by Audra Hart
Breena sits up, all traces of humor gone because she is nearly overcome by the intensity of Morna’s emotions, “I am so sorry all this crap just keeps happening to you. Do you think Magdrid is somehow behind most of it, if not all of it?”
“I am sure Magdrid is involved, but I don’t think she is the only one behind all of this. Magdrid isn’t powerful enough on her own. She would have to be working with someone else, a Shade, a powerful witch, or something. Oh my God! A Shade? Could that be it?”
Morna is shocked by the possibilities that this idea brings to mind. “Some of the signs I have seen over the years could point to a Shade. Their evil magic is reputed to have a distinctively unpleasant odor about it… It might fit. A Shade would have been strong enough to curse my heart when I was delivering Aideen. The force, the essence I felt certainly felt strong enough and evil enough to be a Shade. Where could she meet a Shade? How would that association ever come about? It doesn’t make sense.”
Morna sits quietly for a second and tries to recall what she really knows about Shades. Not much, she has to admit to herself. They are typically spirits who have passed on but have very, very dark magic in their souls. They assume a human like form, but aren’t even remotely human. They are dangerous, she remembers that. “I need to ask Luca. If he doesn’t know then we definitely need to talk to Ari and Almeda.”
Morna tips up her glass and drains it without thinking about what she was doing. She had meant to wait for the nachos and then sip it. “Crap! I should be thinking and not drinking,” she chastises herself.
Room service knocks on the door. Morna looks out the peep hole, it’s the same greasy looking kid from last night. He’s pushing a cart with a giant platter of nachos, the pops and an ice bucket. Morna puts her hand in front of her just in case she needs a binding spell. She accepts the nachos with her other hand and passes them to Breena before signing for them adding a moderate tip. Then he hands her the cokes, which she hands to Breena, then the ice bucket which she hangs onto, says thank you and presses the door shut with her foot.”
She locks it using the locking spell she doesn’t even realize that she still knows. “Wow! Where does all this stuff keep coming from,” she wonders out loud.
She turns back toward the room, “Paranoid much?” laughs Breena “Good thing you don’t still smoke pot,” she laughs again.
“Breena, something is coming, I don’t understand it but I am afraid it’s gonna be bad. We have to be ready,” Morna says seriously.
“I know Morna, I am just being goofy cause I don’t wanna kill my buzz.” Breena admits quietly. “You have always had good instincts for looming threats. Of course, I take your warnings seriously.”
Morna says, “I’ll be right back.” She darts into the bathroom, nearly as fast as Luca moves and gets her cigarettes and lighter out of her bag. She grabs an empty coke can out of the trash and goes back to the front room. She effortlessly rips the top half of the can off and bends down the sides to make an ashtray, of sorts. “I hope this isn’t one of those supposedly never been smoked in rooms,” she says as she lights a cigarette.
Breena smirks, “Interesting talent.”
Morna shrugs and says, “Well, I can make a pipe for pot out of a coke can too. A boyfriend in college taught me one time when we ran out of papers.” Morna shakes her head at herself and chuckles.
Breena giggles and then snatches Morna’s cigarette out of her mouth and puffs away. “I left mine in my room,” she explains with a smirk. She helps herself to a couple of nachos without peppers. Takes a bite, takes a puff, takes a sip. Then she cracks up at herself. Morna cracks up too, but decides she should scarf a couple of nachos before she smokes or drinks any more scotch. But more scotch is definitely sounding like a good idea. She pour 2 fingers and starts sipping.
Breena smiles and says; “Thank heaven that you have your cigs with you, I left mine in my room, because I figured you wouldn’t smoke, you know, being a goody-two shoes school teacher and all that.” Morna laughs so hard she almost falls off the couch.
“Yeah a goody-two shoes school teacher, that’s me alright.” Morna snorts and then says, “I worked my way through college at a biker bar, believe me I have done a lot worse things than smoke a cigarette.” says Morna.
“Sure, but that was ages ago” says Breena.
“Not really, I worked for the same biker dude just at a different bar in different town four months after my children died until about a month ago. He has been a good friend to me for a lot of years. I met up with him again about ten years ago. We had both landed in Oklahoma. I was tending bar for him until about a month ago.” She laughs because Breena looks like her jaw will hit the floor any second.
“But what did you possibly do that was so bad in the biker bar?”
“Nothing really,” she admitted. “In the second bar. I was looking for some kind of distraction. I would honestly pick out some dude that I planned to ball, but I would never make my move. I never got enough courage, or whatever to accept any of the offers I received while working there. It just never seemed okay. Oddly enough, not even when Luca started coming in posing a regular customer. I wanted him, sure enough, I just couldn’t make that leap from solid, decent, hardworking mom, to screwin around for kicks. I just couldn’t go there. It felt like I would be disrespecting my kids.”
“What about in the first bar?” Breena asks.
Morna takes a deep breath. “Well, that was different. I had tons of opportunities, I just never went for it until October of my junior year. I met this guy that I thought was pretty good looking at the bar. I wasn’t above smoking a little weed on the rare occasion, and drinking a little, so I decided one night to add premarital sex to my repertoire.”
“Well it turned out, that the sex was good with him, and he was an intelligent guy, a physics major at the university, with a decent job, and pretty nice guy too. Well he kept coming around and I kept having sex with him. I really liked the sex, a lot,” Morna admits sheepishly. “I guess some things never really change.” Morna stares into her cup, feeling dark inside and dirty through and through.
“Morna stop that. You can’t beat yourself up because you enjoyed having sex before you knew about Luca and you. It’s what people do, sis.” Breena says as she moves nearer and takes her sister’s hands into her own.
“You don’t.” Morna says quietly. “I can tell. You are still waiting for the one. I didn’t wait in this incarnation, or in three others.”
“It’s not the same thing and you know it.” Breena says gently.
Morna scoffs, “Sure it is.” Morna looks away and takes a deep breath as she wills the tears not to fall. When she’s a little more composed she picks up her story where she left off. “I was still having sex with that man until 2 days after finals of my Senior year. I was due to graduate from college in 3 days, and this dude up and proposes to me. Hit me on my blind side. Clean out of left field. I freaked out, temporarily lost my mind, because I thought we were just having casual sex, you know having fun. But when I look back on it I can now see that people don’t have casual sex with the same person nearly every night for almost two years and it remain casual sex. There were plenty of signs that this man had feelings for me and I ignored them.”
Morna sighs and rubs her face, “I guess I was naïve in a weird sort of way. But it was peculiar, because that is all we ever did together. We would get together after work and have sex, maybe party a little. Most nights I would leave his apartment after he went to sleep and sneak into my dorm. On very rare occasions, he would hang out with a couple of my friends and me after work, and I would stay the night, we would talk philosophy and crap, but I didn’t have any interest in doing anything else with him. I never sought him out, not once in all that time. He always came to me. Every single time.” Morna drains her scotch and looks at the empty cup in her hand for a moment.
“Well, like I said, I kind of freaked when he asked me to marry him and blurted out the first thing that popped
into my head. ‘I can’t marry you because I am already married.’ He asked where this husband was and I said, ‘I don’t really know, he just isn’t around.’ Well, I don’t think he really believed me and I didn’t want to answer any more questions about my fictional husband, so I slept with him one more time, snuck out of his house in the middle of the night, went to my dorm packed my stuff up in my VW bug and took off for north Texas. I called the university the next day and gave them a PO Box to mail my diploma to. I didn’t even have my job nailed down yet, I just lit a trail out of there. I was real a bitch, I didn’t even leave the guy a note.”
“Morna, what was his name?” Breena asks quietly
“That’s what proves what a bitch I was to him. I don’t remember. I can’t even remember exactly what he looked like. I remember he was tall, blonde and good looking… but that‘s all.” Morna hangs her head. “I looked back at that time once about 10 years ago and realized I was trying to fill this giant gaping hole in my life with this one, lone guy, that I didn’t even love and it just wasn’t working. But at least I was smart enough to run that time when someone I didn‘t love asked me to marry him. Later, I wasn’t so smart.”
“How so?” Asks Breena.
“I fell into a similar pattern with Rolan Montfort. We were both teachers in the same school district in Texas. We started hanging out and became friends. Eventually we settled into a pattern. Once a week like clockwork, I would go over to his house we would have sex, I would get up early and leave before the sun came up. We did that for five stinking years. I was totally fine with it. I didn’t want any more from him.”
“But right before I turned 30 he asked me to marry him. I put him off for a long time. But then he started hitting me with arguments, like ‘Don’t you ever want to have kids?’, ‘Don’t you ever get tired of grading papers in an empty house and then going to bed alone?’ These questions started to eat at me, making me think I wasn’t normal or something. So after four of months of him badgering at me, I agreed to marry him. I tried to fill that giant hole with still another man that I knew I didn’t love. It was stupid and selfish, but I did it anyway.”
“We got married at the court house. Four years later I am bored to tears, wondering why I did this to us, I was even considering dissolving the marriage, when I found out I was pregnant with Kyle. After my son was born, I thought our marriage was wonderful, that is until my second son Aiden came along. The labor and delivery was botched by a doped up doctor and my sweet Aiden ended up with cerebral palsy and had these horrible seizures.”
Morna scrubs her face hard with both hands. Breena can see the pain these memories cause her sister but doesn’t speak as Morna continues relating the story. “Caring for a childlike Aiden is very time consuming. He had a lot of medical issues, physical therapy, daily care like feeding, diapering, bathing, you name it. Rolan didn’t like it that Aiden took so much of my time and attention. He started being a real ass about everything.”
“We broke it off around the time Nora was conceived. I was in the process of trying to get a very quiet divorce when I thought that Aiden had died, and then the crash takes my other babies.” Morna looks up and stares at her sister with sadness radiating from her.
“Breena, those children were the only right thing I ever did in forty-nine years of this life time, and that evil witch, and possibly our own mother took them away from me. They tried to kill those precious, sweet, loving children. I can barely contain my rage sometimes, Breena. I am not kidding. I am afraid I might explode someday and do something truly horrible to pay them back.”
“Luca know any of this?” Breena asks her sister quietly.
“He knows about the divorce, but nothing about the sex only relationships. How can I tell him I did that? It doesn’t matter that I was trying fill up an empty spot I didn’t even understand existed, I was just really stupid about trying to fill it. Maybe it wasn’t stupid maybe it was just indecent. Maybe I am just a selfish slut or something. I don’t know.” Morna rakes her fingers roughly through her hair. “But I hope to God Luca never finds out, because I would have to find a way to die and never come back if he ever stopped loving me.”
Breena watches her sister mutely. Morna is crying silently now, tears streaming down her face. She gets mad and wipes them off and them pours about 3 fingers of scotch. Downs it and lights another cigarette, and pours more scotch.
Breena moves to sit beside her sister, and wraps her arms around her. “I know I am wasting my time telling you this, but there’s no way you are indecent, selfish or a slut. You are a passionate woman that has had her lives and her one true love ripped away from her a total 13 times, how messed up is that. I think you are astonishing just the way you are. So does Luca, this nonsense wouldn’t change how he feels about you one iota. So what if you fucked around a little when you were younger. Luca did before he met you.”
“Oh God Bree, don’t you dare ever tell him about any of this. I have not told him about the boyfriend in college. It’s just too sordid. Please I am begging you. It is the only secret that I know of that I have ever kept from him, but I can’t let him find this out. Do you understand?” Morna implores desperately.
Breena hugs her baby sister tight, “Yeah sweetie, I understand. I wouldn’t ever tell anyone. But I can promise you that Luca would understand and would not judge you.”
Morna and Breena sit quietly, sipping scotch and smoking when suddenly Morna’s head snaps up, “Did you say a total of 13 times? You mean I have had 14 lives counting this one? Wow, come think of it, I heard Luca say the same thing earlier. I only remember nine. Ten counting Airendell. Oh my God. I must be really screwed up! Maybe the crash really did damage my brain.”
Morna lights another cigarette. She finishes off the scotch in her cup, and then pours three more fingers. Then she decides to change the subject. And starts telling her sister funny stories from her barmaid days, teaching days, and even silly things the girls at the Bridge had done. The sisters have been drinking the scotch liberally and the bottle is nearly empty. They were both practically rolling off their couches when Breena says, “I need sleep!” And props her head on the pillow shuts her eyes and is snoring 30 seconds later.
CHAPTER 20 - UNSEEN ENEMY ATTACKS
Morna’s thoughts wander to Luca. She’s very worried about him for some reason. Quickly becoming frantic about him. “What if he decides he doesn’t want to come back? What if he can’t come back?” her mind screams at her.
Morna looks at her sleeping sister and says, “Oh God, I wish I could do that.” Morna snuffs out her fourth cigarette. Drains her seventh scotch of the night. “What if he can’t come back? What if the evil that seems to be tracking me has his scent?” Morna shakes her head to try to clear her irrational fears, and decides she better go brush her teeth. When she finishes brushing her teeth, she decides to wash her face.
She dries her face looks at herself in the mirror and thinks “I wonder what hell Luca thinks is so special about me in this life time, or any lifetime for that matter.” Morna stares at her reflection for several minutes and then says, “Hello! I need to go to bed. I am the only guest at this pity party.”
She wobbles into the sitting area, grabs the smokes, planning to stash them back in her purse but leaves them on her suitcase instead. She doesn’t want Breena waking up and lighting another and causing a fire. She puts a light throw over Breena, leaves a lamp on, sets the nachos out the door for pick up, because they are starting to stink up the room.
Then she picks up the pillow that smelled the most like Luca and heads for the last bed she had shared with him. She desperately wants to be surrounded by his scent if she can’t be surrounded by his arms. She lies there in the dark playing re-runs of her fears for Luca. “What if he decides he doesn’t want to come back? What if he can’t come back? What if the evil that seems to be tracking me has his scent?” Her fear for him has become a tangible thing. She sits straight up in the bed and urgently whispers, “LUCA!”
/> “I am here Morna!” Luca whispers back at her from the door to their bedroom. Her relief at hearing his voice spurs her forward. She flies out of that bed nearly as fast as Luca can move and barrels into him. He struggles to remain standing when she crashes into him. She wraps her arms and legs around him, clutching at him for dear life.
He’s shushing her, kissing her, trying to calm her down. But it’s a very slow process. She really had worked herself up into a terror over the thought of something happening to him, making him unable to come back, or that tiny voice says from the darkest corner of her brain that says, “If he got smart and didn’t want to come back.”
Luca had been on his way back into the city. It had been a pretty smooth evening out on all counts, except for strange random thoughts and images involving Morna. Some of them were disturbing. Her with that man she was married to. Images of her heavy with child, then her holding a baby in her arms. Then the deepest sense of loss over not having that baby with her anymore. Then images of another man with a much younger Deidra. Morna‘s tortured voice saying, “I can’t let him find this out.”
Luca is overwhelmed by feelings of self-loathing and despair. He knows those feelings are coming from Morna. Then all of the sudden he hears Morna say, “It is the only secret that I know of that I have ever kept from him, but I can’t let him find this out. Do you understand?” He can see Breena reassuring her. Then it gets all foggy again. Then it’s all these silly images of bikers partying, school kids pulling stunts, and foibles of wayward teenage girls. He can taste cigarettes and scotch.
