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Would it be wrong if I kissed his forehead? Would that wake him up?
The temptation is overwhelming.
Suddenly, I feel the same sensation as I did by the werewolf’s door, only stronger.
Could it be?
I lean over him and see his eyes moving rapidly behind the lids.
Interesting. It seems like I’m now able to feel someone nearby go into REM sleep.
Useful.
Now an important choice: what part of Valerian do I want to touch? And with what part of myself?
Grinning, I gently pull the blanket down a few inches.
Target acquired.
I reach out and place my palm gently on his chest.
Yummy. Valerian’s pectoral muscles are perfectly firm, his skin warm and smooth. I can feel his heart beating, and mine races faster, as if eager to catch up.
Wait, what am I doing?
I need to focus.
Calling on all my willpower, I jump into Valerian’s dreams.
Chapter Nineteen
Appearing in the lobby of my dream palace, I come face to face with a gray-colored Pom, who’s looking up at me somberly.
“Guess whose dreams I’m about to walk in?” I say, figuring that will help lift his mood.
The tips of Pom’s ears go from gray to a light shade of orange. “Oprah?”
I look at those guileless eyes in confusion. “You mean that nice lady from Earth?”
He nods.
“Why the puck would I dreamwalk in her?”
The orange in the ears reddens. “It was my guess. No need to be mean.”
“Sorry.” I make Oprah appear next to us, then have her slowly morph into Valerian. “The right answer was Valerian.” I resist the urge to snidely add, “You know, the guy I was actually with when you were awake.”
Pom flies over. “In that case, what are we waiting for?”
Shaking my head, I teleport us to the tower of sleepers and locate Valerian there.
Score. There he is. I half expected to see trauma loop clouds above him—he did mention his parents getting killed—but thankfully, all is clear.
“You mind staying out this time?” I ask Pom, following an intuition.
His ears wiggle. “Okay. But you have to introduce me once he’s comfortable in the dream world.”
“Deal.”
I lean over Valerian, and since there are no cooties here, I give him a not-so-chaste kiss on the lips to enter his dreams.
For a moment, I think I failed and got jerked out of the dream world because I find myself in Valerian’s bedroom.
Then I notice a bunch of discrepancies. One is that both windows leading into the bedroom are black—something to look into later. The other discrepancy is much bigger: There’s a second version of me on the bed.
A version Valerian is dreaming about.
A naked version who seems to be very bendy and more experienced than I am.
I thank the stars I left Pom out of this; he doesn’t need psychological trauma.
Peeling my eyes away from my doppelgänger, I watch Valerian’s perfect glutes—which are flexing in action. A part of me wants to use my powers to swap places with the other me; Valerian wouldn’t know the difference.
Except we have things we have to do.
I clear my throat.
Valerian stops mid-thrust and looks my way.
“Ah.” He makes the naked me go away. “This is a dream.”
That was the quickest adjustment to the reality of dreaming I’ve ever come across.
“Ready to deal with the werewolf?” I ask.
He nods, and without my assistance, he clothes himself.
Second example of his mastery of lucid dreaming. Interesting.
I take his hand—mostly because I want to—and teleport us over to the tower of sleepers.
“What’s that?” Valerian stares in fascination at Pom, who lands on my shoulder with a Cheshire cat grin on his face. “A dream manifestation?”
“Not a manifestation. He’s real. Sort of. He’s my companion.” I fluff up the looft’s fur. “Pom, meet Valerian.”
Pom leaps down and lands at Valerian’s feet. Looking the man up and down, he says, “The version you kissed looked just like him.”
I redden. “Pom, that was private.”
Valerian smirks. “Nice to meet you, Pom.”
“What kind of Cognizant are you?” Pom asks.
Valerian uses his power to make our surroundings look like his living room. At least he tries to. I see double: a ghostly version of what he’s trying to show me and the tower of sleepers underneath.
The tips of Pom’s ears turn purple. “Another dreamwalker?”
“An illusionist.” Valerian takes the vision away. “But I’m an experienced lucid dreamer as well.” He makes a couple of packets of manna appear in the air before handing one to Pom and another to me.
I taste the treat. Yep. He is good at lucid dreaming. So was Hekima, the illusionist behind the New York Council murders. He learned about lucid dreaming because he’d grown up side by side with “my kind” in a mysterious place called Soma.
My heartbeat accelerates.
Could that be where Valerian learned it too? Is that why he got so cagey when I asked him about it?
Pom shovels his manna into his mouth without unwrapping it. After chewing mindfully and swallowing, he says, “Just like the one Bailey made for me when I was trying to understand why everyone in the waking world is so obsessed with eating.”
