"Zane took me. He says I need to eat better."
"He's right."
"He says I need to sleep better too, but that's not happening." I took another bite and added a handful of ranch-flavored Doritos to my plate. They weren't super healthy, but I didn't care. Ranch Doritos for the win. "Tell me everything."
She did. She told me about the pageant, the songs, the dinner, and how after everyone went home, a few of the teenagers gathered in the parking lot and turned on their cars to dance together and laugh.
"She was so much fun; I had an amazing time," Reikah said, pushing her now empty plate away from her. I stood up and gave both plates a rinse off, and started to do the other dishes while I was there.
"I'm glad."
"She kissed me goodnight."
"Oh?" I said, feigning ignorance. "How did you feel about that?"
She shrugged, but there was a blush on her cheeks. "I don't know. Complicated."
I nodded. "That's okay. You don't need to have it all figured out right now. Jenny's awesome. She'll wait for you."
"How did your date with Zane go?"
I shrugged. "Well, I promised him that he was the one I'd fulfill the prophecy with, but when Wei showed up after I woke up from a bad dream, I had a martial-arts-infused make-out session with him, so I'm going to file it all under the 'it's complicated' subheading and hope for the best."
"It sounds as if you have things to figure out too."
"Truth." A thought hit me, and I perked up. "Hey, what do you know about Somniamancy?"
"Dream magic?" She frowned. "That's Markus' brand of magic."
And just like that, a puzzle piece fell into place. My mind began to race. "Markus? You mean Creepy Dude? My mom's boyfriend slash, the leader of the Order slash, my sister's father? That Markus? He does dream magic?"
"Yes."
I frowned. "Wait, I thought he was dead. I was almost sure of it. When we left the compound...he was...well, he was really hurt."
I was having trouble remembering all the ins and outs; memory was weird that way. We had all gotten into this great big fight, and I remember Wei stabbing him in the side with a blade. I mean, as far as killing blows go, getting blooded by the sword of a three-hundred-and-forty-four-year-old vampire was pretty permanent, right?
I'd read enough comics to know better.
"Dangit, he's not dead, is he?"
She shook her head. "It's not likely. Not only is Markus very gifted with magic, but there are several healers in the Order. They would not have let him die."
"Yeah, cults are fanatical that way."
I sighed and put my chin on the table. "I was reading my grandmother's grimoire today. I think he's been attacking me with my dreams. They've been weird, and my sleep is all messed up."
Reikah shook her head. "That's not easy to do. He would need a connection with you."
"How could he make a connection?"
She thought that over. "He would have to be touching you for one. He could make a poppet of you, but as a witch, you are not as prone to that as a normal human. Or you'd have to be exposed to his connective sigils. Those could do it."
It all hit me like a brick. "Connective sigils!"
She blinked at me. "What?"
"I thought...oh god...I'm so stupid..." I pulled my phone out of my pocket, a little surprised that it wasn't broken or anything, and scrolled through my old messages. Then, I paused. "Can you look at the sigils and not be harmed?"
"If they are sigils meant for you, they will do nothing to me."
I showed her, and all I needed to see was her face paling. "Oh, Lorena...these are very powerful. How...when..."
"I've been getting them for a while. But that doesn't make sense. I got the first weird dream before the first message was sent."
She shook her head. "He could have been dream walking the first time, looking to get information about you. Scare you. After that..." she shrugged. "We need to do something."
"What do we need to do?"
She thought about it. "There are few ways to keep a Somniamancer out of your dreams. You'll need sigils and herbs..."
"Yeah, I read about those..." I brought out my grandmother's grimoire and showed her the page that I had marked. "Here."
She nodded. "Those are good starts, but we will need more. I'll need time, but I can add to these, personalize them, and make them more powerful. I'm quite good with sigils."
I thought back to the black paper lesson. Yeah, she was better with them than I was. "Okay, so when do we start?"
"Tonight. I need time to rest and prepare. I'm sorry it can't be sooner, but, Lorena, you cannot fall asleep. If this has been going on for as long as you say, he is stealing parts of your essence every time you rest. There may come a time when you do not wake up." She sounded legitimately scared.
"It's fine. I've got coffee and Netflix. I can stay up for days.
She frowned. "Perhaps I should call Jenny."
I shook my head. "Please don't. She's got to work, and she just had an amazing date. Please don't scare her with this. It won’t help anything, not really.
I could tell that Reikah wanted to argue, but ultimately, she nodded. "If you insist. But please, stay awake, whatever you have to do.
"I'll enlist Maahes’s help."
She frowned. "Ahh, yes, cats. They know everything about staying awake"
She had me there, but what could I do? I sent her off to bed for rest and settled down with my laptop and the largest cup of coffee I could manage. It was a great plan, I thought; it was too bad that everything was about to go crazy.
CHAPTER TEN
Staying awake all day was not what I would call an easy task, especially considering all the sleep I hadn't been having. However, I was surprised by what I could manage when the option of sleep was removed from my day.
My Netflix binge did not go as anticipated. Who would have known that sitting on the couch with a cat by my side while watching the new Voltron wasn't exactly an equation for wakefulness? When I nearly nodded off for the second time, I decided to get up and do something that had been nagging at me for weeks.
I was home. This place, small and simple as it was, was mine now, and I needed to really make that happen. I liked seeing my grandmother's knickknacks everywhere, and her books, and all of that...but they weren't mine.
So I started cleaning. I started with the shelves first. There were plenty of novels there, cute books, but not really my style. I put them in a box and set them to the side, replacing them with my own comic books, fantasy and science fiction novels, and even my very modest collection of Manga, all from team Clamp. They took up one shelf, but already I felt a little better.
I turned my attention to the big trunk that was also the living room table with a patchwork doily over the top. Inside was a huge collection of family photos, which I took a little too much time to look through.
I decided to leave those mostly alone. They were, after all, links to my own past. I was resituating everything when a letter fell out of one of the albums. I was just going to tuck it back in when I saw my name written on the front of the letter in my grandmother's handwriting.
The paper was soft beneath my fingers, as if it had been handled many times before. My fingers shook, and I had to put it down out of fear of ripping the aged paper when I unfolded it. My grandmother had written to me. The shock of it left me feeling a little lightheaded, though that might have been the four cups of extra strength coffee and the lack of sleep. What could she have had to say? Well, there was only one way to find out.
With a deep breath, I sat down on the floor, tucking my back against the couch, and ran my hands down my thighs to stop the shaking. Okay, stopping wasn't going to happen considering the coffee, but easing the shaking was.
I flexed my fingers and then picked up the letter. Yup, that was definitely my grandmother's handwriting. Between her journals and her grimoire, I knew the script well. And that was definitely my name scrawled carefully over th
e long flat plane. I cleared my throat and fixed my hair as if I was somehow going to make some kind of impression on a woman who had been dead for a while now.
"Just open the thing," I grumped at myself.
Carefully, I unfolded it. I read the contents, and then I read them again. It wasn't until the third time that I fully grasped everything that had been said.
My Dearest Lorena,
I am so sorry that I will never meet you. By the time you find this letter, you will know enough about me to understand how I know that you and I will never share the memories that a grandmother ought to share with her granddaughter. I hope you know that I regret not having a place in your life while I am alive, more than anything else.
There is a part of me that hates having told your father about the prophecy. Maybe then I could have helped you grow into the woman who took part in bringing magic into the world. That was my own hubris that couldn't believe that my own child might react how he did. Then again, it is my son we are talking about. My son, for all he was a smart boy, could be foolish when it came to girls. When he brought that wizard girl home, I thought he had just about lost his mind, but I remember how my mother reacted when I told her that Jake was going to be my husband. I had promised that I wasn't going to do the same.
I'm rambling. I'm sorry. I can't help myself. There is so much to tell you and I honestly do not know how much time left there is. Isn't that strange? A Seer who doesn't know when she will die. Well, I am sure it won’t be long now.
Let me start at the beginning.
My son brought home your mother, and he told me that she was pregnant. They were young, no older than you are now, and still fumbling around in the world. Even so, I was shocked. Your father, out of foolishness or rebellion, had taken up with a wizard girl. I do not like to think of myself as a bigot, but their way of looking at magic has always left a sour taste in my mouth. Even so, I secretly hoped that she would reawaken his love of magic, a thing he had given up shortly before he grew into a man.
They asked for help. They asked for a place to stay. I couldn't deny them. For all the girl was a little odd, he was my child and she was going to be giving birth to my grandchild. I wasn't going to turn them away now. I took them into my home. I had hoped that your mother would grow on me. I am ashamed to say she didn't.
Oh, she was a girl, the kind of girl that no matter how old she got, she'd never be a woman. One moment she was batting her eyes at my son, and the next she was snapping at me and then weeping about it all. For a while, I told myself that it was the hormones that come with being pregnant, but after a while, I knew better. The girl was a manipulative little hen, and I wanted little to do with her.
When she declared that she was pregnant with twins, my son was overjoyed. I was not. After all, I had already seen that my son would only have one child. How could there be two? Well, I figured that out well enough as well. There were two children in her belly alright, but only one of them belonged to my boy. When I talked to her about it, she threw a fit, a grand one if I do say so myself, and told me that my witchcraft wasn't perfect. That it was a lesser form of magical casting.
Oh, it took everything in me not to slap that little sneer off of her face. But I managed. My son, for reasons I could not understand, loved her, and at least one of those babies was my grandchild. She would have to do a great deal more to make me forget myself enough to lash out.
That moment, however, did come.
It was just before you were born. A week or two at best. I saw the prophecy. Oh, Lorena, my dear granddaughter. I saw what would happen. I saw the prophecy that was laid before you. It shook me. I don't know if I was scared for you or excited for what might happen. Looking back now, I think it was both.
I told your father. I told him everything that I had seen. I don't know what I expected of him. A part of me still hoped that he would remember who and what he was. That he was a witch, he was a Quinn. What a fool I was to see that he was angry at me. He called me names. Told me that his daughter was going to be normal. She was going to go to school. She was going to have friends. No one was going to make fun of her or be afraid of her.
Then, he asked about his other child, and I was so angry with him that I blurted out that he had no other child. That his little wizard had played him false. That she had been going around with someone else. He looked shattered. I hated myself a little for taking the light out of his eyes.
Oh, Lorena, it was then I knew.
I asked him to turn around. It took a good deal of convincing, but I managed. There, on his back, I found it. It was a wizardry. A circle of magic inscribed on his back. A love spell. Of all the terrible things. A love spell!
I do not know how much you have read into your studies, but love spells, and many spells of compulsion, are against the rules. It is one thing to bless a woman to have children, but it is another thing entirely to force a man to participate.
I think, somehow, your mother must have known something. How she knew that my son's child would be special I don't know, but I am convinced she did. After all, when I helped remove the symbol, we both realized that she didn't care two wits for him. It became even clearer when he confronted her. How it all would have turned out I don't know because the little twit chose just that moment to give birth.
What a night that was, Lorena. What a night!
Before it was all over, my son was already wrapping you up and packing. He said he needed to get as far away from this mountain and the women on it as he could. I begged him to stay, pleaded with him. Told him that his daughter, that you, were going to be special. He said that you were special, just not in the way that I saw. He let me take one picture with you, one memento for me to keep.
While we were fighting over you, that little wizard absconded with her other child. Where they went I don't know. I don't care to know. I only hope that little girl she gave birth to is alright.
So there you have it. How everything happened. I hope it answers some of your questions because now I have to tell you more.
I have Seen so much about you, Lorena. I have watched you grow up from the distant eye of a Seer. Every night, I go to sleep and I hope that I will See a little more about you. I know that you are creative and imaginative and a little stubborn. I know that you have grown up beautifully, if a little lonely. I know too that, when you get here, you will step into a world that you will fall in love with, and I am so happy for that.
What I also know, Lorena, is that you cannot trust everyone in your life. I wish I could tell you more, but my visions, especially as I grow older, do not come in as clear as they once did.
Someone, my dear, someone in your life is manipulating you, and I cannot tell you who. I am so sorry that I cannot offer you more than that. I have tried every tea and mixture and tonic I can think of to help clear up this vision. All I know is that you must be careful when you walk in dreams. I hope that helps you.
Be safe, my dear. Know that I love you and that I am here in every way I can be.
Blessings,
Loretta Quinn
P.S. Take care of Maahes. He looks forward to meeting you.
I put the letter down. There were tears on my cheeks. Weirdly enough, the shaking hadn't stopped. Funny how that kind of stuff happens when you've pretty much been told that at least one of the people that you trusted couldn't be trusted.
Maybe she was wrong. That was the first thing I told myself. Maybe my grandmother had been wrong about everything. Maybe I wasn't a prophecy girl. I was just plain ol' Lorena Quinn. I was not special. I was just here. I was just going to live my life, and nothing magical was happening, and I could trust everyone around me.
Yeah. Sure. And pigs with wings were going to fly out of my nose, and Bruce Wayne was going to make me the next Robin. Uh-huh.
I couldn't stop myself from making up a mental list of the people that I did trust. It wasn't a long list. There was Alan, the pretty vampire. I hadn't heard all that much from him since I moved out of the ma
nsion. The same could be said for Dmitri. I trusted them. Okay, I trusted Alan more. Dmitri scared me a little. Then there was Wei. I wholeheartedly trusted Wei. Should I? He was so complicated. Maybe I couldn't.
I shook my head, but the thoughts I didn't want kept coming.
Jenny, Zane, Reikah. I trusted them too. Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I couldn't How was I supposed to know?
I tossed down the letter and began to pace the length of the living room. Who did she mean? Why did her seeing ability have to get all wonky later in life? Ugh! Okay, no, that wasn't fair. She didn't have any control over that, and I certainly wasn't going to spend the next who knew how long, blaming a dead woman for not giving perfect advice.
What I was going to do was prepare myself. I really wished I could do one of those nifty neato montages that they did in action flicks where I just got better over the next twenty minutes while “Eye of the Tiger” played in the background.
House Of Vampires 2 (The Lorena Quinn Trilogy) Page 13