by K.N. Lee
Rowan paused mid-step on the cement path leading to the main building. The wind howled around her, showering her in brittle, colorful leaves. Would Joe actually be in the library? She’d been so certain that Josephine would remain unchanged between real life and this dream, and now she wasn’t so sure.
She was obviously still a friend since the nun had access to her apartment to water the plant she didn’t really have. And Jovkovic had called her Sister, so she was still a nun. But that was all Rowan knew. She couldn’t say for sure if she was still a professor at St. Anne’s, or even Rowan’s fellowship advisor.
The wind bit through her thin suit jacket, and the path to the main building stretched before her. She glanced back at her apartment building, its glowing windows beckoning her home.
Except it wasn’t home. It wasn’t real, just some creation of her subconscious while she lay in an alley. How long had she been there, seconds, minutes, hours? Or was she in a hospital, inexplicably unconscious?
Her indecision grew, cold and hard in her chest. Go forward and risk wasting time and not finding Joe, or go home and look through her address book for signs of the Sister.
For all she knew, she no longer worked at St. Anne’s, either, or the campus was a maze to trap her. She didn’t want the dream to turn into that, endlessly wandering through halls that no longer led where they were supposed to.
Shit. She hated not knowing, almost as much as she hated inactivity, and she’d spent more than enough of her recent time on both.
She spun on her heel, back toward the street. Home and a phone call were her best bet of getting ahold of the Sister. In the very least, she could confirm whether she still taught at the school.
Elevator Man — Seth — stepped onto the path from the growing shadows, a repetition of the night before. His dark gaze settled on her, and she searched his face for any sign of the monster she’d met earlier that day who’d claimed to be his father.
Nothing.
In fact, if she looked at him from the corner of her eye, he emitted a soft white light. Only a faint glow around his heart, but she was sure it was there.
She wanted to say something witty. But nothing came to mind. Just great. Even in her dreams, she wasn’t cool.
He smiled the cocky smile she remembered from outside the Federal Building.
“Are you going to run away again? It seems counterproductive for a stalker,” she said.
“That was…” He sauntered toward her. He was like a cat — the big kind that prowled the perimeter of their cage at the zoo. It sent quivers of expectation through her.
She clenched her jaw against the sensation. It was not going to turn into one of those dreams.
“That was an unfortunate necessity.”
“Oh, really?”
“With certainty.” He stopped so close she could feel the heat radiating from his body. The wind gusted around them, and she longed for him to wrap his arms around her and offer his warmth.
As if reading her thoughts, he reached for her. She froze, caught between the yearning to feel his heat and guilt over Ben. But this was just a dream.
Shaking, she stumbled back, seconds before he completed his embrace. “Oh, Dinah, what a curious, curious dream.” She’d spoken so softly she was sure he hadn’t heard, but he threw his head back and laughed. It poured like liquid honey over her, melting into her bones and making her legs wobble.
“This, my dear Alice, is not a dream.” His smile curled up at one side. “Nor is it Wonderland.”
“I think, as a figment of my imagination, you’re supposed to say that.”
He reached to caress her face and she forced herself to stand her ground.
“Do you really think this is a dream?” He slid his finger along her jaw, drawing goosebumps.
She met his gaze, biting the inside of her cheek, clamping down on any more of a reaction. “Nightmare, actually.”
Darkness clouded his expression. She sensed a shadow, a hint of the monster that was his father, seep past his beautiful façade.
“Let me assure you, this is no dream. This is a world similar to yours.” He shrugged and the darkness disappeared back within. “A parallel world, you might say.”
“Riiiight.”
Cold water stung her cheek. The clouds were finally releasing their pent-up moisture. She had to admit there was a sense of realism around her, nothing to indicate that she was, in fact, asleep. None of the things that always happened to her in dreams were happening, and to top it off, the fat drops of rain chilling her bare face and hands felt all too real.
“I know how this will play out. What you’ll do. You’ll run around exhausting every avenue — not to mention yourself — unable to believe that what I say is truth. But eventually, you’ll come to see it is.” He traced the line of her jaw again, and her traitorous body shivered with desire.
She hugged herself tighter, not just to ward off the cold drizzle. “How do you know what I’ll do?”
“Trust me.”
She laughed before she could think to control it. She suspected, given her situation, it was more than inappropriate. It could be deadly. But he was crazy if he thought she’d trust him just because he said so. “Oh, I’ll get right on that.”
He grabbed her elbow and yanked her against his chest faster than she could react. His eyes darkened, the irises growing, blocking out the whites. “Trust me or not, your situation will not change and no one will believe you if you try to tell them the truth. This is my world, Rowan Hill, and it is far more dangerous than yours. Yours is practically heaven in comparison.”
She squirmed against his grip, but he didn’t let go. Fine. She was done being polite. She slammed her heel into his instep.
He grunted but didn’t release her elbow. Instead, he clenched her chin in his other hand and forced her to look at him.
“You’re here at my whim and you’ll leave when I say so.”
She fought the urge to spit in his face — that kind of stuff usually ended with a slap. “So what do you want?”
He leaned forward, brushing his lips along her cheek until they reached her ear. Heat shuddered down her neck and pooled low between her thighs. Her pulse leapt, suddenly racing, and her breath hitched in her throat.
“Find my brother.” His words were soft and clear, carried on hot breath that made her heart stutter.
She struggled, appalled at her physical reaction, even more because he’d threatened her. Heat burned along her veins, warming her, numbing all sensation but the feel of his breath in her ear and against her cheek and neck. Her legs trembled and she wondered if she’d be able to stand when he let go. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting the ache swelling within her.
“Find my brother.”
Then the pressure on her chin and elbow disappeared. She stumbled and fell to her hands and knees. The uneven walkway scraped her palms and for a moment she reveled in the cold and wet. It sickened her that Seth could awaken such lust, that she could have so little control over herself.
She waited for him to say something, but he remained silent. The drizzle picked up, becoming a steady rain. It pattered to the ground, soaking through her suit jacket.
When she finally glanced up, she found herself alone. Rain rattled through the dried leaves above her and the wind gusted, making them hiss. Clouds blocked any sign of a sunset, but for all she knew, it had come and gone and night had crept over her while she’d been caught in Seth’s grasp. The campus was empty.
It felt as if everything Seth had said was true. There was something cold and hard about reality and everything she’d experienced that day had been cold and hard. She had no choice but to admit he’d told her the truth. And yet the thought left a bad taste in her mouth. It rankled her that she’d have to be dependant on him to get home.
14
The more Rowan thought about Seth, the angrier she became. She’d been set up, manipulated, except she couldn’t put her finger on the what or the how. The feeling grew as s
he battled the wind and rain back to her apartment. Say for just a moment he was right, that she wasn’t dreaming and that this was a parallel world.
God, just considering the idea meant she had to be crazy.
She unlocked her apartment door, flicked on the light, and waited.
Ben didn’t come to greet her, but neither did Sister Joe. Across from her, by the balcony door, the bonsai sat on the edge of her bookshelf, a reminder that she wasn’t, in fact, home, no matter how much the place looked like it.
It was ridiculous to even humor the idea that a parallel world existed, like some weird science fiction book. If Ben were around, he’d be able to name titles and authors of sci-fi books. He loved that kind of stuff. She, however, preferred nonfiction: occult crime, psychology, and sociology. But if this was a dream, she had no idea where a parallel world fit in her subconscious.
She collapsed on the futon couch. Seth — or whoever he was in real life — had been acting strange before she’d changed worlds… or fallen asleep.
This was becoming confusing.
She needed to take one hypothesis and analyze it.
Fine. Say she was in a parallel world. She resisted the urge to modify the thought with something more realistic. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to believe it. There was no way she could prove it was parallel instead of dreamed. Proof would only come when she woke up — if she ever did.
That thought made her shiver. She hugged herself against the chill of her damp clothes, knowing she should get up and change. If she couldn’t prove anything either way — at least for the moment — then she had to assume the worst. This was real and she was stuck here.
She shivered again.
Her stomach bottomed out and she was suddenly light-headed. Oh, God! She was stuck here.
She hugged herself tighter and fought back the panic.
She was only stuck here until she did what Seth asked: find his brother. Which was such a terrible option she was lightheaded again. Relying on a stranger who’d threatened her was a worst-case scenario added to her stuck-in-a-parallel-universe worst-case scenario. No, she needed to find her own way home, and to hell with him thinking she wouldn’t be able to — she was not going to think about his smug smile if he ended up being right and she just exhausted herself searching for a way back that only he could give her.
Her mind spinning, she forced her gaze to settle on something, anything. It landed on the bonsai, twisted and bent in a supposedly pleasing manner. It was stunted in growth and then manipulated to the whim of the artist, never to reach its full potential, trapped forever in a miniature pot until it died. Below it sat her collection of textbooks, with the bizarre additions.
She grabbed the afghan folded over the back of her futon, wrapped it around her shoulders, and shuffled to the bookshelf. Dream or alternate reality, maybe there was something in one of the books that could help her.
Sitting on the floor, she pulled out the first title she didn’t recognize. It was a psychology text on entity profiling. She flipped to the back and scanned the index, trying to remember what Shannon had called the creature from earlier that day, but stopped before she got too far. Curiosity might not have killed this cat, but it certainly had sidetracked her many times.
There were half a dozen more books along a similar subject, and she skipped over them. She still wasn’t sure what she was looking for — proof of parallel worlds, dream states, maybe dream magic, or some kind of spell. She just hoped she’d recognize it when she saw it.
She scanned through book after book, hoping she’d find something, anything.
Hours later, she rubbed her eyes with the back of one hand while holding open the book before her with the other. From where she sat on the floor, huddled in her afghan and surrounded by uneven piles of books, she could see the clock on the microwave. It was late, almost ten-thirty.
As if on cue, her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t had more than a muffin and a cup of coffee that morning.
She rubbed her eyes again and turned back to the book, promising herself she’d take a quick break after this one. Although she supposed it didn’t make much of a difference if she finished this one or not. It didn’t seem to have any answers, just like all the other books piled around her.
Of course, it would probably help if she knew what the questions were.
Her stomach rumbled louder. She flipped the page to the next chapter and focused on the first word under the chapter heading. While many of the other books hadn’t made much sense, they were at least written in modern English so she could skim through them. But this one was old.
The cracked leather cover had once been a dark brown but now had faded to a muddy gray. The pages of yellowing parchment had hand-written text that changed in size, style, and shade at seemingly insignificant moments. And to top it all off, it was written in Old English.
She would have preferred Latin, Greek, or even French. Heck, any modern language where spelling and grammar had been established. Without it, even just trying to skim was painful and long.
The words of the chapter heading, best translated to “closest heaven,” jumped out at her.
Seth had said her world was practically heaven compared to this one. It seemed like an exaggeration. But maybe it was something to go on.
She thought about all the different myths and fairy tales she knew, searching for the concept of multiple heavens with one closer to the world of the living. She couldn’t think of any, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there, or that she’d never heard of them, only that she was exhausted.
She knuckled down and translated the first paragraph. It talked about a heaven that resembled the world of the living, except the powers of the Lord and Lady were concealed. It told of a heaven where gods and demons lived in shadows. Very few could walk to the closest heaven. They could only remain in the closest heaven as long as the Lord and Lady graced them — a few days at most, sometimes only a few hours.
It seemed she had found her question and answer.
She sat back.
Dream or reality, she could only pray that if this closest heaven was real and it was her world, then the powers-that-be would send her back when her time was up. Just hide and wait it out. Except for how long? And what if she was wrong?
She turned back to the book. The next paragraph discussed a warlock who had found a way around the Goddess’s will and could cast a spell that would allow him an unlimited amount of time in the closest heaven.
Well, so much for that.
Her stomach growled again, and she gave in. At least eating would be something, some kind of action. She untangled her legs from the afghan and stood, letting the crocheted blanket slip to the floor.
With the book still in hand, she picked her way around the uneven piles of texts.
The next section went into greater detail about the warlock, but not the spell, as if the author was recounting second- or third-hand information.
She placed the book on the counter beside the fridge and reached — without looking — for the yogurt she kept on the top shelf. But she grasped empty air. She marked her place with her finger and glanced in.
The fridge was half-full with take-out packages organized in neat groups by package markings. Her yogurt, milk, orange juice… missing. The perfect, color-organized array of condiments on the door shelves was missing as well.
She pulled open the crisper. Empty. No fruits or vegetables.
It was the last straw.
People were dying — girls murdered in a horrifying way — and she was stuck here without real food. Wherever, or whatever, here was. She wanted to wring Seth’s neck, watch his gorgeous eyes bulge from his perfect face, and wipe that cocky smile from his lips.
Her gut twisted, reminding her she couldn’t do any of the above while sick with hunger. She picked a take-out carton at random and opened it up. Brown rice with sprouts and beans. Fine — odd for her, but fine. She retrieved a fork from the cutlery drawer — th
ank goodness that was where it was supposed to be — and turned back to the book.
She finished that chapter and started the next one, but didn’t garner any new information that would send her home or wake her up — whichever was the case. She’d long finished the rice — eaten it cold without thinking about it — and started another carton — cold as well — that was some kind of vegetable stir-fry.
A part of her wondered if all she ever ate here was Chinese take-out.
Hopefully, she wouldn’t be around long enough to know.
With her only lead the spell cast by a warlock, she called the FBI office. Perhaps someone there might know something more. She wasn’t ready to turn to Jovkovic or wrong-Shannon for help — not because she believed Seth when he’d said no one would believe her, but because all of this was still just a theory. No point risking them thinking she was crazy until she’d proven she really was in a parallel world.
The number for the FBI office rang once… twice… It occurred to her she hadn’t confirmed the number was still the same. Maybe she’d called someone’s home number at — she glanced at the clock on the microwave — midnight. But after the third ring, a woman’s voice — almost too cheery to stand — answered.
“Office of Entity Investigation and Profiling.”
Rowan bit her lip. She didn’t know how to ask for what she needed. Asking if there was a warlock or witch on staff sounded a little crazy — even after everything she’d seen that day.
Of course, if it was a dream, her question could go either way. Nope, never heard of it. Or sure, why’d you wait so long to ask?
15
“Can I help you?” the woman on the other end of the phone asked again, some of the teeth-rotting cheer gone.
“Yeah.” Rowan swallowed and braced her back against the kitchen counter. “It’s Rowan Hill—”
“You’re out of the hospital already?” The cheer returned. She could feel it pulse over the connection.
“Uh, yeah I thought—”