Page 12 of (Mostly) Human Resources

You’re next, Lexie Lou.

She screamed. And then she woke up.

Alexys sat upright in bed, hand clutched to her chest and a second scream caught in her throat. She reached frantically for her phone and nearly ripped the charger out of the wall. She dialed Natalie’s number with shaking fingers and held her breath.

It rang twice before she heard Natalie’s groggy greeting, “Girl, this better be good.”

Alexys looked at her bedside clock, its black digital letters read out 2:35 a.m. “Oh, gosh, Nat, I’m so sorry! I didn’t even check the time before I called. I should have, but I …” Alexys took a deep breath.

“Had another one?” Alexys could hear Natalie’s attempt to shush someone, no doubt her latest paramour. “Hang on, I’m getting up.”

Alexys turned the TV off and rose to her feet. She shrugged into her bathrobe and padded out to the kitchen. The bloody letters were running a loop through her brain, rearranging over and over again, and she was fighting the urge to check the bathroom mirror to see if they were still there.

“Alright.” Natalie sounded more awake but no less perturbed. “What was it this time? A corpse in your closet? The hands under the bed? Or maybe the red-eyed ghoul at the window?”

Natalie tried to lighten the mood but Alexys knew that her friend was all too familiar with her sleeping troubles.

“I’d have welcomed a ghoul, honestly,” Alexys said. “This was different.” Alexys fished for the words to explain it, but she wasn’t even really sure herself. Her nightmares were usually horrifying, but they tended to err on the side of hazy—strong enough for her subconscious to be fully convinced of their realism but hard to remember after waking.

This one, though, this one was something else entirely. “It was so specific, and it feltsoreal. I think they’re getting worse, Nat.”

“Alright, Lex,” Natalie exhaled. “Tell me what you saw.”

She sighed and rubbed a hand over her face. “There was a message on the bathroom mirror written in blood.”

Natalie cursed. “Why can’t you have these dreamsbeforeI drink?”

Alexys’s laugh was weak. She wished she didn’t dream at all.

“What was the message?”

Alexys didn’t want to say it out loud. Saying things out loud always felt like it made them come true. Like if they stayed in her head, there was still a chance the universe hadn’t heard her yet, and it might just forget the whole thing ever happened. But she couldn’t call Natalie at two in the damn morning and not tell her what the dream was about. Someone else needed to know.

“Elliot Harman is dead.”

“Who?”

Alexys barked out a manic laugh. Of course Natalie didn’t know all of her Wardens by name. She felt delirious.

“Elliot,” she repeated. “He’s my new Third Quadrant Warden, young guy.”

Natalie racked her brain for a second before it clicked “Wait, the one with the cookie-baking grandma?”

“That’s the one.”

“Oh shit,” she whispered. “He’sdead?”

“Well, according to my nightmares, he is.” Alexys put a kettle on the stove, hoping some chamomile might help. “I haven’t heard from him in almost a week, but his weekly check-in isn’t until Friday.” Alexys propped herself up onto the kitchen counter. “Maybe I should call him and do an early check-in—not right now, but when I get into work. It couldn’t hurt, right?”

“Sure,” Natalie drawled. “Heaven forbid you call someone atthisungodly hour. That would be ridiculous. Cruel, even.”

“Hey, I said I was sorry! You’re the one who said to call you any time of the day or night.”

Natalie let out a dry laugh. “That’s a phrase nobody ever means, babe. But for you, I do mean it.”

“Thanks, Nat.” Alexys let a long breath. “You should probably get some sleep. At least one of us deserves to be well-rested for work.”

“True. And hey, you can watch your trashy housewives show without my commentary,” Natalie teased. “But if you finish the next season before work, I’m going to judge you so hard.”