Free Waking Nightmares by Christopher Golden Page A

there were certain kinds of trouble he was better at handling than anyone else in the world, and that his conscience would never allow him to refuse to help. Nor would she want him to refuse, if only for the sake of her own conscience.
    Her gaze full of regret, she nodded and reached for his hands.
    “I’ve toured on my own plenty of times.”
    “You don’t have to go on your own,” Octavian offered. “The label will send a minder or an assistant or something.”
    Nikki arched an eyebrow. “I’d rather be on my own than have a babysitter from the label.” The corners of her mouth lifted in a coquettish smile, a game attempt to dispel the renewed hesitation between them. “I’m a big girl. I can handle myself.”
    “I know you can,” Octavian said.
    “I could come with you. Cancel a few dates,” Nikki offered.
    But Octavian shook his head. “No. I know how you feel about letting people down when they’ve paid good money to see you. I’m only going as far as Massachusetts. Keomany and I will get this thing sorted out, and then I’ll catch up with you, wherever you are.”
    Nikki kissed him. “You’d better.”
    Octavian glanced at the professor. “Derek, can you run me to the airport? I need a rental car.”
    “Sure,” the professor said, he and Viviane looking at them with concern. “Just tell me when you want to go.”
    Octavian turned back to Nikki. “It needs to be now.”
    “It’s that bad?” she asked, worry creasing her forehead for the first time.
    Octavian kissed her, caressing her cheek, wondering how many days it would be before he saw her again.
    “I guess I’ll find out when I get there.”

     
    ALL Amber wanted was to go home. She smiled and nodded at the nurse but barely listened to the woman. From the moment Dr. Millet had given her a clean bill of health, she had been champing at the bit. All of her life, she had hated hospitals. At age six, she had broken her leg, and she could still remember the hellish discomfort of the hospital bed and the stink of human rot that lay just below the smell of disinfectant they used to try to hide it. But the worst part of being hospitalized had not been the injury or the treatment—it had been the sensation of being trapped there, on that awful bed, surrounded by the sick and the dying.
    So she forced herself to smile and she signed the paperwork for her release, and she took the piece of paper the nurse had printed up giving her nutritional advice on how to avoid doing the kind of damage to her body that might lead to a seizure. They were giving her a piece of paper instead of drugs because they had spent five hours trying to figure out what had caused her morning to turn to shit, and they’d come up empty.
    “Just call us if you don’t feel well, or if you’re concerned about anything at all,” the nurse said.
    Kind of hard to make a call if I’m spazzing out on the floor, she thought. But she smiled and nodded some more, and managed to thank the woman.
    Amber had been holding her cell phone in her hand, ignoring the buzz of new texts coming in because she didn’t want to be rude to the nurse. Now, as the woman ushered her out of the examination room and pointed her toward the exit, she glanced down at her messages. Two new ones, both from her best friend, Tami Nguyen.
    What time can u meet tonite? read the first message. Tami had followed seconds later with Is he really still waiting for u?
    Tami had been fretting dramatically over Amber’s health ever since Amber had first texted her that she was being taken to the hospital. But the second Amber had told her that the doctor thought she had just been dehydrated and possibly overcaffeinated, Tami had moved on to her more traditional concerns—partying.
    The doc said to rest tonite, she texted, which was halfway to a lie, in the sense that the doctor had actually given her that instruction, but Amber would never have obeyed it if she really wanted to go and get drunk with Tami. More