The Children of Hypnos

Chapter 18: Skeleton Boy

That night in Emery's dorm room, none of the seven of them could come up with explanations for what Emery and Wes had seen in the Dream.

Emery sat, legs folded, on top of her desk. Edgar sat in the desk chair, slowly nodding off. Ridley had settled herself on one end of the narrow dorm bed, and Joel and Jacqueline fought for space at the other end; Kris and Lewis sat close but very decidedly not touching, on the floor. Wes leaned against the doorframe.

They ran through every scenario Emery could think of.

"So here's what we've got," she said at three A.M, with Edgar's forehead resting against her knee and the non-dreamhunters among them getting frayed and hoarse. She held up a finger. "One: The Sandman—"

"Klaus," Wes said.

"—Klaus had a drawing of my doppelgänger in his nightmare because I was on his mind and he thinks about doppelgängers a lot. Not my favorite theory. He was following me for a reason." She held up another finger. "Two: He had the drawing because he's waiting for my doppelgänger to appear and he was following me because he thinks it will soon? Or...because he wants to sic it on me when it does?" Emery rubbed her forehead. "Also not my favorite theory. Three—"

"Em," Joel interrupted. His head was back against the wall, his eyes half-closed. "Maybe we should talk about this tomorrow." He glanced at the clock. "Um, later today. I don't think running over the same theories is going to help."

"He's right," Jacqueline said. "There isn't enough evidence to support any of these." She stood from the bed, yawned, and nudged Kris and Lewis awake with the toe of her boot. "I'm going back to my room."

Joel got up too, stopping by the desk to lean over Edgar and give Emery a quick kiss goodbye. "I'm really glad you're okay," he said.

He, Jacqueline, Kris, and Lewis shuffled out of the room, closing the door behind them. Wes looked at Ridley and made a motion with his head.

"We should get out of here, too."

Ridley looked between them. She had her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs, and her limbs were so thin she looked like an odd pile of sticks. "Are you sure you're both okay? I mean, even forgetting the Sandman stuff and the poison and the doppelgänger—you were in the Dream for a while."

"We're fine." Wes held out his hand. "Come on."

Ridley let him tug her toward the door, but she glanced back. "Um, thank you, Emery."

"For what?"

"For getting Wes out of the Dream."

Wes growled. "Ridley..."

Emery snorted. "You have that backwards. He got me out of the Dream."

Wes paused and looked back at her. Emery busied herself with gathering Edgar's sleeping form up out of the desk chair.

When Wes and Ridley were gone, the door closed behind them, Emery lifted Edgar's dead weight and carried him the two feet to the bed, where she laid him down and pulled the covers over him. She herself only used the bed once a month, and only if the sleep research center let her take her monthly sleep in her own dorm room instead of one of their labs where they could monitor her. Edgar would probably have preferred to sleep in his own bed—he'd once told her that his classmates made fun of him when he smelled like her body spray—but he'd get made fun of more for being carried, sleeping, across campus.

As soon as the blankets dropped over his shoulder, he made a quiet humming noise and burrowed his head underneath the pillow.

~