Sweet Nightmare, page 42
Jude doesn’t answer, just pounds up the stairs. He starts having to duck before he’s halfway up.
I start up the stairs behind Jude, while the others mill around, mystified but curious.
But I don’t even get to the top before he’s yelling, “Fuck!” and heading back down.
I’ve never seen Jude like this, so beside himself with rage that he’s barely coherent. “What’s up there?” I ask, wanting to check it out myself.
But he’s already brushing past me, visibly distressed.
“More jars,” he says curtly.
“They’re all open, too?”
“Every fucking one of them,” he growls.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” Remy says when we’re both back on the ground.
“It means I should have killed the other three when I had the chance,” Izzy answers nonchalantly. But there’s a rage in her normally distant eyes that I’ve never seen before.
Not that I blame her. If a Jean-Jerk showed up here right now, Izzy would have to wait in line, because I’m more than ready to decimate every single one of them myself.
What they did here is unconscionable. What they did here is… There’s not even a word for what they did.
“They let the nightmares out.” Jude says out loud what we’ve all already figured out because I think he needs to hear it. “I didn’t fuck up and let them escape when I was helping you. They did it.”
“Yes,” I tell him as I reach out to take his hand. “They did it.”
He swallows convulsively, and for the first time in the ten years I’ve known him, there are tears in his eyes. “I didn’t kill all those people.”
“No,” I whisper, tears pouring down my own face because his pain is as palpable as his relief. “You didn’t. That’s on them. They did that.”
“I didn’t—” His voice breaks, so he tries again. “I didn’t kill Eva.”
“No, Jude. No, you didn’t.”
He nods, then blows out a long, slow, shuddering breath as the others gather around him.
I glance at their faces, see the same devastated rage in their eyes that I feel. Because Jude doesn’t deserve this—and neither did any of the people who died.
Remy puts a supportive hand on Jude’s shoulder and says, “So what do you want to do?”
Jude doesn’t even have to think about it. “I want to fix that fucking tapestry, capture the monsters, and then feed the Jean-Jerks to them.”
Luis nods, then opens the tapestry and spreads it on the table in the center of the room. “Well, then, that’s what we’ll make happen.”
Chapter Eighty-Six
Shoot for
the Jars
“We should probably get the jars ready,” Simon suggests, bending over to pick up a few of the ones on the floor. He’s right, so we spend the next five minutes setting them up so Jude can funnel the nightmares into them.
When that’s done, I look at him. “You can do this,” I say.
“Oh, I know I can.” He’s more in control, more focused, and more confident about his powers than I’ve ever seen him. He’s also incandescent with rage, so this should be one hell of a show.
“Okay, then. What do you need from us, man?” Simon asks, shuddering a little. I assume that’s because he’s brushing against a witch from the past who is currently mixing her own herbal elixirs.
“Just make sure nothing gets away, I guess,” Jude answers, though he doesn’t sound all that concerned—like he knows he’s got this. Which I absolutely know he does.
I watch as he reaches for the tapestry and starts to pull the thread at the corner.
Nothing happens.
“Maybe you need to pull harder?” Mozart suggests from where she’s peering over Luis’s shoulder.
“I’m pulling pretty hard,” Jude tells her, then tries again, and it’s obvious that he’s putting some serious muscle into it.
Nerves jitter through my stomach, and a little voice in the back of my head wonders what will happen if I’m wrong. But I ignore the doubts, because I’m not wrong. I know we need to unravel this tapestry, even though Jude is currently having a difficult time with it.
“Try a different corner,” Izzy suggests.
But that doesn’t work, either.
A glance at Jude tells me he’s still trying—that he still believes I’m right. But it’s obvious the others are starting to doubt, even before Luis quietly asks me, “Are you sure about this?”
“I was,” I answer. But I can’t see the glowing tapestry anymore, or all of the dots in space.
I close my eyes, hoping to be able to see something—anything—and there it is. The tapestry and all the many, many threads.
I move my hand over it, and the whole thing ripples. I do it again, this time with my hand several inches above it, and it does the same thing. Only it starts to glow again as well. And that’s when it hits me.
“Don’t touch it,” I tell him. “Use your mind instead of your hands.”
“My mind?” he asks. For the first time, there’s a shred of doubt in his voice. “I’m not telekinetic.”
“You don’t have to be. But nightmares aren’t tangible, right? I mean, you can’t actually touch them. So maybe you can’t touch them here, either. Maybe you just have to use your imagination to access them,” I say. “Close your eyes. Picture the tapestry as thousands of little threads—”
I break off, because he’s already doing it. In front of our shocked gazes, he pulls one long, feathery, silver thread from the tapestry.
“Oh my God…” Mozart exclaims in awe.
“He needs a jar!” Simon comments, and Luis shoves one down the table to Jude.
But Jude has already sent the nightmare floating toward a different jar and has turned his attention back to the tapestry, where he starts pulling a second thread.
Except there’s a problem.
“Hey, Jude,” Luis says nervously. “The nightmare isn’t going in.”
Jude stops mid-pull, a dark-purple nightmare in his hand. He uses his other hand to wave the first nightmare toward the jar a second time. It moves at his command, but it doesn’t go in like it’s supposed to. Instead, it wraps itself around the glass container.
“They’ve never done that before.” Jude narrows his eyes in concentration and tries a third time. Once again, the nightmare follows his directions in all ways except it still doesn’t slide home like it’s supposed to.
Jude looks annoyed, and this time when he flicks his hand, the nightmare winds itself around his forearm before settling into his skin.
I suppose that’s one way to solve the problem.
Jude goes back to harvesting the second nightmare, but it does the same thing when he tries to store it in a different jar. It flat-out refuses to go.
“Well, this is going to get interesting,” Izzy says, eyeing Jude up and down. “Good thing you’re tall.”
Jude ignores her and keeps going. And going. And going.
Within fifteen minutes, he’s pulled about five hundred nightmares off the tapestry. The only problem is he’s used up nearly every centimeter of available skin on his body and he still has about three quarters of the tapestry left to go.
In fact, the next nightmare he pulls off—a bright-gold one—circles him, looking for a place to land. When it doesn’t find one, it starts spinning and twisting its way around the room. Simon jumps out of its way, Mozart ducks when it twirls near her, and Luis dives under the table.
“Seriously?” I say, ducking down to look at him.
He doesn’t even look embarrassed. “No way am I eating someone’s face off.”
“Is that another one of your nightmares?” Izzy asks. “Wicked.”
“Not wicked,” he tells her. “Disgusting.”
Unfortunately, the nightmare is still at large and looking for a home. Plus, Jude has already pulled off another one, which I’m sure will be circling soon, and the last thing we want is for it to slip out of some crack in the door or something.
Not that I think Jude would let that happen, but these things are slippery.
Although I have no idea what I’m going to do with it if I can grab it, I still reach a hand out for it. But, unlike the others, it doesn’t come near me. In fact, it gives me a wide berth.
I wonder what that’s all about?
But Jude is currently holding two wiggling nightmares in his left hand as he continues to pick the tapestry apart with his right, so I know I’ve got to figure something out.
I have one more idea, but it’s completely outrageous. Then again, everything about the last few days is outrageous. What’s one more thing?
I walk up to him and lay a hand on the center of his back. The second I do, the nightmares in his hands start straining toward me.
Not only that, but the gray one floating around the room makes a beeline toward me, as well.
Maybe this idea isn’t as outrageous as I thought. I glance up at Jude. “Do you trust me?” I ask.
In a moment that I will remember forever, Jude—who doesn’t trust anyone—doesn’t even have to think before he says, “Yes.”
And just like that, something snaps taut inside me.
The sudden tug is so powerful that I stumble back—and into Jude, who also just lost his footing.
Our eyes meet, and the moment they do, a warmth like nothing I’ve ever felt blooms in my chest before fanning out to my entire body. It’s a warmth that feels exactly like Jude when he’s holding me, his big body and beautiful soul sheltering me from the world. And in that moment, as I feel his strength and determination and steadfastness and power deep inside myself, I figure out what just happened.
Our mating bond has snapped into place.
Chapter Eighty-Seven
Well Worth
the Mate
For a moment, I’m too shocked to do anything but stare at Jude in awe. He must feel the same way—in fact, I know he feels the same way, since I can sense it deep inside myself. Also, he’s gazing right back at me with the same awestruck look I’m sure I have on my face.
“Clementine,” he whispers. “Did we just…”
“Did you just what?” Luis asks, poking his head out from under the table to check out what’s going on. When we don’t answer, he turns to the others. “Did they just what?”
I ignore him because right now I have something much more important to do. “I think we did,” I whisper to Jude.
His whole face softens in that way I’ve only seen once before, in the dance hall. And then he reaches for me.
When he takes my hand, several of the nightmares on his skin crawl off of him and straight up my arms.
Jude tries to grab them back in alarm, but something tells me I have nothing to be worried about, so I shake my head at him. “Just wait.”
We watch—Jude a lot more warily than I—as they make their way up my forearm to my biceps. They don’t settle on my skin like they do with him, but they also don’t try to arrow inside me like they did with some of the others.
Instead, they wrap themselves around me like a hug, spinning and twirling until they find their perfect spot.
Jude’s eyes go wide as he watches the whole thing unfold. Once they finally settle, he murmurs, “They can’t hurt you anymore.”
“I don’t think they want to hurt me,” I counter, and I realize that I’m leaning into him. That just his presence alone is a magnet I have no desire to resist.
“Holy shit,” Luis says as he finally figures out what just happened. “You’re mated!”
“We’re mated,” I agree.
“That’s totally badass,” Mozart breathes, her eyes wide and starry. I recognize it because I feel the same way.
And though we’re in the middle of an important, save-our-asses activity, we take a second to accept congratulations anyway. Because a moment like this only happens once in a lifetime, and it deserves to be acknowledged.
Remy’s the last one to congratulate me, and when he leans in for a hug, he murmurs, “See, Kumquat? I told you you were going to be just fine.”
“You knew?” I ask, surprised.
But he just shrugs in that mysterious way he has as he steps away.
I narrow my eyes at him, wishing that I could see useful things about the future like he obviously does, instead of this bizarre past, present, and future thing I’ve got going on.
What good does it do me to have to figure out who is with me in the present day and who in the room is actually from the past or future? Like the witch making her potions over— I freeze as I realize the witch is gone.
Which isn’t a big deal, in and of itself, but so is the hotel employee putting jam on the shelves. Not to mention the teen vamp from the future who likes to use this as a make-out spot. They’re all gone.
I turn back to Jude, who smiles at me as he goes back to sorting nightmares. There’s only one of him—but there’s only ever been one of him. Not to be sappy, but I can’t help wondering if it’s because he’s my mate. He’s my past, my present, and now my future in a way that no one else is or ever will be.
He hands me several more nightmares, and I slide them up my other arm as I turn to look at Luis. And nope. He’s still got three people—baby Luis, present Luis, and a very dim future Luis. For a second, I flash back to that moment at the dorm, when I saw him bleeding out from that chest wound. But I tamp it down, block it out. Because there’s absolutely nothing I can do about that right at the moment, so I have to let it go.
“You okay?” Jude asks as he pulls two more nightmares out of the tapestry and passes them to me.
I loop them around my biceps as I answer, “Yeah. I’m actually really good.”
After the last few days—the last few years—it’s a strange feeling. But it’s a nice one.
A couple of minutes later, Jude hands me close to a dozen more nightmares—now that he’s been doing it for a while, he’s really getting the hang of it. But the faster he goes, the faster I run out of room on my body, too.
But then I remember the idea I had earlier, right before the mating bond kicked in. I don’t have a clue if it will work or not, but considering how well the nightmares are currently responding to me, I’m inclined to try.
I turn back to Jude and closely watch what he’s doing to unravel the tapestry. After I have a pretty good handle on it, I take two of the nightmares he’s given me and hang them in the air in front of me. And do my best to weave them together.
They bind to each other, but it’s not easy, and it’s definitely not pretty.
“What are you doing?” Mozart asks, getting close enough to watch but still leaving a wide gap between her and the nightmares.
“We’re running out of space. I’m trying to weave them back together—and doing a shit job of it.”
“Want some help?” Remy asks, moving close enough to actually touch the nightmares.
“I don’t know if they’ll respond to you,” I tell him.
“It’s worth a shot.” He waves a hand, and I watch in amazement as the two nightmares weave perfectly together.
“How’d you do that?” I ask, shocked. Even Jude pauses what he’s doing long enough to check out—and obviously approve of—Remy’s handiwork.
Remy shrugs. “Nightmares and dreams exist outside of time,” he explains. “So people who can exist in the spaces between time tend to be able to handle them a lot more easily than people who don’t.”
“Is that what you do? Exist in the spaces between time?”
He grins. “That’s what we do, Clementine. It’s not just me.”
“Yeah, well, I think I’m going to have to disagree considering you can weave nightmares a hell of a lot better than me.”
“Maybe.” He reaches to take a nightmare from Jude, but in what may be the strangest thing I’ve seen today—which is saying something—it literally races away from him so fast that it ends up slamming into the wall across from us. “Or maybe we just have different roles to play here.”
He nods to the two strands he’s already woven together. “Pop a couple more nightmares up here and let’s see what we can do.”
I do as he asks, then watch in astonishment as he weaves them together as easily and better than any tapestry artist. But when Jude moves to hand him several more nightmares, they run away from him and circle me instead.
Remy shoots me an I told you so look as I grab them and hand them to him.
“What picture are you weaving?” Izzy asks from where she’s keeping a safe distance—whether from Remy or the nightmares, I’m not sure.
“I’m not,” he answers. “It’s doing that itself.”
“You’re not making the picture?” I ask, surprised.
“I’m a time wizard, not an artist.”
His answer only makes me more curious, because it reminds me of what the tapestry could do before it broke. I’ve never seen anything that could change pictures at whim like that.
“Hey!” Mozart says suddenly. I glance her way and realize she looks completely relieved. “That creepy feeling I’ve had since we got here is gone.”
“What creepy feeling?” Simon asks, looking confused.
“Like someone’s walking on my grave.” She shudders. “Gave me the heebie-jeebies.”
“There was a teenage vamp in here for a while,” I tell her. “He’s been bringing a different girl here every five minutes since we showed up. You’re pretty much standing on his favorite make-out spot.”
She jumps about ten feet to the left. “What the hell? Why didn’t you tell me?”
I take a couple of bright-turquoise nightmares from Jude and pass them through to Remy, who adds them to the tapestry. For the first time, I understand why the chricklers are so many different colors. Because every nightmare is a different hue.
