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Then she opened her eyes and saw that Arman was watching a movie. She turned his phone on and looked through the photos on his camera. There were none but the ones she’d taken at Moody Gardens.

As soon as he realized she was awake, he pulled her close. She loved that he wanted to be intimate with her no matter what he was doing at the time. Watching the movie didn’t seem to be as important to him.

“You took some great photos,” he said.

She smiled at him. “Thanks. You don’t have any photos of your own on here.”

Arman smiled at her, looking more than amused. “No. What were you trying to find out?”

“If you had some pictures of some cute girlfriends.”

He laughed. “I told you I didn’t.” He turned off the movie.

“You did tell me that. And I did it!”

“What? You got into Stasio’s dream?”

She told Arman what had happened concerning the rogue vampire’s sword turning into a cone of cotton candy. Arman laughed out loud. She loved that he could see the humor in situations.

“I couldn’t believe I could turn a sword into a cone of cotton candy. I wish I could do it for real during a deadly fight.”

“Now that would come in handy,” Arman said. “Can you try it with one of our other friends?”

She was still just trying to find her way through all this. “Levka,” she said.

“You like to tread dangerously.”

She laughed. “I’m going to imagine he’s sleeping and see if he’s dreaming. I didn’t have to fall asleep to enter Stasio’s dream.”

“That’s incredible.”

“Yeah, I was really surprised. I didn’t think I could do that.” Then she rested her head against Arman’s shoulder and closed her eyes again. She concentrated on trying to connect with Levka with no luck at all. He might just be watching a movie, not asleep and dreaming about anything. She wondered really how useful her ability could be. If the only way to use it was when someone was dreaming, how would she even know that? She figured she had just gotten lucky with Stasio.

She would try each of her new friends. But she couldn’t find any way to connect with their dreams. Then she thought she needed to wait until the lights were turned off for the red eye flight. At some point, maybe everyone would be asleep. She sighed and sat up in her seat.

“No luck?” Arman asked her.

“No. I’ll have to wait until they turn out the overhead lights and everyone settles down to sleep.”

Arman got up from his seat and visited with his friends for a moment. She hoped he wasn’t telling them about what she did to Stasio and how she was trying to get into the others’ dreams also, but then he returned to his seat.

“I didn’t tell them anything about what you’re doing or attempting to do. Everyone is watching different movies, so I was asking them what they thought of them.”

She smiled. “Good. I want them to be unaware of what I plan to do, or they might be able to stop me in their dream. I’m not sure how this works. I might need to practice at it. But if they’re all watching movies, that’s the reason I couldn’t connect with their dreams.”

“Right. None of them are asleep yet. That’s what I was checking out. Only Stasio was for a while.”

Then she and Arman watched a movie together for an hour and a half until it was getting late, and they turned it off and snuggled against each other to sleep.

“Remember,” he said, “I get to chase you this time.”

She chuckled. “I need to train myself on how to do this, so we’ll see.” She figured she had to try and control the situation in the dream as much as possible. Then she frowned at him. “You don’t think I would have more control over it if I were one of you, do you?”

“I’m not sure. But Tobias planned to turn your father, so it can’t lessen the effects of the ability if you’re one of us or Tobias wouldn’t have planned on changing him. Mostly, we were just thinking you would have better protection against a vampire, being able to move more quickly, vanish, fly, etcetera, to keep out of the vampire’s reach. Especially until you’re able to learn how to fight them well. As a huntress, you’ll be just as strong, but you can’t vanish or take flying leaps to get out of the path of a vampire.”

“Right, but no matter what, I won’t be as capable of fighting, not until I’ve trained.”

“True, but you can hold a sword. Caitlin even had trouble with that. She had to rely on her witch’s skills more.”