The Children of Hypnos

Chapter 10: Totally Obeying Orders

Emery and Wes hustled across campus in their pajamas, quick-stepping over the chilly sidewalks and brittle grass, ignoring small groups of dreamhunters and the early-rising students from the day division.

The food court had just opened for breakfast when they arrived. The kitchen workers crashed pans and plates together in the back rooms behind the food lines. The fountain bubbled to life. Wes and Emery split apart for food and gravitated together to a table in the center of the atrium, near the fountain.

"You know Joel Cullweather?" Emery asked between bites of waffle.

Wes, hunched over his food, glanced up at her. "I know of your boyfriend, Joel Cullweather, yes. I don't know him."

"Joel's great," Emery said. "He wants to mount an ice sculpture at the top of the fountain. The sculpture's of Fabian Fenhallow and a—"

"Em!" Joel, Kris, Lewis, and Jacqueline all burst through the atrium doors, as if they'd been summoned. Lewis and Jacqueline looked put together for the day; Joel and Kris looked like they'd been plucked straight from their beds.

"I didn't know any of you woke up this early," she said when they dragged more chairs up to the table.

"I do," Lewis grumbled.

"We heard the sand wore off." Joel settled next to Emery, sliding an arm around her and pulling her close to kiss her temple while he stole a piece of watermelon off her plate. "Everyone thinks you had a run-in with some huge nightmare that spits sleeping sand."

"The Howards think you're full of it," Jacqueline rested her chin on her palm, "and you just knocked yourself out chasing what you thought was a huge nightmare."

"Isaiah Howard wouldn't know a nightmare if it knocked his shield out of his hand and stabbed him with his own sword," Emery said. Jacqueline snorted.

"So what actually happened?" Kris asked.

"We're fine, it was—"

"We're not supposed to talk about it," Wes said. He stared Emery down across the table.

Again, he was right, they weren't. And it was an unspoken rule between the members of the day division and night division that if a dreamhunter student refused to speak about a mission, no further questions would be asked. Plenty of secrets made their way around Fenhallow; if one didn't, it was serious enough not to risk getting in trouble for leaking it.

"Everyone," Emery said coolly, "have you met Wesley? Wes doesn't have many friends, so he's not too skilled at introducing himself."

A vein stood out in Wes's temple. Emery wondered if she could make that aneurysm a reality before the end of the month.

The other members of the student council introduced themselves in turns. Kris got Wes to smile by mentioning that she had a few classes with Ridley ("Honestly, everyone always talks about how she's the nicest person on campus, but they never talk about how smart she is"); Joel had played soccer with Wes a few times ("Being a dreamhunter should be automatic cheating—you're all faster"); Lewis, an assistant to their dream theory professor, had consistently docked Wes points on his essay grammar ("It's nothing personal, I swear. I just can't in good conscience allow you to keep using 'your' when you should use 'you're'"); and though Jacqueline and Wes didn't have anything in common, Jacqueline managed to make him blush deep red just by making direct eye contact for longer than ten seconds while he explained to her that yes, he was interested in girls, and no, he did not currently have a girlfriend.

"I can fix that for you," Jacqueline said. "Just let me know."

Wes turned a mottled shade of purple.