I don’t think they’re looking at us, Em. I think they’re only looking at me. She didn’t know how she knew. She could just sense it. Like she could sense that something had been taken from her in that dark place.
“This is stupid. This is all just a bunch of cheap scare tactics. C’mon. They can’t do anything.” She walked through the turnstile and dragged Emily behind her. Pretty soon, they were in the parking lot, and the scary clowns were around a corner and out of the line of sight. After that, Emily calmed down significantly.
“I didn’t know you were afraid of clowns.”
“It’s never come up. It’s not something that’s ever a problem.” Emily folded her arms over her chest. “Afraid of bees, fine, that happens. You meet bees in the wild. I’m never in a field and then just—suddenly clowns. They’re not, like, roving scourges or whatever.”
“Now I want to pay one to come to your work and just follow you around.” She mimed holding up an invisible horn and squeezed the bag at the end. “Ha-honk!”
“Stop it! You wouldn’t.”
Cora laughed. “Ha-honk!”
Emily shoved her. “Not funny.”
“It’s super funny.” Cora cackled. “Ha-honk!”
“Yeah, yeah.” Emily was laughing, though, and the good-natured teasing was at least cheering her up. And distracting from the fact that they both knew where Trent was, and exactly what he was doing. Or who was doing him.
Whatever.
Details.
“Talk to you tomorrow, Em.”
“You too, Cora.”
As she drove away from the Faire, the Soothsayer’s words stuck in her head. “May your dreams be quiet.”
What the hell kind of warning was that?
5
It wasn’t long before Cora understood the warning.
She hadn’t ever been one for lucid dreams. They had only happened a few times in her life, and mostly when she was a kid. The last time she had one was after a surgery on her elbow, and she figured that was probably just a result of the pain medication. Hydrocodone was a hell of a drug.
So, when she found herself standing in a field, the long blades of grass brushing against her fingertips, she could have sworn she was really there. But the world felt a little out of focus at the edges—a little too surreal—and she knew she was dreaming. The scene in front of her was a beautiful landscape. Rolling fields, a soft breeze, and she could see a farmhouse down at the bottom of the hill. Sheep, white dots against a rich green background, were wandering around aimlessly.
Clouds overhead dappled a stunning blue sky. It was the definition of picturesque. She looked down at the grass that surrounded her and brushed her hand over the blades. They had grown so long that they had seeds at the top in little bunches, and the feeling of them against her fingers brought back memories of childhood.
The wind blew through the field, folding the long stems in waves. It was rare that a person could see the wind. There was something serene about watching it flow like the ocean over the fields.
It wasn’t anywhere she’d ever been before. Something told her this wasn’t even in America. There was a thin dirt road down below, and there were no power lines running along it. She’d never seen a sheep farm before—and the cottage next to it didn’t look like anywhere she’d seen in New England.
But where?
And why?
Not that she’d complain. It really was lovely. She could feel the wind blowing through her hair. The sun was warm on her face. If this was what lucid dreaming was like, she really was missing out. This was almost as good as reality.
She turned to see if she could glean any more information about where she was and jumped in surprise. She wasn’t alone.
There was a man standing there, although he didn’t seem to notice her. He was far more interested in a canvas on a large easel in front of him. She couldn’t see what he was painting. He was facing her, so the canvas wasn’t. She assumed it was the landscape she had just taken in.
He was humming to himself, some classical-sounding tune, and dabbing at a palette in his hand with a brush, then working on a spot on the canvas.
He was beautiful. And tall. Easily over six feet, if not close to six and a half. It made him look thinner than she assumed he was. His features were sharp, and he had dark hair that framed his face in messy curls. A bit of paint smudged his forehead near his hairline. A smock over his clothing was stained with a myriad of blues, greens, and white smears.
There was something about him. Maybe it was how handsome he was. Maybe it was how he trapped the tip of his tongue between his teeth and leaned into the canvas to focus on a particularly small detail. He was captivating.
She hadn’t found herself attracted to anyone in a long, long time. It was for a good reason. She had decided that between her history and her illness, dating just wasn’t in the cards for her. She turned that part of herself off. Oh, she got lonely. She just stopped bothering to look.
But if this guy were real and not just in her dream? Maybe she’d be forced to change her mind.
“Drat!” He growled in frustration and picked up a little scraper out of his smock and scratched at something on the canvas. “Blast it all. Bad sheep. Do as you’re told,” he muttered to himself. She could barely catch the words. He dropped the scraper back into his pocket and wiped his hand across his chest, leaving a smudge of white and green paint on the canvas fabric of his smock.
She smiled.
His clothing was strange. It didn’t look…modern. It was hard to tell, as he wasn’t wearing a coat or anything. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and black trousers, but something about him seemed dated. The cut of his slacks wasn’t modern. Who wears slacks and not jeans in a field, anyway?
“Hello?”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t even glance at her. It was like he couldn’t hear her. It was a dream, after all. Maybe he couldn’t. She walked up to him slowly, fascinated. He truly was gorgeous. At least if she was going to dream up a stranger, it was this one. She smiled and tried again. “Hey, tall and sexy. How’s it going?”
Still no answer. Not even a twitch of a smile or any inkling he could hear her. With the tip of a finger, he touched the painting, as if trying to use his fingernail to get something just right. When he did, he caught the tip of his tongue between his teeth again, clearly focusing on what he was doing.
Sexy and cute. There were definitely worse people to dream up. She shrugged. She could see that his eyes were a bright blue, almost cyan like the overhead sky. Curious to see his painting, she walked around to look at the canvas.
And felt her heart drop into her stomach.
She didn’t even know that could happen in a dream.
She had expected an oil-painted landscape. Wistful clouds over a sea of green and white-dotted sheep. An adorable cottage, perhaps.
None of that was there.
There wasn’t even paint.
There was only blood.
She jumped back, her eyes wide, and gaped at what she saw. The canvas was covered in gore. It dripped from the edge of the surface into the grass around his feet. It hadn’t been like that a second before. Crimson coated his brush, his pallet, and his hands.
His face split in a grin. An unkind, sadistic, cruel grin. It seemed like such a far cry from what he had been a second prior. Then…he looked at her. “Hello, Cora dear.”