Sleepless (2 page)

More silence. This is where I expect Griffin to break in with his usual “What’s up?” Instead, “Coby,” still businesslike, says, “Um … thank you, Ms. Devine.”

“Pug, it’s nine in the morning,” I begin, but then I notice the words “call ended” flashing on the display.

Huh.

I toss the phone aside and slip deeper under my comforter. Ten minutes later, I’m almost asleep when it happens again.

“You can ring my be-e-ell, ring my bell!”

Cursing, I find the phone tangled within my sheets and check the screen. Private, again. My first and only boyfriend is
so
dead.

I flip the phone open. “Yeah?” I say, grouchier this time.

“Ms. Devine?”

“Who are you now, the
Wall Street Journal
?”

“Actually, it’s the
Intelligencer
.”

Okay, now this has gone too far. “Do you want a quote from the victim’s girlfriend, too?” I ask, my voice saccharine.

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

“Actually,” I say, “it’s a lot of trouble. Pug, I’m trying to sleep. This. Is. Not. Funny.”

“Hey. Julia Devine.” The voice on the other end sparkles with recognition. “You’re
the
Julia Devine. The one who made all
those headlines. Right? How long ago was that? Five years ago?”

I bite my lip, suddenly aware of my heart thudding against my camisole. If there’s anything, any topic in my life, that Griffin knows is off-limits, it’s that. Even
he
wouldn’t touch it. “Nine,” I whisper.

There’s silence on the other end. “Ms. Devine,” the voice finally says, “have you not heard about the accident?”

My voice is a squeak. “Accident?”

“Ms. Devine. There was an accident, on Main Street, last night. Griffin Colburn was killed.”

It seems I was right about one thing, I realize as I flip the phone shut without another word and numbly stare at the display.

My first and only boyfriend
is
so dead.

CHAPTER 2
Eron

I
f Mama, God rest her soul, could see me now, crouching outside the window of a girl’s house, in this tree, she would surely rise from her grave and swat the life clean out of me. And I agree with her; this is no place for a man. But that is one thing I am not.

At least, not yet.

Watching the bedtime ritual of a woman from a clandestine post is perfectly acceptable behavior for us Sleepbringers, known as Sandmen to humans. In fact, I watch more than one woman every night. I’m sure Mama would get out the belt if she knew that. It’s not proper human behavior, so it was a struggle even for me to grasp. After all, I still
appear
human, and one’s human sensibilities are difficult simply to disregard. Even now I’m not entirely comfortable with stalking women in the dark, though I’ve been carrying out this seduction for nearly a hundred years. I’m about as used to it as I’ll ever be.

When I died and made my choice to join the Sleepbringers, it was Mama I thought of. She was the only one I hated to
leave behind—well, besides Gertie, perhaps. Without me, Mama was alone. I was only seventeen, and I had aspirations to be someone, to make something out of my life. But all too suddenly, that was over. I was a picker in a textile mill in Newark and snagged my shoulder in one of the machines as I was trying to free some bunched fabric. Tore my arm up dreadfully, and by the time they got me to the hospital, I’d lost too much blood. It didn’t hurt. Or perhaps it did. I can’t remember. Like I said, it was a hundred years ago.

I do remember, like yesterday, sitting in a dream state and talking to a beautiful young woman. She told me not to be afraid, and it felt as if I’d met her before, perhaps in my dreams. For the first time, I didn’t trip over my words, didn’t make a fool of myself like I always did with the fairer sex. I was comfortable with her. Little did I know that as I spoke to this young woman, she was drawing me further and further into her world, seducing me, and pulling me forever away from the simple life I’d known as Eron DeMarchelle, textile picker from Newark, New Jersey. By the time she explained to me that my life was over, there was nothing left to be done.

Julia is sitting at her vanity, applying some cream to her skin. If I could speak to her, I would protest; her skin is already the color and texture of Ivory soap. Perfect. That is, except for the three small purple scars, like a cat scratch, on her right cheek. She always wears her reddish hair down. It looks lovely when it spills upon her satin pillows, but during the day, it covers too much of her face, which I suppose is her objective. She has always been wildly self-conscious about those scars, which she received when she was seven, in an incident she has otherwise done a wonderful job of forgetting.
Her eyelids sag heavily, so my job should be easy today. For some reason, the thought saddens me.

I’m woken from my reverie when the room suddenly goes dark. I strain to see through the glass the covers of Julia’s bed floating down upon her small frame. Time to begin.

Stepping into the room, I adjust my cuff links and pat my coat pockets to ensure I have a good supply of sand in them. I pass the collection of running trophies, the posters and models of architectural masterpieces, the dusty shelves of discarded stuffed animals she cuddled faithfully when she was a child. Julia is on her side. I peer over her and realize that she’s holding a frame in her hands. Julia’s bureau is covered with framed photographs of family and friends; she feels safe with them watching her. In the darkness, I can’t see the picture she’s holding beneath the glass. I spread the sand over her, and before my ritual is anywhere near completion, she’s dreaming away. She turns onto her back and mumbles something I can’t quite make out.

Julia often talks in her sleep, and usually, her words are laced with worry. She speaks things in her dreams that she is afraid to say while conscious. She is quiet, prefers to keep to herself, which is something I’ve always understood, because I was quite the same way. When she was younger, she was the most precocious, talkative child I had ever known, but she’s much more tentative now, as if she no longer believes that her thoughts have worth. I want to soothe her, but that would break the first rule of the Sleepbringers: once the human is asleep, we must make our exit. Quickly, I leave the way I came, but I can’t bring myself to move on to my other charges right away. I sit on a branch and attempt to find her
form in the darkened room, but all I can see is my reflection in the glass.

“Hello, my pet,” a voice breathes, tickling my ear.

“Good evening, Chimere,” I whisper. I don’t need to turn to know that it is my mentor. A hundred years has bred a familiarity I didn’t know possible. She is that beautiful young woman I spoke about—well, if one could call her a woman; she is not human, either. Though, the difference between us is that she never has been and never will be. I’ve almost come to take for granted that she will forever be in my life. It’s hard to believe that in another few weeks, I will never see her again.

Chimere peers through the window. “Ah! Of course. This one shall be the hardest for you to part with, no doubt.”

“What makes you say that?” I ask, finally looking at her. She carefully adjusts her white petticoats and absently begins to braid her waist-length black hair. It’s one of her most endearing habits.

She smiles at me, her eyes saying,
Must you even ask?
“You two have been through much together.”

“That’s of no importance. It’s not as though she realizes that,” I mutter darkly.

“It matters to you, though, does it not? I can always guess where to find you. Most often when I come to check on you, you’re in this very spot.”

I don’t answer. Perhaps I was spending a few extra moments outside Julia’s bedroom, but I hardly felt it noticeable.

She smiles again. “It’s not at all unexpected. This one replaced your beloved, after all.”

I hitch a shoulder. Yes, Gertie was the girl I loved when I
was seventeen, though it’s hard to think of her as that. “Beloved” would suggest a closeness I hadn’t achieved with the choirgirl from my church. In fact, we had never touched, or even spoken to one another. I firmly doubt she even knew my name. We only exchanged glances and smiles back and forth across the pews at St. Ann’s Church every Sunday for a year. Before the accident, I’d made plans to ask her to the church social. Since then, I’ve spent a hundred years regretting not following through with those plans. “Beloved” sounds rather presumptuous.

That is one of the reasons I agreed to join Chimere; Chimere had told me that if I joined her for “a spell” and served her well, I could continue my life as a human. She said that every one of us Sandmen had unfinished business, and I was certain that Gertie was mine. She also told me that if I became a Sandman, I could lull dear Gertie to sleep every night. Yes, I could be closer to her than I ever had been as a human. But time passes quickly among our people, and I had no inkling that the “spell” Chimere spoke of was equal to a lifetime in human years. When Gertie died at the age of ninety-six, after being married to another (almost too much for me to bear) and having many children and grandchildren, I mourned her as if she were my beloved, despite my being little more than a glimmer in her vast scrapbook of memories. But I accepted it. After all, that is what we Sleepbringers must learn to do: put the safety and happiness of our charges ahead of our own. It was enough to see her living a good life, even without me in it.

After Gertie’s passing, I was given Julia. She was only a
baby when I first met her, a smiling, redheaded little bundle who much preferred chewing on the railing of her crib to my visits.

Chimere says, “Our people always seem to have a fondness for the one who takes our beloved’s place.”

In body, Chimere is only sixteen. But she has thousands of years of wisdom about the Sandmen, enough that I sometimes think of her as a mother hen. I can never argue with her logic. “Yes, I suppose.”

“Well, are you ready?” she says, pouting.

In a few weeks, my obligation to the Sleepbringers will be fulfilled, and I will be able to continue the life I left a hundred years ago. In truth, though I am excited, I am a wreck about the whole thing. Among the countless other worries, I imagine that the world has changed quite a bit since I left it.

“I suppose. Was my replacement called up?”

She nods. “Yes. He agreed. And he is Julia’s beloved, so I think it will work nicely.”

I can’t help bristling. Julia has a beloved? Most often, I learn these things through the dreams of my charges, but Julia has never dreamt consistently enough of one person for me to think she has a special attachment. Julia doesn’t dream often, and when she does, she is usually alone. She dreams of places, of mountainous buildings of steel and glass. Julia is much different from the rest of the women I’ve been charged with. Like me, she feels more content among beautiful works of architecture than around people. I’ve always thought she’d be forever searching—like I was when I was alive—for a kindred spirit, one soul to understand her.

I think of the silver frame she’s holding, and her eyelids, sagging, I realize now, not so much from fatigue but from grief. Her
beloved
. “And when will I be expected to begin his training?”

“In time. He’s still getting accustomed to his new powers,” she explains.

I look back through the window, at Julia. It’s almost unbelievable that in another few months, I will no longer be in those dreams of hers, beside her, staring up at buildings whose roofs touch the moon. I will be human, like her, and yet she will not know me at all; the gap between us will be immeasurable. Insurmountable. “All right,” I say, trying to keep my nerves quelled.

“You are worried, no doubt, about the training?” Chimere asks, studying my eyes. “Do not be. It’s very rare that a replacement cannot fulfill his duties.”

“But it does happen,” I murmur.

“Well, yes … but so? It’s not as though this life has been all that torturous for you, has it?”

“Of course not, but after one hundred years of the same … it tends to be a bit …”

She grins. “Tedious. I have heard that before.”

“I have no idea how you’ve done it for so many thousands of years.”

“You forget. I was never human. Maybe it is that I do not know what I am missing,” she says. “You do want to be human, do you not? To finish that which has been left undone?”

“Of course. More than anything. Though I still do not know what my unfinished business is.”

“It will become clear to you, in time.” She clasps her hands together and inspects me. “Is there anything else troubling you? As you know, the further you proceed in your training of your replacement, the more human you will become. As he accepts your duties, you will gradually become human. At first you may be human for only a few minutes a day, but eventually that time will stretch, until you are completely human. It will take several days, but that is a positive thing. If you became human all at once, the transition would be a bit jarring, to say the least. After all, becoming human is not easy, nor is becoming a Sleepbringer.”

“Yes, I understand.” I smile. “If anything is troubling me, it is that I will miss you.”

“I’ll still see you. As before. In your dreams.” She blushes, and a slow smile spreads over her lips. “The elders and I will be sorry to see you go. You have served us quite well.”

Chimere is never stingy with her compliments, so I note with some consternation that she says “quite well” instead of “superbly,” or “outstandingly,” or “without fail.” That is the best I can hope for. Nearly a decade has passed, and yet one incident, one transgression, mars my record with Chimere. Originals have never been human, so Chimere doesn’t understand that if given the same chance, I would do things much the same. I suppose if a thousand years passed, she would still not forget it and still not understand.

She scans the street. Most of the lights in the houses along Peasant Street are still ablaze, but I do have my three other charges to tend to. She must be thinking the same thing, because she says, “I know it’s a lovely night, but are you going to stay out here until dawn?”