by P. G. Forte
There were other rumors, as well, whispers of dark doings, unsavory deeds. And, even if it was coming on spring in a couple of days, it seemed a very black time of year. Except for yesterday.
Siobhan smiled again, as she remembered their wedding, and all the bright certainty in Ryan’s eyes. “I thought you weren’t going to worry about the future anymore?” she teased. “Isn’t that what you said yesterday?”
Ryan smiled, acknowledging the hit. “I know. It’s just that this morning, for some reason–”
Siobhan nodded in understanding; not even needing him to finish the sentence. She felt it, too: the vague, nagging worry that they might never make it back, never see home again. “It always feels like that before a trip,” she said, hopefully. “But, this is our honeymoon.” Surely nothing could happen to interfere with that?
Ryan’s smile widened. “That it is. And, we better get moving, too, or we’re going to miss our flight.
She glanced around the room. They’d spent the night in her old apartment in the nature center she ran; so they could get a jump start on the morning. Luckily, her niece Jasmine was on spring break, and had agreed to keep an eye on the center for her while she was gone – aided by Seth Cavanaugh, who’d been working part time for her for the past couple of months.
A sudden sense of panic hit her, as it occurred to her to wonder what she’d been thinking. One on one, and under supervision, Seth and Jasmine were great; hard working, reliable, enthusiastic. But, neither of them were strangers to trouble, after all, and, left to their own devices—or worse yet, working together as a team? “Oh, my God,” she murmured, as she thought of the dozens of disasters that might befall the two young people. She might very well come back and find that, between them, they’d leveled the center.
“Siobhan? Everything all right?”
“Just tell me everything’s going to be okay,” she begged him. “Tell me I’m still gonna have a center when we come home.”
Ryan laughed; his certainty apparently restored. “Well, of course you will.”
Not that he has any reason to feel that way, Siobhan thought, still panicking. It’s not like he knows anything more than I do.
“It’s only a few weeks,” Ryan reassured her, leaning in to kiss her again. “What could possibly go wrong?”
* * *
Marsha glanced at the clock over the stove, surprised to see how late it had become. Alarmed, she turned to her daughter who was still dawdling over breakfast. “Jasmine, shouldn’t you be leaving now? You don’t want to make your aunt late for her flight, you know.”
“I know. I’m going,” Jasmine answered, making no attempt to get up from the table.
Marsha raised her eyebrows. “Jazz–”
Jasmine shrugged impatiently. “I have to finish feeding the cat, don’t I?”
Marsha sighed. Just because she could no longer feel anyone’s emotions, that didn’t stop her from making educated guesses as to what the people around her might be thinking or feeling. And, when it came to her sister Siobhan, a lot of guessing wasn’t even necessary.
“Don’t worry about the cat,” Marsha ordered. “I’ll take care of him.”
The concept of not sweating the small stuff was lost on Siobhan. The woman positively lived for stress and she had micro-managing down to an art.
Jasmine looked up, her expression doubtful. “Are you sure, Mom? You know he doesn’t like you.”
“Yes, I’m sure.” Marsha only hoped her daughter would be out the door before the phone rang – as it was sure to do, and any minute now – so that she could tell Siobhan that Jasmine was on her way without lying. “Just go. Please.”
“All right.” Jasmine sighed as she slid the cat off her lap. Moondance growled protestingly, and then, clearly identifying Marsha as the ultimate source of his displacement, he stared at her for a long, disgruntled moment, before he went back to lapping tea from the saucer Jasmine had left on the table for him.
“Maybe you’d like some more toast with that?” Marsha asked, not quite joking, as she sat down in the chair opposite the cat and watched while he finished his breakfast.
They were a two cat family these days, with both Moondance and his sister, Moonshadow in residence. But, whereas ‘Shadow, a laid back and reassuringly normal feline, had always belonged to Marsha, Moondance had originally been her friend Celeste’s cat.
After Celeste’s death, Moondance went missing for over a year. No one knew where he’d been all that time, but he’d certainly developed some strange new habits and bizarre culinary proclivities while he was gone.
When he first came to live with them, Moondance had shown a clear preference for Jasmine’s company, but he’d been happily affectionate toward the rest of the family – Marsha included – until four months ago. Until the night Marsha lost her abilities to sense and feel and see things as they really were.
The cat had been among the first to notice the change in her. He’d taken to glaring at her. He had taken to voicing his displeasure with her at length and at high volume. He’d taken to stalking from the room if she approached him; to spitting and biting if she attempted to pick him up or pet him. All very much as Celeste might have done, Marsha couldn’t help but think.
Tears pricked her eyes as she thought of her friend. If Celeste had lived to see what had happened – what Marsha had been reduced to – she too would have glared and scolded and turned her back in disgust. Especially once she realized what the cause of the trouble had been: Marsha’s arrogant assumption that she could forgo the use of any precautionary measures. That she could act without fear of consequence. That she could ignore everything Celeste had tried to teach her over the years, dismiss all the many warnings she’d received.
I’d be fed up with me, too, Marsha thought. “Oh, Celeste,” she murmured sadly. “Where are you when I need you?”
A low keening growl recalled her to the present. She looked up to find the cat staring at her intently. As their eyes locked, Marsha felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. Was it the mention of her friend’s name that had gotten the cat’s attention?
“Celeste?” She repeated the name breathlessly, curious for the cat’s response.
Moondance’s ears swiveled forward, as if he, too, were curious. His tail twitched. His muscles tensed. He lowered his head and continued to peer at her.
For a moment, neither of them moved. Neither of them breathed. And then the moment was shattered by the ringing of the phone. Marsha jumped. The cat flew off the chair and raced for the door. The rubber cat-flap slapped back into place behind him as Marsha reached for the phone.
“Yes, Siobhan,” she told her sister. “She’s on her way.”
* * *
The morning fog had not yet burned away when Sinead woke up. She awoke as she did every day now; a steady, slow drifting into consciousness, moving from fog bank to fog bank, from one gray, amorphous landscape to the next. As though pearly paleness tinged with gold was all the world could consist of, all her mind could imagine.
The room that met her gaze when she opened her eyes was pale as well, white and gold, with touches of blue, furnished in reproduction Louis Quinze. Very expensive reproductions, but nonetheless...
She felt the familiar panicked racing of her heart and sighed. Not again? The room was as large as it was opulent. And after all her years at sea – myriad mornings waking up in the small, ugly confines of one cramped crew cabin or another, rooms barely larger than this bed she found herself in now – it made no sense that she would feel claustrophobic here. But, there it was.
She took deep breaths and tried to think of something else. This was a time when dreaming would have come in handy. She almost missed the nightmares that had plagued her the previous fall.
It was the same dream she’d had since High School, a vivid reprise of that frightful night in the woods. And, all the horror and fear she’d felt came back in the reliving; only magnified since, in her dreams, Nick was never there to save her.
She only seemed to have the dreams here in Oberon, which had always been a compelling reason to escape back to sea. And during the past few years, they had become increasingly rare. Until last October, when they were suddenly a nightly occurrence.
She’d suffered through them for weeks. Waking each morning with her heart pounding in fear, her stomach roiling. And then, as quickly as they’d started, the dreams had stopped. And, the sense of being trapped here, had begun.
She’d worried about their meaning. Were they a harbinger of danger yet to come? Or, merely a strange, and harmless, side effect of her pregnancy?
They could have nothing to do with her daughter, she was sure of that. Her doctor insisted the baby was healthy, and Sinead felt certain this was true. Deep down inside, she must know it for truth, she reasoned; because otherwise this lack of contact would have had her worried to distraction. Still, she wished she could connect with Victoria again, as she had last autumn...
She’d been unconscious then, rather than asleep, drifting through a strange and lovely landscape such as had never existed on this earth when she realized she wasn’t alone. A little girl with pale green eyes and red gold curls stood at her side, staring into the distance. As though she were listening to something Sinead couldn’t hear.
“Do I know you?” Sinead had asked.
“I think so,” the girl replied, turning to face her. At the sound of the child’s voice, at the sight of her smile, Sinead knew her at once. This was her daughter – hers and Adam’s, the very same one Sinead could feel growing within her – and she had only one request.
“Name me?” the girl asked plaintively. “I think I’d like that. I think I’d like to be... someone.”
“I will,” Sinead promised. “Of course I will.” And, she had.
She’d named her daughter Victoria, as a token of her faith; a symbol of her belief that the child would survive. As a promise that they would both overcome the mysterious illness that had nearly ended their lives, and emerge victorious.
She knew Victoria was still alive and healthy, but all the same... she would have liked to see her, to dream her, once again. She would have liked to make sure her daughter knew she had a name now, that she knew Sinead’s promise to her had been kept.
Dreaming for answers, for people, for glimpses of the future, was a skill Gregg had helped her develop years ago; an eerily effective, frighteningly accurate skill, one she had never acknowledged to anyone. One she hardly ever used, and didn’t even like to think about. One that had always worked before. But the world of dreams was locked to her now. Where she went now each night while she slept was a mystery she could not solve. And, no matter how hard she tried to dream her daughter, she couldn’t do it.
The bedroom door opened and Adam came in with her breakfast. Sinead smiled. Hot chocolate and a fresh brioche might not be the breakfast her obstetrician would have recommended, but it was comfort food. And, this morning, more than ever, Sinead needed comfort.
“Thank you,” she murmured as she took the cup from his hand. He sat on the bed, and watched her as she ate. His expression was a little too concerned, and she just knew he was about to ask how she was feeling, even though she’d told him at least a dozen times how tired she was of being asked. Still, this morning she would welcome the query; it would give her the perfect opening she needed for a question of her own.
Last night’s suspicion – that Adam had, for some reason, and at some point in the last few months, resorted to magic to con her into complacency, had given birth to a new fear this morning. The fear that, in some way, the loss of her ability to dream was also tied to Adam—and to magic of one sort or another.
How ironic that would be, since it was Gregg who had started her dreaming, if it turned out that it was Adam who had caused her to stop. Ironic and chilling. Please, no...
She steeled herself for his question, ready to shrug with seeming nonchalance as she complained about her lack of dreams. Ready to watch his face when she asked him what he thought could be causing it; ready to gauge his reaction, to learn the truth.
Instead, “I want to apologize for last night,” Adam said, very quietly, catching her off guard.
“For what?” she blurted in surprise.
He frowned. “For staying up here all night. For skipping out early, while your sister’s party was still going on.” He glanced away from her and added. “I was in a bad mood, but that’s no excuse for rudeness.”
Sinead sighed. “Well, that was probably my fault, wasn’t it? Your bad mood, I mean.” She really didn’t want him to keep asking her to marry him, but that didn’t mean she didn’t appreciate the gestures, or the emotions that kept prompting them. And she really did need to find a way to let him down more gently. It was only fair.
He looked at her in surprise. “Your fault? Of course it wasn’t. That was Nick’s doing.”
“Nick?”
Adam nodded. “He’s impossible. And he just seems to get more crass and more annoying each time I’m around him. It’s unbearable. There’s got to be some way we can avoid seeing him altogether.”
“Well, considering he’s married to your stepsister,” Sinead felt obliged to point out, “I’m thinking there isn’t. Anyway, what do you mean, we? I don’t have a problem with Nick, he’s always been a good friend to me.”
“Oh, really? That’s hard to believe.”
“Not if you knew him as well as I do,” Sinead replied, coming to Nick’s defense; it was the least she could do, considering all she owed him. “Nick has always been real loyal to the people he cares about. If you made even the slightest attempt to get along with him, I bet you’d see that.”
Adam snorted. “That’ll be the day. And I can’t believe you’re making excuses for his behavior now.”
“I’m not,” Sinead replied automatically. “It’s just– Look, Adam, you’re not exactly innocent, either, you know. As far as I can see, you’re both to blame for keeping this stupid feud alive.”
“Hmph. If you think he’s so wonderful, I’m surprised you don’t try and hook up with him,” Adam grumbled, folding his arms and sounding all of six years old. Sinead had to grit her teeth to keep from screaming at him.
“Well, of course I wouldn’t do anything like that,” she scoffed. “I don’t cheat.” Neither did Nick, for that matter. As far as Sinead knew, Nick hadn’t even cheated on his first wife, although Lauren had certainly given him plenty of reason to – if only to even the score a little. “Why would you even say something like that? You know how I feel about you.” Since when was Adam jealous of her friendship with Nick? And why now, for heaven’s sake? At almost eight months pregnant, the whole idea that she should contemplate beginning an affair was positively ludicrous.
Adam shrugged. “Well, in all those years of friendship, there must have been a time or two when one of you at least thought about taking it further.”
Sinead felt herself coloring.
“Oh, I see. Of course.” Adam nodded thoughtfully. “Well, I guess this must be one of those times when being right isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
Sinead sighed. Why was he doing this? Was this some sort of payback for her refusal to marry him? “Cut it out, Adam. It was a long time ago and we were both unattached. There’s nothing between us now. You know that.” Adam had always claimed to be able to read her mind. And while Sinead still refused to accept that possibility, she had thought he knew her a little better than this. She tried to cross her arms, but her newly inflated breasts and super-sized stomach made that impossible. “You might as well accuse me of harboring some kind of secret longing for Bob, while you’re at it,” she continued waspishly, clenching her fists in the sheets for lack of a better gesture. “Or, or Ryan. Or Seth. Or who knows who else? Any male I’ve ever spent any significant amount of time with, I suppose. Half the population of Oberon.”
Adam’s eyebrows rose again. “That many, huh?”
She narrowed her eyes, all ready to blast him
, when his mouth softened into a small smile.
“I’m joking,” he murmured, ruefully. “You know that, right?”
Joking? I don’t think so. She shook her head. “Well, you ought to work on your material, then, Adam. Because your sense of humor still sucks.”
“I know,” he said, as he got up from the bed. “So you’ve said. Sorry about that.” He picked up her dishes from the nightstand and then glanced at her again. “Are you coming downstairs soon?”
She nodded, and watched as he walked from the room. Joking or not, he was certainly upset about something this morning. And whatever it was, it had very effectively short circuited her plans. The distance between them had left her feeling as if she was walking on very thin ice. Although she was no closer to learning whether her suspicions were correct, there was no way she could ask him now.
* * *
It was cool inside the old carriage house Scout had turned into an artist’s studio; cool and quiet, and smelling faintly of the big bay laurel trees that shaded the building. Scout sat at her drafting table and stared at the wall. She’d been staring at the wall for over an hour now and, in all that time, her mind had refused to come up with one creative thought.
It really shouldn’t surprise her. After all, she hadn’t had a single idea in months; not since Halloween night, and the trance journey from hell. She doodled aimlessly on the sketch pad in front of her while she waited for inspiration to strike, but in her heart of hearts she knew it wouldn’t. How could anything get in, when she’d closed her mind and boarded up the gate?
And that, she thought, as she turned her head to gaze out the window, was precisely the problem.
Always before, if she ever found herself feeling blocked, she would just relax and let the ideas flow. She’d open her mind and let herself go, let her hands and eyes take over, turning ideas into paintings, into sculptures, into visual representations of abstract concepts; turning her thoughts and emotions into something the world could see and understand.