Falling Awake

aside, got to her feet, went to the door and opened it.
    Sphinx was on the other side. He rose, stalked past her into the room, heaved himself up onto the bed, settled at Ellis’s feet and went to sleep.
    Isabel got back into bed.
    “Everything okay now?” Ellis asked.
    She smiled into the darkness, loving the feel of his arm wrapped around her and the heat of his body enveloping hers.
    “Like a dream come true,” she said.

41
    i found Maureen Sage, aka Amelia Netley’s personal dream log in her car last night.” Ellis lounged on one of the stools in front of the kitchen counter, one hand curled around a mug of freshly brewed green tea. “Got a chance to read some of it this morning. Turns out she was a Level Five herself, but she kept it a secret because she thought it would give her an edge.”
    “That was the doc, all right,” Vincent muttered. “She was always looking for an angle.”
    Ellis nodded. “Amelia-Maureen was fascinated with what she saw as the potential power of extreme dreaming. She was obsessed with her plan to get control of Lawson’s government-funded dream research program. She went to work for him and saw her opportunity when he was at a bad point in his relationship with Beth. She dazzled him for a while with her expertise inpsychopharmaceuticals, and seduced him. But in the end he canceled her experiments with CZ-149 and then he canceled their affair.”
    The kitchen was crowded this morning. Isabel listened to the debriefing with only a small part of her attention. Mostly she was focused on the task of fixing scrambled eggs, toast and soy sausages for three large human males and one big feline of the same gender.
    It had seemed so easy at the start, she reflected, cracking the last of a full dozen eggs into a bowl. I’ll just whip up some breakfast. You all just drink your orange juice and tea while I get this on the table. No problem. Be ready in fifteen minutes. Hah.
    It wasn’t until she realized that between them, Dave, Ellis and Vincent were going to go through a full jug of orange juice that she knew she might be in for more than she had bargained for when she volunteered to cook breakfast. Good thing she had bought an extra carton of eggs and a large loaf of sourdough bread in anticipation of feeding Ellis.
    The men took up a lot of space. They did not simply sit or stand, rather they lounged, leaned or sprawled around the counter. The fourth male, Sphinx, watched the proceedings from his perch atop the wide windowsill. He did not seem perturbed by the commotion. Isabel knew that was because he had decided to tolerate the new arrivals.
    She was relieved to see that Vincent looked a little healthier this morning. He was still very wan and washed-out from the effects of the CZ-149 withdrawal but he was no longer shiveringuncontrollably. Dave was quiet and a little sad but he seemed calmer, as if he had begun to come to terms with his grief.
    “According to the dream log,” Ellis continued, “Amelia-Maureen couldn’t understand why Lawson ended the affair. After all, she was several years younger and a lot prettier than Beth. In addition, she was very, very smart and she and Lawson were both dedicated to the same kind of research. They made a perfect team in her view. She just could not deal with the fact that he did not want her.”
    “It was right after the affair with Lawson ended that she went to work on me,” Vincent muttered. “She set up those special kidnap cases and used her knowledge of Lawson’s and Beth’s operations to make sure they got to me. At the same time, she approached me secretly and started giving me the injections of CZ-149.”
    Ellis’s brows rose. “That stuff had the effect of making you believe your own press, I take it?”
    Vincent grimaced. “Along with anything else she told me. But she understood real quick that you were standing in her way, Cutler. Not only were you suspicious about the string of kidnappings I was busily solving so brilliantly, you had Lawson’s ear.”
    Dave downed what had to be half a pint of orange juice and looked at Vincent. “She convinced you that Ellis had gone rogue and that only you could stop him because Lawson refused to see the truth?”
    “Like I don’t have better things to do with my time than go rogue,” Ellis said.

    “Don’t forget she was giving me regular fixes of that damned dream drug,” Vincent said, sounding pained. “She told me I tolerated it well and that it would make