Lay Me Down (10 page)

He pressed a small, clear packet containing two pills into her hand.

“Will you dream?”

“No. Drugging will put me in a non-REM state. It will have to wear off on its own, but Rook will be following at a distance.” Steve would be following. Rook would be the one drugged. “As soon as I’m lucid, I’ll join him. Twenty-four hours, and if you don’t make contact either waking world or Darkside, I’m getting you out. Period.”

“Got it.”

They looked at each other for a moment, that tension sizzling, and then came together simultaneously. One thought, one mind, a kiss meant to drown them both for a few stolen seconds.

When he pulled back, he asked, “You feeling okay?”

“Yeah. Let’s do this.” She flashed him a Maisie mischief smile. “The sooner it’s over, the sooner we can go back to bed. Everything good happens in bed.”

***

Mirage?

Vince Raymond staggered through the Scrape wind toward a warmth like the summer sun on bare skin. His vision was gone, his hearing muted by the constant howl in his head. It was the millions of raw nerves networked across his body that signaled an oasis of life beyond the pain of the desert.

He drove forward, but whether toward salvation or death, he didn’t care. He’d escaped too many times to think he had any luck left.

Could he at last have found the Agora? If he screamed, would a Chimera hear him?

Every muscle and bone at his command felt old. He was a different man now, scoured clean. The reason he was here had been scrubbed away, too, his mind purified by endlessness. Had it had something to do with his father?

An icy shadow fell on his back, cold enough to stall his heartbeat.

One of
them
. So close. Too close for hiding.

Without thinking, Vince heaved a choked breath to run, which is how he knew he still wanted to live.

The dust-born wind resisted his forward progress like a wall. Nevertheless, the sensation of heat on his skin grew into a certainty that refuge was near.

In front of him and at his back were two possible futures.

Ice scraped down his shoulder blade, the thing, the
creature,
reaching out to grab him.

Vince couldn’t run fast enough, not here. Like this.

There was no choice left. This was the end. One way or another.

He turned, hand fisted, and in all desperation, swung.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The moment you were born, I knew you were a devil. Soulless. A freak. I’ve seen what you are. You can’t fool me, boy.

Steve Coll stood, arms folded, next to a replica of an Agora pillar in the center of The Wake Hotel’s sprawling indoor mall of shops and celebrity chef restaurants. Above, the soaring ceilings were a
trompe l’oeil
of endless pale, yellow-bright sky evoking the promise of the waking world’s sun on just the other side of the waters.

For him, the waking world was the dark place.

Across the way, at a restaurant patio of sorts, Rook and Maisie sat at a table, though Rook now bore the illusion of Steve’s face and outward manner. Rook had been instructed to keep conversation away from any topic that would arouse suspicion—Graeme’s or Maisie’s. Graeme could not think they were friends.

One day soon, Maisie wouldn’t be fooled by illusions.

As far back as Steve could remember, he’d been imposing waking dreams on the world, mostly trying to disguise himself. It’d been twenty years since his grandmother’s death, but her voice still occasionally echoed in his mind.

A devil. A freak.

When he was young, the names had made him ashamed, even afraid of himself, but he’d never felt bitter before. That voice had kept him smart, aware of how he must live to survive, a constant reminder that he was different. It now also kept him from happiness.

The average person couldn’t master their own dreams. Rare talents, like Maisie, represented the scope of possibility for Rêve, which excited his superiors within Chimera. But she could also effortlessly blend in with everyone else. She could be normal.

Steve, however, knew his natural milieu was the dreamwaters Darkside. In the waking world, blending took effort. Discovery was always imminent.

Devil. Freak.

Darksider.

Rook-as-Steve leaned back, craning his head over his shoulder, arm raised to get the waiter’s attention. Maisie made her move.

Good. Quick. Efficient. The drug slid into Rook-as-Steve’s drink.

Rook had given her the opening—he’d lived on the streets practicing his own sleight of hand before Steve had recruited him for Chimera. When Rook turned around, he boldly took a drink from his water glass.

For a moment, Maisie’s expression appeared stricken. Scared. Then a flash of anger in her eyes overcame her fear, a thought voicing clearly in his mind.

Waiting is going to be torture. Candlestick would’ve been quicker
.

Steve smiled with relief. She was going to be okay.

Next time
I
make the plan,
she thought to herself. Her expression went carefully circumspect, a forced relaxation in her arms and shoulders, that only he would notice.

He was wrong. There was some light in the waking world after all, and it was beautifully, painfully bright.

***

“Do you have these in an eight and a half?” Maisie had seen Graeme through the boutique’s front window. Her heart hammered out of control, but she concentrated on her selection, freaking
killer thigh-high boots.

Now
these
were what she’d have chosen for herself.

“That’s one of our most popular boots, but I might have one left.” The shop girl ducked behind a curtain.

Outside, Graeme spoke to a man who was with him. Some flunky, no doubt. And the man placed a call.

Maisie turned away and hugged the boots to her heart.

First, they were great boots. And second, the longer she stalled, the more time Steve would have to recover and follow. In the meantime, Rook would be watching her from somewhere discreet. And Jordan was probably lurking around, too.

Everything would be fine.

Steve’s collapse hadn’t been as dramatic as she’d imagined. He’d basically nodded off, chin to chest. A slight slump. She’d been braced for a little more spectacle, prepared to gasp and call for help. To theatrically wring her hands during a BS explanation. But no.

“Steve.” She’d nudged his shoulder. “Uh…asshole?” It was what she used to call him. Like…yesterday.

Little bit o’ drool.

Right.

So she’d simply risen from her chair and skipped out on paying for their food.

After ditching Steve, she was supposed to have contacted Graeme right away, but on impulse, she’d ducked into a boutique kitty-corner from the restaurant to make sure nothing happened to the man responsible for the best sex of her life.

She couldn’t leave him like that—vulnerable—not until she knew he was okay.

“You’re in luck. It’s our last pair.” The shop girl carried a massive, pink-lidded boot box.

Pink. Had to be a sign, right? Everything was going to be okay.

Maisie ignored Graeme outside the window, still talking to his flunky. She sat on one of the shop’s velvet benches, took off her stilettos, and wiggled her toes to get the circulation going.

She thought of Steve again. It’d been a half hour since she’d drugged him.

A waiter had finally shaken his shoulder, and then had looked around the mall, probably for the bitch who’d left her man in a slump. After a desperate beat, the waiter pulled a mobile phone and placed a call. While he was speaking, he checked Steve’s pulse and waved over another waiter to help as well. Her view had been quickly blocked as other patrons rose from their seats. A cry for a doctor went up from inside the crush. A woman, middle-aged, well dressed, stood. Thank God.

Then, and only then, Maisie had placed the call. “Yeah, so I want to deal.”

She hadn’t known what to do with herself while she was waiting, so she’d pretended to be what Jordan had suggested: someone who wanted a fast track up and didn’t care how she got there. This was the third store she’d patronized in her spree.

Graeme came around the glass front of the shoe boutique. “I knew you’d come back to me.”

“Well, actually I’m shopping now,” she told him. She had a foot in a boot, which fit like a glove. The slightly snake-textured leather warranted the whopping price tag.

“You’re pissing me off.” Graeme jutted out his chin with irritation.

The inside zipper disappeared as she pulled it up her calf. Liquid sex, with a heel.

“Maze…” The warning in Graeme’s voice was loud and clear.

Don’t push him,
an imaginary voice said in her head.

“Fine.” Maisie unzipped the boot and put her own heels back on. She stood and wiggled to get her short skirt to drop back down an inch.

But she shouldn’t cave easily. She had to fight for control. Push back. “But buy me my boots.”

Heh.
She was so going to die.

Graeme’s face went arctic cold, but he took out his wallet and slapped a card on the counter.

At least she’d die in really beautiful boots.

Maisie waved at the girl. “Well, ring ’em up.”

“O-kay. Great.” The shop girl quickly did so, as if Maisie was going to change her mind—
not
going to happen—and slid the boot box in a bag and handed it over the counter.

Maisie had to hug the bag—the box was big—in one arm and grab the others (she’d made a few other stress purchases) with her free hand.

Graeme grasped her elbow tightly and pulled her toward the door, which made her stumble, almost fall.

“Hands off, you jerk,” Maisie said.

But Graeme kept hold and forced her to keep up at his side. “I’m sick of your bullshit.”

They went out into the hotel mall proper and speed-walked through the wide passage winding away from the casino. Long strides in heels were impossible at Graeme’s pace. The little bones at the pad of her foot were screaming as she quick-stepped beside him.

“You don’t want to treat me like this.”

A bank of bright doors appeared beyond a fountain in black marble; at its center was a massive sculpture of beautiful naked men and women all facing outward: humanity as the gods of Rêve. Silver water rushed generously from their open palms.

Graeme muscled her through a revolving door that dumped them on the sidewalk outside the hotel. “You can’t keep changing your mind.”

“I changed it
once
, and then I decided I liked my life better the other way.”

He laughed, disbelieving. “You’re just another bitch.”

“I’m a bitch who can do things Darkside you can’t even dream of.” Her talent was too valuable for him to throw away. She needed to remind him of that fact at every opportunity.

A white SUV pulled up into the mall-access and Graeme dragged her toward it. His manhandling of her had attracted a small audience of gapers, silently watching her being forced into the backseat of the vehicle.

“You okay?” a good Samaritan called out, coming forward to do the right thing by her.

Last chance.

How the hell was Rook supposed to follow her now?

Didn’t matter. William Kerry’s suffering had been partially her fault. She wasn’t going back without answers. She’d follow this through. She had to.

“Fine, thanks,” she said.

When the Samaritan didn’t step back, Graeme viciously added, “She’s been shopping around, and I’ve been paying for it.”

He slammed her door.

Inside the SUV Maisie folded her arms tightly over her chest (to try to slow her heart rate), crossed her legs (so she didn’t pee herself out of fear), and frowned (well, because today sucked). But when this was over, she was going to yell at her sister. Jordan was the one to blame for the very real pain inflicted by the stilettos on her feet.

Graeme got in the forward passenger seat. Their driver was a tall, muscle-bound guy she recognized. He’d followed her a couple of times Darkside: once into her city after she’d fled the evil dream, and again into the beach vacation Rêve where she’d introduced Jordan to shared dreaming. He’d tried to scare her into delivering the package, and Rook had pummeled him out of the dream.

This guy had to know something.

The point of her coming back to Graeme was to get as much information as possible, so—

“We meet again,” she said to the driver, her voice quavering more than she’d have liked.

He acted like he hadn’t heard her. As he was only three feet away, she knew he had.

“Next time you come into my city,” she said, trying again, “I’ll make sure you don’t get out again.”

Silence.

Ugh.

If Steve’s statistics about the rarity of her ability were correct, then the driver had to have been the one to kidnap the old man William Kerry from the Sunrise dream, too. She wondered why the driver hadn’t simply delivered the all-important package to the evil dream himself. Why pay
her
fifty thousand to do it? Unless it had been some sort of a test, and she’d failed.