20
It was dark and Ava had no clear sense of where she was. Her own voice had yanked her out of a dream. Her heart drummed in her chest and she felt like her lungs had shrunk. ‘Where…’ she started.
‘You’re having a bad dream,’ Mat said. ‘You’re having a bad dream.’ His voice was scratchy with sleep. She looked around for her Exuberant Alarm Clock but couldn’t find it. She noticed then the sensation of Mat’s hand on her chest, his face coming into focus in the darkness. ‘Ava,’ he said, clicking on his Brilliant Lamp. ‘It’s okay, you’re okay.’
‘I’m… Brutus…’
‘No, you’re Ava. You’re at my apartment,’ Mat said. ‘You were having a bad dream. It’s four in the morning and Brutus is at your apartment. You hired a Bark Bud to take care of him.’
Some feeling had begun to return to Ava’s limbs.
