Chapter 2 Chapter Two

Maren

Piper waits until we're halfway across campus to ask about the dream, which would be less suspicious if she hadn't spent the entire walk pretending she wasn't trying to ask about it. I let her suffer for another thirty seconds because I'm petty enough to enjoy watching her fail at casual conversation. First she asks whether I slept okay, then whether I had weird dreams, then whether I remember them, and by the time she gets to whether there was "anyone specific" in it, I stop in the middle of the sidewalk and turn to stare at her. "Just ask whatever you're trying to ask before you hurt yourself."

Piper's mouth opens, closes, then pulls into a guilty smile that might've worked if I didn't know her so well. "Was it a sex dream?" I narrow my eyes. "You woke me up while I was very obviously having one, didn't you?" Her grin finally breaks through. "You said somebody's name." That makes me pause because I hadn't realized I was actually talking out loud. "I did?" Piper nods once. "Two names, actually." Of course I did. Apparently having dream sex with two strangers wasn't humiliating enough. I also needed to provide my roommate with audio. "I'm moving out."

"You can't afford to move out," she reminds me, which is unfortunately true. "Then I'm murdering you and keeping the apartment." She tells me that seems legally complicated, and I start walking again because the conversation has already gone farther than I ever wanted it to. Piper catches my arm long enough to stop me near the edge of the quad, though, and when she asks, "Maren, I'm serious. What were their names?" the joke drops out of her voice so completely that mine disappears too.

"Why?" I ask, pulling my arm free without really being angry about the touch. "Because you kept saying them." The answer comes too quickly. I know Piper's lies, especially the tiny ones she uses when she thinks the truth will upset me, and this is one of them. I fold my arms and study her face. "That's not why. You know I hate this shit, Piper. If you know something, say it." Her eyes flick toward the students moving around us before coming back to me, and that tiny scan of the crowd bothers me more than anything she's said so far.

"Tell me the names first," she says quietly. "Then tell me what happened. All of it, even the parts you think are stupid." I stare at her because, apparently, my morning is now going to involve narrating dream sex in the middle of Boise State. "You want positions too, or can I preserve one scrap of dignity?" Piper would normally have something obscene to say. Instead, she shakes her head. "I need to know what they looked like, what they called you, whether you recognized them, what they said before you woke up, and whether you remember who reached for who first."

That is not normal dream curiosity. My embarrassment shifts into irritation, and underneath that is the first little thread of unease. "Alaric and Aldric," I tell her slowly, watching her instead of the students walking past. "Twins. Alaric has white hair and these really pale blue eyes. Aldric has black hair and green eyes. Both of them have pointed ears, which I apparently found hot because dream me has very broad interests. They called me Princess. I didn't recognize them. I don't know who reached first because the dream started in the middle of everything, and before I woke up Aldric said they'd find me because I found them first. Now your turn."

Piper goes completely still. Not confused. Not amused. Still. My stomach tightens because I know that reaction too. "You know those names." She looks away for less than a second before meeting my eyes again. "I know of them." I laugh once, but there is nothing funny in it. "That's impossible. They're people I dreamed about." Piper rubs both hands down the front of her jeans and lowers her voice. "I know how this is going to sound, and I don't have enough information yet to tell you what I think happened without possibly making this worse. I need a few hours to contact someone."

"No," I tell her immediately, because there are few things I hate more than someone discovering information about my own life and then deciding I have to wait until they are comfortable sharing it. "You don't get to recognize two men from my sex dream and then tell me you'll explain later. That's not a normal sentence." Piper's face softens, which irritates me even more because I don't want to be handled. "I'm not asking you to wait because I think you're too fragile for the truth. I'm asking because I don't know which part is the truth yet, and telling you a guess like it's fact would be worse. Give me until tonight. I will tell you what I know, what I think, and which parts I still can't prove."

I should refuse on principle. I almost do, but Piper looks scared, and that is unusual enough to get my attention. This is the woman who killed a spider the size of my palm with my statistics textbook and then complained that I'd made her damage the book. She doesn't scare easily, and whatever is going through her head right now has drained every bit of humor out of her face. "Tonight," I tell her. "Not tomorrow. Not after you decide I'm emotionally ready. Tonight." She nods immediately. "Tonight."

We start walking again, and I make it maybe twenty feet before another question comes out because apparently once my brain latches onto something, it refuses to be civilized about it. "Are they real?" Piper's shoulders tense. "I think so." I stop again. "You think so?" She turns back with an expression that says she knows exactly how inadequate that answer is. "I know two people with those names and those descriptions exist. I don't know whether the men you dreamed about were actually them. That's one of the things I need to confirm."

For several seconds I just stare at her. The reasonable part of my brain tries to line up explanations that don't involve magic or pointed-eared dream men existing somewhere outside my subconscious. Maybe Piper knew two guys who looked similar and I'd seen a picture without remembering it. Maybe I heard their names months ago. Maybe my brain stitched together details from something stupid on television. All of those explanations are better than the look on Piper's face. "I'm going to class," I finally tell her because Dr. Whitaker will absolutely mark me absent if I stand in the quad having an existential crisis for another ten minutes.

Piper falls into step beside me. "I'm coming with you." I glance over. "You also have class." She shrugs. "I can be late." That gets another look from me because Piper treats attendance like a religious obligation when tuition is involved. "Okay, now you're making it creepy." She exhales and rubs her forehead. "I'm trying not to make it creepy." "You're failing."

Molly Henshaw catches up with us outside the lecture hall, coffee in one hand and a pastry bag in the other, and takes one look at my face before asking, "Who died?" I tell her nobody, then make the mistake of glancing at Piper. Molly follows the look immediately. "What did she do?" Piper says, "Nothing," at the same time I say, "Apparently she knows the men I had a sex dream about," and the expression on Molly's face is so spectacularly delighted that for one beautiful second the morning feels normal again.

"You had a two-man sex dream and Piper knows them?" Molly asks, lowering her voice only after three people turn to look at us. "I don't know them," Piper says. "I know of them." Molly looks between us. "That clarification didn't make this less interesting." I tell her I hate both of them and push through the lecture-hall door before she can ask whether the men are brothers, because I have no intention of discussing twin dream sex within earshot of sixty neuroscience students.

Dr. Whitaker starts class on time, because he would probably start a lecture during an active fire alarm if the slides were already loaded. I take notes, answer a question about memory consolidation, and spend the first twenty minutes proving to myself that nothing has actually changed. It was a dream. Piper happens to know two men who resemble the men in it. Weird coincidence, yes. Impossible, no. Probably. The fact that I can still picture the exact shape of Alaric's mouth when he said he didn't know what he thought is irritating but not supernatural.

Halfway through the lecture, though, my attention drifts because Whitaker is talking about how the brain can attach emotion to memory faster than conscious understanding catches up, and all I can think about is waking with that stupid empty feeling in my chest. I don't miss men after one dream. I especially don't miss men who don't exist. Yet when I picture Aldric's certainty, something warm settles low in my stomach, and when I picture Alaric looking away from me, irritation and hurt come right back with enough force that I have to remind myself this is ridiculous.

You don't have feelings for dream twins. Get a grip. I underline a completely unrelated phrase in my notes hard enough to almost tear the paper.

After class, Piper is waiting outside despite having missed her own first lecture. I walk straight up to her before she can say anything. "You owe me an answer." She nods. "I know, and I'm working on it. The person I need hasn't answered yet." My temper sparks immediately, but she catches my expression and keeps going. "I'm not moving the deadline. Tonight means tonight. Even if they never answer, I tell you everything I know by tonight. I just want the chance to confirm whether I'm about to tell you something unbelievable because it's true or because I'm wrong."

That distinction is annoyingly reasonable. I hate reasonable when I'm trying to stay mad. "Fine," I mutter, adjusting my bag on my shoulder. "But if you tell me tonight that Alaric and Aldric are secretly Scandinavian exchange students you met at a renaissance fair, I'm going to be pissed that you made this dramatic." Piper's laugh comes out weak, and the sound does nothing to make me feel better.

By late afternoon, I have almost talked myself back into believing none of this matters. The dream was a dream. Piper is acting weird because Piper has apparently been keeping some deeply bizarre social-circle secret from me. I can deal with weird. Weird is manageable. What I can't explain is why, every time my mind goes quiet, I feel that same pull toward two men I have never met awake, one dark-haired and certain, one white-haired and fighting himself hard enough that I could feel it even in sleep.

It isn't enough to make me believe in fate or magic or any other thing that belongs in somebody else's life.

It is enough to make me wish night would hurry up so Piper can start explaining herself.