Harlequin Nocturne March 2016 Box Set by Megan Hart

what they could do in the dream world. It messed with the balance of things in a way Stephanie would never pretend to be philosophical enough to understand.
    Again the alarm pulled at her awareness, but she fought off waking. Here in her anchoring spot, where she was strongest, she was able to hold on to her dream self a lot longer, but even so, the edges of the world had started rippling. Stephanie had spent too many hours asleep and dreaming when she could’ve been living to let go of this now. She had to find him and stop him, before he caused any more trouble.
    She sent out a small push of energy to reshape the landscape around her. Out of her forest, into what she thought of as the dark desert. Ringed by black mountains, the sky permanently the color of tar, this space was as close to emptiness as she could manage to shape without losing herself in the void. Just beyond the mountains, which would always be miles out of reach no matter how fast she ran toward them, blue-white lightning sliced apart the sky. Once, she’d seen a face peering through the cut in the atmosphere. Big fingers, pulling apart the edges. Fathomless eyes. Just the once, but that had been enough, because she’d never been able to convince herself she had not glimpsed the face of some god.
    Now Stephanie pushed again, a nudge, sending out small tendrils of her will to draw the rogue shaper closer to her. Like a flower tempting a bee, she thought as the next steady, blaring throb of an alarm began pounding her ears. Come closer , she thought. Come and find me.
    She’d flown in this world. Leaped high and floated down. She’d sunk to the bottoms of oceans without fear of drowning. She hadn’t faced much in the Ephemeros that scared her, and yet her heart now beat faster as at last she felt the answering push-pull of the other shaper. Anticipation, not fear, though she clenched her fingers into a fist and straightened her back, squaring her shoulders. Ready to fight.
    The dreamers who’d faced him in their nightmares had described him as various entities. Vampire, werewolf, dark wizard. He’d played upon their fears to wrangle their personal data, which he’d then used in the real world to access their bank accounts, credit cards. Identity theft, and nearly untraceable because he hadn’t actually hacked into anything. He simply forced them to give him what he wanted to use, and in the dreams, they did.
    â€œCome here,” Stephanie whispered again. She shaped a park bench. A stone path. A tree. She sent out small and seeking threads of her will and felt the Ephemeros respond around her.
    And then...there he was.
    A shadow. Tall, lean, but unmistakably male. No features that she could make out, but he wore an outfit that looked similar to hers. Leather pants, jacket with a flare at the tail, or maybe it was a shirt with a vest. Hard to tell against the black of the mountains behind him.
    Stephanie straightened. “Come here.”
    â€œWho are you?” The voice, low and raspy and rumbly, sent a vibration straight to the core of her stomach and then upward to the pit of her throat, making her feel sort of sick.
    He wasn’t trying to push her or even to shape anything around them. Stephanie let her forefinger make a small circle, sending a spiral of sand spinning into a dust devil that danced toward him but fell apart before it made it even halfway. The other shaper, the one they’d been calling Mr. Slick, didn’t even move.
    So, he wasn’t threatened by her. Okay, then. Well, she’d faced worse than some dude with a boner for charging up other people’s credit cards to keep himself living in style. She’d faced shapers who killed the sleepers they attacked in dreams. This guy was going to be a piece of cake.
    Chocolate cake, thick with fudge frosting, a cherry on the top, ice cream nestled in the layers, whipped cream, candy, French fries, no, soft pretzels, pretzel sticks