As my breathing stabilized, a process that could have taken anywhere from one minute to twenty, I had no way of knowing, the world around me started to come into focus. Damon had stopped trying to speak to me, stopped trying to ask me questions, a while ago. Now he was just holding me close to his chest, stroking my hair and trying to make me feel comfortable; and it was working.
I swallowed a ball of anxiety and allowed my mind enough time to right itself before turning my wet, teary eyes up at him and wiping them with the back of my hand.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
I shook my head, my lips chin quivering as tears threatened to come again. I wasn’t exactly prone to panic attacks, but when they hit me, they hit me hard. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Could you tell me what happened to you?”
“I… don’t exactly know. I was… dreaming, I think, but it was the worst thing I had ever experienced.
“You’re exhausted. It was only a dream.”
“Yeah…”
Damon shuffled on the bed, sitting upright. I moved around too, settling more comfortably against his body even though he was a relative stranger, but something jabbed me in the side as I moved. I shuffled, reached an uncertain hand around my back, and felt around on the bed until I found the thing that was poking my ribs.
My eyes widened, and I sucked in a breath of air.
“What is it?” Damon asked, alarm of his face.
From behind my back I produced the mask I had been wearing in my dream. It was still cold.
CHAPTER SIX
“You need sleep,” Damon said.
“Sleep?” I asked, “You think I can sleep after this?”
I was shaking, and I hadn’t set foot on the bed since I saw the mask. I had tossed it to one side and had vaulted off the bed like it was on fire. I didn’t want to go anywhere near either the bed, or the mask. Damon was standing a few feet away from me, his hands stretched, trying to calm me down, but my heart had boarded a train with my mind, and both had sped off into the distance.
“I know you have questions, I have questions too, but you’re no good to anyone until you’ve had a chance to rest and process everything you’ve seen and felt.”
“Forget about what I’ve seen and felt—what the hell is that thing?”
Damon glanced at the mask laying on the bed, then turned his eyes on me. “I know what it is, but the answer to that question isn’t going to make sense unless I offer up even more information to back it all up, and you are not ready for more input.”
“Says who?”
“Says me, and I’m not going to repeat myself.”
A shudder ran through me, not so much brought on by a chill or a coldness, but by a strange kind of excitement. The tone of his voice had changed then, had somehow become even more authoritative… and I hadn’t hated it. In fact, I found myself shutting up and instantly relaxing, even though my entire body had stiffened at the sound of his voice.
“Now,” Damon continued, approaching, “You may not know it, or feel it, but you have gone through psychological trauma tonight, and you’re going to do as I say if you want to escape from this with your sanity intact. Is that understood?”
I swallowed and nodded. “Yes,” I said. “Are you… a doctor?”
“I don’t have a doctorate, but I understand the human mind better than most. Come here.”
Every instinct in my body told me not to, told me to keep my independence, resist, but there was something about him that was making me compliant, and it wasn’t magic; I knew what that looked like coming from him, that flash of light across his eyes. I couldn’t believe I was even considering that magic was real, but more than just that, I couldn’t believe I was doing as I was told. It was like being at home all over again.
I walked up to him, bare feet padding lightly across the hardwood floor. Damon stepped up in front of me and placed his hand on my cheek. The sensation was warm, and pleasant. I almost wanted to nuzzle into it, rub my cheek against the palm of his hand. What the fuck, Andi? He smoothed my cheek with his thumb, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on mine.
“I need you to relax,” he said.
“Yes…” I whispered.
“Today has been long and tough, but tomorrow will be longer, and tougher. You need your strength.”
“I do… I just—”
“—none of that is important right now. There will be time for all of that tomorrow. Understood?”
“Yes…”
Damon took my hand and led me toward the bed. A moment ago, I had been dead set against getting anywhere near it, but with him holding my hand, I felt like I could approach, even get on. He reached across the bed, picked the mask up from where I had tossed it, and set it down on the bedside table. My heart was still hammering, not only thanks to the residual fear a panic attack leaves upon a person after it’s departed, but also thanks to Damon and what he was doing to me.
Again, this wasn’t magic; this was just… him.
I settled on the bed, and Damon pulled the sheets up to my chest, smoothing them out for me. “How are you feeling now?” he asked.
“Still not great, but… better.”
A faint smile graced his face. “Good. I want you to get some rest, forget about everything that’s happened until the morning.”
“Forget? But then I won’t be able to tell you what happened.”
“You will. This dream you had isn’t one you’ll forget, and it’s the first of many of its kind that you’ll have throughout your life.”
“What if I have another one now?”
He shook his head. “You won’t as long as you close your mind to them.”
“Close my… mind?”
Damon reached for my face again, and this time I watched the flash of light illuminate his blue, silvery eyes. His hand vibrated lightly against my cheek, and the vibrations pushed through me this time, filling my body with warmth and pushing the tension, the fear out. My mind quietened, and the voice of the demon faded into the black abyss of memory. For the first time in what felt like weeks I thought of… nothing.
Nothing but him.
“Magic…?” I whispered.
“To help you sleep.”
Damon let his hand slip from my face, then drew himself upright. “I’ll be two doors down if you need me.”
I didn’t say anything. I just watched him, heart hammering, a question burning on my lips—one I couldn’t ask. Instead I nodded, and Damon left the room, picking up the remnants of what was supposed to be my dinner with him as he went. At another time, on another day, I may have objected, may even have argued that at least some of that sandwich was still edible even though it had been dropped on the floor, but right now, I didn’t care. An odd mellow had settled around my shoulders, and I just didn’t care.
When Damon left, I shut my eyes and allowed myself to sink into the fluffy pillows under my head, and then sink further into a deep, restful sleep. By the time I opened my eyes again, the sun was out, and birds were chirping. I blinked the sleep away, stretched out on a bed which was clearly not mine due to its massive size, and then sat up.
During the day, the bedroom I had spent the night in looked much, much bigger than it had the night before, owed mostly to the lightness of the walls. They were eggshell white, with lined, golden flourishes running diagonally from the floor to the ceiling. There were pictures on the wall, some of them old oil paintings of New Orleans possibly a century or more ago; one was a painting of a streetcar, another a sun setting over the Mississippi. Some other framed pictures, however, were more modern photographs; one of the Crescent City Connection, another of the French Quarter at night—Royal Street with all the little indie stores.
I spotted an old, deep brown dresser with gold handles, perfectly preserved, polished, varnished, and noticed how the bedside tables matched. The lights set into the wall were old, gothic sconces; black and pointy, with a bulb set into them. There were also two doors in the room, one whic
h led to the bathroom, and one that opened in a way to suggest it was a closet.
All of this antiquity and style, however, was contrasted by the fifty-inch flat-screen hanging on the wall directly opposite the bed, and the intercom panel next to the bedroom door; there was another one beside the bed, within comfortable reach. Of course, they have an intercom system, the house was massive. How else were people supposed to communicate from the comfort of their own rooms?
Then I saw the mask sitting on the bedside table, and my insides went cold.
Jingle.
The memory of that sound, as well as the feeling of the rush that followed, turned my body to ice. I wanted to touch it, pick it up and wear it, but I wasn’t sure what would happen if I did. Would I fall back into that dream I’d had last night? Would my personality suddenly change like Jim Carrey’s did in that movie? But those questions paled in comparison to the biggest question of all, the one that terrified me the most.
How had that mask come to be in my bed, if it had appeared to me in a dream?
I’d had a dream once where I had been given a check for one million dollars, one of those huge novelty checks. In the dream, I’d held onto the thing so tightly, that when I woke up, for a dazed instant, I thought I was still holding it, I could still feel the cool, lacquered cardboard beneath my clenched hands. But as the seconds passed, the check, and the dream, faded into memory, and I realized I was actually still poor.
This wasn’t like that at all. The mask was real, it was staring at me from the bedside table, and that meant other things about my dream could have been real, too; like the person—no, the thing—I had heard talking about a little boy. And to top it all off, Lucia was still missing; I had no missed calls, no new voicemails; she hadn’t even seen the messages I had sent her last night, hadn’t logged into the messenger App at all. It felt like the blood was draining out of my body the more I thought about all that had happened.
I decided to take a deep breath and get up. My stomach rumbled, and that encouraged me to pick out some of the clothes Eli had left for me last night and make an appearance downstairs. As soon as I left the bedroom, the smell of cooked bacon touched my nose, causing my stomach to growl even louder.
I couldn’t say I raced downstairs, but my pace certainly improved.
Downstairs, all I had to do was follow the heady aroma of salty, sizzling bacon in order to find the kitchen, which was—of course—as big as a house of this size required. There were two large ovens, each with a stove large enough to fit six pans on them, an island in the middle of the room surrounded by stools, two fridges, and more cabinet space than I thought possible. A door off to the side of the kitchen led to the yard. Outside, the sun was beaming down. Inside, were Eli and Logan.
Eli, who was sitting at the island, was wearing a white t-shirt, long black shorts, and sneakers. Logan was wearing a pair of jeans and a cooking apron that covered his chest, but nothing else; not even shoes. All of his tattoos were on display, from tribal patterns on his forearms, to the ferocious tiger on his shoulder, to the snake, the wolf, and the shark on his back and ribs. Instantly I felt that familiar insecurity bubbling up. I crossed my arms around my chest and stayed where I was.
“Good morning,” Eli said, smiling brightly when he saw me. Logan turned his head too and waved the spatula in his hand at me.
“Hey,” I said, maybe a little too quietly.
“You sleep okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah, right through.”
“Hungry?”
“I haven’t eaten since… lunch time yesterday. I had a sandwich before work.”
Eli stretched his hand over to me. “Come on over, grab a stool.”
Logan prepared a plate of perfectly cooked eggs, crispy bacon, and thick pork sausages, then he brought the plate, along with a glass of orange juice, over to where I had chosen to sit. My mouth instantly began salivating, and my stomach growled.
“Do you want anything else with this?” Logan asked.
“No, thanks,” I said, “Really, thank you for this.”
He shrugged. “It’s my pleasure. Enjoy it.”
I didn’t need more encouragement than that. The food called to me, and I answered the call, wolfing the it down as gracefully, and as silently, as possible. Sometime during my feast, Damon showed up, also taking a stool by the island and waiting for Logan to serve him a plate. Logan worked like clockwork, preparing plates and serving them as if he knew when the next person was going to arrive. There was a moment when all four of us were eating at the same time, none of us saying a word, with only the chirping of birds and the distant barking of neighborhood dogs for company.
It was comfortable, this silence; something I could get used to, even if I was sharing it with three intimidatingly good-looking guys.
Even though Eli finished first, he didn’t speak until the last mouthful had been swallowed by everyone. “So,” he said, “Do my sister’s clothes fit ok?”
I nodded. “Yeah, they do, thanks again for that. You didn’t have to.”
“I did, but it’s fine. She’s out of town and won’t miss them. I’m just glad you’re feeling a little more comfortable than you were last night.”
“Last night was the worst…”
“You’re telling us,” Logan said.
“Did… you all get a good night sleep?”
“Logan did,” Damon said, “But he always sleeps well, don’t you?”
“It’s a gift.”
“We had a long night,” Eli said, “There was a lot to talk about and discuss. We wanted to make some progress finding Lucia, but…”
My stomach went cold again. “Nothing?” I asked.
“It’s complicated.”
“What do you mean?”
“We haven’t found her,” Damon said, “And we’re having more trouble than I thought we would. Even with magic, it’s proving difficult.”
“Difficult how?”
“It’s tough to explain,” Eli said, “Magic isn’t just like, click, and something happens. There are rules, limitations, procedures.”
“We’ve also been looking the old-fashioned way,” Damon said, “Last night after you went to sleep, I headed back to Wake to see if I could learn anything. It was late, but the bar was still open, so I asked around. Nobody who was still there had seen anything, but I did learn something; Lucia is being hidden by a Shade.”
“A Shade?”
“Shades are Mages with the power to hide things, people, they play with shadows and darkness, with the concepts of lost and found. If she’s being hidden by a Shade, the only way we’re going to find her is if we locate a Seer of equal power.”
“Do you know of any?”
“That’s also complicated,” Eli said, “We don’t exactly have a roster of every possible Mage in New Orleans and their skillset. And even if we did have this information, we don’t really want to go public with what we know; the last thing we want is for word to get out that we’re investigating abductions like this one.”
“You never know who is on who’s side,” Logan said, tapping the bridge of his nose.
“Wait, so you think the people who took Lucia…”
“We don’t think they’re Mages, we know they are,” Damon said, “What we don’t know is how deep their influence runs. If we start asking questions, there’s every chance that information is going to get back to the wrong people, and suddenly we have targets on our backs.”
Lucia. I sighed and let my head fall. “So, we’re still not going to the police…”
“I know you want to,” Eli said, “But trust me when I say, like I said last night, going to the police isn’t going to help. From now on what we have to do is figure out whether or not this group has a Shade working with them and see if we can find our own Seer.”
“And if we can’t?”
“A Seer is plan C. We have a plan A, and a plan B.”
“I wish you could share them with me, seeing as how I’m right here and part o
f this too.”
“I know, but—”
“—but after last night, I don’t want to take any chances,” Damon interjected.
Eli, Damon, and Logan each looked at each other, and I could have sworn every time they did this they were having a private conversation I wasn’t invited to. It was infuriating to sit there and feel left out of the loop, I had never been good at keeping the need to know in check, and after everything that had happened, I was having a pretty hard time keeping my composure in check as it was.
“Guys?” I asked.
“We should talk about your dream,” Damon said, turning his head to look at me. “You probably have questions, I have question too.”
“If you feel like you can answer them,” Eli said, “We don’t want to put any more pressure on you than there already is.”
I nodded, slowly. “It’s okay,” I said, “I can talk about it.”
“Good,” Damon said, then paused, “What can you tell me about the mask?”
I shrugged. “You… gave it to me.”
“I did?”
“In my dream. You were there, and you had a mask too… you gave me the other mask. My mask.”
“Your mask. Is that what I said, or what you feel?”
“What I feel. You didn’t say much, just asked me to come with you. I took the mask, put it on, and walked with you. I didn’t even know I was asleep.”
“Where did I take you?”
“Down a hallway that looked like the one upstairs. At least, it looked like that at first, then it started looking different; it got darker, it started looking older, damaged, then I came to this dark place.”
“Dark place?” Eli said, “Can you describe it?”
“That’s exactly what it was; dark. I don’t remember being able to see anything, smell, taste, feel anything. I could only hear the sound of my breathing, and then… it’s breathing.”
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