The Sandman Read Free

could all leave for their own dreamscapes. And she knew, just knew , they’d make trouble while they were here. She’d never actually been to the black market, but she’d once delivered their packages.
    Which just made her angrier.
    You didn’t know what was in those packages , Steve said.
    She damn well should’ve. Quit talking to me , she said. This is my rant. Get your own.
    He needed to save his energy. And she needed to expend some.
    A tingle of awareness told her that someone was hiding in the deep doorway of the tall, gray brick building ahead. Some intrepid black market survivor venturing out to explore. No surprise there. But hide from her? In her city?
    Well, he’d chosen a bad neighborhood. This whole part of the city had been built after her first job for Graeme when she’d been broke and depressed. All the floors in these buildings went down, not up. And under her city? That’s where she’d hid the scarier things her imagination conceived. Stuffed them deep down and paved right over the top.
    She snorted at the absurdity of the reveler in the shadows and waved a hand toward him, bricking up the entrance and trapping him inside.
    You didn’t know , Steve said again.
    Yeah, well, she’d known delivering packages wasn’t legal. Didn’t take much of a mental leap that there had to be a reason.
    Love you.
    Tell me in the waking world , she shot back. She certainly wasn’t going to say it now, when it sounded too much like goodbye.
    I feel it in the waters anyway , he said.
    Yeah, well, I can’t help it. She didn’t want to help it, either. Mr. Suit. Steve-o. Never in a million-billion years would she have thought she’d fall for him.
    I’m a monster, too.
    My monster , she clarified. Now shut up and float. Some of us still have work to do.
    Seriously, you couldn’t get anything out of the man at the best of times, and now that he was pulp, he got chatty. Go figure.
    “Maisie, hold on!” Rook called again.
    She finally slowed, but only because the closer she got to where the black market people had gathered, the more revelers had drifted from the crowd to explore. One sucker had trapped himself in the avenging angel fountain—inspired by her favorite band’s album cover. Whoops. Others wandered down the main street, shadows in the distance, which gave the city the strange sense of being occupied.
    What would that be like? She’d been trying for so long.
    Didn’t matter. Not important anymore.
    “I have an idea,” Rook said, coming up beside her. He, too, was momentarily distracted by the dude in the fountain. “Uh…?”
    “What?” she asked.
    “Right. I have this friend,” he said. “You can trust her. She’s got a ruthless reputation in the black market. She’ll get and keep the others’ attention. Manage them.”
    “What exactly do you want me to trust her with?”
    “Your city. To help you organize the survivors while Fawkes and I go back out into the Scrape.”
    “I was thinking of Eleanor, Harlen’s mom. I like her,” Maisie said. Now she was one tough broad.
    “Eleanor will need to be waking soon, and she doesn’t have experience Darkside like my friend does.”
    Rounding a corner, the crowd came into view ahead. Among them, she sensed a familiar wildness. Thank God. The cavalry. She grinned. “Besides, I don’t think Harlen needs to go back out.”
    Vince Blackman, aka Mr. Blandman until he’d turned madman , was punching someone in the face. The violence may or may not have been warranted, but since Harlen stood at his side, hands on his hips and slowly shaking his head, she figured Vince had cause. This time. Mirren, on Vince’s other side, was actually laughing.
    “Never thought I’d be happy to see them,” Rook said.
    Since Maisie had been traveling with them in the waking world, she’d grown to really dig them. Case in point, their presence solved everything. She wasn’t going to have to rely on Sera after all. “Get one of them to wake and go for