He had fallen asleep almost immediately in the aftermath of the profound release. That was good, she thought. The man needed to relax. But what his senses desperately required was some truly deep sleep, and that wasn’t what he was getting.

She studied the murky energy seething in the prints on the pillow. The residue of the currents was weaker now than it had been two days ago when he had walked into her office, but it was still detectable. Whatever meds he had been taking to halt the sleepwalking evidently had a long half-life. That wasn’t surprising. Traces of some strong psychotropic medications frequently remained in the bloodstream for days. It could take the body a long time to get rid of the last vestiges of particularly strong medicine. In the case of a few really potent sedatives there was occasionally permanent damage to the para-senses. She could see that Jack was recovering, however. He just needed a little more time.

She might be able to help him get the true sleep he required tonight, however.

Gingerly she put her palm on his bare shoulder. He stirred but did not awaken. Jack was into control. She was almost certain that he would not like what she was about to do. On the other hand, if the procedure worked he would get the rest he needed. She could always explain and apologize in the morning.

She opened her senses to the max, cautiously tuning in to the currents of his dream energy. She was braced again for the unpleasant crackle of sensation she always got when she brushed up against someone else’s dreamlight, but, again, to her amazement there was no shock. The currents were strong, but they weren’t painful.

And then she was into the pattern, getting a fix. The dark taint of the sleeping meds was more obvious now. The stuff was still disturbing a portion of Jack’s dream spectrum in an unwholesome way, and it was very powerful. But she might be able to calm the disturbance temporarily, long enough for him to get some real rest. It was the same technique she used to give her Irregular Clients of the street a vacation from their nightmares.

She went to work, pulsing delicate currents of psi into Jack’s field.

Energy recoiled across the spectrum like the blowback of a firestorm, stunning her. She lost her focus. Before she could retreat she was caught in a fist of raw power. Like a surfer with bad timing she was sucked under and tumbled along the bottom of the sea. She snatched her hand off Jack’s shoulder, heart pounding, fighting for air.

Jack looked at her, hot psi burning in his eyes.

“What the hell are you doing?” His voice was shockingly calm and cold.

She sat up fast and took several breaths in an attempt to pull herself together. “Sorry,” she managed. “I was just trying to make sure you got some proper sleep.”

“How?”

“Uh, well, it’s part of my talent.”

“You can put people to sleep?”

She winced. “That doesn’t sound good, does it?”

“No. What are you? The sand lady?”

“Sorry,” she repeated. “I wouldn’t have hurt you. I think you know that. I just wanted to make sure you got a good night’s sleep.”

“How?” he said again.

She sighed. “Well, if you let me, I can sort of adjust your dreamlight.”

“Sort of adjust it?”

“Just a smidge, honest. Those meds you took to stop the sleepwalking are still affecting your sleep.”

“And you think you can overcome the effects?”

“I think so, yes. Temporarily. Long enough to give you some quality sleep, at least.”

He thought about that. “Could you force me to go to sleep?”

“Not now that you’re fully awake, no. You’re too powerful. You’d have to cooperate. And to do that you’d have to trust me, I mean really trust me.”

“Huh.”

“Sorry.”

“You said that a couple of times already.”

“Right. Sorry.”

He just looked at her. There was still a little anger in his eyes.

“But you can put some people out, can’t you?” he said. “That’s what you did to that bastard, Sawyer, who murdered Rose’s parents. You went in as a hostage and you put him to sleep.”

She hesitated and then nodded. “The minute he touched me it was all over. He went out like a light.”

“And when he came to he was crazy.”

She stiffened. “He was a killer. He was already crazy.”

Jack watched her with his knowing look, the one that said he saw every weakness and vulnerable point. “But not crazy in that way. He wasn’t suicidal. Guy like that would have tried to game the system. Probably would have sold his story to the newspapers or maybe to a publisher. He would have gloried in the attention. Instead he hung himself.”

She exhaled slowly. “There are many kinds of sleep. Some are deep and often irreversible.”

“Like a coma?”

“Yes.” She paused. “But there is another stage of sleep that, if you were to get trapped in it for an extended period, would be psychologically devastating.”

“What’s that?”

“The border between the sleeping state and the waking state. I think of it as the gray zone. We’ve all been there, but we usually don’t spend more than a few seconds or minutes in that place. It is disturbing and disorienting, however. You can’t tell whether you’re dreaming or awake. Sometimes you are physically paralyzed. You see things that aren’t there. With my talent I can put someone into that state.”

“Permanently?”

“Probably not,” she said quietly. “But in Richard Sawyer’s case, long enough to drive him mad. He was already disturbed. What I did to him pushed him over the edge.”

Jack was silent for a moment. “To quote a certain private investigator I know, that is one hell of a talent you’ve got.”

“The truth is, I didn’t even know for sure I could do what I did until I did it to Richard Sawyer. But when I sent him into the gray zone I did it deliberately. I knew what I was doing.”

“Just like I knew what I was doing when I killed that man on Capitol Hill.”

“Yes. And we’re both going to dream about what we did from time to time for the rest of our lives.”

“The price we pay?”

“No matter how well justified, the destruction of another human being exacts a price somewhere on the spectrum.”

“I can live with what I did,” he said.

She thought of the sense of closure that had come over Rose after Richard Sawyer’s death, how the nightmares had finally begun to fade. How Rose had been able to start the healing journey.

“So can I,” she said.

“You were about to put Madeline Gibson to sleep the other night, weren’t you? That’s why you had your hand on her shoulder when I came through the doorway.”

“I was just going to put her under, not send her into the gray zone.”

“And now you want to put me to sleep.”

She smiled, rueful. “After what I just told you, I can understand why you’d be reluctant to let me help you.”

“Try it,” he said.

She blinked. “You really want me to put you to sleep?”

“You’re right; I can’t keep running on psi. I need some real sleep. Do your thing. Let’s see if it works.”

“Like I said, you’d have to cooperate,” she said. “You’d have to open your senses and not fight me.”

“I trust you.”

She took another deep breath. “All right, here goes.”

She felt energy whisper in the atmosphere again. She elevated her own senses in response, seeking a gentle, soothing pattern. He watched her for a moment, not resisting, and then he closed his eyes.

He was suddenly, completely asleep, plunging swiftly into the dreamstate. But this time the energy felt stable. The disturbance created by the medication had been overcome, at least for now. She did a little more tweaking to ensure that the currents would remain steady for a few hours, and then she carefully withdrew from the pattern.

She waited, but Jack remained sound asleep. Sound asleep and dreaming. By rights she should be looking for the nearest exit. But she was okay here with Jack. How was that possible?

She studied him with a growing sense of wonder. The neon-infused moonlight filtering through the thin curtains gleamed on his sleekly muscled shoulder.

Cautiously she opened her senses again, testing. Jack’s dreamprints were on the pillow and the sheet, and she could see the dark ultralight aura that enveloped him. He was definitely dreaming. But her own energy patterns remained undisturbed.

It dawned on her that, for the first time in her life, she might actually be able to sleep in the same bed with a man.

But even as the astonishing thought struck she became aware of the irritating, unsettling traces of the old dream psi of previous hotel guests that stained the sheets and bedding. She might be able to sleep with Jack, but there was no way she could sleep in this particular bed without protection.

She pushed aside the sheet, got to her feet and crossed the room to the small carry-on bag she had brought with her. Unzipping the bag, she took out the long-sleeved, high-necked silk nightgown and silk travel sheet. For some reason that she and Phyllis had never understood, silk was a barrier of sorts. It did not entirely block old dream psi, but it provided a buffering layer that sometimes—not always—allowed them to sleep on tainted sheets.

She put on the nightgown and unfolded the travel sheet on the bed next to Jack. The sheet was constructed like a sleeping bag with a zippered opening on the side and a large flap at the top that was designed to cover a pillow. Jack did not stir. She crawled inside the silk cocoon, zipped it shut and prepared to conduct the Great Experiment.

She fell asleep before she could contemplate the implications of what it all meant.