Daydreams and Nightmares (Complete)

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie Morrigan sat at a desk in a classroom that was bigger than a football stadium. In every direction were more identical desks with identical students underneath rows and rows of identical rectangular florescent lights for as far as she could see - but then, she couldn't really look because her essay was overdue, and she was trying to finish it, but every time she looked back to the page on her desk it was blank again. And she was in her underwear.

She looked down at herself and sighed. "That one again? Can't you come up with something better?"

She was in her pajamas, only they were several sizes too big, and it was hard to hold on to her pen. The thing slipped out of her sleeve-encumbered hand as if it were a live fish and clattered to the floor.

"Jamie Morrigan. I'm waiting for your paper."

Jamie looked up to see Mrs. Baumgarten standing over her desk with a stack of finished papers, and all the students had turned to stare at them. Now the whispering began, and the laughing.

"No, you're not," Jamie said. "I handed this one in months ago. And you're not even my teacher, you're the school counselor, and you're only here because I'm more afraid of you."

"Jamie, your behavior is deteriorating," Mrs. Baumgarten said. "You're a nuisance and a danger to the other children, and everyone thinks you look stupid in those pajamas. We're going to have to send you away."

"Well, good, I don't like being here," Jamie said, and she stood up violently, knocking her chair over backwards with a terrible sound.

She spun around and found herself at the top of the basement steps in her school, watching as Brayden Thomas tumbled down them like a puppet with its strings cut until at last he crashed on the floor below with all his limbs pointing the wrong directions. Jamie gasped and stumbled back away from the steps, hugging herself to try to stop the trembling.

"Okay, that was a cheap shot," she said with a tremulous voice. "It wasn't my fault, and he's already out of the hospital."

"You're going to have to go away, Jamie," said Mrs. Baumgarten, towering behind her. "Don't worry. I know just the place for you."

Jamie squeezed her eyes shut. "I know what you're going to do. I'm going to turn around, and I'll be back at the Jericho Center. It's not going to work, okay? It's not going to scare me."

"Of course, not, dear. It's where you belong."

She opened her eyes, and now she was in a brightly lit corridor that looked like a hospital but wasn't, because hospitals didn't have guards with assault rifles at every wardroom door and even the worst hospitals didn't feel like all the happiness and warmth had gone out of your life and you were never going to have any fun ever again. Jamie looked down and saw that her pajamas had been replaced with a disgustingly pink medical smock. She was defiant as Mrs. Baumgarten marched her down the corridor and stopped at a very familiar door.

Jamie spun to glare up at her counselor. "I told you, it's not going to work!" she repeated, though she felt her heart thundering against her narrow chest. "I get it, okay? I know I'm dreaming."

Mrs. Baumgarten smiled just the way she always did when Jamie said something she found particularly interesting. "Of course you are, dear - and you're very good at it! But how do you know where you're going to wake up?"

The door behind her opened with a crash, and Jamie stumbled backward and off the edge of the stairs to the basement in her school.

She woke with the dizzying sensation of falling still ringing around her ears and lay for a moment half-buried in her pillow, clutching at the sheets in her hands. But the sheets felt wrong. Where the thin and faded prints of tropical birds and insects should have been, there was a starchy sheet of institutional blue. Jamie choked and bolted upright on the hard mattress to see sterile white walls with no windows, a metal door with charts in a plastic folder hanging from it, and a small TV in the corner beside a bookshelf of books and DVDs she'd already read and watched a hundred times. And instead of the fuzzy pajamas Anna had bought her last Christmas, she was wearing that horrible pink smock.

"No, it's not real!" she whimpered, and she pressed her hands hard over her eyes and tried to remember her bedroom in Redención House, but the memory of her dream was still vivid and raging through her brain.

"Dr. Roken to gene lab four, please, Dr. Roken gene lab four."

"It's not real!" Jamie howled at the PA speaker in the ceiling. "Go away! It's not real, it's not real, it's not real!"

Jamie hugged her knees to her chest and put her face between them, sobbing as the whitewash slowly faded to wallpaper, the tile floor to carpet, and the buzzing florescent light to the gentle morning sunlight beaming through her bedroom window.

[Tess Abrahams]

Sometimes when the light was just so and the air rested at a perfect warmth that made it sweet and yet still biting like a pillowy meringue Tess Abrahams thought she could run past forever. Her muscles and lungs and mind rose to meet the pavement in all it's uneven, unpredictable glory and worked and worked and worked until they stopped working and simply were; for a little while nothing else existed but the blur of the passing world and the distant drum of her heartbeat in her ears.

Not an early riser by nature, the young woman usually preferred to wait until late afternoon before lacing up her sneakers. In Los Santos, the streets were wavering mirages by ten o'clock, sweltering with the sun that would only burn brighter as it arched across the sky and so necessity drove her out of bed at dawn a few times a week to get her fix.

Tess grinned in self-satisfied triumph as she cut across the lawn and took the porch stairs in one mighty jump, her legs fluid and graceful after a six-mile negative-split session. Wiping a forearm across her sweaty forehead, she kicked off her battered running shoes and let herself into the house.

But instead of the quiet she had expected to find, the sound of young screaming galloped through the ceiling in discordant greeting.

"Jamie?!" Tess called as she attacked the staircase, hair slipping out of it's elastic collar at the renewed burst of motion. By the time the landing rushed to meet her the shouting had subsided but an awful sobbing had taken it's place and it only made Tess hurry all the more. She nearly crashed into the girl's door as she anxiously twisted the knob and stumbled in to land sweat-soaked next to the small, huddled child.

"Hey, hey," she said breathlessly, arms gently encircling the trembling form. "What's wrong, what happened?"

[Jamie Morrigan]

"It's not real," Jamie said, shoulders still heaving. She didn't open her eyes, but she grabbed onto Tess's arms and held on for dear life.

"Tess," she said, "where are we? Are we in my room? My real room?"

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna stumbled out of bed, pulling her threadbare terry cloth robe on over her nightgown and belting it as she hurried into the hallway. Jamie's cries had quieted already, and Anna gently pushed the girl's door open. "Estás bien, cariño?

"Oh," she added, seeing Tess, but continued into Jamie's bedroom, taking a seat on the other side of the twin bed and opening her arms for the girl.

[Tess Abrahams]

"Yeah, kiddo," Tess nodded, carding a hand though Jamie's damp hair. "We're in your real room. Where else would we be, huh?"

Anna's voice caused her to glance up and Tess traced a gentle thumb down Jamie's cheek. "It's okay, you can open your eyes. Nothing scarier than me and Anna here, I promise."

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie slowly opened her eyes. Everything was a massive blur at first between the tears and the detritus of sleep, but the colors were right. She rubbed her face, smearing away the tear-tracks and saw her room just the way she'd left it last night - window propped open to let in the cool morning air, books piled prodigiously in the little wheeled bookshelf in the corner, wallpaper with its wildlife motif running all around the room, a sensibly random distribution of stuffed animals scattered around the floor, the bed, and the plastic chair in the corner. And more importantly, she was surrounded by something she'd never had at all in Jericho - family.

She let them hold her as she ran out of tears and took a few gasping breaths. The fear that had been so sharp and real and immediate was fading away just as the illusion had, and suddenly she felt embarrassed that it had bothered her at all.

"I had a bad dream," she said quietly.

She used to boast about her bad dreams. More than once during the last summer, she'd sneaked into Jake's room late at night while he was watching some cheesy horror movie on his old TV set that only had color half the time, just hoping the monsters would invade her dreams so she could show them how it was done. This had been different.

[Anna Fernandez]

"Oh, Jamie." Anna smoothed the girl's hair and used the edge of her robe to dry her tears. "You're safe now, mi corazón." Jamie's dreams were so much worse than the nightmares that others might get. With her power of illusions, sometimes it was hard for the girl to determine what was real, and what wasn't.

And, of course, sometimes her dreams got projected all over the house, leading to some quite interesting nights, like when Ronnie and Jake were attacked by giant mutant tomatoes. "If you want to talk about it..."

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie was afraid to even think about it - afraid that if she dwelt on it, her room might morph back into Jericho, and Anna and Tess might turn into Ms. Harmon and Dr. Roken, and it would be just like the nightmare hadn't ended, or even worse, like the House was a dream and Jericho was her reality, even though she knew it really wasn't.

She shut her eyes again before the walls had a chance to turn white. "I was back at J-Jericho," she said.

She felt Anna reflexively crush her to her chest, and she considered just leaving it there. Anna knew what Jericho meant to her foster daughter - dreary captivity, painful experiments, and despair. She'd dreamed of it before. And on happier nights, she'd conjured up the alien tripods from War of the Worlds and watched in satisfaction as they heat-rayed the whole place while all the other patients cheered.

"I was at Jericho, and I knew it was a dream, and I said I wasn't going to be scared. But then I woke up, and I was still there, and--" Her throat tightened up and threatened to send her back into a sobbing mess. "--I couldn't make it go away. I tried, but I could even feel the scratchy sheets, and I'm not supposed to be able to feel things when they're not real!"

[Tess Abrahams]

All that Tess knew about the Jericho Center she had learned by reading and listening to the experiences of others, mostly during her time with the Brotherhood. She recalled with appalling clarity the collar that Tron had shown her once, the cruel thin band an inconceivably barbaric implement of confinement. Seeing the terror of the place echoed in Jamie's face and ringing in her voice sent a chill down her spine.

Tess exchanged a look with Anna over the girl's head, rubbing a small wayward knee with a hand.

"I'm going to get you some water, chica," she said softly because right now Jamie needed to be a child in need of consolation from a mother. Tess knew all too well how good they were at chasing hurt. "I'll be right back."

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna waited until Tess had lightly closed the door behind her before she relaxed the hug she was holding Jamie in. She had done some reading on lucid dreaming, and how things could feel ultra real while in a dream.

"You know, dreams can feel very real. That's part of why they can be so scary." Anna plumped the pillows behind Jamie, letting her relax back into them while she gently rubbed the girl's arm. "Your illusions do not touch, but in your own head..." She sighed, trying to find something comforting to say. "When you know its a dream, just think of me, or another of your friends. I'll show up and give those mean Jericho people a butt-kicking!"

She bent over Jamie and kissed the girl's damp forehead. How she longed to be able to take away the pain her daughter was going through. "I do have something to tell you, something that might help you think happy thoughts..."

[Jamie Morrigan]

The thought of Anna showing up and freezing Mrs. Baumgarten's feet to the floor should have made her smile, but Jamie still wasn't over that terrible feeling of being helpless within the confines of her own mind, the one place she'd always been in control regardless of what was happening to her body.

After that line of thought, any diversion was welcome, and she looked up at her foster mother with curiosity shining on her tear-stained face. "What is it?"

[Anna Fernandez]

"Well..." Anna brushed a thumb over Jamie's cheek and then tucked some hair behind the girl's ear. "I'm going to have a baby." She couldn't keep the little smile off her face as she finally told her adopted daughter the news.

[Jamie Morrigan]

It wasn't the sort of thing you heard all at once. It was spoken all at once, true, but after it was said, you had to listen to the shapes it left behind in the air and in your mind. And while Jamie was doing that, her eyes darted all over Anna's face, reading every curve and every line.

"Really?" she said, breathless. She glanced down at Anna's stomach to see if she could tell. Was there some roundness there she hadn't seen before?

The dream was gone now, as far from Jamie's mind as two things possibly could be. She whirled over all the possible implications she could think of, and the one that she landed on turned out to be: "I'm going to be a big sister?"

[Anna Fernandez]

"Yes!" Anna beamed, and Jamie was the one hugging her this time, skinny arms tight around her neck. "The best big sister in the world... oof, not so tight! I need to breathe!"

When Jamie released her Anna flopped sideways, pretending to gasp for breath.

[Tess Abrahams]

A soft knock sounded and then Tess poked her head in, checking the state of things before she entered. It was a considerably less tumultuous scene than it had been the first time and the grin on Jamie's face was like a clear sky after a flatland storm.

"KO!" Tess winked as she took in Anna's prone form and handed the girl a cool glass of water in her favourite python mug from the city zoo's reptile lair gift shop. She raised one of Jamie's arms in the air, declaring her victor to an unseen crowd. "Morrigan takes state once again!"

Sitting at the foot of the bed, Tess leaned against the frame and quirked a brow. "Now that's got to be the fastest recovery I've ever seen. What's got you looking like a cat with a canary?"

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie laughed - hard enough that it occurred to her how strange it felt to be laughing with that rubbery-wet feel of crying still hanging on her face, but only for a moment. There were more important matters at hand!

"Oh my gosh, Tess, did you hear? Anna's going to have a baby! Why does no one ever tell me these things!"

She was on her feet in a flash, practically bouncing with energy. "Is it a boy or a girl, or are you keeping it a surprise? Oh, what about names? I can help with that! Can I? Please?"

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna laughed, sitting up. "Woah, disminuya la velocidad! No, no names yet, and si, I was thinking of keeping it a surprise." She was relieved that Jamie was taking it so well, although she'd expected her to be excited. She held out her hand to her capering daughter. "Come back to the bed, you'll wake up the whole house.

"I was thinking maybe Maria, if it is a girl."

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie took on a very put-upon look, but she managed to keep her voice down to a stage whisper. "Back to bed? But there's no way I'm getting back to sleep now. Oh wait I know!"

She hopped on over to Tess's side and grabbed her sweaty arm by the wrist. "Anna, you can go back to bed, and Tess and I can go make breakfast for you and bring it back up. Oh, except, Tess, you probably want to shower first."

Jamie took her now-slick hand away and wiped it surreptitiously on the seat of her pajamas.

[Tess Abrahams]

Jamie had a valid point. Her clothes were beginning to stick in that cold, clammy way that they did after a hard workout and even Tess was picking up on the pungent bouquet of sweaty cotton and lapsing deodorant. It was always a bad sign when you could smell yourself.

"Good idea," Tess nodded, nose wrinkling in agreement. She peeled off the baggy t-shirt that she'd borrowed from the laundry room (it hadn't been quite dirty enough to warrant a wash and so Tess had figured she'd do it's owner a favour and push it over the line) and shivered a little as the cool air brushed against the exposed skin of her belly, soothing against the red chafe marks that blossomed under the straps of the running undershirt she wore.

"You heard the newest big sister, Anna," the teenager pointed a finger at her friend as she loped towards the door. "Relax. Your sous chef will be reporting for duty in ten minutes, Chef Jamie."

[Anna Fernandez]

"Oh no, you two are going to be in the kitchen... unsupervised?" Anna threw up her hands in mock horror, but gave in readily to their demands. She was pretty tired. "Very well, I will go back to bed."

Jamie half pushed her down the hallway toward her room, and Anna added, "Don' burn the house down, okay? Okay, okay, I'm going." She giggled, and gently closed her door, listening to Jamie traipsing down the stairs and the water in the pipes rattling on as Tess started her shower.

After a moment she slipped underneath her sheets, her body finding the indent she'd molded over time into the elderly mattress. She was really, truly, blessed.

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie pushed the bedroom door closed to make absolutely certain there was no way her patron could escape. Then she dashed down the stairs in her bare feet to prep her kitchen.

"Hmm... what would Alton Brown make?"

She leaned her elbows on the counter island, poring over the cookbook she'd dragged off the bookshelf by the pantry. Everything she'd seen so far looked daunting, and she didn't even know what an orzo frittata was...

She put the cookbook back and reached for another one - and then she saw the little spiral-bound notebook with ragged edges and a few magazine clippings sticking out the top. Jamie opened it up and found pages and pages of Anna's handwriting and recipes cut out from newspapers and magazines with annotations like "4x beans, 2x meat" and "works w/ chicken, pork, or beef."

Fifteen seconds later, she had her recipe. Out of the refrigerator came a dozen eggs, a stick of butter, and the pot of black beans from three nights ago. Then she ran to the pantry to pull out a jar of Anna's homemade garden salsa and a bag of fresh tortillas. She was noisily wrestling a muffin pan out of the baking cupboard when Tess appeared.

[Tess Abrahams]

What a difference a warm shower made. Stripped of grime and sweat, Tess felt replenished and clean inside and out in the way that only a good workout and scrub down could accomplish. Skin still dewy from the humid bathroom, she made her way down to the kitchen, twisting her dripping and tangled hair into a knot and securing it with a damp elastic from around her wrist.

A veritable explosion of ingredients had materialized on the countertop in the fifteen or so minutes that Jamie'd had to prep. Tess eyed the spread warily, trying to piece together how exactly it was all meant to bind together in a cohesive and complimentary way. She'd never really cooked before, beyond simple things that either didn't count or only required a single pot; toast, oatmeal, pasta, salad.

"What are we making?" Tess asked as she looked from the eggs to the muffin tin in Jamie's hands. Eggs she could handle. She only ever left a little bit of shell in them and a bit of crunch never killed anyone. It was quite nice, actually... but since when did you need a muffin tin to make eggs?

A little puzzled, rummaged around in a nearby cupboard, producing a mixing bowl. She was perfectly comfortable with letting Jamie take point on this one and judging by the girl's purposeful movement in the cozy space, she knew what was what.

[Jamie Morrigan]

"Huevos rancheros!" Jamie announced triumphantly, and she clanged the muffin pan onto the countertop and pushed the recipe book in Tess's direction. "It's like cupcakes, but with tortilla wrappers filled with egg and beans and salsa and cheese and they're so good!"

She hurried over to the oven to start it preheating and then twisted open the bag of tortillas. "We need to melt the butter. You can do that in the microwave, but check it, like, every ten seconds so it doesn't explode. Oh! Let me go get some cilantro!"

Before Tess could get another word in, Jamie had run out to the herb planter on the back stoop.

[Tess Abrahams]

"Butter explodes?" Tess asked the empty kitchen at large, surveying the seemingly-innocent pale yellow stick with trepidation. Jeepers. This was more complicated than she'd originally assumed.

When Jamie returned, brandishing a generous bouquet of flat, lacy green leaves that smelled oddly like soap, Tess was watching the microwave intently. A ceramic bowl spun around and around in time with the monotonous humming and when the cycle ended with a shrill ding of alarm, Tess quickly yanked the door open.

"Ha ha," she winked at Jamie, carefully ferrying the hot bowl onto the counter with a fingertip grip. "Nothing blew up!"

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie quickly determined Tess needed some watching in the kitchen, but pinching off the edges of the tortillas so they fit in the muffin cups wasn't too hard, and neither was brushing them with the molten butter so they wouldn't stick. Each tortilla-cup got a generous mix of salsa and black beans, and then they cracked an egg into each one (Jaime fished out a few shell fragments with a disapproving eye) and slid the laden pan carefully into the oven.

"Okay, that's eight minutes in there before we add the cheese," Jamie said, skimming over the recipe once more. "Oh! You want to do Bisquick, too?"

Out came another mixing bowl, some flour, milk, more eggs, and a process that quickly became a fair bit messier than the heuvos rancheros had been. With a griddle on the heat, Jamie set about mixing up the sticky batter.

From the way she was staring into the gloopy mix, her thoughts were a million miles away.

[Tess Abrahams]

The confidence with which Jamie attacked the recipe was such a contrast from the distraught girl upstairs that they became as separate people. Tess marveled at the diminutive chef, whisking and mixing with no hesitation like the vivid constructs of her nightmare were a mere footnote. It shouldn't have been surprising: Jamie was a gale force and had more spunk and determination than people twice her age. Nothing could hold her back unless she let it.

Tess banked on the leeway that being an assistant provided, bending down to check the baking egg bowls while the chef assumed control over the pancakes. The fillings were slowly solidifying, starting to loose the slippery sheen of raw egg, and the tortillas smelled richly of warming butter. Her stomach growled.

Pushing to stand upright once more, she found Jamie stirring the well-mixed batter, her expression distant. Tess reached around her for the waiting nonstick spray.

"Earth to Jamie," she said, bumping her hip against the girl's as she uncapped the can and spritzed the crackling griddle. "Where'd you go?"

[Jamie Morrigan]

"Oh! Sorry..."

Jamie started mixing with vigor again, and then she realized the batter was already as mixed as it could possibly be. She set the bowl aside and looked up at Tess sheepishly.

"I wasn't... projecting, was I?"

[Tess Abrahams]

"Nope, just drifting," Tess assured with a flash of smile as she twisted around to wet her hand under the sink faucet. Tiny hisses erupted from the griddle as she flicked droplets onto it's smooth surface, water evaporating in wriggling bursts of steam.

Under Jamie's supervision, she ladled some of the creamy batter onto the greased surface, three round little pats that oozed slowly outward until the heat caught up with them and stilled their movement. Tess watched them slowly rise. "You know, my little brother used to have pretty bad dreams when he first came to live with us."

[Jamie Morrigan]

"He did?"

The oven buzzer interrupted them before Tess could answer. Jamie grabbed a potholder and pulled out the muffin pan. Then she ran to the fridge and pulled out a bag of shredded cheese to add to the eggs.

"What happened?"

[Tess Abrahams]

"Well, my parents thought that maybe he should talk to someone about it, so they took him to a child psychologist," Tess grimaced internally, recalling what a monumental catastrophe that had been. Felix had gone from a quiet, withdrawn little boy to an angry hellion who lashed out at anyone who tried to bridge the gap.

"He hated it. And it only made him dream more often. It got so bad that he wouldn't sleep for days and days and then he'd eventually collapse in a heap in the weirdest places; once he fell asleep coming down the stairs and ended up needing six stitches right here," Tess pointed to the thin skin at the edge of her right eyebrow. "My mom cried harder than he did at the hospital."

[Jamie Morrigan]

The thought of someone falling down the stairs made Jamie's heart thump and her head feel light for a moment, but she knew that wasn't Tess's fault. She stopped sprinkling cheese, only three of the eight cups done, and looked up with a genuine expression of empathy. "That's awful!"

[Tess Abrahams]

Tess laughed ruefully, nodding. It was awful, but in hindsight it was kind of morbidly funny. Felix had been such a tiny pain-in-the-ass and any sympathy she'd had for the kid had always been at war with a sense of frustration at his open hostility in spite of all their efforts to love him. The memory of him just... crumpling and thumpbumping down the second story landing like a human Slinky both made her stomach clench and her affectionate sense of sibling rivalry sing.

"It was pretty bad," Tess surveyed the bubbles rising on the pancakes. "But then my mom's mom, Nana Ann, came to visit. She's crazy, Jamie, not even joking but she's the only one who didn't think that Felix needed medication."

Canting her head to one side in appraisal, Tess asked Jamie, "You ever read about the Ojibwe?"

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie scrunched up her eyebrows as she finished off the rest of the muffin cups. "Is that the board game thing that tells your fortune?"

[Tess Abrahams]

"Close but no cigar," Tess laughed, pinching a haystack of cheese between her fingers. "That's a ouija board. The Ojibwe are a Native American tribe and guess what their specialty is?"

Tess tilted her head back and dropped the pre-grated cheese into her mouth, letting the pause draw out. She chewed thoughtfully, letting Jamie mull over the possibilities before she leaned closer, as if to share a secret. "Dream hunting."

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie's eyes widened, and she forgot about the recipe. There was no way she was missing the rest of this story.

"Dream hunting? How do you do that?"

She had some ideas how she would do it, but somehow she didn't think the Ojibwe did it that way...

[Tess Abrahams]

"Well, the Ojibwe think like spiders," Tess glanced around the kitchen surreptitiously. You never could tell when eavesdroppers were about. "And how do spiders catch their prey?"

A needling thought wriggled it's way out and she corrected, "Most spiders, I mean. Not those creepy Australian ones that leap out of trees."

[Jamie Morrigan]

"With a web?"

A devious thought occurred to Jamie when she realized she'd never introduced Tess to her imaginary pet fierce snake - but right now that would only delay the secret of the Ojibwe dream hunters, which, Jamie was growing more and more convinced, would make an awesome book title.

[Tess Abrahams]

"With a web!" Tess confirmed, brandishing a rubber spatula emphatically in one hand. She slid it underneath the first pancake and flipped it over with a wet splat, moving down the line.

"Whenever a baby is born, or a new member joins the tribe, they weave a web to hang above where they sleep and they decorate it so that dreams are drawn into it. Only, when they get there, the bad dreams? They get all tangled up, just like nearsighted bottleflies, and they can't get loose."

Curling one hand into a mass of stalking legs, Tess raced it up Jamie's arm in hungry arachnid fashion, sinking invisible fangs in with mock ferocity when she reached the little girl's shoulder. "They can't ever get loose."

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie squealed and laughed, quickly retreating out of hand-spider range, and then she remembered the pan on the side of the stove. "Oh, the huevos need to go back in!" she said between giggles.

She'd settled down by the time they got the pan back into the oven and set the timer again. The pancakes coming nicely - thick and fluffy and not too dark.

"So your nana made a dream web?" Jamie asked.

[Tess Abrahams]

"Nope," Tess said. "She made Felix make one."

It had taken Nana Ann practically the entire afternoon just to get Felix to sit in the yard with her. She hadn't asked or begged or bargained; she'd simply told him that she was going outside to sit in the sun and make herself a dreamcatcher to ward off her own nightmares caused by too many murder mystery page turners. Felix had kept a keen, distrustful eye on her from underneath the rhododendron bush in the backyard for hours.

And then he'd come out. He still had the little charm, too, though it's feathers were balding and the coloured twine had faded and unraveled in places.

"She couldn't very well make a web for dreams that weren't hers - how could she have known what sort of trap to set? That's the thing about dreams," Tess never broke eye contact with Jamie, her expression solid and unwavering. "They're personal. If we were to make a dream web, for instance, only you would know exactly what would trip up your nightmares."

[Jamie Morrigan]

That made sense - in that matter-of-fact manner that old stories always made sense, like creation myths and Rudyard Kipling. Jamie stared distantly through the steam rising from underneath the pancakes. Stories around the stove at breakfast were just as good as stories around a campfire at night, weren't they?

"So did it work?" she asked. "Did the nightmares stop?"

Of course they had to have stopped, or what was the point of the story? But there were rules to follow, and Jamie wanted... needed to hear Tess tell the ending.

[Tess Abrahams]

Tess didn't say anything at first, concentrating on neatly sliding the pancakes onto a plate and setting it down next to the stove. When they weren't in danger of burning (any more than the slightly-well done state they were already in, that is) she directed her full attention to Jamie, brown eyes serious and unwavering.

"The really bad ones did," Tess said. "The kind that were too scary and real to be brave about. The first night he hung it over his bed, Felix slept straight through 'til morning without so much as a whisper of a nightmare."

Holding the spatula out to Jamie, the older girl lifted a shoulder in casual gesture. "They're not hard to make. We could try, if you want to."

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie met Tess's eyes and accepted the spatula. It took her a few moments to realize what to do with it, and she swooped in to rescue the remaining pancakes before they went metamorphic.

"I think I'd like that," she said quietly. "I think I'd like that a lot."

She finished adding the last of the pancakes to the stack on the plate and turned off the heat on the stove just in time to be startled by the buzzing oven. "Oh! The eggs are done!"

With Tess's help, she pulled out the bubbling egg-and-salsa concoction and laid it carefully on a rack on the countertop. With care, she worked the spatula under one of the tortilla cups and lifted it onto a plate. Then she whirled off to the silverware drawer, grabbed a pair of forks, and pressed one into Tess's hand.

"A good chef always needs to taste her cooking before sending it to the customers," she said sagely. "It's a rule."

[Tess Abrahams]

"A rule, huh? Well, if it's a rule," the aromatic steam rising from the crispy tortilla cup really didn't make it hard for Tess's arm to be twisted and she neatly drove her fork into the huevos, arranging a colourful bite on the twines and blowing away some of the heat before pushing it past her lips. A blissful expression pulled on her features and Tess sagged against the counter.

"Oh, man," a note of pleased surprise bled into her voice and Tess looked at Jamie with admiration. "James, this is good. Really, really delicous."

The scent of breakfast cooking was always a surefire way to rouse other members of the House; there was no better alarm clock than the air ducts in the kitchen that betrayed culinary enterprise. In anticipation, Tess pulled a few extra plates down from the cupboard and stacked them on the counter, adding a pile of silverware next to them. She helped Jamie arrange Anna's plate and load it onto one of the folding trays that were kept for sick days, adding a glass of Tropicana and a paper towel folded into a fan.

"That's better than any bed and breakfast spread, by a mile," Tess winked and carefully guided the tray into Jamie's hands. "There you go, Chef. You attend to your patron and then you and me are going scouting for dreamcatcher frames."

[Jamie Morrigan]

The first thing you needed if you were going to build a dream web, Jamie quickly learned, was a couple of thin, flexible willow branches you could twist into a circular frame. Unfortunately, the neighborhood appeared to be fresh out of willows - the park down the street only had dry-weather trees like chestnuts and beeches. Jamie suggested they ask Mr. Munoz, whose garden was a thing to be proud of, and even he could only point them to the county arboretum in Arcadia - until he asked why they were looking for a willow tree. After Tess told him, he told them to wait a moment and disappeared into his back yard. Minutes later he returned with several switches of grapevine dried from weeks of drought.

"These will work just as well," he assured Jamie as he pressed them into her hands. "If they aren't going to give grapes, at least they can stop bad dreams."

Soon they were back in the kitchen with the grapevines soaking in a pot of water to make them flexible, and they sat at the kitchen table pondering a roll of twine, some beads from the craft basket, and a pair of crow feathers they had found in the park (and thoroughly cleaned under Tess's discerning eye).

"So I know what it's supposed to look like now," Jamie said, "but how do I know what'll stop my..." She glanced around to make sure the kitchen was empty except for them. "My bad dreams?" she whispered.

No one but Anna and Tess knew she was having them. As far as anyone else knew, this was nothing more than a craft project.

[Tess Abrahams]

"I think it's less about knowing and more about feeling," Tess said, laying out spools of thread in shades of saffron and magenta leftover from some costume project that they'd rescued from Anna's sewing kit.

That sounded vague and New Age-ish even to her own ears and she offered Jamie a sheepish smile.

"What I mean is," she elaborated thoughtfully, "it's kind of like when Jake freestyles on his guitar or when Anna whips up a meal with whatever's left in the cupboards. Maybe they have an idea of what the end product will look like, but the way there is up for interpretation. Let your instincts take over.

"Here," Tess reached into the pot and withdrew one of the waterlogged vines, bending it until the ends kissed, backs rounding into a graceful circle. She secured them with a bit of thread, biting the excess of the spool with her teeth. "Just start by wrapping the frame, don't worry about the web yet. See what happens, kiddo."

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie wiped off the excess water from the vine, and then she examined the dark, red-brown hoop in her hands. It looked like a good start - strong, supple wood with little twiggy springs curling off of it, rough and natural and honest. But it was a little thin.

"I think it could use another vine," she said. "My bad dreams feel... well... bigger than this."

They fished out another, longer vine and twisted it delicately around the first one, careful not to warp it out of shape. Now it looked more formidable, like a brambly thicket growing in a circle. Jamie took the yellow twine and started looping it through the gaps between the vines until she had a proper base for her web.

"Do you ever have nightmares, Tess?" she asked, weaving with the careful deliberation of a portrait painter.

[Tess Abrahams]

The rest of the vines were in danger of becoming limp noodles so Tess fished them out and began an assembly line, looping them and tying the ends until she had a row of hoops ripe for twining. They'd decided to make a few - dreams were common currency and everybody liked a homemade gift.

Jamie's question made Tess glance up as she snipped string.

"Sometimes. I have this recurring one," she squirmed uncomfortably, fingers fumbling she reinforced the soggy olive-green band. "I'm competing in a gymnastics tournament and there's about a million and one people in the auditorium, just watching, all silent and ominous like in a bizarre Hitchcock film. Anyway, I'm way up high on this absurd, definitely non-regulation balance beam... and I realize I'm naked. And I can't move. And everybody's just staring and waiting and..."

Tess trailed off with a shudder. After a moment's thought she shrugged. "I guess that's more of a bad dream than a nightmare, though."

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie took a moment to make sure all her loops were evenly spaced. The last thing you wanted was a side-wickered dreamcatcher.

"That's really weird - you'd think after a while it would stop surprising you," she said.

And then she realized it might have sounded like she was making fun of Tess, and she looked up with mild panic on her face. "I mean... you as in everybody, not you specifically. I mean, most of the time I can figure it out when I'm dreaming. But it doesn't always help."

[Tess Abrahams]

It wasn't just that Jamie was such a sweet kid. It was that she was such a sweet kid in spite of all she'd been through. Her bright face and keen curiosity were unwavering and offered solid proof that hope still bloomed.

"I guess that's why they make good bad dreams," Tess shrugged and began wrapping the bendy frame in her hand with thread in a shade of blue that made her think of Aidan. "If they stopped surprising you, even when you know they're not real, then they wouldn't be such a big deal. And dream hunters would be out of business."

[Jamie Morrigan]

"I guess so," Jamie said, and she finished winding the yellow thread around her twisted frame and reached for a length of red to give her dreamcatcher stripes. She was beginning to settle into the rhythm of working with the thread and the wooden hoop. It was relaxing, therapeutic.

"Usually if I don't like how a dream is going, I can change things. Like this one time, I dreamed that I was in the van going down the street, but no one was driving, and I had to jump into the driver's seat and keep it from crashing. And then a police officer stopped me and asked me why I was driving without a license, and I knew I was going to get in so much trouble. So I told him I was racing to stop terrorists from dumping mutant piranha into the sewers, and he said in that case he'd call back-up, and we flew away on jetpacks. But I woke up before we got to the terrorists."

She wrapped the red fabric like a ribbon around the frame and tied it there. "I don't like it when I can't change my dreams. It's like I've lost control of my power. It's scary."

[Tess Abrahams]

Piranhas and terrorists were an interesting combination but the enjoyment of hearing the imaginative twists that Jamie's mind formed was diluted by her next words. The girl's eyes remained steadfastly attentive to the task at hand but the confession was honestly earnest, and Tess fingered the bumpy skin of the grapevine in her hands, a phantom pain running up the arm she'd broken last year.

"It is scary," she agreed. "What makes these dreams so different from the others, do you think?"

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie turned her fuzzy yellow-and-red grapevine ring in her hands, staring at it in silence. Everything else in the house sounded strangely loud and distinct in the long seconds before she answered.

"It's not just that the scary stuff feels real," she said, almost a whisper. "It's that... when I'm having a really bad nightmare... I'm afraid I'll wake up and find out that coming here to live with Anna was just a dream."

[Tess Abrahams]

"Oh, Jamie," Tess breathed, at a loss for what else to say. What did you say to something like that?

Her hand snaked across the table, easing one of Jamie's smaller ones away from the frame of her dreamcatcher.

"This is as real as it gets, kiddo. Nobody and nothing is taking this away from you," Tess ducked down, trying to find her companion's eyes. "None of us would let that happen."

[Jamie Morrigan]

Tess's hands over hers felt good and solid. Jamie worked to meet Tess's eyes and gave her a watery sort of smile.

"I know," she said. "Look."

The girl glanced toward the empty space over the middle of the table, and out of the air materialized a big, beautiful dragonfly with a jewel-green body and broad, shimmering wings. It thrummed in its flight as it swooped toward them and hovered lazily at eye level.

Jamie took one of her hands out of Tess's and reached up as if to stroke the dragonfly, but her finger passed cleanly through its head, leaving little sparks of green light behind. "You can see it, and hear it, but you can never touch it. That's how I always can tell."

And she couldn't feel the sheets from her bed at Jericho. She couldn't. She was adamant on that point.

[Tess Abrahams]

It wasn't the first of Jamie's projections that Tess had ever seen but that didn't make it any less breathtaking. Iridescent shades of ocean and gossamer wings hung suspended in the air, humming the sound of old summer afternoons. Tess watched, her face reflected in the bulging buggy eyes, and couldn't decide which was prettier - the illusion or the tiny fireworks it cast as Jamie's hand swathed through and betrayed it's falsehood.

Mirroring the girl, Tess reached up but didn't touch the dragonfly, somehow unable to bring herself to disturb the mirage. Her palm floated just below the delicately angled legs.

"That's good, Jamie," she said, genuinely. It was easier to believe that something would help if there was already a foundation to build on. "Because that means the rest of it, what you see and hear, shouldn't be too hard to capture. It'll be like trapping air in a jar."

Tess glanced down at the supplies spread out on the table. "Or a net, rather."

[Jamie Morrigan]

Over the course of the morning and into the early afternoon, with a break for lunch, a series of brightly-colored webs took shape. They'd decided they should make a small one for Anna, since Jamie had read that unborn babies dreamed a lot, and she could carry it around with her in her purse. And there were too many people in the house to make one for everyone, but they made one to hang in Aimee and Jennifer's room, and another for Ronnie and Scott, which was probably close enough to cover Alex, and Jim didn't sleep anyway.

Jamie had watched intently as Tess strung the web around the first dreamcatcher frame, because she wanted to be absolutely sure she got it right. It was stunningly simple for something that ended up looking so beautiful - a net of spiraling diamonds, like a spiderweb heavy with morning dew. A bead was perched on one side to represent the spider, and there was a hole in the center to let the good dreams through, and from the excess string at the bottom dangled a blue feather from the craft box.

Satisfied, Jamie set to work on her own dreamcatcher. You wrapped the string all around the frame in loops with a little slack at the bottom, and once you got around to the beginning, you started looping through the loops so you made an interlocking net. She chose a spot for her spider, a large, white bead that she privately decided to name Spectre, and on the other side of the web she decided to put a second spider, a blue bead named Anna. She finished it off with a pair of crow feathers.

"There," she said, just having tied the knot around the second feather's stem. "What do you think?"

[Tess Abrahams]

"I think that those nightmares better watch their backs," Tess said, gently capturing one of the smooth ebony feather between her fingers and tracing a thumb down it's silky length. Grinning, she gathered the rest of the colorful hoops in her arms. They could distribute them later. "C'mon on, let's see how it looks!"

Together they took the stairs, footfalls thudding in a purposeful cadence, and made their way back up to Jamie's room. It was softer now, somehow, with the heat of the afternoon floating around lazily amongst the scatterings of childhood paraphernalia and the warm light from the open window filling even the farthest corner.

Tess watched as Jamie deliberated, one small finger tapping her chin in thought, and watched as the girl walked to the bed and carefully, almost reverently, slipped the lasso of twine atop the dreamcatcher around the smoothly rounded peak of the headboard post.

"Look at that," Tess said. The beads knocked gently against the wood, a chorus of muted plinks, as the woven web settled in it's new spot. "A perfect fit."

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie stepped back to admire her handiwork. Then she stepped back in and measured the distance between the dreamcatcher and her pillow. She realized suddenly she wasn't exactly sure how it was supposed to work - did dreams follow a path through the room into her head, and, if so, did she have to put the dreamcatcher in the right place like a real spiderweb, or would it just draw them in like a pitcher plant?

And then she decided it didn't really matter - after all, she knew dreams didn't really work that way, and she was pretty sure Tess did, too. It was the thought that counted, and the dreamcatcher, for all its garish colors, certainly looked the part of a friendly mystical talisman. And truth be told, it felt good to do something about her dreams.

[Jamie Morrigan]

They finished handing out the dreamcatchers that evening. Jamie finished off the night watching a movie with Aimee and Jen in the den upstairs, and she finished off the movie by adding fighter planes and flying saucers in the background as the two boring main characters professed their love for each other. Jen complained, but Aimee laughingly agreed it was an improvement.

By the time she climbed into bed, the slits of streetlight glare through her window blinds were resting softly on the dreamcatcher at the corner of her bed. She touched it lightly and then squirmed under the covers, pulling them snugly all around herself like a cocoon. She saw the two beads grow spindly spider legs, and they delicately plucked the strings of the dreamcatcher as if daring the nightmares to try and cross its threshold.

She slept soundly that night without so much as a murmur. Tess peaked in early the next morning to find Jamie breathing deep and evenly. They celebrated with pizza rolls for breakfast when she woke up.

A week passed. Every night Jamie looked at the dreamcatcher last thing before she closed her eyes to sleep, and every night she woke up refreshed and at peace. But then, at the end of a particularly hot and stuffy day with an equally hot and stuffy night in the forecast, a bank of black clouds rolled over Los Santos, growling like a faultline. The bedroom windows of the House, left open so its residents wouldn't suffocate, whistled with the gusting wind. It clawed its way into Jamie's room, making the dreamcatcher swing on its post, further and further each time, until it swung around behind the headboard, and the loop of twine it hung from slipped over the top of the post, dropping the dreamcatcher into the crack behind the bed.

The clouds rumbled more insistently, and Jamie began to shiver underneath her covers.

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna tossed and turned under a single sheet, the distant sounds of the storm intruding into her subconscious. The wind blew her curtains apart, the hot air giving little relief to her sweaty body.

Her bladder finally woke her up, in what was beginning to be a nightly ritual. Anna fumbled with the sheet and swung her feet out of bed, her eyes still mostly closed as she stood up. Her nightgown fell to her knees as she unconsciously rubbed her palm over her belly. She was halfway across her room toward the on suite when she realized she wan't alone in her room.

The surprise was so great her heart leaped into her throat, adrenaline pounding through her veins as her fight or flight response was triggered. "Quien es? Quien esta ahi?!"

[Jamie Morrigan]

A small figure stood silhouetted in the open space between the bed and the dresser - the figure of a young girl.

"Anna?" It was Jamie's voice, but it sounded distant, more distant than the size of the room should have allowed.

"Anna, please..."

[Anna Fernandez]

"Oh my goodness, Jamie, you scared me to death." Anna clutched at her chest, her heart thumping under the white cotton of her nightgown. "Just a minute, Princesa, you can hop into bed and I'll be right back."

She hurried into the bathroom, the need to pee outweighing comforting Jamie - for the moment. Anna finished up quickly, washing her hands and coming back into her room to find her daughter still standing on the rug. "Honey, what is the matter?"

[Jamie Morrigan]

Only Jamie's head had moved, and for one disorienting moment it seemed as though she wasn't really looking at Anna but only in her vicinity.

"Anna," she said, "I'm scared..."

A burst of lightning flooded the room with cold, blue light. Jamie was not wearing her pajamas - she was in a pink medical smock.

[Anna Fernandez]

"Jamie?" Anna reached for the girl and her hand passed through her shoulder, motes of light breaking off and swirling around like summer gnats. "Oh, no...!"

She turned away from the apparition, rushing into the hallway to check on her daughter.

[Jamie Morrigan]

The hallway was dark and indistinct, a tangle of shadows cast by the little plug-in night light by the bathroom door, but even in the darkness Anna knew immediately something was wrong. Jamie's door was missing, and in its place was a large steel door painted a sickly green color. And something was happening to the walls around the door - the homely yellow paint was hardening and forming into glossy white tile. It grew like a spreading stain, overtaking a framed painting of the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, transforming it into a lightboard covered in X-ray proofs that showed skeletons pierced by dozens of needles.

As the institutional tile crawled over the walls and ceiling, a sign placard materialized next to the metal door:

JERICHO CENTER
GENE LAB 4
Morrigan, Jamie

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna immediately pushed on the steel door, but it did not budge. Thunder crashed around the house, and she heard excited voices in another room; other kids awoken by the storm. She yanked on the door, trying to disturb and wipe away the illusion, but it seemed more solid than usual.

"It's not real, Jamie! It's not real!" Anna called through the door, but there was no change. The entire hallway was transformed, bathed in utilitarian fluorescent lighting, but she cast no shadow. Anna looked around, taking deep breaths to calm herself as the temperature began to drop. "It's not real," she muttered, closing her eyes and feeling her way to the doorknob.

Grasping it triumphantly she twisted and pushed, opening her eyes once she stepped over the threshold of Jamie's room. Anna gasped, horrified.

[Jamie Morrigan]

It was not Jamie's bedroom. The floor was black laminate with an unctuous glare, and the distant walls were concrete, dark except for the hazy glow of flatscreen monitors. But that was all incidental. At the center of the room, hanging from the ceiling was a thick column of metal and bundled wires and rubber conduits, and at the bottom of the column, bulging and sticking out in every direction like an enormous, fat spider there was a hideous array of floodlights, cameras, mirrors, and strange instruments on mechanical arms. Underneath the device was a table of some kind, but Anna couldn't see what was on the table because the people in labcoats were standing in the way.

They were mumbling to each other in low, serious tones, incomprehensible except for the occasional word like "incision" and "injection," and they passed metal tools to one another that shone mirror-bright in the white-hot glare of the lights, until one of them took notice of Anna. He was balding, and he had a rough sprinkling of gray hair and a rough growth of beard that were the same length, and his eyes behind his glasses were extremely deep-set and uncommonly bright.

He took several steps toward Anna and pulled down his surgical mask. His face did not smile so much as it tightened. "We're not finished yet. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

[Anna Fernandez]

"Eso nunca va a pasar," Anna said, practically ignoring the man in front of her while trying to absorb and process what had been Jamie's room. The horror had flared into anger almost immediately - fury at Jericho Center and what they had done to Jamie.

She clenched her hand, suddenly noticing it was white with cold, and took a deep breath. She could not allow her body to change, it could harm the baby. Anna stepped around the man while he protested, certain that Jamie's bed was in the center of all the doctors and lights.

She paused, suddenly wary of falling over something that had been masked with illusion. Anna closed her eyes and felt her way to Jamie's bed, the lab coated illusions yelling at her, their words turning into a roar in her ears. Her heart thumped as she finally felt the edge of her daughter's bed, hand feeling around until she grasped Jamie's foot.

"Wake up, Jamie, please...!" Anna could see through her eyelids that the lights were very bright here, and she crawled unseeing into Jamie's bed, hugging the little girl to her. "I am here, Princesa, it is just a dream!"

[Aimee Connors]

"Holy crap!" Aimee stood in her doorway watching doctors roaming the hallway. The storm had woken her and Jen up, but her roommate was currently hiding under her covers, whispering a "its not real, its not real" mantra.

"What the hell is going on!?" She'd seen what she thought was Anna, but the woman had gone into one of the rooms and disappeared. Lightning flashed, having an absurd effect of brightening her room while nothing changed in the hallway. A stern looking woman in a lab coat suddenly looked right at her, and Aimee eeped in the doorway as she strode toward her.

Its just Jamie... I think!? Despite the tiled floor she could feel the ragged hallway carpeting under her feet. Aimee darted around the woman and pounded on Tess' door. "Help!"

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie found herself running through a labyrinth of dark underground corridors, hurtling past monitors and gurneys and windows into rooms with people behind them beating to get out. Behind her was... she didn't know. She'd forgotten. It didn't matter now. All she knew was that she was afraid, and she was short of breath, and each step she took seemed to cover less and less ground until she felt herself moving backwards.

Then there was Anna's voice from somewhere close. Jamie looked around her but couldn't see her foster mother - shouted her name, but her voice made no sound. And now something had caught her and had wrapped her up in a tight, immovable grip, and she struggled and choked and -

Jamie's fingers closed hard around Anna's arms, and her eyes shot open, blinded by the glare of the floodlights.

The balding doctor pursed his lips and made a disapproving sound. "It's no good. We'll have to try again when you're feeling more receptive."

He and the other people in labcoats vanished like smoke. But the lab and the instruments and the painfully bright lights were still there.

Jamie clung to Anna desperately, looking around at the blackness beyond her bed with terrified eyes. "Anna," she whimpered, "I can't make it go away! I can't make it disappear!"

[Anna Fernandez]

"Shhh," Anna said into her hair, "To control your power you need to calm down." She held Jamie close, one hand rubbing her back. "Here, watch -" and she picked up Jamie's pillow and threw it at the nearest tray of surgical instruments.

It passed right through, destroying the illusion in a spray of brilliant dust. "Shh, Princesa, I am right here. You are safe."

[Tess Abrahams]

In that half-aware middle ground between sleep and awake, Aimee's fists sounded like encroaching thunder against the wooden bedroom door. Tess stirred groggily, a vague sense of worry about lightning being too close for comfort rising in her thoughts as she untwisted from sheets that were limp with humidity and shuffled in the direction of the cries.

"What, what is..." the words died as Tess opened her door into a strange and foreign world of fluorescent lights and monotone fixtures. Fully awake now, her heart gave a dizzying thump and she placed a hand on Aimee's shoulder, both as a comfort to the girl and as a means of steadying herself. "Oh my God."

"It just happened, Tess, we woke up and everything was... this!"

"Jamie," Tess looked wildly up and down the corridor, thrown by the unfamiliar surroundings masking their home. It was like being trapped in a horror movie, where even the knowledge of something being not possible didn't provide you with the confidence to carry on.

Up in the corner - where a smoke detector had once been, she thought - a PA system crackled and hissed, requesting all available personnel come to Gene Lab 4. Tess cleared her dry throat and crossed the hall with Aimee, back to the room she shared with a Jen-shaped blanket lump.

"Stay here, it's okay. I don't know what's going on but it's not real," Tess gripped the doorway, peering down the hall, wild breeze dancing around her bare calves. Until they had a better idea of where the situation stood, it was probably better to stay put lest they got in the way. "Anna?!"

[Aimee Connors]

Aimee obediently waited in her room, but there was no way she was sitting still or going back to sleep. "C'mon, Jen - this isn't nearly as bad as when Jamie saw IT. Now that was scary."

"Leave me alone," her roommate said plaintively from under her blanket, where she was no doubt roasting in the summer humidity.

"Fine," Aimee rolled her yellow eyes, and then thumped on the wall, calling to Alex on the other side. "You guys awake? Jamie is freaking out!"

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie pressed her head against Anna and closed her eyes. She tried to clear the images of Jericho out of her head, tried to replace them with anything else - Disneyland, the Serengeti, the Westminster Dog Show - but it was like trying to lay down a thin sheet in a windstorm. And even if she knew the images all around her weren't real, the fear was.

"The dreamcatcher!" she said suddenly. "Where is it?"

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna kept one hand on Jamie's shoulder as she patted the headboard, searching for the dreamcatcher. It had been a constant in her room for the last week, and although Anna believed that the object had no inherent power, she'd thought it harmless. But Jamie believed in it, and suddenly she realized that that fact gave the dreamcatcher significant power. "It must have fallen down. Here, hold my hand while I look."

She slipped off the side of the bed, tethered to Jamie by a solid grip, and knelt on the floor. Por favor, Jesús, ayúdame a encontrarlo... Anna pushed a toy out of the way under the bed, and ran her hand along the baseboard until her fingers brushed against something narrow and curved.

"Ah ha!" Pleased, she gently pulled the dreamcatcher out from under the bed and climbed back up next to her daughter. Anna pressed the webbed hoop into Jamie's hands, the stones suddenly sparkling in the artificial light. "Here it is."

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie took a hold of the dreamcatcher and, eyes still closed, felt her way to the head of her bed. She found the post at the side of her headboard and stretched the top loop of the dreamcatcher over the crown of the post, dropping the ornament back in place. The gusting wind from the open window found the feathers hanging from the bottom of the dreamcatcher and knocked the beads against the wood.

"Go away," Jamie muttered, rocking in place. "Just go away, go away, go away, go away..."

The wind reversed direction, streaming out the window like a vacuum, and the shadows all around the laboratory began to distort and stretch toward the opening like stains spiraling round a drain. The cold glint of metal from the table spun away like a stream of mercury; out in the hall, the tiles curled up from the floor and the walls like crepe paper decorations until they let go and fluttered out into the night. Bit by bit, Jericho disintegrated and washed away on the same storm that had carried it in, and the bedroom door slammed shut behind the last of the debris before it went hurtling out the window.

Jamie leaned back against Anna and felt her foster mother's arms wrap her up again. She opened her eyes to see her bedroom restored, Anna sitting with her on her bed, and Tess standing just inside the door, watching wide-eyed.

The girl looked up at Tess with a timid little smile. "See?" she said. "It works."

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna hugged Jamie lightly, unwilling to let go of her just yet. Outside the rain pattered lightly against the window, the sudden summer storm already beginning to move away. She softly blew out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding, and looked over at Tess, her expression saying what just happened!?

[Tess Abrahams]

A shiver trilled it's way up Tess's spine and then crested off, going the way of the rest of Jamie's... projection. Was that even an adequate term? It seemed incredibly concise and incomplete for the vivid, encompassing world that had held them all only moments before.

Mustering up a faint smile in return, Tess nodded at Jamie and shared a brief look with Anna. The innocent multicoloured web swayed gently from it's reclaimed perch, stones gleaming in the light cast by the open window. For a placebo, it packed a punch.

"Looks like it does," Tess said. "That was... well, that was something. Everybody okay?"

[Jamie Morrigan]

"No, we're not okay!" Jennifer wailed from across the hall.

"We're fine!" Aimee shouted over her roommate, and the door to their bedroom swung shut.

Jamie sank into her shoulders next to Anna. It was bad enough that she'd had another nightmare, but now the whole House knew about them. She'd had her powers longer than any of the other kids at Redención - why was she losing control of them now?

"I'm really, really sorry," she said, almost inaudibly.

[Anna Fernandez]

"Tch," Anna said softly, stroking Jamie's hair with one hand as she scooted her closer with the other. "Nothing to be sorry about. We are all fine."

She gently rocked back and forth on the bed, just slightly, and continued, "It is you I am worried about... are you going to be okay?"

[Jamie Morrigan]

"I'm fine," Jamie said, and she dropped her eyes to the floor. Was she? She really didn't know.

She looked at the little travel alarm clock on the end table by her bed - 2:16 AM. Way too early to get up. She looked up sheepishly at her foster mother. "Is... is it okay if I sleep in your bed for the rest of tonight?"

[Anna Fernandez]

"Of course, Princesa, of course." Anna kissed Jamie on the forehead and then scooted off of her bed. "You can bring your pillow, and the dreamcatcher if you want."

She looked around Jamie's room as the girl got ready to travel, and felt amazed that nothing had moved during all the evening's excitement. Although, it was a good thing she hadn't blundered into the bookcase while she had been trying to find Jamie, that could have been a real mess.

[Tess Abrahams]

"Yeah, don't apologize, Jamie," Tess echoed, her face softening. The poor kid's worst nightmare came to life all around her and she was sorry? That was the definition of heartbreaking, right there. "Everybody just wanted to make sure you were alright."

The excitement was fading, leaving room for the late hour to sink it's claws in. Tess yawned and waited until Jamie was kitted out, with her pillow tucked securely under one arm and Anna's reassuring arm around her slim shoulders, before she opened the bedroom door.

"Hey," bending down in the threshold, Tess brushed the girl's cheek with a gentle forefinger. "I'm glad it worked for you. Try and get some sleep, okay? See you guys in the morning... er, later in the morning."

[Jamie Morrigan]

"Okay," Jamie whispered. "Good night."

Jamie had her pillow hugged up against her chest, but she'd decided to leave the dreamcatcher where it was. Having spider-Anna along was redundant if she had the real Anna with her. She carefully closed her bedroom door and, making as little noise as possible, followed her foster mother into the master bedroom.

"I'll try really hard not to project anything else tonight," she said as she crawled into the far side of the bed. "I promise."

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna yawned, slowly getting between the sheets and arranging herself just so for maximum comfort. "Do not worry about it," she said softly, reaching out and pulling her foster daughter close. "I'll be asleep and your illusions would have to be pretty loud to wake me up."

She kissed Jamie on the cheek and closed her eyes. Even the storm was spent, bathing the House in silence as sleep began to overtake even the most excited residents.

[Jamie Morrigan]

Sleep was a while in coming, but when it arrived, it pounced like a wild animal and took Jamie completely unawares. She had no more dreams that she could remember - the only reason she knew she'd slept at all was that the ache of fatigue was gone from behind her eyes when she opened them and the morning light was already crawling through the windows of Anna's bedroom. Anna was gone already, and the covers had been freshly tucked around Jamie's shoulders.

The girl took a few deep breaths and crawled out of bed, careful as she dropped off the edge, which was higher than her own bed was. The bedroom was empty, but Anna's presence was all around her - pictures of family on the dresser, a painting of her native Barcelona on the wall, a small jewelry box with a beautiful mosaic across the lid and a small crucifix on a chain lying next to it on the end table. No way a nightmare could get in here.

Jamie took her pillow under her arm and carefully straightened up the covers where she'd been lying, and then she padded quietly into the hallway and to her bedroom door so she could make her bed and get dressed. But before she could lay a hand on the doorknob, she heard something rattling from the other side.

Was the wind still blowing? She was sure she'd shut the window before she'd left. Maybe the dreamcatcher had fallen off the post again. She was going to have to tape it there or something.

Jamie opened the door and shrieked.

***

Tess's door swung open timidly, and Jamie quietly tiptoed inside, still clad in her pajamas and gripping her pillow. Tess was sleeping soundly with her arms around her pillow, her face mostly shrouded by her thick, dark hair.

"Tess? Hey, Tess?"

[Tess Abrahams]

Tess had just stuck the landing of a perfect full twisting double back dismount when Jamie's voice pieced the veil of sleep and drew her away from the applauding masses.

"Gnhuh?" Tess mumbled, lifting her head off her pillow. She spat out a mouthful of hair and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, squinting. "'S'it morning already? Oh, man. You 'kay?"

[Jamie Morrigan]

"I'm fine," Jamie said. "Um... the dreamcatcher... what are you supposed to do when it catches something?"

[Tess Abrahams]

There was a long moment of puzzled silence.

"What do you mean by 'catches something'?" Tess asked, propping herself up on her elbows.

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie opened her mouth to try to explain, but she thought better of it and simply beckoned Tess with a wave of her hand.

She very carefully turned the knob on her bedroom door so the latch wouldn't knock against the door frame and pushed the door open slowly enough that it wouldn't creak. Pressing a finger against her lips for Tess's benefit, Jamie crept inside and pointed.

The dreamcatcher lay flat against the bedpost as before, just outside the beams of morning light that filtered through the window blinds. But it looked as though something was hanging from the dreamcatcher, poking through the gaps in the twine webbing and resting against the gold-and-red-striped frame.

It was a set of black, curved claws, like a vulture's talons scaled up to the size of railroad spikes. They hung down from the dreamcatcher frame and fell against the wood of the bedpost. One of the needle-sharp points tapped restlessly at the wood. There were long, pale scratches in the dark wood all around the dreamcatcher frame.

But you couldn't see the bedpost through dreamcatcher. There was a misty darkness on the other side, as if the dreamcatcher was a window into a space outside the room entirely. A space filled with whatever owned the claws.

[Tess Abrahams]

Jamie found herself suddenly drawn back by an icy hand, clamped tightly on her narrow shoulder. The girl backpedaled, towed by the strong grip, and once she was out in the hallway Tess swung the door shut and leaned against it.

She blinked. And blinked again. And again.

"Jamie," said Tess in an oddly-pitched voice. "That's not you, in there, is it? A projection?"

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie shook her head. "It was in there when I got out of Anna's bed," she whispered. "I think... I think it's my nightmare."

She didn't know what to do. It was like having a really big wasp in your room, only about a thousand times bigger and scarier and knowing where it was didn't really help.

[Tess Abrahams]

There was something huge and terrible about not understanding something that you had just seen. An ominous dread hung heavy in Tess's belly.

"Okay. This is okay. Everything is okay, Jamie," Tess said, mind racing. "Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna get a team together: a nightmare disposal team. Who else is home?"

[Jamie Morrigan]

"I haven't checked," Jamie said. "Anna is, I think. I don't know about anyone else."

Snoring issued from the girls' room, and Alex and Jim's room was shut and locked - they were both probably at work. Recalling her sense of security in Anna's bedroom, Jamie said, "I think Anna should lead the team."

[Tess Abrahams]

"Good idea."

Tess nodded and swallowed, trying to keep her face as even as possible. Calm was probably stretching it but at least she could keep the thudding terror from leaking in and avoid frightening Jamie.

With the clumsiness of sleep washed away as thoroughly as if by cold water, Tess grabbed the girl's hand and gave it an encouraging squeeze. Her smile was dazzlingly fixed.

They found Anna downstairs, industriously sorting through the plastic storage drawer in the kitchen, singing along to a lively song that thumped from the speakers of the little stereo set in a corner of the counter as she matched lids to containers.

Tess cleared her throat. "Anna? Could you come upstairs for a second? It, uh... it looks like Jamie caught a nightmare in her dreamcatcher." an edge of urgency bled into her tone. "A real one."

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna stared at Tess for a moment, and raised an eyebrow. "A real one?" She snapped a lid onto a container, and said, "I was thinking pancakes for breakfast..."

Her voice trailed off at the expression on Tess' face. "All right, show me." She followed the younger woman upstairs to where Jamie was standing in the hallway.

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie caught her foster mother's eye and pointed to the door. "In here."

Once more, she was very careful not to make a sound while opening it. But this time the claws against the bedpost weren't there.

Jamie huddled by the door frame, feeling Anna and Tess hover close by over her shoulders. The whole room was still and silent.

"Maybe it went away," she whispered.

There was a screech like metal on metal, and a slick maw full of spiky teeth pressed against the dreamcatcher webbing, snapping like some nightmare creature from the bottom of the sea. Then it dashed away, a blur of leathery flesh and obsidian talons as it leapt away to the other end of its prison within the dreamcatcher, and the thrashing of its limbs sounded as if it were coming from the far end of a shipping container.

[Anna Fernandez]

"Madre de Dios!" Anna jumped backwards, startled, her heart thumping loudly in her ears. "What -"

With effort she bit off the question. Obviously the girls had no idea what that... thing was. "It is... caught? Cannot get out of the dreamcatcher?" Anna forced herself forward and looked cautiously through the door that Jamie had left ajar this time, one hand on her swelling stomach.

[Jamie Morrigan]

"I think so," Jamie said. "I mean... it is my first dreamcatcher, so it might not be perfect... But I did use two grapevines."

The thing gave a bubbling growl and thrust its claws back through the webbing, slashing ineffectively at the twine bonds. The talons bit into the bedframe, visibly gouging the wood.

[Tess Abrahams]

"I'm pretty sure if it could get out, it would've by now," Tess said. The claws waving about hit upon the nightstand at a discordant angle and a high-pitched scratching noise followed the trail of gouges that it left, sending a nervey shiver all the way down to her bare toes.

They had to get rid of it. Of course, when they'd been making the dreamcatchers Tess hadn't thought to look up the proper disposal for bagged nasties since it wasn't supposed to work like this.

What the heck was it? And what were they supposed to do? The dreamcatcher rattled and a frustrated screech echoed from it's depths.

"This is the only chance we've got to take a shot at... it," Tess glanced at Anna, "while it's contained."

[Anna Fernandez]

"Right." Anna squared her shoulders, and then looked down at Jamie. "Don't worry, I do this all the time." She laughed a little nervously, and fished her cell phone out of her pocket.

"Wake up Aidan or Alex if this doesn't work," she said quietly to Tess, edging into the room while the thing in the dreamcatcher screeched and scratched at the headboard. Praying constantly, Anna took a few pictures of the creature with her phone, and then tossed it to Tess, who caught it nimbly.

She licked her lips, feet planted firmly on the floorboards as the nightmare maw of the monster slashed frantically at the small opening of the dreamcatcher. Lifting her arms Anna focused her energy, and the air around her dropped several degrees as the skin of her hands paled to a blueish white that crept up towards her elbows.

"Dios nos ayude..." She blasted the center of the dreamcatcher with ice, her power sucking the heat out of the exposed parts of the creature and crystallizing whatever liquid was inside it.

[Jamie Morrigan]

The sound was terrible. Once Jim had brought home a bucket containing a few small blocks of dry ice that were left over from an eleventh-grade science project. Under Anna's very watchful eye, the kids had experimented with it - dropped it into a bucket of water to make smoke, used the gas to fill a balloon. Then Jen, with a mischievous "hey watch this" sparkle in her eyes had come out of the kitchen with a serving spoon that was hot right out of the dishwasher. She'd pressed the bowl of the spoon against the dry ice, and it had made an ear-piercing, warbling squeal that made everyone clap their hands over their ears and sent Jim into speeding figure-eights around the lawn.

The sound started there, and only got worse.

Frost built up around the edges of the dreamcatcher, and Jamie's window fogged over from the outside. Neither Jamie nor Tess could see what was happening in the dreamcatcher, but Anna was still blasting away, and the whole bed was shaking. The creature's banshee screams reached a fever pitch and then, very abruptly, ceased altogether.

Frosty mist rolled out of the openings of the dreamcatcher, and the space beyond faded, leaving the dreamcatcher frozen in a thick glaze of ice against the damaged bedpost.

[Tess Abrahams]

They were so lucky to be living in a technological age. No one was going to believe this - not without proof.

With Jamie secured against her side, Tess thumbed at Anna's phone and scrolled through the tools until she found the camera setting. Switching it to video, she pressed record just in time to catch the first eardrum-shattering notes of the thing as it discovered just how fierce the ice age had been. The tiny mobile speakers were hardly up to the task but Anna's display of power was impressive, even in lagging megapixel.

In the room the noise was like a drill to the skull, so sharp that even when it came to a thankful end, their skulls rattled with the echoes of it. Tess didn't let go of Jamie, watching the dreamcatcher intently, cell gripped in her opposite hand. This was the part where something jumped out unexpectedly, just when they'd let their guard down...

A full thirty seconds later they were still waiting. Tess let out a cautious breath and took a step towards Anna. "Nice shot."

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna flexed her hands, clenching them into fists and then stretching her fingers out to warm them up. After using her power her joints tended to feel stiff from the cold, at least in her furthest extremities. "Gracias."

She took a step forward, and then another, approaching the bed where the dreamcatcher was fused to the bedpost with a few inches of ice. There was no evidence of the misty otherworld that had been visible before, only wood behind the center of the dreamcatcher. Anna reached out slowly, and tapped on the ice, making sure it was really there.

Jamie bumped against the door where she was trying to stay in the hallway but also see as much as she could, and Anna jerked backwards, startled. Then she laughed, relief making it almost impossible to stop once she'd started.

[Jamie Morrigan]

Jamie took that as a signal that everything was all right. She entered the room and stepped around Tess so she could get a clear look at her bed and see for herself that the monster was gone. At least she knew for certain now she'd made the right decision naming one of her bead-spiders "Anna."

She stepped closer to the frozen dreamcatcher to inspect it. She wasn't certain what freezing and melting again would do to it, and now that she knew what nightmares looked like, she knew that durability had to be a premium. Two grapevines might not be enough.

"I think," she said, turning to Tess and Anna, "I might need to make a bigger one."