Stolen Dreams

by Christine Amsden

  “I hear congratulations are in order,” Matthew said, looking between us. If he retained any feelings of bitterness over losing me, he didn’t show them. I could almost believe he felt genuinely happy for us.

  “Yes,” Evan said, tightening his hold on me. “We were married yesterday.”

  “Still haven’t told your families though, huh?” Matthew shook his head. “I don’t think that was such a good idea.”

  “We didn’t ask your opinion,” I said.

  “No, of course not.” Matthew took a seat across from us, his look one of expectation. He couldn’t read Evan’s mind very well, thanks to some mental shielding Evan put in place, but he could read mine. If I spent much time with him in the future, I would have to look into ways of preventing his intrusion.

  Evan got straight to the point. “Alexander called Cassie this morning.”

  With the phone calls prominent in my mind, Matthew must have learned all the details before Evan’s explanation, but it would have felt weird to sit there and think the information at him, so I let Evan fill in the details.

  “It makes me wonder if Alexander is actually involved,” I said when Evan finished.

  “Of course he is,” Matthew said. “Why else would Tyler have done it except on Alexander’s orders?”

  “Why indeed?” I asked. “But technically, we don’t have any proof that Alexander was involved, only that Tyler was.”

  “He’s good,” Matthew said. “He doesn’t get his hands dirty himself, so it’s hard to pin anything on him, but we’ve been all over the country checking out his methods. I know he did something to that church back in September to make them more hostile than usual. Someone was fighting our efforts to calm the situation down, and Alexander has trained as a mind mage.”

  “I can see why you think someone was fighting you,” I said, “but you don’t have any proof it was him.”

  “Him or someone who works for him. It’s all the same. We’ve found similar strategies used in other places. It seems that when Alexander gets interested in focusing on a community, it suddenly finds itself in need of help. Then Alexander swoops in to save them.”

  “He didn’t save anyone here,” I pointed out.

  “No,” Matthew said. “You did that. And then he turned you into a political prop.”

  “You’d have done the same,” I said.

  He shrugged noncommittally.

  “He’s not going to slip up,” I said. “If you want to dethrone him, you’re going to need proof, or you’re going to need to find a different angle.”

  “We’re working on a different angle,” Matthew admitted. “It’s been tough, though. My grandmother was an amazing asset, but she’s gone.”

  “We’ve been trying to find another seer to recruit to our cause,” Robert added.

  I couldn’t help it. When they mentioned needing a seer, I thought about my dreams, once again wondering if they truly portended anything, or if my subconscious mind was able to focus in ways my conscious mind could not. If the latter, then I had made a few uncanny guesses, especially when it came to that secret panel in Evan’s master bedroom.

  Matthew’s eyes sharpened and he focused on me. “I’ll be damned.”

  I shook my head, frantically. Oh no. I hadn’t meant to think about that in front of Matthew.

  “What?” Evan demanded, looking between us.

  “What?” James and Robert echoed.

  “It’s nothing.” I’d been getting my hopes up again. I did it every once in a while, straining for a bit of magic I knew wasn’t there. It had just come into sharper focus now that I had completely rejected magic. It was the right decision, and I felt good about it, but still… a dream is a dream.

  “She’s a dreamer,” Matthew said.

  Matthew’s pronouncement didn’t mean anything to Evan, but James and Robert both sucked in their breaths, sharply.

  “What is a dreamer?” Evan asked, saving me from having to ask.

  “It’s rare,” James said, looking at me in an entirely different way. “I’ve only ever heard of one, and she lived about a hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “An ancestor of ours,” Matthew added. “I think we have her journal somewhere.”

  “What is a dreamer?” Evan asked again.

  “A dreamer,” Matthew said, taking a deep breath, “is what happens to an extremely powerful seer when she suffers massive trauma early in her life. It’s almost not even a gift so much as a defense mechanism.”

  “I’m not a seer,” I said, reaching for a different kind of defense mechanism–denial. “There are no seers in my family, and that’s a gift that seriously runs in families. Plus, I didn’t have a traumatic childhood.”

  “It can skip many generations,” James said. “It really depends upon the family. There’s no such thing as a seer-sorcerer, so in powerful families, it tends to show up very sporadically, and mostly when the bloodlines get weakened.”

  “Or drained?” Evan suggested, tensing.

  “Maybe.” Matthew was still looking at me as if I’d grown two heads.

  “Cassie, what’s going on?” Evan asked. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “I-didn’t want to say anything until I knew if there was something to say. I still can’t remember my dreams unless they’re good dreams. The dream catcher takes out the nightmares, and I can’t see those parts of the dreams. It just goes dark.” I’d started to think of it as a nightmare shroud, but I didn’t say that part out loud.

  “We need a minute.” Evan stood, taking my hand to draw me to my feet as well. Then he led me out the door to his car. We didn’t go anywhere, just sat in the front seat. He didn’t say anything for a long time, and I could see that I had hurt him by keeping my suspicions from him.

  “I was going to say something this morning,” I said, trying for a preemptive defense, “but then I got that phone call and we were distracted.”

  “You didn’t have to take the call. I told you not to. Better yet, you could have told me yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that, or–how long has this been going on, exactly?”

  Oh yes, he was hurt.

  “It hasn’t even been a week since I first got suspicious, and that was just because I dreamed Kaitlin would have a boy named Jay. Easily a coincidence.”

  “But something else made you more certain.”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “The panel in your master bedroom. The book on magical transference. Actually, your entire bedroom. I saw it all in dreams before I saw it in real life, down to the smallest detail.”

  “You knew I would offer to give you back your magic?”

  “Not exactly. It was all jagged and confusing. I haven’t exactly learned to control any of this. I kept having this dream about a clock striking midnight, and afterward everything went black.” I shuddered, thinking about it.

  I didn’t notice Evan stiffen. I just kept rambling, telling him everything, not holding anything back. “I keep dreaming about a baby girl. She looks a lot like my sister Juliana, and her name is Anastasia. I see her being born. I see her as a child. I guess that’s a good sign, right? But it could just be a product of my imagination. I don’t know anything for sure, not really. I just keep writing down the dreams and thinking about things in the past I seemed to know or get feelings about. You always called it intuition, but what if it was something else? There was the time I got crosses for everyone on the cheerleading squad and then we were in that accident. I had a feeling my parents were going to disown me before it happened, too. I always guessed whether my brothers and sisters would be boys or girls. I know it’s a fifty/fifty chance, but they always had me decorate the cake, because I’d always guess right.”

  “The night you came to me,” Evan said stiffly, “you’d dreamed you needed to sleep with me, didn’t you?”

  “What?” I noticed his tension but I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I didn’t immediately guess its source. “Well, the dreams weren’t that clea
r. There would just be this sense of urgency, and if we didn’t sleep together, the nightmare shroud would fall.”

  “Nightmare shroud?”

  “That’s what I’ve been calling it. It goes to black, and I can’t see what’s going to happen, but I think it’s probably bad.”

  “I see.” Evan looked like he saw something I hadn’t.

  “What is it?”

  “Is that why you slept with me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That first night–was it real or just because of a dream you had?”

  “How can you even think such a thing?” I gaped at him; I’d offered him my heart on a silver platter that night and thought he’d done the same. “That’s crazy. I love you.”

  “I know.” He rubbed his hands up and down over his face. “I do. I just don’t understand why you kept this from me. I can’t protect you if you don’t tell me these things.”

  I stiffened. “I don’t need protection.”

  “Clearly you do, because Matthew sucked this right out of your mind. He’s going to want to use you, and he’s going to be damned convincing about it.”

  “In that case, I suppose protecting me means you’ll never tell me anything?”

  “How do you figure?”

  “I’m a security risk, Evan. Matthew may always be able to read my mind. What can you tell me that he can’t take from me?”

  I could tell from his silence that he agreed, which hadn’t exactly been my goal. I felt angry, trapped, and maybe even a little bit guilty because Evan was right–I should have told him. Keeping secrets from one another had nearly destroyed our relationship once, and thanks to my stupid pride, I was giving secrets another chance to hurt us.

  28

  EVAN WOULDN’T LET ME GO BACK inside after our talk. He drove me home, left me there, and then returned to “try to salvage the situation.” I made a point of not being home that evening, which wasn’t difficult since Kaitlin was close to a nervous breakdown.

  “I feel so alone!” She sat on the floor, back pressed against the sofa, sobbing so hard I thought her heart would break.

  “I’m here for you.” It didn’t matter, though. Nor did it matter that her mother was there for her, and that Madison was there for her. It most especially didn’t matter that Aunt Sherry was there for her, although she’d softened enough to let the woman hold her grandchild.

  I left Kaitlin in Madison’s capable hands that night, promising to return early the next morning so Kaitlin wouldn’t have to spend the day alone while Madison went to work. It would keep me from looking into Jason’s past, or researching ways to hold him long enough to have a conversation, but it was necessary.

  I didn’t speak to Evan when I returned later that night. I was angry with him for not letting me return to the meeting with the Blairs and he was angry with me for not telling him about the dreaming sooner. And underneath it all, I think we were both afraid. Of everything left unsaid and undreamed.

  We fell asleep in each other’s arms, which probably said more about our feelings for one another than words could have anyway.

  * * *

  I see a little girl once again, but she isn’t Anastasia. She also isn’t mine. I don’t recognize the red-haired child, but I recognize the mother who swoops in to engulf her in a crushing embrace. The mom is Jane, the dispatcher at the sheriff’s department, and I have a sense that the two are reuniting after a harrowing experience. The reunion is wonderful, but I can’t see the reason for it, a fact that has me in tears of an entirely different sort.

  * * *

  Alexander had apparently given up trying to call me, but Friday morning I found an e-mail from him waiting in my inbox. Evan wasn’t there to warn me against reading it, having left early without so much as telling me where he was going, but I wasn’t in a mood to ask his opinion anyway. I clicked on the message, and began to read.

  Dear Cassie,

  I’m not sure what’s going on there, or why it upset you when Samantha asked about Tyler, but I do hope everything is okay. If you hear from him, please let him know we’re worried.

  I’m not sure if this will make you feel better or worse, but after I saw you reading that e-mail from your dad, I decided to send you all the e-mails he’s sent me over the past few months. I know you argued when you saw him last, but he did love you.

  Yours,

  Alexander

  Attached to the e-mail was a document containing every message my father had sent him in the past half year. My father had been intermittently angry and pleading, begging for help while cursing Alexander for putting me in danger.

  Several messages my father had written early in November stood out from the rest:

  My daughter keeps telling me that men are harassing her there. Do you even care? You’ve refused to help us with Evan or take responsibility for letting her secret out. The least you can do is protect her while she’s under your roof.

  Alexander’s reply wasn’t included, but a short while later my father had written:

  You can marry my daughter if you can talk her into it. I can even see the benefits, but she won’t have you, and I had better not hear of you manipulating her in any way. Not that it would work. She’s feisty. But I didn’t write to you to have one more man harassing her, I wrote to you in hopes you’d offer her some protection while she was under your roof. Or did I misunderstand you when you talked about protecting the less powerful?

  I read through them all, then went back to the beginning and reread, not even noticing that I was crying until tears started dripping on my laptop keyboard. I wiped them away and started over.

  My father wasn’t a perfect man, but everything he had done really had been to protect me. Maybe part of it was about some old grudge, but mostly he was worried that my secret was out, and that it put me in danger. If only he had believed that I could take care of myself, he and I might have gotten along better, but it was past time for recriminations.

  “I love you too, Dad,” I whispered to the laptop screen before shutting it down. I tried to imagine telling him that I was married to Evan now, but all I could see was the house exploding. Even so, I wished he were there to hear it.

  It was time to call Alexander. My gut told me he wasn’t involved with Tyler’s actions, and I had more reason to trust my gut feelings now than I ever had before. Matthew might be looking for a heinous crime to attach to Alexander’s name, but I only wanted the truth.

  “Is everything all right?” Alexander asked as soon as I identified myself.

  “Tyler Lake tried to kill me last weekend,” I said. “He killed my father.”

  “That’s crazy. I’ve known the man for years. He’s an empath, for goodness sakes.”

  “It was either him, or someone wearing a very convincing illusion.”

  “Well, there it is then. That’s your explanation. But if that’s the case, then Tyler has to be in some real trouble.”

  “Evan thinks he did it on your orders,” I said, “because you knew my father would never make me marry you. Uncle John tried just that.”

  “I told you the truth about that, Cassie. I even gave you and Evan my blessing.”

  “I believe you.”

  “You don’t sound like you believe me.” Alexander paused. “Listen, I want you to work for me again. You and Evan both. I know we’ve had some trouble, but I want to make it right. You’ve both got things to offer me and I think I have things to offer both of you.”

  “It won’t work. Evan’s done with you, and I owe him my loyalty now, not you.”

  “Loyalty, yes, but also wisdom. You both shared some of your dreams with me. I can see both of you working as a field team, you investigating while he provides the magic. Neither of you even have to see me if you don’t want, but you can do a lot of good. I’ve gotten wind of another slave trading ring in the Midwest. What do you say? Want to help take it down?”

  Yes. But Evan was working with Matthew and his new organization, and I felt torn. As much
as I didn’t want to play political games, it seemed like I was being forced to choose.

  “There are other cases,” Alexander said. “There’s a drug on the market that claims to heighten magical ability, but with terrible side effects. We’re trying to track it to its source.”

  “I just have one question for you,” I said, “and I need an honest answer.”

  He hesitated. “Okay.”

  “Last fall, right around the time you came to town, members of a certain church began acting more hateful than usual. It was as if someone set them off. Was it you?”

  “How could you accuse me of such a thing?” The words were right, but the tone was way off. There had been a certain indignance in his voice when I had brought up the idea of his killing my father. It was absent now.

  “People died.” My voice cracked. “I almost died.”

  “There’s a lot of good I can do, Cassie, but only if I can convince the entire magical community to band together.”

  “So the ends justify the means?” I asked.

  “I haven’t admitted to any means.”

  “Spoken like a true politician.” Damn, I had wanted to believe in him. I wanted to take down a slave trading ring, and help find the drug dealers. Maybe I still could find a way, on my own or with Matthew, but it wouldn’t be with him. “Good-bye, Alexander.”

  “You’ll never get another chance like this. What are you going to do, go back to working for that small town sheriff’s department?”

  I thought about my most recent dream, and about Jane. “Who knows? But if I do, there’s honor in making a difference, one person at a time. You’re too focused on the big picture to see it.”

  I ended the call, then made a snap decision to place another. Maybe I didn’t have details, including a time frame, and I would definitely end up scaring the life out of Jane, but so far my dreams had an eerie habit of coming true.

  “Sheriff’s department, Jane speaking.”

  “Jane?” I said. “It’s Cassie. Do you know where your daughter is?”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked. “I’ve only got a son.”

  Oh. I felt deflated. No, more like crushed. It hadn’t been a true prophecy at all, just a random dream. How could I have been so wrong, and how could I have let my hopes run wild?