“I’m sorry,” Flora answered. “Perhaps it’s for the best though, given the nature of your life now.”
The nature of my life? I suppose that’s one way to put it.
“That’s what I’m counting on,” I muttered. “So, what’s with the monkey suit?” I gestured to her fatigues.
“Dr. Static has requested an early morning training session,” she answered.
“Ugh. For which class,” I sighed.
Please don’t say Tactical Arrangement. Please don’t say Tactical Arrangement.
“Tactical arrangement,” she said.
“Damn,” I murmured and throw myself flat against the bed. My joints ached. My head spun. I had slept for over half a day. Why was I still so tired? “Can’t you just tell him I’m sick?”
“Are you sick?” She asked with arched red brows.
“Would it make it easier for you to tell him I was if I said yes?”
“Hmm,” she pondered this. “Perhaps, at one point. But I feel like I’m getting really good at lying now. I suppose I should thank you for that.”
“I guess you’re welcome,” I shrugged. “Just tell him I have some stuff to think about.”
“Of course,” Flora said. Then, pointing to a covered plate sitting on the counter by the door, she said, “Owen brought you that last night. It’s roast beef.”
“Thanks,” I said, making my way to the plate as Flora closed the door behind her. Opening the covered plate, I saw not only a dish of cold (and totally unappealing) roast beef accompanied by mashed potatoes, green beans, and one of those small hard biscuits that the Breakers seemed to eat with every meal; but there was also a note sitting on top.
Unfolding it, I saw that it was protected by anchors, the same sort of anchors that kept the truth about Owen’s tattoo a secret for so long. Whatever was in this note, Owen wanted to keep it safe from prying eyes; which probably meant that it was mushy. I stared at the creased parchment until the anchors, built for my eyes alone, melted away. I smiled as the letters took shape before me.
My Love,
I know the last few days have been hard on you, and I’m sure that this plate of subpar food probably won’t help in making things better. But know that it was delivered with love and concern. If there was a way that I could make things better for us, I would. If I could take everything that had ever happened to you or would ever happen to you, and throw it into a garbage can- and then set that garbage can on fire- and then dump the smoldering remains of that garbage can out of the refuge slot of a space shuttle- Well, you get it.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’d much rather be in some cottage in Vermont with you, bottling maple syrup or something. But, until the day when I can actually make that a reality, I’ll treasure every moment of this crappy existence and know that I’m the luckiest guy on the face of the earth; because, even though I’m constantly afraid, and worried, and sometimes even mad, I get to be all those things with you beside me.
No rush, but whenever you feel like coming out, I’ll be waiting.
Yours forever and ever,
Owen
Warmth; renewing and revitalizing rushed through me. It brightened all of me. I was stupid for ever feeling alone; for ever feeling like being alone was even a possibility for me. I’d always have Owen. It said so right there; ‘forever and ever’. Prophecies be damned; stupid Mason councils be damned; perfect former perfects be damned. I could do this.
I was about to fold the paper into a ball and take a match to it, the way I always did whenever Owen sent me these kinds of letters. Even with anchors in place, it was better to be safe than sorry. But I wanted to look at it for just a minute longer. I wanted his words to really dig into me. I needed that today. Just as my hands started to ball though, crumpling the paper, the letters started to glow and shuffle. I had seen this before, when Wendy contacted me the first time, when she guided me to her Seer’s tower. But Wendy was gone, and who else have reason to hijack Owen’s letter to me. I squinted as the letters went red, black, and red again. They danced around, taunting me with the promise of words before they reshuffled, settling back into gibberish. It was a full five minutes, long enough that I thought I was going to pass out or have a stroke, before the letters finally formed a sentence.
Mother’s Man
My face went white. A visage of my dream; Wendy, Mrs. Goolsby, and the man with the gray eyes played out in front of me.
My God, it all means something.
And just like that, the Owen induced warmth washed away.
I found myself walking around the grounds of Weathersby, trying to pretend that I didn’t know exactly where I was going, and replaying my dream over and over again. Something about some dude named Sebastian; how he was dangerous, how he wasn’t who he said he was. Something about some doctor searching for something, and, of course, Mother’s man. It won’t end until I find him; that was what Wendy said. But who the hell was he; some old dude with grey eyes who I had never seen before? And whose mother was she talking about; her own, mine? And if she was talking about mine, which mother did she mean? A chill ran down my back as I realized that the man with the grey eyes might actually be my father; my biological father. Calling him Mother’s man would certainly be a way of complicating the simple; which had always been a Wendy trademark.
I shook my head. Wendy was dead. Seer or not, there was no way she was communicating with me now. Was there? I was a hundred yards from Wendy’s headstone when I finally admitted to myself that I needed to go there. I wasn’t sure what I was going to find, other than a quiet place to sit. But the last time I received a letter like that, none of it got better until I found Wendy, until I did what she asked of me. Maybe if I sat there, if I tried to listen, the answers might come to me.
As I rounded the corner, nearing the grotto where Wendy’s tomb was found, I saw that I wasn’t the only one who yearned for a little clarity. Dahlia sat cross-legged in front of her daughter’s tombstone. I cringed when I saw what she was wearing; a bright white shirt with matching pants and hat. White was the color or mourning, the color of absence; for the Breakers at least. Since Wendy’s death, Dahlia had seesawed in and out of the color. As was custom, she wore nothing but white for weeks after the funeral. The whole compound did. It was only fitting for a seer. Slowly though, bits of color dripped back into her wardrobe; until she was back to normal. Every now and then though, there were times when she’d dipped back into the deep end of her sorrow. Those were the white days, and apparently, this was one of them.
I froze when I saw her.
“Don’t bother, I sensed you coming an acre away,” she croaked, still looking at the headstone in front of her. It was so strange, just how precisely the image on the stone looked like Wendy’s face. It had the same mysterious eyes, the same low hanging bangs, the same pursed lips. It was like looking into a granite colored portal to the past.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize anybody was here,” I stammered.
“Ha,” she chuckled harshly. “Really? Of all things, that is what you’re sorry about.” She turned to me. Her eyes her cold, but rimmed with red.
I set my chin and stared to back away. “Look, I just wanted to pay my respects. I’ll come back another time.” I turned.
“Why?” Dahlia’s voice sounded over my shoulder. I turned to find her standing up. She looked smaller, much less assuming than her usual. “That’s the piece of all of this that I can’t make fit. She was best I had ever seen; the best anyone had ever seen. She saw everything, so I know she saw how this would end for her. Why did she allow herself to be taken from us?”
Fresh tears had pooled in her eyes and I realized I was being faced with one of those rare times when Dahlia was more a mother than her people’s matriarch. She was in pain, and she just wanted answers.
“She said it was her choice,” I said, walking back toward her. That awful day came back to me in flashes of blood, tears, and daylight. “She said she was tired of living her entire lif
e on the outside and that, if she had to die, that it was worth it.” She also told Casper that she loved him and that it wasn’t over for them, but those bits of information wouldn’t do anything to put balm on Dahlia’s wound, so I left them out. “If it makes it any easier, she was at peace. Wendy was happy.”
Dahlia’s face got hard. Her eyes dried and her body stiffened. “That’s quite a selfish way to look at life, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think-“
“And I’ll thank you not to call her Wendy. You’ve done enough by besmirching her tombstone with the moniker. I won’t have you doing the same to her memory.”
“She chose that name,” I said, suddenly defensive.
“It was not her choice to make. Just as allowing her life to be cut short was not her choice to make.” She leveled a withering gaze at me, her hand at the dahlia pin on her throat. “I don’t expect you to know what the first thing a Breaker learns is; given how incredibly lacking your upbringing was. Suffice it to say, it is of such importance that we teach it to our children in their cradles. We whisper it in their ears as they drift to sleep in our arms. We tell it to them so often and with such fervor that we mourn if it isn’t their first words.” She stepped closer. “Duty. Comes. First.”
I balked. She was still walking toward me; advancing even though there was no room left between us. Was she trying to drive me away from Wendy’s grave?
“But they were my daughter’s first words; my seer daughter, my special daughter. She understood this principle. It was in the fabric of who she was. I know because I put it there. So I had been wracking my brain trying to understand how my daughter, who was so perfect that fate saw fit to bless her with the rarest of gifts, could have forsaken her birthright and allowed her flame to be extinguished so long before its time. And the only thing I can think of, the only thing that makes any sense at all, is that it’s your fault.” She pointed, jabbing her finger into my chest. “You got into her head somehow. You’re a disease, Cresta Karr. You may not be the Bloodmoon, but you ruin everything you touch just the same.”
The backs of my eyes started to sting. Was she right? My mother was dead. My father was dead. Casper was an amnesiac who I would never see again. Owen and I were always a heartbeat away from running for our lives. And what the common denominator there? Me. No! Even if she was right, I couldn’t let her see it, not now. I would not cry in front of her. She didn’t deserve my tears.
“You know, here I was feeling sorry for you,” I said, batting her finger away from me. “But you’re not in mourning for Wendy at all, are you? You’re in mourning for yourself! You know that now, nobody’s ever going to look at you and think you’re important or special. Nobody’s ever going to say ‘There goes Dahlia, the seer’s mother’. And that’s what you miss, isn’t it? Have you ever thought that, if you’d have treated Wendy less like a tool and more like your daughter, maybe she wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get herself killed.”
I regretted the words as soon as they were in the air. They were too real, too harsh. But by then it was too late. The look in Dahlia’s eyes was like the worst hurt you ever imagine plus lemon juice. I wasn’t surprised when she reared back and slapped me.
“How dare you?!” She yelled.
I couldn’t turn back now. I needed to remember why I came; for answers. “Who’s Mother’s man?” I asked.
“What?” Dahlia scrunched her nose.
“The man with the gray eyes. Who is the man with the gray eyes?”
Her face cleared like a chalk outline on pavement after a rainstorm. “I…How did you..I have no idea what you’re talking about?”
But she did know what I was talking about and, as I turned, leaving her to grief and her daughter’s grave, I knew what I had to do about it.
Chapter 7
Something Bad
“You want us to break into Dahlia’s office? Have you lost your mind?” Owen’s electric blue eyes were wide and full of questions. He had paced grooves into the floor of my shared bedroom with Flora; who herself was sitting in the corner quietly, pulling at her hair like a nervous cat.
“It’s a definite possibility,” I conceded, watching Owen settle in front of me.
“Okay, okay,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Let me make sure I’ve got this right. You want us; the same us who have spent every waking minute of the last four months trying to fly under the radar, to risk everything and weasel our way into Dahlia’s office, just so you can find evidence that may or may not exist about a man, who also may or may not exist. And you’re basing all of this on the advice of a dead girl who came to you in a dream.”
I waited a second, just long enough to let it all settle on Owen. “That’s about the sum of it,” I nodded. “Though, if you could have seen Dahlia’s face when I asked her about, you’d definitely agree with me.” I lifted my hands, trying to explain. “It was like fear.”
“Perhaps you’ve misunderstood,” Flora said from the corner. “You’re actions seem irrational, and judging from what I’ve learned in my Advanced Human Nature classes, people fear the irrational. So, how can I put this? Maybe you freaked her out.” Flora’s gorgeous hair was in tangles around her fingers, and she pulled at her shirt so much that it was little more than a creased purple rag at this point. But at least she was visible.
“No, this was a different kind of fear; like she knew I knew something I wasn’t supposed to.”
“And let’s say she did,” Owen answered, tapping an index finger against his lip. “Let’s say that, at some point in her life, Dahlia knew a man with gray eyes. That doesn’t prove anything. A lot of people have gray eyes.”
“And the fact that Wendy, Dahlia’s own daughter, called him Mother’s man; that doesn’t raise a giant freaking red flag for you?” I asked.
His finger slid down his lips as he answered, like a slide whistle playing a sad tune. “Sweetheart, Wendy is dead.”
“I know that.” I threw my hands in front of me. “Of course I know that. It’s just, what if-what if-“
“What if it doesn’t matter?” He finished my sentence. “I promise you, Cresta, it matters. There’s never been a verified medium in all of Breaker history, not since the beginning of time. Ghosts don’t exist. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. I don’t know if there’s anything beyond this world, Cresta, but I like to think that, if there is, it’s the kind of place you don’t walk away from, not for anything.”
I didn’t want to, but I thought about Mom. Maybe Owen was right. Maybe Heaven was just beyond my line of site, and my mom and dad were there; so blissfully happy that, when I finally do show up, they won’t even have realized they missed me. Maybe Wendy was there too. That would certainly be a preferable fate to being stuck delivering dream riddles to me for the rest of her afterlife. Still, I couldn’t forget what I saw, or the fact that it wasn’t the first time I had seen something like it.
“I had dreams like this before, back in Crestview,” I said.
“The one with the sevens. I remember,” Owen tightened his stance. I had told him everything in the days that followed that horrible night in Crestview; about how the dreams had plagued me, how I had never been able to make sense of them and, how finally, they helped me free him from Allister Leeman’s control.
“Right, so you know what I mean,” I folded my arms.
“I’ll admit, something was going on there; and if you really feel strongly about this, you know I’m behind you. But what you’re talking about doing is very dangerous. If we get caught, it could spell the end of our time here at Weathersby, and who knows what life be like at some other facility; or even if we’d wind up together.”
I blanched. The thought of not being with Owen, of not being able to see him every day, was enough to send this morning’s cold roast beef back up. But I needed to be strong. Wendy said this wouldn’t end until I found Mother’s man and, dead or not, I had learned enough to know that when Wendy speaks, you’re almost always better off to listen.
“I do feel strongly,” I answered. “I believe in this.” I put my hand on Owen’s arm and let the steadying warmth of his nearness flow through me. “And I have a plan.”
“Really? I hope your plan takes into consideration the fact that the woman we’re trying to deceive can pull memories out of the walls,” Owen answered.
“That does seem a bothering bar to clear,” Flora said, pulling at her shirt. Her edges began to soften, which was the first step of disappearing.
“Have faith,” I said, and slapped Flora on the shoulder, and startling her into full visibility. Sure, Dahlia’s special Breaker ability allowed her to pick up on psionic fragments left behind in places and things. She could pick up a hat and likely tell you everything about the person who owned it; maybe even the people who made it. But I had taken that into consideration; at least, as far as you could take something like that into consideration.
“I heard some of the younglings complaining about Dahlia forcing them to go on an extra credit hike around the perimeter tonight,” I said. “That’ll be our chance. Echo’s predictable. With Dahlia out, he’ll be-“
“Having coffee by the lake,” Owen and Flora finished in tandem.
See, predictable.
“Right, which will give us the perfect opportunity to get in and out without anyone being the wiser.”
“Until they check the security tapes, or the coaster on Dahlia’s desk tells her our secret,” Owen frowned.
“I’ve got that covered,” I answered with a snap. “The cameras won’t be able to see our friend Flora here.”
“You want me to do it?!” Flora stood.
“I want you to take me inside,” I clarified. “So long as you’re invisible, and we’re holding hands or something, I should be invisible too, right?”
“Theoretically,” Flora grimaced and looked at the floor.
“Good enough for me,” I answered. “And with me on the inside, I can work my shade shaping magic, and stop Dahlia from being able to gleam what we’ve been doing.”
The Breaker's Promise (YA Urban Fantasy) (Fixed Points Book 2) Page 6