"Violet!"

I jerk up.

"Ghost..." I mutter his name breathlessly. I distantly recognize the grip of his long fingers on my shoulders, but don't process it as him touching me.

I'm still lost in my sleep.

"Bad dream." He says it as if it's a question. We both know it's not.

I feel myself nodding.

We sit here like this for a few seconds until I shudder, wriggling out of his grasp. I clamp a hand to my head, suddenly registering the pain running through my head.

"You hit your head," Ghost tells me. Makes sense. One of the thousand downsides of being as tall as I am.

"What time is it?" I ask, my voice wispy. It always is.

"Nearly ten," he answers, glancing behind him to glance at the small alarm clock in our room. "Don't worry, I've slept later before."

Right. The one time he wouldn't tell me his dream. He was out until 10:48 am. I had to pretend I was sleeping, too, so I wasn't pulled away for experiments.

"What was it about?" Ghost shakes me from my memories.

Still rubbing my head, I crawl onto the floor and lay down on the rug. I pat a spot next to me.
We always go down to the floor when we're telling our dreams. Then we always add another star to our wall. "It was raining. She and her brother were playing cards. Spades, I think."

"You think?" Ghost interrupts me for one of his classic questions.

"Yeah. It looked like Spades, but I can't remember exactly." I pause for a nod to continue from Ghost. "Anyway, he said something really weird. He said--and looked right into her eyes-- 'I need to train you'. Of course, she questioned him, and he said something even weirder. 'One day we'll leave each other. We need to be prepared for it.'"

"What else?"

"The rest is too foggy right now. I remember laughter. And glares. More laughter. Then... Shouting?" I shake my head. "Don't know."

Ghost is already at his feet. He grabs my hand and tries to lift me to my feet, too, but I don't move. "Violet, come on. Don't make this so hard for me." He looks at me with those icy eyes of his. He has a way of talking through his eyes. Most people would be kind of intimidated by him just by his eyes, but I know him.

I groan and stand up. Together, we tape one of our construction paper stars to our wall. One of too many.