Stolen Dreams

by Christine Amsden

  The room is alive, too. Not that it was dead before but perhaps, not yet born. Now it is a stunning mosaic of greens in its myriad shades. The carpeting is a well-manicured lawn, the walls painted in leaves, and the bedding… well, I seem to be lying in a bed of roses with thorns as smooth as 600-thread-count Egyptian Cotton can allow. The roses decorating the bedding are white, a stark contrast to the green.

  I take in all these details in a few seconds, but they are not the focus of my attention. That honor goes to Evan, who stands near the bed, staring at me. I have never seen such obvious passion in his eyes; he does not even try to hide it as his eyes rake my body from head to toe in anticipation of… what?

  It does not take long for me to find out. Clothes are no obstacle for a man with Evan’s gift, and they soon lay on the floor in rags. They will need to be replaced–Evan never did do subtle very well. It doesn’t matter now though. All that matters now is the heat in his eyes, and the echoing heat in my body. I want him, and he hasn’t even kissed me.

  How do I know he hasn’t kissed me yet? The idea is disconcerting to say the least, especially feeling the way I do. There is no other explanation save the kiss. I don’t lust after Evan Blackwood, and do not feel thrills of anticipation at the sight of his–hard, lean, and muscular–naked body.

  Well, maybe in my dreams. But I don’t remember my dreams so it doesn’t count. Or am I… could I be dreaming now? I must be. In that case I won’t remember it in the morning, so what will it hurt to run my hands along the length of his chest? He seems to like the idea, judging from his slight indrawn breath and his fingers tightening on my arms.

  “Cassie,” he says. He moans. “Say it again.”

  Say what again?

  “I love you.” The words come from my mouth, but I have no control over them. I want to take them back, but words cannot be unsaid, and wagers cannot be unlost.

  I lost. He won. His face beams with triumph that I want to wipe off his face.

  This isn’t what I want. I don’t love Evan.

  The scene fades to black like it’s the end of a movie. Except it doesn’t feel like the end of a movie. It feels like the end of the world, or at least, of my world. The blackness is not the comfortable blank slate of my quiet place, it is the finished product. I study it even as I try to shrink away from it.

  There’s something on the other side, or at least there is supposed to be. I can’t see what it is, but I know it’s a nightmare.

  Isn’t the dream catcher supposed to take those away? Perhaps it does, but leaves an imprint.

  Or perhaps it isn’t working at all. How else can I explain that nightmare with Evan?

  Is Evan doing something to me? Maybe he put a different kind of spell on the dream catcher, one to try to convince me I love him.

  No… I don’t love him. I retreat from the blackness, trying to find something else. Anything else.

  Kaitlin is in the hospital, and doing well despite Linda Eagle’s warnings about hack surgeons delivering babies. I wipe her damp forehead with a towel, murmuring words of reassurance to her.

  This is more like it. I’ve had this dream before. I know how it ends, and I look forward to its joyful conclusion.

  * * *

  I woke to the ringing of the telephone. When I blinked the sleep from my eyes I saw that it was only five in the morning, and wondered who would call at this hour. It couldn’t be good news. Not this early.

  The ringing stopped, but I didn’t think I could go back to sleep. Automatically, I reached for the dream journal on the nightstand, but I nearly dropped it when I recalled my earlier dream.

  I was supposed to write down every part of my dream from images to feelings, but I couldn’t write about that. I simply could not, even in a private journal’s reflection of a dream, suggest that any part of me had doubts about my feelings for Evan. I did not love him.

  I was still trying to figure out what to write in my journal when someone knocked on my bedroom door.

  “Come in.” I made sure the sheets kept me covered, even though I wore a t-shirt reaching to mid-thigh. A second later, I knew my efforts were meaningless because Evan didn’t seem capable of seeing me at all. His face was pale, and his eyes stared vacantly into the distance.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I triple checked,” Evan said. “When I took you, I checked and checked and made sure everyone I loved was safe. I strengthened their wards with my own power.”

  Comprehension dawned. My family had taken someone in an attempt to negotiate a trade and rescue me, as I had guessed they would.

  “It’ll be okay,” I said, hoping it would be. This would not help our efforts to put an end to hostilities, but it didn’t have to be the end of the world. “I’m sure they just want to trade.”

  “That’s what they claimed.” Evan’s tone made it apparent he didn’t believe the claim.

  “If you’re worried because of that stunt you pulled forcing information out of Madison when you got the chance, you should be.” I folded my arms across my chest, calling to mind her pale face and wan complexion upon being returned. “Nicolas, in particular, is anxious to make you pay for that.”

  Evan’s eyes found mine, and there was such desolation in them that I almost wanted to hold him. To comfort him. Almost.

  “Nicolas is the biggest idiot in Eagle Rock.” Evan took a deep breath. “I, apparently, am a close second.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. “What is going on, Evan? Who did they take?”

  “My sister,” Evan said.

  I could only stare at him, dumbfounded. “Um, Evan, you don’t have a sister.”

  “That’s what I thought yesterday, which is why she’s in trouble today.”

  14

  WHO IS SHE?” I ASKED.

  Evan didn’t answer right away. He strode across the dark room to the windows, pulling back the heavy drapes to reveal the pre-dawn sky.

  “It’s not someone I know, is it?” I had a strange feeling about all of this. Evan’s father, Victor, had been sterile for years, thanks to my father’s vengeance. He had always wanted more children, and Evan had always wanted siblings, so why was one suddenly popping up out of thin air?

  Evan closed his eyes and nodded, once.

  “Well, who is it?” I asked.

  “Madison.”

  I heard his response like an echo of some long-distant knowledge I had only just forgotten, rather than as a revelation. I knew it. I must have somehow known it all along.

  Madison had been having problems with her father for months because he didn’t approve of her musical ambitions. Over the summer, he had told Madison that he had adopted her, though at the time she hadn’t cared who her biological father was. Then, in September, she had received a sizable inheritance from an anonymous relative. The pieces all fit.

  “How long has your father known?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know any of the details except that my father is sure she’s his, and that he had hoped my mother would never find out.”

  His parents’ marriage was not my problem; my friend’s life, however, was. I knew without asking that Nicolas had turned on her, and that even though I never thought the two were a good match, she would be devastated. She should be. She had agreed to marry him.

  Oh, Nicolas, what have you done?

  I tried to put myself in her position for a minute, but I couldn’t imagine how things must be for her right now. She had not intentionally stepped into the middle of a conflict that had nothing to do with her, but the Blackwoods had captured her and hurt her, forcing her to choose sides. Then her chosen side betrayed her. How would she feel? How could she feel?

  Would she still want to be my friend? A selfish take on the situation, perhaps, but I wasn’t in a position to lose friends. I didn’t have that many left.

  “Do you think…?” Evan took a deep breath and tried again. “Do you think she hates me?”

  That was an easy one. The only hard p
art was deciding how to tell him, so I asked, “Sugar coated or straight up?”

  “Straight up.”

  “Yes, she hates you.”

  “I kind of figured.” He wouldn’t look at me, and I refused to think about him right now. Her hatred of him was entirely his fault. “So,” he said, running his hands across his short hair in his characteristically nervous gesture, “how would you have sugar coated that?”

  I blinked, thought about it for a few seconds, and finally managed a small smile. I didn’t manage enough of them these days. “How about, ‘Evan, she doesn’t hate you, she just finds you likably-challenged?’”

  He smiled, too, fleetingly. “Make sure she’s okay.”

  “I will.”

  “Will you come back afterward?”

  “Unless Alexander keeps me prisoner.” He almost had before, though I could have left through the underground tunnel at any time. Now, he knew about it, so it wouldn’t work again.

  “Then I’ll have to rescue you again.”

  “Is that what you did the first time? Rescue me?”

  “Sounds more noble than kidnapping.” Evan shook his head and finally looked at me. “They won’t hurt her, will they? I thought Nicolas was planning to marry her.”

  “He was. And I don’t think he’ll hurt her. At least not physically.”

  * * *

  Evan dropped me off a mile from the castle, both of us agreeing it would be unwise for him to venture any closer than that. Sure enough, a few yards down the road, and only seconds after Evan drove away, I ran into two of Alexander’s soldiers who escorted me the rest of the way. They didn’t say anything, and neither did I. We simply marched in formation until we reached the front path, where they stopped and let me travel the rest of the way alone.

  I paused before throwing open the front doors, unable to escape the idea that once I did everything would change. Everything in my life had changed a few too many times in the past year for my own peace of mind, but I knew from those experiences that I couldn’t stop the change from coming. I could only respond when it did.

  I pushed open the door.

  Nothing looked different at first. My entire family was there–what was left of them, anyway–spread across the three sofas, two love seats, and two recliners we used to keep a family of eleven plus occasional guests happy. Juliana was helping Mom with the babies, comforting one while Mom nursed the other, Isaac was playing a video game, apparently trying to teach it to Adam, who had a bit too much energy for the activity. Elena played on the floor with Christina, the pair working together on a one-hundred-piece puzzle. Christina had just turned four, and the puzzle had been one of her birthday presents, meant to challenge a young girl already well ahead of the curve on jigsaw puzzles.

  Nicolas was in the dining room with Uncle John, Tyler Lake, and Alexander DuPris. He looked up when he saw me, letting out a long sigh of relief.

  “Thank God, Cassie.” Nicolas pushed back his chair and closed the space between us, trying his best to hug me. It’s hard to hug someone who won’t hug back, though, so he soon gave up.

  “Cassie!” Six-year-old Adam had his arms and legs around me the next second, softening me up with his charismatic charm. His wasn’t as finely tuned as Alexander’s, but I loved Adam so it worked a lot better on me.

  “Hiya, Adam. Missed you.” I knelt on his level to take him into my arms. Christina came in from the side to get her share, and after a minute or so, even the staid Elena moved forward for a quick hug.

  “I’m okay, everyone,” I said. “I haven’t been gone that long.”

  “Evan kidnapped you,” Uncle John said from his position at the dining room table. Today it looked more like a war room than a dining room. “Of course we were worried.”

  “Was anyone hurt in the attack?” I asked.

  “Not seriously,” Alexander replied. “Although the little stunt you pulled could have cost us a lot. It did cost us you.”

  I pretended he hadn’t spoken. I wouldn’t justify my actions to him; his men had, after all, been trying to kill Evan.

  “Cassie,” Nicolas said, unwilling to let it go, “why did you jump in front of him? Alexander’s men told us all about it.”

  I shook off the question. “Where’s Madison?”

  “Upstairs, in the guest room, but don’t change the subject.”

  “I’m not changing it; this is the subject. What have you done to her?”

  “She’s fine,” Nicolas said, but he wouldn’t look at me when he said it.

  “Did you see Victor Blackwood while you were a prisoner?” Alexander asked. “Is Evan keeping him?”

  “No, he–” I stopped, deciding not to talk about my deal. “Look, Evan and I have a tentative understanding. It might help put an end to this feud.”

  “An end?” Uncle John arched his eyebrows. “Victor killed your father, and now you want it to end?”

  “He’ll go to trial,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean we need to keep fighting the rest of them.”

  “What did he do to you?” Nicolas asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Cassie–” Nicolas began.

  “Nothing!”

  “Stop fighting!” Adam yelled, making his voice heard throughout the ground level. Everyone turned to stare at him. “I’m tired of all the fighting!”

  “True wisdom from a six-year-old,” I said.

  “Seven,” Adam corrected.

  I closed my eyes, trying to remember the date. I’d been having trouble since my father’s death, but I suddenly recalled. It was March 3rd.

  “Happy birthday, Adam,” I said, wondering if anyone else had remembered. From the suddenly shifting gazes, I guessed not.

  It was birthday season, as I liked to call it. It began February 17th, with Juliana’s birthday, and kept on coming until May 17th–my birthday. Juliana’s had been two days after Dad’s murder, and no one had noticed at all.

  It had to end. Even if no one else died, which was a big if, we had forgotten how to live.

  “I need to go to Madison.” I considered further interrogating Nicolas, but thought better of it. I headed for the stairs.

  “Wait, Cassie,” Nicolas said.

  I stopped and turned to him, expectantly.

  “You don’t know the whole story,” he said.

  “Enlighten me.”

  “She’s a traitor. She fed information to them, including telling them about the tunnel.”

  I shook my head. “They forced her to tell them that when they took her hostage.”

  “She’s known the truth for months,” Nicolas said.

  “That’s ridiculous.” I started walking, this time ignoring him when he called for me to wait.

  He ran after me, catching up at the foot of the stairs. “He took you away from us, Cassie. How do you think he knew how to do that?”

  “I trust her,” I said.

  “She’s one of them.”

  I stopped halfway up the stairs, using the advantage of the higher step to look down at my tall brother. “Didn’t you love her at all?”

  His eyes widened. “I was going to marry her.”

  “So?” I had received enough proposals of late to know the two weren’t related.

  “I-I–” Nicolas looked away. “I don’t know how to feel right now. Have you thought of me at all, or just her? Yes, I loved her. I was going to marry her. And now I find out she’s stabbed me in the back.”

  I tried to understand how he felt, I really did, but I couldn’t buy into his faulty logic. I knew Madison. She had not betrayed anyone. I also knew Nicolas. He looked more like Dad than any of the rest of us, and now he was acting that way too. The seed had always been there; perhaps Dad’s death had pushed him over the edge.

  “I haven’t hurt her,” Nicolas said. “I couldn’t bring myself to do that, even after what she did. Doesn’t that tell you anything?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll tell you after I’ve talked to her.” With that, I finished clim
bing the stairs and made my way to the guest bedroom. Nicolas still dogged my heels, but I ignored him.

  The guest room was a modestly sized room furnished in neutral shades of green and beige. A queen-sized bed with a brass headboard was the focus of the room and the place I expected to find Madison, but she wasn’t there. I thought I heard her in the attached bathroom; but before I could investigate, my eyes went to the pile of bedding on the floor. She had stripped the bed for some reason. One creamy sheet was half in, half out of the bathroom, while another damp sheet lay draped across the footboard to dry.

  “What’s going on?” Nicolas demanded.

  I had an idea, but I wasn’t going to talk to Nicolas about it–or let him in to embarrass Madison more than she probably already was. “Female things. Go away.”

  I pushed him out the door, closing it shut behind him.

  “Madison?” I said cautiously, as I moved more fully into the guest room and peered into the attached bathroom.

  “Go away.” Her voice sounded hoarse, as if she had been doing a lot of crying recently. Not that I could blame her. I guessed that she had sobbed her heart out, and was only now coming around, but that didn’t explain the sheets.

  “It’s Cassie. I’m back. I’m going to make sure you get out of here.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Madison?”

  “And go where?” she burst out, suddenly.

  “Home,” I said without thinking.

  “And where’s that? Your family won’t accept me living with you, not anymore. My own father–the one I thought was my father–sold me out. Did you know?”

  “No, I didn’t.” I hadn’t given much thought to how the truth had come out.

  “Ten thousand dollar reward for information,” Madison said. “That’s what I’m worth to him. Ten thousand dollars. I was here when he came by yesterday. He didn’t even look at me.”

  “God, I’m sorry.” What else could I say?

  “It’s not–” Madison suddenly gasped, and clutched at the edge of the vanity for support.

  “What the-?” That’s when I noticed the blood she was trying to wash out of the sheets. I had expected it to be there, guessing that she’d started her period during the night and had no supplies, nor the desire to beg for them. I had not, however, expected quite so much.