Awareness crept over me and I groaned, trying to crawl back into the deep, dreamless state in which I’d been floating. I didn’t want to be awake. Awake was hurting from head to toe, with a skull that pounded and a mouth that tasted like something unbearable had crawled in there to nap. Or die. Maybe both.
Movement thundered nearby, and I cracked an eyelid to see a familiar face leaning over me. Brad. Relief and concern warred across his features, widening his eyes and tightening his lips. I wanted to kiss him. It hurt to move.
“Here.” He held out a teaspoon. I cracked opened my mouth—even my jaws ached, dammit—and he slid the spoon inside. I’d expected medicine of some kind, but the warm, rich sweetness of honey exploded on my tongue. I swallowed and he offered another, dripping a little bit onto my chin in his haste. His finger was warm as he wiped it away. “I know you prefer caramels,” he said as he gave me a third spoonful, “but I figured this was easier to swallow.”
Soon the energy seeped into my limbs, replacing what I’d burned in Daniel’s dream. My muscles still protested when I sat up, but at least the joint-crunching pain had faded to something tolerable.
Sadly for me, this wasn’t the first time I’d awoken in a stranger’s bed after a run-in with a blight. The previous time it had been Brad’s bed, before we’d started dating. “Where are we? Daniel’s place?” I croaked. The furniture was unfamiliar, the curtains covered in tiny white flowers. Sunset seeped through the gaps.
“Yeah,” he said. I glanced again at the flowers. Brad settled beside me with a weary sigh, and I leaned against him.
“How is he?”
“Fine,” Brad said. “He’s been up for a couple of hours now. I gave him some of the caramels from your bag and he picked right up.”
I studied the fatigue straining my boyfriend’s face. His stubble was thicker than it had been when we’d arrived at Daniel’s that afternoon. But wasn’t it sunset? That didn’t make sense. “How long have I been out?”
“All night,” he said. “It’s dawn. I phoned your mum to let her know where we were. I should ring her back. Jen was all set to charge across here with her stethoscope or whatever, but I told her I’d call an ambulance if you got worse.”
I blinked. I could imagine Jen doing just that.
I felt Brad’s absence after he stood, listening to the muffled sound of his and Daniel’s conversation. I didn’t remember a single dream of my own after I’d been thrown out of Daniel’s nightmare.
“Leander!” The name escaped my lips in a gasp as I recalled my desperate attempt to shield the Oneiroi from the trolley’s exploding contents. Had I managed to save him? The recollection of those nails on top of the top of the load tightened my throat. They would have shredded his wings like confetti. I stumbled out of the bedroom and across to the open door of the bathroom, bracing myself against a sink cluttered with men’s toiletries to stare into the mirror.
My reflection stared at me, face pale and blue eyes wild. My hair was sweat-stained and stuck up in all directions, the blue streak in my fringe vivid against my pale skin. But, right then, I didn’t care. “Leander, are you there? Leander. Talk to me.”
When my reflection shimmered and then faded from view, my knees buckled with relief. Leander smiled back at me, looking healthier and more alert than either Brad or I did. “Good morning, Melaina,” he said, brushing invisible specks of dirt from the front of his green armour. It wasn’t even scratched. “You look awful.”
“Thanks. I feel like a million bucks,” I said dryly, nudging the bathroom door closed with my bare toes before Daniel wandered up the hall to see what I was doing. The bathroom tiles were cold against the soles of my feet. “You’re looking pretty good for someone who blew himself up.”
The grin slipped a little, and he placed his hands at his sides, bowing in my direction. If the mirror had been a camera, his hair would’ve brushed against it. He seemed close enough for me to reach through and tousle those golden-brown locks. “Your intervention meant I only got a little singed.”
“You look alright now…?”
He shrugged in response to the question in my voice. “After I cleaned up the blight taint from your Daniel’s dream, I rested for a couple of hours.”
“He’s not my Daniel,” I said, a knot of tension I hadn’t realised I was carrying uncoiling in my belly. “So he’s good to go? I won’t have to go back in there…?” I fidgeted with the cans of deodorant and shaving cream, not wanting to make eye contact with the Oneiroi. I didn’t want him to see how much the dream had frightened me. That final terror and sense of helplessness as the blight had dragged me towards it, the feeling of its barbs biting into me … I shuddered at the memory.
“No. I took care of it.” His voice was gentle, and I looked up, surprised. “Paid a quick visit to your dreams too. To make sure no blights followed you home and that you weren’t reinfected.”
My fingers curled on the edge of the basin. A flare of annoyance that I hadn’t noticed him was quickly smothered by gratitude that he’d thought to check. “And did they? Was I?”
“No. You’re fine.”
“Good. Okay. Thank you.”
Leander paused, and I wondered what he was waiting for. “You, ah, haven’t asked me about your father.”
Oh shit. Mum would kill me. I really was exhausted. “I haven’t had my coffee yet,” I mumbled. “Is he alright?”
“He’s still alive, if that’s what you mean. The Morpheus imprisoned him.”
The idea that he might not be alive hadn’t even occurred to me and, even though my father’s and my relationship had never been a typical one, I still felt like a terrible daughter—if not to him then to my mother. I was sure she’d have thought of it. Worried about it. “For how long?”
Leander’s wings drooped. “Thirty years. I’m sorry. I did try to speak in his defence, but…”
“I’m guessing the Oneiroi justice system doesn’t include a mechanism for appeals,” I said.
Leander shook his head. “There’s more.”
“What?”
“The Morpheus wants to meet you.”
“Me? Why?” As far as I knew, I hadn’t broken any Oneiroi laws. Sure, my existence was a little … unorthodox, but I fought blights, mara and other dream-based bad guys that mucked up Erebus for the Oneiroi. They should be giving me a medal.
My stomach sank as I realised what it had to be. “It’s about Ikelos, isn’t it? The Morpheus’s brother?”
Ikelos had been in exile when I’d killed him, but that didn’t mean the Morpheus, king of the Oneiroi, wouldn’t take offence.
“I don’t know. He said it was about your father, but…” Leander shrugged. “Melaina? He’s made meeting with you a condition of his sending anyone to help with Brad’s grandfather. If you don’t agree to the meeting, he won’t let the Oneiroi clean up that breeder blight. Including me.”
I’d tried to keep my voice down while I told Leander exactly what I thought of being blackmailed, but Daniel still looked at me sideways when I came out of the bathroom, hair damp and a trickle of tepid water trailing down the back of my neck. I hadn’t wanted to shower at Daniel’s, especially given the stall was in line-of-sight of the mirror, so I’d settled for dunking my head under the tap.
“You better?” I asked the nurse. I knew I should try to be polite, but my clothes were dirty and rumpled, and I wanted to brush my teeth.
“Pretty ragged,” he said, rolling his head from side to side as though trying to stretch out a kink. He was still wearing the oversized green hoodie, but now the hood was back it suited him a little better. “The couch isn’t the most comfortable place to sleep. But, on the other hand, I actually slept, so I feel about a thousand times better than I did. Did you…? Am I…?”
“Your sleepwalking days are through. For now, at least. Next time, I’d suggest giving me a call when you’re still at the horrific nightmare stage, rather than waiting until you start waking up on the wrong side of town.”
His skin blanched grey, the blond stubble stark against it, and I instantly regretted my flippancy. “Next time?” he squeaked.
“If. I meant if there’s a next time.”
Brad stepped up beside me, sliding an arm around my shoulder and kissing my temple. It did little to ease my chagrin. “What Melaina’s being too polite to say is that my grandfather is patient zero. He’s at the nursing home.”
“I thought you looked familiar. Your grandfather’s the sleeper?” Daniel’s ears reddened. “The comatose patient, I mean?”
“Yeah.” If Brad hadn’t heard the staff’s nickname for his grandfather before, he didn’t let it show. “He’s the source of your infestation. Infection, I mean.”
“No, you mean my possession. Right?”
“Now he believes us,” I muttered, and Daniel raised his eyebrows. “I know, I know,” I said. “It sounded ridiculous, you’re a rational man, and you required proof. Now you have it.”
Daniel’s laugh was tired, but the amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes seemed genuine. “Yeah, pretty much. Tell me, though: if Mr Peterson is patient zero, what can I do to limit infection? I don’t want to go through this again, and I don’t want anyone else to either.”
“The blights—that’s what the spirits are called—well, they spread via microscopic larvae. They could be as small as skin cells, even. So I guess all the things you’d normally do to stop a cold from spreading? Washing your hands a lot?”
“Are they airborne?”
“Not that I know of.” I shrugged.
“That’s something.” Daniel’s eyes grew distant for a moment. “I’ll see what I can do. But not today. I need a shower and another twenty-four hours’ sleep.”
His words so closely mirrored what I was thinking that I grinned. “I hear you.”
Daniel smiled back. But Brad’s next words killed our good humour. “There’s one more thing you need to consider, Daniel. The man who was assaulted in Commonwealth Park.”
“I…” The nurse seemed to deflate, slumping back against the dining table. A small stack of junk mail toppled over, sliding to the floor. He didn’t notice. “Do you think it was me?”
Brad shrugged, but his grim expression told a different story. “The facefit looked enough like you that Melaina’s mother figured it out. And it matches the timing of one of your blackouts, right?”
Daniel slid his long sleeves up and stared at his hands. The knuckles of his right hand were covered in grazes. My stomach turned to ice; it definitely looked as if he’d been in a fight. “But I don’t remember doing it,” he said softly.
I remembered my earlier thought that reporting Daniel might be the right thing to do, for the victim’s sake. Looking at him now and knowing for certain that the assault hadn’t been his fault, I wasn’t so sure. Possession wouldn’t hold up as a defence in court. He could argue he’d had some sort of psychotic break, but if he had no previous history of mental illness… “They might go easier on you if you turned yourself in,” I said, uncertainty furrowing my brow. “If you told them you’d been sick and couldn’t remember, but you thought you might have done it. Maybe?”
“Maybe.” Daniel stared at his hands for a long moment. I glanced at Brad, who shrugged back. He was clearly going to leave the decision to Daniel. “Will you report me if I don’t?”
I shook my head, catching my bottom lip between my teeth. In some ways, it would be better if Daniel didn’t turn himself in. Now he knew about Brad’s grandfather, he could do a lot of good, trying to prevent further accidental blight infestations until I could unravel the mess with the Oneiroi and get the old man cleansed. But I didn’t want to say anything either way. Daniel needed to decide for himself.
“We should go,” I said to Brad, who nodded, turning to get his keys. “Um. Where are my boots?”
When Brad and I got home, I was too tired to go shopping with Jen for my new office supplies. Thankfully it was a public holiday, so he and I spent a good portion of the day either napping or vegetating in front of the television. Mum and Jen were in and out, so Brad and I even managed to sneak a little “couple time” together, feeling like a pair of giggling teenagers waiting for a disapproving parent to leave the house.
Afterwards, we watched the news channel for a while. I didn’t want to admit it out loud, but I was looking for signs of more blight infestations. I didn’t see any new ones, but I flinched every time I heard about the assault in Commonwealth Park. Until recently, I hadn’t had many interactions with the police, and I’d always thought of myself as a law-abiding sort of person. Before Brad and I had broken into the nursing home, the worst thing I’d done was graffiti the back of the toilet door in high school. Rebecca, the girl I’d written about, had totally had it coming.
Besides, we hadn’t actually broken into the home. Not really. Lien had let us in. I had knocked a whole bunch of people unconscious though. Was putting a person to sleep with magic against their will actually illegal? It might be, depending on how broadly worded the law was. I didn’t know.
When Brad stood to swap one superhero DVD for another, I frowned at the shadowed television screen. Had that hint of movement been his shadow, or was Leander lurking? But when Brad bent over the DVD player, the movement was gone.
I groaned, stretching along the couch. “I’m still annoyed at Leander for not bringing the other Oneiroi with him.” The spot where Brad had been sitting was warm, and I sprawled across it with a sigh.
“He’s just the messenger.” Brad dropped the disc into the tray with a clatter. “I’m annoyed at the boss Oneiroi guy. The king or whatever. I would have thought dealing with a breeder blight would be his top priority. Didn’t you say he was meant to keep the nightmare spirits under control?”
“Yeah, apparently they pollute Erebus for everyone else.”
He walked back to the couch, lifting my legs and sliding underneath before draping them across his knees. “When’s the meeting?”
I shrugged, a lopsided gesture given my awkward position. “The Morpheus has to come to me, given I can’t flitter from dream to dream like a full Oneiroi. Weeks, maybe.”
“Bet that annoys him.” Brad huffed a laugh.
“Yeah,” I said sourly. “He’ll be super-pleased when he gets here.”
“Hey.” Brad massaged one of my calves with his free hand as he fished for the remote down the side of the seat cushion. “Don’t forget you haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Except kill his brother that one time,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but his brother started it,” Brad said, flashing me a grin.
I laughed. “I’ll make sure to tell the Morpheus that.”