Page 27 of Nightmare's Dance

“And Geraint is still trapped there?”

“Yeah. He somehow helped me escape.”

“And Nic is one of your imaginary friends from when you were like eight, right?”

“Uh, yeah. I guess so.”

“Not so imaginary?”

I snorted. “He’s a prince of Nightmare. I’m not sure if that makes him extra imaginary or what.”

She smiled at that. “And you’re a princess?”

“No, but they keep calling me that.”

Ash came over and put her arms around me. “Are you okay?”

“Physically? I’m banged up, but nothing I won’t recover from.”

“Okay, fair enough,” she said when I didn’t continue. “Let’s go talk to your prince and see if we can figure out how to get him home and rescue Geraint. I’m sure he’s just as freaked out as you are.”

I took a deep breath and shook my head. “Ash, I think he knew.”

“Wait, what?”

“Geraint. I think he knew about Dream being an actual place, and, uh, the rest.”

Ash squeezed me. “Well, we still need to rescue him.”

“Yeah, we do.” I collapsed my shoulders and hugged myself. At least I’d proven one thing wrong. I wasn’t trapped in Nightmare. I wasn’t dreambound like Baz had said I would be. That was something. Right?

***

Ash and I left my bedroom and headed toward the kitchen. Our house was an old, but large, log cabin. Mine and Geraint’s room was on the main level, not too far from the den. My parents had their room on the upper floor on the far side of the house. It gave us all some privacy when I was home. We had a handful of guest rooms that occasionally got used, a library, a more public living room, and a kitchen sufficient to feed an army.

The rest of the property had cabins for the summer camp, our gym, both indoor and outdoor, gardens everywhere, a host of chickens and other fowl, and a couple of livestock guardian dogs to help keep the birds safe.

Surrounding that were the woods I’d played in constantly, and beyond that the true wilderness, the hills, and mountains of the Allegheny range.

The wooden floor creaked as we walked, a familiar, comforting sound. The smell of food cooking was incredibly obvious after a week of next to nothing but the dry dusty scents of Nightmare. Even the food I’d eaten hadn’t smelled as strongly as good home cooking. From the garlic and tomato aroma, I guessed mom was making the ultimate comfort food. Spaghetti with homemade sauce. Dad cooked the sauce in huge batches, and they froze enough to get through several months at a time. Mom occasionally made homemade noodles, but today they’d probably be out of a box, unless she’d already had some on hand.

They had modernized the kitchen when they’d started doing summer camps. That had been years ago, but the large range top with gas burners, huge refrigerator and freezer, and industrial-sized dishwasher were all stainless. The counter tops were all granite, and they designed several as easily cleanable cutting surfaces. Pots and pans hung from a rack in the ceiling. Over the summer, they had a professional cooking team, and everyone ate on the screened porch on the other side of the house. We kept part of the house private, but the living room, kitchen and porches were fair game for all the people who stayed with us.

Memories filled me with some sense of calm, grounding me in the present. I was home. I was safe.

Mom was heating something over the stove and boiling water. I was right, comfort food for the win. Dad stared at Nic. For his part, Nic had sought out the deepest shadow he could find and was standing in it. Come to think of it, I’d rarely seen him out in full sunlight even when we were kids.

Ash pulled my normal seat out at the table and gestured for me to sit. Grateful, I sank into the chair, groaning.

“Okay, so first off, who beat you and how do we destroy that fucker?” Ash sat next to me, arms crossed, looking murderous.

Nic frowned, coming partially out of the shadow he hid in. “Someone beat you?”

“Not exactly.” I shied away from the memories of falling. “Uh.” I didn’t want to talk about it, or even say his name. Now that I had remembered my childhood friends, I couldn’t believe Baz had changed so much.

“Let me guess, the douche canoe was inventively unkind,” Nic supplied.

I snorted. “That’s one way to put it. Yeah, no one touched me.”

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