Chapter 6: The Morning After the Dream
The breakfast nook smelled of salt and coffee, the kind of dark roast that Mandy ordered from a specialty roaster in Little Havana because she claimed the grocery store stuff tasted like burnt regret. Katrina stood in the doorway longer than she meant to, one hand braced against the frame, watching them.
Mandy sat with her back to the windows, hair still damp from a shower, her laptop open beside her plate though she wasn't looking at it. Felicity had her nose in a leather-bound notebook, scribbling something with a fountain pen, her blonde hair pulled back in a messy knot. Mai was draped sideways across her chair, bare legs hooked over one armrest, wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt that probably belonged to someone else. Calista sat straight-backed, cutting her eggs into precise squares, her alabaster skin almost luminous in the morning light.
Jeeves hovered near the stove, his mechanical arms a blur as he flipped omelets and poured orange juice into mismatched glasses. The little automaton hummed a tune Katrina didn't recognize—something old, maybe, though she couldn't place it.
"Good morning, Mistress Katrina," Jeeves chimed. "Your eggs are ready. I took the liberty of adding extra cheese, as you seem to enjoy it."
She managed a nod. "Thanks."
Her voice came out thin. Scratchy.
She had spent the hours before dawn sitting on the floor of the guest bedroom, listening to the house settle, feeling the walls breathe. She had counted her heartbeats, catalogued every scrap of the dream, and tried to convince herself it had been nothing but her own imagination—thirty years of isolation finding an outlet in the dark. She had almost succeeded. Almost.
But she could still feel the ghost of Rick's cock inside her. The phantom weight of Calista's hand on her hip. The impossible texture of Mandy's tongue.
And the figure in the grove.
She took a seat at the table, and Calista's golden eyes flicked up immediately. The half-elf set down her fork slowly, her expression shifting from contentment to something sharper.
"You look like shit," Calista said, and it wasn't an insult. It was a diagnosis.
Mandy's head came up from her laptop. Felicity stopped writing mid-word. Mai swung her legs off the chair and sat upright, her dark eyes narrowing.
"I didn't sleep well," Katrina said.
She picked up her fork, stared at the omelet Jeeves had set before her, and felt the words building in her throat like a scream. She had spent thirty years learning to swallow her fear. Thirty years of silence and solitude and the slow erosion of her sense of self. She was done keeping secrets.
"Actually," she said, "I need to tell you something."
The room went still. Even Jeeves stopped humming, his gears clicking softly as he hovered near the window.
Katrina set down her fork and wrapped her hands around the warm mug of coffee Felicity slid toward her. She took a breath. Then another.
"Last night," she began, "I dreamed I was with all of you. The hot tub, the patio, everything that happened before I went to bed—it was exactly the same. But then Rick and I were together. And then all of you came into the guest room. And you…"
She closed her eyes, and the images flooded back with the force of a punch. Mandy kneeling between her thighs. Beth's mouth on her breast. Calista's fingers inside her. And the pleasure—God, the pleasure had been real. Her body was still trembling with the aftershocks of something that had never happened.
"You fucked me," she said. "All of you. I felt it. Every single second of it. And when I woke up, I was alone. But my cunt was soaking wet, and my heart was pounding like I'd run a marathon."
Felicity did choke this time, orange juice sputtering past her lips as she fumbled for a napkin. Mai let out a low whistle. But Calista's expression didn't change—it was still sharp, still watchful, her golden eyes never leaving Katrina's face.
"Dreamwalking," Felicity said, once she could speak. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, the scholar in her clearly warring with the friend. "That's—what you're describing is dreamwalking. It's a forbidden discipline. The Orders stamped it out centuries ago."
Mandy's jaw tightened. "What the fuck do you mean, forbidden? What is it?"
Felicity's voice dropped into lecture mode, her blue eyes going distant as she pulled from memory. "It's a form of unlicensed astral projection. The practitioner enters someone's dream space while they sleep, and because dreams are vulnerable, the mind accepts whatever the walker fabricates as real. Touch, taste, sensation—all of it feels authentic. The victim wakes up with physical aftereffects. Bruised genitals, sore muscles, even traces of saliva on their skin if the dream included oral contact."
She paused, and her cheeks flushed pink. "My mother wrote a paper on it. I didn't want to read it, but it was required for my Methods of Paranormal Inquiry class."
"So someone fucked her in her sleep," Mandy said flatly. "And it wasn't just a dream."
"It was real," Felicity confirmed. "As real as anything that happens in a dream. The body responds to the mind's instructions. Orgasm is achievable. The physical evidence is subtle but present in a forensic examination." She looked at Katrina with something like pity. "It's a violation. No question."
Katrina's hands tightened around the mug until her knuckles went white. The phantom warmth of Rick's body was still there, a ghost pressed against her skin.
"You said traces," she said. "What kind of traces?"
Felicity set her pen down carefully, aligning it parallel to the edge of her notebook. "There's a signature. The dreamwalker leaves a residue in the victim's mind—a way to track them, to find them again. Anyone trained in arcane forensics could identify it. But it fades within seventy-two hours."
"Seventy-two hours," Mandy repeated. "So whoever did this has a window."
"Yes."
Mai leaned forward, elbows on the table, her T-shirt slipping off one shoulder. "Or they plan to come back. They don't give a shit about the residue. They want her to know she's been touched."
"That's speculation," Felicity said.
"No," Katrina said. The word came out harder than she meant it to. "I saw him."
Four pairs of eyes swung toward her.
"After I woke up," she continued. "I went to the window. There was a man standing in the grove—tall, dark clothes, watching the house. He raised his hand. Like he was saying hello. Or goodbye."
She swallowed hard.
"Then he stepped back into the shadows. I didn't see where he went."
The silence that followed was a living thing, heavy and cold. Mandy's hand moved to her laptop, fingers flying across the keys. Calista stood up from the table, her chair scraping against the floor, and walked to the window. She pulled the curtain aside and stared out at the grove.
"What did he look like?" she asked, her voice strangely calm.
"Tall. Sharp-shouldered. Dark linen suit. I couldn't see his face."
Calista let the curtain fall. She turned back, and there was something in her golden eyes that hadn't been there before—something hard, something hot. The air around her rippled, the faintest shimmer of heat.
"I know who it is," she said. "His name is Corin LeFaye. He's a dream psychic. He works for the Order out of a satellite office in Atlanta, but he's been freelancing lately. I've seen him at parties in Chicago. He's a creep."
"You know him?" Mandy demanded.
"I know of him." Calista's jaw tightened. "He's one of Aemelia's people."
The name landed like a bomb. Katrina felt the temperature in the room drop. Aemelia—the elf who had been Emily, the trickster who had harvested Rick's seed to create Calista, the woman who had orchestrated the Bentley Ridge Incident and left her to rot in a timeless void.
"Your mother," Katrina said. Her voice was flat, but her heart was pounding.
"She's not my mother," Calista corrected. "She's the woman who used my father's DNA to make me. That's biology, not family."
"Fair point," Katrina said. "But she's still out there. And now her people are coming for you."
"Not for me." Calista's golden eyes met hers. "For you. Or for what you represent. Aemelia has been obsessed with the rift since before I was born. She wanted it open. Closing it took something from her. And you were the last person to work on it before it was shut down."
"I don't remember anything," Katrina said. "Thirty years in the void—I lost most of my memories of the Incident. I was a junior researcher. I didn't know anything."
"You knew enough to open it," Calista said, and there was no accusation in her voice, only fact. "You knew the ritual. You knew how it felt. That's in your body, even if your mind doesn't remember. Aemelia probably thinks she can extract it from you."
"Extract?" Mai raised an eyebrow. "What, like brain surgery?"
"Like dreamwalking," Felicity said quietly. "The mind is a filing cabinet. Dreamwalkers can open drawers you forgot were even there."
Mandy pushed back from the table, her chair screeching across the tiles. She walked to Katrina and crouched beside her, one hand resting on the older woman's knee. Her expression was hard, but her touch was gentle.
"Listen to me," Mandy said. "Whatever happened last night, it stops now. I'm going to find this guy. I'm going to figure out how he's getting in. And I'm going to make sure he never touches you again."
Katrina looked down at her hand. Mandy's fingers were slender, nails bitten to the quick, a faint callus on her index finger from years of typing. It was a small hand, a young hand.
"Seventy-two hours," Katrina said. "That's how long the residue lasts."
"Then we have seventy-two hours to catch him."
Mai slid her chair closer, her bare feet padding softly on the floor. "What if we don't just catch him? What if we use it?"
Calista turned from the window. "Use it how?"
Mai shrugged, but her dark eyes were bright with mischief. "He wants into Katrina's dreams. Fine. Let him in. But we make those dreams a trap." She grinned, and it was sharp and dangerous. "Instead of a fantasy, we give him a nightmare. Something that leaves a scar."
"No," Calista said flatly.
"Why not? He's already in her head. If we layer the dream with a hex—"
"Because we don't know what kinds of protections he has," Felicity interrupted. "Dreamwalkers train for centuries to resist psychic interference. If we try to trap him and fail, he could retaliate. We could lose Katrina entirely."
"Then we do protection first," Mandy said. She stood up, her hand sliding from Katrina's knee to her shoulder. "Wards, shields, whatever we've got. And then we find him in the waking world and we deal with him there."
Calista nodded slowly. "I can set fire wards. They won't stop him, but they'll burn him if he gets too close. Elf fire leaves marks that don't heal fast."
"Do it," Mandy said.
"I have some texts on dreamwalking in my room," Felicity added. "They're from my mother's library. She gave them to me when I told her about Bentley Ridge. I can dig them out and see if there's a counter-spell."
"Do it."
Mai stood up, stretching in a way that made her T-shirt ride up her thighs. "What about me? What do I do?"
Mandy looked at her, and for the first time since breakfast began, a smile touched her lips. It was small and sharp, the smirk of a woman who had grown up in a house full of weird and had learned to fight fire with gasoline.
"You're going to call Bruce," she said. "Tell him we need a consultation. And then you're going to call Beth and tell her to get her ass over here. I want every Williamson in this city standing in this house before noon."
"Beth's at Shiv's," Mai said. "She was up late here with Marty."
"Then wake her up. This is family business."
Mai nodded and disappeared toward the stairs, her bare feet silent on the tile.
Calista moved to the door, already reaching for the salt and iron she kept in a pouch on the counter. "I'll start on the perimeter," she said. "If he comes back tonight, he'll find out what happens when you touch a girl with fire in her blood."
"Wait." Katrina's voice stopped her. "Please."
Calista paused, her hand on the doorframe.
"You said this man—Corin—he works for Aemelia. What if he's not the only one? What if there are more?"
"Then we burn them too," Calista said. "One at a time."
She stepped outside, and the door clicked shut behind her.
Katrina sat at the table, staring at her cold omelet and the mug of coffee she hadn't touched. Mandy's hand was still on her shoulder, warm and grounding. Felicity was already scribbling in her notebook again, muttering to herself. Jeeves hovered nearby, his mechanical arms twitching as if he wanted to intervene but didn't know how.
"I'm sorry," Katrina said. "I brought this into your house."
Mandy leaned down, her shaggy hair falling forward to curtain her face. Her breath was warm against Katrina's ear.
"You didn't bring anything. He came looking for you. And now he's going to find out exactly how big this family is." She squeezed Katrina's shoulder once, hard, then straightened. "Now eat your eggs. You're going to need your strength."
Katrina picked up her fork. Her hand was shaking.
She took a bite anyway.
The eggs were good—cheesy and slightly jalapeño-spiked, the way she had discovered she liked them last week. Jeeves was learning her tastes faster than she could explain them. She chewed slowly, focusing on the texture, the heat, the simple physical fact of breakfast.
She had spent thirty years without human touch. Without food. Without warmth.
She had spent this morning surrounded by people who wanted to protect her.
The figure in the grove—Corin LeFaye, dreamwalker, agent of Aemelia—had made a mistake. He had assumed she was alone. He had assumed she was weak. He had assumed that the Williamsons were just a family, not a fortress.
He was about to learn otherwise.
Mandy was typing furiously on her laptop now, pulling up something Katrina couldn't see. Felicity was gone, already heading for her room to find those texts. Mai's voice drifted down from upstairs, a low murmur as she spoke on the phone.
They were coming together. A machine assembling itself from spare parts.
Katrina took another bite of her eggs.
And somewhere out in the grove, in the daylight, the shadows were already shrinking. But they would be back tonight. And Corin LeFaye would find that this time, the dreamers had teeth.
She finished her breakfast, drank her coffee, and waited for the war.
The coffee had gone cold in her hands by the time the front door banged open and Beth's voice cut through the house like a knife through warm butter.
"Okay, what the fuck is going on? Mai said it was an emergency, and I left Marty mid-pancake, so somebody better be dying or there better be a really good reason I'm standing here in my pajamas."
Beth Williamson stood in the kitchen doorway, blonde hair sticking up in seven different directions, wearing a threadbare tank top and a pair of sweatpants that had seen better decades. Her camera bag was slung over one shoulder—reflex, probably, the way she brought it everywhere—and her blue eyes were sharp despite the early hour. She took in the scene with a single sweep: Mandy hunched over her laptop, Calista gone, Felicity's abandoned notebook, and Katrina sitting at the table like a ghost who had forgotten how to haunt.
"Shit," Beth said, her voice dropping. "It's that bad?"
Mandy looked up from her screen. "It's that bad."
She gestured to the chair beside Katrina, and Beth crossed the room in three quick strides. She didn't sit. Instead, she crouched beside Katrina, her hand finding the older woman's wrist, two fingers pressing against the pulse point.
"You're shaking," Beth said. "Your heart rate's through the roof. What happened?"
Katrina set down her mug. The ceramic clinked against the table, and she stared at her hands—at the fine tremors running through her fingers—and felt something crack open in her chest. She had told Mandy and Felicity the basics. She had given them the outline, the facts, the clinical details. But there was more. There was always more.
"I need to tell you the rest," she said. "About the dream."
Beth didn't move. Neither did Mandy. They waited, a pair of bookends, one crouched and one standing, both utterly still.
"Rick was there," Katrina said. The words came slow, like she was pulling them from deep water. "And Mandy. And Beth. You were all in the guest room with me. And you were… together."
She paused. The memory surged, vivid and obscene.
"I mean together together. Rick was fucking Mandy from behind while she went down on me. And Beth was sitting on my face. And Calista was riding my hand. The four of you were—you were using me like a shared meal. And the whole time, you kept saying it was for me. That you loved me. That you would do anything to make me feel good."
The silence that followed was thick enough to chew.
Beth's expression flickered—surprise, then something harder to name. She looked at Mandy. Mandy looked at her. A full conversation passed between them in the space of a heartbeat, the kind of wordless exchange that only siblings could manage.
"I need to make something very clear," Mandy said. She closed her laptop with a decisive click and leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed. "I would never fuck my brother. Not in a dream, not in real life, not in any version of reality."
Beth nodded, her jaw tight. "Same. I've never fucked Rick. Never even thought about it."
"We grew up with Jan O'Connor," Mandy continued. "We've seen each other naked more times than I can count. We've been in the same room while the other was getting fucked. We've shared partners. Hell, I've walked in on Rick jerking off more times than I want to remember, and he's walked in on me. That's just how our family works."
"But we don't fuck siblings," Beth said flatly. "That's the line. Rick's my brother. Mandy's my sister. End of story."
Katrina nodded slowly. The pieces were starting to align, and she didn't like the picture they formed.
"That's what bothered me," she said. "In the dream, you were all so… eager. Like you had no boundaries at all. Like the only thing that mattered was giving me pleasure, whatever the cost. That's not how any of you actually are."
She turned to look at Mandy. "You'd never do that. You're too practical. You'd stop and ask if I was okay. You'd make a plan."
Then she looked at Beth. "And you—you'd be gentle. You'd check in. You wouldn't just throw yourself at me because some dream told you to."
Beth's eyes narrowed. "It was the dialogue, wasn't it? The love stuff."
"Yes."
The word hung in the air between them like smoke.
"Everything you said in the dream was about giving. About sacrificing yourselves for my pleasure. About how you wanted nothing but to please me. That's not love—that's a trap."
Mandy straightened up, her expression shifting from defensive to calculating. "It's a compulsion. A magical command disguised as affection."
"Someone was trying to make me believe that your family would do anything for me," Katrina said. "And if I believed that, I'd trust you blindly. I'd let you in. I'd tell you everything."
The implication landed like a brick.
"Fuck," Beth breathed. "The dream wasn't just a violation. It was a manipulation. Someone's trying to get to you through us."
Katrina nodded. Her throat was tight, and her eyes were stinging, but she refused to cry. She had spent thirty years in the void. She had learned how to hold tears back.
"So yes," she said. "That's the rest. That's what I couldn't say earlier."
Beth stood up slowly. Her hand moved to her camera bag, a nervous gesture, thumb tracing the strap. Then she looked at Mandy.
"We need to tell the others."
"I know."
"And we need to make sure nobody sleeps alone tonight. Not until we figure this out."
"I know."
Beth turned back to Katrina. Her expression had softened, the sharp edges smoothing into something warmer, something almost maternal. It was strange to see it on a twenty-year-old's face, but Beth had always been the heart of the family. The one who took in strays. The one who fixed things.
"Come on," she said. "You need a shower."
Katrina blinked. "What?"
"A cleansing shower. I'll wash your hair. I'll scrub your back. No sex, no magic, no ulterior motives. Just hot water and soap and someone taking care of you for five minutes."
Katrina opened her mouth to argue—she didn't need to be coddled, she was a grown woman, she had survived things that would break most people—but Beth was already pulling her to her feet. Her grip was firm, her blue eyes steady.
"You're exhausted," Beth said. "You've been awake all night. You're running on empty, and we need you sharp if we're going to fight this thing. So let me help you. Please."
The word please did it. Katrina had heard commands and demands and pleas in her long, strange life, but rarely had she heard someone ask for the simple privilege of helping her.
"Okay," she said.
Beth led her up the stairs, past the closed doors of the other bedrooms, to the guest bathroom. It was small and sunlit, with a clawfoot tub and a shower curtain printed with fish. Beth turned on the water, waited for it to steam, and then gently stripped off Katrina's borrowed pajamas.
"Get in," she said.
Katrina stepped under the spray. The water was almost too hot, just this side of scalding, and it stung her skin in a way that felt good—clean, real, grounding. Beth followed a moment later, still wearing her tank top and sweats, and pulled the curtain closed.
"Sorry about the clothes," Beth said. "I'll change after."
Katrina laughed. It was a small sound, rusty, but it was real. "You're getting soaked."
"I'll dry." Beth squeezed shampoo into her palm and reached for Katrina's hair. Her fingers were gentle, working the lather through the dark strands with a care that felt almost ceremonial.
"Tilt your head back," she murmured. "Close your eyes."
Katrina obeyed. The water ran over her scalp, warm and soothing, and Beth's hands kept moving, kneading the tension from her neck, her shoulders, the knots that had formed from a night of sitting rigid on the floor.
"You know," Beth said quietly, "what that dream did—it's not your fault."
"I know."
"I mean it. Whoever sent that thing, they're the one who should be ashamed. Not you."
Katrina opened her eyes. Beth was still working the shampoo, her expression focused, her blonde hair plastered to her forehead from the steam.
"I spent thirty years in a void," Katrina said. "I forgot what touch felt like. What it meant. When I woke up this morning, I could still feel all of you on my skin. It felt real. It felt true. And that scared me more than anything else."
Beth's hands paused. She looked at Katrina with those sharp blue eyes, and there was something ancient in her gaze—something that had seen too much for a girl of twenty.
"That's exactly why they did it," she said. "They wanted to exploit your hunger. Your loneliness. They wanted to make you doubt reality."
Katrina nodded. The water was starting to cool, but she didn't want to move. She didn't want to leave this small, safe bubble where someone was washing her hair and telling her it wasn't her fault.
"The good news," Beth continued, "is that you figured it out. You saw through it. And now you've got a whole army of Williamsons standing between you and whoever's trying to use you."
"A whole army," Katrina repeated.
"Damn right." Beth grinned. "Mandy's already planning. Calista's setting fire wards. Mai called in the cavalry. We don't do quiet around here. We do thorough."
She turned off the water and grabbed a towel from the rack. It was soft and frayed, printed with seashells, and she wrapped it around Katrina's shoulders with a tenderness that made the older woman's chest ache.
"Now," Beth said, "let's get you dressed and back downstairs. I have a feeling things are about to get very busy."
They were halfway down the stairs when Mai reappeared at the bottom step, her expression triumphant. She had traded the oversized T-shirt for a pair of shorts and a tank top, and her dark hair was pulled back in a messy bun.
"Bruce is on his way," she announced. "Ben's coming with him—figure you might want some extra muscle, Mandy. Oh, and I called Kim and Maryam Powers. They're at the gym, but Kim said they'd be here within the hour."
Mandy looked up from her laptop, eyebrows raised. "The Powers twins? You called them?"
"You said you wanted muscle." Mai shrugged. "A Green Moon initiate with a sword and her jock twin sister with a baseball bat? That sounds like muscle to me."
"I'm not complaining," Mandy said. "Just surprised you thought of it."
Mai's grin was sharp and knowing. "I'm full of surprises."
"And Rick?" Beth asked from the stairs. "Did you call Rick?"
"I did. He's slammed with a corporate order—something about a wedding cake for some tech mogul—but he said he'd come as soon as he could."
"Good." Mandy pulled out her phone. "I'm going to ring Jess. She should know what's happening."
She stepped out of the room, phone pressed to her ear, her voice already fading into the background.
Beth guided Katrina to the breakfast nook and sat her down. Jeeves appeared with a fresh cup of tea—chamomile, no sugar, exactly how Katrina liked it—and hovered nearby, his mechanical arms twitching.
"Thank you," Katrina said.
"You are welcome, Mistress Katrina," Jeeves replied. "I have also taken the liberty of activating the external security sensors. Should anyone approach the property with ill intent, we will know."
"Good job, Jeeves," Beth said.
The little automaton hummed with what might have been pride.
Felicity emerged from the hallway, arms full of leather-bound books and loose sheaves of paper. She dumped them on the table with a thud that made the teacups rattle.
"I found everything," she said breathlessly. "Three treatises on dreamwalking, one monograph on psychic residue tracking, and my mother's notes from the Bentley Ridge Incident. If there's a counter-spell, it's in here somewhere."
"Then get reading," Beth said. "We've got seventy-two hours before the residue fades."
Felicity nodded and sat down, already flipping open the first book. Her pen was in her hand, and she was muttering under her breath before her butt hit the chair.
Katrina wrapped her hands around the tea. The warmth seeped into her palms, and she let herself breathe.
Across the street, in a rental property that had been paid for with three separate layers of shell corporations, Evelyn Shaw watched the beach house through a scrying pool set into a marble basin. The pool showed her the kitchen: Mandy on the phone, Beth and Katrina at the table, Felicity buried in books. Calista was in the yard, tracing symbols in the air with trails of fire. Mai was pacing by the window.
Evelyn smiled. It was a cold smile, the kind that had been honed over twenty years of prison and planning.
Hiring Corin LeFaye had been a masterstroke. The dreamwalker had served his purpose—he had invaded Katrina's mind, planted the compulsion, and left enough of a trail that Mandy and her little friends would spend the next day chasing their tails. They would assume Aemelia was behind it. They would prepare for an elven attack, brace for ice and glamour and ancient magic.
And while they were looking the wrong way, Evelyn would walk right through the front door.
She leaned closer to the pool, her reflection rippling across the surface. Mandy Williamson and Felicity Winkle had thwarted her once before, during the mummy business. Their presence had ruined years of preparation, years of planning, many within a prison cell. She had spent two decades rotting in a cell planning and still lost because of a pair of college-aged girls befriended an ancient priestess without knowing it.
But she had learned patience in that cell. And she had learned something else: the surest way to destroy a family was to make them tear themselves apart.
She reached into her pocket and withdrew a small glass vial. Inside, a black liquid swirled lazily, thick as oil and shot through with threads of silver.
Phase two was already in motion.
She just needed the right moment to release it.