The next weekend my younger cousin, Justin, caught the bus over for a visit. Just shy of fourteen, he was desperate to grow up, get a car and move out of home. Although I felt his pain on the car front, part of me didn’t understand why he was so keen to move out. His bedroom and study were larger than the lounge room in the flat I’d shared with Jen, and his house had a pool. On the other hand, having had the unique privilege of living with his mother, Lacey, during school holidays when I was a kid, the rest of me understood the urge. Living in a mansion wasn’t everything.
Still, I fought to keep my expression polite as he complained about his mother. “Surely it’s not that bad, Jat,” I said, fixing him a plate of sandwiches. Jat was my nickname for him; the informality of it drove his mother wild. Standing on the other side of the kitchen bench with his back to the lounge room, he watched with keen eyes as I slathered on the Vegemite until the margarine was barely a hint of yellow underneath. I liked Vegemite, but even my tongue curled at the thought of that much salty bitterness.
“She’s even crankier than she used to be,” Justin grumbled, leaning on the low counter. His Adidas sports gear looked freshly ironed and his hair was short around the sides and artfully messy on top. “Yesterday she grounded Olivia for rolling her eyes. Olivia was pissed. Mum was worse.”
I bet. I’d felt Lacey’s wrath before, most recently at Uncle Ian’s wake, but never over a misdemeanour as minor as that. I handed Justin the plate.
“Thanks. Can I get a drink? Anyway, that’s why she didn’t come. She asked me to give you this as a housewarming present.” I blinked, realising he meant his sister, not his mother, as he rummaged in a backpack for a moment, pulling out a small stack of folded linen coloured a pleasant minty green. “They’re tea towels,” he added unnecessarily as I unfolded one, smiling when I saw the clover pattern. I recognised them: they were one of Lacey’s favourite sets. Still, they were good quality, and I doubted my uncle’s widow would ever pop around and discover her daughter had given them away.
Besides, if Olivia was grounded, she’d hardly be able to go out and buy me something, would she?
“Thanks.” I ran the top towel through the oven handle and then poured Justin a glass of milk. “Maybe you and Olivia should go easy on your mum,” I suggested as I put the glass in front of him. “She’s struggling after … well, you know.”
“She’s not the only one,” Justin muttered before taking a quick bite of the top sandwich. “She could go easy on us too. I mean, yeah, she lost her husband. But we lost our dad.” His voice broke on the last word and he blinked rapidly, looking out the window like the view was much more fascinating than my washing, flapping in the wind.
I pretended not to notice, knowing sympathy would make him cry. He’d hate that. “I know. And you’re right,” I said. Looking for something to keep my hands busy, I put the spread in the pantry and wiped down the bench. “How is Olivia?”
Justin shrugged, taking a deep breath before turning back to face me. “She’s been an A-grade cow lately. Barely comes out of her room. I think she broke up with her boyfriend. Remember Sam, from the funeral?”
I frowned. My impression of the man hadn’t gone beyond black jeans and stubble. “Sort of?”
“Well, they had a huge fight. It was intense.” He gesticulated with a crust. “Slamming doors, yelling…”
“The timing sucks. Poor Olivia.”
“She’s better off without him. The guy was a douche. Still, she’s been bitchy as since it happened. It’s not surprising her and Mum are fighting so much.”
“How have you managed to avoid it?”
“I don’t bite back.” He grinned suddenly. “I rebel in sneakier ways. That reminds me, I got you a present too.” He reached down into the backpack and pulled out a white paper bag about the size of a notebook, a silvery tree stencilled on the side. It was the logo for Neve’s, a new-age shop in the city.
I tipped the object in the bag into my hand. It was a willow hoop, with dark yellow string weaving across the centre to form the distinct pattern of a spider web. Feathers and glossy beads dangled from it. A dreamcatcher—I was familiar with them from working at Serenity’s. “It’s lovely,” I said, running my finger over a silky feather. “And appropriate, since that’s basically what I do for a living.”
“Catch dreams?” He laughed, probably assuming I was joking, and I forced a grin, cursing silently. I hadn’t explained to him the supernatural aspects of my job, worried that he’d tell Lacey. It was silly, but I didn’t want to give her any more reasons to hate me than she already had. “Anyway, I thought you could use it to decorate your new office when you get one,” he continued. “Just don’t tell Serenity I got it at Neve’s. I would’ve bought it from her shop, but…”
“Yeah. Don’t worry, I won’t tell her.”
The sound of bare feet on the faux timber flooring drew our gaze towards the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Jen appeared, dressed in jeans and a comfortable, somewhat crumpled jumper. “Hey, Jat,” she said, smiling at him. He blushed. “When did you get here?”
“Maybe twenty minutes ago?”
“How did the game go?” She brushed a strand of blond hair behind her ear and came into the kitchen, crossing to our shiny new espresso machine and flicking it on. Her glasses reflected the red LED light that indicated the machine was warming up.
“Game?” Justin blinked, scratching the faint, somewhat patchy stubble on his chin as if wishing he’d shaved.
“Yeah, you know? Game?” She gestured at him, taking in his soccer uniform. “I assume you played.”
“Uh…”
“Jat pretended to be going to soccer practice so he could come over here,” I said, glancing at him. His spine stiffened, and I grinned. “You did. I knew it.”
“How’d you guess?” he said. I raised my eyebrows and crossed my arms, trying to look mysterious, but he wasn’t buying it. “Seriously, how? If Mum notices, I’ll be joining Olivia in the sin bin.”
“You’re too clean. I’ve never seen you look anything other than mud-stained and banged up after a game. Also, you hinted that my housewarming present was you rebelling. She doesn’t want you coming over here, huh?”
“Well, she hasn’t banned us from seeing you…”
“And you don’t want to put the thought in her head?”
“Exactly!” He took a big bite of sandwich. Jen started the coffee machine, which grumbled to life, jingling the cutlery in the drying rack on the sink.
The vehemence with which Lacey had turned on me after Uncle David had died still stung. She’d insisted I no longer refer to her as my aunt, declaring I was wasn’t her family. The fact I was her children’s cousin didn’t seem to matter to her. And she’d never even so much as called after Mum had seemingly had a miraculous recovery from her chronic hypersomnia.
Lacey probably believed Mum’s illness had all been a scam, though I didn’t know what she thought Mum had gained out of it given her inheritance—in the form of the trust fund—had been paying her accommodation for all these years. If it were a scam, Mum had only been scamming herself.
Justin seemed to sense the shift in my mood, because he finished his sandwich and sat back. “So how’s work?”
“Good,” I said, somewhat reflexively. More honestly, I added, “Annoying too. I still don’t have an office to work out of. House calls suck.”
“When’s Serenity reopening?”
“Two weeks, but she won’t have room for me to work from there.” I sighed. I’d been trying to find another business that would let me sublet a small office, but there weren’t too many independent shops that suited my line of work. Those few that did have the room already had their own resident kooks, as Brad would call them, his tongue in his cheek. Mostly.
“Why don’t you just, you know, buy a place?”
“I’m not made of money,” I said. Behind me, Jen’s soft laugh mixed with the sound of coffee gurgling into a cup. I turned to face her, catching her devilish grin. “It’s true!” I protested, my tone sharper than I’d intended.
“I know! I’m not either. You just sound like my mum did when I was a kid and asked for stuff I didn’t need.” Jen swallowed her amusement. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologise. I do sound like your mum.” From the corner of my eye, I saw Justin’s face had settled into an embarrassed scowl. “It’s alright, Jat.” I took the empty plate and popped it in the sink. “Your idea would be the simplest, but I don’t even have enough saved to pay the bond to rent a small space somewhere, let alone to buy something. And my work isn’t the sort that convinces banks to give out business loans.”
“So why not work from home? That’s what Dad did, when he first started out in real estate. Mum told me.”
My hand froze, halfway to the tap, as I turned the idea over in my mind. Finally, I shook my head. “It wouldn’t work.”
“Why not?” Jen said, regarding me over the top of her steaming coffee.
“We’ve only got the three bedrooms.”
“So?”
“So…” I frowned. Was she suggesting I convert the single-car garage to a study? That would surprise me, given she owned the only car and detested scraping frost from her windshield in winter.
“You could use the dining room. Let’s be honest, we’re more of an ‘eat in front of the TV’ household.”
Justin sighed enviously.
“But it has two doors. That would diminish the office vibe … wouldn’t it?” I walked through the open sliding door from the kitchen into the dining room, the others following. The pile of boxes had been removed, and the room was bare except for our vacuum cleaner and an empty indoor drying rack. The vertical blinds were open; sunlight streamed in the window, making a small rectangle on the carpet opposite the other door, which led to the lounge room. It was a decent-sized space, able to comfortably fit a six-seat dining table.
“You could buy a screen, pop it in front of the sliding door when you have customers,” Jen said. “It just means we’d have to keep the lounge tidy. And find somewhere else to dry our bras.”
Justin turned beet red, but still managed to look pleased that we were taking his suggestion seriously. He pointed to the blank wall opposite the lounge room door. “You could put the dreamcatcher there, so it’s the first thing people see when they walk in.”
Jen nodded enthusiastically. “And the chairs could go here and here.” She pointed with her free hand. “Side table here, near the power point, for you to brew teas on, and—”
“Slow down,” I said, laughing. “I have to ask Mum first. She may not like a bunch of strangers coming into her home.” The idea of working from home did have a certain appeal: no more house calls and fewer bus rides. But I was cautious too. Ewan had burned down Serenity’s shop after I’d stumbled into a scheme his exiled Oneiroi master had hatched. The idea that people who might have blight infestations would be coming into our home, where Jen and my mother slept, worried me. Jen still flinched at the mention of blights, and Mum … well, with my father gone, she was twice as vulnerable.
On the other hand, Ewan and the blights had managed to find our flat easily enough a few months ago by having Brad trail me home when he’d been possessed.
Still, I kept my reservations to myself. Jen would understand, but Justin didn’t even know Brad had been the one to attack me, let alone that malevolent dream spirits were a factor in my business decisions. Hopefully, he’d never have to find out.
That night at dinner—eaten in the lounge room with the news on in the background—Jen prodded me into raising the idea of working from home with Mum. Together, they listened to my concerns about the risk to them. Then they dismissed them.
“At our previous place, you went crazy with the surface spray to stop nightmare beasties getting in. We can do that here too,” Jen suggested, gesturing with a risotto-laden fork.
“That only works to stop the mara.” I watched the clump of rice waving around, wondering whether it would give way and tumble into the couch crevices. “Because they use insects to manifest. Blights don’t. They use people.”
Jen shuddered, her face paling. “Don’t remind me.”
I felt a stab of guilt, but pressed on. “I can spray all the windows and doorframes, all the ways a bug could get in. But that won’t stop someone from coming in here, all blight-possessed and crazy.”
“From what you’ve told me,” Mum said slowly, “people who are in the thrall of a blight are sleepwalkers. Like TV zombies. They can’t talk or do much of anything. Surely we’d notice if one of them came to the door?”
“It’s true.” Jen sniggered. “Most doorknockers are only too happy to talk your ear off.”
“Yes,” I said, drawing out the word as I thought it over. “I mean, maybe. What if the blight was playing possum, being passive, and then took over once the person was inside the house?”
“Then we’d deal with it,” Mum said. I stared at her, surprised by the hard edge to her voice.
“Davina’s right,” Jen said. “There are always more lamps I can belt people with. Besides, with Ikelos gone, whatever blights are out there should be just … free-ranging, like angry, nightmare-eating chooks. They’d have no reason to target you specifically, right?”
I poked around in my risotto, avoiding pieces of chicken that suddenly didn’t seem quite as appetising. “True. They don’t seem to be very pack-minded. If I kick one out, the others have no reason to care. The only reason they got riled up when I evicted that one from Larry last winter was because Ikelos was driving them.”
“There you go then,” Jen said. Mum nodded, and I looked between them, realising the decision seemed to have been made. “Monday’s a public holiday so I don’t have class. Why don’t I drive you to the shops so we can buy the bits and pieces you need to set up the office?”
“Okay,” I said, giving up. “Thanks.”
Jen and I chatted about what I’d need to buy and how much delivery for the bulkier items might cost, while Mum listened quietly, half an eye on the television. She looked so much healthier than she had a few months ago. Her muscle tone was better, for a start: she was still slender, but no longer had the twiggy look of someone who had been bedridden for a long time. Her skin wasn’t tanned, by any means, but it was no longer sickly either.
Maybe working from home would be a good thing. I could keep a closer eye on her, at least when she wasn’t at work. But I would have to reinforce the protections around her dreaming mind before I risked a blight coming anywhere near her.
Her eyes narrowed as a news story caught her attention. I glanced at the screen in time to see a photo of a man with golden hair and pale eyes. Or, rather, it was a facial composite—the sort police use to represent someone they are looking for, based on the descriptions of an eye witness. The face looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
Noticing our attention, Jen reached for the remote, turning it up so we could hear the story properly.
“—described as between 30 and 40 years old, around 180 centimetres tall, with a lean build, fair skin, short blond hair and blue eyes. Police would like to speak with anyone who recognises the man in the facefit.”
The newsreader changed subjects, talking with pun-laden glee about an overturned cheese truck, and Jen turned the volume back down to a murmur, raising her eyebrows at us. “What’d he do?”
I shrugged, but Mum said, “Attacked someone. A stranger in Commonwealth Park, down by the lake.” Her gaze turned to me in a way that made my stomach squirm with nerves. “The victim told police that his attacker seemed to be out of it. Drugged, like he was sleepwalking.”
Oh.
“Do you know him?” Jen looked back at the television screen as if expecting the image to reappear.
“I think so,” Mum said, her tone indicating that she wished she didn’t. “The hair colour isn’t quite right and his jaw is a little narrower, but I think … That is, I’m pretty sure that was Daniel, one of the nurses from Wattle Tree Park.”