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Also, why did Chester kill Hekima?
In any case, this explains Chester’s vote against me. It sounds as though his wife’s suicide drove him to dislike seers and dreamwalkers, and I’m one of the latter.
Well, he’ll hate me even more once I reveal him as the killer.
I observe his dreams flickering by until I see his lion viciously killing a man. I shift that dream into the lion walking outside the castle in a fog, Chester close behind him. I set the date and time to match Gemma’s murder and wait for Chester to fill in the details.
They amble peaceably down the trail.
What the hell? This dream is a memory. Neither Chester nor his lion ripped Gemma in half.
What about shooting Tatum with the arrow?
I set the date and time to match that murder and replace the castle grounds with a casino. Chester fills in the details again, and I see him winning a small jackpot—again, a memory. If he was in Las Vegas, he couldn’t have shot Tatum with an arrow in New York, probability powers or not.
“Are you satisfied now?” Chester says, looking right at me.
I stare at him openmouthed.
“You forgot to make yourself invisible.” He grins. “As luck would have it, so to speak.”
He’s right. I indeed forgot.
“I just proved you’re not guilty,” I say quickly, before he decides to give me cancer or worse.
He puts a coin into a nearby slot machine and wins again. “Which is why I made sure I was in REM sleep when you needed me to be.”
I use my powers to make myself look smaller and frailer. “I didn’t learn anything… overly personal.”
He chuckles humorlessly. “Let’s cut to the chase. I know that you know that I voted to kill you.” He feeds a coin into yet another slot machine and gets a river of them back. “I did that because I dislike dreamwalkers on general principle—and now you have an idea why.”
I nod warily.
He grins as he pokes through a handful of coins for the one he wants. “When my power brought us together in the library, I realized you might actually be useful. I was right, of course—you just cleared me of any wrongdoing. I think Kain suspected me somewhat, so make sure to set him straight.”
“I will. Are we cool now?” Do I have to worry about DNA mutations and things like that? is what I want to add, but I don’t in case that gives him the idea.
“If you stay out of my dreams from this moment forward, you won’t need to worry about me,” he says magnanimously. “Now wake up.”
I do.
Locating Kain, I tell him Chester isn’t guilty.
“Because of Hekima, I didn’t think so either,” Kain says. “So, what’s next?”
“I think I should make dream connections with Eduardo and Nina to verify their alibis. After that, I can link up with the rest of the Council.”
Kain nods and leads me to Nina’s quarters.
The stone slab isn’t blocking the way—she’s expecting us.
I sweep my gaze over the area where she’d indicated she does yoga, memorizing a few key details, and follow Kain into the bedroom.
I’m in luck.
Nina’s in REM sleep, so I quickly enter her dream world.
Pom greets me as I speed to the tower of sleepers. “Who are you working on now?”
“Nina. And I fear she’ll have a trauma loop.”
“Oh?” He turns a light orange color.
I shrug. “Something about her.”
When I locate Dream Nina, I breathe a sigh of relief.
“No cloud,” Pom says. “I guess she’s not as troubled as you thought.”
“Yeah.” I make sure to turn invisible. “It’s your call if you want to join me or not.”
“I will,” he says conspiratorially and turns invisible also. “Can we talk telepathically?”
Fine, I think pointedly. But don’t get used to reading my thoughts.
I won’t, Pom says as a voice in my head. Thank you.
I touch the space between Nina’s sharply defined dark eyebrows.
The tennis ball machine shoots balls at Nina at a machine-gun clip. She catches each ball using her telepathy and throws it into a basket. Another ball gun starts shooting at her from a different angle, and she diverts those projectiles just as easily.
What’s she doing? Pom asks.
Training her power, I think back. Please let me concentrate.
I look around the tennis court for a way to turn it into Nina’s apartment.
Something odd catches my attention: The windows of this building are solid black. Shrugging it off, I settle in to wait until Nina tires of practice.
She finally gathers up her things and heads for the locker room. I set the date and time to Gemma’s murder and shift the location. Instead of a bathroom, Nina walks off the court into her own apartment—and as so often happens with dreamers, she doesn’t blink an eye at the switcheroo.
The windows here are black as well, an odd detail I can’t recall adding.
