by Robin Hale
“Are those white ink tattoos?” Laurel asked and from the periphery of my vision, I saw her reaching toward me. Toward the exposed skin of my neck, the side of my jaw.
Toward my scars.
An involuntary hiss parted my lips and I glared at the offending limb until she had enough sense to pull it back. And enough shame to look at least sort of apologetic. The comfortable, companionable closeness I’d been enjoying shriveled under my irritation.
“Is it considered polite to ask strangers about their scars where you’re from? Is that what passes for manners outside of Cincinnati?” I grumbled and retreated to the far end of the bench under the cover of dragging another bunch of chamomile from its wrapping. Never mind that I hadn’t finished the stems in front of me.
“Those are scars?” She asked and although she didn’t reach for me again, she looked curious rather than embarrassed. “But they’re…”
“Everywhere?” I snapped. “Sometimes that happens. Be glad it hasn’t happened to you.”
“I was going to say beautiful.” Laurel put down the stems of verbena and leaned against the heavy wooden bench. “They look like branches. Like pale branches spreading over your skin.”
“They’re called Lichtenberg figures,” I said, ripping the buds from their stems with more force than required. I didn’t want to talk about it. It wasn’t any of her business. Where did she get off saying they were beautiful? “They happen when you’re struck by lightning. Usually they go away. These didn’t.”
The question pulsed behind her lips, danced in her eyes but she didn’t ask it. She wanted to know the story, of course. She wanted to hear all the dramatic details. Well, after telling the Council, I’d never told another living soul and I had no intention of breaking that streak.
The quiet, so recently comfortable and companionable, was oppressive.
“I’m sorry,” Laurel said at last, shattering the tension.
“Just finish those vials.”
5
Laurel
I was dreaming.
I’d always been able to tell when I was dreaming. I’d assumed that everyone could, right up until the moment I’d mentioned it to my mom and she’d corrected me. But dreams were as clear to me as the canvas supporting a painting or the stage around a play, no matter how lifelike. Dreams were a medium that never had the fidelity of the waking world. Sometimes I wished that they did.
She was there again. The dark-haired young woman I’d seen in my dreams for as long as I could remember. She was younger than she usually was. Through the strange blurring that always hid her identity from me, I could see the vestiges of baby fat still clinging, rounding her features from the fierceness I’d seen painted there before. She was excited about something, trying to keep the grin off her face — a too-serious teenager with a child’s excitement over having a secret.
She moved through a house with the smell of something bright and clean, almost citrusy, on the air.
She was on her way to meet someone but she had to get out of the house first. She had to hide it. The adults — they wouldn’t understand and they’d try to keep her away.
She couldn’t wait.
The image shifted, the canvas blurring by in an incomprehensibly disorienting swing of the whole world. The air tasted differently. There was a buzzing, a feeling of insects crawling beneath my skin.
The man outside Barleywick stared at me, his eyes bright and beguiling, a shade of copper I’d never seen in someone’s face before. He was handsome — so pretty he might have been carved from marble by someone with an all-consuming crush on a beautiful man. He radiated surprise when he saw me, said the name that had followed me since I stumbled into the Wyrm. “Olivia.” He said it sternly. Fiercely.
Then he realized, like all the others, that he was wrong — and the light in his eyes changed to something calculating.
And he was gone.
It shifted again, sending my stomach dropping as another wave of crawling things skittered along the underside of my skin.
I was in a clearing — in a forest or some sort of wooded glen. A woman stood in front of me, her back turned but I knew without seeing her face that it would resemble my own. Her hair cascaded in unruly waves over her shoulders and down her back. I lifted a hand to my own hair, feeling the mass of hers against my skin.
She turned and as though her attention had lifted a shroud hiding him, I finally saw the man standing next to her. He bristled with anger and an emotion I couldn’t identify. He was handsome. The line of his jaw and the set of his shoulders were unfamiliar, but he called to my mind with a lure smelling of cinnamon and cloves on Christmas morning. He shimmered and an aura around his body radiated golden power in the shape of a lion’s mane.
At once, their faces froze and fear clawed in the deep places of my instincts.
The man from Barleywick spoke and his voice filtered through the trees but I couldn’t make it out, couldn’t make it out, couldn’t quite make…it…out…
I bolted upright in bed, sweat streaming down my back, and the unseasonable chill of the morning air sapped the last of my bed’s warmth from my body. I turned, confused, and stared at the window. At the wind blowing through my curtains.
Had I opened the window last night? I was sure that I hadn’t.
I shook my head to clear the lingering cobwebs of sleep and rolled my eyes at myself. Obviously, I was misremembering. I had probably gotten over-heated and just didn’t wake up enough for opening it to register.
I shut the window again and flipped the latch — and didn’t think about the skittering legs of insects.
The shop was already open by the time I arrived, and Jean stood near the coffeemaker at the back with someone I didn’t recognize.
The stranger wore her dark hair in a plait down her back and the exposed columns of her forearms were covered in tattoos. There was a tilt to her grin, a kind of rakish cast that suggested she usually found a way to be on the upper end of a joke. She was laughing at something that Jean said with a glint in her eyes, then her smokey-rich voice filled the store.
“So I’ve got at least three clients from the Council building — you know how it is, someone lights their own cashmere on fire and it’s gotta be a curse, right?”
The bell above the door jingled as I came through and Jean’s bright blue eyes flew toward the sound. She put a hand on the stranger’s arm, murmuring something low that I didn’t catch. With a wink and a couple of finger guns, the tattooed woman backed away. She didn’t say anything else, didn’t give any kind of farewell, just tossed me a grin and a wink of my own on her way past me and out the front door.
“Friend of yours?” I asked with a raised brow. I swung my bag behind the counter and made my way to the coffee pot where I paid homage every morning.
“You could say that. An ex, but a nice one. She usually drops by when she’s in town.” Jean smiled over her own mug at me. She paused, took in the way I was fumbling the glass carafe of the coffeemaker, and knitted her brow in a frown. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just tired.” I offered a smile. “I had the weirdest dreams last night. I’m not sure I actually managed to get any rest.”
“Weird dreams?” Jean perked up and her raised eyebrows above the gleam in her eye were a clear invitation to continue. “About Rhea, maybe?”
“No,” I said. I ducked my head to hide the heat in my face. I wouldn’t tell her that I thought the teenager in my dream might’ve been my brain’s interpretation of a young Rhea. It would only get Jean going again and I was embarrassed enough about that little interaction. “They just felt weird, mostly. I always know that I’m dreaming, but some of them…it was like my skull was full of ants or something. Gross image, I know, but the colors were wrong and it all felt…off.” I slid onto the tall stool behind the counter and wrapped my hands around my mug. “And I woke up with the window open but I can’t remember opening it? You ever sleep-open a window?”
“Can’t say that I hav
e, no.” Jean hopped off of her own stool and headed for one of the bookshelves near the display I’d finished the day before. “Here,” she said as she handed me a slim volume. “This one is about dream interpretation. Maybe poke around in it? See what you can come up with?”
I nodded and muttered something noncommittal. Dream interpretation had always struck me as bunk, but I didn’t want to tell my crystal-wearing boss that. Especially when she was trying to help. Dutifully, I spread the book open on the counter, but the words swam in front of my eyes and all I could think about was the evening I’d spent at Barleywick preparing herbs with Rhea.
My thoughts had drifted back to her ever since the first time I stepped foot onto the grounds. Hell, probably since I’d wandered out in front of her truck. It wasn’t just that she was gorgeous, which she was — and honestly, who told her that she could walk around looking like that? Out in public where awkward women would see her and become…whatever mess of insecurities and frustrated crush I had become?
So no, it wasn’t just that she was gorgeous.
There was something about the tension between the way she carried herself when she was on alert and the way she sometimes relaxed. Like seeing a predator get comfortable enough with a wildlife photographer to lie down nearby and take a nap. Not that Rhea was threatening, of course. I wanted to beat my head against something. Even my thoughts were a mess of rambling and contradiction.
There was something about her. I kept finding myself wondering how I could tease her out of her shell. How I might be able to get her to smile, or — dare to dream — even laugh. It was a dangerous game. Not because she was a threat, but because I was so vulnerable to overwhelming crushes that led to nothing but unrequited longing and heartache. And she didn’t deserve to be something I used to torment myself.
I’d come to Cincinnati to find a community and I wasn’t doing myself any favors if I fell into the habit of running after people who didn’t want to be chased.
But there had been a moment where I was sure she’d let down her defenses. That she was going to let me in past some of her walls — and I had to screw it up by asking about her scars.
It hadn’t seemed possible that they could be scars. They were so fluid, so…melodic, if something visual could be melodic. They followed the lines of her arms and the curve of her neck and painted her in this...aura of beauty and power that had kept my eyes drifting from the work I was supposed to be helping her with.
I couldn’t help it.
I’d done it all night. Every little scrap of conversation, every tepidly offered piece of information or polite question had been an opportunity to look at the way the strange lamps had lit the planes of her face.
So yes, she was beautiful. But there was more than that. Since the first moment I’d arrived at Barleywick, it had been like she’d understood what was driving my awkward rambling. She let me off the hook for it. She let me stay. She’d struck that perfect balance of maybe close enough to reach but just far enough away that I wanted to drift closer. Classic moth to a bug zapper — with similar outcomes.
“Okay, maybe don’t read that book. You look like it told you your childhood cat has cancer.” Jean’s voice broke through my reverie and I jerked upright.
“Sorry! I think it’s that I’m tired, really. I don’t think drip is going to do it. I’m going to run over to the coffee shop and grab some espresso. You want anything?” I hopped down off the stool with a desperate shrug.
“You know me, snag a cold brew if they’ve got it?” Jean asked, lips curled in a weightless grin. She claimed the lower acidity was helping her stomach, but I could only imagine what the increased caffeine content was doing to the rest of her.
Not that I had a leg to stand on. I was drinking espresso for the same reasons. Well, maybe one or two more. Like the need to get out of the shop and away from the thoughts of Rhea that kept swirling in my head.
“Okay, that’s a large cold brew, small latte with an extra shot, and two almond croissants. Anything else?” The barista looked up at me from the old-fashioned register, something that had clearly been modified to interface with newer systems, and stood with her hands poised over the keys. Her fingers were covered in silver rings that matched the hardware in her ears and nose. The sight made me feel every inch the hopelessly uncool rube, but I’d never lived in a college neighborhood before and it was kind of a miracle to see people who didn’t look like they’d all been stamped out on the same machine.
A machine that had run out of parts before it had gotten to me.
I opened my mouth to confirm the order as a sudden impulse hit me. “Actually, can I add a small americano to that? Room for cream, please.”
What the hell. It wasn’t like showing up to the Wyrm with too much caffeine was ever going to be a problem.
“You got it, babe.” She punched in the additional item and paused, squinting at me. “Hey, you work over at the Wyrm?”
“Yeah, started a little while ago.” I smiled and tried to remember if I had seen the barista in the shop. I didn’t think I had, but with the way that day was going? I wouldn’t have sworn that I knew my own middle name.
“Rad. I’m newly back in town, so I’ll probably be seeing you a lot more frequently. Can’t miss book club, right?” She winked and scrawled shorthand orders onto three cups, leaving me bewildered at the register.
Oh, well. Maybe someday I’d go to a book club meeting, too. Then it would all start to make sense.
The coffee shop’s door swung closed behind me with another tinkling of the bell. The light playing over the glass struck me, cold and deep and unignorable, right in the center of my spine. Eyes in the glass, a tilted smirk, a knowing glance.
I snagged on it, stumbling over my own feet.
A face. It had looked like a face. I blinked and it was gone. The glass was just glass. It flashed with the half-reflection of the street around me and nothing else. Doubt instantly began to crowd out the certainty that I had felt.
The glass pane shifted, the door moved in its frame and I jolted so hard that I nearly wore coffee down the front of my shirt. I looked up to see a woman trying to leave the shop. Her eyes were wide, wary like I’d revealed I was secretly a hyena in uptown Cincinnati — dangerous and unpredictable — and I offered what I hoped was a reassuring smile as I pulled the door open for her.
“Oh, sorry!” I said.
The woman hurried away and the door settled back into its frame. I fought down the urge to trace my fingers down it. There wasn’t any point. It was just a door. Just glass. But for a moment it had looked like the face of the man from my dream. The man I had seen outside Barleywick.
I spun on the sidewalk, keeping a tight grip on the cardboard carrier for my coffee order, but there was no one close enough to have been the face I’d seen in the glass.
I took a slow, calming breath and chuckled as I blew it out.
I was a mess.
The walk back to the shop took me down the charming streets of the gaslight district near the university. The streets were lined with artsy independent theaters, restaurants, coffee shops, and boutique stores. There was a small grocery store that was run on some sort of co-op and the broad spread of price points that perfectly illustrated that this was a neighborhood where students lingered, but that tenured professors, successful business owners, and the city’s wealthiest still found comfortable and interesting enough to spend their time in.
That mix of people led to voting initiatives that made sure green spaces were maintained in the neighborhood — a far cry from the desolate concrete wasteland that less politically powerful neighborhoods had become — and my favorite one was the large expanse of wooded park that sat in the middle of the route I’d taken to the coffee shop.
I paused at an intersection, waiting for the light to change so that I could continue on my way, and watched the trees in the park sway in the late summer breeze. I’d never lived someplace that had such pretty outdoor spaces so intermingled with an
urban neighborhood. Where I grew up it was entirely one or the other.
It was nice to see the oaks, the evergreens sharing horizon with a high-rise. And as the sun passed behind a cloud, the light shifted and a wave of recognition slammed through my body.
I’d seen those trees before. And not only on the walk to the coffee shop — I’d been dreaming of those trees.
Blood rushed in my ears and the sound of the traffic, the wind, the world around me fell away.
There was a voice right outside my ability to hear it. It whispered along awareness that was more superstitious than physical. But I knew if I could strain in the right way, if I could clear my ears of whatever was blocking me I would be able to hear the words. Would be able to make sense of what they were saying.
It was like a memory of a dream that slipped away faster than I could grasp it.
I dragged in a shuddering breath as the light changed and the walk signal chirped at me that I could cross Ludlow. The sound of car engines and tires on asphalt filled my head and I forced myself to look away from the park.
After work. I’d go back after work and try to figure out why I might’ve dreamed about that place.
“Okay, Jean, I’ve got your cold brew, my latte, and — oh!” I came through the front door backward, pushing through the resistance on the catch so I didn’t need to try and one-hand the drinks, and found Jean and Rhea talking near the front counter. Jean’s face was lit with an amused smile while Rhea scowled down at her.
I spared a moment to feel regretful that I’d announced my presence — I didn’t want to think that I was that sort of creep, but I’d have loved to overhear what they were talking about.
Rhea’s scowl morphed into something like surprise and the taller woman was darting toward the door, catching the handle and taking its weight off of me in a burst of courtesy clearly drilled into her from birth.