Felix nods. “Got it. And we’ll see you in person soon. Remember I told you about Ariel’s cousin’s best friend’s daughter’s Mandate ceremony? I’m definitely joining so I can look at that dreamwalker’s comms for you.”
“Sounds great,” I say. “See you both then.”
I take myself into the tower of sleepers, muttering under my breath, “Assuming I’m not dead.”
Making my way to Gertrude’s bed, I shimmer into invisibility and touch her forehead.
Trauma loop, here I come.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Gertrude in this dream looks younger. She’s sitting on a couch with a handsome blond guy, who’s sipping from a bottle of beer as she gazes longingly at his lips.
He offers her the bottle. “Want some?”
She recoils as if it were poison. “I need to be in absolute control of my faculties to suppress my power.”
His grin is cocky. “All so I can touch you, right?”
She takes the bottle from his hand, puts it on the table, and kisses him. As they proceed to make out, I realize two things: this is a memory, as most trauma loops are, and the guy isn’t rotting despite his contact with her. I guess gangrene-givers can turn off their powers. It makes sense. If they couldn’t, how would they reproduce?
Speaking of reproduction, the guy fishes out a condom from his pocket, and they take things all the way.
I yawn, watching them. They’re not very creative—definitely nothing like some of the dreams I’ve seen. If I ever get around to doing this with Dream Valerian, there will be a lot more acrobatics.
“You have to leave now,” Gertrude says sleepily when they’re done.
He gives her puppy eyes. “Can’t we spoon for a few minutes?”
“Two minutes. Put a blanket between us, just in case.”
He does as she says, and they cuddle through the blanket until her breathing changes. When he notices she’s asleep, he carefully climbs off the couch and starts picking up his clothing. Before he can put on his pants, she sinks into REM sleep. He’s none the wiser.
At this point, the dream isn’t a memory but Gertrude’s extrapolation of what must have happened.
Her arm swings wildly, the way it did when she nearly took out my nose. By pure chance, her hand connects with his ankle and, as if it has a mind of its own, wraps around it.
The rot is instant. In mere moments, his leg looks as if it’s been infected for weeks.
He clutches his leg, screaming.
She stirs as if she’s waking up, but her grip doesn’t release, and the gangrene spreads and spreads until his screaming ceases and he collapses in a rotten heap.
The dream is a memory again.
Gertrude opens her eyes—and jumps off the couch, emitting a scream of such horror and agony that my chest aches with genuine sympathy.
However awful she was to me at the trial, she doesn’t deserve this.
But this is my chance to do what I came here for, so I make the guy’s corpse disappear, put her back on the couch, and make her fall back asleep. I then change the room to look as Kain described, moving the couch, adjusting the clock’s date and time to that of Gemma’s murder, and putting Catwoman on pause on the TV.
Then I use my power to “wake” Gertrude here in the dream world.
Remote control in hand, she rubs her eyes in confusion, her anguish gone for now. As I hoped, she thinks she’s snoozed before starting her movie. Later, when she really wakes up, she’ll process the horrific incident I just witnessed, as much as such a thing can be processed.
To my relief, Gertrude falls into the new dream perfectly. She unpauses the movie and watches it, everything else forgotten. It doesn’t take long before I see that watching this movie is indeed a memory.
Kain was wrong to suspect her. Her alibi checks out.
A part of me is disappointed. Given how much she seems to hate me for little reason, it would’ve made life easier if she were the culprit. Still, after seeing that trauma loop, I understand why she’s so angry with anyone who can’t help her sleep condition.
Oh, well.
Time to wake up.
I open my eyes in Kain’s sleek kitchen and head over to his bedroom, where he’s supposed to be keeping an eye on Gertrude. I find him diligently engaged in that duty, standing over the bed like a sentinel.
“Hey,” Felix says in my earpiece. “I just woke up.”
Ignoring him, I tell Kain, “Gertrude isn’t guilty. She really was watching a movie, like she said.”
Kain curses under his breath. He looks ready to kill someone.
“What now?” I ask cautiously.
“I’ll take you to deal with the next sleeper, then come back to clean up this mess.” He strides out of the room.
I speed after him. “How?”
“I’ll use glamour on Gertrude to make her forget what just happened,” he throws over his shoulder as we exit his quarters.