Page 21 of Little Buried Secrets

“I run in the woods by day. At night, I sit, but you will not usually find me alone. My tongue sticks out and waits to be filled in the morning. What am I? What am I, Detective Georgiana Germaine?”

A hand brushed across the side of my neck, and the dream came to an end.

My eyes flashed open.

Giovanni was standing just outside the hot tub, a look of concern on his face.

“Are you all right, cara mia?” he asked. “Did you fall asleep?”

“A shoe,” I said.

“A shoe?”

“She’s a shoe.”

“Who’s a shoe?”

“Margot. I was with her just now. Well, not with her with her. I was having a dream. I couldn’t see her, but I talked to her. In my mind, at least.”

He stepped into the hot tub and sat beside me. “Tell me about it.”

I considered what Margot had said, or perhaps what I’d said to myself, about trying harder to show everyone who I am. If anyone deserved all of me, it was him. It had always been him.

I told Giovanni everything I could remember.

When I finished, he said, “Do you have any idea where you were?”

I shook my head. “I couldn’t see more than two feet in front of me.”

“Why do you think she told you the riddle?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It surprised me.”

“Did anything else about the dream stand out to you?”

Recalling the short encounter I’d had with Margot, I said, “There was noise all around me. It sounded like I was in the forest.”

“Good, anything else?”

“I had a hard time pinpointing where Margot was because of the thick, gray fog. It was everywhere.”

“I wish I would have known you were dreaming,” Giovanni said. “I would not have disturbed you.”

“It’s all right. Most of the dreams I have like this don’t last long anyway. Who knows what any of it means, if anything.”

Giovanni smiled and looked me in the eyes. “I believe we’re at the point where you can admit some of the dreams you have are unique in their own way. You believe there’s something to these dreams. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have bought the book about empaths that’s sitting on your nightstand.”

He was right.

I’d had too many dreams over the years to deny the fact that while most of my dreams were nothing out of the ordinary, some were far from it.

Maybe Margot was trying to tell me something.

Now I just needed to find out what.

CHAPTER 9

I woke the next morning to the sensation of someone touching me. I looked up and saw Giovanni hovering over me, his hand running up and down my arm.

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