CHAPTER 16

Eron

Twenty, twenty-five minutes. At the most.

By the time I’m back on Julia’s front lawn, I’m in a dither. It’s less than five days before I’m supposed to return to the human world for good. By now, my time on earth should be stretching to at least three or four hours each day. Instead, I barely had time to orient myself before fading. And all because of my student, who can’t for the life of him follow simple directions.

I grimace, rubbing my sore head. If he hadn’t swatted me there, I might have had a few more moments with Julia. His interference with the human world caused me to fade. I am certain of it. If he is not behaving himself like a proper Sleepbringer, then I cannot be human.

Before I can climb Julia’s tree, I hear Chimere’s giggles. Here I thought she’d be in a sour mood like me, scolding our newest member for his transgressions. Sometimes I just don’t understand her. When I rise past the leaves to the branch she’s lounging on, I realize that she’s not just in a joyful mood; she’s in a joyful mood because my student is … Oh, how improper.

Chimere has her shoe off, and her skirt is pulled up to her knee. And Mr. Colburn is sitting across from her, leaning against the trunk of the tree, with her foot in his lap. Massaging her ankle. They turn to me, and immediately Chimere blushes and throws her skirt down to cover more of her legs. She giggles some more. “I twisted my ankle,” she explains, “and Mr. Colburn was good enough to tend to it.”

“The saint,” I mutter.

She tilts her head. “Oh! What has gotten you in such a foul mood?”

I jab a finger at the young man at the other end of her branch. He’s much too absorbed in Chimere’s tender and dainty foot for my liking. It’s shameful. “He has,” I say, seething. “I should still be down there, becoming human. Instead, I had no more than thirty minutes.”

Colburn’s eyes narrow. “Just what are you accusing me of, old man?”

A vein on the side of my brow pulsates with heat. Chimere straightens. “Don’t fret, my pet. Everything is in order.”

“In order? How can you—”

“Mr. Colburn did well with the seduction last night, did he not? I was very pleased. And do not trouble yourself if you were only human a short time today. These things vary. Everything will come together,” she says soothingly.

It’s infuriating. I seem to recall Chimere being much less indulgent when I was learning the trade. They stare at me until my cheeks burn. “But … he hit me,” I sputter, very aware that I sound every bit of two years old.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he returns indignantly. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to slap that smug expression off his lying face.

“Nonsense, Eron,” Chimere sings, turning to him. “He has been here, with me. For quite some time.”

They exchange looks, and I can tell someone is not being truthful. Perhaps they are both lying. I’ve always trusted Chimere, though she can be naive, but she is not above telling lies. She hates conflict. Her eyes turn to me, pleading.

I sigh. “Fine, fine,” I say to Chimere. “But tell him. Make sure he knows that he can’t touch humans. If he gets sent to the Last Place and I’m stuck here, I’ll—”

Colburn exhales. “I get it, I get it. See that dead horse in the corner?”

Chimere smiles. “It looks like we are all in accordance. I’ll leave you both to your work, then. Please try to get along.”

I meet Colburn’s sneer with an icy glare. We don’t speak for several moments. Finally, he says, “Sure we will.”

Even after Chimere disappears, we continue our staring match. I sigh. “Why did you hit me?”

“I was trying to show you. Bret was in the window, watching you, and—”

“I know.”

“So then you know what I said was true.” I’m about to say that I’m still unsure, when his face softens. “So was it me hitting you that shortened your time down there?”

“I imagine so.”

He shakes his head. “Bret had his hands all over her today.”

“He … did?” The thought alarms me, but I push it away. This is not something we need be concerned about. “Well, perhaps that is what she wants.”

“No way in hell. You didn’t see the look on her face. She was just being nice.”

He does have a point. Julia is nothing if not polite, but she did cry out against him when he kissed her in her dream. “Still … I have a hard time believing that this young man, your best friend, can be as evil as you say.”

His eyes narrow. “Why would I lie?”

“Because you are obviously too attached to her to be thinking straight.”

“Oh yeah?” He rubs his chin, and his face falls, revealing him in a rare vulnerable moment. Clearly hurt, he mutters, “Screw you.”

Everything he says blurs the line between truth and fiction. If Julia truly is in danger … if I knew that for certain, I couldn’t stand idly by. I didn’t before; though I knew it was against the rules, my emotions got the best of me. Colburn’s face reveals nothing, but I don’t need to take his word for it, I suppose. I have the answers at my disposal. It will take some careful research, perhaps require the bending of a few rules, but the answers are there.

I give him a pointed look. “Fine. I will check into it. If you follow the rules.”

He nods. “Fine.”

“I’m quite serious. If I so much as suspect you’re not where you should be, I won’t do a thing.”

He sighs. “Got it. I promise.”

Since he’s almost sounding reasonable, I go further. “And please don’t play with Chimere like that. She may be an Original but she’s quite naive to humans.”

He grins. “Are you jealous, old man?”

I straighten, thinking of how she let him do something so compromising as massaging her foot. “Of course not. It’s simply … I can tell she has taken a liking to you, and I would hate to see her hurt.”

“Seriously?” He grins. “But you said she’s not interested in that. She’s not a girl.”

“You are not a man,” I remind him. I’m relieved when the door to Julia’s room opens and I see her enter, then settle down on the bed. Though it’s a warm June day, she pulls the comforter over her body. The sun is setting, but still strong, streaming orange rays through her blinds. It’s much too early for Julia to be sleeping. And yet I can feel that it’s time. The compulsion to visit her is overwhelming, drawing me toward her window. My student inches forward, feeling the drive as well. He casts me a questioning look, and I shrug. “I suppose,” I say, following him through the window and into the bedroom.

We separate and move over her, one of us on each side of her bed. Only her forehead and a few wisps of her tea-colored hair are poking out from the blankets. I gently ease the sheets down and study her. There are deep worry lines in her brow, and her jaw seems clenched in pain. “Is she ill?” I ask, mostly to myself. I bring my hand over her forehead but feel no heat there.

But there’s no mistake, I realize, as I look at her hands clutching her pink comforter, that she’s trembling.

I meet my student’s eyes. He gives me the same wide-eyed expression he wore when I accused him of lying to Chimere.

I draw in a breath. “Mr. Colburn. What did you do to her?”

In the early morning, satisfied that Mr. Colburn is doing what needs to be done to care for our charges, I make my way across town, checking every so often to see if Chimere has followed me. Again, she will not be pleased to know what I am up to, but this is something I am compelled to do as Julia’s protector.

I stop at a large brick house I know only vaguely. Once or twice, when Julia didn’t come home, I was drawn here, only to find her yawning away on the leather sofa in the basement. Perhaps Mr. Colburn and Mr. Anderson had been nearby, but I’d never seen them. This time, I venture to the window of Bret’s bedroom. A girl with white-blond hair is perched on the landing, and she’s dressed so revealingly I can’t bring myself to look at her. Her breasts spill out of her tight red dress, which barely covers any part of her long legs. She narrows her eyes at me as I approach.