I wish Daniel had just checked his damned Facebook messages. Butterflies spiralled in my stomach as I drove home along mercifully quiet streets in my uncle’s car. My uncle’s very expensive, limited-edition muscle car, which was the burnt orange of a smoky sunset and cost more than my annual salary. Several years’ worth of my annual salary. That was why I clung to the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip and had turned the radio off. I didn’t want any distractions. I’d barely driven a car in years, and never one that smelled of leather and was probably smarter than I was. And surely an automatically dimming rear-vision mirror and heated seats were overkill?
The fact Lacey hadn’t sold the car in the months since my uncle’s death was telling, and made me even more afraid of scratching it.
If Daniel had just answered me, I wouldn’t be driving this ridiculous vehicle. I’d checked my Facebook page on Lacey’s computer to confirm Daniel hadn’t replied, and had then called Wattle Tree Park. Daniel wasn’t at work, but was expected in later. I’d left a message for him to phone, but really? Couldn’t he just live on social media like everyone else seemed to?
The plan Lacey, Mum and I had come up with had involved Mum staying with Lacey and Justin—it turned out Olivia hadn’t logged off her social media accounts on her PC, which had given them a handful of fresh leads to pursue. Since Jen wouldn’t be home for hours, I’d suggested I go to our place, in case Olivia reached out to us there.
What I hadn’t told any of them was my half-formed plan to go out to Wattle Tree Park later in the evening, once Daniel was at work. I was pretty sure I could bluff my way in to see him. And, if he wouldn’t help me, I would be able to put him to sleep so I could go through the home’s records. Ewan’s address would be on file there.
Mum and Lacey were better off out of it. I didn’t want to get Mum in trouble, and Lacey … well, for the first time in years, I thought she might actually bail me out. If Constable Nelson found out I’d gone back into Wattle Tree Park again, after hours and in a visit that resulted in mysteriously sleeping nurses, I’d definitely need a lawyer. And, unlike the one Brad had spoken to today, Lacey might even represent me for free. Maybe.
I breathed a shaky sigh of relief when I took the key out of the ignition, feeling more than hearing the engine shut off. Giving the steering wheel an uneasy pat, I shouldered my bag and slid out of the driver’s seat, peering down at the keys to mash the button that activated the central locking.
I jumped almost out of my skin when someone strode across the lawn towards me.
Olivia? But that first, hopeful thought fled when I realised the approaching figure was male. I backpedalled, bumping into the side of Uncle Ian’s car. The car alarm began to wail, the lights flashing. In their strobing illumination, I took in the shabby, dishevelled appearance of David Nelson. He wore tracksuit pants and a creased T-shirt. Stubble shadowed his chin, and his eyes … his eyes stared out of his head like a man possessed. And I knew what that looked like.
“Get away from me,” I yelped, darting to the side, away from the hands I expected to grab me, choke me.
Instead, he paused on the edge of the driveway. Those hands covered his ears, and his face scrunched up as though the sound pained him. “Please shut that off,” he shouted over the screeching alarm.
Blight-possessed people can’t talk… Still, I made sure the car’s bonnet was between me and Nelson before thumbing the alarm off with a shaking hand. “What do you want?”
“I need to know. Is it true?” His face was suddenly in shadow, but his rasping voice carried despite the protesting, rapid-fire bark of a dog several houses up.
“Is … is what true?”
“I spent the day talking to some of your clients.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Several of them claim you put them to sleep during your therapy sessions. Herbal teas, they said. I thought it was hypnosis. But one, a Mrs Blackwood, saw you put her granddaughter under by just breathing on her. Is it true?”
I tried to think of a clever answer: some way to diffuse the situation, a plausible excuse. But he’d seen the footage of me doing exactly that at Wattle Tree Park. What was the point? “Yes,” I said with a sigh. “It’s true.”
“I knew it.” He ran a hand through his hair. It stuck up in clumps, like it hadn’t been washed for days. “He told me … you’d been messing with my dreams. He said the footage was proof.” He stepped forward, and I took an equal step backwards, my boot sinking into the garden on the far side of the driveway. A few stray autumn leaves we’d never swept up crunched beneath my heel as he pleaded, “Make it stop.”
“I didn’t … wait, what? Who said?”
“The man with the burning eyes.”
I stared at him. My first incredulous thought—that Nelson’s dreams had been clean when I checked—was swept away in the sickening realisation that only blights left residue, not Oneiroi. Had Ikelos been hiding in Nelson’s mind while I poked around in there, watching me? My stomach churned.
“He comes to me when I sleep, fills my head with nightmares of you,” Nelson continued. “Says you’re a devil, a witch. Says I should arrest you, or… But he’s a symptom, a figment. Not my friend. And you can make him go away.”
Or? I swallowed, my glance flicking down to his hip before returning to his tortured expression. He wasn’t wearing his gun belt, and the bulge on one side of his pants seemed more key-sized than gun-sized. Still, I took a slow breath, kept my voice even. “How long have you been dreaming of him?”
“About a week.” One of Nelson’s hands scratched at his stubble; the other hung loose at his side, though the fingers flexed, a restless, anxious gesture.
“Since you went to visit Ewan?”
He nodded. Scratch, scratch. “You believe me?”
“Of course I do,” I said. “Do you believe me when I say I’m not a witch? I haven’t been giving you nightmares.” Technically true. I’d given him a pretty good dream, actually. Or it had started out that way, at least—I wasn’t so sure how it had ended up.
He nodded again. “There’s no such thing as witches.”
I laughed, a nervous sound borne of the adrenaline still coursing through my system—and then jumped when a screen door banged a few doors up. A man yelled and the barking dog fell silent, the night still.
We can’t do this out here. I squared my shoulders. “You’d better come inside before my neighbours complain. I’ll try to explain what’s going on.”
The hair on the back of my neck prickled with unease as Nelson followed me up the short footpath connecting the driveway to the front door. “That’s a nice car,” Nelson commented. “It’s not registered to you.”
“Well, no.” I unlocked the front door, gesturing for him to precede me into our darkened house. Of course he’d known the car wasn’t mine. He’d done a lot of digging into my life. “It was my uncle’s. His wife loaned it to me.”
“Nice loan. Still, it has to be rough getting it under the circumstances. Sorry. About your uncle’s passing.” He stopped in the entryway, and I shut the door behind me. To our right, the lounge room was filled with orange shadows from the streetlight outside. I remembered my panic that Nelson had seen Brad and me in there. A blush scalded my cheeks, and I had to clear my throat before I could speak.
“The kitchen is straight ahead,” I said, flicking the entry light on so he could see where he was going. “I’ll fix you a coffee while we talk.”
“Not a relaxing herbal tea?” Nelson’s tone contained a trace of self-depreciating humour as he ran a hand along the doorjamb until he found the light switch and turned it on. Although he was clearly fatigued, his gaze still took in the contents of the benches: a microwave and our coffee machine took up one corner each, while the remaining space was filled with other small appliances, a grocery list, an empty coffee mug … the usual clutter of life.
“No, no tea.” The knot of tension between my shoulders eased when I entered the kitchen proper and he remained on the other side of the bench, sliding onto a stool with a soft groan. I snatched up the mug, placing it in the sink to deal with later. “Honestly, I’ve rarely seen someone in more need of a good night’s sleep than you,” I said. “And I wish I could help you out with that. But I’m more worried about you falling asleep than staying awake at this point.”
“Why?” He blinked those bloodshot eyes, his fingers drumming on the benchtop as I retrieved a clean mug and turned the coffee machine on.
“Because the man with the burning eyes is an actual thing, not just a symptom of your sleep-deprived mind. He’s a spirit named Ikelos.”
“A spirit.”
“A dream spirit, yes.” I kept my tone matter-of-fact. I didn’t want to antagonise the constable. Even if he didn’t have his gun on him, I was sure he could physically subdue me in half a dozen different ways. I so need to learn self-defence. “And if he’s been in your dreams enough times, he might be able to possess you. If you fall asleep, it will be easier for him.” I was pretty sure of that last part. It was definitely true for blights … although I had seen Ikelos slide into an awake Ewan as easily as I’d slide my hand into an oven mitt. That’s because Ewan is his minion. The ease of familiarity. At least, I hoped so. Otherwise, inviting Nelson inside might have been a very bad mistake. “How do you have your coffee?”
“White and none.”
“Right.” The coffee machine thrummed as I pulled the milk out of the fridge, turning over in my mind how much to tell the constable. I really didn’t want to go into my parentage if I could avoid it. “Ikelos doesn’t like me much. He sees me as a threat due to my work. If he possessed you…” I grimaced. “Well, let’s just say I’ve had my fill of being choked.”
Nelson’s fingers stilled, and he sat up a little straighter. “Brad Peterson. Your boyfriend. Is that why he attacked you last winter?”
“Yeah.” It was a blight, but Ikelos had been directing it, so it totally counted. “Though he wasn’t my boyfriend at the time. I wasn’t lying to you when I said I’d never met him before that night. We hooked up later, after I helped him.”
Understanding widened Nelson’s eyes, and he seemed to be regarding me in a new light. Less abused girlfriend and co-conspirator and more … something else. Fingers crossed it turned out to be something good; helpful and trustworthy dream therapist would be a lot better than unstable lady in need of medication. “That’s why you didn’t press charges,” he said.
“Yup. Because it wasn’t Brad’s fault. Same as it wouldn’t be your fault if you got possessed and tried to kill me. Still, even knowing that, I’d rather avoid it if it’s all the same to you.” I gave Nelson a small smile, standing sideways as I frothed the milk so I could keep an eye on him.
Nelson rubbed his eyes. “Is this for real?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” I finished making Nelson’s coffee, giving him time to think. He was willing to hear me out, even if he wasn’t quite convinced yet. I wasn’t sure I’d have even gotten that much from him if Ikelos hadn’t targeted his dreams, seeded them with nightmares. He had too much of a logical, ordered mind, despite Serenity’s glimpse of his astrological tendencies the month before.
In a way, Ikelos had done me a favour.
“I expect it’d be a lot easier to believe I was scamming you somehow,” I said, sliding the coffee across the bench to Nelson. I withdrew my hand quickly, before he could reach across and grab it. “Hypnosis and hallucinogenic drugs; that sort of thing.”
“I had considered it. But I never drank that tea you sold me, and you haven’t had access to my house.”
I blinked. I had no doubt he’d double-checked. “You didn’t really give the tea to someone at work, did you?”
“No.” He regarded the coffee for a long moment before taking a cautious sip. His willingness to drink it felt like a victory. A small one, sure, but a victory nonetheless. “I wanted to have it sent for testing,” he added, “but I couldn’t think of a way to justify it. So I binned it.”
The reminder that Nelson had access to resources I didn’t struck me like a slap to the cheek, widening my eyes and filling me with sudden energy. He could help find Olivia! “Ikelos, your burning-eyed man, is working with Ewan Wright. More accurately, Ewan works for him. He’s Ikelos’s hands in our world. And I think he might have abducted my cousin.”
Nelson’s gaze sharpened to steel. “What?”
“Her name is Olivia Armstrong-Taylor. She’s eighteen, and she’s been missing for about twenty-four hours.”
“Has this been reported to the police?”
I nodded. Lacey had been on the phone to them when I left. “But the connection between her and Ewan … well, it’s nothing the police can pursue as a lead. I don’t think they’ll find her.”
“The connection. It’s this Ikelos?”
“Yes. I found evidence that he’s been in her dreams too. Drawings of him.”
“What does he look like?”
Nelson’s tone was casual, but I knew a test when I saw one. Fortunately, I knew the answer. “Eyes like embers. Wings like a Monarch butterfly. Tribal tattoos.” His eyes widened, and I suppressed a surge of grim satisfaction. “I think … well, Olivia’s of particular interest to him.”
“Why?”
“She’s pregnant. And she’s related to me.”
“You said he has a grudge against you.” I nodded, biting my lip, and he frowned. “How is the pregnancy relevant?”
I hesitated. “Ewan and Ikelos … well, they believe they can subvert the baby. Bring it under their control.”
“Are they right?”
“Yes,” I whispered, hugging myself as a shudder ran down my spine. If Ikelos could possess Ewan after a few months of residence in his dreams, how much control would he gain over Olivia’s child after nine months? Would the baby have any autonomy once it was born? Or would its personality be put to sleep, subsumed by Ikelos? Ollie hadn’t done that to me—but then, Ollie wasn’t an evil bastard. “Do you have Ewan’s address?”
“I do.” Nelson ran a finger along the rim of his mug, though he studied me through lowered brows. “You want to go out there?”
“Yes. Tonight. I can’t be sure he’ll have taken her there, but it’s the only lead I have. And he has no reason to assume the police will piece it together. Or that I will. Olivia and I … we aren’t that close. And she’s been keeping a lot of secrets lately.”
“Why not let the police handle it? I can call it in right now; they’ll send a car around to see if she’s there.”
“Because Ikelos is a dream spirit. Even if they do find Ewan and Olivia, how are they going to tell if she’s possessed? This isn’t a supernatural cop show. You can’t call me in as a consultant or whatever.”
He hesitated. “I could get fired for this…”
“I know.” I waited, my arms folded, for him to make his decision. I didn’t beg, even though I wanted to. Nelson didn’t strike me as the sort of man who’d give in to what he’d regard as emotional blackmail.
“Okay,” he said. “But I want in.”