Page 127 of In Somnis

He stops in front of an empty storefront, and whatever I was about to say dies somewhere in my throat because he’s looking at me with an expression I haven’t seen on him before. It’s not the lazy amusement or the deliberate provocation but the thing underneath all of that, stripped back and almost irritated.

“You’re staying with me,” he says. “You hear me?”

“Excuse me? I⁠—”

“Fine, maybe you are her tether.” He says it as if it costs him to admit it. “But you are mine too. And if I’m not completely wrong…” his jaw tightens, “… I’m yours. Or I can be. I will be.” He says the last part like he’s making a decision in real time and is slightly annoyed about it. “I am not going to stand here and let her just sweep in and take you from me.”

He turns and starts walking again, pulling me with him, and I follow because apparently my feet have decided to cooperate without consulting me.

There’s this ridiculous fuzzy feeling spreading through my stomach, and I’m looking at the back of his head and the line of his shoulders and…

“Remember, we have a deal,” he says flatly, cutting off my thought.

Oh. Right.

“I need you conscious and functional, and in possession of your own brain so I can use it.”

The fuzzy feeling retreats, sensibly, back to wherever it came from.

Along with what little dignity I had left.

Of course. The deal. He’s not mad because he’d fight a dream version of my best friend for me, or of anything that sounded, for four seconds, like something else entirely.

“Right,” I say, keeping my voice very even. “The deal. Got it.”

“Good.”

“Wouldn’t want to confuse the situation.”

“Nobody’s confused.”

“Clearly,” I agree.

He glances back at me over his shoulder, and his expression shifts, as if he caught a note in my tone and is deciding whether to address it.

He doesn’t and faces forward again. “Keep up,” he says. “I want us out of Mallworld before we deal with any of that.”

“Mallworld?”

He gestures around at the empty corridors, the dark storefronts, the fountain still running for nobody. “You ever see those posts online? People describing places they dream about that feel weirdly real? Airports with no exits, hotels that go on forever, shopping malls that just keep going?”

I look down the corridor. It does seem to stretch longer than it should.

“They’re not only dreams,” Ridge says. “They’re shared spaces. Leftover architecture from too many people dreaming the same thing. Mallworld is one of the more stable ones.” He glances sideways at me. “Which sounds like a good thing until you realize stable means it doesn’t want to let you out.”

“That’s horrible.”

“It’s fine if you know the exits.” He says it like someone who has learned the hard way. “Toilet World is worse.”

I stare at him. “I’m sorry, Toilet⁠—”

“Don’t ask.”

“Ridge.”

He exhales through his nose. “It’s exactly what it sounds like. Infinite public bathrooms, but they don’t have doors and are dirty as fuck. Flickering lights, that specific smell, and the overwhelming certainty that you’ll need a piss soon…” He pauses. “I spent a whole night in there once before I figured out how to leave.”

“That sounds like a personal hell.”