Dream Walker (Bailey Spade 1)

“Won’t she get suspicious if she’s the only person not to have to undergo a dreamwalk?”

“I’ll tell her she’ll be the last one.” He covers the corridor with long strides. “And we’ll find the real killer before that.”

“Assuming you do,” Felix says as I strive to keep up without breaking into a jog. Thankfully, Kain slows a bit as we make the next turn.

“Where are we going?” I ask breathlessly.

“Colton’s,” he replies and speeds up again. “He’s the only one of your suspects available tonight.”

Puck it. I launch into a full-out run to catch up with him. “What do you mean?”

“Eduardo left on pack business, and Nina said she’s going on some important trip to the Otherlands.”

Panting, I pull up next to him. “You don’t find that suspicious?”

“A little.” He slows down a bit to look at me. “They know they’ll have to undergo a dreamwalk tomorrow night.”

“But what if they don’t come back?”

He stops next to the massive wooden door. “In that case, I’ll consider the case closed and the problem solved. Our main priority is stopping the murders. Justice is a distant second.”

He pushes open the door and leads me to the giant’s bedroom.

“Wow,” Felix says. “I think that’s two California king beds.”

Yep, I can see where one bed ends and the other begins. I guess no one on this world makes beds for people Colton’s size.

“He’s not in REM sleep,” I whisper to Kain. “You go deal with Gertrude, and I’ll wait for my moment.”

He leaves as I perch on the edge of the bed to watch Colton’s closed eyes—a boring enough activity that a yawn tugs at my jaw despite the vampire blood I recently consumed.

“That dream session with Ariel and Pom was so cool,” Felix says—a welcome distraction for once. He proceeds to tell me what they did while I was dealing with Gertrude: mostly goofing around.

After a few long minutes, Kain comes back and eyes me impatiently. I point at Colton’s eyelids and shrug. If I weren’t afraid to wake up the giant, I’d explain that REM sleep typically happens around ninety minutes after someone first falls sleep.

Kain makes his way over to a corner and becomes very still, like an alabaster statue. Must be some weird vampire meditation.

I turn my attention back to Colton. After what feels like an hour, his eyelids finally indicate REM sleep—though if I had my way, I’d be using equipment to know for sure. If I get this wrong, I’ll have to deal with the subdream again. Still, I’m pretty sure he’s dreaming. His eyes, like the rest of him, are ginormous. The movement is hard to miss.

Carefully, I touch the back of the giant’s hand and plummet into the dream world.

“Ariel and Felix are so fun,” Pom pants excitedly as I appear in my dream palace lobby. “You’ve got to bring them back some day.”

“I will,” I tell him as I head to the tower of sleepers. “Tell me what you guys did.”

I barely listen as he repeats some of the stuff Felix told me. I’m contemplating a theory that’s been brewing in my head since we left Gertrude’s room.

There’s a way Kain could still be behind the murders despite his alibi. What if he used glamour to get others to do his dirty work and forget it ever happened? After all, he was able to glamour Gertrude, a fellow Council member. Then again, there’s no way he’s powerful enough to do it to anyone he wants. He was only able to glamour me thanks to my vampire blood consumption.

Hmm. Could Gertrude also be on the blood? If I suffered from her condition, I might go that route to avoid sleep as much as possible.

Either way, I’m proceeding with my current plan of action. If Kain has planted a fake alibi in someone’s head, it won’t check out in the dream world. In fact, I should see if I can retrieve a memory of being glamoured. I’ve never tried that, but it could work.

Thus determined, I locate sleeping Colton in the tower.

“Huh,” Pom says. “The bed grew to fit him.”

I’m not surprised. “The nook, too. That’s the beauty of the dream world for you.”

The good news is that no trauma loop clouds gather above Colton, so this will be a get-in, get-out situation.

I turn invisible and enter his dream.

Around us is a world lacking any technological advancements, even modest ones like the tech on Earth. Instead, I spot mud huts the size of high-rise buildings, dirt roads the width of a large speedway, enormous windmills, and plainly dressed giants walking to and fro.

Colton is trudging down the street, looking very small next to his kin. I guess it makes sense for him to be tiny. In order to live on Earth, he has to pass for a human. If he were actually human, though, he’d probably have serious pituitary gland issues.