Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2 by Jody Wallace

He sat and crossed his arms. Maggie returned his clipboard to his lap. His heart pounded in his… Shit, it felt like it was in his throat, choking him. A big ball of tension.
    Goddamn. That’s where his balls were?
    Z only 1 who can link w/K besides curator, Adi wrote.
    Zeke accepted the pad and wrote, Fuck no.
    A pending murder spree didn’t seem like something Adi ought to hide from the others. Why were her suspicions off the record? Everyone knew what Karen had done—and how it had been half his fault.
    Maggie sighed. She took the pad next. How is she killing?
    In dream coma, shield deteriorates. Adi’s handwriting remained concise despite the fact she was writing with the pad in her hand instead of on a table. Victims can’t defend forever.
    Maggie used her own pen. How long can they?
    A week or more, Adi wrote. Zeke had become perforated after a couple hours, but he could have survived a dream coma for weeks—provided his body were maintained in the terra firma. Other alucinators trapped in dream comas wouldn’t be as enduring.
    Can K vigil-trap from coma? Maggie wrote.
    No. But believe K helping wraiths. Directing them. Something.
    Zeke let the women scribble at each other and fumed. Adi wanting him to trance in and connect with Karen was fucking stupid. If that psycho was close to being functional again, she had to be put down. From the outside.
    It was long overdue. The people she’d killed. Friends, strangers, innocents. She’d reveled in the violence as if she were the wraith, as if she were growing more powerful with each death.
    Had she found a way to kill from inside the dreamsphere? Were the other patients an appetizer? If she could vigil-trap healthy alucinators like she’d managed with Zeke—a procedure most alucinators were never taught—who knows what else she could do? No alucinator would be safe, much less a neonati like Maggie, whose shields were imperfect to begin with.
    His Maggie, whom Adi expected to accompany him into the war zone of Karen’s dreamsphere.
    Fuck no.
    Maggie was writing now. Why are patients changing coma types?
    Occasionally it happens. Don’t know reason for marked uptick.
    Request curator?
    Zeke would like to read the answer to that too.
    Adi shook her head. Nobody involved curators until they were desperate. Adi’s rank as a vigil wouldn’t offset her wariness, but this was huge. A curator had had to help subdue Karen last time. Now Adi thought they could avoid one?
    Zeke hadn’t defeated Karen by himself the first time and couldn’t now. Linking with her in order to conduct a rudimentary assessment—he wasn’t a trained assessor and only knew basics—would place him at her mercy. Again.
    Adi should know he’d bomb. She was, after all, his shrink. Sort of.
    Maggie added, Why both of us? and gave Adi the notebook.
    You strengthen his shields. Adi’s clear, neat cursive put his and Maggie’s penmanship to shame. Then again, Adi wasn’t thrown for a loop. Lill told me. Guardian role inspires him.
    Zeke flipped to a clean page impatiently. So his shields were tougher…as long as he had Maggie to protect? Lill didn’t tell me that.
    Adi raised her eyebrows at him. Had Lill told her anything else—like how many wraiths Maggie attracted and how she’d managed to orate with Lill?
    Out loud, as if he and Maggie were obediently speed-reading the doorstoppers, she said, “Initial each page at the bottom. I’ve highlighted where you need to sign and date.”
    Then she wrote, Prior to recent events, anomalies noted. Upsurge in wraith population.
    Everywhere, Zeke wrote.
    Not this many. Adi’s pencil flew across the paper. Masses. Shields don’t shroud them.
    Maggie’s knee bumped his. That described her dreamsphere too. Karen’s trance sphere, if that was what Zeke had seen this morning, bore a marked resemblance to Maggie’s sleep sphere.
    He needed to tell Adi about encountering Karen—and probably about Maggie’s wraiths. If Lillian hadn’t already. Adi