Chris shook his head. “No,” he said aloud.
“Try opening it,” Teo said.
Again, in agitation, Chris projected the image of the dead plant into Teo’s mind. It was followed by a clear image of shattered glass.
“No,” Teo said, smiling, understanding the imagery. “It won’t hurt the door. It’s just like the stick you moved in the woods yesterday.” Watch.
He tried holding Chris’s thoughts with him as he slowly placed his command on the glass. It was so much a habit with him to slide the door open without use of his hands that he had a moment’s difficulty thinking about the effort.
“Can’t,” Chris said, but Teo knew the boy meant “won’t.”
He slid the door closed, then open again. And repeated the whole process. “Your turn,” he said.
He could feel—hear—Chris’s desire to please the large man who held him. Could hear the puzzlement in the little boy’s mind, the uncertainty.
Chris looked at the door. Teo felt the strength of the boy’s concentration.
“You don’t have to work at it. Open it like you pick up your toys.”
Chris frowned. A couple of items on Teo’s cupboard shelves lifted into the air, but the door stayed shut.
“Too hard,” Chris said, pouting a little. The spices he’d sent into the air dropped to the cabinets with a clatter. Chris’s head whirled in surprise.
“It’s okay, niño,” Teo said, and smiled. Chris had, unknowingly, crossed a major hurdle. He’d been concentrating on the door, and managed to lift objects elsewhere. And, most important, he’d done both those things without totally losing himself in the attempt.
Teo slid the door open and carried Chris outside to the crisp, clean mountain air. The door slid closed behind them and Chris clapped his hands.
Teo smiled crookedly, feeling off balance. When had anyone ever genuinely applauded his unusual talents? The scientists at the PRI had certainly been eager to harness them, to use them, but at every juncture, at every stride in development, they’d become more and more fearful, more leery of him. And, eventually, more greedy. And here was a three-year-old boy who simply praised a minor task that he hadn’t been able to accomplish.
He squelched a sudden, wholly childish desire to show off, to let Chris catch a glimpse of what he could really do. This urge etched his crooked smile with a tinge of bitterness.
Melanie knew. She’d known before she had brought her son to him. She’d read the files. She knew he was capable of destroying an entire wing of a building, knew he had reduced the mind of one scientist to complete mush. And she’d seen the evidence of his abilities a dozen different times and, while she hadn’t applauded, she hadn’t run from him.
No, she’d opened her arms and drawn him inside her, giving herself fully night after beautiful night, holding back nothing but her thoughts. And in return for that favor, for that sharing, and because he selfishly had wanted everything, he’d slapped her with words or silence, left her with tears in her eyes, his kisses still warm on her body.
God, what kind of a man was he? What kind of a monster?
He felt a tap on his shoulder and focused his attention on Chris’s brown eyes, his baby face. “Mommy sleeping,” he said. He held a chubby finger to his lips and exaggerated a shushing sound.
He’d spent so many years without anyone able to hear his thoughts, he’d momentarily forgotten how easily the boy could. He could see from the untroubled expression on Chris’s face that he hadn’t understood the complexity of Teo’s musings, only that they had been directed at Melanie.
“We’ll let her sleep, shall we?” Teo said, kneeling down, letting Chris slide from his arms to stand beside him. He held out a piece of meat for the fox. She took it delicately and moved off a few inches to nibble on it.
“Chris do it,” the boy said, reaching into the bowl for a piece. He held it out, imperiously demanding Gina take it.
“Yes,” Teo said, his hand on the tiny shoulder. Protectively, he thought. Supportively. Or was it possessively? Somehow the distinction didn’t seem to matter. The sun was bright, the air was fresh, and today was only the beginning of the third week in a six-month-long miracle.
“Don’t worry,” Chris said, but Teo couldn’t tell whether the remark was directed at him or at the fox.
“I’ll try not to, son,” Teo said.
“No bad guys here,” Chris offered in a complacent tone.
Teo wondered.
CHAPTER NINE
The sky was dark with rain clouds, or perhaps an early snow. It was late afternoon and the birds and forest animals were silent, still. She was inside, but could discern no movement through the heavy sheets of glass. Her heart pounded and her ears rang with the strain of listening to nothing. Something was out there. She could feel it. Smell it almost. Where was Chris? She’d been looking for him, running from room to room in Teo’s home. A shaft of pain shot through her as she thought of Teo. And then came a stark, raw terror.
She heard a voice calling her and thought it might be Pablo from the gas station. “Lady, leave/come quickly!” She ran up through the corridor leading out of Teo’s strange home and burst through the heavy wooden doors. Across the clearing she could see something lying on the ground and didn’t know what it was. Rags. Please let it be rags. Near it, clearer than the rags, was Chris’s red ball, lying on some pine needles.
She heard something moving behind her, and something nearby. From the corner of her eye, she saw a vague, indistinct flash of white, and something brighter, something that reflected the sharp, glittering lightning streaking across the cloud-heavy sky. A needle of some kind. A knife?
She knew she had to run. Knew something was close. But her legs wouldn’t move. And from far away, from the pile of rags lying beside the ball, she heard “M-o-m-m-y!”
Oh, please, don’t let those rags be Chris! she prayed, and tried to run to him.
She heard something beside her again and turned. Teo was running toward her, sparks flying from his fingers, anger lining his face with a harsh blue light. His lips were pulled back in a grimace and his fingers were curled like claws as he reached for her. And he had blood smeared across his palms, mud covering his clothing. She screamed and screamed—
And woke, her throat aching from the harsh release, the echo of the scream taunting her. Her heart pounded in undiluted terror. Where was Chris? Where was Teo? Was the dream a prophetic vision or was it only a product of her fevered, tortured fears? She’d seen the ball before, many times now, and the pine needles. And Teo running at her. But she’d never seen the needle before, or had it been a knife? Had she seen the blood before? The blue light? Was Teo the something that lurked outside, waiting for her? Whatever, she’d always awakened screaming, or trying to. That part was the same. Always the fear of Teo Sandoval.
And she did fear him, more than she had ever feared anything or anyone. But was the fear born of his powers or her reaction to him as a man? She hadn’t feared him the night before even as she was wholly and utterly terrified. The same applied to all the nights she’d spent in his arms, locked in his embrace. Which was the truth? Which feeling was to be trusted? Or were they both the truth, both real?
With Teo Sandoval, where did fear end and faith begin? Somebody had told her once that fear was the precursor of faith, the carrot that led the fearful to that place of control. Was that where Teo was leading her, down a path that led to her ultimate lack of control, to a position of powerlessness?
She pulled on her robe and went in search of Chris. As she moved through the house, remnants of her dream clung to her mind. She felt she was reenacting scenes from the nightmare, except that the sunlight filtering through the glass now was bright and dappled golden, where in the dream it had been distant and gray. This was morning, that had been late afternoon surely.
But she still couldn’t find Chris. He wasn’t in his room, nor in the kitchen, nor even the bathroom. Teo was also obviously gone. Remains of a breakfast were in evide
nce on the countertop flanking the sink. This should have relieved her, should have chased the dream back into the world of shadows, but somehow didn’t.
Everything appeared the same as it had every morning in this bizarre life she’d thrown herself and her son into. Nights spent in passion as deep and intense and as achingly poignant as a great masterpiece of art. Days spent alone, roaming Teo Sandoval’s unusual home, trying to glean some understanding of the man who so haunted her every thought, reading his well-worn books, studying the intricate carvings, fingering the handmade quilts he carefully folded away.
A semblance of a strange pattern had materialized between them, between all of them. By day, Teo was Chris’s mentor, a teacher, a master magician with a half-pint apprentice. By night, the lover. But there was nothing in the middle, no by-play, no interaction. And he would leave her in the night, as though having had his fill of her, as if having pleasured her, pleasured himself, he had no further use of her.
She had discovered much about him by roaming freely through his home, his books, even his clothes. She picked up only small bits of information: a scrap gleaned from an underlined passage in a book—My relatives are not all dead, but they are surely all damned. And I am the one who determines the hell they occupy; a newspaper clipping about a strange rockslide in the steep canyon above Loco Suerte—Geologists Baffled Over Freak Avalanche; a framed photograph found upside down behind some of the books in the large wall unit in his living room—two men who looked alike, who resembled younger versions of the man at the gas station, and a woman with long black hair and hard, cold eyes holding a baby.
There were many such items, many such tidbits that contained clues to the personality that made up Teo Sandoval. But they were all only puzzle pieces strewn across a table too large to be fully recognizable, a puzzle too complex to comprehend. Like the other things that she’d found out about him, they only posed more questions, greater contrasts.
She had often wanted to ask him about the things she discovered, wanted to seek an explanation for the many questions tormenting her. But his shuttered gaze and his stiff silence daunted her, made her all too aware that she, too, was a mystery to him and he was determined she remain one.
She would have to be satisfied with the strange alliance they’d forged, if only for Chris’s sake. She might be getting more restless by the day, by the night, but Chris was blooming. His gifts were obviously gaining strength by the moment, expanding into areas she’d only vaguely suspected he was capable of approaching. And with each newfound “trick,” he’d seemed more complacent, happier.
Teo had done that for him. Teo was giving him a strong sense of self-worth even as he pushed him to greater and greater heights. Hadn’t he done the same for her? Each night in his arms, didn’t she give in to the passion that had always lain dormant in her body, in her heart?
But each night seemed to widen the chasm that stretched between she and Teo, because each night drove home those puzzle pieces she couldn’t make fit. What was he? What did he really want from her? Why did she seem to need him so?
Strange questions, stranger man. Strangest bargain in the history of bargaining. And yet, all seemed to be well, all was working. Or had been.
But today was different. A nearly full pot of coffee waited for her on the old-fashioned stove as it always did. A loaf of fresh bread and some hand-pressed cheese waited for her on the island bar as it had every morning, little considerations that had somehow only daily served to make her feel more off balance, more insecure.
Today, in the wake of the intensity of the dream, the terror rife within it, the feelings of disorientation were even greater.
If she showered in that unusual washroom or soaked in that huge, hot pool of water, the day might seem more normal, less charged by the dream. If, afterward, she strolled outside to find some new offering on Teo’s doorstep, a small token of some townsperson’s gratitude—or fear—the day might seem less dominated by the leavings of the night.
But nothing felt right today. Was it only the dream? Was the dream true? If so, where did truth and supposition collide? How could she begin to interpret the differences and separate illusion from reality?
The truth was that she couldn’t. Nothing in life seemed real anymore. She was living with—sleeping with—a man like no other on earth. She was running for her life and for her son’s protection from a privately funded organization that seemed to have no qualms about circumventing any and all laws, including her permanent removal to gain control of Chris.
And for all that her talents seemed minuscule when held in comparison to Chris’s and Teo’s, she was clairvoyant. Always had been. She couldn’t allow herself the luxury of forgetting that important detail. She knew when things were going to happen. Not always, not definitively, but enough, and often enough, to trust her sense that things were amiss this morning.
The dreams had to mean that the PRI was nearby, or that danger existed here on the mountain. They certainly pointed to the fact that Chris was in danger. And what about Teo’s role in her chaotic dream? She wouldn’t know unless she dropped her careful guard and let her mind roam at will. She wouldn’t be able to ascertain the extent of the danger, the confines of the truth unless she did so.
She forced herself to pour a cup of coffee, as much to steady herself as to take in the jolt of caffeine. She drank it thoughtfully, slowly, trying to tell herself not to worry, not to panic. Teo had taken Chris out on the mountain every day, for most of the day, ever since they’d arrived. He had never lost him, hadn’t harmed him.
Just as he hadn’t harmed her the night before or any of the nights before that. Not physically, at any rate. But while each night was as glorious as the previous, the whole arrangement was beginning to tear at her soul. Because sometime in the space between their first night together and this morning she’d discovered she wanted more. With each union, she found herself fighting to hold on to her guard, fighting not to cling to him, keep him at her side, not to beg him to sleep beside her, abandon himself in dreams, his strong arms wrapped around her, holding her close.
She wanted, leveled at her, that tender look he transferred to Chris. She wanted the smile she sometimes glimpsed on his face turned in her direction. She wanted that gentle voice he used in loving her spoken during the course of the evening, proffered after a meal, or while cleaning up the dishes. She wanted to ask him what he thought about some of the books in his library, the drawings on his walls. She wanted to know why he looked sad sometimes and angry at others.
As long as she thought about Teo, what it felt like to be in his arms, what her legs felt like against his, she could almost forget about the dreams, the feeling that something was dreadfully wrong. But even thinking this much, she had to raise her hand to her mouth to mask the slow moan of anxiety that threatened escape this morning.
What if henchmen from the PRI came upon Teo and Chris unaware?
She shook her head. Nothing could come upon Teo Sandoval without him being aware. It simply wasn’t possible. Why else had she sought him? And yet, the PRI had taken Teo once. Why had she never wondered how before? She remembered that underlined passage in the book, the line about relatives being damned. She knew his father had betrayed him. Had someone else done so, as well? She thought of the look of hatred he’d sent at Pablo that first rainy afternoon, of the phrase he’d used when she’d tried deflecting his anger against Pablo for having sent her up the mountain to find Teo: If I am…it has nothing to do with you. What had Pablo done to him? She knew Teo’s father had literally sold him, almost exactly as Chris’s father had when he’d transferred his custodial rights to the PRI. But the PRI files had been clear on the point that there was no love lost between father and son in Teo’s case.
So how had the PRI gotten their hands on Teo? What had they done to him that drove him to the point of total destruction of the PRI’s laboratory wing?
Did any of this even matter now? Fifteen years had passed and Teo’s life was still as diff
erent as a life could possibly be. But, somehow, she suspected that it all did matter, that it all fit together in some complex alignment of causes and effects.
This morning, however, it was the dream, the prickling of her arms, that kept snaring her thoughts, that kept insisting that something was wrong. She still carried the image of that pile of rags calling her name, that pile of clothes that could only be a person. Please, not Chris! Another part of her added a codicil to that half-formed prayer—please, not Teo!
What if the PRI people had somehow snatched Chris from Teo, were using him against Teo? It was possible. She’d seen with her own eyes the great tenderness, the affection Teo had for her son. She had no clue what he really felt or even thought about her, knew one thing from his lovemaking, an entirely different interpretation according to his prolonged silences, his gruff comments, but she knew what he felt about Chris. He displayed that gentleness, that regard, openly and easily.
She’d even caught glimpses of him studying Chris as if perplexed by the very ease of their relationship. Was Chris the clue to the cradle in the small room, the baby gate around the deck? Had Teo at one time hoped for a family? Craved one, planned to have one? There had been no clues in the files relating to any wife, girlfriend. He was a loner, the notes had said, a complete recluse.
But Melanie now knew that wasn’t exactly the truth. He might be reclusive, might hold himself apart from the rest of the world, but he entered it when one of the townspeople needed him. He saved lives. She’d seen it with her own eyes. And if he was capable of that, capable of the tenderness he displayed with Chris, the sensitivity he let her glimpse in the flare of lightning during the night, then he was also capable of having dreamed of having a family.
She realized suddenly that a family was exactly what he had bargained for in his six-month definition of terms. She to play the wife, Chris the child and Teo the lord protector. But, she thought sadly, they were the farthest thing from a real family. Real families talked, laughed, found inside jokes and curled up together on shabby sofas to read books to each other, relate day’s events.
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