Page 36 of Guarded By the Nightmare

Give me all of your light.

“If you can get me in there, I’ll owe you my life,” she said, daring to give me a smirk. “All that remains of it, that is.”

“Sold,” I said, gesturing her forward, and closing her car door behind her.

This time she followed me,and I went to the all glass front entrance of the building. There were a few visitors inside, I gathered from their lack of uniforms, and a stout woman wearing scrubs on the otherside of a desk—and I could tell that Mina was hiding behind me, even though she knew other people couldn’t see me unless I wished them to.

“Do you know where your friend is located?” I asked her, looking back, and I saw her nod. “Then be more brave, my queen,” I said and flowed behind her so that she would be forced to lead the way.

“Sylas, they’re going to—” she began, but then headed for the wide glass doors rather than fight me and I...

I slowed time for her.

Just like I had the prior night.

She caught onto it instantly, turning to gape at me. “You’re doing this?”

There was a mother coming out of the door with a small child at her side—I’d frozen him mid-sneeze.

“It’s only a moment or two out of people’s days,” I said, walking around the child, holding the door open for her.

She angled around the woman, doing her best not to touch her.

“But won’t they remember it?”

“Oh, no. If you’d had an interaction with any of them, it would be harder—and I can’t erase what’s already gone before—but I can make sure that no one pays attention to you.”

Mina stood in the lobby, looking all around. “If I’d had that power this semester, I might’ve been able to go to class.”

I didn’t understand this, based on what I’d gleaned from the man’s mind the prior night. “I thought your schoolmates avoided you? Isn’t that much the same?”

Mina snorted. “Sometimes non-attention has a weight to it,” she said, and walked past the front desk, and down the hall.

I only kept the space nearest us frozen, gently releasing those we’d passed so that they’d never notice they’d had any time missing in their day, and slowly picking up those we were nearing, easing their transition from one state to the next, so they would be unlikely to realize anything was happening to the others around them.

It’d been a very long time since I’d had to slow time for so many people at once, so I was concentrating hard, but once Mina opened a door I felt a deep sorrow cut her like a knife.

“Hey, Ella,” she said softly, right after walking in.

I closed the door behind us both, and released my control, allowing time to resume normally for everyone in the building.

There was a girl in a bed in front of us. She was Mina’s age, and there was still youth in her size and the smoothness of her skin, but her body was flaccid as she unblinkingly stared at a wall full of pictures.

The whole room smelled like diapers and cleaning products were having a war, and the diapers were winning.

“This is your friend?” I asked, while Mina hesitated.

“My one and only,” she said quietly, stepping forward, slowly taking Ella’s hand in her own. “How are you doing?” she asked, stroking the back of the other girl’s hand, and arm, until she started to cry and leaned forward to give the bedridden girl a hug.

More tears—and not for me.

My hands clenched into fists at my side, as I flowed forward—and felt something familiar and magical slice through the smoke I was comprised of.

I frowned down, and then started dissipating at once, spreading myself thin, to trace it back, in a line from the girl in the bed to the walls—and then found another line of it, and another, like she was resting in the center of a spiked wheel.

“I’m so sorry, Ella,” Mina said, smoothing the other girl’s blonde hair back. “I didn’t know—I swear I didn’t.”

“Mina, don’t move.”

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