Drained: The Lucid (45 page)

“Then go get your slice of happiness,” Heather approved. “Because you deserve that.”

Riley wrapped her friend in one last parting embrace. She reasoned that Heather was being tolerant of her affectionate gestures due to their lack of girls’ nights in the past months. That, and it felt good to be hugged.

Heather sighed into her friend’s shoulder, defeated. “But if you come back anything less than happy,” she warned, “I will break that girl’s neck and get rid of the evidence.” The threat wasn’t serious, but out of all of Riley’s friends, Heather was more action than talk.

“You know, you’re the best.” Riley pulled back from the hug. “Too bad James snatched you up before I had the chance.” She playfully waggled her eyebrows and received a firm shove to her shoulder.

“Go. You’re such a damn dork.” Heather laughed. “Hurry, before I change my mind and hogtie you.”

“Hmm.” Riley took a few steps backwards. A grin spread on her face from ear to ear. “Honey, I’m from Texas. If anyone’s gonna handle ropes, it’ll be me. But you already know that.” She winked.

Heather shook her head and restrained a smile.

When she was out of sight, Riley pulled out her phone and called her neighborhood tech hero.

“What’s up?” Josh chirped.

“How hard would it be to find me an address?”

Riley stared out the rear passenger side window. It had begun to rain and the silence of the taxi ride was punctuated by the mechanical swishing sound of wipers across the windshield. The mild winter weather had followed her from California to the Midwest. She had expected to see mountains of snow when she’d disembarked her plane, but was met instead with mud and concrete. She wiped her palms on her thighs. With all of their influence and technology contacts, she was mildly annoyed that Trusics had yet to invent a way to cross time and space in real life the same way she could flash in and out of the dream realm. She could have used her watch to launch herself into a dream and back out into the waking world, but she didn’t know any place near her destination well enough for that to have been a viable option. The airplane ride out of Los Angeles had been long enough, and now the cab trip from the airport to her eventual destination had heightened her anxiety.

She would eventually have to track down Sean again for her own piece of mind. She had assumed that it was her sire who had broken into Morgan’s dream the night the two women had finally consented to each other, but the more distance she had from that event, the more she was starting to realize that it could have been anyone. Sean was the most likely culprit, but not the only possibility. There was also the matter of Niall Price and the missing energy reserves. She couldn’t fathom what had inspired the former branch director to steal from Trusics or how he had even pulled off the feat. But all of that would have to wait. All she wanted was to see Morgan and know that she was okay and to hold her in her arms. For real, this time. If she could keep Morgan in her waking life, that was all that mattered. That would make everything that had transpired over these recent chaotic months worth it.

Beyond the taxi’s windows, there was nothing that distinguished Morgan’s neighborhood from any other large American city. Row after row of similarly constructed skyscrapers lined the wide city streets. She craned her neck, but from the confines of the vehicle, she couldn’t see to the top of each building. Each skyscraper looked like a facsimile of its neighbor with a few subtle differences.

The taxi rolled to a stop. “We’re here.” The driver’s voice was thickly accented—Eastern European, Riley guessed. If the driver hadn’t stopped directly in front of Morgan’s building, she wouldn’t have recognized it. She had the sudden urge to double-check the address folded away in her front pocket.

It was nothing like the house from Morgan’s dreams.

She handed the cab driver the appropriate fare and slipped out of the car with a silent nod of acknowledgement. The cab drove away, and Riley stood on the sidewalk in front of the high-rise. She hadn’t brought anything with her—no luggage, no carryon, not even a purse. It felt symbolic. She wanted to pursue this relationship without the baggage of her past.

She stared up at the formidable building as the sky began to darken with storm clouds cluttering the purple horizon. She had often teased Morgan about her choice of fantasy getaway. Her childhood home was dated and worn, but at least it had charm. The skyscraper residence Riley now stood in front of was lifeless. She wondered what had originally stood on this city block a century prior. The building was impersonal, all glass and steel and concrete, imposing itself in the city skyline.

The wind picked up around her, and the formerly pleasant sprinkle became more severe. The raindrops grew in size and volume, leaving large wet spatter marks on the grey concrete. Riley shoved her hands deep into her pockets. Maybe it had always rained in Morgan’s dreams because of her dour disposition. But maybe it always stormed simply because she lived in Chicago.

A uniformed doorman gallantly opened the front door for her. His suit was smartly tailored, and he wore a top hat that looked anachronistic in front of the modern condominium. She offered him a shaky smile of thanks while she willed herself to look like she belonged. It wouldn’t do for her to have traveled all this way to be turned away at the front entrance.

The inner lobby was brightly lit and decorated with surprising details that felt like stepping back in history to a period when top hats and ladies in bustles had been fashionable. The lobby furniture was upholstered in darkly colored velvets and an elaborate crystal chandelier hung over an elaborate inlaid mosaic in the tiled floor.

Riley located a bank of elevators with little trouble, but a stairwell appeared to be nowhere in sight. She pressed the elevator button, but nothing happened. The up arrow remained unlit. She pressed the button again with the same result.

“Is someone expecting you?” A man dressed in a similar outfit as the doorman stood behind a podium to the right of the elevators. Riley hadn’t noticed his presence before.

She stepped away from the elevator doors. “Yeah, uh, Morgan Sullivan?” It felt strange to say the name out loud to someone else.

The staff member nodded, as if recognizing the resident’s name. “You’ll have to sign in, and I’ll need a form of identification.”

“Oh, okay.” She hadn’t expected security to be so tight. In her own apartment complex, she was lucky if the gate was closed at night. She fished her wallet out of the inner lining of her jacket and produced her driver’s license.

“California, huh?” the man made small talk as he wrote down her information in a ledger. “You ever see any movie stars?”

“Sometimes.” Riley drummed her fingers on the ledge of the podium. She was so close to seeing Morgan in real life, and this final obstacle felt particularly antagonizing.

The man returned her license. “I have to call Dr. Sullivan to give her notice of your arrival.”

Riley smiled softly at the title. Morgan must have successfully defended her dissertation and had earned her doctorate in psychology. She’d have to remember to work that into conversation and definitely into the bedroom.

She snapped herself out of her thoughts when she saw the man reach for the lobby phone. “Actually,” she said, catching his arm before he could dial any numbers, “I was hoping it would be a surprise.”

The man frowned. “It’s building policy.”

Riley flashed the man what she hoped was a disarming smile. “Maybe just this once you could make an exception? Morgan knows I’m coming today,” she smoothly lied, “but I was able to catch an earlier connecting flight this morning, so I was hoping to surprise her by being here a few hours early.”

“I’m really not supposed to.”

“How about this?” Riley’s eyes landed on his nametag, and she kept the cheerful, harmless smile on her lips. “You, Bradley, can give me a little head start. I’ll go in the elevator, you wait, I don’t know, sixty seconds and then call Morgan. If we time it right, maybe she’ll be on the phone with you when I’m knocking on her door.”

The man slowly returned the receiver to its cradle, and Riley felt the surge of victory.

“Sixty seconds,” he solemnly agreed.

“You’re the best!” Riley cheered. She ran to the elevator and pressed the up button. There was no time for stairs now. This time the button illuminated. She didn’t have to wait long for the elevator to ding with the arrival of an empty lift.

Riley hopped into the elevator, her excitement practically palpable. “Sixty seconds!” she called out as the doors began to close. “Not a second more or less!”

When the elevator doors closed, Riley’s excitement turned to anxiety. “This is actually happening.”

She let out a ragged breath and wiped her clammy palms down her thighs. It had taken forever to decide on an outfit—like preparing for a first date—only this was so much more than that.

On the plane, she’d run through a few lines and short speeches in her head about what she was going to say to Morgan when she opened her apartment door: “It’s a new year, so I was hoping for a new start for us.” Lame. “I couldn’t wait a month to see you again, let alone an indefinite amount of time.” Cheesy. “It would be impossible to stay away from you.” Desperate. She’d come up with nothing appropriate or good enough for Morgan short of grabbing her face and kissing her.

The elevator came to a stop on the seventeenth floor, and the doors opened. The hallway was empty—a long corridor of closed doors. Riley followed the numbers until she found Morgan’s apartment door. She noted the stairwell that she hadn’t noticed downstairs along her walk, and silently prayed that Josh’s research had not been wrong.

She knocked. And waited.

If she listened hard enough, she could hear the ringing of a phone through the walls of the apartment complex. The door swung open and the ringing, now louder, continued. One of them would have to answer the phone so the man downstairs didn’t think she’d murdered Morgan.

Riley’s anxiety faded away because of the woman standing barefoot in the doorway. Her long brunette hair was pulled back in a messy bun and she wore light grey yoga pants and an oversized coral T-shirt that had slipped off one shoulder. Riley thought she was the most exquisite woman she’d ever seen.

“It’s …” Morgan blinked. “It’s you.”

The telephone stopped ringing.

Riley tilted her head. “I was worried you might not recognize me fully clothed and without my giant watch.” She rubbed at her empty wrist.

Morgan opened her mouth but was cut off.

“Hey, Beautiful?” A male voice filtered past Morgan and out into the hallway. “Is that the pizza? I have the cash on me.”

Morgan looked back into her apartment and then back to the woman standing in her hallway. Neither could speak nor move.

A handsome man with sandy-blond hair leaned out the door. A masculine hand curled around the doorframe. The flash of a gold ring was nearly blinding. “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were the pizza guy.”

Riley’s eyes shifted in her skull. “I didn’t realize …”

“Riley,” Morgan choked.

Her body jerked backward, and she held up her hands. “I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what she was apologizing for, but the words tumbled out. “I … I shouldn’t have come.” She turned on her heel and started to run.

“Riley!”

Morgan’s voice called after her as she escaped down the hall, but she didn’t look back. The elevator dinged, and the pizza delivery boy stepped off a fuller car.

Instead of entering the ascending lift, she slammed her palms against the stairwell door, shoving the heavy fireproof door open. It banged hard against the opposite wall. Her boots pounded down the concrete stairs, one flight after the next, until her lungs burned and her shins and knees ached. She shoved through the final stairwell door when she reached the ground floor. She could faintly hear a building staff member calling to her, yelling something about her needing to sign out, but she ignored his protest.

She was outside before the doorman could open the door for her. Beyond the condo’s shallow awning, the rain continued, and she had no umbrella. She flipped up the hood of her jacket, but it offered minimal protection as gusts of wind bent the raindrops, slanting their trajectory as they fell to the ground.

She squinted her eyes as large raindrops pelted her face; she didn’t mind the weather. Her face would have been wet anyway. At least now she had no way of knowing where the rain stopped and her tears began.

She threw up her arm and tracked down another yellow taxi. She refused to turn back and look to see if Morgan was coming after her. What would she have done if Morgan had chased, and how would she have felt if there was no one chasing?

The taxi was warm and dry, and it smelled like leather cleaner.

“Chicago O’Hare, please,” she told the driver.

She leaned her head against the rear passenger window and closed her eyes. It had been a foolish dream. She realized that now. A multitude of emotions washed over her and she sucked in a ragged breath. She felt embarrassed by her impulsiveness and foolish that she had assumed what she and Morgan had shared in the realm could translate into the waking world. Succubi weren’t allowed dreams of their own; they could only fulfill others’.

The sun blistered down on the blacktop. The heat reflected back in visible waves that hovered above the runway pavement. Niall Price peeled off his blazer and folded it over one arm. He thought the outerwear made him look more imposing, but he was starting to wither under the intensity of the Los Angeles sun.

The jet engines of the private plane parked in his direct line of vision slowed before coming to a complete stop. A door swung open toward the tarmac, followed by a short series of stairs. Niall approached the private charter and held out his hand to help the passenger inside disembark.

The woman slipped on oversized sunglasses and peered up into the sky. “I hate this city,” she sniffed, taking in her surroundings. “It’s like the worst of humanity congregated in one convenient location.”