Bring Me A Dream: Reveler Series 5 (8 page)

“I’ll fill you in later,” Agatha said to her mother without breaking her gaze from Mirren.

“What’s this about?” she demanded.

“The Sandman,” Vincent supplied. Mirren thought the mention was both dangerous and daring, but Steve Coll had emphasized how little time they had, so she chuckled briefly as if Vincent were misbehaving.

Agatha turned, wide-eyed, to her mother.

“Throw them out,” the senator said to the clipboard man since Agatha was beyond acting on it.

“No, Mother,” Agatha said. “This may be it.”

The senator gave a very small shrug, as if to say,
It what?

“
Didier
sent them to me.”

The senator looked back at Mirren. “Lambert, did you say?”

“My father.”

She inclined her head toward Agatha. “And you know this for certain.”

Agatha nodded. “It’s time. He
needs
me.”

Mirren restrained a groan. Drama. “Let’s go somewhere we can speak freely,” she said to Agatha. “We have a lot to discuss.”

Agatha looked confused again.

“Really?” Vincent said aloud. “And Didier was frustrated with
me
?”

Mirren shushed him. “My father was frustrated for other reasons and you know it.”

“Take them to my place,” Senator Fleight told Agatha. “I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

Mirren let the faintest shade of confusion cross her features, as if to question the senator’s instruction. As Mirren hoped, Agatha was watching her closely and didn’t miss it.

“
My
place,” Agatha said to Mirren. “I know what to do. I’ll just grab my bag.”

They were alone with the senator for thirty seconds under her scrutiny and consternation. Agatha didn’t even say goodbye when she brushed by her mother on the way out.

***

They followed Agatha’s car to a garage and parked underground. Vince recognized the same kind of security he used at his SpiderSly lab outside of San Diego, where the tandem dreaming technology had been developed. It was the best of the best, far more than would be necessary for a residence, even for the daughter of Senator Fleight. A service monitored Agatha’s building, as well, which meant that a report for her mother had probably been in the works before Vince had even turned off the car’s ignition.

He wondered what the report would say about his father. Missing? Or did the senator know what Lambert had been doing to revelers?

The three of them took a faux industrial elevator—nothing about the building had been left original if they were using that kind of security—up two floors to open into the ferny greenhouse of a bohemian-styled den. Not what he expected. It smelled like fresh, wet dirt, which wasn’t necessarily bad. The furniture was upscale but with sofa tables behind each seat and lined with plants. A patio outside extended the greenery with even larger, more expressive growth.

“I’m impressed,” Mirren said to Agatha, making a show of looking around.

The only plant Vince had ever kept alive had been cannabis back in his freshman year of college.

“Gardening is my passion when I’m not reveling. I often have to stay here, near my dreamjack, so that I can be ready at a moment’s notice to initiate a Rêve.”

If she was using a jack and not a crown, then she had the latest equipment, too. Very pricey.

Mirren made a short
hmm
sound. “I would’ve thought you’d be able to revel without the use of a jack.”

Agatha flushed. “I can cross Rêves easily once I’m underwater, I just need a little help getting there in the first place.
You
mentioned you needed help, too. What can I do for you?”

Vince didn’t miss the undertone that made her offer a testing kind of question, one that suggested that Mirren now needed to prove herself in some way.

Mirren must’ve heard it, too, because the next second found Agatha on her knees, head bowed. Mirren had dropped her waking dream altogether, no teases.

The shift relaxed something in Vince. He was sick of pretenses, even necessary ones. He was glad Mirren was being herself. He preferred her that way. She was part nightmare. He was part crazy. It was much better to admit the truth.

“First,” Mirren said, “I need to know what you know so I can be assured that you have my father’s confidence.”

“Umm…” Agatha gripped her hands together. She seemed to be racking her brain for something good.

Vince pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and sat, stretching his legs out and crossing them at his ankles while he waited. If he stayed very still, the currents inside him did, too.

“Well,” Agatha said, “I know about your dreamscape.”

Mirren swung her gaze over to him and shook her head, as if to say Agatha was a dead end. She had been a long shot, even if she did know a nightmare when she saw one. The whole enterprise had been a long shot. Demon Steve would be disappointed, but maybe Allison Bright would let Vince at Lambert now.

“My dreamscape is the Scrape,” Mirren said coldly.

“Oh no!” Agatha dared to lift her gaze briefly, then dropped it just as fast. “I mean the one your father has set aside for you and David. It’s new, a
real
dreamscape. I’ve seen the plans and have visited once myself. He’s a genius.”

Vince uncrossed his ankles and sat up, heat bubbling through his blood. If Agatha knew about
David
, then she did know something about Lambert’s activities—maybe even about the nursery Rêve? Did she know what had happened in that Rêve? Had they come to the right person, or had they walked into a trap?

He wouldn’t mind a trap. He could fight then.

“Your father loves you so much,” Agatha said to the floor. “He’s been working so hard for you. Talks about you all the time—how you’ll be safe there. You and David. It’s amazing. So sharp and beautiful, like you. It’s called Maze City.”

***

Mirren wanted to kick the woman for saying such things. Her father didn’t
love
her. He didn’t know what love was. And there was no way in hell that she was going to allow David anywhere near a place called Maze City. Put a three-year-old in a
maze
? Like a lab rat? How typical of her father. Mirren wished again she hadn’t stood by while Vincent had tried to kill her father; she should’ve fucking
helped
.

“When the Agora falls,” Agatha continued, “he wants a safe place for you out of the fray and confusion.”

Mirren’s mind blanked for second.
When the Agora…?

If the Agora fell, then people would go back to dreaming alone. Or most would. There would be a select few who could still roam. And if the nightmares kept creeping into the waking world and snatching people? Her father
was
a genius. His strategy was a whole new take on divide and conquer. The waking world and Darkside. Just make everyone else sitting ducks.

“What about the EU’s Complex?” Mirren asked.

Agatha grinned. “That will come down, too.”

“And the black market?”

“The nightmares will overrun it easily,” Agatha said.

Mirren knew from Rook that nightmares were already infiltrating the black market. He had job offers to protect the illegal Rêves in operation there.

“But my father thinks Maze City can withstand all that?”

Agatha smiled, and her eyes sparkled. “It’s amazing. It’s a masterpiece. His legacy to you and your son. Pure genius.”

“So you’ve said.” Mirren turned thoughtful. A maze might be a trap, but it could also keep others out. David did need a dreamscape, especially if her father’s mayhem were to come to pass. An entire city would give him plenty of space to roam and explore until he got older and learned about the dangers of the world Darkside.

“Did I ruin the surprise?” Agatha asked, new worry in her voice. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Will he be angry?”

“No, I’m not surprised at anything my father does,” Mirren said. Though, one day, Agatha might be, once she realized what the true cost of his genius was. “I won’t mention it to him. I’ll let him surprise me himself.”

Mirren had to see Maze City. Maybe there was a way to secure it, snatch it out of her father’s grasp while he was tied up. And with Vincent beside her, they could defend it from the inside. It was imperative that they not be at the mercy of her father should all the Rêves fall and the nightmares run amok. She had to survive.

“Now, what can I help you with?” Agatha asked. “Please.”

Okay, fine. To the point then. “I need to speak with the Sandman on my father’s behalf.”

Silence.

After a moment, Agatha tilted her head, as if thinking. The silence stretched, and Mirren let it. Too many people tried to fill holes in conversation. It was a nervous habit. The confident only said what they needed to and no more. The trick was to let others speak and use what they said—and what they didn’t say—against them. It only required patience.

“Are you going to give me to Him?” Agatha finally asked in a timid, breathless voice. She snuck a glance at Vincent and said louder, “Or maybe Mr. Blackman?” Then she raised her gaze to meet Mirren’s. “Or someone else…?” The last bit trailed off as their eyes locked.

Mirren held a shallow breath.
Give her
to the Sandman? Mirren knew her father had been using revelers, feeding them to nightmares. Did Agatha already know that
giving
and
feeding
might be the same thing?

“Give me,” Vincent said, drawling. “It’d be my
honor
.”

Seemed he understood just fine. But then he didn’t believe in the Sandman; he thought Lambert was the Sandman. The
honor
was a hoped-for second chance to kill him.

“It’d be my honor, as well,” Agatha said softly, voice broken by emotion as if shamed into humility. “To go into the dark with Him is my greatest wish.”

“Sorry. I called the wish first,” Vincent said. “The Sandman and I have business.”

Agatha drew back slightly and looked to Mirren to decide the matter.

Fact was, they needed Agatha to show them how it was done.

“How about you both do it?” Mirren said. “Make Him come extra quick.”

Her father was trapped in the Agora, so if Vincent was correct, the Sandman might not come at all.

“Both of us?” Agatha asked, a tremulous quiver on her lips.

Ugh. Drama.
Mirren cut her a quick, “Yes.”

Agatha’s presence was the point. Rook and Jordan were taking care of David pending the results of this expedition into the Scrape cosmology. The question was simple: is the Sandman a real person or a scary story? The answer would be simple as well. The former presumed an intelligence Darkside that was separate from humanity and its collective psyche. A god.
The
God.

The latter possibility, that the Sandman was just a story, was more likely. It meant that the nightmares plaguing dreamers were not intelligent in their own right; they were merely malformed ghosts of fears that mirrored back what revelers themselves held within. Vincent had seen his father, for example. And Rook his dead little brother. And if those fears “consumed” them? Fears consumed people all the time. That was the dreamer’s fault, too.

Agatha stood and Mirren could see tears on her cheeks. She looked a little lost in her thoughts, a little afraid. “Then I suppose we need to sleep. If you’ll come this way, I’ll get you settled for the revel.”

Revel
meant fun. Mirren wasn’t having any. Agatha’s meekness made Mirren feel very tall, exaggeratedly so. Like a freak.

She sought Vincent’s gaze and found him looking at her already. The wolfish expression was back on his face, gaze calculating, something gaunt under the lines of his handsome features. He was probably contemplating murder again. It made her feel better about herself. Freaks together, then.

Agatha led them into a room that was empty except for several ergonomically styled lounging chairs, which were arranged in a circle, the heads all pointed inward, as if intended to literally pool the dreamers’ thoughts.

This was all new to Mirren. She’d never had to use equipment or go to a Rêve center, commercial or private, to share dreams or learn to become lucid within them. It had always been easy for her, literally second nature. But without her own dreamscape, she’d always wandered. Even now, in the waking world, she was a wanderer without a home.

Maze City.
The idea was growing on her, especially if it could keep David safe.

Agatha held out a Rêve dreamjack to her, and Mirren waved it away. But Vincent made a face and took one from her. Mirren hesitated. She didn’t know how safe it was for him to be dependent on Agatha’s system, which had to have been set up and maintained by Mirren’s father. There was an alternative.

“If you want,” Mirren told him, “I’ll take you into sleep with me.”

She used to do it with David’s father when they were first tangling in bed. It’s how she’d kept their relationship unknown for so long, sneaking into sleep. It was an intimate thing, maybe even more so than sex, sliding soul-naked into darkness with someone else.