Yeah, wishful thinking.
“King, are you okay? Are you mad?”
Sighing, I shook my head. “I’m not mad. I’m just…worried.”
He chuckled. “Why? What’s the big deal? We’re in front of Ego’s sanctuary.”
I felt the color drain from my face. Ego, the guy Sky was working with, the rich, famous, popstar was the one who’d been dreaming about Sky? What did that mean? Did he like him? Did he want him? Would I stand a chance once Sky realized that the guy had been dreaming about him?
I knew it changed everything for me once I stood in Sky’s and found out how much he desired me. It had made me braver and more confident. Ready and willing to risk all those hopes and desires that I’d kept buried in the recesses of my own mind.
“King?” he asked, stepping into my space. “We don’t have to go in. We can just stay in this one spot like we did in the field. I don’t mind. This is really your gift, and I’m not pushing you until you’re ready.”
Was it, though? Was it really only mine? If Sky and I carried the same mark, if Dreamwalkers needed a tether, didn’t thatessentially make him one, too?Shit. I couldn’t lie to him just because I was jealous of the guy inside.
“Sky, this is the mansion I told you about. The one that scared me so bad.”
He blinked at me like he was confused, then nodded slowly. “The lady with the missing eye?”
“Mhm.” And the guy who was dreaming about you, I thought, but I kept that part to myself. If he figured it out on his own, fine, but I didn’t have any intention of helping him along.
He frowned. “King, we have to…” He trailed off.
“You want to go inside, don’t you?”
“I have to. It’sEgo.”
He said that name with such feeling that something inside of me died. I’d had one good, perfect, magical day. Glad I enjoyed it. If he was already feeling this dude, his soft, compassionate heart wouldn’t keep him away from him once he saw what was living in the house with him.
“Come on. We have to be quiet, though. Scary-lady didn’t see me before, but now that we’re here together and linked, we’re on the same plane as the spirits, so they’ll come after us.”
Sky shuddered, then slipped his hand in mine. “You’re in charge,” he said.
Great. Dorky, goofy, awkward me was in charge. How would I ever keep him safe? This gift should’ve gone to someone like Jetty, athletic and strong. I spent most of my time sitting behind a computer or studying old books and records. Sure, I loved nature, sitting by a pond or hiking out into the middle of the woods, but once I was there, I was a thinker.
Now that we were on a mission to find the man whose dreams we were in, Sky didn’t seem to care much about our surroundings. But then, he’d been out here, on this property during the day, redesigning this monstrosity for Ego. We’d probably be better if I followed him.
There was no way. If something as creepy as the lady was coming, I wanted to be between her and Sky.
“Sure wish Gran would’ve told me exactly how to claim my psychcopomp,” Sky muttered.
“Me, too.” Like everything else, she’d been vague. If we asked her a question point-blank, she answered every time, but we didn’t have enough information to even know what to ask. I hadn’t ascertained a thing about Duchess but that she was a little bit of a snot and a lap princess.
Once we were in the doors, I looked both ways but didn’t see or hear the man. When we heard, “What the fuck?” we spared each other a glance and headed that direction.
The place was even more eerie than last time. There wasn’t much light, and long shadows stretched up the walls. The place was barren, echoing at the slightest sound. “I swear there was more furniture here last time,” I said quietly.
Sky shrugged. “Then it had to be a dream. He hasn’t picked exactly what he wants yet. It’s taken time to get us down to his final two choices.”
Huh. Time? How much time? Had they been speaking on the phone before the guy showed up in town? How much longer would he stay if his damn castle was unfurnished? How many more times would Sky have to see him?
Right before the entrance into the room, I pulled Sky into a hug and whispered in his ear, “Don’t put yourself in danger. If you see something creepy, run. If it chases you, try to wake yourself up. From what my grandparents said, the longer someone’s owned a haunted home, the worse it is. Ego hasn’t been here long, so no matter what we see, he’ll probably be fine in the real world.”
He squeezed me around the waist, then whirled around and peeked around the corner. At his gasp, I stepped up closebehind him, put a hand on his waist, and peeked, almost throwing up at what I saw.
Ego sat on the stone ledge of his fireplace, strumming a guitar and singing softly. His head twitched to the side like a bug was bothering him, and his face contorted in pain every so often. But to him, in his dream, he was doing something that he obviously loved since he was a musician.
What he didn’t know, couldn’t see, that Sky and I could, was the stuff of horror movies. The lady I’d seen before was there, flicking her tongue out and dabbing at his face. It didn’t look as bad as I knew it would if we could see her missing eye and the goop that I’d seen slipping down her face.
