Night's Deep Hush: Reveler Series 4 Read Online Free Page A

to want work. I heard you were back and looking for a scam.”
    “It’s no good, Chuck. I told you Chimera is after me.”
    “There’s no one else to do what I need. Talent is dying out.”
    “Then you’re screwed.”
    “No, you are.”
    “We both are,” Rook said. “You’ve got to get away from the nightmare chick. Pay her off with your pop-royalty money.”
    “No amount of money will do her. Her kid is missing. Little boy.”
    Rook quit straining against the sand ribbon. A missing kid? Darkside? Shit. “Your best bet is Chimera, even if it is corrupt as hell. Have them find the kid, then steal him away as fast as you can.”
    Chuck reared back and raised his face to the nonexistent sky, palms open, to beseech some higher power. “Come on, man.” He looked down at Rook again. “We could’ve, should’ve grabbed your woman back in the waking world and done all sorts of fun things to her to make you cooperate. What were you doing with a nice girl anyway?”
    Rook still didn’t believe they hadn’t grabbed her. If they had, she’d have fought them. If they hadn’t, she’d be plotting, in which case Chuck was going to find himself cast far out into the Scrape.
    “Leave the girl alone. I only met her last week. And I’m not taking work.”
    The idea of a missing little boy burned, though. He tried not to let it bother him.
    “You know why we didn’t take your woman?”
    Chuck hated mess?
    “Because I know you have a soft spot for kids. In the old days you were always making sure that no one bothered with them or gave them bad dreams. It’s because you killed your little brother and can’t ever make it right. I told Mirren that there was no need to motivate you. That you were motivated already.”
    The dreamwaters were bitter with Chuck’s lies. Funny thing was, Rook knew Chuck didn’t care if he believed him or not. He just liked to hear himself talk, mixing in truth so that nobody could tell what was a lie and what wasn’t. It was strategic, and it worked—a person had to decide what to believe on their own, just like in the waking world. But Rook had made his peace with Joshua’s death. Yes, it had been his fault, but it had also been a terrible accident. Joshua didn’t haunt him anymore.
    Didn’t mean another little boy couldn’t. Being lost Darkside was bad. But Rook shook his head, again. “I have no idea how to go about finding the child of the nightmare chick in the first place.”
    “I told Mirren you’re the best tracker there is.”
    “You don’t get it, Chuck,” Rook said. “Their kind don’t have their own dreamscapes like normal people do.” Which was why Didier Lambert had wanted Maisie’s incredible Maze City for his own. Steve Coll didn’t have a dreamscape, either. He’d said that he’d spent the first part of his life wandering in and out of other people’s dreams, trying to find his own. “The good news is that the monsters out in the Scrape won’t harm him. Maybe.”
    Coll had said they hadn’t harmed him.
    The blond nightmare chick—Mirren, was it?—advanced out of the shadows. Rook had guessed she was probably close by. “How do you know all this?”
    “I’ve been in the dreamwaters a long time.”
    “You aren’t scared of me?”
    “I don’t like you much.” For obvious reasons.
    “I didn’t touch your woman.”
    “And I didn’t touch your kid.”
    “I need you to find him.”
    Rook strained against the Scrape ribbon again, then smiled bitterly when he failed. “And I need to adjust my junk.” It was a metaphor. He had no idea what state he was in or where he was in the waking world. For all he knew, he could still be in that tiny apartment. Jordan could be bound and gagged at his side. She could even be dead, one of Chuck’s many messes.
    “You used to have more heart, man,” Chuck said.
    “My heart’s all tied up right now.”
    Mirren took a step forward and touched the band of ribbon. The bonds fell from him in a rain of sand. He