“Hopefully not. As we were flying, I got the Senate to replace the surveillance footage in her home and the rest of that building. When she checked it, she saw herself running around like a madwoman.”
I whistle. “Isn’t that illegal?”
He shrugs. “The Senate decides what’s legal.”
“Right. So much for the rule of law.”
He splashes at the water with his foot. “Do you have what you need for the dreamwalking?”
“No. I could use an anchor.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Something that would help me get the right dream started,” I explain. “Saves a ton of time.”
“Use her patent filings.” He gestures around, clearly activating his comms.
I check my inbox. Yep. A message from him is waiting there, full of attachments.
As I review the plant designs, a shiver goes down my spine.
These make the man-eating plants from her apartment seem like cuddly kittens.
The tamest one is a tree with blooms that remind me of corpse flowers native to Earth, but uglier. The pollen these trees produce would be toxic enough to fell even a vampire. With the right wind, a single tree could wipe out whole neighborhoods.
“She’s insane,” I mutter as I review more of the deadly flora.
“Icelus seek to create nightmare fuel whenever they can,” Valerian says. “Even someone writing an article about these plants can be helpful to them.”
“No kidding.” I turn off the VR. “I myself might have a nightmare about a garden with these abominations. Do you think Icelus plan to unleash these plants on us?”
“That’s what I want you to find out,” he says. “Will those filings work as an anchor?”
“Only one way to find out.” I rise to my feet. “Please don’t disturb me as I go into my trance.”
I don’t know why, but I turn away from him before I touch Pom. I guess I still don’t trust him with this information.
Hand resting on my looft’s soothing fur, I dive into the dream world.
Chapter Eleven
I find Pom in the lobby of my dream palace, shooting a laser gun at targets that remind me of inter-Otherland gates, only with a shimmering bull’s eye in the middle.
A pang of guilt bites at me. Before all my problems started, I’d regularly play competitive games with Pom, everything from tennis to fencing. They’d brought my little friend incalculable joy, and were fun for me also. Now I’ve ignored him for so long, he’s been forced to play with himself.
But not in a dirty way.
Probably.
Hopefully.
“Bailey!” Pom makes his game accoutrements disappear and flies around my head with the enthusiasm of an overcaffeinated puppy. “What’s going on?”
I take a slow route to the tower of sleepers so I can bring him up to speed.
“And that’s her? The dryad?” He looks at the green newcomer in one of the nooks.
“Yep.” I fly over to her bed. “Looks like she was able to fall back asleep.”
He lands on my shoulder. “Can I join you in her dreams? Doesn’t seem like it’ll be very scary.”
“Just don’t give away our presence,” I say and make us both invisible as I reach out to touch Erato’s forehead.
Erato is lying naked on her bed. A nearby shrub extends a cucumber-like fruit toward her groin.
Before Pom and I witness something we’ll never be able to unsee, I change the plant into a giant VR screen.
Despite the incongruity, the dryad doesn’t wake up. Good. I put the plant designs from her patents on the screen, and she focuses on them, as I hoped.
With her attention occupied, I change the room around us to be more generic, then clothe her and make sure she’s standing upright.
This is it. If this is close enough to a memory—and intuition tells me it is—she’ll take care of the rest. And she does. The room starts to look like her living room, except the front door is different.
Suddenly, the door in question breaks into tiny pieces, and a giant wolf leaps through what remains. With a flash, he turns into a naked male with Elvis-like sideburns and a Mohawk hairdo popular with gremlins.
Anger twists Erato’s features. She recognizes him.
“Stupid bitch,” he growls. “Which part of ‘discreet job’ was unclear to you?”
Three strangle vines snake from the ceiling. One wraps around the guy’s throat, and two grab his wrists. “Now,” Erato says menacingly, “what were you saying?”
The guy sneers. “If something happens to me, the people I work for will have your spleen.”
Erato waves a hand, and a poison hogweed coils within a hair’s width from his feet. “Given your lack of intellect, I doubt you’re as indispensable as you think.”
“Test it and see,” he snarls.
She waves her hand again, and the acid seed okra pod zeroes in on the guy’s torso. “I don’t have to kill you, you know. Something tells me if I make you look even uglier, the people you work for will thank me.”