Chapter 2

By the time I closed the apartment door behind me, it felt as though the day had lasted at least a week. The evening’s strange events refused to settle into any kind of reasonable pattern. Normally, I was good at dealing with things that could be broken down into causes and consequences. Today, the causes seemed to exist on their own, the consequences somewhere else entirely, while common sense had apparently decided to take the day off.

Home greeted me with silence and a black cat sprawled in the middle of the room as though he were the one paying the rent and my return was an unwelcome intrusion into his private life. I stopped just inside the door and looked at him.

“I see you’ve settled the question of who lives here without consulting me.”

The cat opened his eyes and stretched lazily. He had appeared a month ago, simply sitting outside my door one day—black, fairly large, and not remotely like some miserable lost animal in need of rescuing. I brought him water, then tried to send him away. The next day, he came back. After my third attempt to explain that the apartment was already occupied, I began to suspect that, of the two of us, I was the one having trouble understanding the obvious. By now, he had apparently stopped considering himself a guest altogether.

“Fine. Stay. But don’t complain about the service.”

The cat blinked slowly, and somehow it looked less like gratitude than an acceptance of terms.

I took off my shoes and went into the kitchen. His presence was unexpectedly reassuring. It was difficult to convince yourself you were completely losing your mind when an insolent animal was lying in the next room, clearly of the opinion that your emotional crisis did not merit interrupting his evening. I made tea and stood at the counter for a while, warming my hands around the cup, but the image of the car mirror kept returning: the silver around my pupils, bright and impossible.

I went to the window and studied my reflection carefully. My eyes looked perfectly normal. To make sure, I turned on the lamp and checked again.

“Wonderful. So either I imagined it, or my supernatural abilities only work in parking lots.”

The cat opened one eye.

“Don’t look at me like that. You’ve occupied someone else’s home without permission, and now you’re going to assess my mental health too?”

One ear twitched. I chose to interpret that as an admission of guilt and stepped out onto the balcony.

After the rain, the city seemed cleaner and quieter. Wet rooftops reflected the streetlights, and ordinary evening life glowed behind the windows of the neighboring buildings. Somewhere a car passed, a door slammed, laughter drifted from an open window. Everything looked so familiar, so firmly rooted in the real world, that the strange events of the day were already beginning to lose some of their force.

Then I looked up.

The moon hung above the rooftops, enormous and clear, flooding half the sky with cold silver light. I had always loved moonlight. There was nothing mystical about it; a few quiet minutes were usually enough to steady my thoughts, let the noise of the day recede, and make the world feel manageable again.

Tonight, it didn’t work.

The moment I looked up, something tightened beneath my ribs—not pain, not exactly anxiety, but the sensation of a fine thread drawn from somewhere inside me straight toward the silver disk above the city. I tightened my hands around the cup. Moonlight lay across the wet railing, slid over my fingers, silvering my skin, and gradually the same feeling returned that I had experienced near the man in the restaurant.

Recognition.

Except this time, it felt as though I were the one being recognized.

“No. Don’t even start.”

Talking to the moon was ridiculous enough to restore at least some perspective. I went back inside—and stopped again.

The cat was sitting on the windowsill, looking up as well. Not lazily, not with ordinary feline curiosity. His front paws rested neatly side by side, his tail curled around them, and his head was lifted toward the window with such intense concentration that it seemed as though something familiar to both of us was out there.

“Don’t tell me you feel it too.”

One ear turned toward me.

“Actually, no. Better not say anything at all. If you answer me now, I’m moving out.”

His tail swayed once.

“Good. We understand each other.”

I went to bed earlier than usual. Exhaustion finally proved stronger than my need to understand what was happening, and my last rational thought was that by morning, all of today’s absurdity would surely seem much less convincing.

Then I opened my eyes in the middle of a lake.

Cold water reached almost to my knees. Silver mist drifted all around me, hiding the shore, if there was a shore at all, and above the motionless water hung an enormous moon—the same one I had been looking at from my balcony only a short while before. There were no houses, no trees, no road, nothing I could use to place myself anywhere familiar, and yet the place did not feel entirely strange.

I didn’t remember it, but for some reason my body did.

That was considerably more unsettling.

I turned and saw a man standing several yards away, waist-deep in the water with his back to me. He was tall, broad-shouldered, motionless. The mist blurred everything around him, yet somehow seemed unable to touch him; he remained too distinct, too solid, as though he were not standing inside my dream at all, but the dream itself had formed around him.

I should have been frightened. Instead, for several seconds, I simply looked at the line of his shoulders, his dark hair, the water surrounding his body, until I finally remembered that unfamiliar men standing in unknown lakes generally called for at least a few questions.

“Who are you?”

He turned.

I had never seen that face before, and yet my heart struck hard as though it had recognized him before I did.

He was handsome, but that was not the whole of it. There was nothing soft or immediately inviting in his face: defined features, a steady gaze, the restraint of a man accustomed to occupying his place without needing to prove anything to anyone.

He simply looked at me, while my body chose, with spectacularly poor timing, to decide that the distance between us mattered. The cold water, the damp air, the sound of my own breathing—everything suddenly became too vivid.

I did not like that.

Especially because the man himself appeared completely at ease.

“You came,” he said.

His voice was low, slightly rough, and so startlingly real that I felt it almost against my skin.

That was simply unfair.

“Where, exactly? And before you answer with a riddle, I should warn you that I’ve run out of patience for today.”

Surprise flickered in his eyes. “You don’t know where you are?”

“If I did, this conversation would have started much more productively. So let’s try this in order. Who are you, and what is this place?”

He studied me more closely, as though searching for something in me and not finding it. “You don’t recognize me?”

“Have we met?”

The pause lasted a little longer than a simple answer required.

“No. Not like that.”

I exhaled wearily. “Excellent. We’ve already failed the first question. Where am I?”

“For now, I can’t explain that to you.”

“The second one too.”

The corner of his mouth shifted almost imperceptibly. For some reason, I wanted to see what his real smile looked like, and that thought irritated me nearly as much as his answers did.

The man took a step toward me, and the water parted softly around him. I raised a hand at once.

“Stop. I still have no idea who you are, so I’m perfectly comfortable with this distance.”

He stopped without argument. He did not try to convince me that I was worrying for nothing or tell me I had no reason to be afraid. He simply stayed where I had asked him to, and for some reason that made me look at him more carefully.

“I won’t hurt you.”

“You do realize that men a woman meets at night in the middle of an unknown lake don’t automatically receive the benefit of the doubt?”

This time, he really smiled. Only slightly, but the severity left his face so unexpectedly that something warm stirred inside me.

“A sensible rule.”

“I’m generally a sensible person.”

His gaze moved across the silver mist. “I’m beginning to have doubts.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Are you making fun of me in my own dream?”

“Are you certain this is your dream?”

My smile disappeared. He said nothing else, and suddenly the water felt colder around my legs.

“Fine. Let’s assume I’m not certain. I still want to wake up.”

“Then wake up. I’m not keeping you here.”

There was no challenge in his voice, and somehow I understood immediately that he meant it. He truly was not keeping me. I could leave, turn away, tell him not to come any closer—and he would stop.

The trouble was, I did not want to leave nearly as much as I should have.

And that was far more dangerous than the dream itself.

I took a step back, then another. The mist thickened behind me.

“Alice.”

I stopped.

The way he said my name was worse than everything else. Not as a question, not merely to get my attention, but as though he had known for a long time exactly how it sounded.

I turned slowly. “How do you know my name?”

He never had the chance to answer.

Something moved beneath my foot. A sharp, indignant sound broke the silence, and I jumped back so quickly I nearly fell.

“Damn it! What is that?”

A small dark creature thrashed in the water. At first I saw the gleam of wet scales, then a slender tail and two wings. It scrambled into the shallows, shook itself, and lifted its head toward me.

It was about the size of a large cat, with an elongated muzzle, scales silvered beneath the moon, and folded wings.

And silver eyes.

Very angry silver eyes.

“No.”

The creature made a sound remarkably like outrage.

“I didn’t step on you on purpose.”

Judging by its expression, that did absolutely nothing to excuse me.

The man came closer. This time I noticed him moving but did not stop him. He remained beside me without touching me, leaving enough space between us, yet I felt his warmth immediately even in the middle of the cold water. I focused on the creature instead. That felt safer.

“Be careful with her,” the man said. “She won’t forget that.”

“Her?”

“Yes.”

The little creature spread her wings, as though deciding to spare me any further uncertainty on the subject.

I exhaled slowly. “That’s a dragon.”

“Yes.”

I looked at him. “You say that as casually as if you’d just told me she was a duck.”

“I’m used to them.”

“Dragons?”

A trace of warmth entered his voice, and the creature snorted irritably.

“See?” he added. “She already thinks we’re discussing her with insufficient respect.”

I looked down again. The dragon was no longer angry; she was simply watching me closely, and there was something strangely familiar about those silver eyes.

Suddenly, I realized where I had seen that look before.

At home.

On the windowsill.

No. That was impossible.

“Why is she here?”

The man looked at the dragon first, then at me. “Because you are.”

“That still isn’t an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have for you right now.”

I shook my head. “Do you ever answer a question directly?”

“I do. You simply keep asking questions that are difficult to answer in a single sentence.”

“Then let’s try again. Who are you?”

This time he did not smile. His gaze deepened, becoming almost personal, and for several seconds the lake, the mist, even the little dragon at my feet seemed to disappear. There was only the man looking at me as though he knew something about me that I did not yet know myself—and my own inexplicable desire to move closer.

I didn’t.

Neither did he.

“She isn’t just a dragon, Alice.”

The little creature moved toward me and stopped beside my leg. There was no resentment left in her eyes now, only quiet, watchful expectation.

“Then what is she?”

The man looked at her, then back at me.

“Your dragon.”

I woke so abruptly it felt as though I had actually been pulled out of the cold water. My heart was pounding, my palms were icy, and my body remembered the lake far too well: the cold around my legs, the damp air, the mist and, most irritatingly of all, the warmth of the man beside me.

For several seconds, I simply sat in bed while the room settled back into place around me.

“It was a dream.”

The words sounded reasonable. Almost convincing.

The problem was that I remembered it too clearly: the man’s face, his voice, the way he had said my name, the little dragon at my feet, and those silver eyes watching me with an intelligence that was far too human.

I covered my face with my hands. “Fine. A very strange dream. A very handsome man. A very convincing dragon. But still a dream.”

Something fell in the kitchen.

I went silent.

A few seconds later, soft footsteps came from the hallway, and a familiar dark figure appeared in the doorway. The cat entered the bedroom, stopped at the edge of the moonlight, and looked directly at me.

I was about to ask what he had broken this time when I saw his eyes.

Silver.

Not their usual feline amber-green, but the same deep shade of silver that had been looking at me from the water only moments ago.

Slowly, I lowered my feet to the floor.

“No. Not this.”

The cat blinked calmly, walked over to the bed, jumped up with effortless ease, and settled at my feet as though he considered the matter closed.

I stared at him, and for the first time all day, the scattered oddities began to connect—not into an explanation, not yet, but into one deeply unpleasant thought.

If the silver eyes had not been part of the dream, then perhaps none of the rest of it had been either.