Free Bad Blood (Book 4 of The Warden series) by Felicia Jedlicka Page B

the seat.
    “Sit right.” Danato pointed to her feet. It wasn’t foretelling to predict that Danato would have an issue with her feet being on the furniture, but it was uncanny that the events were happening very similar to her dream. She repositioned and started to put her feet up on the desk. “Don’t even think about it,” Danato said without looking up.
    “Sorry, just had to throw a wrench in my déjà vu. It was starting to overwhelm. So, are we going into the time bubble today?”
    “No,” Danato said. He even paused as if he expected her to object, but since she was already predicting his response she saved her rebuttal. “You will go by yourself. You’re armed now. I think you can handle it.”
    Cori grinned seeing the hard look he was giving her to defend his choice before she had even objected to it. “I understand completely. I think your right. I even have the perfect spot picked out. Shouldn’t take me more than a couple hours, and then I can start filling out the paperwork.”
    The two men exchanged looks of surprise and suspicion. “Who are you, and what have you done with Cori?” Danato asked. He was only partially joking considering her past.
    “I’m me. I was just prepared for this. I had a dream about it last night.”
    “Dream?” Both men asked as they shot looks at each other before turning their concerned looks on her.
    “What?” she asked and looked between them for who would best explain the excitement.
    “Cori,” Danato stood up tossing his glasses on to his pile of papers. “We don’t get to keep our dreams. We have protections from that. If you remember dreaming, something is wrong.”
    Cori shrugged forgetting how the use of the wrong word could get her into so much trouble. “I don’t know. Maybe…I just…I don’t know.” She knew that at the house she was protected from her nightmares. She knew in the wizard world she wasn’t and she had awful nightmares, but it never occurred to her that she shouldn’t be having any dreams.
    Danato came around the desk and grabbed her hand. “Tell me what happened.” She didn’t like the attention she was getting for one little dream. She looked to Belus. He nodded toward Danato. Tell him.
    “It was nothing. I woke up. I came here. You told me to go to the bubble by myself. I did. I planted the plants. I swam.” Danato’s eyes narrowed at that part, but he didn’t interrupt. “I got out of the bubble and Efrat was there. He shocked me, and boom. I woke up in bed.”
    Danato’s comforting hand slipped away. He meandered back to his chair, but didn’t sit down. He stood there pondering the situation. “This might explain your sighting of Efrat before.”
    “Maybe the transmorphs left her open,” Belus said still sipping on his coffee calmly. Danato could have been climbing the walls and Belus would still be sitting in that chair.
    “Yes,” Danato agreed.
    “Open to what?” She asked.
    “Dream feeders,” Belus said. “They inject you with bad thoughts, fears, and traumatic memories. Nightmares, like the ones you had while you’re in the wizard world. Anything that will get your amygdala into overdrive. They feed off the energy.”
    “What happens to me, besides having nightmares?”
    “Eventually, the creatures will be able to inject you with psychic stimulation while you’re awake. Long-term exposure to that will result in paranoid and delusional behavior. That of course spawns all sorts of trouble depending on how paranoid, and how delusional.”
    Cori let her mouth hang open, but the defaming word could not be put back in now that it was out. “It’s just a dream ,” she pitched. She could see Danato pondering, turning the entire situation over and over again. Soon, he would be so concerned for her safety that he would lock her in the house to keep her safe.
    “A test!” She blurted out and turned to Belus who was still sane. For once, she could see the benefit of having one man around that was not