Best I Ever Had | Hope Mikaelson

"What Was Hope Doing In Your Dreams?"

"How is she?" I asked Dr. Saltzman as we walked down the hallway. After my sister expressed interest in speaking with the tribrid, I left her with Hope.

"If you two spoke words to each other, you would know," he answered then sighed. "She's doing what she does best, keeping people out."

"You can't blame her. I'm surprised I was in for as long as I was."

"What happened, Alexius?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "That's a question for her."

"Dr. Saltzman," Landon's voice interrupted our conversation. We turned around to see the human running down the hallway, coming to a stop in front of us.

"Dr. Saltzman, I have changed my mind," the headmaster spoke, anticipating Landon's next words, but I'm sure that was not what he was going to say. "I've decided to take you up on your offer and get the hell out with every other sane person here."

"No, actually, I took your advice and I stayed busy, and I think I found something."

I love being right.

We followed Landon to the library, picking up Hope and my sister along the way. Something must have happened because neither of them, especially my sister, would look at me.

"What did you do, Artemis?" I questioned her but didn't receive an answer.

"Let's pretend for a second that the research isn't wrong," Landon started talking as we all walked into the library and stood around a table covered in books and papers. "Maybe the Night Hag can't hurt us in real life. Maybe the Night Hag can't leave the astral plane and get ahold of the urn, so maybe we are not dealing - with a Night Hag."

"Well, if it walks like a Night Hag, and talks like a Night Hag, what else could it be?" Dr. Saltzman wondered.

"That's exactly what I was wondering, so then I started going through all these books, and boom," Landon replied, opening a book and flipping to a page.

Hope glanced over the page then asked, "What's an Oneiroi?"

"A pain in the ass."

"It's a black-winged shapeshifting dream demon from Greek mythology."

Were the answers to the tribrid's question.

"Why would one monster disguise itself as another monster?" Hope asked another question. "The Oneiroi sounds freaky enough."

"Because if we knew what it actually was --"

Dr. Saltzman finished Landon's answer and exited the library, saying, "We'd know how to stop it."

࿊࿊࿊

"A black-winged what?" Kaleb asked out of confusion after Hope explained everything to the Super Squad.

We all assembled in the main room, which was oddly empty and quiet. Kaleb leaned on the arm of the couch, where MG and Rafael sat. I stood behind the couch, Artemis by my side, but she still hasn't looked at me or told me what she and Hope were talking about. Landon sat on the arm of a chair a few feet away from the tribrid, who stood in front of the room.

"Shapeshifting dream demon," Hope and I replied in unison. She continued talking, "I know it sounds bad, but now that we know what the creature is, we can fight it."

"How the hell are we supposed to kill a dream demon?"

"It's not very hard, just aim for the eyes," Artemis answered Rafael's question.

"Since I can't fall asleep without compromising the location of the urn, I need someone else to pull it out of the dream plane and into our waking reality."