It sounded like she had some bags to unpack. James looked at her wrapped bicep, the opposite hand, and formed a mental picture of how the injury came to pass. He remembered a bad night when he ran metal wire under a couple of his fingernails, convinced there were parasites underneath. He blinked and pulled down the truck’s visor. The sun wasn’t in that direction, but it was a thing to do. A clue about how he felt about that visual.
“I’m no dream interpreter,” he hedged, “But it seems like, if you cut past the dark stuff… that’s an important piece of information.”
James reached behind them into a small cooler. He came back with a couple of cold, dripping bottles of water and offered her one.
“With magic like that, you have to be extremely specific. Dark forces are perceptive. Your worst nightmare of a court-mandated psychiatrist. They get a kick out of loosely interpreting language. If you have even a kernel of doubt in your mind, a secret you don’t want out? They’ll find it. Can I ask, what were you trying to reveal?”