Read Lay Me Down Online

Authors: Erin Kellison

Lay Me Down (4 page)

All she could do was shake her head. “Just bad.”

“It might help to talk about it.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I’ve seen bad, Maisie,” he said. “I’ve been Chimera for years. I’ve been in the dreamwaters longer than you’ve been alive.”

That last bit made Maisie reassess his appearance. He had his boring Everyman thing going, suit and tie. He looked mid- to late twenties. She was twenty-one. His math had to be off. Rêve had only been discovered fifteen years ago, by that French guy, Didier Lambert, which was why everyone used the French word,
Rêve,
when they referred to dreams.

Regardless, in his time as a Chimera, he might’ve seen bad, but she’d witnessed evil and it existed where the package was supposed to have been delivered.

“Doesn’t make a difference, does it?” she answered. “We give the package back, and Graeme lets me go.”

“Yes, that’s what’s going to happen.”

Steve sounded so sure of himself.

“Then I don’t want to talk about it.” And she didn’t want to be afraid anymore. She was afraid all the time. She wanted to run for her life every minute, but the thing she was frightened of wasn’t behind her. It was inside her head, waiting for her to sleep.

She dropped her gaze to the menu again, but she’d stopped caring what was on it.

Steve wasn’t done ruining dinner, though. “How much do I owe Graeme?”

Maisie looked up. Stretched her mouth and bared her teeth in an expression that resembled a smile, but wasn’t. “Fifty grand.”

Steve looked baffled for a second.

Good. He thought he knew everything.

“Can you make a transfer?”

“Nope. I spent it.” Her balance was currently at about twenty bucks.

“You spent fifty thousand dollars in—”

“—two days. Yes. There was a short delay, or it would’ve been one.”

“I see.” Amusement glimmered in his eyes, but he didn’t fight her like she wanted him to. A good fight would feel so good, but Steve-o was never ruffled.

“What did you need that kind of money for?”

She sighed, disappointed all over again. The plan was now on indefinite hold. And she’d have to figure out how to pay Chimera back first. She hated owing people.

“I’m starting a business outside of the Agora’s manufactured Rêves, but in the dreamwaters. I’m going to help connect people in their individual dreams. A kind of private service for friends and sweethearts. Their dreams are their own, and if they want to share them, I can help with that. But the headsets and tech cost a fortune.”

“A great deal more than fifty thousand.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been pinching pennies for a year now.” She’d been just about there when she’d accepted that last delivery. She’d known it was too good to be true. She’d known the minute Graeme had offered.

She leveled her gaze at Steve. Revealing her plan gave Steve ammo to condemn her business idea. She waited for him to take his best shot.

“It’s a great concept,” he said, disappointing her again. “You’ll also need licensing and oversight.” He meant Chimera, who would never license her in a million years.

Yeah, well, she hadn’t planned on applying. And why was he agreeing with her?

“Would help if you were Chimera to start with,” he said.

There it was. The pitch. He was relentless.

“The point is,
Steeeve,
my business, when I get set up, won’t rely on anyone but me.”

Independence. A future. Something of her own that she was good at. Because Darkside, unlike in the waking world, she was fucking brilliant. She was born to dream, and when she’d first tried it, she’d known she’d found the one thing she was good at. She could be happy, and she wasn’t about to let go of that.

Steve was looking at her too long again, thinking Steve-o thoughts.

“What?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” he said, sitting back in his chair, retreating. “Have you decided what you want?”

She sure as hell wasn’t going to be scared anymore.

“Yes.” She set the menu aside. “The octopus.”

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

 

“But I don’t need a headset.” Maisie had changed into soft gray pajama-like sweats that bared a shoulder, but disguised the shape of her trim body. Her body language, however, was clearly discernible—arms folded in resolute lockdown.

Steve held out the delicate crown attached to the elegant, ergonomically molded recliner in the suite’s Rêve room. It was a top-of-the-line interface. Nothing to balk at.

“I need to be able to locate you at all times. You have people after you.” Plus, he couldn’t trust her not to bolt. Pursuing her Darkside would be a challenge, even for him.

“I’m not wearing it.”

“It’s a safety measure.”

“It’s a shackle for the head.”

Most people needed a headset to modulate their brainwaves to a frequency suitable for shared dreaming. The hotel’s Rêvellier could assist first-timers. Most Chimera didn’t require a headset. Steve never had, but security was the reason they had the King Suite.

“No one’s caught me yet,” she said. “Maybe you’re afraid you can’t keep up.”

She was baiting him, but it wasn’t necessary. He wasn’t going to force her to wear the crown. Maisie Lane was going to have to choose to trust him sooner or later. And he was going to have to find out if he could trust her. Guess that’d be tonight.

He tossed the headset aside. “All right. Get comfortable. I’ll let you sleep now.”

She had to be exhausted. He sure was. He’d slept exactly as much as she had these past few days.

Her mouth made a kiss twisted to the side as she considered his abrupt shift. “And you’re going to meet me in my dreams again?”

“Yes.”

“What if I don’t let you in?”

Again with the bait.

This time he took it, just to see what would happen, and hooked her with some of his own. “Sweetheart, I’m already there.”

She had a lot to say after that—first, “Har har, very funny,” since his claim couldn’t possibly be true. Then, as the possibility that it could be true reached maximum Maisie worry capacity, she segued into a tirade spiked with colorful language rudely characterizing both him and Chimera.

He had a feeling she’d been raring to tell him what she really thought for some time now.

Maybe he should’ve let her vent sooner.

He enjoyed all of it while exiting the Rêve room and descending into the sunken living room, her voice behind him. He sat on the sleek leather sectional and took off his shoes.

“Intrusive, is what Chimera is,” she was saying. “Like Big Brother, but in the worst way.”

He didn’t like to dream with shoes on; he always had the sensation of being a little uncomfortable. He leaned back and put his feet up. Crossed his arms in front of his chest. Truth was, the tirade felt good. Connected. This part of Vegas was perpetually awake, but still sometimes he caught unwanted glimpses into strangers’ dreams, hence his forced isolation and the fact that he lived constantly on the move. It was how he survived. But Maisie’s energy blocked all that out.

“You know what?” she said. “Forget the bucket.
You’re
the rat.”

Somewhere in her rant, she’d openly admitted to planning to kill him, and truth be told, it wouldn’t be such a bad way to go. At Maisie’s tender mercies. Good Lord.

“Do you need me to compel sleep or can you manage it on your own?” he asked.

“I want to get this
over
with.”

“Join me, then.” With the rest of the world blocked, and only Maisie in his mind, he gave in to a rare impulse. “Sleep with me.”

She’d been inhaling to say more, but stalled mid-breath.

The double entendre was a common one among Revelers. It was even part of the slogan of one of the lesser Rêve companies offering commercial dream dating services.
Sleep with me. I’ll be the best you’ve ever had.

Her eyes did that diamond glitter thing, but no matter how hard she tried to shoot laser beams from her irises, she couldn’t kill him with a look. Good try, though. She stepped down into the sunken room. Turned and dropped beside him. The rush of air was Maisie scented, Maisie charged, crackling around him.

“Do me, then,” she challenged, upping the ante.

Yeah, she got on his nerves, but not in a bad way. Again the word
bothersome
came to him.
Like a little sister, maybe. Easy to like, but under his skin.

That’s what she was: a little sister. There were seven years between them, after all.

“Unless you’re, uh, having performance anxiety?” she asked.

Steve heated quickly, a quick flash of temper that left him with a smile on his face.

Not his little sister. The edge to his heat was nowhere near brotherly. It was the kind of sensation that involved pinning her beneath him and the satisfaction of making her admit to being happy to be there.

But he could not let go of his control. Control was paramount. He had his own secrets to hide.

She interested him. Okay. Better to admit it, which would diffuse the interest, than deny. He could never do anything about it. She was too talented a Reveler. Eventually she was going to develop her gifts, refine her darksight, and then she’d discover him.

He’d go out with some other woman, maybe, when this was over. Maisie, with her pink hair and smart mouth, was off limits.

And yet, extending his reach, nudging her consciousness, following her down, plunging into the dreamwaters, while already surrounded by her scent in the waking world, he felt as if he were sliding skin to skin into a secret, carnal knowledge stripped of physical laws, yet laden with sensory intensity.

They broke the surface of sleep together, beneath which the world Darkside existed, a place where the atmosphere was thicker, where the very air was a conductive medium through which emotion traveled like electricity.

In dreams it was harder to deny the baser impulses. Harder to maintain a mask of neutrality. A single sensory hit—and dreams were full of them—and he’d respond with a need he had to consciously restrain.

Her dream was still amorphous shifts of light and darkness—here a reflection of light on a city street, there a shimmer of a building looming out of oblivion. Maisie, however, shone with an inner golden light. She was giving him a narrow-lidded, mean look.

Trespasser,
he heard, though she hadn’t spoken.

What was it about her? He wanted to kiss the curl of dislike off her mouth and leave another expression there in its place.

Thank God she hated him, otherwise this might be a problem. Better get the damn package and get out. Finish this business.

He forced himself to look away from her and take in the setting.

He knew what to expect—had visited once before—but like everything Maisie, he was still surprised.

Most people had indistinct dreams that gradually took on shape and narrative as the dreamer either sank deeper into unconsciousness, or became lucid enough to create a fantasy. Further, black and white dreams were uncommon; the few he’d witnessed were blurry, like a pencil sketch dampened by water. Which was why so many people flocked to Rêves, where dreaming was sensory-rich and connected.

Not Maisie. Her dream was magnificent.

The dark city that struck up into a midnight sky was drawn with razor-sharp edges, each formation a meticulous rendering of angles and detail, yet the dark patches weren’t just shaded black, but were empty vacuums of density. From the buildings’ windows gleamed an occasional white light. Her dream wasn’t a localized conception, either; it had a sense of vastness, of completion, the likes of which he’d never witnessed before.

This was why Chimera wanted her. Thus far she’d merely scratched the surface of what she could do.

But she had enough experience not to let him see anything too personal, enough experience not to fumble and let him know if she was reacting to him as well. She’d hidden herself here, Maisie in her maze, her magenta hair a fire of color like a torch in the darkness. She had no blond roots here. This was how she really was inside.

Waking world or Darkside—no wonder she captivated him.

“How long have you been building this?” he asked.

She smiled enigmatically.

He cast his gaze around, using his darksight, but he couldn’t penetrate the dark bricks she’d used to build, which meant every piece was deliberate, not just her subconscious filling in the spaces. Damned impressive.

“What would it be like to build?” He’d only explored, but as in the waking world, he’d never stayed in one place long enough to build. To stay was to be found out, driven out. He’d had to keep moving.

“You haven’t seen the half of it yet,” she said. “Come on.”

He followed her down a street with pavement so dark it looked wet. Around a corner where tall, somber buildings stood sentry, was a deep city park, a haunted place with trees like widow spiders and shadows like veils. Maisie skewed a little urban goth.

Other books

Wicked Delights of a Bridal Bed by Wicked Delights of a Bridal Bed
We Joined The Navy by John Winton
Start Shooting by Charlie Newton
My Demon Saint by R. G. Alexander
Last Notes from Home by Frederick Exley
Libby on Wednesday by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Shatter by Michael Robotham
Marriage Seasons 04 - Winter Turns to Spring by Palmer, Catherine, Chapman, Gary