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quite rested after the nights
I spent in other people's dreams, which was nearly every night since
I'd met Taggart.
    "Why
is it that you don't seem to lose weight like I do as a result of
dream walking?"
    Taggart
pondered the question for nearly a full minute before shaking his
head. "Honestly, I don't know, but it explains some things that
I'd always wondered about."
    "What
do you mean?"
    "You're
not the first human I've run into who had an ability of some kind or
another. It's rare, but it happens. Usually it's clairvoyance or some
kind of precognition. Stuff that doesn't actually affect the material
world."
    Taggart
folded up the foil wrapper that had been around his second hamburger
and shrugged.
    "Shape shifters, on the other hand, frequently have abilities
that have physical manifestations of some kind or another. I always
wondered at that, but now I'm pretty sure humans don't get that kind
of gift because it takes a lot more energy to power something like
that than dream walking or another similar ability. I think humans
have to power their gifts out of the energy reserves they have
physically present in their bodies."
    "But
you don't?"
    "It
doesn't appear like it. Even our ability to shift forms, instantly
adding more than a hundred pounds of bone and muscle, would be
impossible if we weren't getting fed from some kind of external power
source."
    I
thought about that for a couple of seconds before nodding. "That
makes a lot of sense, I mean for something that I don't understand in
the slightest. Part of me thinks I should feel ripped off because I
didn't get a bigger, more powerful ability, but the truth is I'm
already in over my head as it is."
    Taggart
frowned at me. "Don't sell your gift short, Adriana. It's not as
flashy or straightforward as being able to electrocute someone, but
wars are usually won because of information and you and I are ideally
placed to find out things that nobody else could learn. That's
actually what I need to do tonight."
    I
couldn't decide whether to be disappointed or relieved. Most nights
Taggart trained me by either joining me inside of my dreams or having
me join him inside of his, but occasionally he took the night off
from training me so he could tend to the network of informants and
spies he'd spent the last several decades putting together.
    Apparently
my indecision made it onto my face. Taggart gave me a rare smile and
then pointed to the bed on my side of the room. "This doesn't
mean you get the night off. I want you to try and come with me to
meet my informant tonight. You're getting good enough inside of the
dream that I think it's time for you to start doing some of your
learning on the job."
    I
tried to look confident, but the last time I'd run into anyone other
than Taggart in a dream I'd nearly died.
     
     

Chapter 5
    Adriana Paige
The Premier Pillow Motel
North Platte, Nebraska
    Taggart always dropped off to sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, but
it wasn't that easy for me this time. I was just as tired as always,
but I was nervous enough that it took me a few minutes to finally
transition to sleep.
    That
meant that I had even more time than normal to worry. Before he'd
gone to sleep, Taggart had shown me a picture of his informant,
someone name Eric, and then rattled off a handful of facts about him
like his date of birth and parents' names.
    That
was how Taggart made his way into someone else's dream. Making the
initial connection seemed pretty hit-and-miss, but once Taggart had
visited someone else's dreams, he could almost always return to them.
Whether it was the first trip or the hundredth, Taggart always
accomplished it by visualizing his target and remembering some of the
things that made them unique.
    I'd
had his method of making first contact drilled into me a dozen times
already, but each time I'd tried to make contact with one of his
people I'd failed. The failure itself wasn't unusual, but I should
have had a success by now. It rarely took