"We'll go to places that might not be very safe," Maggie admitted, "but I don't know how we can avoid it, especially since we need information fast. I can feel the boundaries between the C.U. and the waking world eroding as we speak."
Damien tightened his grip, and she squeaked in pain. He let go. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to squeeze that hard. I just don't want to let you go." He looked into her eyes, and his concern nearly broke her heart. "Are you okay with all this? You don't have to if you don't want to."
"I'm fine, Damien." Audrey smiled up at him. "This is something I can do even with a hurt collarbone. Go ahead with Charlie. Maggie will take care of me."
"Where will you sleep?" asked Charlie. "You have to make sure no one can sneak up on you while you're away."
"We can use my place," said Maggie. "There are guards and protections set up so that no one, either human or supernatural, will bother us."
"Will I get to see Zinfandel again?" Audrey asked.
Maggie laughed at Charlie's confused look. "Zin is a dragon, a very interesting representative of his species."
"He?" Charlie arched an eyebrow.
"Don't worry, he'd be way more interested in capturing you than me," Maggie assured him.
"Then let's go." Charlie checked his watch. "We should be able to catch the lovely Mrs. Ames at home."
18
Audrey stood at the window of Maggie's top-floor penthouse suite and looked out over the surrounding buildings and trees. When they had gotten off the elevator in the hall, the outside noise had faded, and now all she could hear was the whispering of the wind. It rattled the empty branches and made shadows play on the ground below.
Maggie brought pillows out of the bedroom and tried to make the two couches that faced the windows in an L-formation as comfortable as possible. Audrey couldn't help but look forward to being back in the Collective Unconscious, where, she hoped, her injury wouldn't be present. A dull, throbbing ache told her the pain medicine she'd been given at the hospital was wearing off, and she hadn't yet filled the prescription they gave her. She couldn't afford to be incapacitated by painkillers, but how bad would the pain be? Not that it mattered—she'd survived worse emotionally.
After they stretched out, Audrey couldn't close her eyes. Having someone else there made her nervous. Her mind flicked back to Kyle's pulmonary/sleep rotation and thought about how the patients would be hooked up for sleep studies, with electrodes glued to their heads and belts around their chests and stomachs. She couldn't imagine dropping off under those circumstances. She tried to pretend she was back at her apartment, but she missed the warm rumbling of Athena's purr and the occasional noise of passing cars.
"Are you asleep yet?" she asked and glanced at Maggie.
Maggie opened one eye. "No, you?"
"Not unless I'm talking in my sleep, but I've never been one for somniloquy."
Maggie rolled over on one elbow and stared at Audrey through her blue lenses. "You've had a rough past twenty-four hours. Do you want to talk about it?"
Audrey almost put her hands to her eyes, but her shoulder reminded her the gesture would be impossible. "Yes and no." Yes, she'd had a rough past day, and no, she didn't want to talk about it. She especially didn't want to discuss the thrill-dread roller coaster Damien's attentiveness toward her had put her on, both before and after Cupid's interference. "I'm just not all that tired, and knowing I have to go to sleep is making it that much harder. I think I have performance anxiety."
"Do you ever need to take anything to sleep?"
"Not usually. Kyle gives, er, gave me samples every once in a while to try, but that was only when I had a big deadline coming up. I never used them regularly."
"That's one of the ironies of the C.U.," Maggie said. A dry leaf scraped the window, and they both jumped. "People aren't getting enough sleep to keep the archetypes entertained, but they constantly seek it."
Audrey yawned. "Keep talking philosophy. I think it's working."
Maggie didn't look amused. "Do you mind if I help you? I've got an exercise I used to do with my nephew when he couldn't sleep."
"Your nephew? You mean Arthur?"
Maggie nodded, a smile on her lips and a far-away look in her eyes while she gazed into the past. "He had a horrible time sleeping, especially after the whole Lance and Guinevere thing started."
"Whose fault was that, exactly? I've always wondered."
"I'll give you three guesses."
An image of Aphrodite flashed into Audrey's mind. "You're kidding."
"Nope." This time Maggie's smile turned bitter. "The gods knew they were losing ground to the Christian religion, so Aphrodite had her nuisance son stir things up to demonstrate passion wouldn't be quelled so easily."
"That explains a lot." Audrey rolled on her back and looked at the ceiling, which was painted with clouds on a blue sky.
"Are you comfortable?"
Throb, throb, throb… "As comfortable as I'm going to be unless you've got any pain pills."
"I do, but they may interfere with your movement in the C.U. Modern pharmaceuticals wreak havoc with proper sleep and dreaming."
"Fine, I'll do without." Audrey took a deep, centering breath and tried to isolate the pain into a box in her consciousness and thus separate it from her awareness.
"Good, now try to relax. Close your eyes. Now count backwards from ten, and as you do, spell the number itself, so start with t-e-n…"
Audrey did as Maggie suggested, even picturing the numerals being written with a fine-tipped brush on parchment paper. The Truth Seeker's voice lulled her such that she lost the words themselves and only saw the pictures.
At Maggie's suggestion, Audrey found herself in a corridor. She walked past the doors, and at the thirteenth one, opened it and stepped on to the bright green grass of a field. She tilted her head back to a blue sky with wisps of clouds, and she wiggled her toes in the soft grass beneath her feet. A warm breeze caressed her skin and brushed her hair back from her face with gentle invisible fingers. She tilted her head and rested her cheek against her hand.
"Walk through the field," Maggie told her, "and ignore the caress of the West Wind. He likes to lead wanderers astray, and there are many things you could explore, but you can save those for your own dreams. These are the border-lands, what the sleep experts call alpha waves, and if you stay on the path, you will get to where you need to be."
A dirt path appeared in front of Audrey, and she followed it. The fingers disappeared, and a chill rode on the breeze. With every step, her eyes grew heavier, and soon she had to sit, then stretch out on the grass. She struggled to keep her eyes open, but within a few seconds, she fell into a true sleep.
Charlie and Damien pulled up to the Ames mansion on West Paces Ferry just outside of Buckhead after having been buzzed through by the gate guard. It fit with the rest of the affluent neighborhood that included the governor's mansion. The red brick house with white columns and wraparound porch had been built to look like an antebellum home, and Damien whistled with appreciation.
"Lyle could probably stash a dozen nymphs here without anyone knowing it," he said.
"Ah, but you've met Amelia. She wouldn't let him bring that kind of work home with him."
A butler let them in and told them to wait as he brought Charlie's card on a silver tray to Amelia, who was in the finished basement. Damien tried to get a peek into the rooms on either side of the spacious black-and-white tiled front hall. The house even had a large, dramatic staircase.
"So this is how the other half lives," he murmured.
"Getting decorating ideas?" asked Charlie.
Damien looked away from the painting that had drawn his eye, a landscape that could have hung in a museum. He thought for a moment that he had glimpsed a black wolf on one of the bluffs that overlooked a lake with rocky shores and mountains in the distance. Something about the scene looked familiar to him.
"Not really." He bit his tongue before he said something about letting Audrey do
the decorating since all he could manage was bachelor chic. What would she think about the Ames mansion? He couldn't imagine her going for opulence over comfort. He checked his watch and hoped she was safe with whatever she and Maggie were doing.
Maggie wouldn't let anything happen to her, right?
"I take it you gentlemen aren't here to discuss art." This time Amelia Ames' voice wasn't friendly. She stood with her arms folded at the base of the staircase.
"Ah, Mrs. Ames, it's so good to see you again."
"Right, because it's only been, what? Three hours or so?"
"I apologize for bothering you like this." Charlie flipped his notebook out. "But I have a few more questions to ask you."
"Have you discovered something?"
Damien was distracted by the woman who had followed Amelia into the front hall. He couldn't help but notice how the creaminess of her skin stood in contrast to the dark brown of her hair, coiled in a braid around her head, and her dark blue eyes. She wore elegantly cut khaki pants and a light blue striped shirt.
"Do I need to leave, Amelia?" the unfamiliar woman asked.
Mrs. Ames shook her head. "No, Delilah, this should only take a moment."
The hairs at the back of Damien's neck told him trouble stood nearby. He recognized her now. Delilah Butler had been married off to some rich old man for his money the year before and had made quite a reputation for herself as a party giver, and planner since it was no longer fashionable for women to just stay at home if they didn't have children. She was also known to be a man killer—indirectly. If her husband David caught her even thinking about cheating on him, well, Atlanta's streets were known for their high accident rate, and the man who got too close to her wouldn’t fare well. Damien had worked one of the scenes, a nasty T-bone crash on Scott Boulevard, and remembered searching the society blogs for the rumors afterward, but he doubted she'd recognized him.
"And you are…?" Charlie held out his hand to the newcomer.
"Delilah Butler. She's helping me with this gala I'm throwing on Saturday at Lyle's request." Amelia fixed Charlie with a hard stare. "And we have a lot more work to do."
"I'm Detective MacKenzie, and this is Detective Lewis. This will only take a couple of minutes."
"Come this way, then. Delilah can continue looking at the room plans while we talk."
She led them behind the stairs, through a gigantic kitchen, and down a set of carpeted steps to a large game room that had been turned into a work-room. Delilah bent over a large table covered with lists, charts, and a diagram of a ballroom.
"These look fine, Amelia." She looked up and smiled at Damien. "Everything should go well assuming you won't end up in jail between now and then."
"As long as Mrs. Ames is cooperative, it shouldn't be a problem." Charlie winked at her. "Mrs. Ames, I'm curious about your husband's properties."
"What kind of properties?"
"Ones that may be used to house a large number of people."
Amelia raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow. "A large number of people? Can you be more specific?"
"As in a large number of people that he doesn't want anybody to know about. Captives, shall we say?"
She sat heavily on a navy and white striped sofa. "Officer, you've lost your mind. What are you saying? Has Lyle kidnapped someone?"
"I can't really go into it right now. But does he have any properties where, say, twenty or thirty people might be stashed?"
"Well, he does own a couple of spas and hotels that have lots of rooms. And gyms, if he just wanted to keep them all in one room. But what are you getting at? Lyle isn't interested in the sex slavery trade. All of his business is above-board and legal."
Damien coughed, but Charlie continued. "Let's talk about the hotels. Now let's say he has a very important guest. Someone who would require the height of luxury but absolute privacy. Where would be the best place for someone like that?"
Amelia chewed on a pinky nail. "One of the penthouse suites, probably. There's a nice one in the Plaza Hotel with a view of the city. He also has one behind his office on Peachtree that he'll sometimes spend the night in. And one at the Hotel Tres Cher in Buckhead."
"So that gives us three possibilities." Damien wrote them down.
"I think that's a great start." Charlie looked at Amelia, who licked her lips. "Mrs. Ames, may I have your cell phone number in case I need to ask you anything further? That way I won't have to interrupt you personally."
"Sure." She wrote it on a card and gave it to him.
"Thanks for your time. I'm sorry for interrupting you ladies."
Delilah Butler smiled at both of them, which showed her dimples. "It's no problem at all. I don't know why Amelia even needs me. She has this party well under control."
The expression on Amelia's face said otherwise, or maybe she just wanted to get rid of them. "You know the way out."
Damien followed Charlie out of the house, and once in the car, asked him, "What was the point in all of that? Couldn't we have just called her?"
"No, because I doubt she would have talked to us unless we showed up."
"What would you have done if she hadn't been cooperative?"
"Oh, I have my methods."
Audrey opened her eyes to a room with dirty mosaic floors, their colors faded and the tiles cracked. She lay on a pile of straw covered with some sort of homespun cloth. Her clothes, a tunic and long skirt, marked her somewhere between peasant and merchant class. The sun streamed through the windows, which had no curtains, and the air smelled of salt, spices, and roasting meat. Her stomach growled and compelled her to roll over and stand and find out where the aromas came from. Thankfully her injury had disappeared.
The door opened on to a courtyard, and street sounds spilled over the high walls. Cursing, swearing, haggling, and idle conversations in an unfamiliar language filled her ears.
"Audrey, there you are."
Maggie wore something that looked like a toga, but with a piece of blue silk cloth with a gold border over it. Her long hair was tied back in a complicated style, and jewels sparkled at her neck and fingers. She still wore her light blue sunglasses.
"Why do you always get to be the noblewoman?"
"Because I know what I'm doing in this realm and can manipulate my appearance."
"Can you conjure up Charlie and Damien to keep us company and see us in our costumes? What are we, anyway? Romans?"
"Something like that. I'm dressed as a noblewoman, and you're my servant, and we've landed in some Mediterranean town. I would guess that this is my house, and I've just caught you napping."
"So what do we do?"
"We play along until we can figure this out. I put in a request to talk to the Oracle, but she has a strange sense of humor. Sometimes the message isn't really a message, but more of a hint that you should have been paying more attention on the journey to find it. Sometimes the place where you end up is part of the message."
"Wait a second, the Oracle? Like, the chick who breathes the poisonous vapors and gives you a message from Apollo?"
"Yes." Maggie tugged the folds of cloth more tightly around her, although the warmth of the air felt comfortable to Audrey.
"What are we going to ask her?" She followed Maggie through the courtyard, through another room, and to the front door.
"That's a good question. We each get one query. We can plan it out while we walk."
Audrey braced herself for the hustle and bustle of the street, but when Maggie opened the door, it was deserted. Dust settled in the sunlight that peeked through the buildings and cast sharp shadows on the street below. Blankets and stalls full of random jewelry and clay pots sat empty. They walked past booths full of seashells, apples, sparrows in cages, small statues of the gods and goddesses, and packets of dried herbs with strange writing on them.
"Hey, this is Greek." Audrey squinted at them and recognized the letters from her math classes of long ago. "And they're claiming to be aphrodisiacs. I didn't know I could read G
reek."
"You can't. It's a function of the dream world we're in."
"So we're in Greece?" She looked around with a new appreciation for what she saw. "Ancient Greece?"
"It appears so."
"Where did everyone go?"
"That's what we need to find out."
They followed the winding street to the center of town, where white limestone municipal buildings stood around an open square. Philosophers and politicians debated each other with shrewd eyes and false smiles, and jugglers and performers entertained small knots of people.
"Excuse me," Maggie said to a young juggler. "Can you tell me what's going on here today?"
"Oh, it's very exciting, Lady. Our purpose is coming back to us."
"What do you mean, your purpose?"
"The Man from the East took it away, but the Man from the West said it's coming back."
"Can we talk to either of these men?" asked Audrey.
The boy giggled. "The Man from the East is dead, although his followers claim he's not. The Man from the West comes and goes. He promised big news for us today."
"Really? And is the Oracle open?"
"I don't know, Lady." The boy ran off before they could question him further.
"So what did that tell us?" asked Audrey. The boisterous crowd threatened to swallow her, and the sun beat down on her head.
Maggie pursed her lips. "There's something big going on here today and there's going to be a V.I.P. visit."
They walked farther and found themselves in the middle of a dense crowd that pressed toward the marble steps of one of the buildings, the one that stood at the highest point on the slope. The steps led to a deep portico with fluted columns. The dress of the people around Audrey surprised her, and she recognized modern attire like jeans and T-shirts in addition to the period tunics and toga-type garments. Some of them even had ear-buds with white wires that snaked out of their ears.
"We're not the only visitors," she told Maggie.
"You can see them, too?"
Tangled Dreams Page 18