“Leander, I don’t know if you can hear me. But, if you can, get your skinny butt to this mirror right now.” My reflection stared back at me, looking irritated and a little alarmed. Behind it, my back-to-front bedroom was both familiar and distressingly empty of Oneiroi. With the curtains drawn, the mirror was the only reflective surface in my new bedroom. It hung on the inside of my wardrobe door, where I could be sure it wouldn’t capture a reflection of myself without me being aware of it. I’d grown to trust Leander during the past few months, but I still couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t sneak a peek at me getting changed if given the chance.
I closed my eyes and rested my forehead on the glass, breathing out a sigh. “Seriously, Leander, I need you.”
No answer. I opened my eyes, using a thumb to wipe away the condensation my breath had left, and pulled the wardrobe door wide open, swinging it so the mirror faced the side of my chest of drawers. There, I’d taped a piece of paper from the kitchen notepad with a scribbled note explaining what we believed: that Ikelos had been hiding inside Ewan’s mind and was now squatting in Olivia’s. I hoped Leander would see the note and bring the cavalry to help. Despite my brave words to Nelson, I wasn’t confident I could prise Ikelos out of Olivia’s dreams on my own.
First step: get her away from Ewan and back home. I’d worry about the second stage later.
I pulled on a comfortable knitted jumper over my band T-shirt and turned to my bedroom door, heading up the corridor to find Nelson still sitting on the stool at the kitchen bench. “I don’t know why you needed to get changed,” he said, taking in my more casual clothes.
“I’d been in that outfit all day.” I wrinkled my nose. “It was gross.” And you seeing me talk to a mirror might make you change your mind about the whole giving-me-Ewan’s-address thing.
“You say this to the guy dressed like a hobo.” He smoothed down the creased front of his T-shirt with a restless hand.
I shrugged, grinning as I hooked my handbag over my shoulder. “But you’re a comfortable hobo, am I right?” He frowned, and I hastened to add, “Comfortable is good. I’d live in yoga pants or trackies if I could get away with it.”
“It’s fine. Believe it or not, I would too,” he said. “Still, I didn’t even think you owned a pair of sneakers till now.”
“Well, what else would I sneak in?”
“Those are meant to be sneaky?” he said with a laugh, gesturing to my feet.
I looked down at them, clad in gleaming white and hot pink below the hem of my dark jeans. “They’re auditorily sneaky.”
“True, that.” He stood, pulling his keys out of his pocket.
I raised an eyebrow at them, jingling my own—well, Lacey’s—keys in my hand. “No offence, officer, but you’re not driving. You know what the ads say about driving while fatigued. It’s as bad as driving drunk. Let me handle it.”
His lips pressed together, and for a second I thought he was going to object. Certainly he was the more experienced driver by a long shot. But when he did speak, his answer wasn’t the one I expected. “I’m not going with you.”
“But you said—”
“If Ewan has taken Olivia against her will and I come with you, it could be spun as an illegal search. Hell, it would be. The chances of us landing a conviction go way down.”
“I don’t care about a conviction. I just want to get Olivia home!”
“I know.” He handed me a piece of paper. On it, he’d written an address and, below that, a mobile phone number. “Ewan’s address and my number. If you’re asked, you got the address from somewhere else. I know I gave you my card a few months ago, so you have reason to have my number. I assume you didn’t keep it?” I shook my head, pressing my lips together. I’d tossed the card in the recycling the next day. “Didn’t think so. Copy the address onto another piece of paper.”
He was being paranoid, but I obediently transcribed Ewan’s address onto the back of a loyalty card in my purse before programing Nelson’s number into my phone. “And where are you going?” I asked, handing him his original sheet. He scrunched it up and stuffed it in his pocket.
“Home. If you get to Ewan’s place and find your cousin is there, text me with all the details, like it’s the first time we’ve discussed it. I’ll call a unit to respond.” He smiled, an expression that was at least half grimace, as we turned towards the front door. “I’ll do my best not to fall asleep in the meantime.”
“Oh, hey, about that. I had a thought. You probably are safe to sleep now, if Ikelos has set up permanent residency in Olivia’s head like I think he has.” Ollie had been in Mum’s mind constantly while she was pregnant with me. A quick departure to mess with Nelson’s dreams might invalidate the entire nine months’ work. I didn’t think Ikelos would risk it.
Nelson sighed, a wistful sound, as we stepped out into the night. “I hope you’re right, though I won’t test the theory till I hear from you. These nightmares … I’ve never experienced anything like them.”
“Well, after this, if you’re still having issues, let me know. I really can take nightmares away.” I pulled the front door closed.
Nelson cocked his head, his expression hard to read in the gloom. Finally, he shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, but we’d come a long way in the last hour or so. And I didn’t need him to believe I could fix his dreams in order to do so. I just needed him to not arrest me for trying. “Drive safe, okay?”
“I only live a few minutes from here. I’ll be fine.”
He squared his shoulders and I wondered whether he was trying to convince me or himself. Still, he was doing his best to make it look like we hadn’t conspired tonight; I could hardly order him a cab or drop him off, leaving his car on my street. I saw now, as he strode towards it, that he’d parked it several blocks up, in front of an empty playground. No wonder I hadn’t spotted it when I’d gotten home—especially given how focused I’d been on not scratching Uncle Ian’s car on our concrete letterbox. Sneaky bugger. The thought was as admiring as it was grumpy.
Once Nelson slid into the driver’s seat I turned to my own car, regarding it with faint trepidation. I climbed inside and turned the engine—and heater—on, letting it idle as I pulled my phone out of my bag.
No way was I going to Ewan’s house on my own.
“I still can’t believe you told him,” Brad said, his gaze fixed on the display of the GPS we’d found in the glove box. When I glanced at him, the device’s green and white glow lit up his face in the dark car interior. “How’d he take it?”
“Remarkably well, all things considered,” I said, “though I didn’t tell him everything. Still, if Nelson turns out to be on our side, you’ll be able to call off your lawyer before you rack up too big a bill.” I flicked on the indicator even though the road was almost empty, easing the car around a roundabout and into the suburbs.
“Let’s see how tonight goes first. I might need him to get us off a trespassing charge if Ewan catches us peeking in his windows.”
“Yeah…” We drove in thoughtful silence for a minute, the GPS’s clipped British instructions the only sound in the car. When Brad laughed softly, I tipped my head to the side, risking another glance at him. “What?”
“Remember how, when we first started dating, I told you Belinda said I always go for the bad girl?”
I grinned. “And Jen said the same thing about you. That I go for bad guys, I mean. Not that you’re a girl. Obviously.”
“Well, I was just thinking tonight proves who the real bad influence is. I never needed a lawyer until I met you.”
“It’s hardly my fault,” I huffed, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel. “Besides, I never needed one till I met you either.”
“I’m not complaining.” There was a teasing note in Brad’s voice. “I like it when you’re the bad girl.”
“Oh, do you?” I replied with a laugh.
“In one hundred metres, turn right. Then you have reached your destination.”
I didn’t feel like laughing anymore.
Taking a leaf out of Constable Sneaky’s book, I drove further up the street, parking the car in front of a mostly empty block. The skeletal frame of a house loomed behind wire fencing and canvas. “He’s home,” Brad said as I turned off the engine. “His car’s in the carport, and the light in the front room is on.”
“Bugger. It would’ve been easier to check the house if he was out.”
Brad opened the glove box to slide the GPS in. I jammed my handbag in on top. “We’ll have to come in from the back yard,” he said. “Unless you want to just knock and push past?”
I shook my head. “He won’t let us search the house. No way.” My mobile phone buzzed in my hand as I switched it to silent.
“Maybe you could, you know…” Brad blew out his cheeks, puffing loudly.
I raised an eyebrow at him. I don’t look like that … do I? I shook off the thought. “If I could get the jump on him, sure. But if he sees it’s me, he won’t unlock the screen door. He knows what I can do. I’m hoping we can glimpse her through a window or something; then we can text Nelson.”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t have a dog,” Brad said as we climbed out of the car. I locked it and slid my phone and keys into a pocket of my jeans. If we were going to engage in criminal trespass, I wanted my hands free.
The night seemed icy after the car’s toasty warmth—I’d by now grown fond of the heated seats. Beside me, Brad was dressed in black jeans and a navy blue hoodie with the hood up. He grinned like a schoolboy about to engage in a prank; the expression brought a smile to my own face, and I slid my hand into his. I loved that he hadn’t questioned my conviction that Ewan had Olivia, even though it was almost entirely based on speculation and gut feeling, a justification thinner than the paper on which Olivia had painted Ikelos.
I was going to feel like an idiot if she’d taken off to Sydney with a mate or something.
Trying to look like a couple out for an evening walk, the two of us strolled back along the street on the other side of the road from Ewan’s place. He lived two blocks from the corner, his house one among many small, brick veneer places: the sort a real estate agent would describe as “cute” or “cottage-like”. The blocks were small enough that the left-hand wall of each building formed part of the adjacent property’s fence line. Carports rather than garages were the norm, and each front yard was tiny. Blue light from the television flickered through the cracks in the venetian blinds, but there was nothing to indicate Ewan was actually in the front room, let alone whether Olivia was with him.
“There’s not much scope for sneaking,” I muttered as we reached the corner and turned right, out of sight of the house. “No big trees to skulk behind, and just that side gate behind the carport.”
“There’s a sensor light over the front door too,” Brad said. “If we try to get past the car to get to the gate, it’ll probably come on.”
“Crap.”
“Yeah. Still, I got a good look at the layout on the GPS screen. Cross your fingers that the neighbour behind him isn’t home.” Brad led me down the street and we turned right again, back onto Ewan’s street, but this time at the other end: the street was a circuit, shaped like a bent bobby pin with both tips touching the feeder road. We slowed as we approached the third house along: the place that shared a back fence with Ewan’s. This house had an empty double carport and the lights were off. Bingo.
“You ready?” Brad whispered.
Was I? This could land us in a lot of trouble. We’d already gotten an unofficial warning against trespassing once, for the incident at Wattle Tree Park. If someone called the police other than us, I doubted we’d get off so lightly a second time. But I couldn’t shake the mental image of my bright, bubbly cousin in a sleep coma of the sort Ikelos had trapped Mum in, her muscles wasting away as her belly swelled and the Oneiroi forced his way into the baby’s psyche, gnawing into it like a grub into an apple. I pulled out my phone. “Give me a sec.”
“What are you doing?”
“Drafting that text to Nelson.” My fingers flew across the keypad. “I want to have it ready if she’s in there, just in case.” I didn’t say just in case what. Careful not to hit send, I turned the phone off and slid it back into my pocket. “Alright, now I’m ready.” I put on an American accent and swaggered forward. “Let’s be bad guys.”