Page 10 of The Filled Vessel (Cambric Creek After Darkverse #4)

Chapter eleven

Tara

" W hat happens now?"

They were sitting in a small boat, gilded and sturdy, even if it was little more than a dinghy. It was sunset. Unsurprising, as it was always sunset here on the surface. She remembered having nightmares once, bobbing along a pitch black sea, but it seemed impossible that this hazy-colored ocean could be anything other than shimmering and lit with pink and violet light.

The water glittered beneath the setting sun, reflecting the wash of color at the horizon, leaving it a deep inky purple. It was the end of the month. His shift was complete, the deal with his devil fulfilled, that was what he had told her. He would have no reason to come enter her apartment, no reason to perch on her sleeping form.

"I don't understand why you have to call it bird food every night."

His voice was peevish as he tore the bread, and Tara grinned. Regardless of the note she left on her bedside table in front of paper plate bread each night, he still ate it. Still tore it into little pieces, exactly like a bird. Which is why I call it bird food.

She had discovered he was not fond of generic sandwich bread, nor did he seem to care for the sweet dessert bread she had purchased on a whim at the bakery up the block. He best liked the fresh, yeasty bread from the same bakery, soft in the middle with crisp edges, which was a relief, as she liked it best as well. It toasted beautifully, provided a fat cushion for a slather jam and made the most heavenly French toast. And was the easiest for tearing .

He ignored her question, and continued to eat his offering.

"You'd better not get crumbs in my sheets."

"Have I ever?!"

He hadn't.

Her unconscious mind understood that he was atop her in her bed, that she was not floating on an endless, beautifully sparkling sea, not in reality. But Tara had begun to question what the point of reality was. Who was to say what was real and what wasn't? She spent half her life sleeping. Wasn't that half just as important as the time she spent awake? Who was to say that her reality was not here on this ocean with him? That the dream was actually her life in the waking world, as he called it. Somewhere else she was asleep in her bed, unaware that he sat over her in the dark.

But here . . . here they could be together.

"The incubus returns from his vacation this week."

Tara nodded. Time meant little here, beyond the fact that their time together would soon be ending. “You told me. Will he try to visit me?"

"Have you prepared your candle?"

She nodded again. She had received a package from the Cat & Crow, unexpectedly. Inside had been a message — painstaking instructions on how to close the connection she had opened with her original ritual. A sigil to be carved on her candle, which she had already done, with the athame. She would light her cardinal candles in reverse order, light the thick candle, add water to the salt, instead of salt to the water. She would snip one of the glyphs on the altar cloth, and close the channel for good.

She would complete it two nights hence, reversing her summoning. And then, Corviss would be done with her.

A part of her did not want to complete the ritual. Tara knew it was stupid. She did not want to close the connection they had, but the thought of something else visiting her in the night, something darker and crueler, terrified her to her core, and she knew she had no choice. He had looked over the instructions himself, in her mind, ensuring it was not another trick or trap. The note had obviously met his approval.

"Then you will complete your ritual as planned. He will not be able to visit you. Not unless you call him up again."

From her place in the boat, she shivered. She had no intention of doing so. "So . . . What happens now?"

His feathers fluffed and he tried to look very important, although she could see the small shadow of a smile on his thin mouth.

"Your time within the incubus is done, sweetling. And you won't have to worry about him again. No more deals with devils. I , however, am not a devil. There is nothing you can do to banish a nightmare. Perhaps one will find you, after this month is done."

The sun slipped beneath the horizon line, her cue that it was time to go under.

"It grows very late. Are you planning on sleeping dreamlessly tonight?"

Tara smiled, feeling herself grow heavy. "No . . . But give me a good dream first. We don't want you to go home hungry."

The boat tipped and they slid beneath the surface of the waves like slipping into a mirror. She bit her lip and reached her hands out to grasp his shoulder feathers, anticipating the moment when his mouth would find her neck. She would wrap herself around him, open for him, give in to him. And somewhere topside, he would press himself into her, a fullness and pleasure that would ripple through her until it could be felt there, in the water. He would make her come and she would cling to him, anticipating the moment he would release her.

If you want to call upon the spirits, you need to leave gifts .

Soon, he would push her down into the darkness where he could not follow . . . but until then, they would float here together in her dreamsea, her and her nightmare, the one she had called up, in the only reality that needed to matter.

At least, the only one that mattered to her.