Who: Neil, Nic, Jules, Carson When: late afternoon, Monday, Oct 30th Where: Castell Exotic Spices & Teas Status: Complete
The nosebleed that had woken Carson up seemed to have been another shared experience. All the others chimed in to confirm, and he couldn’t help but feel a little extra shaken up about it. Sleepwalking, nosebleeds ... what if this thing was truly fucking with their brains? Making sure they couldn’t get good rest so they couldn’t recover from ... whatever? It was all so fucked up. He felt slightly relieved that Rylee knew about it now, and she seemed to believe him. As much as she could, anyway. Having that support meant a lot. She’d always kept him grounded, and Carson didn’t think he’d ever needed that more in his life.
They’d all decided to meet up at the Castells’ tea shop -- maybe that was why his name was familiar? Carson still hadn’t been able to place it -- once Jules got out of school. They all seemed motivated to talk and figure something out, though he had no clue what that might be. Carson had been antsy through his work shift earlier, leaving a bit earlier than necessary to go from the gym to the tea shop, so he arrived a bit too soon. That was okay, he guessed. Shoulders hunched in his hoodie, he walked in through the shop door and glanced around for Nic. At least it smelled amazing in there.
Jules had spent most of the day feeling a little zoned out and nervous about meeting Nic and Neil at Nic's shop. She had already met Carson, and he seemed like a nice guy, so there was a tiny bit of comfort there. More than once during class her brain began to betray her, coming up with all sorts of sordid, morbid scenarios that this was all some elaborate trick by three guys to kidnap and rape her or sell her into some human trafficking ring. But it was too bizarre to be that, with the dreams and the mirror and everything, and she realized she was just trying to rationalize what was happening, even if there was no real rational explanation.
During school she had let Ms. Gaines know that she wasn't feeling well, so she was excused from cheer practice, giving her the opportunity to leave right after school ended and meet the three men at Nic's spice shop. Tea shop. Whatever it was. Her heart was racing from anxiety and anticipation as she parked her Prius. She had the irrational hope that as soon as they were all in the same room together, something would happen, like... answers would just appear and everything would suddenly make sense. In her gut Jules knew that wasn't likely to happen, but she still wished for it.
Sighing, she slipped her phone into her purse and got out of the car. As soon as she walked inside she spotted Carson and Jules exhaled to try and calm herself a little as she headed toward him. "I thought I would be too early," she admitted with a faint smile.
Nic was done by the time he woke up with blood all over his face and pillow. This dream thing, mirror thing, sleepwalking bloody-nose thing had to stop. He was fine getting together on Monday and would kick other people out of the shop if he had to. Not that most of the people that shopped there would mind, though at least half of them would see them as an experiment and he’d rather not play twenty questions with a nosy witch. He was curious about the others and what they might believe, and wondered how much about himself he should disclose to the group. It depended on if they would all benefit from knowing. So far, being a witch hadn’t helped him any.
He didn’t think about the makeup of the group until Jules showed up, and then was suddenly aware that she was a teenager meeting with three adult men. He kept his distance, staying behind the counter for the time being, but offered them both a small smile. “No problem with being early. I’ll flip the sign when Neil gets here,” he said, then decided he needed to come around the counter to actually meet them. “I’m Nic,” he said, offering his hand to Carson.
Carson had given Jules a little smile when she walked in, then chuckled a bit. “Think we’re all eager for this,” he murmured. He hadn’t expected to be first. If Neil was as finnicky of a guy as he’d seemed to be, Carson wouldn’t have been surprised if he was annoyed to be the last to arrive. Carson turned his attention to Nic when he spoke, then shook the guy’s hand and gave him a nod. “Carson Durand,” he said, though Nic probably already knew that. “Nice to meet you.” He knew the guy’s name from way back in the day, but Carson couldn’t really remember why. His long term memory was spotty sometimes, but he definitely wasn’t going to be forgetting any of these people after all this.
Contrary to his nature, Neil was late on purpose. He didn't want to be the first to arrive and share an awkward moment with Nic Castell while he waited for the others to get there so he'd sat in his car a little while before he started it and left his home, jittery and annoyed. The nosebleed the day before had been terrifying and more than that, disgusting. He'd considered throwing away the pillow because he knew he would never get the stain out but then realized that it might happen again. There was a limit to how many pillows a man could buy in a week.
He showed up looking as frazzled as he felt but relieved to see everyone was already there. "Hello," he mumbled stiffly, looking between the three of them and giving them an awkward wave before shoving his hands in his pockets. They were a mismatched group at best and he too was acutely aware that there was a teenage girl in there and things could get really ugly if she started throwing around weird accusations. He stayed close to the door, only moving aside when Nic came over to lock the door and changed the sign to closed. "I hope I didn't leave you waiting," Neil mumbled though he was pretty sure they'd all just gotten there.
Jules knew Carson already, and she knew of Nic Castell - he didn't look very scary in real life as she imagined him with all of those stories about what he had done in high school - and once the other guy entered the shop, Neil, Jules suddenly realized he was a librarian! Not that she spent much time at the library, but she had been enough times to remember his face now. Jules stood off to the side, her arms crossed against her chest as the introductions were made. She felt more than a little out of place. These were three grown men and she was seventeen and a high school senior. What on earth could the four of them possibly have in common?
"I'm Jules," she said, lifting one arm up in a brief 'hello' gesture. Her gaze shifted between the three men. "And I have, like, zero clue what we're supposed to do now." She supposed they would talk, but about what? The dreams? Bleeding noses? Creepy mirrors? None of it sounded appealing, even if it was necessary.
“Well, we try and find a common thread,” Nic said, leaning back against the counter. “Which is only useful if it’s not random. And it seems random, but… I’ve never seen a curse randomly select people and that’s all I can think this is.” It sounded bad, but honestly a curse would be easier to handle. Nic had dealt with curses. The alternative was some kind of creature, or some kind of power, and that was so open ended that he didn’t even know where to start. It could be anything that had selected the four of them and it was extremely hard to fight the unknown.
Carson gave Neil a nod and a wan smile as he arrived, thinking he looked just as edgy as he had the night they’d been sleepwalking, more or less. Not that Carson could blame him, or any of them. He was suddenly aware of the gender and age dynamic too, one teenage girl amongst three grown-ass men, and he was glad that Nic had just closed the shop down for this conversation instead of leading them to a back room or something. He kept his hands in his hoodie pockets and gave Jules plenty of buffer room. Carson’s brow furrowed, looking at Nic. “A curse?” he echoed. “Like ... what kind of curse?” He’d seen that word used when it came to werewolf stuff, and the similarity gave him an unpleasant little roll in his stomach.
Finding a common denominator between four people so different was going to be hard and Neil was already trying to think of ways to narrow it down. He was already thinking spreadsheets but writing down such personal facts would be hard. They would have to share intimate facts about themselves no doubt and that was hardly his strong suit. "Perhaps we can start with the obvious," he muttered, though he felt weird speaking up. "Do you have any enemies?" It would be just his luck to be cursed on top of everything else but the more likely explanation was that he was somehow responsible for this, he or AIR.
It definitely felt more random to Jules, because she couldn't imagine what she had in common with these guys. They were men and older and had jobs and it was more likely that they had something in common and she was the one who threw a wrench into it all. Neil's question reminded her of those cop shows where someone was murdered and the police officer always asked the family Did he have any enemies? and they always said No! Everyone loved him! but then it turned out he did have enemies... usually the family. And... Jules realized her mind was starting to wander so she refocused, shifting from one foot to the other. "Only carbs," she replied, meaning for it to sound humorous and light but it came out more dry than anything. "I'm seventeen, I don't have any enemies. And whatever it is that's in our dreams... I mean, can curses do that?"
Nic snorted a quiet laugh at Jules’ comment, though the idea that a high school girl couldn’t have enemies was absurd. Maybe it was just him, but he remembered high school as a battlefield of its own and if someone had the power to attack with dreams and nosebleeds, then they were also young, petty, and stupid enough to do it. But then Nic didn’t think he had any high schoolers as enemies, so he doubted that was the case. “Curses can do just about anything, if the caster is good enough,” he said, since no one had argued the point that curses weren’t real, which he thought of as a good start. “But they require a specific target, and that requires a personal effect-- hair, nails, blood, whatever. I could, potentially, have an enemy that would do this to me, but I don’t see the overlap and am starting to feel like it’s something stupid, like we all ate infected clam chowder or we all crossed a bridge after midnight and pissed off some bridge demon,” he said, rolling his eyes before he sighed. “I don’t know how to deal with this if we can’t figure out what it is.”
A bridge demon sounded like something out of a fairy tale to Carson. A super fucked up one. But werewolves were pretty fairy tale-ish too, weren't they? And he was ninety percent convinced that he was one of those. Just thinking about it made his stomach churn with nerves. Carson tried to push that aside as a completely separate problem that none of these people needed to know about. “I’m pretty sure I’m enemy-free,” he offered with a sigh. “At least as far as I know. Definitely nobody who’s got my hair and blood or whatever. None of us knew each other before, right?” He glanced between them all. They did all seem to be very different. “So if it is random ... what can we do about it?”
Curses sounded ridiculous enough on their own but Neil supposed they didn't sound any more ridiculous than dream manipulation did. He considered telling them about that, about Jane and AIR but the more he thought about it the worse he felt, his chest tight with anxiety. He listened instead, looking idly around the little shop they were in. He cleared his throat when Carson asked what they could do and in oh so many ways he felt like he wasn't a part of this conversation - or shouldn't be. "Have any of you- do any of you know someone who's gone missing?" he asked quietly since that was the most likely denominator and he was in no way ready for this to be random. If there was a reason for this happening it could be dealt with.
Bridge demons? Did those actually exist? Jules could feel small slivers of fear seep into her body, but she did her best to keep her expression calm, not wanting to give away how scary this all was. She shook her head slowly at Carson, since she hadn't known him at all. She had known Nic's name, but that was from town gossip. Neil, he was the librarian, so sure, she had seen his face apparently, but she wasn't sure she had ever said two words to him before tonight. Jules had no ideas, no suggestions or possible explanations. She wanted there to be some connection between them, because that would be something they could work with. The randomness of it all scared her more than anything, because maybe she had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time in front of her mirror that morning, and now she was involved in this. "My boyfriend's sister went missing last week," Jules said with a frown. "But... I never met her, so I don't think there's a direct connection there."
“You asked me that at the festival,” Nic said, looking at Neil. “Why do you think this has something to do with someone that’s missing? Are you thinking of the Lucas girl?” Which was who he assumed Jules was referring to. News like that spread all over town. People became paranoid for a few weeks, keeping the reigns on their kids tighter than usual. But people had gone missing in Point Pleasant for years and nothing seemed to change. Sometimes they came back, sometimes they didn’t. “Normally I’d suggest a hex bag,” he said, answering Carson’s question. “Or a ritualistic cleansing of our mirrors or beds, but I’ve tried that and it hasn’t seemed to work. I was hoping that us getting together might trigger something, but… I honestly don’t know. I knew Neil, but only barely. And I feel like I’ve seen Jules before, but I don’t know why. And I don’t think we’d ever met,” he said, looking at Carson. “So I’m open to ideas.”
“Just that ... Danny guy, but I didn’t really know him,” Carson said, giving a little shrug. “I just heard about the case ‘cause I’m friends with one of the deputies, so ... I guess, no.” He knew some people who had left town on purpose, but nobody who’d gone missing. He nodded slightly at what Nic said, letting it really sink in that this guy was ... what, a witch? Fancied himself one? Though if Carson was believing in fucking shared dreams and monsters and goddamn werewolves, why not witches too, right? That bad-surreal feeling washed over him again, but he tried to ignore it for now. He could freak out about how weird it all was when he wasn’t right in the middle of it.
Neil shook his head somewhat dismissively at Nic, relieved when they kept talking about other possibilities but it still kept gnawing at him and they were there to try to stop this so he should probably speak up. "I just asked because I went missing," he muttered, hating every second of this, his words a little strained, lips barely moving. "As a kid. I've seen things that... I know someone who can influence your dreams." That was a mild way of putting it, Jane had a bad habit of crashing his dreams and mess them up.
Hex bags. Jules had one of those in her purse, one that Jasper had given her. It hadn't really helped keep away the bad dreams, so she had to agree with Nic that it didn't work for this particular problem. "We probably have seen each other before, even if we weren't really paying attention," Jules said with a soft shrug. "I mean, it's not like this is a big city or anything.” Her gaze shifted back to Neil and she knew that surprise was probably evident on her face. That seemed to be news, even if it had nothing to do with them directly. "You were one of the missing kids? What happened to you?" she asked, wondering if whatever happened to him also happened to Amelia. "What do you mean by influencing dreams... like, can they mess with them? Do you think they could be doing this?" If Neil knew this person, it was a possibility, right? Why they would be doing the same to her and Nic and Carson, though, Jules had no idea.
“Like a dream walker?” Nic asked Neil, wondering why he hadn’t said that earlier and what that had to do with going missing. Which was weird, but he didn’t see the connection, though he thought Neil might, considering how he was tying them together. “I think someone with powers like that might be able to manipulate our dreams, but I don’t know that they have any control over mirrors. Unless it’s… Like… A different sort of portal or something.” He ran his hands over his face, frustrated that he couldn’t put it together. “The person you know, would they do this to you? Or to us?” He kept coming back to the why of it all and there was nothing. Why would someone do this? Why them? It felt malicious, but none of them had pissed off anyone, at least that they knew of.
Neil huffed a little derisively at the question though it had nothing to do with present company. Would Jane fuck with his head like this? Yes, absolutely. He wasn't sure why she would at this point when they'd talked but she wanted to move forward while he didn't so he wouldn't be surprised if she terrorized him to break his will or something. But why include everyone else? It made no sense. "I wouldn't put it past her," he sighed then and fretfully ran his fingers through his hair. "I don't know why she would involve any of you though."
It was kind of an unpleasant shock to hear that Neil had been missing before. Carson knew it happened, he just didn’t think he’d ever known anybody who it had happened to. It made him want to ask a bunch of invasive and probably-unwelcome questions. He glanced between Neil and Nic, listening intently and feeling slightly more crazy the longer this conversation went on. People who could influence dreams? That was a thing too? Fuck. Carson let out a heavy sigh and ran a hand through his short hair. “This is fuckin’ nuts,” he muttered, more to himself than anybody else. “Who is she?” he asked Neil directly. “Maybe we all know her and just don’t know that we do. If she’s not behind it, and dreams are like, her thing ... maybe she can help us?”
Dream walker? Did those exist? Despite everything she had experienced and knew already, it was still jarring to realize more weird stuff might actually be real. People who could influence dreams? Walk in them? Is that what that meant? Jules thought about her experiences with the mirror, seeing her reflection act of its own accord. Feeling like her normal reflection wasn't really her. It was so hard to explain, but could there be something on the other side? Some other weird version of herself? If there was, it didn't fascinate Jules in the least. It scared her. Jules watched Neil expectantly, now curious as to whether or not she knew who he was talking about. How insane would it be if she knew a 'dream walker' without even realizing it?
“We have to know who she is to know if she’s the common thread,” Nic agreed, looking to Neil for an answer. He knew people didn’t like to share this kind of information and he didn’t blame them. It was easy to see people with supernatural powers as a threat, even when they weren’t, because they could be. But right now she was the most likely suspect and Nic doubted any of them would be okay with Neil keeping her name a secret.
Neil would normally not be quick to name names - or meet up with three strangers - but circumstances were dire and this might be their common denominator. "Jane Randolph," he muttered, eyeing each of them for any sign of recognition. There didn't seem to be any and at this point he didn't know if that was good or bad. "I guess she's not the clue we were looking for." Whether Jane could help them was something he couldn't predict, he found it unlikely that she'd want to and he didn't know how he'd even begin to ask her so he just shook his head as if to dismiss the idea, ready to move on to other possibilities.
“Don’t know her,” Carson muttered, glancing at the other two to see zero spark of recognition too. Well, fuck. “Are you sure?” he pressed Neil, his brow furrowing a bit. “That she can’t help? Even if she’s not the one doing it, if she knows a lot about dreams, maybe she can ... I dunno, guide us. Tell us what to do. Something. What else do we have?” He looked around again. Jules was just a high school student, she seemed completely normal, Nic was apparently some kind of witch but he hadn’t been able to help himself, much less the rest of them. Neil was just a skittish librarian, Carson felt completely useless ... he couldn’t think of any other leads.
The name didn't sound familiar at all, which was beyond disappointing. She wondered how Neil knew her - a dream walker - and why he thought this Jane woman would want to mess with him in such a shitty way. It didn't make any sense that she was the cause of all of this, since it was affecting three people who didn't know her. But even if Jane wasn't a clue, dream walker who could influence dreams sounded like someone who might be able to do something for them, right? "Yeah, if she can... influence dreams or whatever, is it possible she could like, see ours and tell us what's going on?" It sounded like a stretch, but what else did they have to go on right now? They were all clueless and Jules wasn't ready to shrug off the one person who might be able to do something.
“Damn,” Nic sighed. He’d been really hoping the name sounded familiar. Not that he wanted to have pissed off a Dream Walker, but it would have been so much easier if it was that simple. He’d much rather be dealing with a person than some supernatural entity that they knew nothing about. Nic realized he was probably the only one thinking that might be a real possibility, but he wasn’t sure how helpful it would be to give them horrible news if he wasn’t sure and they couldn’t do anything about it either way. “I’d like to talk to her. I’d be curious to see what might happen if she witnessed one of our shared dreams, or one influenced by whatever. Maybe she could see something we can’t.”
Neil wasn't so sure Jane would even want to help and even if she did there would definitely be problems involved. "I think getting her help would require knowing when this will happen again," he reasoned. "That's not something we can predict." Even if she was willing, Jane had mentioned dreamwalking being an exhausting venture so it wasn't like she was going to chill in his head every night until they figured something out.
"We can't predict when it'll happen again, but I think it's pretty obvious it will happen again," Jules pointed out. "I mean, I don't know how any of this works, or what we can expect her to do, but it wouldn't hurt to ask for her help, would it? What else can we do right now?" It didn't seem like any of them had any answers or suggestions, so it was either go see this dream woman, or just flail about and wait to see what happened next. And Jules so didn't want to do that. She chewed on her lip for a brief moment and then glanced between the three men. "Did any of you recognize the road we end up on? I feel like it's near Point Pleasant if not in Point Pleasant, and maybe it's a real place we should visit if we can figure out where it is."
It didn’t seem like Neil really wanted to talk to this woman on their behalf. Maybe not at all. Maybe they had problems or something. But Carson didn’t have any other ideas. All of this was terrifying and confusing, and he had no clue what to do about any of it. It gave him a bad, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach to see that the rest of them seemed just as clueless as he was. So much for all of them magically figuring it out when they all came together. “I don’t know it off the top of my head,” he offered to Jules’s question in a murmur. “But I’ll try to pay more attention next time.”
Neil might not want to talk to Jane for them, but now that Nic had her name he could hunt her down himself if he had to. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to help, especially since they couldn’t predict when the dreams would happen, but it was all they really had to go on. “You know, I didn’t really pay attention, but now that you say that it seems familiar,” Nic frowned. He hated that he hadn’t picked up on that, but there’d been a lot going on in the dreams, including something chasing him. Now they needed to have another dream for him to really figure it out.
That street had felt very typical and dream-like to Neil, like a combination of streets he'd seen before but not an actual place so he couldn't help there at all. He couldn't even really understand why the others thought it was familiar, it was just a shitty, dark road with trees around, like any street in or around Point Pleasant. "I suppose I could talk to Jane," he muttered. Maybe if he told her he thought this was related to AIR she'd be more inclined to help, though he would never stop worrying that she was not on his side at all.
Neil didn't sound terribly pleased with the prospect of talking to this woman. He seemed standoffish already, in the short amount of time she'd known him, and Jules chewed on her lip for a second before glancing at Carson and Nic. "One of us could go with you," she told Neil, though she didn't really want it to be her. "If you think that'll help convince her? It doesn't sound like you two are very friendly..." And if Jane could help them, it would suck to have her say no because of Neil. If they could talk to that woman, Jules could... she didn't really know. But she could try and figure out where that street was, because it did feel familiar, which meant it had to be in or around Point Pleasant.
“I’ll talk to anybody,” Carson volunteered after a beat, glancing between the rest of them. Maybe it was because he met Jules first, or just because he was protective by nature, but he didn’t really want to expose Jules to some other weirdo. It was possible this Jane chick couldn’t even help them, so maybe it was better to keep her at a distance until they knew for sure. He wished he had some other alternative ideas to throw in there too, but Carson really just ... didn’t. This was all scary and weird and he was definitely out of his depth.
“Me too,” Nic nodded in agreement with Carson. “Shoot us her number, if you have it. If not, I’m sure we can look her up.” It was Point Pleasant. People weren’t hard to find. The town was too small to disappear in. Looking back at the rest of the group, Nic sighed and drummed his fingers on the counter. “So I’m not sure what else to do now, other than talk to Jane and maybe be on the lookout for the road we’ve been dreaming about. I was hoping that meeting up might help, but… I’ve got nothing else.” Which sucked ass. As much as he didn’t want it to trigger some grand spell or some shit, he’d been hoping for something.
Neil felt a little fretty. Sending these guys to talk to Jane sounded good in theory because it meant he didn't have to talk to her but that also meant they'd go see her and tell her things about Neil and he'd have no control or knowledge of what they said exactly. They'd tell her he'd spilled her secrets to them and she might get really angry and haunt his dreams again in that terrible way she had when they were kids. "I'll talk to Jane," he muttered sulkily. "If you want to come with me I suppose that could work."
It was disappointing that they had no answers, but she couldn't exactly be mad at any of them, since Jules had no answers either. She had sort of been hoping some kind of cosmic reveal would happen as soon as they were in the same proximity, but nope. It was possible there were no answers and all of this was just random and nothing they could do could stop it. Jules knew that was morbid and pessimistic, but she wasn't feeling very hopeful about anything lately. She frowned and shifted from one foot to the other again. "Okay, so, like, we all go together? Should we wait for you to text us?" Jules asked Neil. "I mean, we shouldn't wait too long. I could probably drive around too, and see if any of the roads look like the one in our dreams."
"I think she's staying at Juniper Inn," Neil sighed. "We could go there, I suppose. I'm just not positive she'll actually help us." Even if she was capable, Neil wasn't so sure she'd want to. She'd probably use this against Neil somehow, agree to help if he agreed to join her in her impossible war and he wanted nothing to do with that.
“How well do you know her?” Carson asked Neil, shooting a wary sort of glance at Jules. The three of them were grown men, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to get a teenage girl mixed up in all this, if they were going to start involving other people who obviously weren’t trusted. “Maybe just the three of us should go talk to her,” he suggested, gesturing to himself and Neil and Nic. “Just in case she’s like, dangerous.” Who knew what someone like that could do, after all? Carson sure as fuck didn’t. And maybe if she didn’t see Jules’s face she couldn’t involve her or ... something. “No offense Jules, just trying to err on the side of caution here,” he added in a murmur, hoping she wasn’t offended. “You look for the road, we can talk to Jane, see how that goes.”
Nic agreed that someone other than Neil needed to talk to Jane, and he also thought it might be better not to introduce Jules into that equation. If Jane ended up being a problem, then Jules would at least be somewhat shielded. He doubted Jane was dangerous when they were awake though. Usually dream walkers only had power in dreams. He did wonder if maybe all three of them was a bit much, but at the same time he didn’t want to sit this one out. He might have questions that they didn’t think of. “I think that’s a good plan. We can keep in touch via text and you can let us know if you find anything,” he said to Jules. “We can let you know what we learn from Jane. And hopefully we won’t have any new dreams in the meantime.”
Jules didn't really want to go talk to this Jane woman, but she was feeling a bit defensive that none of them seemed to think she could take care of herself. If she went to look for that creepy road on her own, who was to say something didn't happen to her there? What if they learned something from Jane that could help them? Jules would feel a bit left out, even if they did text her. "You don't think having a girl there would make her feel more comfortable?" Jules asked, only because she was feeling stubborn all of the sudden. "Three guys showing up to ask her a bunch of questions about dream walking? I mean... no offense, but this is kind of weird for me even though none of you seem like creepers or anything."
Neil was definitely overthinking the part where Jules said they didn't look like creepers. He sometimes felt like one and he'd definitely felt like one when he realized there was a teenage girl in the mix even if he had zero interest in her. Maybe she was just being polite, or maybe she just meant Nic and Carson. Neil wasn't even sure if they were creepy or not. Carson was a little less intimidating than he'd thought he'd be but Nic had history of violence and yes, he was a little creepy talking about magic like it was the weather. He still clung to it, that maybe he wasn't very creepy and got a little lost in thought trying to tackle the doubts that came with it. Whether she came along to see Jane wasn't his decision anyway, he honestly didn't want to go at all.
She did have a point, and Carson felt that stab of nonsensical guilt again, for being a dude. Jane might feel like she was being cornered by three men if they all went, but maybe having a younger girl who already trusted them would be helpful. But what if she was dangerous? Looking a little pained, Carson looked from Jules to Neil, but he wasn’t offering them any other insight. He glanced at Nic, then back to Jules with a sigh. “You’re probably right,” he told her. “If we invite her into our dreams she’ll see you anyway, so ...” Carson shrugged. “We can all traipse in there together, I guess.” He just hadn’t wanted to put the most vulnerable among them into more danger.
Nic tried not to groan in frustration. Coordinating all four of them to go talk to Jane together was going to be a pain in the ass. They each had work schedules to contend with, Jules had school and probably a boat load of social obligations to go with it, and Nic had the full moon getting closer with every day. And then there was Halloween. Nic hoped it was quiet this year. “So when do we want to do this? Should we find out when she’s available and ask her to meet? I’m not sure that ambushing her is the right approach if we want her help.”
Jules turned to Neil, because it felt like they would all keep circling this until someone made a decision. "If you know how to contact her, you should do it. Tonight, or tomorrow. There should definitely be no ambushing. Ask her if she can meet with us, like, super soon. We can go to her place, or we can meet somewhere public, if that makes her feel better. Even here, I guess." Since it was sort of a public place, but there was no one around to eavesdrop. "If she says no, then we figure something else out. But that seems like our next step. Does that work for you?" she asked Neil, since he was the only one who knew this woman and it felt right for him to be the one to ask if she would meet with them.
Neil hated this with every fiber of his being but he supposed he could try to call the inn instead of going there, ask for Jane, or leave her a message. He'd never spoken with her on the phone before and he was reluctant to give her his number. Though logically thinking it was probably preferable that she call him at night instead of showing up in his dreams. "I will contact her tomorrow," he muttered unhappily. "And text you all with the information. Is there any particular time that works best for you if she does agree to meet us?" That question was directed to all of them because they all had jobs or school, obligations, time management.
Leave it to the female among them to really sort shit out. Carson had to smother a little smile. Jules reminded him a bit of Rylee in a way that made him sort of homesick. Once they had all sorted out when the next time was that they would all have time to meet, he jingled his keys in his pocket and glanced around again. Things seemed to be wrapping up, they had as much of a plan as they could muster at the moment. “Well ... I would say it’s good to finally meet all you guys, but ... wish it was different circumstances,” he muttered with a wan smile. They all seemed like good people, it was shitty that something like this was happening to all of them. “Guess we’ll all be in touch, yeah?”
Nic was glad they had finally decided on a plan, rather than going around in circles. It probably was overkill for them all to go meet Jane, and it would definitely make it harder to come up with a date, but then everyone would have a chance to ask their questions and no one would feel left out. Nic offered the shop again, if that’s where they wanted to meet, but he was open to whatever. Just as long as they made progress. “Nice to meet you anyways,” he told Carson with a little smile, then gave a nod to Jules and Neil as well. “We’ll talk soon.”
If not for these circumstances, it was pretty likely that Jules wouldn't have really met any of them. She might have seen them around, but that was the extent of it, really. Maybe a few months ago Jules would have made her mom get her a gym membership just to ogle Carson, but that seemed pretty silly right now. Now that they had some semblance of a plan, Jules supposed she felt a little bit better, even though none of them had been able to come up with any answers. Hopefully those would come soon. Jules said her goodbyes and followed Neil and Carson to the door to finally get to her car and drive home.