Layla leaned forward and frowned at the sight of a man and woman being tossed out of a burning tower.
“This card is about chaos. Abrupt change. Difficult. Sudden.”
It was repeating. She dreamed at Alcott Manor and now everything was going to hell.
Dixie stared at the card for a minute and then at Layla, as if she were getting some inside information she was hesitant to share. “You’re keeping something from him. Whatever it is, you should talk with him about it. Sooner rather than later. For everyone’s sake. And maybe it won’t—” Dixie pulled another card and placed the Ten of Swords on the table, a man lying dead on the floor with ten swords piercing his body, and she frowned.
“Good grief, what does that card mean?”
“Mason is about to face his worst nightmares: secrets, lies. He doesn’t respond well to those, sees them as a personal betrayal. Also anything to do with ghosts or the paranormal. He likes for things to be logical. He likes his world at right angles. This isn’t that.”
Layla sat on the edge of the bed, held an ice pack to her head and wished she could get the cold deeper within. “The house is the one that’s paranormal. Whenever I’m around it, there isn’t anything about my dreams or Asher that sit at right angles.” Her voice drifted off.
Dixie pulled another card entitled The Fool, where a graphic of a man was unwittingly taking a step off of a cliff.
“That’s you.”
Layla let her hand that held the icepack fall to the bed. She was nothing if not a fool. She thought she had made the safe choice—sticking to her dreamtime with Mason.
Dixie patted Layla’s knee. “This is saying that you need to watch your step. Know your gut, trust your instincts.”
She closed her eyes and thought of the champagne bubble sensation she had felt in her chest, that meant-to-be feeling she thought was guidance. “I thought I had.” She had felt it long ago with Mason, before that fateful high school night at the manor. It let her down then, too. Life had let her down, it seemed. At every turn.
She remembered Asher’s laughter, mocking her when she fell. She hadn’t been able to get rid of him when he was alive, and now she couldn't do it when he was dead.
“How in the hell do I get rid of my dead ex-husband?”
Dixie lifted her eyes to the upper part of the room, her focus somewhere within. “What’s Asher’s unfinished business?”
“His work was flat when he died, nothing to wrap up there. I never thought he was particularly attached to the girls. Alcott Manor, though. He always wanted to own that property. It was the reason he married me in the first place.”
Dixie’s mouth tipped up at the side. “So he’s finally occupying the property he always wanted. He has no interest in moving on.”
“He said he tried and the house wouldn’t let him go. Something about it being possessive and there was a party going on that he could hear but not see.”
“There is something about the energy in the manor, nothing moves on too easily from that property. There’s always a piece of that home in the past, like a root or an anchor. Like anyone with a difficult beginning, I suppose, it clings to what it can. Maybe it’s hanging on to Asher.”
“And me, possibly. He was very controlling when he was alive.” She thought for the millionth time to tell someone how Asher had abused her, how he had punched and hit. But she couldn’t bear the shame. “Probably because I was his link to owning the manor and I never came through on that. I always voted for restoration. It was one of the few places I stood my ground, and he hated that.” She told Dixie briefly about his insurance policy and hers and how she thought he planned to kill her for money and her stock.
“Oh, Layla.” Dixie rubbed her hand along her knee and a mother’s concern shadowed Dixie’s face.
Layla tried to conjure the courage she needed. “How do I kill a ghost?”
Dixie gripped her own hands tightly in front of her and leaned forward. “I don’t know. I think you should just stay away from the manor altogether. Mason should, as well.”
“I need the income that place is going to generate and I’m the family representative. Although Jordan is trying to shut that down.”
Dixie didn’t seem to hear her and she asked Layla to draw six more cards.
“The Other Side wants him, honey. They don’t like it when people stay behind—it leaves things out of order. His dying in that house kept him from the magnetic pull that most people just flow with when they die. Normally, that would have carried him over.”
She pushed the cards around so that she could see the faces of all of them and squinted as if she were listening to them speak to her, as if she understood them.
“Maybe I need to do something to him in my dream.”
Dixie bit the side of her lip. “I think he has more freedom and more control in your dreams than he does otherwise. And you’re more vulnerable there.” The two women sat in silence for a while, neither one coming up with a good solution.
“Alright, sweetheart. Do this. Think about what is true. Think about what is real. Do you remember these questions? I’ve always posed them to myself in times of trouble and I’ve found that it can help guide you toward a solution. Anchor yourself in the truth. Stay away from what is false and not important. We may not have the final answer right now, but one thing is for sure, the answer is always in the truth.”
“Jordan?”
Layla and Dixie spun toward the sound of Mason’s voice.
“What are you doing here?” Layla and Dixie leaned into the hallway in time to see Mason escorting Jordan around the corner. Jordan looked over her shoulder and when she spied the two women she smiled and slid her hand into Mason’s.
Layla’s throat promptly went dry and her heart began a fast-paced jog up a slippery hill.
Dixie pulled her back inside the exam room and patted her arm. “Riffraff has to be escorted off the property. That’s all that is.”
It was too late to be calmed. “Just the sight of her sends me into a panic. It’s like junior high and high school all over again.” She thought she might throw up. Had she heard their conversation?
“Mason doesn’t care about her. Not anymore. I can promise you that, darlin'. If he has any contact with her whatsoever, it’s to move her on. Okay?” Dixie said as if she read Layla’s mind.
“Okay.” Layla was embarrassed for Dixie to see her like this. Which was funny because Jordan was the one who ought to feel embarrassed for her behavior, and Layla was certain she didn’t.
“Don’t you worry about this. Anyone in their right mind feels ill when they see Jordan. It’s just good common sense to feel panicked when you come into contact with a crazy person.”
When the nurse arrived with the aftercare instructions, Layla told her, “I’m a nurse, you don’t have to go through these with me.”
“Actually, I’m required to. And I’m going to need a signature from you at the bottom of the page here, agreeing that I went over everything with you.”
“We’ll honor this delay as a part of the law of perfect timing,” Dixie whispered.
Layla wasn’t sure what the law of perfect timing was, but she couldn’t shake the dread that had cemented itself in her gut. Jordan and Mason together was not something she ever wanted to see.
After the nurse had collected Layla’s signature and payment, she wheeled her out to the patient pick up area. Jordan and Mason were talking near his truck and Layla didn’t like the sparkle in her eye.
26
“What did Jordan want?”
Mason had held her hand in his until she asked this question, then he pulled away, shook his head, and exhaled hard. “Jordan.”
“Why was she at the hospital?”
“She went to the manor this morning and one of the refinishers told her I was at the hospital. I guess she thought I was sick or something.”
Layla fumed at the idea of Jordan dashing to Mason’s side. “Were you able to talk her into calming down about
the manor?”
He returned his hand to hers, rubbed his thumb over it and gave her a reassuring glance, but she could see that something was troubling him.
“Not really. She did say that a few city building inspectors were going to visit the manor next week and that we might find them hard to please. She reminded me that the city won’t allow the manor to open for tours until it’s passed all of its inspections.”
The pain in Layla’s head throbbed harder. “Damn it. What did you say to that?”
“She was full of all kinds of nonsense this morning, so it wasn’t possible to tell her much. So I asked her to have lunch on Monday and I’ll see what I can do then.”
“Thank you,” she said and hoped Mason would be able to work some sort of magic.
Just before they arrived at his lake house, she called the girls again to see what they were up to. She also gave her mother an update on her condition. Jayne Ella told her to rest, and that the girls were hers to manage. She was sure that her mother was now trying to push her into Mason’s arms as much as possible.
To her mother’s knowledge, Asher was out of the picture, so onward and upward. Her mother might even play dumb when she finally cornered her on how she kept Mason away from her that summer. Brand new day, brand new plan. No memory of yesterday. She would have made a great politician.
Once at his house, Mason fluffed pillows and brought her tea and tried to get her to relax on the couch that had a view of the lake. However, she was more concerned about him.
“Mason. Sit down. There’s something you need to know.”
He sat on the edge of the couch and stared distractedly at the floor.
“I’m sure you remember—” she began.
He raised his finger and shook it as if he’d just thought of something he needed to voice and right away. “Just one quick thing—what did you and Dixie discuss while I was getting the car and talking with Jordan?”
With a jolt, she realized that Jordan must have overhead part of her conversation with Dixie. Jordan probably knew Mason well enough to know what he thought of the mystical world and couldn’t wait to use this information against her.
“I know better than to believe anything Jordan says, especially if she’s saying it to me, because she always has an ulterior motive. But I found her outside your hospital room, apparently listening to your conversation with my mother. According to her, you told Dixie that whatever you dream comes to pass and Asher is still alive in the manor and…” He exhaled hard as though he couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “That he’s trying to kill us?”
She didn’t think she had ever hated Jordan more than she did in this moment. Mason waited for her to refute what he said and to call Jordan ridiculous. She could see the please in his wide-eyed expression.
“Okay, this is part of what I wanted to talk with you about. Not everything that happens in my dreams shows up in my life. But when I’m around the manor, some things do.”
He didn’t move, but something drained from him that took the color from his face.
“Mason. The manor has some sort of effect on me, something I would never have deliberately chosen. My dreams and the manor have created some kind of bridge that Asher has used to get in touch with me. He’s sabotaged the equipment at the manor with the hope that that will hurt you or worse.” She went into patient detail about how Brooke and Jordan endlessly humiliated her at school, the resulting sleepwalking and sleep eating, seeing Dr. Waters and his recommendation that she do lucid dreaming.
She had mentally rehearsed this speech a hundred times, much of that in the last hour. But when the words came out, she knew they fell short of his understanding. He barely looked at her when she told her story, frowning toward the lake as if he struggled to hear what she was saying.
“When I moved into the manor with the girls, I thought—I thought everything would be okay. I guess because I needed that arrangement to work out.”
“Wait, so you dream something at the manor and it happens in your real life…like some premonition thing?”
She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then said, “Not exactly like a premonition. But yes, a few times. If I’m at the manor or if I’ve spent a lot of time at the manor, then there is a real life carryover from my dreams.”
“Okay,” he answered in his not-believing tone.
“We moved in and a dream happened—I can’t control when they happen—and Asher was in it. I wrote it off as a stress dream and tried to ignore it. But then last night I dreamed you were there.”
She eyed him cautiously, wondering if he would remember what they had shared. She wanted to bring up the proposal and hoped he would say, “Of course! I thought that was real! Yes! Let’s!” With his hands folded, he stared at the ground, his eyes in narrow hard-to-believe focus, his lips pressed tightly together.
“We swam in the lake and there was this cave.” She pointed toward the opposite bank.
Mason sprang from his chair, then walked to the other side of the room with his hand over his mouth. “Not possible,” he mumbled. “Not happening.”
She wondered how it felt when someone told you they had made an appearance in your dreams. That they knew things about your most private, unguarded moments.
“When we came out, Asher was there.”
He stared at the lake. “Wings,” he finally said.
Her heart thumped hard.
“You had these wings.” He motioned with his hands and scoffed as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying. “Look. I don’t understand how you know what I dream. Coincidence, I guess, or maybe we’ve spent a lot of time with one another lately and it’s just one of those weird things. But you can’t expect me to believe that you made my dreams happen. Or that my life is in danger because your dead ex-husband’s spirit rigged some equipment and he told you that through a dream.”
“I know this is hard to believe. But we’re talking about your safety. Please have an open mind.”
“Layla. Are you sure you feel okay?”
“I’m fine. Mason, I wouldn’t share any of this with you if it weren’t important. I know how you feel about these things.” And that was true. Because he had chosen to come back to her, knowing she was who he loved and who he wanted. To save his life, she was eliminating herself from his world, sentence by sentence.
They stared at one another quietly. Her head pounded with so much pain that she squinted to see straight. Mason’s nostrils flared slightly, as if he had been challenged and had no intent to back down.
She went into the kitchen and put soap and water on a paper towel. She scrubbed at the lower part of her neck, the spot where she had been diligent about keeping the waterproof makeup. In a rectangular wall mirror, she checked the area on her neck, then turned and showed the small bruise to Mason.
His line of sight fixed at her neck and his chest rose up and down more quickly than usual. She knew what he must have felt, she’d experienced that same terror-filled disbelief several times where her dreams were concerned. Like seeing Brooke’s dead body or Jordan’s bloody head or Asher’s spirit, this was another one of those moments when proof showed up in the midst of the impossible.
He finally reached out cautiously, running two fingers along the mark he’d left on her. He shook his head almost imperceptibly and said, “Can’t be.”
“You can’t go back into the manor, no one can. Not until Dixie and I figure out how to get rid of Asher,” she whispered.
He paced across the floor and shoved his hands through his hair. “Layla. I don’t know what’s going on here. I really don’t. But this work is my father’s business, my business, and the job’s not yet done. Plus, do you know how many workers I have on my payroll right now? Just for the Alcott Manor project? They’re expecting to have their jobs next week, they’re expecting to get paid. As am I, frankly. I can’t just tell them not to come in or that I won’t be there because there’s a ghost in the house. I’ll lose my workers, I’ll lose—”
“Going back to the manor could end your life.”
He shook his head, his mouth moving without sound until he finally said, “I don’t know what to say.” He waved toward her neck. “But it was a dream, and— I—I can’t tank my father’s business. The job at the manor is big for us and I can’t screw this up.”
She rested her head against her fingertips and dreaded the one card left that she had to play. For his sake, because she hoped it would save his life.
Her heart twisted.
“When Brooke was killed…”
He slowly cocked his head to the side.
She tried to speak, but her throat had gone dry and her voice broke off. She sipped her tea. She reminded herself that nearly everything they shared had been in her dreams, none of the meaningful experiences of late had been real. Only dreams. So she wasn’t really losing anything, not really. However, her heart couldn’t quite get on board.
“I had been lucid dreaming for a few months by then, it was really helping me. But that night we were here at the manor and Brooke had been particularly awful that week. This was right after you took me to the prom. At our lockers that day at school, she called out to me in a way that got nearly everyone’s attention in that crowded hallway. Then Jordan said that her mother had lost weight on some diet and maybe she could get the name of it for me. That I couldn’t possibly feel good about myself at my size. She said she was just trying to help.
“But then she started humming that old song, ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry.’ Her friends joined in and soon they were all singing it at the top of their lungs. I was so humiliated. I just walked away without saying anything.”
A Murder at Alcott Manor Page 21