Page 197 of Ex Somnis

“Oh,” he says when he straightens, looking at Paul. “You’re already here?”

Paul nods. “Just arrived.”

“Too early,” Ridge says, sighing dramatically and kissing my neck.

Nevan frowns. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing,” I say, before Ridge derails a perfectly good group lucidity in ninety seconds. “It means nothing, Nevan.” I step out of Ridge’s hold and grab Nevan’s sleeve. “You made it into Ridge’s dreamscape. That’s huge.”

Nevan pinches his nose shut and breathes through it anyway, checking for himself. “Still dreaming,” he says.

“Still dreaming,” I confirm. “Okay. Let’s get to work. Who wants to be Tessa first?”

“Before we do that, let’s see if he can build at all,” Paul says, taking control. “One thing at a time.”

He nods at Nevan, who stares blankly at him. “Build what?”

“Anything,” I say. “That’s the whole point. You can do anything you want here. There’s no wrong one. Just pick a thing and try it.”

I can see him thinking about it, his brow doing the thing, his big shoulders coming up around his ears, and I have just enough time to think, oh no, before the air detonates.

Clouds. Clouds come boiling out of him in every direction, thick, gray, and damp, faster than I can step back, and the planet vanishes. The flowers vanish. Ridge vanishes. There’s nothing but wet cotton and the sound of three people coughing.

“Stop it,” Paul says, choking, somewhere to my left. “Nevan! Stop!”

“How?” Nevan’s voice is panicked, very close, but he’s completely invisible. “I don’t even know what I did, how do I…”

“Pull it back. Same as you pushed it out. Think about pulling it back in,” Paul instructs.

Immediately, the clouds thin, then it goes all at once, sucked back into wherever it came from as fast as it arrived. The flowers are there again along with the galaxy, and Nevan is standing in the middle of it all, looking like a man who just set off a firework in his hands.

Ridge wipes mist off his face. “Wow, baby boy. Clouds? That is so helpful. We’ll absolutely have a need for clouds going into a rescue.”

“Shut up, Ridge,” Paul chimes in. “That can be helpful.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know, but it can be.”

Ridge scoffs, and Nevan glares at him, but it’s undercut by the fact that he’s gone pink to the ears.

“Ridge,” I warn. “Be nice.”

“What? I’m being supportive.” Ridge holds up his hands, all innocence. “I’m genuinely curious, though. Why clouds? I’d have bet money your comfort zone was the inn. Or a skate park. Something with, I don’t know. Ground?”

“I like them. You can lie under clouds all day, and they don’t ask you for anything.”

I want to cross the few steps over the flowers and put my arms around him, but I don’t. Instead, I say, “They were good clouds. I liked them.”

Nevan smiles at me, and I can’t help but smile back.

“Okay.” Paul claps his hands once. “He can build. Good. That’s what we needed to know. Now the real thing. We need to look like Tessa. How about we start by trying? Same thing here, Nevan. You think about how you want to look and let it happen.”

I close my eyes, think of the shape, and the shape comes. I hold Tessa in my head, the weight on one hip, the gap in her teeth, the exact pink on her nails, and I feel my bones rearrange and grow, a slither under the skin that should be horrifying and somehow isn’t. A cool slide like stepping into water that’s the wrong temperature for a brief moment and then fine.

I open my eyes and look down at my feet. They aren’t mine.

When I look up, Ridge is already done.