Taken at Dusk (Shadow Falls #3)(71)

"Why?" Miranda asked. "We've met your mom."

"And your philandering dad," Della added.

"That's different," Kylie said, and frowned at the philandering comment. Though she didn't know why she was offended, because it was true.

"How's it different?" Miranda asked. Before Kylie could answer, Miranda added, "Hey, I hope you two get a chance to meet Todd on Friday night. Will you guys wait with me in the parking lot when he comes to pick me up?"

Both Della and Kylie frowned, but they nodded.

"It's different for you," Kylie said to Miranda, still stuck on Sara coming to visit on Parents Day. "You've known you were supernatural all your life. You don't have a presupernatural life." Socks, still on the tabletop, jumped down to the floor with a catlike elegance. "It's like I was a different person back then. And yeah, you met my parents, but it's almost as if they don't count-not the way your friends count."

"I'm sorry, but I don't understand," Miranda said.

"I do," said Della. And she said it as though she hated to admit it. "Kylie's right. It's different when you had a different life. I tried to imagine how it would be for you guys to meet Lee, or one of my old girlfriends. It would be freaky." She met Kylie's eyes. "I'm sorry I gave you a hard time about this."

"Wow," Miranda said. "You'd better be careful, Della. In the last few days, I think you've used up your vampire quota of apologies for the next ten years."

"Kiss my apologetic ass!" Della snapped.

* * *

Later that night, Kylie woke up to the mist forming around her. She didn't know where she was, but for some reason she wasn't afraid. Her gaze stayed on the soft, moist mist. She looked at the trees; the leaves, even in the dark, were a perfect shade of verdant green. Beautiful sprays of moonlight spilled through limbs that seemed to reach up into the heavens with pride. Perfect. Fairy-tale perfect. Even the sounds of the forest at night were like a symphony. She heard the water, like a babbling brook, a peaceful, beautiful sound playing in the background.

She immediately thought of Derek and that crazy thing he did when he was really close to her. How he made everything look like a fairy-tale picture, one meant to capture your imagination-one meant to fill you with awe, like the pages of a children's book.

"Hey..." His voice pulled her away from the few stars she saw twinkling above the trees.

He sat beside her on a large rock. Not so close that she would have felt awkward, but near enough that the moonlight allowed her to see him. Then she realized this wasn't just any rock; it was their rock. The spot he'd taken her to after she'd first arrived at Shadow Falls.

She'd done it again.

She'd brought him here through the dreamscape, and that was so wrong.

"I'm sorry," she blurted out. "I didn't mean to do this." She closed her eyes and concentrated on moving back, away from the dream. She concentrated really hard, waited for the floating-flying sensation, but it didn't happen. At least she didn't think it did.

She opened her eyes just a crack. Enough to see if she'd moved. Nope, she was still sitting on the rock. Derek was still looking at her. Why couldn't she fly away from the dream? She jerked her eyes open all the way.

"I'm sorry," she said again. "I didn't mean to do this. Just a minute and you can go right back to sleep."

She slammed her eyes shut again and tried really, really hard to concentrate. Back. Go back to sleep. Now!

"Kylie?" His voice tickled her ears as she tried to fix what she'd done. "Kylie."

She tried to ignore him and concentrate.

"Kylie, you're not doing this. I am. I'm the one dreamscaping."

Kylie jerked open her eyes and her vision filled with him sitting there, looking so real. She recalled how the dreamscape had felt different when Red had come into her dreams. She hadn't been able to fly away, she'd had to wake herself up. So that's what she needed to do. Just wake herself up. She didn't do it.

"You can dreamscape?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

The first thing she did was make sure she had clothes on. Hey ... she knew her own tendencies with dreams, and from what she'd heard, boys were even worse.

She had on her pink nightshirt. Nothing sexy or showy. Good thing. A fluttering of relief waved through her that he didn't intend for this to be that kind of dream. Then she couldn't help but wonder if it was because he didn't feel that way about her anymore. He had Ellie.

"Why didn't you tell me you could dreamscape?" she asked, not wanting to think too much about him and Ellie.

He hesitated. "I sort of figured out how to turn it off before I ever got to Shadow Falls. I was constantly trying to visit my dad to communicate with him, even when I didn't want to have anything more to do with him."

Kylie knew all about unwanted dreamscapes. Then she remembered Derek's pain at dealing with his dad, the man who had abandoned him when he was really young. "Do you communicate with him now?" she asked, remembering he'd said he was going to look for his dad when he'd left Shadow Falls. When he'd come back with Ellie, she hadn't thought about Derek's problems, only about feeling betrayed by him. A touch of shame filtered into her chest at her selfishness.