"HAYDEN!"
The lights dimmed, and the woman and child faded. Two blurry impressions of Cove sat on the doubled couch. I couldn't see his expression, but I could hear the concern in his voice.
"Your magic flared–did something happen?"
My eyes slipped shut. "'M fine. Jus' thinking." I yawned.
I heard him sigh. "Right."
I passed out quickly after that, but another vision came to me before dawn.
The beginning of the dream was staticky like I was shifting through frequencies and hadn't yet found the right one.
Even in my dream haze, the scene before me was baffling. A curly light brown stuffed bear with a faded red bow and missing patches of fur sat at the desk, facing three men in their early or mid-twenties. Two I didn't recognize, but the third I did. It was Jack.
The bear moved, stars of gold swirling in its eyes, to focus on Jack, who leaned back in his plush cloth chair.
The stitches on the bear's face opened, the threads twisting to shape the words as it communicated. It didn't quite speak–it was difficult to understand, much less explain how the words didn't come from the Bear's mouth to slice through the air but rather seemed to drop into your ear.
Or perhaps the bear's mouth didn't move at all, and any movement I saw was a product of my own mind trying to explain the source of the noise. Regardless, it was clear the bear was the one speaking.
"So where are they now?" The bear asked without speaking. The words were fragile like static, preventing me from knowing the gender of the voice by sound alone. It was old and young and male and female all at once.
Jack pulled a leg up onto the chair, leaning against it as he spoke. "I showed them to my apartment. I figured that would be the best place to put them for the night."
The bear brought its paw to its face in a facsimile of a thoughtful grip. "Perhaps they're the interference They warned me about?"
The 'they' the bear spoke of had a heavy list to it, the word sticking in my head for some reason.
Jack gave a half-shrug at the question, his black trench coat slipping off his shoulder. "Maybe? I can try to find out."
The bear nodded. "Do that. Ask them if they know about What Lies Ahead and check their reactions."
Jack and the others looked uncomfortable at the namedrop, eying each other nervously.
One of the other men, black-haired and green-eyed in a black leather jacket with his hair slicked off to the side like an 80s gangster, spoke up. "Is it really okay to talk about that with random people? If they're not who you think they are, then…"
The bear waved off their concerns.
"Then they won't know about it. Only you three know the details."
Over time, the details of the dream had steadily become clearer, more real. I stared at the bear, catching the golden sparks in its eyes. Recognition crossed the golden eyes, and the bear jolted. "Someone's here."
Shock, followed by icy panic, flooded my veins. I sprinted sideways at the wall. Just before impact, I closed my eyes, reminding myself this was a dream.
"Who's there!"
I needed to wake up NOW!
My eyes flew open. They landed drooping apartment ceiling above my head, and I released a breath I hadn't noticed I'd been holding.
That was the second time one of the fragments had almost caught me. The chimera in Heirs had never shown any sign of noticing Ani or me, even when we desperately wanted him to–had something changed?
And then there were the bear's eyes and the things it had mentioned….something was going on here. Someone else must be interfering. Was it Ava?
The floor outside the apartment door creaked. With breakneck speed, I whipped my head around to fixate on the door. When minutes passed without another noise, I let my eyes drift away. Coincidentally, they landed on Cove, who was facing the door rigidly, his eyes wide open. In the faint moonlight cast in from outside, now that the storms had passed, I could make out deep-cut bruises underneath his eyes. Had he slept at all yet?
Something clanged outside in the street, and Cove and I both jumped to look. We made brief eye contact as we looked out but moved on, pretending not to have noticed.
For the rest of the night, every time something banged or clanged, we'd jerk awake, our hearts pounding at the sudden break in the silence.
When the sky started to lighten, but before the sun was up, Cove finally fell asleep, his head dropping back onto the pillow and his eyes slipping shut. I was wired with nervous energy and stared at the ceiling, thinking.
As the sun poked up over the horizon, I found a loose thread in the blanket and pulled it loose, casting it out to go catfishing. Ani and Ranch's heads spun around, following the tail of the thread. Ani was the first to take a leap at it, and I jerked over his head, sending him into a backflip as he tried to catch it. He landed uncatlike and flat on his back, blinking with confusion.
I stifled a laugh.
Ranch jumped for it, stretching her paws as far as she could. My next tug caused her too, to miss, and sent her careening into the rising Ani, knocking them both back into the ground. Ani's ear flicked back in irritation, and Ranch sprung back up with renewed vigor, leaping again and again for the thread.
We went at this for what felt like hours before the boredom set in.
As my gaze landed again on the sleeping Cove, I actually debated pranking him. Thousands of possibilities jumped through my mind, and the bags under his eyes encouraged rather than deterred me. In the end, however, I feared any backlash would make this trip more torturous than it already was. Now wasn't the time to be testing boundaries.
Ani and Ranch had no such boundaries, jumping up to paw at Cove's face when the novelty of the string ran out. Impressively, Cove didn't flinch at their initial movements. Ranch got more creative, burrowing her way underneath the blanket to nip at his arm. Cove flinched, and his breathing stuttered before quickly smoothing back out. Ani brushed against Cove's face, his tail just kissing Cove's eyes as he followed Ranch underneath the blanket. Cove's eyelids twitched, signaling he was only pretending to sleep.
Somehow, Ranch and Ani's interaction devolved into a fight beneath the blanket, and they were both sent tumbling to the floor before they sprinted off, tearing through the apartment to chase each other. My sister would have said they have the 'zoomies.'
Cove rolled around, turning away from the sunlight cascading in through the window, and lifted the blanket further over his head. Growing frustrated at the riot the cats were causing, he finally flipped back over, tossing it down in irritation. Deep purple bags marked his face.
"Let's get out of here."
"No arguments here." I replied empathetically, folding my own blanket back up to shove it into my backpack. I immensely regretted our decision to stay in this creepy city and thought Cove felt the same, though neither of us would ever admit to it. We had magic; why should we be afraid of ghosts?
As I passed the photograph of the family, I paused. My eyes lingered on the teddy bear the child was holding. Unthinkingly, I picked up the photograph and shoved it, frame and all, into the front pocket of my book bag. I the somber thought that crossed my mind, saying that if I didn't, the family would be forgotten in time.
I rolled my shoulders, not at all eager to tell Cove what I'd learned last night. There was more work to do here than we'd thought.
Cove stopped in the doorway, his hand lingering on the rotting wood of the frame. "You coming, Hayden?"