Player made a sound. The moment he did, she forgot about her dilemma and jumped up. From experience, she knew better than to touch him. He was already sweating, fighting the sheets.
Without warning, the silly rabbit appeared. She was used to him now, life-sized, just standing there, staring at his watch, pink nose wiggling. In front of him was the table. Before he had been shadowy, barely across from the bed, standing just in front of her grandfather’s picture. That seemed such a sacrilege to her. Her grandfather and father had kept her safe for years, and now, when she needed their magic the most, it was failing her. Her gift was failing. Everything she counted on was failing.
A man sat on the bench with his back to her, as he did in all of Player’s nightmares, still shadowy, still undefined, but she could make out wide shoulders. His head was down, and he concentrated on the various pieces of equipment in front of him. She had seen Player putting bombs together in his head enough times to know the likelihood was that whatever those individual tools, instruments and equipment were, put together, made up a bomb. The White Rabbit morphed into another man, one with a gold watch standing behind the man at work at the table.
The man working on the bomb was Player. Young or old, she would know him. His brown hair was wild and artfully kissed with white streaks. His back had the Torpedo Ink colors tatted into his skin, covering a multitude of scars and burns. The shadowy figure stared down at his pocket watch while he hunched over Player’s shoulder.
Suddenly, Zyah heard the ticking of the clock loud in the room, just as she had heard the night before. Her heart jumped and then began to pound. “Player. Wake up. Wake up now.”
The man with the pocket watch lifted his head as if he’d heard her. That was very frightening. Immediately, she began to dance, pushing her feet into the floor, calling up the magic of the earth. She gently extended her arms to bind Player to her, weaving them together, her voice singing softly to him to call him back to her. Fortunately, she had managed to forestall the nightmare before he was too far into it. By staying in the bedroom with him, she hadn’t allowed whatever was gripping him so tight at night to take him down that path and fling him fully into another reality. If she didn’t gather her courage and connect fully with him to see what he had discovered as a little boy when he had been so alarmed, she might lose him after all.
The shadowy figure abruptly disappeared, and then the bench with the man making the bomb disappeared as well. Player groaned and threw one arm over his eyes and swore in his native language. “Damn it, Zyah,” he said finally.
She ignored him and went to the bathroom to get a cool washcloth for his head, just as she had every night for the past few nights. Kneeling beside him, she wiped off the little beads of sweat. “It wasn’t as bad this time. You’re getting better.”
“Or you’re just getting faster.”
“I’m really good,” Zyah said. “Dancing around the room, and you missed it.”
He groaned. “That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t meant to be. I thought I was really sexy when I danced. Most men think I’m sexy. You’re the exception, it seems.” She tried to tease him. Make it humorous when she’d been so afraid. The ticking of the clock had been terrifying.
He took his arm away from his eyes. Now they were piercing blue, icy daggers. “That’s really not funny.”
She wiped down his throat. “You’re in a foul mood, but then you usually are when you’re around me. You don’t like me. You don’t have to. I’m one of those girls. You apologized and all, but you didn’t mean it. We fucked all night, over and over.” She forced herself to say the words as crudely as possible, wanting them imprinted in her brain. “I get it. Some men think women who do that sort of thing are nasty girls or something. I don’t know. Somehow, it’s okay for the men but not for the women.”
She avoided looking into his eyes when she said it because, honestly, just saying the sentiment aloud turned her stomach. Still, it was true. She’d come across so many men who thought that way. Not that she was promiscuous, far from it, but she didn’t judge other women and didn’t feel they should be judged. She wasn’t even certain she believed that was the reason he didn’t want to be around her. She hadn’t found that in him. He didn’t seem judgmental. She didn’t know what the reason was. Only that he didn’t want her. Maybe she just needed a reason, any reason. It was just that he kept pushing her away.