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“Yes,” he said darkly. “Yes, we should, wife.”

20

THE DREAM

Nick didn’t always sleep.

As a vampire, he didn’t have the same relationship to sleep as a human, or a seer, for that matter. When he’d been a newborn, a newborn vampire, that is, he’d thought vampires didn’t sleep at all, that maybe they evencouldn’tsleep. Now he knew better.

Still, he didn’t sleep a lot.

He tended to sleep the most with Jem. He sometimes slept without his mate, but the vast majority of the time, he engaged in what he thought of as “sympathetic” sleep. His mate slept, so Nick would go with him to that unconscious, dream-filled place.

That has started back when… well, back at the very beginning.

Nick had no idea why he’d fallen asleep this time.

Maybe he’d been thinking about his mate again.

He’d definitely been waiting for him, and maybe Jem had fallen asleep on the plane, so Nick had gone down with him. Black dismissed Nick from the last meeting so he could focus on Holo and Alisha, who’d be handling the tech and medical side of their trip to Prometharis. Nick would be on security. He’dalso possibly help them control Gorren and any other implanted humans shielded from the seers, if pushes didn’t work on them.

Black was fairly certain pushesdidn’twork on Gorren.

Either way, Nick’s role was pretty straightforward, so he went to their old apartment in Black’s building, and stretched out on the couch to wait for Jem.

He didn’t have time to go home, which was a bummer.

He wanted to go pick up his dog. He wanted to introduce her to Panther, see if the two of them got on as well as he thought they would. In the end Nick called their neighbor, Bill, and asked if he would mind using his key to go in and feed her, and to take her for a few walks, or at least let her go out in the backyard.

Once he knew the dog was being cared for, Nick came here, to the old apartment.

He’d lived here for a while before he got turned into a vampire.

He’d shared the apartment with Jem for a short time, too. That was before they bought the house, obviously, while things were still pretty new, but after the group had more or less accepted him again, and after Angel got tired of him and Jem sleeping in her spare bedroom, andparticularlytired of Solonik screaming bloody murder from her garage.

They hadn’t lived here for almost a year now. It no longer felt like home, but Nick still snuck in here occasionally when he wanted a break.

He folded his hands on his chest, and blanked his mind.

If he’d thought anything, it was that he’d lie there and meditate for a few minutes, calm himself down before Black’s private plane landed at SFO and the helicopter or one of Black’s company cars brought Jem back to the city.

Jem had never called him from New York.

Something was wrong.

Something was wrong, and Nick didn’t know what it was.

It was one thing for the seer to be angry with him.

They fought sometimes, absolutely. They’d had drag-down, full-blown shouting matches. Nick had slept on the couch, and there had been at least one night when Jem didn’t come home. But usually, theydidn’tdo that. Usually, they laughed and went to the beach and went hiking. And the few times theyhaddone it, it was short-lived, only ever lasting the one night. The next day, both were apologetic. They talked, worked it out, and they made up.

Whatever was going on now, it felt more serious.

They hadn’t spoken at all since Jem more or less accused Nick of screwing around on him, on a night Nick spent dealing with his psychotic sire, and falling in love with a stray dog. The idea that he could’ve been out prowling for sex was so damned bizarre, Nick had trouble even taking it seriously. He wasn’t even insulted exactly. He was baffled.

Jem was usually the more even-tempered of the two.

Nick could admit that. He was the hot-head.