The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(97)

He rolled his eyes, taking her foot in his hands again. “Do you think there’s an intersect between dreams and thought?” To her pause of expectation, he clarified, “I’ve been trying to do research on it but it’s no use, really. I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

“What is he?” she asked him. “Gideon.”

He kneaded the bone above her arch, stroking it with his thumb.

“A creature, technically.”

“Hybrid human?”

“Well—” Nico bit the inside of his cheek. “No. Half mermaid, half satyr.”

“Oh.” Parisa’s smile twitched, and then broadened. “Human-shaped? Where it counts, that is.”

He glanced up at her. “Is that meant to be funny?”

“Yes. A bit.” Her tongue slid over her lips, rendering her faintly girlish. “I can’t help my appetites.” “He’s got a dick, if that answers your question.” He switched gruffly to her other foot, tugging punitively at her pinky toe. “Not that I—” More hesitation. “I’m just saying, I’ve lived with him for a long time. Things happen.”

“So you’ve seen it?”

Nico glanced up, defensive, and she shrugged.

“I’ve seen plenty,” she told him. “I wouldn’t judge you.”

“It’s not like that,” he muttered.

“Fine, machismo again.” She nudged his knee with her heel. “Don’t be cross.”

“I’m not, I’m just—”

“So Gideon can travel in dreams, then?”

“Gideon… can,” Nico said slowly. “Yes. Sorry, yes.”

“Oh.” Parisa sat up, abruptly removing both feet from his lap. “You’ve done it too?”

“I—” He felt his cheeks flush. “It’s a private question.”

“Is it?” No.

“Fine, I do it,” Nico said with a grimace, “but don’t ask me how I—”

“How do you do it?”

He gritted his teeth. “I told you, it’s—”

“Describe Gideon’s penis,” Parisa suggested, and in the pulse of panic that followed, she had clearly plucked something from his head. “Ah,” she said, “so you transform, then? Well, that’s certainly impressive. More than.” She nudged him again, delighted. “Brilliant. Now we can never fuck,” she said, seemingly content with that conclusion, “as I make a point never to sleep with people who are more magical than me.”

“That can’t possibly be true,” said Nico, gently devastated.

“I,” Parisa replied, “am very magical. The Forum must have been especially eager to get their hands on you,” she added as an afterthought, which meant nothing to Nico. He frowned, bewildered, and she tilted her head, apparently recognizing his blankness for what it was. “Did you not get a visit from the Forum while you were in New York?”

Nico thought back to that weekend, trying to recall if anything had been out of place.

“Oi,” Gideon had said at one point, “someone’s trying to get in.” Nico, who had been in his customary form of a falcon, said nothing, but gave a brisk little flap of his wings to suggest they could well and rightly fuck off. “Right then,” said Gideon, “that’s what I thought.”

“Well,” sighed Parisa, dragging him back to the point, “never mind, then. You wanted to know about dreams and thought?” she asked, and while Nico had until that point been highly insistent on keeping what he knew of Gideon’s condition a secret, he recognized the motion of a rare door opening. Somehow, he had earned a key to Parisa Kamali’s sincerity, and he did not plan to waste it.

“You read a book,” Nico said, “about dreams. Reina told me.”

“Ibn Sirin’s book, you mean?” asked Parisa. “Though it’s said he abhorred books, so probably a lesser medeian wrote it.”

“Yes, that one. I think.” He fidgeted. “I wondered if you had any—”

“I do,” Parisa confirmed. “One theory, mainly.” She paused, and then, “What do dreams look like when you’re in one?”

“They have a topography,” Nico said. “They’re in… realms, for lack of a better word.”

“Like an astral plane?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Nico, “seeing as the only one I’ve ever been on was the one you created in my head, and I didn’t know I was in it.”

“Well, you remember how it looked and felt,” she pointed out, and he considered it.

“Indistinct from reality, you mean?”

“Pretty much,” she agreed. “Our subconscious fills in the blanks. If anyone, particularly you, had looked closely at any of the details, you would have known we were not in reality. But most people do not look closely unless they are given a reason to look.”

“Well, then yes, dream realms feel the same,” he said. “Like reality.”

“I suspect dreams are their own astral plane,” Parisa said. “Only they are absent time.”

“Absent time?”

“Yes. Are you ever aware of time when you’re traveling with Gideon?” she asked, and Nico shook his head. “Is he?”