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Without removing my hand, I enter Rowan’s dream.
Time to see if our alleged ally can be trusted.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Finding myself in my dream palace lobby, I gape at the scene in front of me with a mixture of fear and confusion.
Two feet from me stands a frozen-in-place Nutcracker, with pitch-black Pom glaring up at him.
What the puck?
“Pom!” I shout. “Get away from him.”
The Nutcracker disappears and Pom turns toward me, the fur on the tips of his ears going from black to beet. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“See what?” I ask, though a part of me already knows.
“That wasn’t the real Nutcracker,” Pom says, confirming my suspicion. “He just scares me so much, I figured I’d use exposure therapy to become braver.” The beet color moves from his ears to the rest of his body.
I smile and fluff up his fur. “It’s brave of you to even try. Especially on your own.”
Pom’s ears take on a brown tinge. “You mean it?”
“Sure. I usually have to badger my clients to try exposure therapy, and once they agree, I have to hold their hand every step of the way.”
He hugs my leg and grins. “Thanks. Maybe I’ll join you in whatever you came here to do—no matter how scary.”
“Good idea.”
I don’t tell him that my investigation isn’t likely to uncover frightening dreams. Let him believe he’s being brave. Besides, one never knows what can come out of other people’s subconscious.
Pom perches on my shoulder, and I make us invisible before teleporting to the tower of sleepers. Locating the nooks of both of my new necromancer connections, I enter Rowan’s. “We’ll start with her.”
A man wearing a Necronian zombie mask is chasing Rowan through the streets of Manhattan. Though this isn’t a memory dream, it does prove she’s been to New York City.
I make the pursuer evaporate, more for Pom’s sake than Rowan’s.
As Rowan stops running and looks around in confusion, I debate how to proceed. What I’m about to do works best if I have something like an alibi to check. Answering a question such as “is this person part of Icelus?” is much harder and therefore time-consuming. Basically, I have to put Rowan—and later Exozar—in different dream scenarios, and as they fill in the details from their memories, I might spot something incriminating.
Or I might witness them knitting socks.
The worst part of this is that I can never prove anything with one-hundred-percent certainty. Even if I spend days without discovering an incriminating memory, it could just be due to bad luck.
Oh, well. All I can do is my best.
I start with the simplest trick I know. I make a random stranger on the street whisper the word “Icelus” and watch Rowan’s expression.
She looks confused for a second. Then her mind takes over, and she strolls right into a nearby cinema to get a ticket for a movie in The Fast and the Furious franchise.
I switch to mental communication and tell Pom, So far, this doesn’t look suspicious.
I don’t think this woman is evil, Pom replies as a voice in my head. And my intuition is never wrong.
I’m not staking our safety in the real world on anyone’s intuition, so I change the surroundings to a warehouse, a setting where I imagine shady conversations might occur.
Rowan’s mind doesn’t generate anything suspicious in response.
I put her in a few more shady places, with a similar lack of results.
After more futile digging, I recall an extra clue that I have in this case. The Nutcracker is someone who knows what I look like—and if he’s the Icelus dreamwalker, Icelus members might know him in the real world.
Excited, I have Rowan meet dream versions of anyone I can possibly think of, from nurses at Mom’s hospital to all of my rehab clients.
Nothing.
Then I get an idea. If Rowan is in Icelus with Exozar, putting them together in a dream might yield memories of them conspiring.
When Rowan is not paying attention, I change her current surroundings from a back alley to Exozar’s house, then add Exozar himself.
Rowan’s subconscious takes over, and suddenly, the room looks different, though clearly, we’re still on Necronia.
My guess is this is Rowan’s own living room. Her pet, Frank, is here as well, and Exozar is smiling and pointing at the creature.
They speak Necronian for a bit.
Puck. Valerian and I hadn’t thought this through. In hindsight, I should’ve brought Dylan in too. Though it’s pretty clear the conversation is about the pet; they’re not looking anywhere else.
As I watch, Exozar crouches and feeds the creature a couple of local nuts. He’s rewarded with a lick from Frank and a grin from Rowan.
This must be from a time when Frank was alive—that or I’ve just learned something new about the zombie diet.
I think she’s clean, Pom mentally informs me.
You’re probably right, I reply.
Since we’re still in a memory dream, I let it play out.
