawling city, an old city. Bailey scanned the view to find a landmark that would trigger recognition of where her dream had led her. She looked closely at the buildings looking for clues. She didn’t recognize any of the words on the buildings. The letters were familiar, but everything was in a different language.

“Belgium?” Bailey said with a spark of excitement in her voice, and Daniel scoffed.

“You wish,” Daniel said. “We’re in Paris.” He walked over to her and stood behind her. He softly put his hands on her hips and moved his head down to whisper in her ear. “The most romantic city in the world.” He spoke directly into her ear, his hot breath on her neck, making her stomach flutter. It felt nice to be close to him in this way. For a moment, she felt herself give into him. She almost turned her head to smile at him, but she stopped herself. She snapped herself back to the moment quickly. Bailey elbowed him as hard as she could in his stomach, making him back away swiftly and double over in pain. Tea spilled from the side of her teacup, but she’d decided it was worth it.

“Bitch,”
he yelped just as the swinging door swung opened again, with Sam entering the room. He had worry scribbled profusely on his face.

“What’s going on?” Sam queried aggressively.

Bailey turned quickly to face Sam and smiled innocently at him. She tilted her head and walked over to Sam to give him a hug. It was so good to see him. He hugged her back tightly, and she smiled into his sweatshirt. She heard Daniel making gagging noises behind her as she pulled back from Sam.

“Daniel’s just being an ass,” Bailey examined Sam, and frowned. “You look tired.”

“I feel tired.” He had the beginnings of bags showing under his eyes, and they were bloodshot. “We have a problem.”

Daniel shot Sam a glare. “We have no such thing,” he barked. “We have a new member with us.” His smile was indulgent.

Bailey narrowed her eyes and looked at Sam for an explanation. Sam didn’t speak; he continued to glare at Daniel.

Bailey knew to change the focus. “Where’s Halene?” she asked, looking at the swinging door that led to what she assumed was the kitchen. “In there?” she said as she pointed with her thumb at the door.

Sam glanced toward Bailey and nodded. She made her way past him and pushed through the door to see Halene sitting with a brunette woman. She couldn’t have been more than forty-five years old. She was haggard. She had dark circles under her eyes, and her brown eyes were rimmed with red.

Bailey quickly noticed another person in the room, behind Halene. It was a very tall, leggy blonde standing against the wall as if she were posing for a magazine cover. She was wearing light pink skinny jeans and a flowing blue floral shirt. She was by no means fat, but she was curvy. Her long blond hair was sporadic. It looked like she had come out of the ocean and didn’t make any attempt to fix it.

The seated brunette woman said a phrase over and over again that Bailey couldn’t understand. She was wearing a brown blanket over her shoulders as if to help comfort her.

Bailey saw that Halene was holding the woman’s hand and leaning forward in a position of empathy. “B,” she said with a little too much enthusiasm. “Thank God you’re here.”

The blonde glanced over at Bailey, her sea-green eyes looked Bailey up and down as the woman assessed her attire.

“You must be ‘B’?” the blond woman concluded. She didn’t move. She stayed where she was, a statue of a model.

“Bailey,” Bailey corrected her, and looked behind her to see Daniel and Sam had entered the room. “Let’s get started?” Bailey instructed the group to go into sharing-and-planning mode.

The blonde looked at Bailey with indifference. “We’ve already started,” she said, finally breaking her pose and walking over to Bailey. “Katherine,” she introduced herself with her hand outward. “I’m the human lie detector. So be careful,” she said with an arrogant wink.

“And what does that mean exactly?” Bailey asked, a little taken back by Katherine. She was tall, beautiful, and blond and had an aura about her that, to Bailey, screamed “bitch.”

“I can read people,” Katherine said as if it was obvious. “I can tell when they are lying or if they’re scared. I can tell if someone is trying to protect someone. Mostly by facial expressions but sometimes through body language. And I can tell when people don’t really like me.” Katherine winked, and Bailey raised her eyebrow at the blonde.

Bailey shook her hand and looked down to notice the reason Katherine was so tall. She was wearing four-inch pumps that matched her top. “Wow. Those are some shoes,” Bailey said. Her tone was not complimentary.

“Being a human lie detector gives me a lot of abilities,” she said with an all-knowing smirk. “And I can already tell you don’t like me very much.” The condescending manner of this new member was unpalatable.

She looked past Bailey at Sam. “And she is legit scared.” Katherine pointed to the brunette Parisian woman at the small kitchen table. A handkerchief appeared in the woman’s hand. She brought the cotton scrap of material to her mouth. She appeared to be biting on the edge of it in nervousness. She would alternate wiping her eyes with the biting motion.

“Let’s get to work,” Sam said with a heavy breath. He looked at Bailey with tired eyes, and she nodded back at him. She could already tell this was going to be a difficult mission with the addition of Katherine.

Halene, Bailey, Daniel, and Katherine stood in the foyer of the kitchen and watched as Sam and the Parisian woman went back and forth. He was introducing the group and how they could help her. Her face was wet with tear tracks, and her lips and eyes were swollen from crying. Her face had blotches of redness all over her. She spread the handkerchief over her hands and buried her face in the cloth, beginning to cry loudly. Bailey knew she was at a breaking point.