Page 64 of Demon of Dreams

Any pretext of not wanting to pry had clearly been dropped.

Those questions skirted too close to things I didn’t want to talk about. But at the same time, Felix and Ash knew way more about magic and Vesperwood and how this all worked than I did. Maybe I could get some useful information from telling them, if I did it carefully?

“I wasn’t on my way here yet when I first saw the tenelkiri,” I said slowly. I paused, wondering just how nuts I was going to sound if I told them the rest of it. Sure, magic was real and all, but that didn’t mean I couldn’talsobe completely crazy. “Not at first, at least.”

“You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to,” Felix said, seeing my hesitation.

“Well, duh.” Ash grinned. “He knows that. But he wants to. Right?”

“He’s not going to be more likely to tell you if you keep pestering him.”

“Or maybe heis, if you would quit jumping in and stopping him from talking. And come into the room, dammit. You’re giving me a crick in my neck, hanging in the doorway like that.”

“Too bad it’s not a crick in your tongue,” Felix said, but he did finally step fully into my room, closing the door behind him.

He walked over to my desk, setting down two books he was carrying. He pulled out the chair and sat, trying to fold his legs neatly underneath it. They were too long, though, and eventually he gave up and stretched them out. They reached all the way to the edge of my bed.

“You do look kind of pale,” he added, his brow furrowing. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

I sighed. I knew I didn’t need to say anything, but then I felt like I’d have to explainwhyI didn’t want to talk, and that seemed harder than just telling them. Plus, maybe they could help me figure some of this stuff out. I shifted so I my back was to the window, took a deep breath, and began.

“So this is probably going to sound weird, but a while ago I started having these dreams. Just like, very dark, and confusing, with this monster that was—it was just—well, scary. And these dreams felt so real, even after I’d wake up. They’d stick with me all day, and I was tired all the time, and they started happening more and more, and I thought I was going crazy.”

That was all true, as far as it went. If I’d left out the part about the monster trying to fuck me, well, I’d never promised to tell the whole truth.

“And then earlier this week, there was this raven, and this is going to sound totally nuts, but I swear it followed me around all day. I thought it was an axe murderer at first. I was walking to work before dawn and I could tellsomethingwas following me, but I couldn’t see it and—I mean, it doesn’t matter, but it was kind of strange. Even other people commented on how weird it was for it to loiter outside the diner like it did. And then it followed me to my second job, and yeah,maybeit was just there by happenstance—Churchill’s not that big, it could have visited every business in town if it wanted to—but I just felt like it was fixated on me.”

I paused to take a breath. It was surprising, how good it felt to finally tell people, even if it did make me sound insane.

“And then I fell asleep at work—I’m a clerk at a motel, and it was a slow shift—and I had one of those dreams again, and it was just, um, intense. More so than usual.” I swallowed, wondering if my omission was glaringly obvious. “And at the end of it—the dream, I mean—the monster said the word, ‘Vesperwood,’ and then I woke up.”

“Whoa.” Ash looked stunned. “Weird. Did it say anything else?”

I didn’t think sexual growls counted as words, so I shook my head. “No.”

“What did you do?”

“Uh, ran out into the parking lot and had a panic attack?”

“That seems a little extreme.”

“Well, it was an intense dream.”

I sounded like a little kid, afraid of the boogie-man. But I wasn’t sure it would improve matters to tell them the part of the dream I was holding back. What kind of person had a panic attack after a sex dream?

“The thing is, as soon as I got outside, that raven was there again. Like it had been waiting for me. It flew over while I was still trying to catch my breath, and it, uh, kind of… talked…to me?”

I looked at Felix and Ash, preemptively wincing at how dumb that sounded, and how dumb they must think I was. But Felix just looked thoughtful and quiet, which was how he always looked, and Ash said, “Oooh, interesting. What did it say?”

I frowned, confused at how nonchalantly they were taking this.

“I’m sorry, I just—you guys are taking the news that a bird talked to me pretty calmly. That doesn’t seem out of the ordinary to you?”

“Says the guy sitting with a fallen angel and a changeling, at a paranormal university,” Ash deadpanned.

“And talking birds aren’t that weird anyway,” Felix said. He held out the index finger on his left hand, tapping it with his right. “Parrots talk.”

“Yeah, but—”

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