One of the dean’s eyebrows went up a hair, and a trace of a smile ghosted across his lips.
“I see. Let me rephrase. Did their mental states appear altered? Were they acting as though they were drawn to you, almost as though they were sleepwalking?”
I blinked. That sounded a lot like what had happened with the bartender at the Balsam Inn. But not the men in the bathroom. Unless ‘drawn to me’ meant the lumberjack telling me to get down on my knees. But I didn’t think that was what the dean meant.
“No.” I shook my head. “No, they weren’t like that.”
“That explains it, then.” Dean Mansur nodded to himself. “If the last dream you had was the one at the rest stop, it’s been approximately forty-eight hours since the last time you engaged in sex acts and reached orgasmin a dream. Which is what you need to survive. Apparently two days is your limit. Add in the fact that you’ve yet to even learn how to enter a dream intentionally, and frankly, it’s a wonder you’re still alive. If you went to sleep in this state tonight, I’m not sure you’d wake up.”
He said it like he was commenting on the longevity of a jacket, or a kitchen frying pan. Not like he was talking about a living, breathing person. Was he always this matter of fact when discussing whether the person sitting in front of him would live or die?
“But you just said there wasn’t another incubus here to teach me,” I said. “How am I supposed to learn control, if it’s so important?”
“Let me worry about that,” he said. “You do need to learn, but even if I could teach you, you are in no condition for a lesson right now. Tonight, we need to build your strength back up.”
“How do we do that?”
“That, Cory, is entirely up to you.”
He smiled another one of his private little smiles. I had the vague sense he was making fun of me, and I knew I should find that annoying. Iwasannoyed, but not about being teased. I was annoyed that his superior smile only made me harder.
“What do you mean?”
“The trance you’re in right now isn’t a dream, but it functions very much like one. Whatever you concentrate on is what you’ll see.”
“What?”
“Why don’t you think back to the last person you saw to whom you were attracted?”
I glanced away. That would the dean himself, but that felt weird, so I tried to think of someone else. I didn’t have to think too hard.
The lumberjack from the Balsam Inn sprang to mind immediately, and as soon as he did, the dean’s form began to shimmer. One second he was there, and the next, the lumberjack was sitting in his chair, watching me.
“Wait a second. Are you—did you just—what’s happening?”
“Whatever you want to happen,” the lumberjack said, and what was crazy was that it washis voice.
I’d only heard him say like, twelve words, tops, but his voice was burned into my brain, and it was definitely different from the dean’s. The dean’s voice was cold and remote, like icy mountaintops. The lumberjack’s voice was warm and rough, like a campfire and a swallow of whiskey.
“But are you—are youhim?” I asked. “Or am I just imagining this?”
“No, and yes. I’m him as you remember him. But I’m just a figment of your imagination, nothing more.”
“But Dean Mansur—”
“The dean pulled you into the trance, but your mind is doing the rest. If you stop fighting it, that is.”
I shook my head, more confused than ever. “But if you’re just a figment of my imagination, how can you possibly know all this?”
It was messing with my head. Was I still talking to the dean? Could he see inside the trance, out there in the real world? And if I moved in the trance, did I move out there too?
“What’s the hold-up?” the lumberjack asked.
“I…I don’t know what I should do,” I stammered.
He laughed. “What was it you said? In the dream at the rest stop, the man you were with got aggressive. And you liked it?”
My face had to be scarlet, judging from the heat in my cheeks, but I nodded.
