Page 74 of Demon of Dreams

I wrapped my arms around my stomach and nodded. Lucky me.

“It can be uncomfortable talking about sex with people you know well, to say nothing of someone you met a day ago. So don’t feel bad about that, or feel that you need to apologize, or that you need to grit your teeth and get through this if it’s making you uncomfortable, okay? Just tell me, and we can take a break.”

I nodded again. Romero was clearly trying to set me at ease, and I appreciated it, but I was just getting wound up tighter and tighter.

“My point, I suppose,” he continued, “is that despite these lessons requiring a certain degree of intimacy, I will do my best to respect your privacy. There will be some things you’ll need to tell me in order for us to work together, but I’ll do my best not to ask you to disclose more than you’re comfortable with. My priority is your safety, not your deepest, darkest secrets. Understood?”

A third nod.

Romero leaned back in his chair. “So, with that said, why don’t I let you talk for a while? Is there anything you’d like to ask me?”

“Where do I even start?” A helpless laugh escaped me, tinged with audible panic. “I just learned about all of this magic stuff a few days ago. I’m still not sure I’m not hallucinating the whole thing. All I know is that the dean told me I was going to die if I didn’t learn to control my powers, but I don’t even understand what my powersare. What evenisan incubus? Some kind of sex demon? Why do they exist? What if I don’t want to be one? What if—I just—I can’t—fuck. Why is this happening to me?”

I looked at Romero plaintively, knowing I sounded pathetic. But I’d had all these worries trapped in my head for the past two days, and I couldn’t keep them inside anymore. I couldn’t keep pretending I was okay.

“Sorry,” I said after a moment. “I know that sounds whiny. I just feel like I don’t understand anything.”

“Cory, it’s okay. I meant what I said about asking me anything you wanted. And Ireallymeant what I said about not apologizing. Those are all good questions. I’ll do my best to answer them, though full answers for some would take longer than we have this evening. You need to be back in your room shortly after Fifth Hour ends.”

Romero smiled gently, ever the professor. “What is an incubus? I suppose ‘some kind of sex demon’ is as good a starting definition as any, although ‘demon’ is rather a loaded word, and it lumps together such a diversity of beings as to be a functionally useless category. Simply put, an incubus is a paranormal being whose home is the realm of dreams. Humans require food to live. Incubi require energy—an energy they can only get from engaging in sexual acts with human beings within that dreamworld.”

I sighed. That was more of less what the dean had told me. Some part of me had been holding out hope that he’d gotten it all wrong. Apparently not.

“As for why this is happening to you, and the fact that you don’t want to be one…for that, I’m afraid I can only offer you sympathy.” His eyes were warm, and I believed him, but I didn’twantsympathy. I wanted my old life back.

Your life, full of monsters chasing you?whispered that traitorous little voice.Your life, full of dreams that make you wake up screaming?

Your life in Churchill, where nothing ever happened, and nothing ever will?

Until a few days ago, I thought I’d never get out of my hometown. Never escape the memories that kept me chained there. Never break free of my past.

And then my whole world had turned upside-down. Was I really in a position to complain that this wasn’t the kind of rescue I’d wanted?? Sure, it would have been nice to discover I was a witch instead—that I could do the kind of magic I kept seeing in my classes. But did I really have the right to demand that the universe owed me a different, better escape than the one it had provided?

“I know what it’s like to find yourself questioning everything you thought you knew,” Romero said. “About the world. About yourself. The best advice I can give is that if you can find a reason not to give up, you might discover a new purpose that you’d never imagined. You might discover hope, beauty, and joy in your new life. But only you can make the decision to keep going.”

I pressed my lips together. I almost wished he’d told me Ihadto do this. Taken the decision away from me. Forced me to accept it, so that I didn’t have to be responsible for this part of my life. But in the end, everything the dean had said was true. And in the end, it was still my choice.

“How am I supposed to be a student here if I can’t even tell people what I am?” I grumbled. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m dying to announce to everyone that I can invade their dreams and make them have sex with me, but aren’t people going to wonder what my deal is? Ash and Felix keep insisting I’m a witch, but they’re gonna realize pretty soon that they’re wrong, when I don’t demonstrate any ability to do magic.”

“Ah, yes.” Romero nodded. “Dean Mansur thought of that. The plan is to have you apply to join Horizon at the end of the year. Hierophants are an enigmatic bunch, but some of them demonstrate no spellcasting abilities whatsoever. Your ability to see things in dreams, once you gain control of it, will be close enough to other prophetic skills that you’ll fit in just fine.”

“But how are we supposed to explain these lessons?” I asked, unwilling to be assuaged. “Why would a seer—a hierophant, or whatever you called them—need extra lessons if they can’t do magic anyway?”

“Because you missed your first semester, of course,” Romero said. “Even hierophants take the same distribution requirements as everyone else. Unfortunately, you didn’t turn eighteen until well after the first semester had started. Vesperwood cannot admit any students under that age. But by the time it was clear to Dean Mansur that you needed to be brought to Vesperwood now, instead of waiting until next fall, the second semester had begun as well. No one will think it odd that you’re taking additional lessons to catch up on what you missed.”

I sighed. He had an answer for everything. Of course he did. He was doing all of this at the dean’s behest, and the dean seemed like a man who controlled for every possible outcome, who considered every factor and made sure it slotted into place. I was just one little piece in his giant jigsaw puzzle.

I didn’t like it. But what was my alternative? Decide he was lying? Leave and go back to Churchill? Even if the deanwerelying, was that really where I wanted to spend the rest of my life? In the same small town I’d been born in, never amounting to anything?

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this. Do I just lie down on the couch?”

“In a moment,” Romero said. “First, we have to figure out whose dream you’ll be trying to penetrate.”

“Oh. Right. How do we do that? With an app? Felix said phones don’t work here.”

“They don’t. But you might say we’ll do a bit of scrolling.”

He picked up a literal scroll from the coffee table and handed it to me. He laughed self-deprecatingly at his pun, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. In truth, his joke did take some of the tension out of the air.

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