Night Terrors (10 page)

“I knew it!”
Jinx said, his voice louder.
“Why were you pretending to be asleep? What’s wrong? Don’t you want to see me?”

On the word
see
, his eyes lit up with bluish light, illuminating his face and body. He was dressed like a hobo in a tattered jacket with a dead flower fixed to the lapel, a dirty white shirt, and an ugly blue tie with orange dots. I took my lower lip between my teeth and bit down hard to hold back the scream that was building inside me. If I screamed, Jinx would vanish – at least, he always had before – and my mom and dad would come running, just as they always did.

Only they’d gotten tired of my waking up screaming after one of my “nightmares”, and by this point, I was almost as afraid of their anger as I was of Jinx. They’d started threatening to take me to “see someone” if I didn’t settle down, and even though I was only ten, I knew what that meant. “Someone” was a doctor, and doctors meant shots and pills – and I wanted nothing to do with either. So I fought to hold my scream inside and prayed Jinx would get tired of torturing me and leave soon.

The cold blue-white light from Jinx’s eyes illuminated me as well, and his smile widened as he saw the terrified expression on my face.

“You
are
awake! And you’re scared. That’s good. That’s very good.”

His ivory-fleshed hands gripped my footboard tighter, and as I watched, his fingernails lengthened into sharp black talons.

His smile grew even wider, until the edges of his mouth tore and lines of bright red blood trickled down his white face. I couldn’t fight it any longer. The scream came, high and shrill, and all the louder for having been restrained for so long.

Jinx laughed in delight, sounding almost like a happy child before breaking into fog-like wisps and disappearing.

My door swung open, and I prepared to apologize to my parents, to beg them not to send me to a doctor. But they didn’t enter my bedroom. Jinx did. Day Jinx, that is.

Even though he looked like a normal human, he was still recognizably Jinx, and the sight of him was enough to make me draw in a gasping breath in preparation for another scream. I’m not sure what stopped me. Maybe it was that the lights were still on in my bedroom – and that it was
my
room. The adult me. But it might have been the look of concern on Jinx’s face, an expression so different from anything I’d ever seen on his night face. Whatever the reason, I managed to let out my breath in a shaky exhalation instead of a scream.

Jinx and I looked at each other for a moment, and then he said, “I assume you took a backstep.”

Since Ideators don’t sleep, we don’t dream. But sometimes when we’ve gone too long without getting enough rest, we experience hallucinatory memories so strong, it’s like literally reliving them. The Somnocologists call these episodes backsteps. This wasn’t the first one I’d experienced, but it was one of the worst. I’d actually believed I was ten years old, in my bedroom at my parents’ house, being terrorized by Jinx in the middle of the night.

I sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed.

“What makes you say that? Maybe I was watching a scary movie and it just got to me.”

“You hate scary movies,” Jinx said.

He was right. When your job involves dealing with living nightmares, you don’t enjoy reading or watching scary stuff in your downtime. At least I don’t.

I changed the subject. “Looks like you’re ready to go out.”

Jinx had changed into a new shirt and gray suit. He wore a conservative blue tie and black dress shoes. His sartorial tastes were vastly different from those of his other Aspect.

“I was just about to head out to the Art Institute when I heard you… well, when I heard you.”

His expression of concern – which he’d worn the entire time we spoke – now deepened, and I thought I detected guilt in his gaze. But then he gave me one of what I thought of as his “day smiles”. Thin-lipped and barely noticeable.

“Have you changed your mind about coming with me? Aesthetic experiences can refresh the human mind just as well as physical rest in their own way, you know.”

“Thanks, but I think I should stay here and rest – really rest – some more.” I faked a smile. “I obviously need it.”

Jinx’s smile fell away and his expression grew serious. “Audra, you didn’t… take anything, did you?” he asked.

Anger flashed bright and hot in me, and I had to fight to keep from snapping at him. “Only water,” I said, my voice tight.

He regarded me a moment longer before finally nodding. “Very well. I’ll be back at least an hour before sunset.”

Day Jinx knew better than to allow his night self to roam the city streets alone. Without me to babysit him, there’s no telling what sort of mischief he’d get up to.

“Sounds good,” I said.

“Promise me you’ll stay here until I get back?”

“I promise.”

“And try not to get too broody about the meeting with Sanderson. I’m sure he’ll come up with another assignment for us soon.”

“Sure.”

He gave me a last look, one that I couldn’t interpret, and then he left, closing the door gently behind him.

I heard the apartment door open and close, followed by the sound of Jinx locking it. I then waited an extra ten minutes just to be sure he was gone. Then I got up and put my suit on.

It was time to get back to work.

 

I didn’t want to waste any time, so I caught a cab to the Near North and got out a couple blocks from my destination. The place I was going to wasn’t secret exactly, but when you work for an other-dimensional law enforcement agency, you tend to err on the side of paranoia.

Wet Dreams is a hole-in-the-wall bar that doesn’t advertise. No website, no entry in the phone directory, not even a sign out front. No windows, either. Just a plain wooden door, unremarkable except for the ornate brass knob fashioned in the shape of a demon’s head. At night, you have to be careful opening the door because if the knob is in a bad mood, it might bite your hand. But it was day now, and the knob was only cold, lifeless brass. I turned it, pushed the door open, and went inside.

As always, the first thing that hit me was the smell. I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not talking about the stink of stale beer, dried piss, and old vomit. It was a subtler smell than any of those, a combination of air after a thunderstorm and the acrid tang inside the reptile house at the zoo. It was the smell of Incubi – a lot of them. Over the years, the odor had worked its way into the floor, walls, ceiling, and furniture, and even when the bar was mostly empty – like now – it still smelled as if it were packed full of living nightmares. I’ve worked with Jinx long enough that I’ve gotten used to the scent. It helps that Incubi don’t smell as strong in their Day Aspects, and there are so many competing smells in Nod that my olfactory sense is usually stunned into submission when I’m there. But here, in the enclosed windowless space, the scent slammed into me like a brick between the eyes. I thought of the backstep I’d just experienced. Jinx had smelled like this when he came to me at night.

My stomach twisted with nausea, and I realized I hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast, and it was getting close to lunch. I have a bad habit of forgetting to feed myself. And not resting enough. And disobeying Sanderson’s orders whenever I didn’t agree with them.

The latter was the reason I’d come here, and I’d come alone because while Night Jinx is a living embodiment of chaos, his day self has a stick up his ass a mile long. He was a stickler for… well, everything. But especially for rules. If he’d known what I was up to, he’d chastise me for going against Sanderson’s wishes, nag me to stop, and keep nagging me. At least until sunset. And I simply wasn’t up to dealing with that right now. Besides, after the memory I’d relived during my backstep, I didn’t want to be around Jinx, regardless of which Aspect he was in.

Wet Dreams’ interior is about as no-frills as it was possible for a bar to get. Brick walls, concrete floor (complete with suspicious stains), round wooden tables and uncomfortable chairs, and a bar that looked like, well, a bar. The lighting was dim, which added to the bar’s overall miasma of gloom. Incubi, regardless of their Aspect, are more comfortable in dark places. Light doesn’t hurt them in any way, but it does make them uncomfortable.

The action at Wet Dreams doesn’t really pick up until after dark, but there were a dozen or so regulars present. I was familiar with them all, but some I knew better than others, and none were all that happy to see me. An Incubus named Scattershot got up from his table as soon as I walked in, and headed for the exit. As far as I knew, he wasn’t involved in anything shady, but I made a mental note to check up on him later.

Lizzie Longlegs was sitting at a table with Cancer Jack, both of them looking relatively normal in their Day Aspects. Jack eyed me warily as I entered, ever-present cigarette dangling from his lips, but Lizzie gave me a smile and a nod. Lizzie and Jack had been an on-again, off-again couple for years, longer than I’d been an officer. Maybe longer than I’d been alive. Their relationship ran hot and cold. When it was hot, it was very hot, but when it turned cold… well, it was better – and safer – to stay as far away from them as possible.

I tried to get a read on which extreme the pendulum of their relationship was currently at, but their body language gave nothing away. They weren’t sitting close, but they weren’t sitting far apart, either. They weren’t touching, but they weren’t shooting venomous looks at each other, so that was a good sign.

Abe Chen sat at the bar, and he glanced over his shoulder at me, face expressionless, and then faced forward once more. Abe’s a middle-aged man whose Incubus – some kind of bird creature he called Budgie – left him not long after its Ideation was complete. He had no idea where it might’ve gone, and he never heard from it again.

There’s no law that says an Incubus has to remain near its creator. Once they come into existence, they’re separate beings, free to make their own choices and act as they will. Even so, they tend to stay close to their Ideators if they stay on Earth, even if they don’t maintain contact with them. There’s a bond – or maybe link would be a better word – between Ideators and Incubi. One that goes both ways. It’s not uncommon for Ideators to follow their Incubi to Nod, and if for some reason they can’t find each other or become separated – or if one dies – they feel as if there’s something wrong in their lives, something vital. They often end up lonely and depressed.

Although in Abe’s case, no one really believed there ever had been a Budgie. He was commonly thought to be a nightfreak, a human who’d somehow become aware of Incubi and wanted so much to be a part of their world that he posed as an Ideator. Abe was a nice guy and harmless enough, so the customers at Wet Dreams played along with his pretense, myself and Jinx included.

At the opposite end of the bar sat one of the creepiest Incubi I’ve ever encountered – the Darkness – along with his Ideator, a woman in her sixties named Maggie Martin. In his Day Aspect, the Darkness looked like a young man in his early twenties. In his Night Aspect… well, maybe it’s better if I leave that up to your imagination. Maggie was a petite firecracker of a woman who loved life with the gusto of a teenager and who didn’t suffer fools. She looked upon the Darkness as the son she never had and made sure to keep the darker side of his nature on a very short leash.

The Darkness ignored me and took a sip of his Coke – Maggie doesn’t let him drink alcohol. Maggie, however, lifted a scotch to me in a salute and gave me a grin. I couldn’t help but smile back.

I took a seat at the bar between Abe and Maggie and the Darkness. Not because I was being antisocial, but because I hadn’t come here to chat.

The man behind the bar was larger than life, even in his Day Aspect. Deacon Booze stands close to seven feet tall, is broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, and his arms are as thick as most people’s legs. He has a full head of dense black hair that he wears bound in a ponytail that reaches down to the small of his back. His mustache and beard are just as black as his hair, and the tips of the mustache are curled up in an old-fashioned style. His features are pronounced and sharp, and they look as if they were carved from solid granite. But his eyes are a warm brown, and he always wears a friendly smile. He was dressed in a white work shirt with the sleeves rolled up and jeans. I’ve never see him dressed in any other way. Some Incubi are so old and strong that they retain a small measure of their power even during the day, and I sometimes wonder if that’s the case with Deacon. His shirts aren’t just white. They’re always spotless, and they practically glow with their own light. He always wears a button pinned to his shirt with the words
In Vino Veritas
on it. Latin for
In wine, there is truth
.

“Hey, Audra,” he greeted me as he came over to see me. “Flying solo today?”

“There’s an exhibit at the Art Institute that Jinx wanted to see.”

“The Titian? That’s a good one. He’ll really enjoy it.”

As far as I know, Deacon never leaves his bar – literally. In fact, that’s one of the conditions for his being allowed to stay on Earth. But I didn’t ask how he knew about the exhibit.

As a Shadow Watch officer, I’d learned long ago not to ask my friends questions I might not like the answer to.

“What’ll it be?” Deacon asked. His voice is a mellow baritone, and every time I hear him speak, I wonder what he’d sound like singing. Pretty damn good, I bet. “A glass of white wine? Or maybe something stronger? I imagine you can use it after what happened last night.”

I wasn’t surprised that Deacon knew about last night’s clusterfuck. When it comes to the Incubi community, he was information central. Which was why I’d come here, of course.