Before I Wake (3 page)

“Food with intense flavor,” He remarked, tilting his head. “Music you can feel in your soul. Fabric that caresses your skin.”

Whoa Nelly. I swallowed. His voice had dropped, and my pulse was pounding. He hadn’t said anything inappropriate, and yet, I felt as though he’d seen me naked. He was right about all of it. And if I didn’t take control of this situation, I was going to follow him wherever he led.

“Dreams that can be altered,” I quipped, breaking through the tension.

Noah’s gaze dropped to the cup in his hands. “You ever have a nightmare, Doc?”

“Sure. You?”

He nodded. “Most of my dreams are, until I change them.”

“Nightmares aren’t uncommon for creative people,” I informed him, slipping into clinical mode. “I read once that 90 to 95 percent of all dreams by artists, writers, and the like are nightmares or disturbing at least.”

“I used to think nightmares were bad, now I’m not so sure.”

“No?” I was curious. “Why’s that?”

His ebony gaze lifted, seized mine. “I think some Nightmares are there to help us.”

I swallowed. The way he was looking at me made me feel like an animal in a cage—a strange and exotic one at that. And was it my imagination, or had he intimated that Nightmares were actual beings?

Christ, he couldn’t know. Could he? But the old man had. Was there a freaking billboard somewhere that I didn’t know about?

“Nightmares are often our subconscious way of working through fears and unpleasant memories.”

He leaned forward, and so did I, not about to be intimidated or show fear. He wasn’t trying to scare me, but there was a lot he wasn’t saying, and that’s what bothered me.

“I had a nightmare the other night,” he said softly. “You were in it.”

That was a surprise. “Me?” At his nod, I asked, “And what did I do?”

He smiled, a gentle tilting of lips that lit his eyes in a way that I couldn’t be sure if it was meant to be warmth or suspicion. “You offered me your hand.”

“It makes sense that you would see me in such a way in your dreams, given our work together.”

His smile faded. “And then you pulled out a knife and slit my throat.”

I was thinking about Noah’s dream when I opened the door to my apartment later that day. Obviously there was a reason for it—his own trust issues, I would imagine. Still, it made me uncomfortable, especially on the heels of the old man from the Duane Reade.

I could talk myself out of being too freaked-out over that as well. The old man had to have seen me leave the sleep clinic where I work, and that triggered his little…outburst. He didn’t know anything about me. He couldn’t. No human could.

I had to stop thinking about it. It didn’t matter. I’d never see the old man again. I tossed my bag on the floor and resolved to forget the whole thing. Noah was a different matter, but I’d deal with that if his dreams continued.

My apartment wasn’t much, but it was mine. Thanks to my father—the man who raised me—footing the bill for university, I was pretty much debt-free and could afford to live decently. That didn’t mean I wanted to spend most of my salary on rent, though, so I had a roommate—my friend Lola. Yeah, that’s her real name. We had a nice apartment in Murray Hill.

And by nice, I mean fairly simple. It was a walk-up in a prewar building, had two bedrooms and a kitchen separate from the rest of the living space—for which we were grateful. And the bathroom was huge, with a big tub, for which I was even more grateful.

My cat Fudge was sitting on the kitchen counter waiting for me when I set the plastic bag beside him. He shifted his furry black bulk long enough to sniff the bag, then turned back to me with a loud meow.

I checked messages while I fed him. One from my friend Julie wanting to know if I wanted to go out Saturday night, and one from my oldest sister, Ivy wanting to know if I was going to make it home this fall.

The thought pulled my attention to the family photo on top of the TV. It was too far away to see perfectly, but I didn’t need the little details. I knew each face as well as I knew mine didn’t quite fit.

I was the palest of the bunch—looking like a vampire alongside these robust mortals. I was the only one with blue eyes and full lips. At least my eyebrows were the same shape and my hair the right color.

I looked a bit like Mom—hence the eyebrows and hair—but nothing like my dad. Because I looked like her and was the baby, my brother and sisters accused me of being Mom’s favorite, and maybe that was true, but it wasn’t because of my looks.

My siblings wouldn’t have teased me if they’d known the truth.

I made an egg-white omelet for supper—I was wearing my fat clothes this week and wanted to be back into the “thin” section of my closet by Monday. At my smallest I was still a size 12. Some of us just aren’t meant to be skinny, and I’m one of them.

I followed the omelet with a small container of low-fat cherry yogurt, and wisely decided against coffee even though I desperately wanted one.

I e-mailed Julie while a cup of tea heated in the microwave and told her we were a go for Saturday, then ran a bath. I didn’t return my sister’s call. She always wanted to talk about Mom, and I never did. I’d call from work tomorrow so I’d have an excuse to make it short. I drank my tea in the tub and read a romance novel until the water turned cold.

With Fudge on my lap, I watched an episode of Smallville I had DVR’d, then I went to bed. See what a wild woman I am?

Dreams have always been an escape for me—mini vacations from life, if you will. Sometimes I like to crawl into bed and give in to the pull of my dreams and let them take me away. Today I hoped to dream as I had the night before—of being fireman-carried by David Boreanaz to a bed strewn with rose petals.

I wasn’t so lucky.

I was in Central Park, sitting on a bench eating ice cream and listening to a young guy play saxophone nearby for change. He was playing the theme from an old TV show I couldn’t remember the name of. I hate when that happens.

“Facts of life.”

I looked up. It was the old guy from the Duane Reade. I wasn’t afraid of him here. This was my world. “Huh?”

He sat down beside me, hitching his pants in the way that older men do before they sit. “The song he’s playin’. It’s the theme from The Facts of Life.”

“Oh.” Of course now that he mentioned it, I recognized it. “I liked that show. I always wanted to be Jo.”

“She the pretty one or the tough one?”

“Tough one.” I spooned another mound of Cherry Garcia into my mouth.

“Huh. Figures.”

I swallowed. “She was pretty, too.”

“She was at that.” He didn’t look at me, but at a point some distance away. “Grew up to be a fine-lookin’ woman.”

We sat for a while listening to the music. Finally, I turned to him. “Why are you here?”

“I always come here.”

“I mean here now—with me.”

“Shucks, I don’t know, girl. I’s just walkin’ through the park mindin’ my own business, and there you were, sitting here like you was waitin’ for me or something.”

I shrugged. “I wasn’t.” Where the hell was David Boreanaz?

“I shoulda known you’d show up eventually. Didn’t figure it would happen this soon, though.”

“What are you talking about?”

He looked at me. Braced one bony hand on his bony leg and angled himself to take what my grandmother would have called, “a good long gander” at me. “You’ve been pretending so long, you’ve almost got yourself convinced, don’t you?”

I shook my head, wishing I was anywhere but here. My ice cream was melting, and I didn’t like this conversation. “I know you seem to think I’m a nightmare, but I have to be honest. I question your sanity.”

He laughed. “I betchoo do. I bet you question your own sometimes, too.”

He was right. I did, but only when I allowed myself to think about it.

Again, there was silence as we sat. The saxophonist was playing the theme from The Jeffersons, and my companion’s foot was tapping like mad on the bald dirt below it. “I love it when he plays the stuff I can dance to.”

My own foot started to tap as I tossed the empty ice-cream cup in the trash. He was right, it was a catchy tune.

Abruptly, the old man stood. “I’m gonna go now and leave you alone.”

“Wait!” I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “What’s your name?” It might come in handy if I needed, oh, say a restraining order.

“Antwoine. And you are?”

I hesitated, but figured, what the heck? “Dawn.”

He laughed. “Whoever named you was not without a sense of humor.” His mirth faded. “Bye-bye, little Dawn. You take care now.”

“You too.” I watched him walk away with a feeling bordering on sadness.

“Dawn?”

I looked up, and there, silhouetted by the sun was the man I’d been waiting for: David Boreanaz. Hello, Gorgeous.

“Fancy meeting you here.” I batted my eyelashes at him.

“Yeah,” He seemed really distracted as he sat down beside me, looking very much like he did as Angel—post- Buffy, of course.

“Listen, there’s something I gotta tell you. Something you need to know—”

And that’s when a teenage girl with dark hair and big blue eyes jumped out of the bushes and drove a stake through his heart.

Honest to God. One minute I was glorying in the feel of DB’s thigh pressing against mine, and the next I was covered in vampire ash—and I had my mouth open.

The “slayer” had eyes that were so pale they were almost clear with an outer ring of black, but it was her grin that made my skin crawl—or maybe that was the gray soot covering me from head to toe. Gross, was that a clump of hair?

“Saved you, Dawnie.”

I scowled as I brushed vampire leavin’s off my sweater. “From what? It’s daylight, for crying out loud!”

She leaned on the bench, all attitude and skimpy clothing. Her stomach was flat and decorated with a ruby bellybutton stud.

“From hearing things you know you don’t want to hear.”

I glared at her, my animosity stemming from more than just envy of her abs. What could possibly come out of DB’s mouth that would bother me? “As if you would know what I would and would not want to hear.”

She leaned down and actually kissed me—on the mouth! Her lips were soft and warm, but something about them gave me the wiggins—and it wasn’t just the vampire gunk, or that she was a girl. It was how real they felt.

“I know you, Dawnie. I’d like to get to know you better.” She was actually flirting with me!

“Or what?” I tried to sound all cool and composed, like I had women hitting on me every day. “You’ll drive a stake through my heart?”

She licked ash from her lips and gave me a once-over that made my skin crawl. “I could put it somewhere else.”

I jumped up. This was wrong. I shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be here—not in my head, in my dreams. The old man showing up I could probably explain, but not this. “I have to go now.”

Creepy slayer-girl shook her head. “Nowhere you can go where I can’t find you.”

In the distance, I heard a familiar buzzing noise that both annoyed and elated me. Was that my alarm? “You’re wrong,” I told her.

“I can wake up.”

And then I did.

I hit snooze but didn’t bother trying to go back to sleep for the extra five minutes. I lay there, staring up at the white of my ceiling and thinking about the dream that was already starting to fade from my memory. I wasn’t comforted by the fuzzing details.

Bad dreams always find a way to come back.

At precisely 10:01 the next evening, as I sat on the couch watching TV with Fudge purring loudly on my lap, the phone rang. I knew who it was before I even checked the caller ID. It would be Ivy. I had called her earlier from work and gotten her voice mail. I knew I shouldn’t have left a message.

I was tempted not to answer, but she was my sister, and there was always the paranoia in my head that she might be calling to tell me Mom’s condition had changed—for better or for worse.

So I picked up the receiver of my lip-shaped phone and drew a deep breath.

“Hi, Ivy.”

“Dawnie, thank God you’re home.”

She sounded distraught, and I was instantly guilty. “What’s happened? Is Mom okay?”

“She would be better if all of her children were gathered around her.”

Uh-huh. “She tell you that, did she?” It was a cheap shot, of course. Mom hadn’t said a word to anyone in a very long time.

Ivy sighed in my ear—heavily. No doubt a million other martyrs around the world heard it and shook their heads in commiseration.

“You know perfectly well that she didn’t.”

“So how do you know what would make her happy? Maybe she’s happy just as she is.” In fact, I was pretty certain that was true.

“Oh, Dawn.”

Okay, the sighing I could deal with—it was melodramatic and manipulative. The disappointment in her voice wasn’t so easily shrugged off. This was my oldest sister, after all. I’d spent much of my life trying to live up to the example she set for me to follow.

Obviously I was not measuring up in her estimation.

“Look, Ivy, unless there’s been some change in Mom’s condition, I don’t see how having me there would make one bit of difference.” It wasn’t like my mother would know I was there—at least not in the physical realm.

“She’d know her family was with her.”

“You think Mom would be impressed with me leaving my job to sit beside her bed?” She wouldn’t be. My mother had been—was—very big on personal accomplishment and pursuing dreams—no pun intended. She would not appreciate me brooding by her bed as though she were a corpse. Not when I knew the truth.

“Getting defensive isn’t going to change anything, Dawnie.”

“I know, and stop calling me that.” I hated that she talked to me like a kid. I hated when she tried using her Oprah-learned psychoanalysis on me, too. I was the one with the degree, damn it.

I could help someone deal with bedwetting or nightmares. I could help someone find rest when they were having trouble falling asleep, but I couldn’t get my own mother to wake up. It wasn’t because I hadn’t tried, but because Mom wouldn’t come back to this world. The only way I could hope to wake her up outside of my field was to go into the Dream Realm after her, and I’d rather eat broken glass than do that. That would mean acknowledging what she had done. Acknowledging her.