Once Zoey was done with her meeting with Lawrence, she did her best to clean up the broken monitor and requested a replacement with the school. They were quite disappointed in her for having smashed it in such a way, but since it was an accident there wasn’t much that they could do. Once everything was taken care of and the replacement was set, it was already sundown. Thanks to daylight savings time, it was beginning to get dark quite early now compared to before. Not that it mattered to Zoey, who got home from the safety of her vehicle. Deer Valley was a relatively safe city by American standards. Some drug and homeless person-related incidents, but not much in the way of violent crime or kidnapping.
Zoey strode through the darkness alone with her head filled with thoughts of Tristan Collins. Now that everything at school was taken care of, she could now devote the entirety of her attention to him and Dream Paralysis. She had expended all of his good will to deal with the undesirables, but they were all gone now.
Gwen Diaz could have graduated from Deer Valley High without any issues had she just stuck with Benjamin. But instead, she decided to attack Zoey by trying to take Tristan away. She never did quite figure out why Zoey was so interested in him, but that she had attempted to sway him at all was already a step too far. When Lawrence warned Zoey that Gwen and Tristan had left the mall together, she decided to create a fake injury to lure Tristan over to their place. She had decided that their little outing had to be interrupted before the depraved fool said something he shouldn’t have.
Once the two of them were leaving though, she had heard them both when Gwen tried to re-enter her home. She’d heard her express her irrational fear of bees at the door. That they induced a state like that of an anxiety attack. When she called Lawrence the next day, she decided to ask about it. He proceeded to tell her that Gwen had terrible bee allergies that would put her into anaphylactic shock if she ever got stung. Taking advantage of that was simple. All Zoey needed was to capture a few bees and give her a nice birthday gift. And while doing so was not a simple task, it was a fun project that helped stave off the drowsiness she had been fighting. Bees are attracted to sweet smells, which is why she avoided wearing her perfume the next day, and why she had given Gwen a separate, fruity scent to try on before releasing them.
All she needed to do was have Tristan pull the trigger on betraying her, and everything would fall into place. In Gwen’s mind, there would be no hope for crossing Zoey anymore. The thought of opening her locker and being assaulted by bees, of having one or two float around in one of her classes. It didn’t matter if she reported Zoey. After all, she could just tell them about her involvement in the rigging of the basketball game. Of course, there was a chance that she would throw it back her way. But that would end in them both going down, and, in Gwen’s eyes, she had far more to lose than Zoey did.
Lawrence, on the other hand, involved far more social engineering on her part. There’s only one thing that would get him to back off from her, she realized, and that would be some form of blackmail involving that Christian sister that he’d threatened her over. Once Zoey figured out that Laura had a boyfriend, she decided to come up with a plan. The first thing she decided was to have her lower her defenses when it came to sex. And for that, she tried her own hand at the girl. While there was the distraction in the middle, things did wind up the way they were meant to. The two exchanged a deep passionate kiss, and her curiosity towards sex grew slowly over the week until their next meeting.
Her boyfriend was loving and caring, but he was also a man. Once Zoey had gotten Tristan to leave Zoey with him outside of the church, she asked him if he knew Enzo. When he said that he’d only known him in name, Zoey told him that herself and Enzo shared a secret pastime. The two of them shot sex tapes with their partners without them knowing and shared them with one another. Herself and Tristan, and himself and Krista. He seemed iffy about the idea initially. Zoey thought that she might have been a bit forward, and she recognized it immediately thanks to his hesitance. But once she reeled it back and played it coy, he seemed to lean into the idea of taking control of the conversation and getting involved.
The number she gave him wasn’t Enzo’s, but the number of a second cellular phone she had acquired for the purpose of this next deception. Unfortunately, she did have to pretend to be Enzo and send him a risqué photo of herself to prove that they had indeed been swapping sexual content, but it didn’t matter. She had him delete the photo from their message history in case it got revealed to Tristan later. The photograph itself wasn’t nude, but it seemed to convince him that the sex tape trade was worth his time.
She convinced him to make and send it to her that night, and that’s why she had Tristan hack him. She needed him to have Jacob’s copy deleted before it could spread anywhere outside of her control. But why would she do that? Why would she risk having Tristan ruin everything by deleting the video before it got sent? It’s simple. Because he can’t risk Dream Paralysis being revealed. That was the leverage in this situation. To do something as complicated as deleting a video from a phone or fighting against sending a message would require so many precise, minute movements against the original body owner’s will that it would easily reveal that his body was not under his control. Worse yet, he might even get kicked out before he managed to do anything.
His only safe move was to hack either of them while they slept and delete it then. As it turns out, the idiot actually tossed the phone to Laura and had her find the video, but thankfully it turned out okay. In any case, Zoey had decided in hindsight that there were far too many points of failure in this plan, and things did go wrong multiple times. It might have been due to the fact that she came up with it all while sleep deprived, and she hadn’t thought about any failsafe measure. But it turned out okay in the end thanks to Jacob’s desire to view risqué content of Zoey Brahm. As for Jacob, he’s probably upset that Enzo hasn’t sent him anything in response. He might confront the real Enzo about it later and realize the truth, but it wouldn’t matter at that point.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The real issue was that Enzo did fancy Laura quite a bit despite his relationship with Krista. Once Zoey called him and told him what she had done to Jacob, he laughed and agreed to play along if he was allowed to view the video. Unfortunately for him, she couldn’t risk him redistributing it himself. But at the very least, she decided that she would grant him an in-person viewing at some point if he truly wished for it, but only once he was certain that Jacob was done bothering him about it.
“Phew.”
She sat down in the driver’s seat of the car.
It was a tiring month for Zoey Brahm, but now it was all over. Benjamin, Lawrence, Gwen, Warren, all of them were finally taken care of.
Now, it was finally time for her to take on the final boss.
Her Dream Paralysis demon, Tristan Collins.
How would she do it?
Would she weaponize his friendship with Lance as leverage? Or maybe she’d have to manipulate Jazmine in some way? The girl did go behind her back and tell him about Tanner. Zoey gritted her teeth. She only needed him for his programming expertise, and yet he had caused her so much trouble.
No, it didn’t matter, Zoey decided. She would deal with it. She always dealt with it. It didn’t matter how much the odds were stacked against her. She truly believed that, if she had enough time to think, she could get herself out of any situation.
Yes, she truly believed that.
Until she felt something cold and circular against the back of her neck.
“Don’t turn around. Keep your hands on the wheel.”
The words were enunciated clearly enough so that she could follow his instructions.
It was a man’s voice.
A familiar man.
Of course, how could she have forgotten?
The deadline was today.
She was no longer free.
“You’re not in the playground anymore, Fraulein.”
“Oh, really? I was under the impression that-“
The blow to the side of her head dealt by what she recognized was a gun in the rearview mirror had caused her head to go hurdling toward the side window.
“Did I give you permission to talk? No, Fraulein. I am unfortunately quite familiar with the kind of person you are. You will not be talking your way out of this one.” It was a shock, to be sure. For once, Zoey was forced to abandon her most potent weapon, her silver tongue. For the first time in her life, she was enveloped in genuine fear for her life. “Lake Irma. Drive. And if you even think of diverging from the route, I’m putting two in the back of your head.”
She had a lot that she wanted to say, but she didn’t want to risk angering him. There was blood dripping down the side of her face. He truly hadn’t held back with that blow. This man, unlike Tristan or Lawrence, did not fear the use of violence against her in spite of her gender. And she had no doubts that he was capable of killing another person. However, she did not start the car. She sat in silence, as if protesting.
“What? You think I won’t kill you?” Oliver smiled, still pointing the gun at her. “No, you’re smarter than that. You know that I could easily cover this up with the spirit. So why… oh. That’s it? You think I still believe that you’re the other spirit host?”
She held her breath.
“You poor child, I always knew you weren’t the real host. The second you took your phone out to make that call after I linked with you on campus, I had a suspicion. No, you’re only the secondary host.”
The term secondary host meant nothing to Zoey. What was he talking about? Did she have a sort of secondary spirit inside of her?
“It’s not that I didn’t link with you since then, Fraulein. It’s that I couldn’t. You should remember what happened the first time I tried. It was like an alarm bell ringing through your head, wasn’t it? You felt a painful resistance, like a migraine. It forced you to expel my attempts thanks to your familiarity with the power. That’s because your soul is attuned to the other spirit, the spirit of the body, as one of its two secondary hosts. To rewrite your soul into the shape of my spirit of the mind would be slow and agonizing. You would realize it right away and force me out. That’s right. It’s not that I didn’t link with you, it’s that I couldn’t.
There were a lot of terms he was using that Zoey didn’t understand. Spirit of the mind? And that meant that Tristan’s was the spirit of the body? Did this man’s power function differently? And if he couldn’t hack her, then that meant she had avoided sleeping for the entire week for nothing? It suddenly dawned on her that without access to Dream Paralysis, she was running a rat race. There was no real exit to be found here. He had her corralled away in her ignorance, running around as if there were a goal or an exit somewhere. Zoey couldn’t respond even if she had permission. The man had had her in every sense. This wasn’t like manipulating high school students. He was craftier than most adults. And worse yet, they were playing by entirely different rules.
“Yes, someone else is the real host. Someone close to you. Someone you trust. You’ve already ruled your mother out for me, thankfully. The girl you were with that day, she’s also clean, isn’t she? I linked with her too immediately after you. And since your father’s out of your life, that leaves your little school friends, doesn’t it? Of course. You and your friend, whoever it is, possesses the single most powerful ability in the world. And rather than using it for something worthwhile, you’ve been using it to score beer and to find out if Timmy like Sandy. No, the host could only be another school friend.”
She bit her lip. It frustrated her to hear him disparage her because she did, in fact, have grander plans for Dream Paralysis. But Tristan needed to be groomed for the role. She couldn’t just convince a regular person to murder bad apples out of nowhere. It was a slow and delicate process, made even more difficult by the people she needed to take care of first.
“Hey.” He caressed the back of her neck with the gun. “Start the car. We’re going to Lake Irma. You’re going to be telling me everything you can about the host.”
“And what if I told you now? Would you let me go?”
“And how would I verify that, exactly? I don’t know what they look like, so it’s not like I could link up with them, could I? No. You’re not leaving my sight until we find the other spirit. Do you understand me?”
Zoey nodded hesitantly, and Oliver leaned back in his seat. “Lake Irma, Fraulein. And don’t do anything crazy.”
Reluctantly, Zoey finally started the car.
“Once we’re there, you’re going to give me access to your private Instagram. From there, we’re going to slowly link with every person you’re friends with until we narrow it down. Don’t worry. If you’re lucky then you’ll get to go home by morning.”
She would not be lucky, however, as Tristan’s Instagram account was a blank slate with a fake name, a fact that even she herself was not aware of. However, it didn’t change the fact that she knew that he would not be found. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing was irrelevant. What mattered was that she would probably not be home for a long time, or maybe even at all for that matter. After thinking for a moment, she resigned herself to her fate and reversed out of her parking spot, then headed out onto the road, with no certainty that she would ever return to human civilization.