Delirium (4 page)

In her peripheral vision, Sera saw Natalia approach, fava beans in hand, but Harlen’s text came through:

Spaghetti is my favorite, but another time. Veal will work. Can you get some? I’m going into my last meeting.

That nutcase? Over her? She was never cooking Italian for Harlen again.

She examined the favas in Natalia’s hand. “Those won’t work; try some sunchokes.”

Downstairs in her cubbyhole of an office, Sera searched deep in her desk files for the burner phone…for the fourth time that day. Harlen was adamant that she not contact the others on her own mobile.

If Harlen needed Vince, then whatever was going on was bad.

Sera made the call.

No answer.

She stood in the dark biting her thumbnail, then texted Harlen again.

The market’s out of veal.

Please keep trying
, he texted back.

Yeah, okay. She’d keep trying (while going crazy). Or…

She looked at the time again and calculated five hours until Harlen needed to meet Ravioli Rook or Vince Veal at Maze City, alone. One or both of them were probably already there. If she ran home right now and used the dreamjack Harlen had set aside for her use, then she could go Darkside and make sure one of them hung out to wait for Harlen. Simple.

“Chef?” Natalia called from upstairs, music beating through the door as she cracked it open.

“Coming!” Sera yelled back.

She sighed. Cleary, Harlen thought the issue was urgent. She might not be the person to handle it with him, but she could at least deliver the message. She had enough talent Darkside to have once turned down the same recruitment package that Harlen had been offered by the Army upon his college graduation.

In fact, she might only miss an hour of service if she was quick. Harlen was taking on the nightmares of the Scape; she could damn well make sure he had whomever he needed to help him.

Powering up the steps and into the kitchen, she asked Natalia, “What’s up?”

“The flattop is acting up again.”

“Call Bill and get him over here to fix it now. In the meantime, the grille will just have to be a little busier.”

Everything was in order, steam rising from the saucier station, the line cooks hoarding towels and readying their
mise en place
. Natalia and the new guy were playfully bumping hips to the
boom-boom “Take me!”
of a rock god’s sex anthem about love in dreams’ deep waters. Dear Lord.

“Nat, you have the kitchen. I’ll be a little late.” She’d been giving her more responsibility anyway. It was good practice. When the second restaurant opened, Sera wouldn’t be able to be at Marina every night.

She made it back to her apartment in seven minutes. The place felt strangely silent, with different shadows; she was rarely there in the late afternoon. She threw her jacket on a chair, but it slid slowly to the floor. She banged through to the bedroom.

Harlen had left his tablet on the nightstand—he liked video games and played them stretched out on his belly naked in the bed, so tall his feet hung off the end. He was over almost every day, though at weird hours. But, then, her chef’s hours were skewed, too, so they did manage to see each other often. He had a toothbrush and razor in the bathroom, but she was hoping to make the joint living situation a permanent thing soon.

The dreamjack was in a box on the dresser. The thing cost around fifty grand and required a remote user license, but Harlen had pulled some strings at Chimera. Without it, Sera couldn’t get Darkside quickly. She’d have to wait around until she fell asleep naturally and descended slowly into REM.

She plucked the metal jack out of its foam and pressed the sides to turn it on. The tiny green light said it was charged—Harlen was very careful about that. She toed off her kitchen clogs and lay down on the bed, then placed the jack in her ear. The high-pitched sound it emitted was best suited to calling dogs, and the pre-migraine ache behind one eye made her tense up. But then, abruptly, her bed seemed to fall out from beneath her.

Her vision went dark, a spark of panic lighting in her chest, but that was just because she was a control freak and didn’t like the sudden plummet, the cold fluid rush that tingled along her nerves, or the darkness folding around her like an origami box meant to cage her.

Darkside. She had a moment of disorientation, her dreamscape shattered into far-flung colors by her arrival, before she felt herself again.

The atmosphere gradually hazed into a familiar setting—the Fawkeses’ kitchen—the shapes of the appliances mere silhouettes and suggestions. She’d have to concentrate to see and remember minute details. As it was, she simply stood at the sink with an empty glass in her hand.

It was that morning all over again.

Turning to the side, she knew who she’d find. This wasn’t her first nightmare about it. She’d dated Harlen years ago, but the breakup had been bad, and when they’d gotten back together, his mom and sister had been less than thrilled. And while they now seemed welcoming on the surface—and Sera was sure they meant it—there was still that protective vibe about Harlen dating her again.

As expected, Eleanor was standing beside her. “You’re not right for him.”

Damn but dreams could be brutal.

Even in a dream, Sera would never push his mom out of the way, so she turned around and left the kitchen on the other side, where the arch led to the tiled front hallway. And then she walked out of the house and the dream at the same time.

Eventually, his family would get to know her all over again. Eleanor would stop watching her with wary eyes and accept her. And the bad dreams would go away. Everyone just needed more time.

Finding the boundary of a personal dreamscape was impossible for most people; dreams were infinite. So it took an act of will to perceive the Scrape sands blowing up against the steps to the house’s front porch. The grains skimmed over the brick path to the driveway and were stuck in the grass of the lawn like early snow.

Stepping off the porch, she headed across the yard and pretended that the lines of the house and sidewalks and driveway were irrelevant. Because they were.

When the wind picked up, she knew the relative safety of her dream was nearing its end. The ground under her feet was beachy gold. A gale of darkness lashed her hair, and Sera squinted her eyes as she finally set foot on the vast, endless desert that was the Scrape.

She could do this. Well, hopefully. The Scrape was where revelers got lost and died. She’d ventured out there before though, so she knew she could find her way… That is, if a nightmare didn’t find her first.

Bending her head toward the storm, she trudged out into dark night. Her destination was Maze City, and as there was no real direction in the Scrap—no north in the burn and chafe of the dust storm—the secret to finding anything was to keep moving, goal in mind, and eventually the wind would taper.

Whatever endurance test the Scrape required, she knew she was its equal. She’d done this before. The forward drive was brutal, but she kept at it. She’d never been one to give in—not now, not ever.

Cold whispers on the air told her that nightmares could be near, could be following. Her heart thumped hard, blood screaming through her veins, but since Harlen did this all the time, she would not let herself be overcome.

Finally, the city gleamed ahead. She gritted her teeth and pushed harder. She knew the secret of Maze City, knew that Maisie’s creation was the
safest
dreamscape out there. The sexy twist and slash of the skyline was a tribute to her brilliance. Maisie was smug about it, but since Sera occasionally had ego trips of her own, she’d bear the very deserved arrogance of Maze City’s architect. Somehow, of all the dreams that Maisie could’ve built, her intuition had told her to build a refuge.

Icy air seemed to blow through Sera’s skin to create a frozen filigree in her veins. Now
that
had to be nightmare close-by.

The city was near, looming higher and higher above her, so she ran for it and didn’t stop until she was pelting down a deserted street, the air going still and the coldness inside melting with her exertion.

Breathlessly, she stopped to turn around—she’d yet to get a look at one, to know what to fear. Like a bad dream, her perspective lurched and stretched. For a second, Harlen’s mom stood there, five paces away at the boundary between Maze City and the Scrape, her hair blown by the high wind, an angry set to her expression. Sera knew she
really
had to have a talk with Eleanor and settle things between them. Get this out of her head.

Sera blinked, and when she looked again, Eleanor was gone and a pitiful and starved creature—its flesh grayish, its mouth and nose more like slits than true features—but those eyes… She’d heard about the eyes. They were
not
human. They were all black, and it was as if they held all the horrors humankind could contemplate.

Sera shuddered, felt a tendril of panic curl in her stomach. Though from where she stood, she was safe.
This
was the kind of the creature Harlen was fighting, what was finding its way into the waking world. And somewhere out there in the spinning sands was an entity even worse. Immortal. Powerful. The Sandman.

Harlen was big and brave but he was going to need all the help he could get. With that in mind, she turned to deliver his message.

Deep within the city was a building where they all convened. Their meeting room was cozy in a dingy kind of way, with fat moldings and overstuffed sofas and chairs. The route she needed to take wasn’t on a map, nor could it ever be. To find it required following a set of directions—blocks and turns counted, no matter where they seemed to lead—that could be initiated from anywhere to let the dreamer find the very room. It was literally the journey and not the destination that mattered.

Sera started to count off the blocks to her first turn when she spotted a man down the street in front of her. She knew Maisie had been working on creating dream people to populate her city—it was such a vast, lonely place, haunted by silence. Maybe this was one of her creations?

Seemed very realistic, even for a dream person.

Or was he a trespasser? There’d been a handful of them who’d found the place, all of them rotten. One had even followed her here not long ago.

Or maybe this guy was Harlen’s urgent problem.

“Hello?” he called, his voice very friendly.

It was too late to hide. He’d obviously seen her.

She stood where she was and let
him
approach, a trick because even were he to follow her step by step and turn by turn, he would not reach the safe room. The directions had to be followed precisely and he’d already missed the first block.

“Hi,” she said, as if she met people on the streets of Maze City every day.

“I’m Peter.” Big, muscly guy. Blond buzz cut. Weak chin.

A trespasser. Definitely. Crap.

“And I’m wondering what you’re doing here,” Sera shot back. A strange determination rushed through her. Might’ve been anger, frustration, worry for Harlen—all three. Anyway, her mood grew sour as her attention narrowed to a keen focus.

The man looked around at the buildings surrounding them, the older-looking brick walk-ups across the street and many blocks away, the structures of towering glass and steel and glittering carbon. “I can’t say how happy I am to see you. I’ve been yelling, ‘Hello!’ but the city seems deserted. I’m supposed to meet someone, but I’ve forgotten where.”

Of course he was lost. And there was no
where
in Maze City. Not really. If he knew anything he’d have said he’d forgotten
how to get there
.

But she obliged him for the moment. “Who are you supposed to meet?”

“Vince Blackman.”

As there was no shift or taint in the dreamwaters, he was probably telling the truth. She offered him hers. “Vince Blackman, the murderer? Probably means you’re bad, too.”

“Or you are,” he said, “considering you’re in the dreamscape where I’m supposed to meet him.”

He was quick. Good for him.

“Oh, for sure, I’m a murderer, too.” Of clams and shellfish regularly. Fish, every day. Once even a live chicken on a farm, and yeah, it had kicked a bunch after she’d chopped off its head. She was the Chef, wielder of sharp knives. She wished she had one now.

If Maisie were here, this Peter guy would be in pain already. But she was probably out with Mirren, searching the Scrape for Steve Coll. The best thing to do was lose this trespasser—once deep in the city, he could never get out on his own—and then Harlen could decide what to do with him. She’d done the same once before with another bad guy. Worked pretty well.

“Can you take me to see Vince?” he asked.

A cleverly worded question:
can
she take him… Did she know the secret to the city?

“I don’t know.” Which was the truth. She didn’t know if Vince was there. The city was probably empty or someone would’ve arrived already to help by now. “Better that Vince comes to meet you, I think.”

“I’d prefer to surprise him,” Peter said.

“I don’t think he likes surprises. The man’s insane. Best not to provoke him. If you’ll come with me, I’ll show you where you can wait.” She knew it wouldn’t be that easy, but size and appearance had nothing to do with strength Darkside. Strength was measured in passion and willpower, and she had both. “This way.”