Before I Wake (9 page)

He took a sip from a bottle of water I hadn’t noticed before. “You’ve got his eyes.”

How the hell did this old fart know Morpheus? “You a buddy of his?”

Antwoine shook his head, a distant, sad expression on his weathered face. “We crossed paths almost thirty years ago.”

And just like Forrest Gump, that was all he had to say about that.

Thirty years ago. Before I was born. Not much chance that he could help me then. “Oh. I thought maybe you could tell me about these dreams I’ve been having. About me.”

He gave me a quick once-over. “You’re a Nightmare.” He said it with so much finality my heart sank.

“I know. A big bad dream, that’s me.” I mean really, who wants to be a nightmare? I’ve seen the painting; that poor woman with that ugly little gremlin on her chest.

“You don’t know nuthin’, do you?”

His sharp tone had me raising my eyebrows. “Excuse me?” I might not be a genius when it came to common sense, but I could kick ass on Jeopardy provided they didn’t ask me anything political. I had my doctorate, for God’s sake.

Now he turned his whole body toward me. He was small and wiry, and I had no doubt he could slap me silly. “Nightmares aren’t as insignificant as minor dreams. You’re a guardian of the Dream Realm. You’re supposed to protect us.”

Wait a second. My mother never said anything about my protecting anyone. Of course, I hadn’t spoken to her in a long time. And even before that I wouldn’t listen when she tried to talk to me about “what” I was. But I would think—hope—that she would have found a way to tell me something like this. “Us who? And protect you from what?”

“Dreamers—everywhere. From those dreams that would hurt us—like this thing that’s been killing people in their sleep.”

I forgot all about his “guardian” remark for a second. “Killing people?”

It was obvious from his expression how shocked he was that I didn’t know what he was talking about. “All those people dying in their sleep, what else could it be? You don’t really believe it’s that Sudden Unexplained Death thing, do you?”

I didn’t, now that I thought of it. And the thought of it made me cold—right down to the bone. Was that thing from my dream—and Noah’s—responsible? I couldn’t even protect myself. How could I protect anyone else from that?

The old man stared at me, obviously unimpressed with what he saw. “How can you be the daughter of Morpheus and not know this?”

“I haven’t seen my…him in a very long time.”

Another stare—a shrewd one this time that made me squirm. “So that’s the way of it. Explains a lot. For a while there I was scared you was stupid or something.”

I resisted the urge to correct his grammar and show him just how not stupid I was. “Can you help me?”

He shrugged narrow shoulders clad in a red leather coat two sizes too large for him. “Maybe, but not with what you’re looking for right now. You want answers, and the only person who can give you those is your daddy.”

As much as the idea of acknowledging my true father made me want to spit, it looked as though I was going to have to ask for his help in order to help Noah.

Not helping Noah really wasn’t much of an option, was it? It was my job to help people, but even more important than that, Noah meant something to me. He trusted me. And maybe Noah saw that there was something different about me and it didn’t bother him. Whatever reason—excuse—I wanted to use to justify helping him didn’t matter so long as I did what I could.

He stood up, brushing the creases from his tan Dockers. “You want to keep any more people from dying, you have to stop this thing.”

“I do? Wait one freaking minute—”

He pinned me to the bench with a stare that made me want to crawl under my seat and stay there. “It’s your duty, girl. You’re one of the few who can stop It.”

“I don’t even know what It is!”

“Most likely it’s a Night Terror.”

I blinked. “A Night Terror.” Like the kind of thing that made little kids scream in their sleep?

He nodded. I might have laughed if he hadn’t looked so bloody serious. “I’ve heard the name Karatos being tossed around in some circles.”

“How could it get into my dreams?”

“Same as it does to anyone else, I s’pose.”

Well crap.

He leaned forward, resting the elbows of his red leather coat on his thighs. “That said, it sounds like this Terror’s been lookin’ for you. It would have to have been to find you in your little fortress. You tell that to the King. He’ll want to know that.”

By “King” I assumed he meant Morpheus. “If you know so much, why can’t you tell my daddy?” And why the hell couldn’t he give me the answers I needed now? Why should I have to go to Morpheus at all? Couldn’t he see that I was a big fat coward?

The old man smiled, but there wasn’t a shred of humor in it. “I can’t. He banned me from his Realm. I couldn’t enter if I tried.”

Banned? I’d never heard of such a thing. How could someone be banned from the Dream Realm? People had to dream.

“That’s a conversation for another day, Miss Dawn. You run along now. Come find me once you’ve seen your daddy, and I’ll help you if I can.”

He turned to walk away. He managed to take a few steps before the ability to speak came back to me. “Wait!”

He peered over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

“What’s your name?”

“Antwoine Jones.”

“Will my…Will Morpheus remember you if I tell him we spoke?”

This time the smile had a little joy in it. “He should. I tried to kill him.”

I went to work Monday morning feeling like my eyes were on fire and my head filled with concrete. I’d spent my entire weekend (after my strange and somewhat cryptic meeting with Antwoine) trying to “find” my mother and Morpheus in the Dream Realm. I hadn’t even made it out of my own little corner of it. Apparently stuff could get in easier than I could get out. Fabulous.

A lot of people think dreams take place in the subconscious mind, and to an extent that’s true. The conscious mind of an ordinary human cannot enter The Dreaming, as the Realm had been called long before Kate Bush and Neil Gaiman used the phrase. There are some humans who have done it, but they’re obviously not ordinary. However, the subconscious mind can easily span the dimensional portal between this world and the world of dreaming. In short, dreaming doesn’t come to humans, humans go to dreaming. It’s been that way ever since Ama, the creator of the Dream Realm, spun Her first web.

Which meant that even though I was part of the Dream Realm, I still had to move through it. And let me tell you, it’s one hell of a big place when you don’t know where you’re going. I was worn-out from the preparation and the journey, and I still hadn’t found my mother and her lover.

Eww. My mother and her lover. It sounded so very seventies of me, but saying my mother and my father—my parents—felt too much like a betrayal to the man who had actually raised me, who paid my tuition and sent me a birthday card every year.

My current patient didn’t seem to notice that I was barely staying awake during our session. In fact, Mrs. Leiberman was well on her way to what seemed like an episode of manic-like giddiness. I might have given more thought to how strange her mood was, but, frankly, I was too tired to care. It was just nice to see her smiling for a change.

“You look well, Nancy.”

She smiled; it was coy and struck me as out of place on her fortysomething, usually tired face. “I feel well. Work has been great, and I’ve met someone wonderful. I feel…good.”

“I’m happy to hear it.” And I was. “And your dreams? How are they?”

“They’re good, too.” There was such wonder in her voice I almost winced. Nancy had been my patient for almost four months, shoved onto me by another psychologist who would rather work her own kind of cognitive therapy in the Dominican Republic than help a woman who couldn’t close her eyes without dreaming the most horrible things.

“Good?” “Good” was a four-letter word, and had already been bandied about more than it should have been. “Good” was too vague, too easy, especially in a case like this.

I suspected that Nancy had been abused as a child. She had already hinted at some things during our sessions that made the warning bells go off in my head. I was trained for this kind of thing, obviously. Dreams might be my passion, but when Nancy finally did find the source of her nightmares, I planned to be there for her. Whether or not she moved on to a counselor with more experience was up to her. The truth was buried deep inside her, but whatever had happened to her came back to haunt her in her dreams.

Her awful, bloody dreams. So, telling me now that, after almost two years of debilitating nightmares, two years of having an on-again, off-again relationship with sleeping pills, her dreams were suddenly “good” was not, well, good enough.

“Yes.” She was obviously as confused as I was—either that, or she deserved a star on the Walk of Fame. I had no reason to believe she was trying to play me, so I at least had to try to believe that something had happened to make her demons go away.

Yes, I am by nature a suspicious person. So sue me.

“Can you tell me what you’ve been dreaming about?”

She smiled. “I love how you say that.”

I stifled a sigh. Four years of living in the U.S., and people still made fun of the way I spoke. Though I could get through months without ever uttering an “eh,” other words and phrases refused to die.

For the record I say “a-bout.” Long O, like in oats. I do not say “a-boot.”

“Nancy, I’m beginning to suspect that you don’t want to tell me about your dreams. If you don’t, that’s okay, but I can’t help you if you don’t discuss them.”

“That’s just it.” She leaned forward in her chair. “I don’t think I need your help anymore. Dr. Riley, I think I’m cured.”

I kept the surprise off my face—I think. “Excuse me?”

She didn’t seem bothered by my reaction at all. “The nightmares. They’re gone. I’m cured.”

I stared at her. This had never happened to me before. What the hell did I say? “Of course I’m delighted to hear that you’ve gotten relief from your dreams, Nancy, but—”

“It’s not relief. I’m cured.” She was still smiling, but there was a determination in her expression that hadn’t been there earlier.

Had she had a break of some kind? Because excuse my technical phrasing, she looked totally cracked.

What had happened? The only new thing she had mentioned was seeing someone. Had this person talked her out of therapy? Or worse, had they convinced Nancy that they could “fix” her? “Nancy…”

She jumped to her feet so fast the chair she used staggered backward on its hind legs, swaying dangerously before slamming down onto all four again. “Thank you so much for all you’ve done for me, Dr. Riley.” She offered me her hand. “I’ll talk to the receptionist on my way out about canceling the rest of my sessions.”

Dumbfounded, I stood and shook her hand. “Why don’t you hold off on that, just in case?”

She was still grinning as she extricated her hand from mine. “No, that’s okay. Thanks again. I mean it, you’ve been wonderful.

Bye.”

And then she was gone, leaving me standing there, staring at my open door like a Pez dispenser with its mouth stuck open.

I’d been dumped. By a client. I hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t been able to stop it. It felt very much like it had in tenth grade when Mike Robbins decided he needed a skinnier, blonder girlfriend.

Of course, I was pretty sure that aside from being an asshole, Mike Robbins hadn’t the same kind of emotional-health issues that Nancy Leiberman did.

What if something happened to her? What if she went home and killed herself? That was an extreme case, I know, but how much responsibility would be mine? Had I done everything within my power and reason to stop her from giving up on therapy?

I knew, beneath the shock and anxiety, that I had done everything I could for Nancy. Her will was her own, and in this case, I had to bow to it.

But that didn’t stop me from going out to Bonnie’s desk a few minutes later and telling her not to cancel Nancy’s next appointment—just in case—an action that brought a smile to Bonnie’s caramel-colored lips.

“You’re a good kid,” she told me, “No, you’re a good doctor.” I preened despite myself. Then one of her dark blond eyebrows rose ever so slightly as she glanced over my shoulder. Her green gaze took on an almost gleeful sheen as she cast me a sly glance, and I knew immediately who had just entered the reception area.

I turned. Standing there, beautifully rumpled in a black sweater and jeans, hands in his pockets, was Noah. Tension, hot and thick, bloomed in the room between us, pressing on my lungs as he stared at me with demanding black eyes. He wanted answers, and I knew he wasn’t going to be satisfied until I’d given them.

“Noah. Hi.”

He raised a brow at my breathless greeting. Never mind that I had seen him a couple of nights earlier, my heart kicked up as though I hadn’t seen him in weeks. Plus, I was nervous. I had never told anyone details about my “other” life, and now this guy I hardly knew was going to know me better than my best friend.

“Hey, Doc. Got a minute?”

“Sure.” And I did since my appointment had fired me. I gestured toward the hall that led to my poor excuse for an office. I didn’t look at Bonnie because I knew her reaction would only get my hopes up. She would think Noah had come to see me because he liked me. It would never occur to her, thank God, that it was because I was a dream-invading freakazoid.

I closed the door behind me, making it less than a full step into the office when Noah turned, trapping me between himself and the door.

He really had lovely skin, golden and unblemished. And there was just enough light that I could see the hint of brown in the darkness of his eyes. He had a tiny scar above his lip on the left side and one at his temple. I wondered how he had gotten them.

He smelled nice, too—like spicy sugar cookies.

“You’re staring,” he accused, his voice all buttery and low.

“You’re standing awfully close,” I countered, as though that was an excuse.

He stepped closer, so that the heat of him seeped through my clothes, dotted my skin with goose bumps, and shivered down my spine. A long hand lifted and planted itself on the door beside my head. He had me boxed in on three sides, leaving me an escape route if I wanted it.