Page 144 of Ex Somnis

When he left, Lennon went to sleep in my room, saying she wanted to try reaching Derek now that he had the tea, but Paul and I continued digging. Got nowhere. Made coffee. Ran out of theories. Ran out of coffee.

I know Seraphine isn’t lying. I was there. I remember the fury in her voice when she threw me out of Jasper’s dream. She was real and in there.

But I once got yelled at by a psychic woman in somebody else’s subconscious turns out is not a sentence that generates actionable research.

On screen, something lurches out of the dark. Paul’s decorative fruit suddenly requires his full attention.

I scoff and look at the ceiling.

Five years, and I still can’t watch him pretend.

Someone on screen opens a door that no reasonable person would open. I’m preparing a lecture on survival instincts when I hear something behind us.

Crunch.

I turn toward the noise.

“What the fuck?” My hand flies to my chest, and I may have made a sound. “Where are your mittens, man?”

Six feet seven inches of Nevan Shaw stands in the kitchen doorway with his forehead against the upper frame, wearing only his boxers, face blank, eyes focused on nothing, eating a bowl of cereal.

Crunch.

Nevan keeps eating and crunching, the sound making my hair stand on end.

“He’s sleepwalking,” Paul says, in the tone of someone who has better peripheral vision, clocked this thirty seconds ago, and chose not to tell me about it. “I asked him to leave the mittens off for a few nights to test a low dose of the new medication. I wanted to observe his REM behavior without the containment.” He sighs heavily. “It appears the dose is too low.”

Crunch.

“You don’t say?”

“What?” Paul counters, a tiny smirk on his mouth. “Did the boy scare you under all the blazing lights?”

“He appeared out of nowhere!”

“He went into the kitchen. Got a bowl. Got cereal. A spoon.”

“Appearing from the kitchen still counts as appearing from nowhere when the person is the size of a wardrobe.”

Crunch.

“And I was watching a horror movie.”

Paul hums. “That’s fair.”

Thank you.

I look at Nevan, who has not registered any of the conversation and is still working through the cereal. “Should we…”

“Don’t touch him unless he’s heading for a window.” Paul’s focus returns to the movie. “Let him finish.”

“He’s going to eat the whole box.”

The door to my bedroom opens, and Lennon steps into the living room, drowning in one of Nevan’s shirts, her hair doing something, well, spectacular. She’s holding her phone in one hand while rubbing her eyes with the other.

“Everything okay?” she asks, her voice thick with sleep.

Fuck, she’s cute.