Of course. Being in bed for so long, Mom’s muscles are atrophying, or would if it weren’t for what the nurse is doing. My chest squeezes tight. This is why I need the money, why I need to survive.
This is also why I should, at the very least, finish Valerian’s job.
Exiting the nurse’s dream, I check on Bernard.
He’s still not back.
I return to the gallery and play a memory to banish the hospital room from my mind’s eye. It’s a memory of me blowing out the candles on a cake for my ninth birthday, and unlike the vase incident, it doesn’t make me feel worse when it’s done.
When I return to check on Bernard, he’s still missing.
Pom’s visibility returns in that Cheshire cat manner. “Isn’t that Felix?”
I glance at a nearby nook. So it is. My friend fell asleep, after all.
Though I told Felix to do this very thing, a part of me thought he’d have trouble snoozing while I was in danger. Then again, it must be four in the morning, and unlike me, he hasn’t imbibed vampire blood.
I float over to the nook where he’s audibly snoring, his dark hair in even greater disarray than usual. Like me, Felix must stump anyone on Earth who tries to pinpoint his ethnicity—though unlike me, he comes from a long line of Earth Cognizant and does, in fact, resemble the humans from his home country of Uzbekistan. If I had to describe him to a fellow Gomorran, I’d say he looks like a tanned, skinny elf, only extra hairy and without the pointy ears.
“You might want to sit this one out,” I tell Pom. “He’s been through some ordeals.”
Pom promptly goes away to do whatever he does when he’s not pestering me. Good. I actually want him out of the picture so Felix and I can talk freely about the danger I’m about to face.
Making sure I’m still invisible, I reach out with one finger to touch Felix right above his unibrow. Connection established, I leap into his dream.
Chapter Eight
I’m in an abandoned warehouse with windows facing the Empire State Building. Huh. Do they even have warehouses in this part of NYC? Somewhere off to my right, a girl is screaming so loudly I’m glad my eardrums aren’t real.
I turn to see what’s going on. A foaming-at-the-mouth puck is clutching Felix’s petite girlfriend in his furry paws as a dozen or so other pucks try to rip her out of his clutches. Poor girl. With hairy bodies, horns, and hoofed feet, pucks look a lot like the depictions of satyrs and demons on this world—only with shark-like teeth. On Gomorrah, pucks have the worst reputation of any creature, in part due to negative portrayal in the media, but mostly because they like to rape, kill, and eat their victims—and not always in that order.
Put another way, Felix’s girlfriend is pucked.
“Help me, Neo Golem!” she cries out in a voice that’s surprisingly intact, given all that screaming. “You’re my only hope.”
Seriously?
As if in reply to her plea, the warehouse door bursts into tiny pieces and a huge figure lumbers in.
Ah, right. When Felix got embroiled in saving the world, he and our gnome friend created a robotic power suit for him. Having obviously read too many Earth comic books, particularly Iron Man, Felix made this design—and even chose a superhero name for himself: Neo Golem.
The robot lunges at the nearest puck with a speed something this big shouldn’t be capable of. Grabbing the puck by the left horn, he tosses him out the window, where the creature smashes into the Empire State Building.
The pucks let the girl go and circle Felix.
He slams a robotic arm into the stomach of the puck who’d held his girlfriend, causing the creature to fly at the wall and slide down in a broken heap.
A bigger puck gores Felix’s shoulder with a diamond-hard horn, shredding metal like tinfoil. But when he rips the horn out, there’s no blood. He must’ve missed Felix’s flesh. That’s good. From what I recall, my friend faints at the sight of blood, especially his own.
As I watch, Felix retaliates with a kick, hurling the attacking puck at his brethren. They tumble like bowling pins.
“Yeah!” Felix shouts. “You don’t mess with Neo Golem.”
The robot’s chest opens up. In the place where Felix’s nipples would be, two giant guns show up—and fire at the remaining pucks.
One spectacular explosion later, Felix is left alone with his sobbing girlfriend.
Wow. I can tell that the last part of the attack was based on a real memory of some fight Felix was in. I’m tempted to check it out, but I’m here for a different reason.
Felix sheds his robot suit and strides over to the girl.
Now this part is clearly pure fiction; his naked body looks way more muscular than his figure would imply in the waking world.
They kiss. Oh, boy. If I don’t interfere now, I’m pretty sure I’ll find out the X-rated way this damsel intends to reward her knight in shining armor.
Making myself visible, I clear my throat.
Felix’s head snaps toward me. As he takes in my face and fiery hair, his eyes grow to the size of saucers, literally so—which is only possible in a dream.
I hastily return my hair to normal and clothe Felix in jeans and a T-shirt with a wave of my hand. “It’s me, Bailey. I asked you to take a nap so we can speak, remember?”
Felix looks between me and his girlfriend. To make sure she doesn’t distract him, I make her disappear.
Felix rubs his eyes. “What the hell is going on?”
“This is a dream,” I say patiently.
He doesn’t look like he believes me, so I change our environment to the place where I usually perform talking therapy—a pillowy cloud floating above a soothing ocean.
“A dream?” Felix plops onto the plush white couch my patients like to sit on.
“An unrealistic one, at that.” I perch on a cushy, fleece-covered chair that appears conveniently under my butt. “Think about it. The warehouse was in Manhattan, as in Earth, but there are no pucks on Earth. Also, the pucks could’ve—and would’ve—killed the girl first, then attacked you. And that You’re my only hope bit… Would anyone really say that, outside of Star Wars?”
I can see the dawning comprehension in his eyes.
“Don’t feel bad. Dreams are my thing, after all.”
He swivels his head from side to side, taking in our surroundings. “Unreal. I was totally clueless.”
“It’s hard to question dream reality.” I let my hair go fiery again.
He looks awed. “It’s like being in The Matrix.”
Oh, crap, his favorite. If I don’t change the subject, I’ll get an earful. “I wanted to ask you about this Council that kidnapped me. I have a vague idea of how they work, but I could use more details.”
“Hold on.” He sits straighter. “How’d you get into my dreams? You’re in that limo with the vampires.”
I’d hoped he wouldn’t question this part. “I had a connection with you already.”
“Since when?”
I sigh. “Remember how you fell asleep during that video game design course we took together?”
“Nooo…”
“Well, you did.” I change the environment around us to match that classroom, so he can see what I saw that day: his head on the desk, some drool in the corner of his mouth. “See how your eyes are twitching? That’s REM sleep. Too good an opportunity to pass up.” I pantomime touching his forehead. Of course, when I’d really done it, there was hand sanitizer involved.