I smile at the elderly illusionist. “Thank you. I’ll find you if I need that.”
Hekima’s dark eyes twinkle. “I guess I’ll see you tonight in my dreams.”
“Not if I’m just setting up a connection,” I say.
Hekima leaves, and Kain picks up the folder and strides out.
I sprint to keep up with him.
A few winding corridors later, we arrive at the lab I saw in Hekima’s recreation of the grisly bird attack. Though someone has cleaned up, I can picture the bloody corpse all too easily. What’s worse is that the doves are here now, roosting in the same cages they broke out of to murder their caretaker. And the smell emanating from those cages…
“Creepy,” Felix remarks just as Kain says, “I’m going to leave you to it. Be back in an hour.”
Hundreds of saffron-colored eyes stare at me hungrily from the cages. Before I can beg Kain not to leave me alone with the stinky killer birds, he disappears, closing the door behind him.
As if that’s what they had been waiting for all along, the dule of murderous feathered beasts begins to coo menacingly.
Chapter Fourteen
The cooing swells to fill the room, mimicking the growing knot in my throat. But the birds don’t attack me. They don’t even try to escape from their cages. They just coo and eat grain from their feeders, and on occasion, I hear a wet splatter as one of them poops.
Serious eww.
Despite the stench choking my nostrils, the death-by-birds-inspired adrenaline begins to leave my system. And as it does, my eyes get gritty, my lids grow heavy, and a yawn escapes my mouth. Oh yeah, I’m starting to feel like someone who hasn’t slept for four months.
I’d give a lot of money to take a nap right now. Then again, needing money is how I ended up so sleep deprived in the first place.
There’s no time to sleep, though, no matter how I feel, and it’s too soon to take another dose of my “medicine.” So I do the next best thing, an exercise called bellows breath. I inhale deeply and rapidly for a short while, as if hyperventilating. Bellows breath can give a little burst of energy in a pinch, and I’m certainly in a pinch.
It helps a little. Instead of a ten out of ten on the horribleness scale, I only feel like a good, solid nine.
“You okay?” Felix asks softly.
I take out my phone and furtively text, Never been better. Time to get back to my investigation.
“You can just talk out loud,” he says. “I doubt Leal’s lab has any listening devices.”
You sure? I text.
“Positive.”
“All right,” I say out loud. Even if someone is listening, they’ll probably just think I’m crazy.
I look around, taking in the surreal paintings on the walls around me.
Stinky birds aside, this lab clearly belonged to a dreamwalker.
“Very cool,” Felix says as I walk over to stand before a famous painting by Salvador Dalí—Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second before Awakening. “Makes me wonder what it would’ve been like to walk in the artist’s dreams.”
“Maybe Leal did just that,” I say as I turn to see a painting depicting a staircase that loops in a circle instead of going up or down. Such structures can’t exist in the real world, but they can exist in art and dreams. In fact, I have stairs similar to these in my own dream palace.
“That’s M.C. Escher,” Felix says needlessly. “That piece is called Ascending and Descending.”
I force myself to ignore the cool art and search for anything relevant to the case. But there are no notes on the desk, no diary on the bookshelf, nothing else I can use. If the doves were parrots, I could ask them to repeat something, but as is, this is leading nowhere.
I study the way the art is laid out, using my dreamwalker’s eye for detail.
Aha. Every painting is hung flush with the wall, except one. Ascending and Descending is not. I pull the heavy frame away from the wall and peer at the back. Score. There’s a pocket here, and something inside it.
Fishing out the small device, I examine it carefully.
“Gomorran comms,” Felix says, confirming my guess.
“Must be generations old.” I turn the clunky little thing in my hands. “My unit was ancient, and it was way sleeker.”
“Even an old comms device probably has a petabyte of data and more processing power than any supercomputer on this world,” Felix says reverently. “Be careful with that.”
“Otherland tech is totally forbidden,” I say in my best imitation of Kain. In my normal voice, I add, “Unless you’re on the Council, that is.”
“They’re hypocrites,” Felix says. “At least the dreamwalker hid the device. Some of the other Councilors break their own rules a lot more openly.”
Feeling a yawn coming on, I shake my head. “Back to the investigation. Let’s get into this thing.” I bring the comms device closer to the camera. “This is your chance to show off your powers, in case that’s not obvious.”
He sighs. “I can’t.”
“What?” I tap the earpiece as if that’s going to change his answer.
“I mean, I could, but it would have to be in person. The device is not connected to the internet and—”
“You can’t be here in person.” I twirl around to remind him where I am. “Maybe I can ask them to take me to you? But no, then they’d know about you.”
“Yeah, I’d rather not be pulled into this. But there is a way I can get into the castle in person without much fuss. Ariel’s cousin’s best friend’s daughter is having her Mandate ceremony there in a couple of days.”
“Oh? What does that have to do with you?”
“Mandate ceremonies are a big deal. Everyone attends to show support, so it won’t be suspicious if I tag along with Ariel.”
“I hope I’m alive by then,” I say dubiously.
“Well… maybe I can get some of the data from the cache right now. But we risk damaging the device.”
“Do it then—but carefully.” I don’t think I have a couple of days to dick around.
“I’ll do my best. Put the comms on top of your phone.”
I set my Earth phone on the desk and place the comms device on top.
“Now be quiet,” he says.
I watch the device for any sign of something. Just as I’m about to ask Felix what gives, a strange magenta energy snakes from the phone into the comms unit.
“Got something,” he crows. “A few excerpts from some kind of diary. Emailing them to you now.”
I pocket the device and open the first email from Felix on my phone.
Roger came back with the newest batch of the medicine today. The bird I tested it on fell asleep instantly, and stayed asleep for six hours, three hours longer than with the prior formulation. But just like before, it died instead of waking up. Still, at only $10 per dove, this provides unlimited access to the dream world. Next time, I’ll have him—
The passage ends there.
“That’s it?” I ask Felix. “Any chance to see what came before or after this excerpt?”
“No, but there’s another piece when you’re ready.”