Poison Sleep by T. A. Pratt

back for the car eventually, when they finished whatever business they had here.
    He cursed. The Bentley shimmered and vanished. More magic. Probably just a theft deterrent, but he hated the uncertainty of dealing with sorcerers.
    About twenty minutes later, a tree appeared in the center of the street, not fifteen feet from Zealand’s car, showering blossoms to the pavement. Something long, dark, and oddly jointed slithered down from the branches and paused on the ground, lifting an angular head and looking at the car. Zealand turned on his headlights, and the thing scurried away into the shadows before he could get a good look, though there was something horribly asymmetrical about its movements. The tree’s branches waved, as if in a wind, and then, abruptly, the tree disappeared.
    “Magic,” Zealand muttered. He doused his headlights and checked to make sure all his doors were locked.
    “Not bad,” Marla said after the meeting broke up. She and Joshua were alone in the big, drafty warehouse, sitting side by side on some splintered wooden pallets. Marla resisted the urge to scoot even closer to him. He smelled amazing, like honey and vanilla and sweat. “You played them like cheap violins.” The Four Tree Gang had agreed to withdraw to the limits of their old territory, in exchange for right of free passage through certain areas controlled by the Honeyed Knots. Marla could have forced them to make the agreement with threats and verbal bludgeoning, but the peace would never have held. Under Joshua’s influence, though, the gang leaders had actually shaken hands before leaving, something unheard of in Marla’s experience.
    “I’m happy to have helped. So I passed the test?”
    Marla laughed. “These guys were kittens. Pretty soon you’ll be dealing with tigers. The leading sorcerers are cranky, egotistical, and a little bit psychopathic. All necessary qualities in a top-notch sorcerer, of course, but it does make them hard to wrangle. Those negotiations are going to be a bitch. But, yeah, you did well enough that I’m willing to toss you in the tiger pit and see how you fare.”
    Joshua yawned, and Marla wanted to kiss his mouth. “Are we done for the night, then?”
    “Need your beauty sleep?”
    “This face doesn’t happen by accident,” Joshua said dryly.
    “Come on, then. I’ve got a few hours of work left in me, but I’ll give you a lift back to the club and send you on your way.” She wanted to invite him up to her office for a nightcap, but it wouldn’t do to look too eager. If
he
asked
her
if he could stay, though, maybe she’d allow herself to grudgingly consent….
    They stepped out of the warehouse, into the alleyway, and Marla stumbled, her sense of balance deserting her entirely. She fell into Joshua, who exclaimed in surprise and then caught her—but a moment later he disappeared, and she completed her fall, sprawling on—
    The cobblestones? “Oh, hell,” she said, rising, the ringing in her ears subsiding. She was back in Genevieve’s world, sunlit and warm, surrounded by dozens of orange trees heavy with fruit, a whole orchard growing unaccountably up from rounded cobblestones. The branches rustled, though there was no wind, and something like an ambulatory spinal column with too many legs and a head like a wedge dropped from a branch and hissed at her. Marla drew her dagger of office—she always went armed to gang situations—and crouched. “Come on, then, you slithery bastard.” Abruptly, the light vanished, and it was suddenly
cold.
    “Marla!” Joshua said. “Where did these trees come from?”
    She was back in Felport, among the warehouses. But the trees—and the slithery thing—from Genevieve’s dream world had come
with
her. This was bad. Getting infected with Genevieve’s dreamsickness was trouble enough, but now the woman’s nightmares were popping up in Felport spontaneously?
    The slithering thing ran back up the tree, apparently as freaked out as Marla was by