Edge of Dreams

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  “Stop! He’s my brother!” I practically screamed it as I started struggling again.

  “Gregg. Enough. Put it away.” Price’s chest rumbled against me.

  Touray’s hand dropped to his side, but he didn’t holster his gun. I melted in on myself. Whatever strength I had had washed away with the adrenaline. I was too done even to shut my eyes or blink. I must have looked like roadkill.

  “Riley?” Price’s voice roughened as he gently rocked me in his arms.

  I didn’t move, didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I no longer had bones or muscles. I was rubber.

  “Now, Gregg,” he snapped. He shifted his feet in the direction of Leo and Madison. “He’ll be back for the two of you. Then I want to know just what the hell happened.”

  I didn’t know if Leo was going to try to stop them again or not. Didn’t matter. He had no time. Magic spun around us in a white cocoon. It wrenched us. We crossed into a between place—not the trace dimension, but somewhere else. It was full of morphing shapes and colors that made me go cross-eyed and feel seasick. The next thing I knew, I separate from my body. I swallowed—could I really swallow if I wasn’t in my body? My throat felt dry.

  This is normal, I told myself. Touray told you how travelling works. Your mind and body split and get reconnected when you arrive. It’s normal. I didn’t remember him telling me it was like a hallucinogenic drug trip.

  My mind hooked on something, and I felt myself wrenched in a new direction. I rocketed through the dreamspace, as Touray had called it, pulled on an invisible cord.

  I didn’t think this was normal. I scrabbled to remember what else Touray had told me about travelling. He’d said that the body and spirit separated on the journey and sometimes had trouble melding back together on the other side. I had had no idea what he meant. As my mind raced farther and farther away from my body, I had a sinking feeling I was about to find out.

  Chapter 11

  I tried to stop myself, to return to my body, but I was like a fish hooked on a line. No matter how I wriggled or fought, I couldn’t free myself.

  Abruptly, I stopped. Something that looked like a soap bubble swallowed me. Inside it was still. Outside of it, shapes continued to morph and change, twisting and bubbling and splashing and rippling. There was no place to look that wasn’t moving. My absent stomach lurched. It really wasn’t fair that I had no body and still felt nauseous.

  The bubble drifted and spun slowly, but seemed immune to the speeding currents beyond its walls. I lifted what passed for a hand—a crooked branch of pale blue energy—and touched the walls of the bubble. It sizzled, and little red flakes spun out around my hand. They settled and absorbed into me. As if I’d opened a mental dam, images rushed at me. They battered my mind, making no sense, even though they felt familiar. I thought I recognized something, and it melded with something else and something else again, and my head whirled with overload. It was like an acid trip gone way out of hand. I started to panic.

  I pressed blue twig hands to what might have been my head and called on my null power. As depleted as I was, I expected nothing. Instead, it roared up inside me like a forest fire.

  Calling up power with no place to put it wasn’t entirely wise. It swelled inside me, looking for an outlet. I had no good place to send it. I pressed my twig hands against the bubble and let it go. White light burst into stars, and the influx of images stopped. I pulled my magic back and held still as shock waves rocketed back through me. It felt like I’d thrown a massive rock into a small tank and the water was crashing back into me, except it was magic.

  After a while, or maybe only a few seconds—I had no sense of time—the waves subsided, and I was sitting in stillness.

  I tried to figure out a plan. Could I tear the bubble walls apart with my magic? If I did, could I find my way back to my body? Though I figured Touray was looking for me, I didn’t know if he would find me inside the bubble, or be able to save me if he did. I wasn’t going to wait to find out.

  I pushed my twig fingers against the bubble’s wall again. The skin of my prison felt warm. I pressed harder. It stretched like a balloon, but sprang back as I pulled away. I did it again, this time trying to absorb its magical energy. Nothing happened.

  More time passed as I tried to get my head to focus. The seventies lava lamp lights outside kept distracting me. They were hypnotic as well as sickening.

  I would have closed my eyes, but I didn’t seem to be able to. So in spirit form, I could get nauseous and get a full-on down-to-the-bones body ache, but I couldn’t blink. Where was the sense in that?

  I did appreciate the silence. Either my ears weren’t working, or dreamspace was dead silent. After a while, though, the lack of sound started wearing on me. I got twitchy. I kept jerking around to see if something was sneaking up on me. I looked up and down and all around. Pretty soon paranoia set in, and I began a counterclockwise rotation, twisting to scan every quadrant of the hypnotic churn outside the bubble.

  That went on for a while until I got bored with the constant fear. I couldn’t maintain that level of vigilance. I let myself slow to a halt, pulling myself into a ball. I wished I knew how to meditate. Then I could while away the next centuries or however long I was trapped.

  I was settling in for a massive pity party when I noticed a droplet forming in the top of the bubble. When it was about the size of a softball, it broke free and dropped lazily down. When it got to eye-level, it stopped and hovered, spinning slowly. White mist swirled inside, turning it opaque and reminding me of those crystals balls you see gypsies use in Scooby-Doo cartoons.

  Color seeped into the mist and slowly resolved into shapes. I gasped. The first was of my mom, my dad, and me when I was maybe three. I was in the middle, with each of my parents holding my hands. We stood in front of some pine trees on what looked like a hiking trail. I didn’t remember. My throat swelled, and tears burned my eyes. My mom smiled at me from the image, looking radiant with life and health. My dad was looking at her, over my toddler head, his expression full of love. I reached out to touch them, and the image faded.

  “No,” I said brokenly, and was startled when the sound bounced around the bubble walls, making them vibrate.

  A new image rose to replace the first. This time it moved, like I was watching a movie. A horror movie. My stomach knotted. I hadn’t been there that day. I’d been out with my dad. I remember how someone said after that we’d have been killed, too, if we’d been home.

  She was in the kitchen at the sink. In the middle of the window hung a purple glass heart. The same one that I thought had been burned up in a fire, but later turned up in our investigation to find Josh. Mom’s fiery hair hung loose around her shoulders. She wore a purple sweater and jeans. From the back, she almost looked like me.

  I made a little squeaking sound as she shut off the water in the sink. She turned around and said something. She frowned, looking more angry than scared. Was this real? Had it happened this way? Then someone moved. A big man wearing a black knitted cap stepped into view. I could only see his back. I didn’t recognize anything about him.

  My mom grabbed a plate off the drying rack and threw it at him. He knocked it aside and lunged for her. He had a knife.

  I pressed my twig fingers against my mouth. No, no, no! I wanted to scream, to tell her to run, to fight, but my throat squeezed the sound into a tiny squeak.

  My mom fought. She kicked and hammered at the man with a dirty pot. She smashed his head, and he dropped his knife. Then she kicked him and ran for the doorway. He caught her, driving his knife into her stomach. I saw his face. It was . . . Gregg Touray.

  For a moment hate filled me, pressing out everything else. I wanted to kill him. I would kill him. I shook with the emotions crashing through me. I couldn’t breathe.

  Touray’s arm rose again and again as he stabbed my mom. Thirteen wounds
altogether. I’d found that out later when reading the police report. I watched every one, horror twisting my stomach and knotting my lungs.

  The image faded to white. I sat gasping, trying to understand what I’d just seen. But before I could put any of the puzzle pieces together, a new image appeared.

  Dalton. At the diner. I was there, too. My forehead was bloody and bruised, and I was wearing the same clothes I had been in the mines, the clothes I was still wearing, somewhere. Patti threw her arms around me and then around Dalton. She was smiling and crying. Then I saw Dalton hold out his hand to me. I took it, and he pulled me out the door. The picture honed in on our linked hands, then faded. The bubble swirled white, and then melted away into smoke. It rose and melded back with the walls of my prison.

  I couldn’t say how long I sat just replaying my mom’s murder in my head. Each time I felt sicker and sicker. I could almost hear the sounds of the knife pulling out of her flesh.

  I was so wrapped in misery and rage that it took a while for reason to return. I focused on the last scene. It bothered me. Or maybe I just wanted to stop reliving my mother’s murder. For one thing, though it had looked incredibly real, I couldn’t imagine Dalton and me ever holding hands. Or Patti hugging him. That the scenario was a message to me, was obvious. It told me I could trust Dalton, that I should go to him for safety. Of course, that implied I could trust whoever was sending me the message, and I wasn’t so eager to jump off that cliff.

  Another thought struck me—as real as that scene had looked, it obviously wasn’t. So how much of the murder scene was made up to manipulate me? A lot, if they expected me to believe Touray had been the killer. That was more than twenty years ago. He’d have just been hitting puberty, maybe.

  I made myself consider the images of my mother’s murder. The scenario had got the kitchen right, down to the paint on the walls and the glass heart in the window. It all looked perfectly plausible, and of course, my mom had been stabbed. Of course, somebody could have picked all that information out of crime-scene photos, and I didn’t trust my four-year-old-kid memory enough to believe I’d spot any minor differences. Besides, I’d already been burned by stupidly trusting Dalton without asking enough questions. I wasn’t about to swallow this performance without verification. But even if I did believe it, I couldn’t get around the question of just who was doing the sending. If this scene, minus Touray, was accurate, then the sender of the image could very well be the murderer. Who else could get the details right? There didn’t seem to be even one logical runner-up for the Oz behind the curtain.

  And that raised another big question. What did they want from me? Clearly, they wanted something, because they wanted me to go to the diner, and then from there, go off with Dalton. Maybe they thought the promise of knowing who murdered my mom would be enough to lure me. They were wrong. That sort of gift had to have strings attached. Or maybe I was supposed to believe that whoever murdered my mom was out to get me and this Good Samaritan wanted to save my life. Maybe I was supposed to knee-jerk freak out about Touray being the killer and immediately run away from him.

  It irritated me that anyone could think I’d fall for that. Like I was an idiot. Like I was Little Red Riding Hood, unable to see past some pajamas and spectacles to notice that her grandmother was really a wolf. My, but don’t your teeth look big, Granny, I thought sourly. I wasn’t falling for it. I wasn’t going to let the wolf get me that easy. This smelled like a trap.

  At that point I lost it just a little bit and let go a primal scream of absolute and total frustration. A sound erupted from me, ricocheting through the bubble. I could see it—a harpoon of ice and fire. Everywhere its tip touched, cracks appeared in the bubble. I held still, hope wrapping me in barbed wire.

  The power of the scream faded, and soon the harpoon vanished, but not before a spiderweb of cracks ran through the entire sphere. I collected myself, not even thinking before punching my twig fingers into the side of the bubble.

  It shattered. Fragments flew off in all directions. I was left drifting in the dizzying shift of colors and shapes. Now what? I kicked my legs and swam with my arms. Nothing.

  I was just starting to consider panicking when something enveloped me in a hot, sticky net. It dug spiny hooks into me, then dragged me in sharp yanks through the dreamspace. My panic went to DEFCON twelve, and I twisted against it. The more I fought, the more tangled inside it I got, until I could no longer move.

  At some point, I checked out. I don’t know if it was the pain, or something else altogether. All I know is the black curtain dropped, and I was gone

  “RILEY? RILEY! C’MON, baby, wake up for me. You can do it. Just open your eyes.”

  Price’s hands stroked over my hair. He cupped my face between broad, rough palms. He sounded belligerent. I’d have thought he was totally pissed at me, except that the fear lacing his frantic words suggested he might be more than a little worried about me. Until I’d texted him however many days ago, I’d been half afraid he’d forgotten me. Another thing I’d gotten wrong.

  I made myself open my eyes. My shoulders and neck ached, and my head throbbed. Of course, I’d banged myself up a bit in the tunnels, so it was only to be expected.

  I stared straight into Price’s brilliant sapphire eyes. Long black lashes framed them, and his silky black hair fell over his forehead. His skin was porcelain white stretched over chiseled cheekbones. His nose was a stone wedge above a square chin. He hadn’t shaved in a while. At least a couple days. Dark circles bruised his eyes.

  “Riley?” he whispered when I said nothing. One hand smoothed over my hair again. It might have been shaking just a little bit. “Tell me you’re here.”

  Duh. But I suppose half of me had been here awhile when the other half was lost in psychedelic drug land. I guess he deserved some slack.

  I gave a faint nod. “I’m here.”

  “Thank God.”

  He kissed me. His lips brushed mine, opening an unexpected flood of emotion. His touch was delicate, like I might shatter. I wanted more. He drew away.

  I made a wistful noise in my throat. “You can do better than that.”

  At my words, his fingers curved into hooks around the back of my head, but he held himself back, much to my eternal disappointment.

  He let go of me and straightened out of his crouch. He turned to look at someone. “Tell her you’re okay, and then get out. She needs to rest.”

  Turns out he was talking to Leo, who dropped down in front of me, taking one of my hands in his and squeezing. “You scared the hell out of me, Riley. What happened?”

  “I’d like to know that, too,” Touray growled from somewhere down by my feet.

  I lifted my head to look at him. It weighed a thousand pounds. He looked bad. His face was gaunt, and his skin was gray. His short hair stuck up in spiky clumps. His black eyes were sunk deep into their sockets. They skewered me, demanding answers. “I know you didn’t kill my mom.” I dropped my head back onto the pillow.

  “Your mother?”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Why would you think he killed your mom?”

  The three men responded together. I don’t even know why I said it. I knew it wasn’t true—except for the first few seconds before I’d had a chance to think it through—and for whatever reason, I felt guilty about that. Especially given that he rescued me and looked like he’d gone through hell doing it.

  I sighed. “Long story.”

  Silence. Clearly that answer wasn’t going to cut it. I sighed again. “Something grabbed me in the dreamspace and dragged me off.” My voice scraped thin through my vocal chords. Before I could say more, Touray pounced on that.

  “Something grabbed you?” He repeated, and now he loomed above Leo. “How? What? Explain,” he demanded. Magic swelled around him, driving the air out of the room.


  I gasped, feeling an invisible weight pressing down on me.

  “Enough!” Price grabbed Touray by his collar and spun him away. He planted a hand in his brother’s back and shoved him hard. “Get. Out. Now.” The ferocity in his voice promised anything short of complete cooperation would be met with violence.

  “You, too,” Price said, hooking his hand under Leo’s arm and dragging him to his feet. “You can talk to her later, when she’s rested.”

  Leo, entirely unaware of the danger, or else having a death wish, jerked out of Price’s grip and shoved the other man back. “That’s my sister, buddy. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Price practically purred. “But you are. Feet first if necessary.”

  Leo snorted. “I’d like to see you try.”

  Time for me to intervene. I attempted to clear my throat loudly, and that quickly turned into ragged coughing. That’s when I realized I was parched. My bones felt like kindling, and my tongue was leather. Price leaped to my side, sitting down on the edge of my bed and pulling me up against him. He tipped my head onto his shoulder and stroked my back.

  “Shhhh,” he crooned, “I’ve got you, baby. Easy now. Just breathe.”

  I melted against him. I didn’t really have a choice. Once the coughing settled, I didn’t have the strength to do anything else.

  This was ridiculous. I mean, sure, I conked my head a couple of times and I hadn’t eaten for a while, but I shouldn’t be pancaked like this. “What’s wrong with me?” I murmured into Price’s shirt. Black, per his usual. Wouldn’t want any maverick color sneaking into his closet. He and Dalton apparently shopped in the same stores. “Why am I so weak?”

  “It’s spirit-sag. Happens when a body and soul are separated too long,” Price said, running his hand over my hair.

  How long was too long?

  Leo anticipated my question. “You were lost for twenty-seven hours.”