With Ida’s help, I tracked down my other phone and found I had several messages from my mom and two from the doc. The messages from Mom were what I’d expected, mostly her being worried about me not picking up and if I had any more news on Conner. I’d call her back in the morning.

The first message from the doctor was from her receptionist, saying that my blood results were in and that the cage had been prepared. I had completely forgotten about that. The second one was from the doctor herself, telling me I should call her as soon as possible. Uh-oh.

I called back but got the answering machine. I sighed and left a message that I’d be calling back as soon as I woke up.

After that Ida and I spent a little bit chatting until we both started yawning. We got comfy, snuggled, and fell asleep in each other’s arms.

I dreamed.

* * *

I was in space again. This time, on the surface of the moon. I had that weird dreaming quality where I knew something wasn’t right but I wasn’t quite lucid yet. I hopped up and down to test the gravity and was disappointed when I discovered it was normal Earth gravity. Lame.

Maybe I’m not on the moon? I turned around, trying to spot it in the sky. Instead, I spotted the creature of absolute darkness taking up most of the horizon.

I screamed. Just like the last time.

Then the thing reached for me and I fucking tried to turn to run, but that weird thing happened when you have a terrible dream where the thing you want to do is suddenly impossible, like you’re in a late-night infomercial for Snuggie’s and you’re trying to grab a bowl of chips but you are just a fuck up for some reason. I couldn’t turn away.

My fear ratcheted up and up, with some distant part of me screaming this couldn’t be possible—

* * *

I awoke with a sudden jerk, slamming the back of my head against the headboard with enough force to crack it. The motion and the noise startled Ida awake, who rolled out of my arms and was suddenly on her feet in a shooter’s stance, my 1911 in her hand, held ready but not pointed at anything in particular. Had she been sleeping with it under her pillow? Wait, we’d been using the same pillow.

The pain in my head chased away my confused meandering thoughts and brought me to the present. I groaned and rubbed my head, feeling a goose egg already forming. Son of a bitch, that hurt.

Ida relaxed a bit when she took in the scene, placing the gun on the nightstand. “Another bad dream?” She asked as she turned on the lamp.

I felt Alice’s mind brush mine, and I sent her calming thoughts that there was no danger. The contact promptly cut off as, I assume, she went back to sleep. I must have really knocked my noggin if it had woken up Alice in the next room.

“Yeah,” I said, patting the top of my head to see if it was bleeding. It wasn’t, thankfully. “Wait,” I said, putting my focus on her fully. “Another? Did I tell you about my dream at Conner’s apartment?”

She shook her head. “You mentioned it, but you’ve been having nightmares every night since we’ve been on the road,” she relaxed and straightened the tank top she had been sleeping in, then sat next to me.

“I have a lot of trouble sleeping,” I said, trying to downplay it. It was a true statement, but these dreams are… something else. And apparently, they’ve been happening every night. Normally my sleep is plagued by anxiety-fueled dreams about my home life growing up, or the terrible night I first encountered the Doorman. More recently, the dreams have been flavored with the faces of the pirates I killed on the island last year. Oddly, those were the… calmest? Not serene. But compared to the guilt I felt at the time, I half expected dreams that featured men I killed to elicit some emotional response. Mostly I felt a vague sense of unease.

But this dream, and the dream back at Conner’s were something else. I felt… small. Helpless. In a way that I haven’t since I was a very small child.

There was a scratching at the door. Ida and I shared a glance, then she and I stood. She picked up the gun and took up a position to cover me as I went to go see who was at the door. I checked the peephole but didn’t see anything.

The scratching again, followed by a muted “boof.”

I relaxed and opened the door, seeing a concerned Bogo looking up at me.

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“Hey there, boy, is something—oof!”

Bogo shoulder checked my knees and I had to take a step back to maintain my balance. What followed was a slightly silly retelling of an episode of Lassie as I tried to get Bogo to tell me what was wrong. The not-dog didn’t seem to be his usual communicative self, however, and just kept looking up at me with sad eyes and kept himself pressed up against whatever part of me he could reach.

“Sorry,” I said to Ida. “He hasn’t acted like this before. Dunno what’s got into him.”

“Well,” Ida said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “He’s essentially a dog, no?”

“Yeah,” I said. “A very smart, very weird dog. But a dog.”

“He’s probably worried about you,” she said.

“Boof!” Bogo said.

A tired smile slowly took shape on my face and I knelt and gave Bogo a thorough petting. “I’m okay, you big goof. Just had a bad dream. Do you want to go outside or sleep in here?”

Bogo left my side, did a circle in front of the bed, and plopped down. His expression conveyed “going to keep an eye on you” as he watched me from the floor. I stood and went back to the bed, grabbing a pillow.

Ida’s eyebrows raised. “Not coming back to bed?”

I shook my head. “You get some sleep,” I said. “I doubt I’ll be getting any. I’m going to meditate for a while. It’s not sleep, but it is restful. And beneficial in other ways.”

She looked worried. “Alright,” she said. “But come back to bed if you need to.”

I nodded tiredly and crossed to a corner of the room that was free of furniture. I dropped the pillow down and sat on it, getting comfortable. Ida waited for me to settle before turning off the lamp and getting into bed.

I’ve been doing a lot more meditation since the cruise last year. I had a lot of mental… problems, for lack of a better word. In a controlled environment, I can be excellent. Very competent, sure of myself, creative. But as soon as something throws a wrench into my plans I fall apart and, with how my life has been, I need to very much not do that.

I really should see a mental health professional. The trouble is, you have to trust those people. And I only trusted three people on the planet. Maybe four, if you count Perry. Sure, there’s the patient/doctor privilege and all that, but when you operate on the edge of legality as I do, you know how flimsy those protective laws can be. Makes it hard to open up to someone, and I’m honest enough with myself to know that honestly opening up will be the main thing that helps. Perhaps the only thing.

Thus, failing to seek professional help, I went with the next best thing: sitting on a pillow and just existing. Allowing my thoughts to happen and setting them aside. When a worry popped up, I acknowledged it and allowed it to exist, and then let it pass. When an intrusive thought popped in, I regarded it as calmly as I could, examined it as much as I felt comfortable, and again—let it pass. Ida snorted in her sleep. Instead of letting it intrude, I just allowed it to be in my mind for a moment before passing on to other things.

This is the simplest form of meditation I know, and it’s the one I start with. I use it to prime my mind for the more involved meditation techniques you use to train your mind to hold magic. I usually did it for a bit and then switched to the heavier, more magically inclined meditation, but tonight I just… didn’t.

Magically, I was as competent and powerful as I’ve ever been. Though I only could cast one spell with Circe’s Method, it was a vastly versatile spell with applications across the board. Most of all, it was safe. I didn’t run the risk of boiling my fucking brain every time I used it. I was also proud of the progress I had made with my chosen Method. The manuals and other resources I had looked at said that the first spell you learn with Circe’s method is the hardest, with some people taking as long as ten years to master one spell. When I had done it in a little under one I had given myself a little pat on the back.

Technically, drawing or writing out spells came with the same risks of casting them without a Method, but since the energies were spread out over a longer period of time the danger was negligible. Thus I felt very little anxiety about writing out spells, though it has the potential to be “unsafe.”

My thoughts were wondering again. I acknowledged them and set them aside.

That was my main problem with meditating for long periods: I drifted easily. I think things through a lot. I’d like to attribute that to how I was able to survive my second encounter with the Doorman. Because I am such a nervous mess, I kept thinking of ways I could die, and then try to think of ways to circumvent them. I had been weak, so I thought of ways to be stronger.

This leads me back to how I react when things don’t go according to plan. Remembering how I had basically shut down for the first few days of the pirate attack makes me cringe. I couldn’t afford to do that again. Not only could it get me killed, but it could get my friends killed. It could get Conner killed.

Conner.

My meditation broke apart when I thought of my brother, and it took a good while for me to calm down. I rolled each worry for my brother around, getting—not comfortable. That’s the wrong word. Acclimated? Acclimated to the emotion and thought. Once I could exist with the thought without my emotions threatening to overwhelm me, I moved on to the next. Each thought a hammer blow against my psyche, and every time I shored it up with more reinforcements, thicker mortar.

I don’t know how much time passed during this portion of my meditation, but I did notice that I was getting better at it as time passed. It took less time to confront the awful thoughts and set them aside. I wasn’t ignoring them. No, that wouldn’t do anything. No, I was staring them down, knowing them, examining them from every angle, knowing each cutting edge like an old friend. And then I took them and put them to the side, where I could reach them if I wanted. Not out of sight, not out of mind, but not hanging over me, either. No longer a threat to my calm.

When I heard Ida’s alarm go off, I finished with the final worry and put it aside. I opened my eyes and found Ida watching me. I gave her a tired smile, and was surprised that it wasn’t forced. I felt calmer than I had since I left my house. I was still thoroughly tired, but I felt ready to confront the day in a way I had not felt since… since college, really.

And then a wet nose poked into my neck and Bogo was making himself comfy in my lap.

“Hey bud,” I said, scratching his ears. “Ready to go back to work?”

“Boof!”