Page 27 of Inception

I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

“You have to go back. You have to make it right.”

“Go back where? Makewhatright?”

“The answers you seek are right where you are,” he said, pointing over my shoulder into the horizon.

I followed his gaze down the abandoned street. “There’s nothing out there,” I said, looking back at him. But he was already gone.

I turned back to Trace, easy as breathing. Something was always drawing me to him, magnetizing me in his direction. I wanted to be by his side, even in this strange dreamlike world. He reached for my hand and pulled me in close to him. His eyes speaking to me, telling me secrets I needed to know, but I couldn’t make out any of their words.

“I don’t like it here,” I told him. “I want to go home.”

He leaned in to me; to kiss me; to comfort me; and in my dream, I waited with bated breath for it, though our lips never connected. Instead, his lips moved down the base of my neck, caressing me as they glided over my hungry skin.

I closed my eyes briefly, indulging in his touch. When I opened them again, short blond curls filled my vision.

“This will only hurt a lifetime,” saidDominicand then bit down into my neck.

The pain shot through my veins, burning as his poison consumed my being. He drank from me in unquenchable heaps, over and over again under the strange red sky.

And I didn’t move a muscle to stop him.

It took me several minutes to steady my heart rate and breathe once I realized it was only a dream. I climbed out of my bed and tiptoed my way down the hall, intent on getting myself a glass of water to wash away the dream’s bitter taste from my mouth. I wasn’t sure what time my uncle woke up at so I was extra quiet when I rounded the corner, careful not to accidentally wake him up. I relaxed as soon as I neared his office and heard his voice looming from within.

“Jemma is my responsibility. I will decide what’s best for her,” I heard him say, and froze mid-step.

After a brief pause, he continued. “The problem is she’s neither here nor there at this point. She’s somewhere in-between. We can’t go on this way, it’s much too dangerous. The spell has to be broken.”

The spell? What spell? What’s too dangerous? What in the HELL was he talking about?

I took a step forward, greedily wanting a better view, better sound. The wood creaked monstrously beneath my foot giving me away as though the house were alive and openly playing for the other team.

Crap.

“Listen, we’ll discuss this later at the meeting. Something’s come up.”

I took a series of track-star steps backwards towards my room and nearly somersaulted myself back into bed, pulling the covers up over my head and squeezing my eyes shut.

Several moments later, I heard my door creak open, followed by a brief stint of silence, before it closed shut again.

There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that my uncle had just come in to see if I was awake. If I had been the culprit eavesdropping on his conversation, probably wondering how much I had heard.

Well, I heard enough.

I had no idea what was going on around here, or what he was talking about, but I had every intention of finding out.

I had an impossible time staying focused throughout the day. My mind, despite what I had been commanding it, continued to busy itself with the conversation I overheard this morning in my uncle’s office as I struggled to make sense out of the senseless. After countless scenarios, I finally decided that I must have misunderstood what he had said, or the context in which it was said, because no other explanation seemed plausible. Jumping to paranoid conclusions was a surefire way to get myself admitted back to the hospital.

My thoughts quickly drifted to better things, like the conversation I had with Dominic last night—and our walk, and the shade of his eyes, and the fullness of his lips, and every other little distracting thing about him. It was absolute mutiny of the mind, and Dominic Huntington was reigning supremely.

After the big lunch rush, I was relieved to finally be able to sit down at the bar with Paula, the other full-time waitress, and have our first break of the day. We sat side by side eating our lunch as Zane balanced his cash register on the other side of the counter. Paula, with her dark blond hair pulled back into a proper and unassuming ponytail, seemed to be completely distracted with her own thoughts.

I needed to get us out of our heads.

“Is it always busy like this?” I asked no one in particular.

Paula shook her head.

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