A wounded whimper slips past my lips, the hold of the dream vanishing and catapulting me back to my body. To my bed.
I wake with a hot flash burning across my chest. The loose shirt I slept in has ridden up to my hips, and the sheets are tangled around my legs like I wrestled monsters in my sleep.
I rake my hair back and groan, eyes still closed, trying to breathe through the shame clawing up my throat. Sex dreams about a ghost I just met—while I’m engaged. Brilliant.
It was a dream,I tell myself.Just my imagination running feral. It could never happen in real life, and I had no control over the scenario.
But what if it wasn’t just a dream?
The doubt gnaws. The supernatural is complex and mysterious, and dreams can bleed into flesh when you least expect them to. Witches have a special relationship to the Dreaming. We can catch glimpses of the past there, or the future, but it’s dangerous to trust such visions. There are thousands of possible futures, and most of them are already out of reach.
If E curling up next to me sparked all that, then I’m going to need stricter boundaries, because I’m still wet from the echo of his voice. That’s unacceptable.
I wallowed in self-pity last night, about Lachlan, about the guilt of dragging him down into my world. That’s what brought this on. It’s not prophetic or anything. I was only having cold feet, that’s all.
“Good morning,” E whispers.
Heat floods my cheeks. I focus on the sunlight streaming through the open curtains and licking my exposed toes.
“Err—morning. Did you sleep?”
The question tumbles out too fast, my breath catching as he draws near, the dream still pulsing under my skin.
“I can’t sleep. I’m a ghost.”
I pick at a loose thread on the duvet. By the Dark One, why did I let him stay here? It seemed harmless—two lonely souls surrounded by monsters—but it wasn’t.
I clear my throat. “Did I…talk in my sleep? I do that sometimes.”
“No. But you smiled. Pleasant dream?”
Fuck. Is he teasing me? Does he know? Did he slip into my dream? My gaze snaps to the foot of the bed, searching for him, but he’s invisible, of course.
I’m still trying to pinpoint his exact location when the sound of the front door slamming freezes the blood right in my veins, and I leap out of bed.
“Maxine? Maxine, it’s me!” Mabel’s voice booms up the staircase.
“Mabs!” I run out of the bedroom and grab the railing, my knuckles whitening.
She’s here. She’s safe. Relief pierces my chest, spreading through my limbs.
Loose hairs stick out of her white bun, the familiarity of her wistful frown blowing all thoughts of the dream out of my mind as I rush down to greet her.
Her wrinkled hands cup my cheeks. “I was terrified for you, my darling. Are you alright?”
Tears flood my eyes. “I’m okay, but Kerri?—”
Mabel’s lips purse. “Kerrigan is dead, I know. I feel the ache of her absence in my bones. It took some scheming—and a great deal of luck—to get back to you in one piece. The sceawere is no longer safe.”
She’s breathless, I realize, and wearing black, form-fitting clothes. I’ve never seen her feral form, not since I’ve known her, but she clearly had to shift to get here.
“You were in Faerie?”
She nods, and I gape at her sheepish grimace. Mabel hasn’t set foot in Faerie in decades and practically vowed never to go back. Beneath the joy of her return, an undertow of anger stirs. I was too scared for her before to dwell on my resentment, too terrified to be angry that she’d left me here without a word or an explanation.
A white feather sticks out of her bun, and she’s a little pale, but other than that, she looks perfectly healthy.
“Where were you?” I croak.
