Stolen Dreams

by Christine Amsden

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  I blinked. First, a known vampire had begged me to keep his secret, and in such a way that had me seriously doubting his bloodsucker status. And now, the man leading the war against my family wanted to know if I was all right?

  When I continued to look confused he added, “Something just ran past me.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  He took two steps closer, bringing him within easy touching distance. “We need to talk.”

  They were the same words he had used in voicemail messages, text messages, and e-mails last fall. Never an apology, simply “We need to talk.” In some of the e-mails, he had gone on to say that he knew I still loved him deep down inside, that my actions at the conclave had proved it. I hadn’t responded to a single message, nor bothered trying to explain myself. If his arrogance blinded him to the truth, that was his problem.

  His attempts to contact me had stopped abruptly before Thanksgiving, right around the time he–or someone in his family–had blown up Robert’s car.

  “We have nothing to say to one another. You’d better go before Aunt Sherry gets back.”

  “Or what? She doesn’t have any magic.”

  I took a step backward. Evan wasn’t usually so insensitive, but who knew how he had changed in the months since I had last seen him?

  “I’m sorry,” Evan said. “That didn’t come out the way I meant it.”

  “Didn’t it?” There he stood, full of inflated pride that was largely the result of having far more than his fair share of magical talent. It had been that way ever since middle school, when he decided to go from taking it to dishing it out.

  “Your aunt was tied up at the hardware store when I passed by. It’s why I came over. I knew you’d be here, and would be alone for a while.”

  “How did you know I’d be here?” I asked. “Are you spying on me?”

  “Yes.”

  It had been some time since I’d been faced with his disconcerting honesty. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I just stood there, opening and closing my mouth like an idiot.

  He took another step closer. Now we were practically touching. His familiar scent surrounded me, intoxicating me, almost enough to make me forget he was the enemy.

  Almost.

  “Haven’t you done enough to me and my family?” I asked, stepping backward out of reach.

  “I haven’t done anything to you or your family. Some of my relatives have, but only when provoked.”

  “You’re suggesting we started this?”

  “I’m suggesting that we need to put an end to it.” Evan stepped closer, and again I stepped back. He paused, his mask still set, his expression unfathomable. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “Under the circumstances, wouldn’t you be?”

  “No. I would never hurt you. No matter what.”

  “You have a funny way of showing it.”

  “Your family put a price on my head. A million dollar price. Do you have any idea what that’s done to me?”

  I closed my eyes, remembering something Abigail had told me. “You killed a bounty hunter.”

  “Two bounty hunters.”

  My eyes snapped open, but I still couldn’t see anything behind his mask.

  “I had to kill another one this week,” Evan said.

  “I-wow.” I had no idea what to say. I had never killed anyone before. I had killed vampires, but they didn’t count. Fleetingly, I wondered if I would feel the same way if Jason really did turn out to be a vampire.

  “You do realize that if one of these guys manages to capture me, you still won’t see any magic?”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “They want it for themselves.” He still didn’t let his mask slip, or show his emotions in any way, but his anger couldn’t have been more obvious to me if I could read his mind.

  It left me cold to think about the greediness of the bounty hunters, out for profit instead of justice. If I had thought about it I might have realized what would happen, but to be honest I wanted my parents to stop trying to buy justice for entirely different reasons. I still felt like this was between me and Evan, and that we were the only two people who could eventually work it out.

  Of course, that won’t happen if you don’t talk to him. He had made the first move by coming in here; bracing myself against the anger I could sense emanating from him, I made the second.

  “The reward wasn’t my idea,” I said. “I’m sorry you had to become a killer.”

  “It wasn’t the first time.”

  That did surprise me. “It wasn’t?”

  “It doesn’t matter, but no, it wasn’t.”

  I wanted to ask him more. When? Where? Why? And most especially: How do you feel about it? I refrained.

  “That’s not what I’m here about, though,” Evan said. “Things are escalating, and if we don’t find a way to stop this, someone else is going to die. Someone close to one of us.”

  “I know.” It was why I had gone to Abigail, although so far, that hadn’t amounted to much. She had told me to talk to Evan, and now here he was.

  He took another step closer, but this time, I couldn’t step back. I was against a wall, and he was close. Way. Too. Close.

  “I just have to ask you one thing,” he said. “Why did you agree to marry him? Was it because of me?”

  Torn between outrage that he would think I’d get engaged to spite him and incredulity that he still believed the ridiculous rumors, I just stood there, not able to say anything at all.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “You’re too close.” What a stupid thing to say. Now he’d know how he was affecting me.

  “Am I?” He leaned in closer, until we were almost nose to nose. His lips were right there, slightly parted, inviting me to partake of temptation.

  I lifted my hands against his chest, intending to push him away, but I let them linger there for a second too long. It was, apparently, all the invitation Evan needed to seal his lips over mine.

  I had been hit with innumerable lust and love spells over the past few months, both from Matthew and his successors. Some were potent, some were subtle, some tried to be both, but none of them could compare to the simple, primal joy of Evan’s kiss. It had been my first lust spell, and it still hit me the hardest, invading my senses in a fierce, targeted strike.

  Reason fled. Only Evan existed for me–him and the things I wanted to do to him, with him.

  I moaned into his mouth before breaking the kiss and trailing my mouth along his stubbly jawline to his ear. I sucked the lobe into my mouth, feeling a surge of pride and power at his sharp intake of breath. Before I could move to the other side, however, he took control, kissing a path down my neck and into the V of my low-cut sweater. His hands dove beneath and he was about to lift it over my head when he suddenly stopped himself, taking an abrupt step backward.

  “Evan!” I launched myself at him, but it was his turn to dance backward.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Evan, please!” I tried to kiss him again, to feel the rush of pleasure, but he eluded me. I started to beg. “I want you.”

  He took another step backward, tripping over some scrap lumber and falling to the floor. I took advantage of his incapacity by leaping on top of him, pressing my body against him full-length. I managed to brush my lips against his again, reveling in the shuddering thrill that coursed through my entire body. I pressed my hips against him, feeling the evidence of his interest pressing back.

  “We have to stop,” he said.

  I wasn’t listening, and I wasn’t going to be denied what I so desperately wanted. This wasn’t complicated, it was a simple matter of flesh against flesh, need against need. There was nothing more or less important than that.

  “Make love to me.” I slid my hands up his shirt, massaging the lean, muscular frame.

  Evan sucked in a breath, but when he answered, it was with a voice of
steel. “I should. You’re not as far gone as you’re pretending.”

  It was as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over my head. I was suddenly and painfully aware of where I was, who I was with, and what I was doing with him. I was straddling him, one thigh on either side of his pelvis. I had begged him to make love to me, to forge a connection between us that would not be easily broken.

  “Oh, God.” I leaped off of him and away. “Is this what you came to talk about?”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. That was a mistake. I was just… you were….”

  “Irresistible?” I mocked.

  “Yes.”

  “You had no right.”

  “I know.”

  “Stop agreeing with me!”

  He just looked at me, helplessly.

  “Get out,” I said.

  “We still need to talk.”

  Probably, but not here and not now. Maybe never. I felt as if six months of careful resolve had just come crashing down around me, and I had to rebuild my defenses.

  “Cassie–” Evan began, but for the second time that day, the bell over the shop door interrupted an important conversation.

  This time, it actually was Aunt Sherry. She froze for a second when she saw who stood there, then pulled out her phone. “I’m calling Edward.”

  “No need,” Evan said. “I’m leaving.”

  5

  AS MUCH AS IT PAINED ME to admit it, there was nothing I could do for Jason until and unless he came to me for help. I hoped he would. I sent him e-mail messages, imploring him to talk to me, but I didn’t know if he checked his e-mail any longer. His voicemail had filled to capacity months earlier.

  Evan was a different story. He tried to get in touch with me half a dozen times over the weekend, each time beginning with an apology for kissing me. If only he would apologize for the right thing, I might have been tempted to try talking to him again.

  For the first time in weeks, I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Abigail the following Monday. I knew what she would say. Evan and I needed to talk. We needed to find a solution. We needed to get back together. We needed to forgive one another. (She still insisted I needed forgiveness.)

  As usual when I walked into her home, the front door was unlocked. She insisted it didn’t matter; that she would know if she should lock it, and besides, she was too old to have to answer the door. The trouble was, as I parroted back to her, seers can’t predict every path. (She had told me this.) She did give me a key so she wouldn’t have to answer the door when I arrived, but she still never locked it.

  “Abigail?” I called as I walked inside. I had called her Mrs. Hastings for a few days, out of respect, but she had insisted I call her Abigail. It made her feel young, apparently. “Where are you?”

  She wasn’t sitting in her usual spot by the window. I finally found her at the kitchen table, staring blankly at a plate of stone-cold buttered toast.

  “Abigail?” I tapped her on the shoulder, but she didn’t move. Only the slight rise and fall of her chest told me she still lived.

  I had seen her like that once before. She was “peering into the void,” as she liked to call it. She put herself in a trance-like state and got so caught up in possible futures that she wasn’t aware of the present. She swore she could snap herself out of it at any time, that it was fine, and that I shouldn’t worry, but I couldn’t help it. She barely looked alive.

  I busied myself clearing away her breakfast plate and brewing a fresh pot of tea for the two of us. To my relief, by the time I finished she was blinking back to reality.

  “Cassie, you’re here.” Her voice sounded thin.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m old,” she said. “Thank you dear, for making tea.”

  “How does the future look?” I asked.

  She shook her head, wet dry lips, and sighed. “Someone is going to die.”

  I sank heavily into a nearby chair. “Who?”

  “That depends.”

  “On?”

  “Me.”

  I felt an icy shiver run down my spine. I didn’t like the sound of that, and as much as I had come to respect the old woman over the past few weeks, I couldn’t help but remember where her loyalties lay. If the choice was truly hers, would she sacrifice one of her own?

  “You need to talk to my grandson,” Abigail said.

  “I tried. He hurled accusations at me and…” I trailed off, not wanting to recount the rest.

  “Kissed you?”

  I refused to answer.

  “Try again.”

  I thought of several retorts to that, but her dire prediction kept them at bay. “Will it help?”

  “Death is unavoidable.”

  My insides clenched, but I didn’t ask who would die. I knew better than to continue peppering her with questions she had already refused to answer.

  “Let me see your dream journal,” Abigail said.

  I handed it over, bracing myself for her reaction. There was almost nothing in it save fleeting impressions and emotions. It was all I could remember, and though Abigail had told me to start there, I knew she expected more by now.

  “Still so little.” She took a sip of tea before continuing. “Your impressions are always so dark. Fear. Pain. Loss. The emotions you remember speak of nightmares.”

  “I know.” I had often wondered if I couldn’t remember my dreams because some part of me simply didn’t want to.

  “You’re meditating before bed every night?” Abigail asked. “Finding your quiet place, then focusing on a pleasant image?”

  “Yes… yes… and I’m taking the potion.”

  She pursed her lips. “Stubborn. Why are you being so stubborn?”

  “Me? I’m doing everything you’ve told me to do.”

  “Have you? I don’t know. It takes mental discipline, and that’s not something I can tell you to do. It’s just something you do.”

  I stared at her helplessly, wondering what on earth she expected from me.

  “Last week you came to me asking about dream catchers,” Abigail continued. “You were looking for easy answers when there are none.”

  “That is not true. I’m just looking for something that might help. Maybe if I stopped having so many nightmares, I’d remember something.”

  “Aha! So you’re sure you’re having nightmares?”

  I shook my head. “No. I mean… maybe. I don’t think I’ve always had nightmares, but lately….” I lost track of what I meant to say and gave it up as a lost cause. I hadn’t always kept a dream journal or strained for those fleeting impressions of dreams, so I had no idea what went through my mind at night.

  “A dream catcher is a crutch,” Abigail said.

  “You told me that last week.”

  She acted as if she hadn’t heard me. “It catches the bad dreams, allowing only the good ones to filter through.”

  I didn’t say anything, since it was obvious she was talking to herself more than to me.

  “You’ll never be able to use dreaming properly if you can’t see the bad and the good. You’ve got to figure out what’s blocking you and deal with it, and whatever it is will be trapped by the dream catcher.” She sighed and lifted her eyes to me. “On the other hand, crutches exist for a reason. Maybe I’ve been too closed-minded about the whole thing.”

  “What do you see when you peer into the void?” I asked her.

  “Not much.” She shook her head. “All right, use the dream catcher, but only for a few nights.”

  * * *

  Kaitlin is in the hospital, but it is a happy occasion. Any minute now, her baby will come into the world. I wipe her sweat-drenched forehead with a damp cloth, murmuring words of reassurance to her.

  “One more push,” the doctor says.

  “Hear that?” I say. “One more.”

  She clenches her teeth together so she won’t make useless noises and strains. She keeps straining. She is about to give up when a look of mingled relief and wond
er breaks across her face, even as the sound of an infant wailing fills the room.

  “It’s a bo- Ow!” The doctor looks as if he had other ideas, but now decides to quickly place the tiny, gooey bundle on its mother’s belly. The baby lifts its head slightly–so strong already–and gazes at his mother for the first time.

  “Hello, Jay.” Kaitlin places a hand on the baby’s head. Tears stream down her face, but she isn’t crying.

  Tears of joy fill my eyes. I have never been allowed in to see a birth, even though my mother always had hers at home. It isn’t at all pretty, but it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

  * * *

  After weeks of struggling to remember anything more from my dreams than vague feelings, I woke to the memory–shiny and clear–of a real, honest to goodness dream. I could see Kaitlin’s face, both as she struggled to bring her child into the world and then when she looked at him for the first time. I remembered my own tears of joy, and when I touched my cheek, it came away damp.

  I did it. I grabbed my dream journal and began writing furiously, trying to capture every moment before I lost it forever. That morning, it didn’t matter that I had needed the dream catcher. It didn’t matter that Abigail would want me to take the thing down the next night to make sure I didn’t use it as a crutch. It only mattered that I had been working hard for weeks, and that finally–finally–I knew what it meant to wake from sleep with the foggy tendrils of a dream still active in my mind. I held onto that feeling, trying to memorize it.

  I must have had a goofy smile plastered to my lips, because the moment I walked into Abigail’s living room, she noticed.

  “You remembered.”

  I handed her the dream journal by way of a reply. She took it and began to read, her lips twitching upward slightly as her eyes flew down the page.

  “Is Kaitlin having a boy?” she asked.

  “She didn’t want to know for sure. She thinks she is, though. Moms are usually right about those things, aren’t they?”

  “Only those touched with the faintest bit of the sight,” Abigail replied. “She named the baby Jay in your dream–after the father?”