Stolen Dreams

by Christine Amsden

  “What’s going on?” I rushed into the bathroom, not sure what I could do but ready to offer my assistance in any way possible.

  “N-nothing. I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine. You’re bleeding! A lot!”

  “It’s nothing.” She spoke through gritted teeth, and in her eyes she seemed to be trying to give me a message. I wasn’t slow on the uptake, but I wasn’t going to let her get away with brushing it off, either.

  “You’re miscarrying,” I said flatly. “Or did you abort it?”

  I hope I never again see a look on Madison’s face as ferocious as the one she sent my way just then. She looked like I had just poked a finger into a gaping wound, which I probably had, even if it wasn’t physical.

  “If anyone aborted the baby it was a team effort between my father for betraying me and Nicolas for hating me afterward.”

  The image of Madison trapped in this room, sobbing far more than her heart out, stopped me cold. For a long minute it was all I could think about.

  “Did Nicolas know about the baby?” I asked finally, praying he hadn’t. He wouldn’t be so monstrous, would he?

  “No. I didn’t tell him yet. Only knew for a few days myself. And he never has to know now, okay?”

  I hesitated, but under the circumstances I didn’t see how telling Nicolas would help a thing. It was over. “I won’t tell him, but we have to get you some help. There’s so much blood. Is there supposed to be so much?”

  “How would I know? I’ve never lost a baby before. Have you?”

  “No.” I cast about helplessly for something useful to do. “I could get Juliana in here.”

  “She can’t keep a secret.”

  “True. How about Linda Eagle? You can trust her.”

  “I-she can’t come here.”

  “No, of course not. Let me work a few things out, then we’ll get you out of here.”

  “Nicolas won’t just let me go.”

  “What?” This time, I was slow on the uptake. “Why not?”

  “Haven’t you guessed?” Madison asked. “No wonder you’re being so friendly to me.”

  “What haven’t I guessed?” I asked. “You weren’t really spying for Victor, were you?”

  “No, of course not. I didn’t even know for sure, I just thought…. something about the way he acted… and I knew it had to be someone, probably the same someone who gave me all that money….”

  “Madison, the point?” I asked.

  “What makes you think all your magic went to Evan?” Madison asked, softly. “He wasn’t the only baby Victor conceived around the same time as you.”

  I did some quick mental math. Madison’s birthday was in September, making her about eight months older than me. Since I hadn’t been born early, that meant there were a few short weeks of overlap. Not much, but then again, Madison didn’t have much magical talent.

  “Go ahead,” Madison said bitterly. “Hate me for it. You’ve got more right to hate me than anyone else.”

  “No.” I answered without thinking, but I knew I meant it. I had no right to hate her at all; the idea made me sick, just as the idea of taking what small bit of talent she had made me sick.

  “You can take it. I don’t care. It’s what Nicolas wants you to do.”

  “No,” I said again.

  “It’s not like it’s ever done me any good,” Madison added.

  “No.” This time I said it forcefully enough that she stepped backward, and then promptly doubled over as another painful contraction hit her.

  For a minute I just stood there helplessly, trying to decide if I should help her breathe or something, but I knew I couldn’t do anything for her here, not with Nicolas hovering outside. Besides, Madison was still sending out “don’t touch me” vibes, and after her revelation I didn’t have the confidence to push through them.

  “Wait here.” As if she could go anywhere. “I’ll be right back.”

  15

  EVAN’S METALLIC BLUE PRIUS PULLED IN behind us a couple of miles from the castle, and continued to follow us all the way back to our cozy rental property within the city limits. Madison didn’t notice; she was too busy breathing her way through crippling pain that came at closer and closer intervals.

  I called Linda Eagle on the way, asking her to meet us at the house, and to not let anyone know where she was going. She sounded uncharacteristically subdued when she agreed, and I wondered if the news of Madison’s parentage had spread.

  Evan quit his escort when I pulled into the driveway, behind Kaitlin’s pickup truck. Good. One less person who would require explanations. There would be no such luck with Kaitlin, however. She waited for us in the living room, staring blankly at a daytime talk show. If I had asked, I doubt she could even have told me the name.

  “Thank God,” she said softly when she saw Madison. Then, “Are you okay?”

  When I explained the situation in short, terse sentences, Kaitlin’s hands flew to her own burgeoning belly. She was due any day now.

  “Linda Eagle’s on her way,” I concluded.

  “I don’t like that woman,” Kaitlin said. “She keeps trying to talk me into a home birth.”

  “She is opinionated.” Privately, I agreed with the advantages of a home birth, but Kaitlin’s choice wasn’t my business.

  Linda Eagle arrived within minutes and true to form, she immediately took charge.

  “You’re not hemorrhaging, dear,” she told Madison. “I know it feels like it, but you’re not. These are labor pains; you were at least ten weeks along. Why didn’t you come to me sooner?”

  “I only knew last week,” Madison whispered, her face pale as she recovered from another contraction. “My periods are never regular, and N-he said he was using protection.”

  Linda sighed. “That child is the worst potion maker I’ve ever known. I remember loaning him my book on magical contraception just before Christmas, but he wouldn’t hear of me mixing something up for him. I should have insisted.”

  “Too late now,” Madison said.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” Linda said. “I know it doesn’t help to hear it now, but these things happen. Babies aren’t all meant to be, but it doesn’t mean you won’t have more in the future.”

  “I’d have to be willing to let another man touch me first,” Madison said bitterly.

  “Oh dear,” Linda said. “You have no idea how ashamed I am of that child right now. He’s apprenticed to my husband, you know. I could tell Clark to dismiss him. He’s been on the verge of wanting to ever since this trouble began, to try to keep our family safe. And then little Barry came home stone deaf–”

  “Don’t do it on my account,” Madison said.

  Linda looked flustered. “Yes, well, I’ll just go finish that pain potion. You won’t feel a thing for twenty-four hours after you take this.”

  She bustled off, leaving me to hold Madison’s hand through the next few pains. Neither of us spoke, giving me far too much time to stew in my own thoughts, which centered on Barry Eagle, and the myriad ways in which a mindless feud could tear lives apart.

  My sister, Elena, had apparently developed a crush on Barry Eagle after her devastating outburst that had wrecked the school in September. (The school had been repaired by Thanksgiving.) Barry had rushed to her aid, possibly even saving her life. The Eagles had always been allies of the Scots, and one of Dad’s cousins had even married into the family, but Barry’s mother was Rose Blackwood, Victor’s sister. This made him one of them.

  Honestly, it wasn’t always clear who was on whose side, and as relations grew more distant, and marriage lines crossed, it blurred even more. But when Dad found out about Elena’s little crush he drew a dark line, putting Barry on the other side. To emphasize the point, he cast a deafness spell on the ten-year-old boy.

  Barry’s father had apparently been trying to remain neutral, despite his wife’s desire to support her brother, but when his youngest son couldn’t hear for three days, he sent him to school with a
spell to blind Elena. Even then, it took Dad a week to relent.

  Elena’s vision returned to normal the next day, but unfortunately, her young heart hadn’t mended so quickly, especially not when her newly reopened eyes saw the hatred Barry aimed her way.

  If there’s one thing all this taught me, it’s that hatred destroys love, be it a nine-year-old’s first crush, or a grown woman’s engagement.

  And what of Evan? A voice at the back of my mind asked. What has your hatred of Evan destroyed?

  For the first time since I had learned the truth about him, I was faced with the possibility that I had treated him unfairly. I didn’t want to think about it, but in the silence of my mind, during the hours I held my friend’s hand and talked her through losing a child, I couldn’t help but wonder why my feelings toward her differed from my feelings toward him.

  I didn’t want her magic, and I didn’t hate her for having a piece of the power that by rights should have been mine. Why? I asked myself again and again, but I came up with no satisfactory answers. Because she had so little of it, relatively speaking? Because the man who had done this to me hadn’t raised her? Because I still couldn’t picture her as a Blackwood? She didn’t look like one; she must have favored her mother in looks. Then again, Evan favored his mother, so perhaps Victor’s genes were more recessive.

  Or was it, perhaps, because she hadn’t broken my heart, leaving me alone just when I thought I had found a measure of happiness? He had simply slammed the door in my face one day with no explanation and precious little warning. He hadn’t told me the truth. He hadn’t had the courage to tell me himself; I had come to the realization on my own, and with no one there to cling to for support.

  And then he hadn’t offered to make it right. Madison had, never mind that it was easier for her to do since the magic had never defined her the way it had defined him.

  Evan had run away when he had learned the truth, and when he had returned, he had brought a wall of determination with him to set between us. He hadn’t believed I would love him again, and he had proved himself right.

  By the time Linda finished brewing her potion, I was as ready for sleep as Madison. The worst of her pains had eased, though I never saw anything resembling a tiny baby.

  “Did I make this happen?” Madison asked after she gulped down the potion. “Is it my fault? For crying?”

  “Who knows, dear?” Linda asked. “Maybe it was going to happen anyway. Who do you help by trying to guess at the unknowable?”

  Madison yawned, and her eyes started to close. I’m not even sure how aware she was of speaking the next words. “When he hurt me, I didn’t want the baby anymore. It’s all my fault.”

  Linda, Kaitlin, and I all exchanged glances, but if we had anything to say to her, comforting or otherwise, Madison was beyond hearing.

  16

  THE DAY WASN’T OVER. KAITLIN LEFT around dinnertime to join her mother, breaking with her recent tradition of spending the evening with my family. Neither of us felt like facing them after what they had done to Madison. I suggested staying in for pizza, but I couldn’t blame her for choosing better company. She was focused on waiting for her baby to come into the world, while I–well, I wasn’t focused on anything save my own self-doubts and recriminations.

  In the midst of all that, I received an unexpected visit from my Uncle John. He stood on the front steps with the look of a supplicant when I first saw him, but it didn’t take him long to disabuse me of that notion.

  Uncle John was my father’s older brother by about four years, and unlike my father, he looked his age. There may have been a resemblance otherwise, but not a pronounced one. When I saw pictures of the two of them growing up, they looked like the sort of brothers whose fraternity you neither questioned nor intuited.

  The biggest difference between them in my lifetime had been jealousy. I never knew where my father learned alchemy, but it had not been from his family because neither his parents nor his brother knew the spells. Uncle John resented that fact. He wasn’t overtly hostile about it, but it was there in his eyes whenever my father offered him money, which he rarely took. My father didn’t see that sometimes what he saw as generosity, others saw as an insult to their pride.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked him when I opened the front door to allow him entrance on that cool March evening.

  He wasn’t the sort to waste time with pleasantries, so he didn’t act affronted at my preemptive question. He walked in, made himself comfortable on one of the new leather recliners Madison had purchased to replace our mismatched garage-sale furniture, and told me what he wanted.

  “I want you to marry Alexander,” he said.

  I wasn’t really surprised. Back in June, when my family had disowned me, they had asked Uncle John to look after me. His solution had been to marry me off, something I had neither forgiven nor forgotten, although since he didn’t have any power over me and my life, I didn’t dwell on it.

  “I don’t want to marry him,” I replied. “Anything else?”

  “You will marry Alexander.” Uncle John sat forward with his elbows propped on his knees and stared at me intently. “Your father should have forced the alliance months ago, but he was too soft where you were concerned. Seemed to think if he spoiled you rotten and let you have anything you wanted, it might somehow make up for your deficiencies.”

  “My deficiencies?” It wasn’t exactly a new concept, but it had been some time since anyone aside from my father had commented on my lack of magic.

  “Don’t play word games with me. He felt sorry for you. We all do. But now we have the chance to use your problem to our advantage.”

  “Well this has been an educational chat,” I said. “There’s the door.”

  “We’re not finished.”

  I withdrew the electric shock potion from the belt at my waist, and leveled it at him. “Get out of my house.”

  Uncle John scowled. “That is precisely what I mean. Indulging you. Letting you walk around looking like a magical drug dealer, with that poorly conceived arsenal. It didn’t help you defeat Evan; what makes you think it will help you against me?”

  “Seriously? You’re not aware by now that Evan’s got my magic and his own? And for all that, I almost beat him.”

  “Almost,” Uncle John repeated. “There’s the key.”

  “I’m going to count to three,” I began.

  “You don’t want to do that until you hear what I have to say.”

  “There’s more?” I didn’t lower the water gun, but I didn’t start counting, either. “I suppose you’re going to explain exactly how my father has spoiled me rotten? Or maybe tell me about my duty to my family?”

  “He let you remain friends with Evan Blackwood for years. I told him to put an end to it but he didn’t listen, and look what’s happened now.”

  What had happened? Our friendship hadn’t started the feud, and though it made learning the truth all the harder, I didn’t regret the years of companionship.

  The thought brought me up short. I had been looking back on our friendship with nostalgia and longing, but never regret. Shouldn’t I regret it, knowing what I did now?

  Uncle John didn’t give me a chance to consider the question. “Your days of indulgence are over. I’ve given you some time, knowing how hard your father’s death was on you. I miss him, too, but now I’m the head of the family, and things are going to change.”

  “I think my mom’s the head of the family.” I wish I sounded more confident. Truthfully, my mom could barely take care of herself or her new babies, and grief was eating her alive.

  “Your mother is a drained woman,” Uncle John said.

  I bristled, but wasn’t surprised. The shutter of innocence was gone from my eyes, and I saw many things I had somehow missed before. “Like Aunt Leslie?”

  “Like my wife, yes.”

  “Strange that you’d want an alliance with Alexander then.”

  “Alexander’s a hypocrite,” Uncle John
said. “His first wife was a drained woman, and now he wants you.”

  “He rescued his first wife from a terrible situation.” I knew the story; Alexander used it in political speeches often enough. “She was his inspiration for wanting to put a stop to the practice.”

  “And now he wants you,” Uncle John repeated, as if that settled things. Maybe it did.

  “Look, I don’t care. The answer is still no, and none of us will ever accept you as head of anything, let alone the family.”

  “Won’t you?” Uncle John smiled for the first time, an expression that sent chills running down my spine. “A strange thing happened when your father died. The spells he cast began to fade.”

  This didn’t sound good. I half lowered my water gun, both dreading and needing to know the rest.

  “I replaced the wards protecting the castle, of course, including the ones in the tunnel. But when I got to the library, well, I decided it was about time my brother shared certain information with me.”

  “You took the books on alchemy.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Every last one. Nicolas wasn’t ready to use them yet anyway, and your mother, of course….”

  He let the implications hang. She was a drained woman. She couldn’t work the spells. She might have assisted my father in the past, but she couldn’t do them on her own. Uncle John had the knowledge now, and he would not give it back.

  In the usual manner of men who underestimate women, he was forgetting one very important thing about my mother, but I decided not to clue him in. First, I wanted to know how far he would carry his threats so I could learn the extent of his treachery.

  “I’ll support your family, of course. My brother always tried to help me after all, even if his intentions were misplaced. It was the knowledge I wanted him to share. The power–not the money. He shared it with his worst enemy, but not with me. Never with me.”