Tangible (Dreamwalker)

by Wallace, Jody

  “We’ve made improvements. To our methodology, to alternate remedies, to our detection process.” He tucked her hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering. Her skin heated wherever he touched. “Certain mistakes won’t be repeated. You’ll be protected. Although if you have a family history of psychosis, tell us now. Don’t make us hunt it down.”

  “I don’t. I’m so average I’m boring.”

  His gaze dropped to her lips as his thumb brushed her chin. “You’re far from average.”

  Behind the sofa, Rhys cleared his throat. Maggie and Zeke jumped apart.

  “Don’t scare Maggie more than you already have.” Rhys rested his huge hand on Zeke’s head, who ducked and batted it away.

  “Cut it out,” he snapped.

  A gleam flashed in Rhys’s eyes before he continued. “What our fearless leader is getting around to telling you is we will train you to control the dreamsphere. The caveat is that once we bring you over, you’re expected to do your part. Help keep civilians safe from wraiths.”

  “My part?” Maggie wanted to be as far from the nightmares and everything related to them as she could get. “What if I don’t want to be involved?”

  Zeke watched her from the corner of his eyes. “We take the decision out of your hands.”

  When Rhys didn’t correct him, Maggie’s insides lurched. “Is there a way to stop the dreams? Drugs or something?”

  Rhys nodded. “A few ways. Electric shock, for one. We’ve found customized ECTs—electroconvulsive therapy machines—to be somewhat effective in a crisis. Lobotomies are a long-term option we prefer to avoid. Before lobotomies, you don’t want to know.”

  Maggie couldn’t stifle a gasp. “Seriously?”

  “Don’t worry, Maggie.” Rhys patted her shoulder. “We’ll take care of you.”

  “I’ll take care of her.” Zeke glowered at the larger man. “Back off, Rhys.”

  “You’re the one worried about the tangible,” Rhys said blandly. “With good reason.”

  “I know, I know.” Zeke let out a frustrated sigh. “Hellfire.”

  Maggie couldn’t decipher the undercurrents so she returned to the previous subject. “What if I accept the training but not the involvement?”

  “Ah, deadbeat dreamers.” Rhys patted the breast pocket of his black leather jacket as if it held something significant. “You’ll be signing a legal contract that authorizes us to garnish your wages in the event of insufficient assistance. Since many of us don’t have time to hold down regular jobs, we have to finance our operation somehow.”

  Based on the state of their equipment, she guessed funding was limited. “I see.”

  “No contract, no training. No training, no control. No control, and you’re in a heap of trouble.” Zeke unbuckled his weapons belt and placed it on the coffee table in front of them. “Do you want to be in a heap of trouble?”

  She frowned. “You’re blackmailers.”

  “You have choices,” Rhys assured her. “There are all types of assignments. Many individuals maintain normal lives while supporting the organization monetarily.”

  “Not very well,” Zeke added.

  Rhys continued as if Zeke hadn’t spoken. “They’re called funders. The fundi.”

  “That sounds about my speed.” No one could go back to normal after learning what she’d learned, but if she could approximate normal, that would be her top choice. “Exactly how big is your operation?”

  “That’s all we’re gonna tell you until you sign. And you will sign. Everyone does.” Zeke rubbed his shoulder and her gaze was drawn to the muscles flexing in his arm, the way his long fingers splayed on the planes of his chest.

  With a quick headshake, Maggie yanked her attention to the matter at hand. “Is this a government black-ops thing?”

  “No, ma’am. Nobody knows about us except members and sometimes their families. Our contract includes strict nondisclosure clauses.” Rhys pursed his lips as if considering how to phrase the next statement. “We’re very careful when we clean up any complications.”

  While a legal agreement promising support and confidentiality for a secret group of vampire slayers sounded ridiculously unenforceable, Maggie decided not to dispute it. Decided to accept that all of this was real and she wasn’t under the influence of hallucinogens or a TV crew.

  To survive the madness that had overtaken her life, she needed to cross bridges when she came to them and hope the trolls beneath weren’t hungry.

  “Don’t rule out active participation so soon, Maggie,” Rhys said. “You could be an asset.”

  “How? I can’t kill monsters.” She scrunched into her corner of the sofa and crossed her arms. “I pass out if I see blood.”

  “You’re quick with that pepper spray,” Zeke pointed out. “And wraiths don’t bleed. You may be better than you think.”

  “I’m pretty sure I won’t.” Based on Zeke and his team, her age wouldn’t automatically be a problem, but her lack of athleticism would. “So, these wraiths. They come from some type of alternate dimension? I can’t believe I’m even asking that.”

  “You dream ’em up, we take ’em out,” Zeke said. “Big, little, stinky, slimy, toothy, hairy. They can all be killed once they’re on this plane—the terra firma.”

  “Because I’m an...alucinator...any dream I have can manifest?”

  “Any nightmare,” Zeke corrected. “Good dreams don’t come true for alucinators any more than they do regular folks.”

  “If I have a nightmare about somebody dying, does that mean...” She had to know. Please don’t let it be true. “If I dreamed of a car wreck, could I have killed my parents?” Tears burned her eyelids and she breathed deeply to stave them off.

  Unexpectedly, Zeke clasped her hand. Warmth that was disproportionate to the contact rippled through her. “That was a month ago, right? You didn’t make that happen, sweetheart. But you’re active now and you need a mentor.”

  Through watery eyes, she could see the concern in his face. Concern for her or the people her visions could hurt? “How long does training take?”

  “A week or two for minimum control. For you, it might be longer.” Zeke’s grip tightened when she tried to withdraw. “I’m the one who sensed your breakthrough. Your first nightmare in the true dreamsphere. It took us all day to locate you since the dreamsphere doesn’t have exact geographical coordinates, and your reading was particularly complex. We were worried we wouldn’t find you in time.”

  “Zeke was our area monitor last night.” Rhys rounded the sofa and lowered his bulk onto the coffee table. Zeke shot him an unreadable glance. “We screen the dreamsphere for disruptions, and when we sense a manifestation, a field team is assembled. We can tell if it’s a neonati or someone we know, and that helps us decide how to handle it.”

  “You were in my head?” she asked Zeke. Maybe that’s why she felt like she’d met him before—because she had.

  “I was.” He stroked the inside of her wrist and Maggie shivered. “I sensed you, I connected with you, and I brought the team to find you.”

  He made it sound intimate. His caress ebbed and flowed inside her. “What do lessons involve? How do we fix me?”

  Zeke and Rhys exchanged a glance, and Zeke jerked a thumb at the door. “We have a decision to make. Wanna go get Lillian?”

  “No, I want to stay right here,” Rhys said. “In the same room as you and the pretty neo.”

  The skin around the men’s eyes tightened. The two of them seemed to emit subsonic growls. The hair on the back of Maggie’s neck lifted.

  “Just tell me,” she insisted. “What do I have to do?”

  “Fine.” A roguish expression crossed Zeke’s features that transformed him from good looking to mouth-watering. “We meditate every day and sleep together every night.”

  Maggie jerked her hand free. “Excuse me?”

  Rhys laughed. “What he means is you share a bed with your mentor so he can monitor your dream state. If you want a chaperone at first, t
hat can be arranged.”

  “Why, so we don’t have to get married?” Zeke joked. “It’s the twenty-first century.”

  “You’re my mentor?” she asked Zeke.

  “You have choices there too,” Rhys said with a frown.

  “Technically, I’m supposed to be,” Zeke said. “But you don’t like me much, do you? That might get in the way.”

  “I don’t know you,” she said primly. Parts of her liked him lots. Other parts couldn’t help but notice how much friendlier he’d become once he’d confirmed there were no more monsters and once she’d stopped accusing him of hosting a TV show. “I’m withholding judgment.”

  “I won’t kiss you again,” he assured her, but something in his mesmerizing gaze promised the exact opposite. “That was only to shock you out of your panic.”

  “It doesn’t matter if she likes you. What matters is if you like her,” Rhys said. “I think you do.”

  Zeke shrugged. “I’m withholding judgment.”

  “But you’re recusing yourself?” Rhys asked.

  “Haven’t decided.” Red tinged Zeke’s cheeks. Maggie couldn’t tell if he was aggravated or embarrassed. “HQ was clear on how they wanted this to go down. If we get on their good side, maybe we can get some damn upgraded comms.”

  “I’m happy to sleep with Maggie,” Rhys offered. “She’s going to need at least an L4—Maggie, that means someone with a higher-rated ability—and my bed’s empty.”

  “Forget it, Casanova,” Zeke snapped.

  “Hey, now. I’m not the one who kissed her.” Rhys inclined his head toward her. “Not that you’re not attractive, Maggie, but that’s not how it works.”

  Zeke slid closer to her on the couch, his body language blatantly possessive. “We’ll ask Lillian. Or we can ship Chloe in.”

  “Or I can handle it,” Rhys said, “like you asked me to already.”

  “That was before.”

  “You’re jealous, aren’t you?” Rhys turned up his palms. “That’s the opposite of good. Started like that in Harrisburg. We’ve barely recovered our standing from that and you want to go again? You can’t do this with a clear head.”

  “Fuck you, Rhys.” Zeke’s thigh brushed Maggie’s as he bristled at the larger man. “I don’t care about standing.”

  Rhys shrugged. It was odd to Maggie that he was unperturbed by Zeke’s antagonism, but she didn’t know either of them well enough for conjecture. “Well, I do care about standing,” Rhys said, “and I won’t apologize for it. Or for the fact I don’t want your pong stinking up my plans.”

  “If I’m not the one in Maggie’s bed, HQ will pitch a hissy. That’ll hurt your plans too.”

  Since Maggie was already crammed into the couch corner, there was nowhere to go to escape Zeke. Every time she blinked, he seemed to be a centimeter closer. The idea of sharing a bed with him gripped her imagination like a vise.

  She clenched her legs and released a shuddering breath. “I don’t know. This bed sharing stuff sounds like a scam.”

  While Zeke and Rhys looked nonplussed, a new voice answered.

  “You’re not the first lady who’s wondered that.” The woman from the team lounged against the doorjamb. She was by no means the least menacing of the group, but she had warm brown eyes and a weathered face Maggie instinctively liked. “The simplest explanation, which my coworkers conveniently failed to mention, is that skin contact is required so your mentor can find you in the dreamsphere. It’s a big place and your mentor has to be with you to protect and train you. Since the easiest path into the sphere is during sleep, that’s where the bed sharing comes in. It’s practical.”

  Practical and other things. She and Zeke had barely known each other an hour. Her libido had no place in her decision-making. “Will this stop the nightmares?”

  Zeke shook his head. “Not exactly. But training stops manifestations.”

  The woman—Lillian—ambled into the room and handed Maggie a wet washcloth and a bottle of antiseptic that she recognized from the upstairs medicine cabinet. “The boys always make it sound skeevy. The stunt Zeke pulled in the alley probably isn’t reassuring you, either.”

  Zeke’s mouth tightened. “She panicked and I didn’t have a pie. I had to do something.”

  “She may have rather had a pie in the face,” Lillian said with laughter in her voice. “It worked on me.”

  Maggie dabbed the dried blood on her neck. Because Zeke was so close, her elbow bumped him. “He mentored you?”

  “No, but he led my field team,” Lillian said. “I freaked out too. Zeke doesn’t exactly have a delicate touch with neonati. New dreamers.”

  “Didn’t have time for manners.” Zeke’s tone was stiff, his Southern accent at odds with the clipped phrases. “She coulda had kids waiting on her to come home.”

  Maggie realized now how essential it had been to hunt down the monsters quickly. Her resistance had delayed them. Zeke’s kiss had convinced her she wasn’t imagining everything. She opened her mouth to assure everyone she wasn’t upset but they weren’t talking to her anymore.

  “He has a tangible, Lill,” Rhys said. “He can’t keep his hands off her.”

  Whatever that meant, Lillian sank into a chair and studied Zeke gravely. “That explains why you’ve been as ruffled up as a banty rooster. First neo out of retirement, Zeke, and you stumble across a pretty, high-level female.”

  Zeke scoffed. “You act like I did it on purpose.”

  “This would be easier if Maggie was Marvin.”

  “Well, she’s not. She’s a she,” Zeke said crossly. His arm slipped from the back of the couch to Maggie’s shoulders like a confirmation.

  “What does me being female have to do with it?” she asked, resisting the urge to snuggle against him.

  Nobody answered, caught in some battle of their own.

  Rhys crossed his arms. “The tangible makes things risky for him. He can’t do it.”

  “Harder to switch her to a different mentor though,” Lillian pointed out. “Depends on how far the link has advanced.”

  “It won’t have advanced that far yet. All he did was geolocate her. And it doesn’t matter. We have to switch her. He’s possessive already. I offered to train her and look at him.” Rhys threw up his hands. “He’s practically sitting on her.”

  “Comforting her,” Zeke corrected. “I’m physically comforting someone who’s had a kick in the teeth. Like we learned in counseling, you assholes. You do this all the time with neos.” His hand tightened on Maggie’s shoulder.

  Lillian and Rhys studied Zeke and, in passing, Maggie.

  “This isn’t my fault,” Zeke said. “I’m doing my job.”

  “HQ insists he start mentoring again,” Lillian mused. “There shouldn’t be a repeat of Harrisburg. We collared Maggie after the first manifestation, and nothing pinged in the medical history so far. And he’s going to be on his best behavior. I think he should do it.”

  “What happened in Harrisburg?” Maggie demanded.

  Rhys argued with Lillian instead of answering Maggie. “I know what HQ wants, but HQ’s not out here in the field. You or I have to teach her, Lillian. I don’t want to use the ECT on someone with her potential and I sure as hell don’t want to go begging a curator. If it makes you feel better, we can conference in the vigils and explain.”

  “Hell no, you heard them this morning. They’ll insist I do it,” Zeke said. “You wanna get charged with double insubordination if we decide to do it another way?”

  “Good point,” Rhys said. “I’d rather not have insubordination on my record.”

  Lillian barked out a laugh. “Your record is not our first concern. Maggie is.”

  “This is how it’s gonna be.” To Maggie, Zeke sounded begrudging, as if this weren’t the solution he wanted. “Lillian, you sleep with Maggie tonight. Keep her safe. Once you establish that link and tag her signature, nobody but a curator can take over. Let’s ask forgiveness, not permission. I’m making this call as team
lead, so I’ll catch most of the shit.”

  “It’s not that I’m not willing, but a phase one disciple limits me for field duty.” Lillian unsnapped and snapped the sleeve of her leather jacket. “Paulo’s on paternity leave. Who’s going to confound witnesses?”

  “All the more reason for me to mentor her,” Rhys said. “I have an excellent track record with high-level alucinators. I only need one more to—”

  “Can it, Rhys. Lillian’s on it,” Zeke ordered. “We might not even need a confounder if Lill processes Maggie out of nightly rotation in two weeks.”

  “Lill’s best with an L4 is three weeks,” Rhys said. “I could do Maggie in two.”

  “Stop talking about me like I’m not here!” Maggie jumped off the couch and shoved her hair out of her face, wishing for a string or a rubber band. The bottle of antiseptic rolled across the floor. “Do I get a choice? Tell me what’s going to happen to me or...”

  Or she’d kick them out? Beat them up? Call the cops?

  “Or I’ll cry,” she finished.

  “Christ,” Zeke muttered. Even big, scary Rhys flinched.

  “Sorry, Maggie.” Lillian waved her back down on the couch, and Maggie was careful to sit so she wasn’t touching Zeke. “It’s a complex decision. We got carried away.”

  “Not that I’m saying I like Zeke,” Maggie began, refusing to glance at him, “but I want you to explain in simple terms why he can’t mentor me if that’s what your boss ordered. I’m at risk too, I assume. I deserve to know.” She didn’t enjoy sharing a bed, but she couldn’t erase the image of Zeke sprawled on her white cotton sheets.

  Naked.

  Dammit.

  “Because he wants to have sex with you,” Lillian said succinctly. Rhys smirked. Zeke sank his head into his hands and sighed.

  Maggie’s face burned. “Excuse me?”

  Lillian nodded. “We’re all adults here. No reason to beat around the bush. The mentor-disciple relationship is best when platonic. Just as with any business partnership, sex clouds the participants’ judgment. When you’re talking tangible bonds and high-level alucinators—which you are, Maggie—it’s even dicier. Clouded judgment is only the beginning.”