Amelia cleared her throat. “Yeah… well, it’s mostly to make the boys happy. And Serena. She is all about this self-care stuff.”
I stifled a grin. I’d been on the receiving end of Master Larson’s assistance, and I fully believed in his efficacy as a practitioner of psychic arts, of course. But I still harbored some general skepticism. Psychic arts were more art than science, after all.
“If you’ll be attending,” Thomas-Tom said, “try to keep your aura as calm as possible. Please, have a seat. Can I get you some tea?”
“Anything stiffer than that?” I asked as I sat and watched Master Larson lead Amelia to the treatment table that was set up with a blanket and a pillow. “Preferably something over twelve years old and aged in an oak barrel?”
Thomas-Tom’s brows pinched slightly. “I have chamomile tea.”
“Chamomile it is then,” I replied.
Amelia gave me a slightly worried look as Larson laid her out on the bed, adjusted her pillow, and murmured the usual tripe. Calm your mind, relax your muscles, breathe deeply. None of that in the least bit affected the application of a sleeping charm. But perhaps this bit of ritual was part of his process. I gave her a thumbs up, and winked.
She rolled her eyes before she followed Larson’s admonition to rest her head more comfortably and close them. After a moment, he retrieved a clear crystal bowl the size of his palm from a box on a table in the corner, and a mallet which he rolled around the edge to produce a pleasant, tenorous tone that hummed in the air for a time after he took the mallet away, his lips moving silently as he murmured the sleeping charm.
It was the sort of magic someone of Amelia’s talent could have shrugged off, but she must have been receptive. Her eyes began to roll a bit under her eyelids, and she sighed out a long breath before her chest began to rise and fall in slow, shallow breaths. Larson set the bowl back in the box and put his fingers to his lips to indicate that I should stay quiet. I gave him a nod and watched as he held a hand first over Amelia’s forehead, and then her chest, his eyes half-lidded as he no doubt explored the state of her consciousness.
Thomas-Tom returned some minutes into the process with a steaming cup of tea, on silent feet that I didn’t notice until he was standing over me. The tea smelled and tasted of soil, but I sipped it anyway to keep my mouth wet.
It wasn’t a terribly long process and watching Amelia in repose wasn’t unpleasant. Her face slack, she looked slightly younger than her nineteen years, I thought, and utterly peaceful—a state I hadn’t actually seen her in before. For two hours, Larson sat perfectly still behind the head of the table, his fingers pressed into a complicated looking mudra, his eyes closed and his expression utterly placid. Twice, I almost drifted off myself, probably thanks to the tea. And the relative boredom.
That boredom, however, was utterly shattered when Amelia began to stir. She only twitched a little, at first, but within a few minutes of the first motion, she flailed one arm, and then the other, and then was gasping for air as she sat up. I was on my feet without having quite realized I’d gotten up, and went to her side, frowning as she wiped sweat from her forehead. “Fuck me… I’d like to sleep for just a few hours, anytime, without… sorry. I’m fine, Nathan, really.”
I had to take a step back, suddenly realizing how close I was. “I didn’t realize your night terrors were so pronounced,” I said. I looked to Master Larson. “What was it?”
He only rubbed his jaw pensively, peering at Amelia.
She looked back at him, brow furrowed. “So? Can you help? Do I need to meditate or… take some kind of herb? Maybe a pharmaceutical? I sleep walk on Ambien, just for your information.”
Master Larson looked even more deeply concerned as he stood from his meditation chair and adjusted his robes and mala. “Well… you were certainly asleep…”
Both of us snorted. Amelia shrugged. “Yeah, I mean… obviously, I was.”
“But?” I inquired.
Larson turned to Amelia first. “This is confidential information—”
“I fished Nathan out of the Abyss. Twice,” she said. “We’ve got a certain level of intimacy. What’s the diagnosis?”
Again, he adjusted his robes, clearly uncomfortable either with what he had to say, or with saying it in front of me. Either way, he stuffed his hands into his sleeves and inclined his head slightly before he answered. “While you slept,” he said, “I did sense some anxiety, and I was able to determine that you were, indeed, in a deep sleep. REM, for the most part, which is the nature of the charm. However… I’m afraid, Miss Cresswin, that you were not dreaming.”
She stared at him, and then shook her head slowly. “Okay, well… it was worth a shot. I was definitely dreaming, so maybe your antenna needs an adjustment or… whatever.”
She started to get up. Larson stepped around the table, serious now. “I do not doubt that you were experiencing something,” he said softly, “but I have thirty-eight years of training in this art, Miss Cresswin. And I can assure you—what you were experiencing as you slept, was not happening in your brain.”
My stomach sank.
Amelia shook her head. “Well, I don’t know what kind of experience you—“
“Thank you, Master Larson,” I said quickly. “If you don’t mind, could we have a moment alone?”
Larson eyed Amelia like the curiosity she must have been, and nodded before he glided out of the room, trailing Thomas-Tom behind him. They closed the door.
Amelia searched for my eyes, caught them, and held them. “What is it? Larson may be good at some things, but he’s no Gina and I’m not entirely convinced his job isn’t mostly hypnosis and suggestion.”
“It isn’t,” I said. “I’ve had him in my mind, exploring my psychic landscape with me—if he says you weren’t dreaming, then you weren’t. But… there’s another possibility.”
“Great,” she breathed, and clasped her hands between her knees. “Lay it on me, Doc.”
I hated to do that. I truly did. But she needed to know, because it complicated things significantly. If what I believed was true—and there was ample evidence in the literature to support it, though I had thought it only superstition—then Az-Harad already had a firmer grip on her than I realized. Her eyes were concerned, though, and then pleading as I weighed the pros and cons, until finally I simply had to trust that she could handle it.
“These terrors,” I said slowly, “it’s possible that they aren’t dreams at all, Amelia.”
She shrugged. “Okay. Then they’re…?”
“They may well be… short trips into the Abyss,” I said, and it pained me when her face slowly fell, but she needed to hear it. Needed to be prepared.
“That proverbial game of chess? I think… we may already be many, many steps behind.”
Amelia and her men return for her Junior year at Rosewilde Academy of Magical Arts in A Spell for Twilight.
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About Marie Robinson
Marie Robinson
Marie Robinson lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband Michael, their son Kal, and their two aging-but-young-at-heart pit bulls who love to sleep on the couch. After years of helping out authors as an editor and literary agent, she took the time to write her own book and has never looked back. She loves magic, adventure, and romance—and so that’s exactly what she spends her days writing about.
To keep up with Marie, join the Tower Sirens Facebook group or follow her on Twitter.
About B.C. Palmer
B.C. Palmer
B.C. Palmer (call him Brian) is originally from the Pacific Northwest but trekked the wrong direction on the Oregon trail and ended up in Sun Valley, ID with his husband Scott and their adorable dog Mac. Brian is a fantasy author who delights in the torment of un
suspecting characters and readers. He loves to haunt coffee shops and wine bars with his laptop and practice his writerly brooding.
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A Spell for Shadows: Rosewilde Academy of Magical Arts Page 30