Since that wasn't going to happen, I decided to do the next best thing. I took a brief inventory of what I did know how to do.
In the past few weeks, I had learned how to tug at ley lines, talk to ghost cats, and play with the elements. I could create a wizard’s circle...usually, and I could multiply my magic when a vampire bit me.
It was not a very impressive amount of skills.
"Well done, Lorena. You were so focused on dating that you pretty much forgot that you were supposed to be practicing magic. Just had to get that job, didn't you?"
I shook my head and blew out a breath. Getting frustrated with myself wasn't going to help anything. Time to think.
Dreams. My grandmother had mentioned dreams, and someone was attacking me with dreams. That someone was probably Markus, but until I knew for sure, I wasn't going to make too many assumptions. I'd read enough plot twists to know better.
I pulled out my grandmother’s grimoire and read everything that there was to know about dreams and dream magic. When that was done, I focused my research on protecting myself and keeping my astral self, my dream self, connected to my body.
It was the best that I could do.
"Afternoon," Reikah said sleepily, coming out of the back room of my grandmother's house. "You ready?"
"Can I trust you?" I blurted, because I was Queen of smooth social interaction.
"Huh?" she asked, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. "Yes? With what?"
"Like, overall. Can I trust you? Why aren't you with the Order anymore? You still like the way they do magic?”
She gave me a look, but the sleep was slowly coming out of her eyes. "What?"
"I realized that I've never actually asked you why you wanted to leave your little hermit order. It's not because you don't agree with the way they practice magic, since you still talk the way they do. I guess I'm just confused."
Reikah narrowed her eyes. "You want to know why I helped you leave?"
"Yeah, I guess that's part of it."
She sighed and sat down on the other side of the kitchen table, still cluttered with all the notes I had tried to cram in the past few hours.
"I do believe that magic ought to be practiced with regularity. I believe that sigils, circles, and symbols are important. I think that a person should be careful when utilizing magic. Considering the lethal ability of magic, I don't think that is a bad thing to believe."
I sat back, crossing my arms over my chest. "You think witchcraft is inferior."
She sighed. "Inferior isn't the right word. If you wish to use a comparison, it is the difference between using a firecracker to remove a stump, or a tractor. Both can do the job, but a firecracker can cause a great deal of damage."
"So can a tractor."
She nodded. "Yes. But even so. Even if I believed that witchcraft was inferior to wizardry, even if I thought that you shouldn't fulfill the prophecy, I think hurting other people to make that happen is wrong."
I wanted to believe her. With a sigh, I dragged my hand down my face and told her about the letter.
"You are worried that I have been living with you, secretly still working with The Order?"
"It's stupid."
"No, it's logical. I commend you. Of all the people who could be against you, I am certainly the most obvious choice."
I don't know why her agreeing with me made me feel worse, but it did. "Okay, well, until I know better, I'm going to trust you."
"Well that's foolish."
I shrugged. "My grandmother said my dad is foolish, so I guess I take after him."
She gave me a look of complete exasperation. "If you aren't sure you can trust me, you ought to do this dream walking thing yourself."
I nodded. I probably should, but I just didn't know enough. Instead, I reached across the table and took her hand. "A few weeks ago, Connie was my friend. I would have done anything she asked of me short of committing murder. I screwed up there, and I know better now, but I'm not going to let that experience and a letter from a dead woman make me go crazy with who I can and can't trust."
I thought I saw a smile, but she quickly hid it. "Still foolish."
I shrugged. It was true. "Okay, so tell me how this is going to work."
She went over it; then, she went over it again. She was going over it a third time, with my help, when Alan crashed through the door.
"Where is Wei?"
I blinked. I had never seen Alan look so scared. In fact, I had never seen Alan look anything but mildly amused at everything.
"What do you mean?" I demanded. My heart had gone from zero to a hundred and eighty in less than two seconds. "What happened?"
"Wei did not return last night."
I felt lightheaded. My vision swam in front of my eyes. I am pretty sure I would have fallen to the floor were it not for someone catching me. When I felt velvet and lace against my cheek, I knew that it was Alan.
"What?" I whispered. Maybe I had heard him wrong. Yeah. That was it. I wasn't living in denial at all. "What do you mean he didn't return?"
"He went to guard you." Alan placed me gently back on the chair.
I raised my eyebrow. "Guard me?"
"We've been taking turns guarding you, watching over you. It was for your safety. But Wei did not return."
That was news, and none of it good.
"Oh my god," I whispered. I felt like I was beginning to understand something. An idea was pushing in the back of my head. "But Zane was here for some of the night."
Alan frowned. "Zane? Why was he here?"
I blushed. I assumed that Alan and Dmitri would have been informed. "I...I may have told him that I was going to fulfill the prophecy with him." Man, it was a really good way of saying sleeping together. Far less embarrassing...yeah.
Alan's eyebrows flicked up. "Why?"
The blush went from rose to tomato. "I don't know; maybe because I was told he was the best option?"
Alan frowned at me. "I thought love was the most important thing to you."
"Do you really want a play-by-play of how I ended up making this decision? Because that does not seem like the most important thing here."
Alan placed a hand on my shoulder. "Zane did not return last night either."
I felt my heart skip a beat. "Oh god."
Zane. Zane was the one I couldn't trust. Wasn't he? He was probably still in love with Connie. Maybe he had never wanted to leave the Order.
"But why would he agree to be my partner if he's bad?" I asked out loud. "What about all the dreams? It doesn't make any sense. It's just flat out confusing."
"Lorena?" Reikah took my hand. "What do you want to do?"
I wanted to go find Wei, but I was so tired. I had thought skipping a night of sleep or two once in a while was no big deal, but I was quickly growing aware of the effect that too much caffeination and not enough rest was having. My head was aching, my body was shaking, and I knew that there was no way I was going to be of help to anyone until I got sleep.
"Alan, you and Dmitri need to go looking for Wei, and Zane too. I think if we find one, we will find the other. Maybe Zane is the bad guy, maybe he's a victim. I don't know. Find at least one of them. Send Jenny over here. Tell her we are doing magic."
Alan smiled at me. "Taking this prophecy woman thing seriously, aren't you?"
I wanted to smile back, but I just couldn't. Not with Wei gone. The fact that I was more worried about Wei than Zane was not lost on me.
"Find Wei," I said.
Alan placed a kiss on my forehead. "I will."
I watched him go as quickly as he had come in and turned my focus back on Reikah. "Okay, lucid dreaming, that's what the sigils are?"
She cleared her throat. For a moment, she just looked at me as if to make sure that I was serious. It was a good thing that I had never been more serious about anything in my entire life. Yeah, Wei was missing, and so was Zane. There was a chance that something absolutely terrible had happened to them. Yeah, that was totally a thing.
But the fact was I could not worry about it right now since some dream mage person was trying to kill me with my sleep. I mean, don't get me wrong; dying in my sleep was the preferred way to go, but not when I couldn't even legally drink. So, I had to compartmentalize.
Checklist:
Review sigil magic
Use dream magic to fight Somniamancer
Rest
Find vampire make-out buddy
Save world
Seemed like an average day in my life.
"Lucid dreaming is a stage of dreaming where you realize you are dreaming and can still be asleep," I prompted, encouraging Reikah to trust me. It worked.
"Yes, the sigils that I am making for you will help you dream lucidly. The way that most Somniamancers achieve victory is by making you forget that you are dreaming, so that when they hurt you, the damage is permanent because your mind believes it so fully. We are going to give you that boost. The sachets you made will help, but we are going to work some protective magics in too.
I nodded. "Okay, let's do this."
"Now?" she asked, looking shocked.
"Would you like to wait a week?"
"Well...yes," she admitted, "I don't think we are ready."
I spread my hands wide. "Clark Kent wasn't ready for Zod, but he made it work."
"Your comparisons confuse me."
"Please, being a nerd is status quo. Let's do this."
A few minutes later, Reikah was dipping a fine-tipped brush into a pot of dark blue ink. I was laying on my grandmother's bed. Maahes had curled up at the top of my head like some sort of protective kitty hat, and half of me was painted with complicated symbols that I truly didn't understand. I really hoped I could trust Reikah.
Every time the brush hit my skin, I felt another tingle of magic. I remembered what my grandmother had said about my father, about the love spell that had been imprinted on his skin and he hadn't even known.
"Hey, Reikah?" I asked.
"Hmm?"
"You'll be able to wake me up, right?"
She looked down at me with those big serious eyes. "When you are ready, you'll be able to wake up all on your own."
I hoped she was right, because it was getting harder and harder to stay awake. My eyelids were heavy. Maybe if I just rested for a little while…I'd be okay, right? Yeah. Just a little rest.
When I opened my eyes again, it was morning.
THE FINAL
CHAPTER
The morning was clear and bright, and a breeze was coming in through my window. The lacy curtains that I seriously needed to switch out for something a little more me were fluttering softly with it. A layer of snow had covered the ground, but with a breeze like that, it wasn't going to last for very long.
I rolled over in bed, and there was Wei. Even with his back to me, I knew who he was. The long line of dark hair was loose rather than braided, and it made a blanked over his shoulders. Even so, there was just enough of that golden skin showing through.
"Wei!" I gasped. "You are alright!"
He shifted slowly and rolled over; the blanket slid down just far enough that I was pretty sure that he was naked. I had to swallow pretty hard. Wei wasn't like Alan, prone to wearing clothes unbuttoned to his naval, but I'd seen him topless once or twice, and it never failed to leave me a little breathless. All of those sleek muscles shifted and bunched as he stretched out against the bed and offered me a tiny smile.
"I was waiting for you to wake up," he said, reaching a hand out for me. I took it. I couldn't help myself. I was so happy to see him. I pressed his palm to my cheek and gave his palm a soft kiss.
"Alan said you were gone."
"I'm not gone; I'm here."
He sat up, and the blanket slipped lower. Yup. Definitely naked. I was going to slide out of the bed when he pulled me suddenly into his lap. My hand landed on a scar on his side. I don't remember Wei having a scar there. What had happened? I wanted to ask him, but the devastating smile he shot in my direction had the thought melting right out of my head.
"I could prove to you how very here I am."
I let out the most god-awful laugh. A regular girl would have giggled lightly, maybe even offered some seductive and witty repartee. Me? I made a sound like a whimpering puppy and a sick donkey. Yeah, there is a reason I've never gone all the way with a guy before, and that reason is total awkwardness.
But he smiled and kissed me anyway, and the next thing I knew, my back was against the bed. He kissed me, and I enjoyed it. No, ‘enjoy’ isn't the word. The word for how much I liked it probably isn't PG-13. Heck, it probably isn't even rated R.
"Wei," I said, pulling him closer.
He kissed slowly down my neck and then further. He didn't answer.
"Wei, are we really going to do this? I don't think I am ready for another round of blue ovaries."
He didn't answer, and that bothered me. Wei always answered me. Even in the middle of a make-out session, Wei was a responsive kind of person. Sometimes too responsive. Also, wasn't this about the time that he hauled out on me?
"Wait," I said, pushing at his shoulder, "I don't feel right."
Wei lifted his head, but it's wasn't Wei's face staring back at me. It was Zane's. Then, it was Alan's. Then, it was Dmitri’s.
Dreaming. I was dreaming. Crap. This wasn't real. This wasn't real at all. I pulled back from the hot male body draped over me and scampered back. "Oh no no no no no."
"What's wrong?" a voice asked. I knew the voice, but I couldn't place it. I wasn't sure why. My head felt weird.
Another breeze came in the window, and it was a very cold breeze.
"Get away from me!" I snapped.
I scrambled more. I really wanted to get off the bed, but it was like the mattress never ended.
"Lorena? What's wrong? I thought you wanted to be with me."
If I hadn't been sure that the shape changing body over me wasn't Wei, that line right there would have sealed the deal. Wei wouldn't say that. He'd say something about me being confusing or he'd bow politely and offer some kind of apology. The man on the bed was not Wei, and I was guessing he wasn't any of the vampire guys.
"Show your face, Markus, you creep."
The smile on Wei's face stretched strangely. It was another man's smile on top of Wei's features. I did not like it. It was creepy, and I really wanted it to go away.
"Crafty little witch."
"Unprepared creepy wizard."
The image of Wei flickered and then disappeared entirely. There was Markus, Mr. Average Height and Average Build himself. Markus was the kind of middle aged guy that they'd get to stand in for the dad character in those photographs they put inside picture frames. The kind where they say 'look at this attractive happy family; this could be you.’
What I'm saying is he was so average-perfect that he creeped me out. It didn't help that he had just been having a dream make-out session with me while wearing my maybe-boyfriend’s face. Yeah, extra creepy.
"There's no need to act like that, Lorena. We can be friends."
"Dude, friends don't trap friends inside creepy dreams while slowly milking all their energy. Just sayin'."
He almost smiled. "You look so like your mother."
Okay, ew. Gross. I was not okay with this. Not even a little bit, not even at all. "Okay, creepy step-father, let me the hell out of this dreamscape. Right now."
He chuckled. "Why would you want to go back? Why do you want to go live in a tiny house with people who are too involved in what is going on with themselves to give you what you need?"
"What the heck are you talking about?"
"Well, what do you think is going to happen when Jenny and the little traitor get on with their lives? Right now, all three of you can hang out, but you know what happens to the third wheel even in the average relationship. But those two, who are just beginning to live openly? They are going to forget you; after all, they'll want to hang out with other women who date women. They don't want to be seen with a girl w
ho surrounds herself with men."
"That's a lie. Jenny and Reikah are my friends. It doesn't matter if they are dating or not."
He tsked and stretched. The white sheet he had been wearing slithered around him to create a pretty impressive toga. I was happy that he was wearing clothes, but I'd much rather he wasn’t here at all.
House Of Vampires 2 (The Lorena Quinn Trilogy) Page 14