I screamed into the air, a shrill sound I didn't know I could make. Somehow, I was sitting straight up with my hands behind me, like I had been pulled from my bed by the throat, and as my fingers tightened reflexively around the fabric of the sheets, I discovered a cold patch that had formed from the perspiration on my back. I was drenched in the sweat of my nightmare.

A nightmare. Oh, thank God it wasn't real.

As I thought this, the door flew open and my parents rushed in and tears came rushing like last night's waterfall, only it wasn't beautiful.

"Angel, what happened, are you okay?" asked Daddy, pulling me into a hug that Mom joined shortly after.

I couldn't speak yet; my thoughts and words were drowned out by the quaver of my crying, so I just watched as my parents scrutinised my bedroom and beyond the panes of my windows. I wondered what they expected to find.

"Leslie, what happened?" my mom asked, too. Dad found and closed the window I left open before I went to bed - it was one of those Raven Hills nights that were simply too hot to survive without some kind of breeze.

"It was just a bad dream," I croaked.

"About Justin?"

"What?" How did they know? I must have been screaming his name. "Kind of..."

Mom sat on the bed, right by my feet, and gave me the same concerned look she had given me a few hours ago when we returned from the police station. The first thing she did when we'd arrived home was to bring me to my room and reprimand me for how reckless I had been, alone in the Hills, and at night no less. Mentioning that Justin had been with me did not make things any better - after all, my mom was still a mom - and my punishment, which she assured me was all too necessary, was a curfew of my own. I was to be at home by six every evening; no nights out unless it was with the family, she had told me. "And I'm changing the Wi-Fi password."

"The Wi-? You're joking!" I had muttered, panic under my breath.

"I'm not; you need to stop researching those monsters." I would have defended the supernatural and myself, but her tongue was quicker than mine, "I know that's what you were looking for in the Hills. Stay away from there, Leslie."

The warning had been her final word, steady, precise and daunting. I wasn't looking for monsters; I was looking for truth, even if I didn't know how much truth I for yet. But monsters followed me into my dreams anyway.

Dad laid his hand on my shoulder, bringing me back to present affairs.

I continued, "I think he's in trouble."

I half expected Dad to fly to the car and demand that the whole family made sure his future son-in-law was okay, but that didn't happen. I guess because I sounded crazy. How could I know if he was in trouble? It was just a bad dream.

"Try to get some sleep, okay?" Though his words were for me, Dad was looking at Mom, who shook her head like her hope in me was spread too thin right now, too thin to entertain me. I'd never felt so naïve.

My phone buzzed suddenly, it was on vibrate and it still managed to startle all three of us. They left the room then, left me with my sweat and tears and phone call to pick up. I did it quickly, not brave enough to look at the caller ID or think about what was so important that it had to be said at three a.m.

"H-Hello?"

"Shit, did I wake you? I'm sorry."

"Graeme," I sighed in light relief. "You didn't actually. I was already awake."

"You can't sleep either?" he asked in this low, sad voice, like he felt sorrier for me than he did for himself even though we were in the same figurative boat of acute insomnia.

"Nightmare."

"Me, too."

For a couple of seconds, we didn't talk, which was okay because it just felt like we were sitting right beside each other.

"So, what was yours?"

I answered fast so my brain wouldn't comprehend that it was reliving its night terror, "I saw Justin. He was running in the Hills; someone or something was chasing him through the trees to this cliff and he had to jump. Couldn't even see the bottom, but he jumped anyway. When he eventually landed, it was just dark, like, imagine the bottom of the ocean. At least it seemed like it until you breathe it in and your lungs fill with smoke instead of water, and then you look down at your body and realise that you're on fire - burning alive and unable to scream."

I stared blankly into space, waiting for Graeme to speak and wash away the imagery of my thoughts, but a considerable amount of time passed before he found anything to say. Or maybe it just felt like a long time to me.

"Geez," he said - nothing profound.

"Yeah. And yours?" I wanted to change the subject.

"Same as always - the incident," he said. "Except you were the vampire. You were going to kill me, and I was going to let you do it."

"I would never hurt you," I assured him, "even if I was a vampire. That would never happen."

Graeme's chuckle fluttered through the phone, just long enough for me to hear it. "Well, they're just dreams, right?"

I smiled, "Yeah."

Just like that, Graeme had broken down my fear and turned it to content, and so by the time he hung up, the only thing keeping me awake was the stickiness of my skin. Sleep seemed to beckon me again; my heart and head stopped their violent pounding and listened to the call. But before I could adhere to it, I needed to take a bath.