“No one you would know,” I lie. Although Una and Pierre weren’t working at theGazettewhen my brother died, they would have to have been dropped off here from another planet to not know who Valdemar Montresor is.
“Damn. Male, female, trans, neutral, or neither?” Pierre asks.
“What difference does it make?” I squint at Pierre, whose pizza is suspended in the air, inches from his mouth.
“I can’t paint a mental picture if I don’t know who I’m imagining.” He grins.
I shake my head.
“Seriously, though, I’m not sure you can control yourself during a dream,” Pierre adds.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Una corrects him. “There are techniques that revolve around lucid dreaming where you recite a mantra while you’re awake and then try to recite the mantra in your dreams. It’s possible, but it can take years to master. And then there’s hypnosis.”
“I’m not getting hypnotised,” I say.
“I think you’re tackling this from the wrong angle.” Pierre swallows and then picks up another slice. “I think you need to address why you’re having this dream and whether, on some subconscious level, your brain is telling you that you really want to engage with this individual.”
“Absolutely not.” I snort. “Subconscious, unconscious, semiconscious, or even comatose, I do not want anything to do with this guy.” As I say the words, I feel the pull of something within me, like there’s a little voice in my head asking me if this is true.
“So, he’s a man.” Pierre’s eyebrows rise.
I throw him a stern look.
“Hey, I’m not saying that you want to bone him. All I’m suggesting is that there might be something unresolved between the two of you, and maybe you just need to confront it,” he points out.
“I hate to admit it, but he does have a point,” Una says.
“I do come in useful sometimes.” Pierre takes a small bow, and Una pats him on the back. “But what I really want to know—” He leans forwards, eyes darting between the pair of us. “—is why you, Una, choose to eat this stuff that claims to be cheese?” His eyes drop to the pizza in his hand.
“It does notclaimto be cheese, merely an alternative to the processed rubbish the rest of you Neanderthals stuff in your mouth on a daily basis. Besides.” Una smacks her lips together. “You don’t seem to have had a problem with it, having polished off half the pizza.”
“Everyone knows you have to try something thirty times before you decide you don’t like it,” Pierre says.
“Is that so?”
“And I’m hungry.” He rips a bite off like a caveman, and Una laughs.
Plucking a mushroom off my pizza, I wonder what my dream could possibly be trying to convey. Is it that I hate Valdemar Montresor? Is the dream some kind of metaphor that I have no idea how to interpret? Is it about me confronting him over the death of my brother? Or is it to do with the note suggesting I should kill him? The dream doesn’t feel connected to any of this, but I’m not a dream expert. No matter which way I look at it, I can’t convince myself that having erotic dreams about a man I loathe could be some sort of hidden message about how to move on from the loss of my brother.
I haven’t told Pierre and Una about my visits to Valdemar Montresor, mainly because I know Una wouldn’t understand my motivation. Pierre would probably get it, the fact that I need closure or to understand what happened, but Una’s moral compass is firmly set on wrong and right, no in-between, and she wouldn’t want me to be manipulated by him or to give him the airtime. Despite her mean-girl vibes, she’s protective when it comes to those she cares about. And I can’t tell Pierre without telling Una. And I certainly can’t disclose that my dead mother convinced me to go visit him, so it’s no surprise that they don’t even consider him a possibility. I should confide in them, but I need more time to gauge what Valdemar’s motivation is and what he really wants from these visits first.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Why I wasunder the illusion that my conversation with Una and Pierre might put a stop to the dreams, I have no idea, but by Thursday, I’ve had the same one every night—the long corridor stretching before me, the moonlight drenching my naked body, and the brutal blade against my skin.
The only thing that differs is what Valdemar says to me, his filthy mouth working me into a frenzy even more than his touch.
My insides are in turmoil, my body at war with my head.
Why him?
Why me?
I’m beginning to wonder if this is a new form of torture, one there appears to be no end to.
These night-time escapades have stretched my days out somehow. The week has felt longer than normal, and I feel strange sitting here waiting for Valdemar to be brought into the visitors’ room when I’ve felt the touch of his hands and heard the purr of his voice every night.
“I can’t wait for my tongue to replace my fingers, angel, so I can taste you properly.”
