Framed and Burning (Dreamslippers Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

sipping a cocktail. Cat could tell this through the broken pieces, putting them back together as if they formed a puzzle.
    “C’mon,” Donnie coaxed Rose. “Let’s go take a look at what you’re working on.”
    He motioned for Mick to follow, and the three walked down the hallway to Rose’s studio. But when Rose opened the door, a swirl of black smoke blew out, swallowing them up. Cat couldn’t breathe. She coughed, choking on the smoke as she saw Rose drop to the floor, overcome by the fumes. Cat could feel herself about to go down next. But then the dream changed.
    They were in Mick’s studio. She caught a glimpse of Donnie, asleep on a cot behind a curtain, a bottle of Bushmill’s open on the floor next to him. Cat rode along in her uncle’s consciousness as Mick picked up pots of paint thinner and turpentine and began dumping them out around the room. He opened the curtain and poured the liquid onto Donnie, who woke in time to see Mick and yell out. But Mick lit a match and threw it onto him, everything going up in a burst of flame. Donnie screamed and screamed until he couldn’t scream anymore….

    And then Mick woke up, and Cat was forced out of the dream .  
    She sat up, sweaty, her heart pounding. She heard Mick stumble to the bathroom, coughing and clearing his throat. Did he know she’d slipped into his dream? He hadn’t seemed to show it within the dream. She lay in bed for a long time, considering her uncle’s possible guilt and how she could tell this to Granny Grace.
    But then Cat fell into her own recurring nightmare, one that had plagued her for the past year, a dream within a dream.  

    She is sleeping in bed with Lee and begins to dream. The killer, Anita, slips into Cat’s head. Anita was not a dreamslipper in real life, but in Cat’s dream-within-the dream, she has the ability. She fuses with Cat’s consciousness so that Cat can feel Anita in her head; she can hear Anita’s thoughts.
      Cut out the rot to make the wood strong. In Jesus’s name. You will be the Church’s salvation.  
    Quickly, Anita overpowers Cat so that Cat becomes Anita. She gets up and looks in the mirror, and it’s Anita’s face staring back at her. The dream always ends the same way: Cat-as-Anita opens Lee’s dresser drawer, pulls out a gun, and shoots him there in the bed.
    Only this time, as Cat/Anita turns around with the gun, she finds there’s someone else there, sitting in a side chair, drinking whiskey.
    “Whatcha doin’ there, my mild-mannered grand-niece?” Mick says, motioning with his drink at the gun in her hands.
    Cat hears herself as Anita answering him. “I’m going to shoot that man,” she says, pointing the gun at Lee, sleeping in the bed.
    “That’d be a waste of time,” Mick says, taking a drink. “Seeing as how he’s already dead.”
    Cat turns to the bed with a start and sees Lee as he looked that terrible day on Granny Grace’s front porch, after Anita shot him, with part of his head blown away and blood spilling out around him like a halo.
    “No!” she cries, and suddenly she’s Cat again. Anita is gone, and Cat crouches down to stop the blood.

    Cat awakened from the dream in a panic, and it took her a few moments to realize where she was. Then she heard the sound of her uncle, shuffling to the kitchen for another drink.  
    So he had the ability to appear and talk to her in her dreams, as Granny Grace did.
    The next day, Cat tried to broach the subject of Mick’s possible guilt to her grandmother, but she couldn’t find the words. “I think your brother might be an arsonist or murderer” didn’t exactly roll off the tongue.  
    Mick came out of his room only to piss or get more alcohol, helping himself to Ernesto’s ample stash. Cat was sure Alvarez and her posse would identify the hole in his alibi soon, if they hadn’t already. But they were probably waiting for the forensics reports. They’d want more evidence on Mick before interrogating him further.