He was quiet. His gaze dropped for the briefest of moments, down to my throat and the loose neckline of my chemise. “I know. Good night, Anna.”

He left, striding to his bedroom across the hall. I thought it was probably for the best and slid into the safety of my cold sheets.

28

The November new moon arrived, at last. Phelan and I walked the cold, darkened streets with shields on our arms, waiting for the dream to arrive.

The trees were succumbing to bareness, limbs creaking in the wind and leaves gathering on the cobblestones, damp and golden and fragrant beneath my boots. I could see my breath, a steady plume of smoke, and I felt the chill of the air bite my cheeks.

It began to drizzle.

The streetlamps cast hazy circles of light and I shivered as moisture gathered in my hair, beaded on my raiment. A dankness settled into my bones. My shield sat snug on my arm, but the uneven weight of it was agitating my shoulders.

Phelan said nothing as he stood at my side, but he frequently checked his pocket watch. We hadn’t discussed the library dismantling again, or what had driven him to do it. In fact, he had kept me at a polite distance, and I hated to admit that his reserve bothered me.

I could barely see his face in the darkness, but when he looked at me, his eyes were bright, almost feverish.

“This weather is granting us a disadvantage,” he said.

“As long as we stay close together, we should be fine,” I replied. But I couldn’t deny that he was right about the disadvantage: the streets were slick from the drizzle and patches of leaves. We continued to wait as the rain began to fall steadily, soaking through our clothes.

“If something goes amiss,” Phelan began to say, “I want you to retreat to the house and lock the door.”

“I’m not retreating and leaving you.”

He never responded, because the nightmare manifested in the streets with a sudden and fierce gust. It blew us both off our feet. We sprawled on the wet cobblestones, breathless and wide eyed and clumsy with our shields.

“What was that?” I asked, scrambling to my feet, my gaze peeling the darkness.

We both heard a clatter behind us. The sound of something climbing up a trellis, rattling the shutters of a nearby house.

I turned. It looked like a man upon first glance, but then I saw that he was some manner of demon, with pale, scaly skin, sinewy wings, and long talons in place of nails. His eyes were lambent and he hissed when the shutter remained locked against him. He flew to the next window, seeking to unlock it. I was alarmed, to see a figment of a nightmare so intent on breaking into a house.

“Is this a child’s nightmare?” I asked Phelan, because I failed to recognize it.