He knew it was dumb, but he couldn’t suppress the flicker of jealousy that crackled through him.

“Was Nick your high school sweetheart?” he asked.

Gwen shook her head. “Nick is gay. He became my brother, not my boyfriend. I didn’t go out on any real dates until I left Summerlight and went off to college.”

“No high school dances? No prom night? No trips to lovers’ lane?”

“Nope, nope and nope. You don’t do that kind of stuff when you’re attending a boarding school that has bars on the windows.”

“It sounds awful.”

Gwen made a face. “Summerlight was not a normal high school. The students were all there because we were considered abnormal. Some of us were more abnormal than others. And some of the kids were downright dangerous. The atmosphere was not conducive to dating, believe me. Besides, we wouldn’t have been able to go off the grounds.”

“Were all of the kids psychic?”

“No, a percentage were genuinely disturbed. But a surprisingly large number of students showed traits that Abby and Nick and I have come to associate with forms of psychic talent. That’s what brought Evelyn to the school. She somehow discovered that there was a high proportion of talents at Summerlight. Abby and Sam found out recently that the school deliberately searched for teens with strong para-psych profiles.”

“Sam mentioned that.”

“I can assure you that in the course of tossing out a wide net, the school administrators managed to gather a lot of serious wack-jobs, some of whom no doubt went on to become very scary people,” Gwen said.

“Like the two bastards who assaulted you. Do you know what happened to them?”

“No. They steered clear of the three of us after that. When Abby and Nick and I got out of Summerlight, the last thing we wanted to do was keep in touch with former classmates, believe me. I will give the academy credit for teaching us one very valuable lesson, though.”

“What was that?”

“How to pass for normal,” Gwen said.

“But it’s hard to pretend you’re normal when you get involved in a close relationship of any kind—friend or lover.”

“Obviously, you’ve had some experience,” Gwen said.

“Yes,” he said. “But unlike you, I grew up in a family that accepted the fact that Sam and Emma and I are different.” He smiled. “I should say Dad has accepted it. Mom still tries to pretend the three of us are normal, but deep down, she knows the truth.”

“I’m sure that mothers always do know the truth about their offspring, whether they admit it or not.”

“Probably,” he agreed. “All right, the assault in the linen closet explains how you came to find out that you were capable of sending a man screaming into the night. But that was a deliberate effort on your part and done in self-defense. That doesn’t explain why you would send a lover screaming from your bed.”

“Not intentionally,” she assured him. “Honest.”

“Unintentionally?”

She grimaced. “The problem is my aura. When I sleep, I dream more intensely than most people. My dreaming aura affects anyone who happens to come into physical contact with me. If that person happens to be asleep and dreaming, my currents overpower his. The result, I’m told, is a particularly unnerving kind of nightmare.”

“Well, that answers one question,” he said, satisfied.

She raised her brows. “About my love life?”

“No, about how Zander Taylor happened to go over the falls. You sent him into a nightmare, didn’t you? He went crazy and started running.”

She closed her eyes. “I knew you would figure it out sooner or later.”

“Nice work.”

She opened her eyes and watched him very intently. “It doesn’t bother you that I’ve got the ability to send someone into a nightmare landscape so intense that the victim actually leaps to his death to escape?”

He patted her bare shoulder. “We’ve all got baggage.”

“That’s very broad-minded of you, but in my case my baggage makes me a prime suspect in a few murders, past and present. And some would say that in Zander Taylor’s case, I’m guilty.”

“Not like he’s a great loss to the world,” Judson said.

“You’re not taking this seriously, are you?”

“I’m taking you very, very seriously, Gwendolyn Frazier.”

He tightened his grip on her face and pulled her mouth down to his. He kissed her until she wrapped herself around him once more.

A LONG TIME LATER, he awoke to the feel of someone shaking him gently.

“Judson,” Gwen said.

“What?” He did not open his eyes.

“Judson, wake up.”

The urgency in her voice brought him fully awake. He sat up swiftly and used his other vision to quarter the room, searching for the threat. Nothing of a dangerous nature presented itself.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.” Gwen was on her knees amid the tumbled bedding. Excitement blazed in her eyes. “That’s just it, nothing’s wrong.”

He sank back against the pillows. “I think I’m missing the point here. If nothing’s wrong, why the hell are you acting like there is something wrong?”

“We both fell asleep.”

“Yeah. Felt good. I haven’t been sleeping too well lately and I needed the rest. Nothing like great sex to do the trick. Better than meds, that’s for damn sure.”

“Yes, you are missing the point. Judson, we both fell asleep. Side by side. I was dreaming and you didn’t even twitch.”

“I try not to twitch too often,” he said. “It makes people nervous.”

“This is no joke. You are the first person I have slept next to in my entire adult life who hasn’t had a really bad reaction to my dream aura.”

“Oh, that.” He stretched his arms overhead. “Between you and me, I wasn’t expecting to run screaming into the night.”

She ignored that. “I was planning to send you back to your own room before I drifted off, but I fell asleep instead. So did you.”

“Probably all that exercise,” he explained.

“You were sleeping quite soundly.”

“Yes, I was, wasn’t I? Can I go back to sleep now?”

“I have a theory,” she said. “It’s just a theory, mind you, but there is a certain logic to it.”

“I’m going to have to listen to this theory before I get to go back to sleep, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are.” She was clearly having trouble containing her excitement. “I think that because you are a strong talent, yourself, you have a kind of immunity to me.”

He raised a finger to silence her. “Now there is where you are wrong, Dream Eyes.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I am anything but immune to you. Just the opposite.”

He pulled her back into his arms and kissed her until she stopped talking.

Sometime later, he opened his eyes again when he felt Gwen slide out of bed. He knew she was trying to be discreet about it. Probably headed for the bathroom, he thought. But when he saw her put on the robe and lean down to pick up the map that had fallen to the floor, he realized something else was going on.

He levered himself up on his elbows. “Everything okay?”

“What?” Surprised, she glanced back at him. “Yes, sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you. A few minutes ago, I woke up and decided to try the road trip dream again. I went back to the start, back here to Wilby, and I saw a pattern.” She moved to the table and spread the map out across the surface. “But it was all wrong.”

Her urgency got through to him. He shoved aside the covers, sat up and reached for his pants. Zipping his fly, he crossed the room to the desk.

“Tell me about the pattern and what’s wrong with it,” he said.

“I assumed going into the dream that this was a map of towns and places that Evelyn intended to visit for research purposes. But there are too many towns marked.”

“There are only a half-dozen circled.”

“Yes, but that’s about four, maybe five too many. You see, Wesley operates with a tight budget. He doesn’t like to pay for airfare and lodging for a scouting crew to check out the location unless it promises to be good. It’s highly unlikely she would have selected six towns for the next episode of Dead of Night. And if she was working on a big project involving multiple locations, I think she would have talked it over with me and probably Wesley as well.”