by Kate Aeon
Alan studied her. Generally schizophrenics and psychotics didn’t have the self-awareness to realize that they were acting bizarrely; they were usually quite confident that they were perfectly normal — or even better than normal. Phoebe was full of doubt. And knew where she was and who she was. Though she still seemed foggy, and definitely paranoid about her ex, he couldn’t make a case for insanity.
So what about the nightmares? Might she just be someone who suffered from some sort of sleep anomaly?
“You haven’t tried to treat these nightmares yourself? Never gone to a psychiatrist, or someone who could give you some sleeping pills, or... anything?” His voice sounded hoarse and shocked in his own ears, a far cry from the detached, calm professional he was supposed to be. “A sleep researcher? There has to be something that could help this.”
A tiny flicker of a smile across her lips, gone as quickly as it had appeared. “I’m... please forgive me... not a huge fan of the medical establishment, or of medical treatments in general. The whole medical establishment is enslaved to corporations that look at drug development as a profit center. And I don’t feel like being someone’s guinea pig for profit.”
And that was true, he thought. He hugged her gently. “There’s something charming about your cynicism.” He swallowed hard, envisioning her in his loft, naked. Seeing her at her own front door, lost and bewildered and fragile. “You don’t have to be alone in this, Phoebe. I could help you.”
“You don’t want to be involved in my life. Horrible things happen to people who get involved with me.”
“I’m already involved,” he said. “My daughter... Chick... she woke me from a sound sleep and aimed me over here as fast as my body could bring me because this is something that concerns both of us. You and me. Whatever is going on with you has dragged both of us in. You know this. It’s connected in some way that we can’t see. The cards said so — the man and the woman at the end. Chick implied as much. Maybe I’m the one who’s supposed to help you end it, whatever it is.”
“You don’t want to be involved with me. ” She opened her eyes and studied him. “Michael knows about you.”
“Michael is in a coma a long way from here.”
“Whoever is calling me sounds just like him and knows things only he knew, so until I have some proof to the contrary, I’m going to act on the assumption that somehow Michael has found a way to reach me. Anyway” — she shook her head — “Michael called me today and said awful things about me. And he mentioned you.”
Alan sat on the edge of the bed, trying to get his mind around the insanity that Phoebe had just presented to him as reality. Someone might be watching her. But her comatose ex-husband?
Still, he could not let himself forget that he already stood firmly within the realm of the impossible — with Chick’s presence and Phoebe’s strange talents, he had moved into his own personal Twilight Zone, and he wasn’t sure he would willingly leave if given the opportunity. He had some small vestige of Chick back, and if nothing else, he now believed that she had not ceased to exist with her death. And he had this new and tenuous connection with Phoebe.
He didn’t know if he dared think of that connection as a relationship. He wasn’t sure he was ready for a relationship, and the idea of choosing to be with a woman who made her living reading tarot cards and who, by all appearances, was a magnet for every awful possibility that life had to offer unnerved him.
But there he sat, on the side of her bed, looking at her lying with her eyes closed, her long black hair fanned out across the pillows in wild curls. She was still too pale, still breathing a little faster than she should have been. He couldn’t forget how strong she had been in facing a man who had tried to kill her, and how hard she had fought for her life, and how hard she was still fighting against something. He knew that she mattered to him. Chick had brought her to him, and that, too, had to mean something. He tried not to see her lying beneath him on the soft, deep rug up in his loft; the hunger that image stirred deep in him, no matter how eager it was to come to mind, could only confuse this issue. Love was a thing that built slowly over years, that started with friendship and grew into something more, and this — this had happened too quickly, and it didn’t make sense, and he couldn’t look at Phoebe and think about having loved her since he was just a boy. He couldn’t even pretend that he knew her. But his heart and his gut both insisted that she belonged in his life.
Platonically. That would be best for both of them. Certainly until the two of them figured out what was going on with her. With Chick. With the phone calls and the nightmares and her terrible dread — yes, he needed to keep things platonic.
He would take the role of brother, perhaps. He would watch over her and he wouldn’t let anyone hurt her and when she got through whatever she was going through and when he’d made sense of Chick’s appearance, maybe they could see if they might have something else.
“I’m staying the rest of the night,” he said.
She looked up at him, shook her head, and he could see concern on her face. “No. I’ll be fine. I’m feeling much better. And I’m serious. You need to get away from me and stay away.”
“I can’t,” he said, discovering the truth of that only as the words came out of his mouth. And then, with his mind asking him what the hell he thought he was doing, he leaned over and kissed her firmly on the lips. He felt her start to pull away and then fall into the kiss. She twined an arm around his neck and pulled him down, and suddenly she didn’t seem helpless or fragile. The kiss deepened, and his protective urges slipped aside, to let the hunger she brought out in him come to the front. “I’m not going anywhere,” he told her, and heard his voice go husky.
Chapter Thirteen
Phoebe woke to gentle warmth and surprising weight behind her, to an arm thrown over her, and to vague memories of horrors — but this time, horrors banished.
She lay with the light slanting across her face, and for the first time since that devastating night when she lost her family, she felt warmer on the inside than on the outside. Safe. She smiled a little, and closed her eyes, and drifted down into a wonderful, soothing sleep.
“Have to get to work,” Alan said, kissing the side of her cheek. “Before I go, I want to make sure you’re really awake. No more of those nightmares, okay?”
He was leaning over her, dressed in drab green scrubs, beat-up white leather cross-trainers, and a white lab coat. His stethoscope, draped around his neck, bumped its cold little metal heads against her neck. She disliked lab coats, scrub suits, and stethoscopes. All of her associations with them involved terrible pain.
But she liked Alan.
She stretched and shook off the last of the sleep. “What time is it?”
“Just a little before six.”
She looked at him and frowned and sat up. “In the afternoon?”
“You slept for a long time. I borrowed your keys and did a little shopping,” he said. “Didn’t want to wake you, but didn’t want to leave the door unlocked. My cell phone number is on the table — in case you woke up and needed me.”
“You shopped?”
“Your fridge was awfully empty.” He grinned at her. “Sweet dreams?”
“No dreams at all. That’s better — trust me.”
He ruffled her hair with his hand and said, “Then get out of bed, sleepyhead, and don’t go back to sleep until I’m here.”
Phoebe smiled. She remembered her mother doing that when she was little — that same gesture, almost the same words. Nice. It made her feel cared for, and if that was just a fantasy, it was a good one.
She followed him out of the bedroom and locked the front door behind him. After Alan left, she showered, got dressed, and decided while pulling on jeans that her knee hurt enough to justify Tylenol but not aspirin or ibuprofen.
She headed out to the kitchen. She found a note taped to the door of the fridge— “Got you a couple of veggie subs, vinegar and oil, no mayo, no cheese. Figured you could eat t
hose.” The handwriting was both atrocious and endearing.
She stared at the note and blinked back the tears that started to well up in her eyes. He’d gotten her sandwiches?
Just enjoy it now, and don’t think too much, she told herself, and pulled out one of the subs, turned to get the Tylenol out of the cabinet—
Her tea mug was sitting beside the sink, waiting to be washed. Dirty. Dried tea leaves in the bottom of the cup.
She’d had tea the night before, sitting on the couch. She’d put the mug on the end table and had fallen asleep on the couch, and that was when she had the nightmare. Alan had come to her rescue, she’d spent the rest of the night in her own bed. She’d never moved the mug to the sink.
She studied it more closely. It seemed to her that it was in exactly the same spot it had been in the day before, when she hadn’t been able to find it on the table. Exactly the same spot.
She shook her head. That was paranoid. Alan had no doubt seen the mug on the end table and picked it up and put it by the sink for her. Because he was being thoughtful.
She washed the mug out, rinsed it, put it in the dish drainer, and then got herself a glass of water and took her Tylenol.
And then she sat down at the table and went to work. Six in the evening was not prime phone time, but she hadn’t been too regular with the work the last few days, and she needed to log some call time or her priority number was going to drop into the basement and she wouldn’t be able to make rent.
She spread out the cards and started doing readings while she waited for the phone to ring.
She didn’t like the way the cards were falling. Lots of Towers, lots of Deaths, way too many majors and none of them in good configurations.
She was just being sloppy, she decided. She hadn’t paid proper respect to the process. She got up and gathered candles and incense, and took a few deep breaths to clear her mind. She lit the candles. Put a little classical music on her CD player and looped it — Vivaldi for once. Light, happy stuff.
With her space set up, she sat down again. The phone still hadn’t rung. She hoped she hadn’t lost too much of her ranking in the network by taking a few days off. Rank was supposed to be determined by call length, not by volume handled — but she didn’t believe that. She knew short calls counted against her, but she suspected not taking a lot of calls in a day counted against her, too.
She settled into her chair, exercised her knee. Shuffled. Relax. Relax. Empty mind. Breathe in... two... three... four... and hold... two... three.. four... and…
The phone rang.
She took the call on the first ring. A girl named Marti listened while Phoebe uncovered an awful childhood. When Phoebe noted a violence-filled past that still haunted her, Marti admitted that her father had murdered her mother in front of her. Marti talked about a life of hell in foster homes and losing track of all of her brothers and sisters, and finally got to the meat of what she wanted to know, which was if she was going to be able to find any of them again. The five other kids were all scattered, and Marti hadn’t been able to locate any of them since she was old enough to get out of foster care.
Phoebe tossed cards on the table, but she wasn’t looking at what fell so much as just taking impressions. She described rolling hills and monuments and a little book chained to a stand, and it turned out that one of the last things Marti and her family did together before everything went to hell was go to a Civil War battlefield. Marti remembered a guest book kept there.
She and Phoebe talked, Phoebe tossing cards and making suggestions based on what she saw, and at last Marti decided to go to the battlefield, leave her name and address in the guest book, and see if any of her siblings had done the same. It wasn’t much, but it was a start, and she sounded a little more hopeful when she hung up.
Phoebe found herself wondering about Marti and whether she would ever succeed in finding her brothers and sisters again. That was another thing about the psychic hotline job that really got to Phoebe. She never did find out what happened next, how it all came out.
She spent a moment wishing Marti well, then flexed her leg, stood, and stretched. That had been a long call — good for her averages.
She had another long wait, this time only to get one of the Three-Minute Clock Watchers. That wouldn’t help her average, dammit.
Then the pace started to pick up, and the next time she got a breather and really noticed the clock on her wall, it read 10:40 p.m.
She logged off on the first try, deciding that she needed a tea break, and walked around the counter to make some tea.
Her mug, dirty, with dried tea leaves in the bottom, sat next to the sink, in the precise location where she had found it before. Heart fluttering, breath quick, blood chilled to ice, she crept across the kitchen as if it were a snake coiled on the countertop.
She studied the leaves dried in the bottom of the cup. Previously, she’d half noticed that the dried leaves had clumped in a sort of rough triangle. They were still clumped that way. She couldn’t be certain, but they looked vary similar, if not identical.
Phoebe picked up the cup and studied it. Poked a finger down into the leaves. They were completely dry.
But she had washed the cup. She knew she had. She’d washed it and rinsed it and left it in her dish drainer to dry, and now it was back where she’d found it. But it couldn’t be.
All her brief happiness and tenuous security bled out of her.
“The hell with this,” she muttered, and from under her sink she took out one of the brown paper bags she saved from grocery shopping. She put the mug in the bag and smashed the bag to the floor again and again until she heard the glass shatter.
She opened the bag and looked — just to be sure. Yes. The mug was in a million pieces. She closed the bag, dropped it in her trash, and considered taking the extra step of taking the trash out to the community dumpster. But it was late, and she wasn’t crazy about limping across the parking lot in the darkness. She felt far too vulnerable.
She’d solved the problem, though. She could get back to work.
She logged in, and waited, and while she was waiting her regular phone rang. The damned caller ID still wasn’t showing anything. She was going to have to call the phone company and tell them something was wrong. She let it ring twice more while she hesitated, but at last she answered it.
Alan said, “We got a break. I’m just checking to make sure you’re all right.”
She bit her lip. She wasn’t going to mention the cup. “I’m okay. Thank you for the sandwiches. They were wonderful. I’m getting a little work done now, but it’s been slow tonight.” She made herself smile when she answered him, because if she smiled she would sound more relaxed over the phone. She didn’t want him picking up on her anxiety. He didn’t need to be worrying about her.
“Good. I’ve been thinking about you— ” And then he swore. “I’m going to have to run — something big just blew through the doors. Be careful,” he said. And was gone.
Careful. Yes. She should be careful. But of what? She heard voices no one else could hear, got phone calls no one could trace, and had two sightings of a ghost that hadn’t even helped her credibility with the girl’s own father until he was willing to admit that he’d seen his child, too. The only solid, tangible, real thing Phoebe could point to that anyone else could actually see or prove existed was a dirty tea mug. Was she supposed to take that to police and tell them, “I had a cup that wouldn’t stay clean, so I put it in a paper bag and smashed it, and I want you to open an investigation because of it?”
No. She didn’t think so.
And then her Network phone rang, and Phoebe got back to work.
Alan got home on time for once — he’d dashed out the ER doors the instant he handed off to Morrie, getting suspicious looks but ignoring them.
He stopped at his place long enough to pick up a toothbrush and a change of clothes, and then walked next door and knocked.
Phoebe opened it, and for a moment Alan fo
rgot to breathe. Botticelli angel, he thought again — black hair and black eyes and an English rose complexion, made more wonderful by a smile that radiated pure delight at seeing him. She said, “I wasn’t sure you’d stop by, but I’m glad you did.”
And he stepped through the door and wrapped his arms around her and kicked the door shut behind him. “I told you I wasn’t going to let you have any more of those nightmares alone. If you don’t mind, I’ll stay.” He paused. “I can sleep on the couch— ”
She put a finger to his lips and grinned a little. “We’ve moved a bit past that. If you don’t kick, I’ll share the bed with you.”
He showered, pulled on a pair of pajama bottoms, and headed into the bedroom to find her already asleep, far to one side of the bed. He went into the living room to make sure the door was locked. It was triple-locked and had a bar jammed under the doorknob. The rest of the place was tight, too. He found a note she’d left on his side of the bed.
Right half of the closet is yours if you have anything you need to hang up.
He smiled. He didn’t. But he’d make sure that he did tomorrow. He slid into bed beside her. Put an arm around her and felt her nestle against him.
And dropped into exhausted, dreamless sleep.
The sound of a phone woke him.
Phoebe wasn’t really awake when she reached over and picked up the receiver, but the first words she heard woke her up fast.
“Ms. Rain, this is Special Agent Toeller from the FBI.”
She stared at the phone. “Yes, Agent Toeller. Have you found out something already?”
“My colleague in Ohio was both prompt and very thorough. He went in to see your ex-husband in the nursing home yesterday. Due to the critical nature of Mr. Schaeffer’s condition and the fact that the family wanted all measures taken to preserve his life, the doctor refused to permit any blood to be drawn. Apparently even small amounts would jeopardize his life at this stage.”
