He briskly wiped them away with the back of his hand before the evidence of his emotions went spilling down his face. “God damn you, woman.” With that out of his system he tilted my chin up further and took my mouth with his in a bruising display of force. I tried to wiggle out from in between him and the wall but he just responded by pressing in tighter, holding my body captive until he was done with it.
“Micah,” I pleaded with him in between breaths. “You’re hurting me.”
He breathed in my words, making them a part of him; nourished by them. He gave my lips a short reprieve in order to bite at my neck. His hands clawed themselves around my hips and down my thighs.
He stopped just as suddenly as he had started, and my feet hit the ground with a loud thud. I hadn’t even realized they were off the floor. He kept his forehead pressed against mine, breathing hard, straining to regain control of himself. “Sleep in my bed tonight. I have a lot to do and won’t be there until late, but I’ll check in on you.” He leaned in for what might have been another kiss, if you can call it that, but thought better of it and left the room abruptly.
I went to bed early, hoping to be asleep long before Micah came and long after he left. My dreams were chaotic; never once did I sense Micah beside me in bed but he was always there to pull me away from Shawn’s tainted grasp. I woke up in a sweat, suddenly too aware of what Micah’s absence would do to me. Who would save me from my nightmares? Certainly not Alex. He contained no more magic than a child’s wizard play set.
I quickly dressed and left the room, thankful to be away from Micah’s scent. It was too much to bear. I found Alex perched on a chair just outside the door with a magazine in one hand and a cup of coffee in another.
“Good grief, has it already begun?”
He looked at me, “Good morning to you, too, Sunshine.”
“I’m sorry, Alex, but I don’t agree with whatever Micah told you. I don’t mind spending time with you. It will hurt our friendship, however, if I start to feel trapped.”
He lowered his magazine and crossed his legs. “Ok. How about we just take this one hour at a time and see where it goes?”
I just looked at him.
“Come on, we’ll start with breakfast.” He stood, holding out his elbow for me. I couldn’t help but giggle. At least I didn’t have to worry about morning breath around this one.
Halfway through a bowl of cereal I finally calmed down enough to ask, “Has everyone left already?”
“Micah has. He went early to make sure there was a boat ready. Susan and Cato leave shortly. Cato wanted to see you before he left.”
“What for?”
He shrugged his shoulders, looking down. “Truthfully I’ve been trying to avoid him lately.”
I put my hand over his. “I’m finished. Why don’t you stay here while I hunt him down? He’s probably in the library. I’ll come right back here when I’m done.” I made an invisible cross over my heart. “Promise.”
Walking toward the library, I realized Micah knew it would work out this way. I would follow his rules not because he asked me to, but because Alex needed me as much as I needed him.
It could be worse, I thought. I could be handcuffed to the toilet right now.
I found Cato in his library, where he usually was. He regarded me with cool, calculating eyes. There was no sign of his usual warm gestures. I had no idea what brought on the change, but perhaps it was a good thing he was leaving for however long.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Yes. Follow me.” He didn’t wait to see if I followed, leading me to one of the deepest corners of the library. “This section contains a lot of my personal notes on each of the Gaias we have had. There may be something larger than anything we have ever faced about to happen. We’ll need you as knowledgeable, as strong, as possible. While we’re gone, you should take some time and study these notes.”
I peered closer at the scribbles on the spines of the ledgers and notepads. They appeared to be in chronological order, dating from, “1853?”
He fixed me with the same cold look. “Some of them were passed down from my predecessors.”
I looked back, arms crossed. “Ok, I’ll take a look. Thank you for showing them to me.”
“Yes, well – they belong to all of us, really.” He moved to another part of the room. “Over here are my notes on discovered ‘hot-spots’ around the world. It includes energy depleting areas as well as areas that intensify the energy. I though you could expand on my research there, look for patterns.” He silently regarded his stacks of books and notes. I couldn’t tell if he was avoiding looking at me or just lost in thought.
“What is the matter, Cato?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.
He let out a sigh and rubbed his temples. “Kaitlyn, you have to understand – up until a year ago everything was just as it should be. Then you came, and well, everything has turned upside down. I’ve lost Shawn, Micah is distracted, and no one is focused.”
“You don’t think Shawn would have done this even if I hadn’t come along?”
“There is no telling what he would have done. He’s no longer the son I thought I knew.”
“And you aren’t the Cato I thought I knew.” I fixed him with my own cold stare. “What did you and Alex do yesterday to that worker?”
He crossed his arms. “We did what we had to in order to get the information we needed. It was no less than what we’ve done in the past.”
I nodded my head, not in understanding but in recognition of what kind of leader we truly operated under. “Maybe, Cato. Just maybe, your world has been upside down all along and it is just now righting itself.” I left him there, nothing more to say to him. Besides, I needed to get back to Alex.
Thankfully, Alex was still waiting in the kitchen, taking advantage of my absence to finish off the last of our only package of toffee-nut cookies.
I offered a small smile. “I know you are going to save me one.”
Before he could answer, Susan stood up from behind a counter where I hadn’t seen her, “He won’t, but I will.” She snatched the last cookie out of his hand, stuck her tongue out at him, and surrendered the cookie to me.
“Aw, that’s just not right,” he complained. “I’ve got the worst sweet tooth today.”
“And I’m eating for two over here,” I said.
Susan held up my hand in triumph. “After one round, the winner by decision is Kaitlyn ‘The Pregnant Gaia’ Alder.” She turned to look at me. “I’d put a victory belt around you but I don’t think it would fit.”
“Maybe she should lay off the cookies, then.” Alex pouted.
We both stuck our tongues out at him. Susan put her arm around me and directed me a little way from Alex. “I have something for you.” She handed me a notebook from the counter. “I have a friend who is sort of an expert in the dreaming world – she sends me advice and notes every now and then; all of which I keep in here. Micah thought you could use this while he was gone.” She flipped through the pages and stopped halfway through the book. “This may be of particular use to you.”
I read the title, Spell to Give Someone a Dream.
“If you have a dream foretelling what Shawn might do or where he is, you can send it to Micah. Also, Alex knows how to get in touch with us using secure communications.”
I closed the notebook and tucked it under my arm. “Thanks – I’ll add it to the list of homework everyone else has given me to do while you are gone. How long will you be gone, anyway?”
“We don’t know – we hope to make it back before the baby is born.”
I looked at her, and my jaw dropped thinking it might take that long. “You have to be back by then. I don’t think I could do something like that by myself.” Susan’s presence truly would be missed during labor, even more so than Micah’s.
She placed a reassuring hand on my arm. “We will do our best, Kaitlyn. In the meantime, stay safe. I mean it. I don’t want to be left picking up the p
ieces of my brother.”
“Okay.” I looked down, suddenly finding myself fight back tears. I laughed nervously while I wiped them away. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”
She wrapped her arms around me, hugging tightly. “You’ve been through a lot lately. We all have. You are strong, Kaitlyn, and we can beat this. We can beat him.”
I hugged her back, afraid, both for her and me. “Come back – all of you. Except maybe Cato. I could take him or leave him at this point.”
It was her turn for a nervous laugh. We stood a few more moments comforting each other until she released me to say goodbye to Alex. Even across the kitchen I could see the awkward tension in their hug. I made a mental note to tease him about it later.
Susan’s departure seemed to leave us at a loss. We looked at each other helplessly.
“What now?” I asked.
He pulled something from behind an oversized package of dates no one ever seemed to touch. “Now, we dive into that stash of toffee-nut cookies I hid—”
“You snake!”
“And I can give you a tour of some of the Chakra you have never seen,” he finished, seemingly unperturbed by my name calling.
Chapter 19
With Pleasure
“And this is my room.” Alex brushed cookie crumbs from his mouth. He remained in the doorway while I walked around, taking in my new sleeping arrangements for who knows how long.
“Small,” I commented.
“Us non-magical types are low man on the totem pole around here. At least I’m not forced to have a roommate like most the others. Well, not until now anyway.” He cleared his throat. “But I’ve always wanted a bunk bed. Now, thanks to you, I get one!” He took a running start and made a massive leap to land on the top bed. “I get top bunk!”
“Glad I’m not a total inconvenience.” I snorted at the apparently ten-year-old man I was going to be spending my nights with. My eyes scanned the rest of the room. It was a little messy but no more than mine, and no foul odors crept in from the dark corners. It would do. I walked over to his shelves, eyeing bits and pieces of radio parts. “Bringing your work home with you?”
“Eh.” He shrugged his shoulders from his perch. “I like tinkering around with communications equipment. I was a radio-man in the military you know.”
“You were in the—” my line of questioning was interrupted by the most beautiful sight I had encountered in a long time. “A Nikon D3X!? You’ve been holding out on me.” I picked up the top of the line camera carefully, treating it like gold. It practically was. The camera alone ran around $8,000, not counting the array of lenses, flashes, and filters he had laid out next to it.
“You know your cameras.” He jumped down from the bed, taking a renewed interest in me.
“Well, yeah. I’m a photographer, or was anyway. I’m partial to Cannons, mainly because of price, but any digital SLR will do.”
“Oh, Katie - this isn’t just any SLR. It is 138 megabytes of 14 bit image files with a 24.5—”
“Megapixel format,” I finished his sentence for him. “Like I said, I am a photographer. I know the industry equipment.”
“Then you know it’s not the cost of the equipment that counts, but how you use it.” He slipped the camera strap around my neck.
“Are you serious?”
“You got something better to do?”
“I guess the rest of the tour could wait…” I stared at the camera.
“Then it’s settled. Come on – there’s nature out there that needs to be photographed.”
We spent the rest of the day in the gardens, Alex giving me complete use of what I thought should be his most prized possession. I loved seeing the world through the cameras lens. It distanced me, somehow. Made me feel like I was merely a witness, instead of deeply involved – a nice change. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. I clicked away, able to capture all the beauty and magic nature had to offer in one mystical moment – to be halted for all time. When we got hungry, and had exhausted our cookie supply, I was too reluctant to leave my long lost passion behind so we satisfied ourselves with offerings from the fruit trees and continued on our, or my, photographic journey. I only forced myself indoors once twilight approached and the camera’s battery was running low. Over dinner, in between awkward silences when other workers of the Chakra came in and then quickly left the kitchen after seeing me, I couldn’t stop babbling about the day.
Alex seemed just as delighted to have someone to share his hobby with. “Tomorrow, I’ll show you my darkroom.”
“Get out! You have a darkroom?”
He pulled a hard pelican case out from under the bunk bed. It was full of older film cameras, just as much fun to work with as digital cameras.
“I can’t exactly run to a photo center down the block to print my images. Once I became a more permanent part of the family here Cato gave me a lot of space for what I said was necessary for my work. It is one advantage of being a techie, no one knows exactly what you need; they just go along with it.”
The day had gone by faster than the Nikon’s high-tech flash. Alex was one of the best friends I’ve ever had, and the brother I never had. I yawned and looked out the window, the corners of my mouth turning down as I realized it had grown pitch black. Days without Micah might be bearable, but sleep would still be hell when nightmares plagued me.
“What’s the matter?” Alex asked.
“It’s been a fun day with you, Alex. It’s just that I have trouble when I sleep. I have nightmares. Micah can help me avoid them, but now that he is gone…” I let my words trail off, letting Alex coming to his own conclusions.
“What are you going to do? You can’t just not sleep.”
“Can’t I?”
He paused, thinking. “What about the notebook Susan gave you?”
It was still sitting on the kitchen counter, where I left it. “I haven’t had a chance to read it.”
“There is no time like the present.”
“Fine.” I don’t know why I was so hesitant. I supposed I preferred Micah’s help instead of finding my own solution. I flipped through the book while Alex hunted down dessert, as if we hadn’t been eating cookies all day. There were some notes in Susan’s handwriting but the notebook also contained mailed letters from her friend and printed e-mails or cut outs of various magazine and newspaper articles. There were dream protection spells, instructions on how to make magical dream catchers and dream pillows, as well as spells for peaceful sleep.
I stopped on the short section that clumped together information about dream catchers. They were Native American in theory, but if I combined that by blessing the dream catcher with spells it just might work. “I’m going to need some things.”
“Like what?”
“Thread, a metal ring, beads, and feathers.”
“Easy enough. Except maybe the feathers.”
“What about that owl’s nest we saw today? There might be some feathers around the ground by that.”
“You’re not going to make me walk all the way back out there, are you?” Alex whined.
“No. I’m going to make you get me a flashlight so I can walk out there. You don’t have to come.” The more I thought about it the more appropriate the owl feathers seemed to be. An article about the dream catchers said you should use material that was personal or meant something to you. During my saining, it was an owl Cato pointed out as the sign of acceptance.
Alex groaned again. “Micah would kill us both if I let you go traipsing around in the dark. I’ll go get the flashlights.”
Fifteen minutes later we were just below the owls nest. I could hear hooting in the distance. We found four feathers on the ground without too much trouble. I had my pick of those that were particularly ornate. On our way back, we passed the trail to the large boulder and I had an idea.
“Follow me,” I called over my shoulder to Alex. He let out another grunt of disproval. Entering the cleared circle, I tried suppressing any bad me
mories and concentrated on my task. I got on my hands and knees, scanning the ground for bits of the lightening-shattered boulder to use instead of beads in my dream catcher. I wasn’t finding any.
My knees stung. I hissed, “Who broke a bunch of glass here?”
Alex bent down to examine the ground next to me. “That’s what happens when lightning hits rock – it melts and fuses the grains of the rock together. Fuller… fulg… fulgurite is what it’s called.”
I picked one up and examined it. It was less like a bead, looking more like a root, hollow in places. Perfect for stringing them together. I grabbed a handful and we made our way back to the building, Alex thoroughly annoyed. He collected the rest of the supplies I needed while I retrieved some personal belongings from my room. I was about to pile my large comforter and more pillows in my arms until I thought better of it and stopped by Micah’s room for them instead. No matter how angry I was with him I’d still find peace enveloped by his scent.
Alex set up a reading lamp for each bunk. In my cove, surrounded by Micah’s blankets and pillows I weaved the dream catcher together while above Alex flipped through Susan’s book. I felt oddly at home and safe, which gave me all the more reason for concern. From experience, it was in those moments that the worst could happen.
Once the dream catcher was put together, complete with owl feathers and lightning rocks, I studied it and let out a dissatisfied sigh.
“What is it?” Alex hung his head over the side of the bed.
“Well doesn’t it say it needs a charm or something in the middle? Something to act as the final filter?”
His head retreated and I heard him flipping through the pages. “Not exactly a physical charm, per say.” He read the notes verbatim, “As a final touch to your dream catcher, adorn it with a keepsake-like entity, either physical or spiritual in form.”
My hand immediately went to my neck, wishing I still had the butterfly necklace. Alex peered over the side once again, helping me think. “What about the baby?”
“Huh?” I didn’t make the connection.
“It’s always with you and I can’t think of a better, or more reliable, lucky charm.”
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