Page 11 of The Most Wanted Witch

She tsked. “No. You think I’d be clustered in with them? Never, but I can’t get away from them. I hear them talking while they work. Most of them don’t shut the hell up. All I’m hearing lately is insistent chatter of how they dream of your blood.” She finished one cigarette and then used the last embers to light the next. She took an unnaturally long drag before she started back up. “At first I thought it was random daydreams, you know, the typical sort you have of stabbing someone to death when they piss you off.”

If I took another step back, I’d be outside the canopy. As appealing as that was, it was a better plan to get all the details, no matter how much I didn’t want to hear them.

She took another drag and then continued to speak, the words smoke-laden. “Then I saw a trend: it was happening between groups that didn’t socialize. The dreams all sounded a little too similar, too. You know, not how they killed you exactly, but how they all had this uneasy feeling and agitation that was replaced by this feeling of elation as you lay dead at their feet.

“They all had slightly different twists to their endings. Some talked of carrying your dead body through the streets and others putting your head on a spike, but that’s not really important.” She took another drag and glanced my way, as if remembering I was listening to her. “Yeah, so I figured you might want to know how Dread is trying to come for you. That’s what you call it, right? Dread? Not the most original, but fitting, I guess.”

I nodded, taking in deep breaths and then letting them out slowly to calm the racing of my heart.

“You look a little paler than your normal ghostly self.” Mertie straightened off the tree and waved a hand to the spot she’d been leaning. “You need to relax or something? You’re not gonna throw up, right?” She took a step away from me, as if she were afraid I’d get sick and splatter her hooves.

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look it. That little strip of flesh still visible looks near ghostly, and I’ve seen my fair share.”

“No, I’m good. Just cold.” I jumped around in my spot a bit, as if warming up as I tried to get some blood pumping.

Mertie went back to leaning in her spot while I tried to stay on my feet as the reality hit. A retired demon was warning me that there was a mass hypnosis going on, plotting my death. Dread couldn’t kill me. Its creatures couldn’t kill me. A few of his top people hadn’t been able to kill me. So was it going to come at me with an army of brainwashed minions? What was I supposed to do with that kind of information? It wasn’t like I could kill half of Xest.

It was dreams and I was well known. It might mean absolutely nothing.

“I don’t have anything else, by the way.” Mertie was looking at me, as if wondering why I was still standing there.

She didn’t have to encourage me to get going. I was ready before I’d gotten there. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

She lifted her chin a hair.

I went to leave, but couldn’t stop myself from asking one last question. “Why’d you warn me? I’ve always gotten the impression you didn’t like me.”

She shrugged again. “I don’t know. I haven’t picked a side yet, and I like having options. If you’re dead, there aren’t as many options left. Don’t think you’re special because I gave you a warning. It doesn’t mean I like you.”

So happy she’d cleared that up.

“Yeah, well, thanks.” I walked out from the tree, my tolerance for Mertie hitting its capacity for the night.

I’d made it halfway home before Hawk was walking beside me.

“What did she want?”

If I didn’t tell him, he’d hound me. It wasn’t really a big deal, was it? People dreamt all the time. They didn’t usually turn into homicidal maniacs. Maybe they’d like me a little less, but it wouldn’t make them a bloodthirsty horde. He’d surely agree that it was nothing. Maybe using him as a sounding board wasn’t a bad idea.

“People are having dreams.”

“What kind of dreams?” he asked, with no levity at all.

“Ones where they kill me and have a parade afterward. It’s a little mass hysteria. Nothing to get all up in arms about.” He might need a hint so he realized this wasn’t a big deal.

I could feel his energy shifting, ratcheting up until it nearly sizzled in the air around us. This wasn’t helping matters. At. All.

“It’s just dreams,” I said. “It’s not like anything happened or there’s some mass organizing to come kill me tomorrow. I’m fine. You haven’t lost any of your advantages. It’s all good.”

I saw him nod out of the corner of my eye, but he wasn’t talking. He wouldn’t take my bait to fight. He just let me zig without zagging back. The energy kept building up around him.

By the time we got back to the building, all I wanted was to get away from him too. It was dreams. People dreamt horrible things all the time. I wasn’t going to blow it up into something catastrophic. Dreams meant nothing. I’d dreamt I went to dinner with no pants. I didn’t turn around and go out with no clothes the next day.

This wasn’t getting blown up into something it wasn’t, not when I had too many issues thatweresomething.

6

---