Two
Han Solo—gray tail bushy, his purr only a little softer than a dragon’s roar—greeted me as I entered my apartment. He jumped onto my lap as soon as I took a seat on the barstool at the island counter, a bowl of Lucky Charms in hand.
My cat positioned himself next to the cereal bowl. His green eyes watched the spoon enter my mouth.
“No,” I told him.
He mewled, his eyes pleading.
“People food.” I pointed at his cat bowl on the floor. “Cat food.”
He looked at me with those wide cat eyes. After a few more bites, I relented and scooted the bowl of milk to him. I was such a pushover sometimes. Good thing I wasn’t a parent.
Glancing at the clock, I realized I should have been in bed hours ago. Crossing town had been murder—it had taken me two hours just to get back to my tiny little apartment on Galveston Island. Should have taken half that. I hated Houston sometimes.
Stumbling to my bedroom seemed a longer walk than usual. I only had seven hundred square feet to call my own, but even that seemed like a lot. My apartment was functional, decorated sparsely. Honestly, it probably looked like a bachelor pad. I’d never had money to spend on candles or plants or those cute little quotes people hung on their walls.
My mind wandered as I found the bathroom and turned on the sink to wash my face. Living alone was a solitary ordeal, and I found myself having conversations in my head. It sounded strange, but I had certain characters running around inside my head, representing particular aspects of my psyche. Bill Clinton represented my emotions. Albert Einstein represented my rational side. He always popped up whenever I had a moral dilemma. Don’t know how he came to represent my rational side, but I do know when it started. I was twelve, and it was the year I moved in with my mom—the year my world turned upside down.
After washing my face, I grabbed the towel.
A shadow crossed behind me.
I straightened, my heart beating wildly in my chest as the faint reflection gained substance.
A wisp of gray, like the tattered hem of Charon’s cloak, fluttered behind me. A translucent, skeletal face appeared and then faded.
Chills prickled my neck. My body froze.
Einstein spoke up. A specter from fairy world in your bathroom? Is this normal, Olive? Perhaps you imagined it.
The chills on my neck disagreed with him. Something had moved behind me, so close I’d felt it brush against me. I knew I hadn’t released any magic, so I shouldn’t have seen anything in my mirror.
This was why I hated living alone.
My doorbell rang. I almost fell into the tub.
Stumbling upright, I walked out of the bathroom, through the living room, and stopped at the front door. Peeking through the peephole, I almost wondered if Death were on my doorstep. Strange things happened to me frequently, but I never got used to them.
I spied Dr. Hill through the peephole. The streetlamp illuminated his dark brown skin. He wore his usual suit and bowtie, and trimmed his graying beard in the style of Abraham Lincoln. My heart rate evened out a tiny bit, and with shaking hands, I opened the door.
“Dr. Billy?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“You know I hate that name. And what’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Maybe I had. “I’m fine. Jittery, I guess.”
“Jittery? Should you make an appointment? Prozac or Effexor—”
“No pills. You know that doesn’t work for me.”
“I’m trying to help.”
“I know. But I’m fine. So what’s up?” I forced my voice to stay level. I didn’t like explaining weird crap, especially not to Dr. Hill. Stepping aside, I let him in, and he took his usual seat on the couch.
I sat on the loveseat across from him, trying my best to seem at ease.
His voice took on a doctor’s tone. “I’ve had a patient come in recently.”
Okay, I knew the drill. After seeing so many patients he couldn’t help, he finally agreed to let me give it a try. With a few successes, he’d given me a steady trickle of work ever since.
“So what’s this one got? Bi-polar? Depression? Anxiety?” Useless terms for my patients if you asked me, but scientists liked labels. Made them feel secure. And trying to convince doctors that the proper term for a ‘narcissist’ was ‘visitor to fairy world’ made them extra nervous. Angry, even.
I know. I’d tried.
Ninety-five percent of the time, I was just fine with the scientific terms. But for the five percent who suffered from Faythander’s lost memories, pills and therapy were rubbish.
“I’ve diagnosed him with depression,” Dr. Hill said, “but I’m certain there’s more to it.”
“Classic symptoms?” I asked. “And none of the meds are working?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I can handle it.”
He gave me the address and phone number. I grabbed a scrap of paper from the coffee table and scribbled it down. The address seemed familiar, but I couldn’t decide why. Dr. Hill was silent for a moment.
“Is there anything else?”
“Olive, this one isn’t quite like the others.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s—well, he’s seven.”
Seven? “You know I can’t help kids. Those repressed memories don’t surface until adolescence. Sorry, but I can’t do anything about this one.”
“I think you ought to at least have a look.”
The tone of his voice made me shudder. “I wish I could help, but there’s nothing I can do.”
He paused. “Olive, it’s Jeremiah Benson.”
My heart skipped a beat.
“He’s your godson, correct?”
“Yes.” But he was more than that. Jeremiah was the closest thing I had to a real son. His mom, Shawna, died when he was four. Even though she was a couple years older than me, she’d been my best friend in junior high. But she’d started using drugs and dating the wrong boyfriends, so we’d parted ways. I hadn’t seen her until she called me a few years ago.
I remembered visiting Shawna in rehab before she died. She had two kids out of wedlock—Sissy and Jeremiah. Shawna had gotten addicted to heroin and knew how bad things were. She knew she couldn’t control the drugs, or the inevitable overdose, so she’d begged to me to watch over her children. I never forgot what she told me. I want you to be more than just their godmother, she said. I want you to be their guardian angel.
Despite Shawna’s faults, I couldn’t let her children suffer the same way she had. I’d given her my promise that day.
Sissy and Jeremiah had gone to live with a foster family—the Dickinsons. They were nice people. The kids were safe there.
A pang of guilt gnawed at me because I hadn’t visited for a couple months.
“What are Jeremiah’s symptoms?” I asked, almost not wanting to know the answer.
“He hardly wakes up. Sleeps almost twenty-four hours a day. From a medical perspective, it seems like a coma. But my gut tells me it’s something else.”
“I’ll rearrange my schedule and visit him in the morning.”
Han Solo bounded onto Dr. Hill’s lap. He gave the cat a half-hearted pat on the head.
“You still have the cat, I see.”
“Can’t seem to get rid of him.”
He moved the cat off his lap. Han Solo glared before stalking away. “Be careful tomorrow,” Dr. Hill said. “I know this magic, voodoo stuff is the norm for you, but something feels wrong about that boy. I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Wrong how?”
He shook his head. “I wish I knew.”
What had happened to Jeremiah?
“Call my receptionist tomorrow. She’ll give you the insurance details.”
“Sure,” I mumbled as he stood.
He said a brief good-bye and good luck, shot Han Solo a glare as he brushed cat hair from his pressed suit, and left.
I leaned my head against the wall. Through t
he living room door, I glanced at my bed, the coverlet a ghostly gray under the moonlight streaming from the window.
Seeing a strange apparition in my mirror and learning that my godson was in some sort of coma worried me. Would I get any sleep tonight? Probably not. Those pills from Doc Hill were starting to sound more attractive. And Albert Einstein’s reassurance of my sanity wasn’t helping.
Dreamthief Page 3