Page 50 of Never the Roses

“Handy trick,” he said with a smile.

“Useful for impressing the gentlemen.”

“Ah, Oneira, I am already beyond impressed.” He did not add that he obviously knew which other gentleman she’d been entertaining, nor did he ask if she’d bedded the puppyish poet, much as the question burned on his tongue. To distract himself, he went to examine the chair she’d conjured. “It looks just like mine.”

“Nearly,” she replied, scrutinizing it with professional objectivity.

“Nearly” was the operative word, as it seemed very much like his chair, but subtly altered. The color of the oxblood leather didn’t quite match. Nor was it, he determined on closer examination, upholstered in actual leather. Instead the material had a satiny give that wasn’t unpleasant, but also felt oddly unreal. The studs all lay in the same pattern as his chair, but bore varying sigils instead of the matching embossed stars in the brass of his, and they served no actual purpose, the upholstery seamless, enveloping the chair like a coat of glossy paint. Most extraordinary, the clawed feet of the wooden legs extended actual talons in a gradation of ochre to ivory, looking for all the world as if they belonged to a living animal.

“Do you mind the oddness?” Oneira asked curiously, observing his intent examination.

“I’m fascinated,” he admitted. “Is everything you pull from the Dream like this?”

“Only if I don’t take the time to refine it. Objects in the Dream are like… well, think of how things seem in your dreams. They are familiar, and very nearly like what you know in the real world, but also ever so slightly different. If I pluck something from the Dream and do nothing else to it, I’ll usually get a close approximation of what I want, but it will never be confused with something from the real world.”

“Usually?” he queried, increasingly fascinated.

She grimaced. “Something like a chair of this sort is fairly easy to find, because people furnish their dreams with common items. The more specialized or uncommon an object, the longer it can take to locate in the Dream and the more work I have to do to alter it to blend with the waking world.”

“And how do you that, the altering?”

Her lips quirked in a half smile and she gestured to the wine bottle. “Sorcery, yes?”

He nodded, considering. “Can I sit in it?”

“Yes, but you should take your own—” She huffed out a breath as he sat in the one she’d made from the Dream, running his hands over the arms with interest. “Fine.” She sat in his usual chair, perching on the edge and holding her wineglass in both hands, the rose in its box on her lap.

“The things I saw in your house didn’t have this odd—all right, I’ll say it—dreamy feel,” he noted.

“Dreamlike is probably more apt.”

“Dreamy,” he returned, snuggling into the chair. “Like sitting in a cloud. Can I keep it?”

She ignored that. “You didn’t see my entire house. Only the kitchen and the outside.”

“True, but you have that blissfully ignorant mundane lad staying with you, so it can’t be too odd or he’d wonder.”

“Ah.” She saluted him with her wineglass. “You, as a posotomancer, have greater sensitivity for noticing such things, as you, in particular have that gift for detail.” She nodded to herself as he acknowledged that truth. “But, that’s part of the skill of being an oneiromancer, the shaping. Very few things that come directlyfrom the Dream are useable. For example, food is no more nutritious than it is in a dream.”

“That’s why you grow and make your own food.”

“That’s not the only reason.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” She looked intrigued and he blessed her native curiosity.

“Yes. I only grow beautiful useless things.” He gestured to the rose in her lap. “But you’ve inspired me to try my hand at vegetables.”

Glancing down, she picked up the rose as if she’d forgotten about it, twirling the stem between her thumb and forefinger as she had with the wineglass. “You grew this yourself then?”

He raised his brows. “You’re surprised? You knew I love gardens and know plants, and that I have a particular interest in roses.”

“That doesn’t mean you do the work yourself,” she replied, meeting his gaze evenly without a hint of chagrin.

“With my own hands.” He held them up, showing them to her, front and back, as if that demonstrated anything.

“I wondered why you had dirt under your nails,” she commented.

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