Chapter 5

Janelle looked frightened.

"I... I had a nightmare about you; I wanted to make sure you were okay."

He let her in. She wasn't even dressed -- short-hem long-sleeve white satin robe and slip-on running shoes.

"I'm okay," he lied. For the last fifteen minutes he'd been thinking about not telling her about the marble -- about any of it -- but if he didn't, it wouldn't be over, and he wanted it to be over. He was tired of trying to figure her out, and things were only getting weirder, and if he spent any more time around her he was likely to do something stupid.
Well, more stupid.

"I found it," he said. "It's a marble. He hides it in the fishtank." Will didn't understand it, but he didn't really want to.

He thought vaguely about what would happen now. She'd grab the thing -- some heirloom? some precious ancient artifact? maybe its value would buy her freedom, maybe she had to return it to someone to clear her name? -- Stop it, Will, if it makes sense it might make you care. She'd grab the thing and go, and her furious husband would come looking for her. It would get ugly. Will was fucked.

Better clean the gun.

Will couldn't shoot worth a shit, but the old snub-nose revolver looked serious enough and made plenty of noise, and that might be enough to get through to a man nicknamed Rhino.

He sat down behind his desk; the desk lamp was cocked too high and blinded him -- the rest of the office was still dark -- but he didn't bother to adjust it. It was probably better that he couldn't see her very well.

"Ohmygod, what happened to your face?" Janelle sounded concerned, but not alarmed. She flipped on the office lights, casting a bright greenish glow over everything that made Will squint, which made his cheek hurt. It was already swelling.

"Nothing. I fell." The contradiction made the lie obvious, but he tried to sell it anyway. "Off the couch. When I woke up." She stood across the desk from him now, and leaned across to touch his cheek; he winced. "He just startled me." He assumed she knew about Randy's ability to Dream. In retrospect, it was obvious -- it was why she'd approached him in the first place.

"He startled you?"
"Yeah. I asked for it -- I yanked a thread pretty hard." She seemed to understand what he meant. "At first I thought I woke him up, but then he saw me, and-"

"What? He saw you?"

Wait, what? She didn't know? Or was this another game? She was so damned convincing...

"Well, yeah," he said dumbly.
"Are you sure?"
"He asked me who I was." Actually, who the fuck he was, but close enough. "Then he asked me to leave." Then there was the ass-kicking, and being trapped in Dream, and escaping through his own nightmare, and seeing her where she'd never been... but if she didn't even know Randy could see someone else in Dream, it was probably better he stop short for now.

Her face paled. She felt behind her for the couch and unsteadily took a seat. She mumbled something he couldn't quite make out, but sounded a little like "goddess help them."

"What's wrong?"

Janelle stood up, a sudden grim determination on her face. "I'm sorry, Will. I shouldn't have involved you. Just... forget I ever came here."
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to go home to my husband." It was the most... tragic thing Will had ever heard.

Was this part of her act? Was he supposed to jump in now? He felt played, and yet he made a half-hearted attempt anyway. Maybe it was a sense of professionalism, maybe it was something else. "Wait... Don't just give up. If you need help... I mean, if he moves it and you need me to find it again, I don't mind. I mean, it's what you paid for. And if you need help with anything else, like... I mean..." don't be a hero, Will, "there are programs, or I could refer you to someone who specializes-"

She cut him off. "Will." At first he thought she was offended at his unheroic offer, but her withering look meant something else. "This is my problem, not yours." She turned to go, her hand gripping the doorknob, muscles tensing as she tugged on the sticking door...

"Wait," Will said desperately.
What are you doing?
I don't know. I deserve some answers...
You deserve not to get your ass beat in Dream by a man named Rhino.
But none of this makes any sense. How will I ever let any of this go if it doesn't make any sense?

Janelle had paused, but wasn't waiting.
Will's words tumbled out, emotion turned to words without intervening thought. "What are you trying to do to me? What do you want from me? You come to me to find something, you hardly tell me anything, but all the signals... pulling and pushing... and then there's somebody else who can Dream, and I find the thing you said you wanted only you say 'never mind'... and you keep showing up at the end... I don't understand. Why? Why did you even come here in the first place? Is it just torture? I just..."

Janelle looked down, ashamed. "You're right. I'm sorry. I'll leave now." She resumed her struggle with the sticky door, her whole body jostling and shaking as the tug-of-war escalated...

... until her robe fell off her shoulder, exposing the slender spaghetti strap of her low-cut nightgown.

And the huge scars that ran the length of her shoulder blades.

"Oh my God," Will breathed.

The flesh was dark and twisted and rough and angry, cruel contrast to Janelle's beauty. Will knew the monster who'd inflicted such wounds was no different.

Will had suspected some kind of physical fallout, but this... Nothing distanced like a broken bone or diffuse like a bruise, but jagged and ugly and sick with violence, Will felt his humanity sucked into its shocking gravity.

The scars were only exposed for a moment: as quickly as the robe had fallen, Janelle pulled it back up. She continued tugging on the doorknob, now with only one hand, but using all of her weight, desperate to escape.

"Janelle." Will rushed across the room, his hands coming gently to her shoulders. "Stop..." His hand fell to hers on the doorknob, stilling her, pulling her away from it. Her struggles stopped, and she turned, slipping free of his hold only to collapse back against the door, exasperated. He stepped closer, arms wrapping around her, feeling her fall into his embrace.

He wasn't letting her go. Not now. Not after seeing that. Confusion fell to the clarity of purpose. Details didn't matter. What mattered was that she was in trouble, she needed help, and she'd come to him. All of Janelle's games, the flirting, the manipulation, the dishonesty -- if any of it was ever a game at all -- all were forvigen in a heartbeat.

It didn't matter how he got here, only where he went next.
And Will was ready to go all the way.

"It's gonna be okay," he soothed. "I'm not gonna let him hurt you again."

She pulled back, looking up into his eyes with tragic amusement; her hand brushed his cheek. "Oh, Will, that's... sweet. But I can't let you get involved. He's my problem."

"He doesn't have to be. Leave him."
"It's not that simple."
"Sure it is."
"No." She slipped past him, stepping to the window, looking up at the sky. "You don't know what he can do."

"You don't know what I can do." Of course, neither did Will. But he'd always felt something in Dream, a vibe whenever he Shifted that there was more, much more. He'd never dared explore it before -- he'd always been afraid, either of hurting someone or of going so deep he didn't want to wake up. But now with Randy out there, and Janelle here, he wasn't afraid of those things anymore.

She turned and look at him. Hard. Like she was sizing him up. Or maybe like she was seeing something in him for the first time. "Sit down, Will."

He moved to the couch, but hesitated in front of it. "I'm not gonna let-"
"Sit down."
Will sat, tense but silent.

Janelle settled back, half-sitting on the window ledge. The streetlight outside seemed to hang like a halo over her head. She looked down at the floor for a long time, her lips occasionally parting but never quite forming words, as if she kept thinking she'd figured out where to begin and then reconsidered. Finally she just tsk-tsked and shook her head; she had to start somewhere...

"When I first heard about you, I thought you were the answer -- my ticket out of here. I was tired -- we've been here almost ten years now -- and I thought, how much trouble could he cause here if I left him? After all, he was just a man here. Ten years was enough penance.

"You have to understand, I thought it was hopeless. He bound me, just like they warned us would happen if we got careless. Binding is forever, unless you can take the object that binds you. Only two wagons ever escaped their towel lids, and they were long before my time. So-"

"Wait," Will interrupted. "Only two wagons escaped a what's-it?"

Janelle smiled; shoulders shook with a little chuckle. "No, Wi'gens." She enunciated more carefully. "I'm Wi'gen. And Randy is Tal'id. We're from tu'Ress."

"Why-gginn and Tao-led."
"Close enough."
"From Tourette's."
"Tu-RESS. Yes."

Will cocked an eyebrow. "Never heard of it. Is that like a Balkan state?"

Janelle hesitated, deciding what to tell him. Then she sighed, "it's on the other side of Dream."

Will just stared at her for a long moment as a thousand little memories started to go off like popcorn. The shadows of nothing in Dream, the phantom threads that ran off into nowhere, things Will had long ago learned to ignore suddenly had a theory. The Other Side of Dream.

Well, Fuck Me Naked.