The Dream Thief (3 page)

"You could have warned me."

My voice didn't work the first time, so I swallowed and tried again. "Could have used a warning myself."

"This isn't normal, then?"

"Hell no. I have no idea what just happened."

Ba dum. Ba dum. Badumbadumbadum

I had more than used up my quota of rebellion for the day, and needed to answer.

"Cell phone," I said. "I need my hand."

Badumbadumbadumbadumbadum.

"
Jaws
is your ringtone?"

I was profoundly relieved when his fingers opened because I'd begun to believe we'd been indelibly fused like some living statue.

"I apologize," said the Dream Merchant's voice.

"You—I—what?"

"You'd best bring him to me."

Will was watching, and I turned my back and cupped my hand around my mouth, dropping to a whisper. "Look, you don't understand…" But the connection was gone and I was talking to myself. As usual, there was no point in arguing.

"What?" he said. "I want some answers, Jesse."

"Great. You're about to get them, although I can pretty much guarantee they won't be the answers you are looking for."

"What in blazes is that supposed to mean?"

"I'm taking you to the Merchant. Don't bother arguing or asking questions. You can go hard or easy, but if she's called you, there's no point fighting. The Merchant—"

"Is." His brows drew together. "How is it that I now know what you meant by that?"

I didn't want to begin to guess, so I just shrugged. "Give me your hand."

"Are you insane?"

"I don't think it will happen again."

"You don't think."

"It wasn't supposed to happen the first time. Don't ask, okay? Because I don't freaking know." So he gave me his hand again—there were livid marks where my fingers had squeezed, and I could feel the bruises on my own—and with the other I texted one word into my phone.

Ready
.

I had enough time to say, "Close your eyes, it's easier," before the whole world spun away.

 

 

W
ill yanked his hand
away and I opened my eyes, surprised to find myself in a small sitting room with a cheerful fire, three armchairs, and a round table holding three mugs of what looked like hot chocolate with marshmallows on top.

It was completely empty of mirrors.

The Merchant sat in one of the armchairs, a tiny little white haired woman with apple cheeks and a grandmotherly smile. Neat tweed suit. Sensible shoes.

Only her eyes gave her away. When I looked into them I had a sense of spinning into a timeless void of faces and images, bits and pieces of humanity constantly growing, changing, shifting. The expressions on her face were not quite right, either, her smile not fully human.

She patted the chairs on either side of her invitingly. "Sit down, have a drink."

"No thank you," Will and I said in unison. Our eyes met.

"Oh, don't be silly," she said. "You will do as I say, of course."

We sat. We picked up the hot chocolate. We moved in disconcerting stereo motion and I tried to break free, but somehow Will had become my mirror, or I had become his.

"What happened was—unexpected. I had not quite accounted for the full polarity of the bond between the two of you."

"I don't understand," Will and I said at the same time, his baritone and my soprano doing a perfectly twined yin and yang thing that raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

"I'm not sure I can explain. Jesse was acting as a conduit. Normally this is not an issue. Emotions and memories travel directly through her and into one of my mirrors."

"And?" we said. I glared at Will only to find him glowering back at me.

"It is a thing that has happened once before. The memories and emotions were unable to pass through Jesse. They—fused—for lack of a better term. The half became a whole."

I shook my head. Will shook his.

A slow horror filled me as we said, "I'm stuck with her/him? Like, forever?"

"It won't be so bad." She patted our hands. "Before you came to me you could still speak your own words and think your own thoughts, yes? The bond is intensified here and will be less so when you return to your world. But you will be—linked—in certain ways."

Both of us leapt to our feet, protesting, "No! You don't understand—"

"Sit."

We sat.

"You agreed to a price, Will Alderson. Any price. And what you're going to do first is help Jesse clean up some dream contamination."

"And then I'll be free?"

We both said it. We both meant it. And I could feel Will's heart thudding as I know he could feel mine.

Her face puckered a little. "It's not entirely clear what will happen with the link."

"But you said it happened once before? What about those people? What happened to them?"

"That was a sad and unfortunate case. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to get back to work." She held a familiar looking briefcase out to Will. He hesitated, then took it. Even though my hands were wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate, I felt the distinct sensation of the handle against my own palm when he took it from her.

"One last thing," the Merchant said, before she shipped us back out. "You asked for a dream, William, and Jesse will deliver it to you in a day or two."

 

 

J
ust like that we
were back in Will's office. His eyes had changed from wary to guarded and I could feel a tension in my own muscles that was different and not my own.

"I'm getting out of here," he said. "Too much freakiness for me. Feel free not to see me again."

"You wish. I'll be delivering that dream—probably tomorrow."

"I don't want it anymore."

"What you want no longer matters. You placed the order and committed to the price."

"This is fucked up. Totally."

I couldn't argue that point. My past sins were coming home to roost with a vengeance. I still wasn't sure at all what had happened, but everything felt strange. When I moved my body it felt dual, as though I had an invisible set of arms and legs and hands. I was seized with a desire to run away and not look back.

He obviously felt the same. His truck door slammed shut before I could get a leg over my bike. Gravel spun beneath his tires as he pulled out of the parking lot. I felt a sharp twinge in my chest as he drove away. Then another, deeper, more intense. As the distance between us increased the pain intensified into agony, as though my heart were being ripped in two. Cold sweat slicked my skin. My breath turned to gasps and then sobs. Dark spots danced before my eyes.

Just before I passed out the truck slowed to a bare crawl. It stopped. Backed up. And as it grew closer the pain eased. My breathing slowed and steadied. My head cleared. Will pulled up beside me and Red and sat, engine still running, with his forehead bowed against the steering wheel.

I wanted to pat his shoulder, stroke his hair—but he certainly wouldn't want any comforting from me. I parked my butt on Red and just waited for him, so weary I could barely keep my body upright.

At long last the window of the truck rolled down. His tanned forearm resting on the edge of the open window triggered a flash of my revenge dream, and I closed my eyes to block it out.

"Did you feel that?" he asked.

"If by 'that' you mean 'did I almost die just now,' yes. I felt that."

Silence. His hand beat a slow tattoo on the side of the truck, flashing me further into the dream.
Boom. An explosion of metal and glass and body parts.
I wanted to tell him I was sorry that I'd killed him, which is evidence that I was totally losing it.

"Get in."

My eyes were still closed. If I looked at him I was going to start to cry and this was a thing that could not happen, even if the whole world exploded.

"I'll just sit here, thanks."

"Jesse. I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm going to go eat something. Apparently you are coming with me. So, get in."

"Fine, I'll follow you."

He took off his hardhat and flung it onto the seat beside him, my body registering the controlled anger in the movement as if it had been mine, and my eyes flew open. Still not moving, I watched him run his hand through his hair, darkened by sweat, pushing it back from his forehead. His eyes were serenely blue, which meant his temper had reached the point where it was not safe to push him. I'd always thought that strange, even as a child, that the sweet clear blue meant the fists were ready to fly. Last time I'd seen that expression he'd laid a bully out flat on the school playground and spent a week on suspension.

"Don't be stupid. You really want to try riding on my bumper and hoping nothing happens to separate our vehicles? Think, for once."

He had a point. A stoplight at the wrong time, an aggressive driver nosing in between us, and that heart flaying thing would have me off my bike and transformed into road kill before either one of us would have time to react.

Which sucked for more than one reason.

I turned off the bike, pocketed the key, and locked my saddlebags, delaying the moment as long as I could. Shrugging out of my backpack, I hugged it against my chest, both to protect the clandestine contents and as a shield.

I could do this. It would be all right.

When I opened the door, though, the scent that was purely Will's truck hit me: summer sweat and leather and machine oil and, oh my God, Will.

Will's hands on the steering wheel.

A curve unfolding in the headlights.

Cow, too big, too solid, too damn close.

Look out!

Hiss of breath.

Shit!  

Sickening lurch.

"Jesse."

Will's voice brought me back. I was still standing on the pavement, clinging to the door handle with both hands, soaked in sweat and breathing way too fast.

When I first opened my eyes I thought I caught a glimpse of softness in his face but it was gone so fast I figured it was the last remnant of the flash.

"I don't do vehicles," I told him, my feet still firmly planted on the ground.

Truth. Ever since the accident I haven't been able to tolerate riding inside a car. Anybody's car. And to be in the cab of a pickup with Will driving—well, there is no more perfect recipe for a full on anxiety attack.

He didn't answer, just kept that disconcerting gaze fixed on me. I couldn't tell what he was thinking, couldn't read his emotions, but I could feel the tension in his muscles, a waiting.

"PTSD can happen to strong people," I said into the silence. "So don't get any ideas about weakness." I made myself focus on my breath, like I'd been taught.

"Jesse, get in."

I swung up onto the seat, focusing with all of my might on details. Grey interior, new. CD player with an iPod plugged in instead of the old cassette deck. No blood. Windows intact and not shattered into a gazillion tiny little pieces. I buckled my seatbelt, hoping he wouldn't see how my hands were shaking.

"Let's go."

Without a word he shifted into gear—he still drove a stick, and I watched his strong brown hand on the gear knob. He was so damned steady, not shaking at all, and I tried to absorb some of that quiet into myself and failed utterly. I tried to ground myself the way I'd learned to do—feet on the floor, hands on something solid, but everything under and around me was moving and fragile and as likely as not to turn into glass fragments and splinters of plastic and metal. Not a helpful train of thought, and I resorted to my old habit of digging my fingernails into my palms, deep enough to feel the pain which gave me somewhere to focus my brain.

"Explain this to me," Will said. "You ride a motorcycle but you're scared to get into a truck? If you crash on one of those—"

"No fender-benders on a bike, I know. But I'm not in a cage, either."

Trapped. Dark water rising. Must get out. Can't, have to get Dad out somehow first. God, he's bleeding, bleeding…

 
"Look, can you step on it? We're crawling."

"You're scared to be in the truck and you want to go faster? What kind of sense does that make?"

"I just want to get there, is all. Sooner the better."

Whatever his motivation, he did as I asked. I rolled down the window and closed my eyes again, imagining myself free and easy on Red with the wind flowing past me, heading out of town on the highway that led to anywhere but here.

 

 

"Y
ou should have warned
me," Will said a half hour later, as we sat facing each other across a booth at Dave's Roadhouse.

"I tried." Relieved to see my hand acting of its own accord without a mirroring gesture from him, I ate a fry—crispy and seasoned to perfection—and felt marginally better. Dave's fries were a local legend, as was his BBQ brisket. At least we weren't the Bobbsey twins any more, and I was free of the truck for the moment.

But it looked like, for good or ill, we were stuck together for a while. Which, for two people who didn't want to be in the same room with each other, was a bit of a problem. At least we'd been able to agree on Dave's as a mutually acceptable place to eat.

I was still trying to figure what the extent of the damage was. We had to stay together, that was thing one. But there was also a weird sense that I now held some of his memories. Not that they'd replaced mine, but more that they'd altered them, deepened them, given them another perspective. And inside the recesses of my soul I was quietly panicking. I was going to have to take Will home. And there was something there I didn't want him to know, ever.

"You didn't try very hard," Will said, forking up a bite of brisket. Neither one of us seemed inclined to let the tragedy interfere with our appetites.

My mind had traveled so much territory since the last word was spoken that I had some serious backtracking to do to get with the program. Right. Warning him. "You try it. Explain to this cute little waitress who is ogling you, that should she ever be so lucky as to receive a dream from the Merchant, she should run fast and far."