Tangled Dreams

by Cecilia Dominic

"Ah, Margaret." Charlie stood and shook her hand. "It's so good to see you again. This is my associate, Detective Lewis."

  "Pleased to meet you, Ma'am." Damien stood and held a hand out, intrigued. Normally women buzzed around Charlie, and he took in all the attention with cool detachment. But this time the redhead regarded Charlie with professional politeness, and his friend had a decidedly smitten grin on his face. Had someone finally caught Charles MacKenzie's interest?

  She shook it. "Margaret Cornwall, but Maggie works just fine. Please don't call me ma'am. It makes me feel dreadfully old."

  Charlie stifled a laugh, and she shot him a dirty look. Damien sensed they had known each other for a while and guessed they had some sort of inside joke.

  "All right," she said after returning from placing her order at the counter. "What have you got for me?"

  Charlie signaled to Damien to tell his story and started eating his sandwich. Damien recounted the tale of the three women and Rizzo's shooting. Maggie picked at her salad while she listened, but she soon put her fork down.

  "And what about the shooter?"

  Charlie dismissed him with a wave. "Floridly psychotic."

  "And will probably say the creatures he hallucinated made him do it," Maggie finished for him. "It's the neatest way, really. Cover up with a mental health issue."

  "Neatest way to do what?" asked Damien. He ate carefully to avoid getting anything on his shirt—he really needed to do laundry—and thought he caught an approving glance from Maggie.

  She waited until he was done chewing and said, "Cover up a crime of a more, ah, supernatural nature."

  Damien almost choked on the bite he was swallowing and had a coughing fit. "Of. A. What?"

  "You didn't tell him," she said and sighed.

  Charlie shrugged. "I tried, but you're better at it than I could ever be. More practiced."

  "Okay, here's the deal, Damien Lewis." She leaned forward, took her purple-lensed sunglasses off, and made full eye contact with him.

  The force of her gaze felt like a punch to the solar plexus and took his breath away. Her formerly blue eyes now looked gold.

  "What's your full name?"

  The words tripped off his tongue without any effort on his part. "Damien Armand Lewis."

  "Date of birth?"

  "July twenty-sixth, nineteen ninety."

  "Worst thing you ever did to a younger sibling?"

  His face heated. "Tricked my little brother out of all his Halloween candy when I was five. I told him it had bugs in it." He stopped, mouth agape. "Why did I just tell you that?"

  Charlie laughed so hard he almost knocked his water off the table. "That's low, man."

  "Shut up."

  "It's because I'm a Truth Seeker," Maggie explained and put her lenses back on. "It's an ancient organization whose sole purpose is to keep supernatural events from interfering with the flow of the living world. I'm a police officer of the other side, if you will."

  Damien shook his head to appear nonchalant and kept his hands under the table so she wouldn't see them shaking. "And you're expecting me to believe this?"

  "I can truth-spell anything with a conscience. And it sounds like you've gotten yourself mixed up with some interesting company, like it or not. I'm actually looking for one of the girls you found, probably the one you brought in last."

  "The naked one? Yeah, she was the prettiest by far."

  "Show some respect, man," Charlie said. "She was a goddess."

  Damien frowned. "How would you know? You didn't see her."

  "No, he didn't," Maggie told him. "But that was the goddess Persephone."

  Damien couldn't have heard that correctly. "The who?"

  "Really?" asked Charlie with a grin. "I was just kidding, but Dame had a goddess in his squad car? You lucky dog, you."

  Maggie looked at the ceiling as though praying to something for strength.

  Dear God, she's serious. Damien checked to make sure he could protect anyone who was sitting nearby if she snapped. He knew most crazy people weren't violent, but also that you never could tell; just look at what had happened that morning, which made his gut clench every time he thought about Rizzo's wounds. Was he out of surgery yet?

  As for Maggie, she had the same expression on her face that his grandmother had when she'd told him with absolute certainty that she could talk to spirits, and the voices she heard were saints and deceased family members.

  "There's something eroding the barrier between the two worlds, and we don't know what it is yet," Maggie said. "But the fact that the doctor who treated the girls was attacked shows that he may have stumbled on to it. Can you take me to his office?"

  "Sure." Let's get her away from all these people. "Charlie, do you think forensics is done with it yet?"

  "They should be. They'll probably want to break for lunch soon anyhow."

  "Then finish eating, boys, we've got to get over there before someone—or something—else does."

  When they arrived, Maggie paused in the doorway and surveyed the mess in the office. Damien watched her. She didn't seem crazy, but there was that thing she'd done to him that made him tell her his secrets. Weren't some mentally ill people really charming?

  Yeah, that's it. I'm exhausted and fell for the charm of a pretty woman.

  She nudged one of the books with her toe and said, "Doctor Rizzo has some interesting hobbies."

  "When you're living so close to life and death, you get curious about the other side," Damien told her.

  "Do you know him well?"

  "Sort of. He fixed me up when I got shot about a year ago. We'd chat when I brought people into the E.R."

  "Does he have any family?"

  "I'm not sure. The hospital should have an emergency contact on file."

  "Hold off on notifying anyone for now, at least until I can figure out who did this and if anyone else could be in any danger, too."

  "You make some big demands, redhead," Charlie put in. "It's going to be hard to keep the hospital from notifying next of kin. They probably already have."

  "Telling someone could put them and Rizzo in further danger. I wonder if he's out of surgery yet."

  "Maybe. It's been a few hours, but bullet wounds at close range take time to patch up." Damien crossed his arms, a defensive posture. "Trust me, I know."

  With one last look around the office, she said, "Well, I've got to get back to my cover job. Charlie, keep me posted."

  "Will do, Ma'am."

  "Don't start."

  After she left, Damien grabbed Charlie's arm. "You just let her go? Can't you tell she's mad?"

  "Why? I didn't do anything."

  "Not like that. She's one slip away from landing at Peachview."

  "The mental hospital? Oh, Damien," Charlie said and rubbed his temples. "Go home and get some sleep. This will all make much more sense to you later."

  Damien watched Charlie walk away, his mouth agape. Is everyone crazy but me? Shit, maybe DeMarco was right.

  Audrey wandered around Decatur and kept her eye out for any signs of a goddess-type on the loose. Her interview experience had convinced her that yes, her Collective Unconscious wandering had been real, and there were beings coming into the waking world.

  She walked by Bistro Moderne a few times to see if the new hire would turn out to be Persephone, but every time, it was locked up and dark inside. Her one possible lead gone, she wandered back to Maggie's shop. The door chimes tinkled when she entered.

  "Ah, there you are," Maggie said. "Any luck?"

  Audrey picked up the Zinfandel figurine. "No. My interview went well, and I got the job. There was another supposed interviewee this afternoon."

  Maggie tapped her lips with the pencil in her hand. "That's a promising lead. I may have to stop by there tonight. You say they're desperate for help?"

  Audrey thought back to what she'd said. "No, I didn't."

  "Whoops, sorry. Your mind is very open."

  The thought of someone poking around in he
r thoughts made Audrey cringe. "What do I do to close it?"

  "Just try not to think so loud. Imagine your words occurring behind a screen."

  Audrey imagined a black screen surrounding her thoughts. "Is that better?"

  "Is what better?"

  "I guess so, then."

  "Right. So," Maggie said and tore a piece of paper off the pad in front of her, "here are some places for you to check out."

  "What are they?"

  "The locations where three mysterious young women were picked up over the past few nights. The one with the star is Persephone, I think."

  "What happened to them?"

  "The cop brought them to the E.R. They're at the hospital now, but I don't want to go barging in there until I determine that they are, indeed, from the C.U."

  "I see. They're all on College Avenue."

  "And that's likely where you'll find signs of the crack they fell through."

  Audrey looked up from the paper, her brows furrowed. "And what, exactly, am I looking for?"

  "Remember the scene you witnessed in the C.U.? Look for something similar."

  "So I'm looking for a grassy area…? Oh, I know a possibility near these places."

  6

  Cold rain drops stung Audrey's cheeks, and she kicked an old, dirt-encrusted bottle. So far her search of the empty lot's overgrown surface had turned up nothing to indicate where the goddess and others had appeared. Yet she didn't want to return empty-handed. Or minded. Or something.

  Why should I care?

  Chilled and feeling like the only person for miles in spite of the whoosh of traffic over the wet pavement outside the construction fence, Audrey told herself she should go before the low-hanging gray clouds completely opened up. She shouldn't care what Maggie thought of her, but she'd been through enough therapy to know she liked the idea of being special. The concept of being a dream weaver appealed to her. And she never let anyone down. Well, except maybe herself. But back to the task at hand…

  She took one last look around. The lot, like many others in the area, had recently been sold to developers for condos or some other form of ridiculously expensive in-town living, and it sported a sign—Coming Soon! Another Ames Development. The house itself had probably been run-down, condemned, and then burned by vandals, and it still emanated an air of stagnant sadness in its almost-gone state. The old stones of the foundation poked through the weeds and litter like a monument gone bad. The lot itself seemed to have male-pattern baldness with blank patches in the front and in the middle. Broken bricks and charred bits of something lay interspersed with decaying beer cans and other filth that Audrey didn't try to identify.

  "Remember what you saw in the Collective Unconscious," Maggie had told her. "That's going to be your biggest clue."

  The distress Audrey had witnessed and Demeter's pitiful cries had almost blotted out the rest of the initial scene Audrey had walked into. She tried to remember the visual details, but the images had faded as most dreams do. She recalled a field with grass, and the gash in the ground had not closed completely. Rather, it glowed like lava smoldered at the bottom. She turned her attention to the middle of the lot again, the charred area in the middle of the foundation. She could see that grass had grown there, but something had recently burned it. Which would make the rift down the center of the house. She knelt on a stone to get a closer look.

  "They used to say it was haunted," a male voice said from behind her, startling her to her feet. She looked up to see—oh, shit!—the coffee shop cop. But he wore jeans and a black leather jacket, making him look more bad boy than cop. And twice as appealing. She combed her fingers through her curls, sure they were frizzed and must be writhing Medusa-style.

  "Um, I'm not trespassing, am I?" she asked, then mentally slapped herself for such a dumb question.

  "The answer is yes. I saw you over here and thought I should tell you that this is private property. Have you lost something? Your coffee, perhaps?"

  She grinned at his attempt at a joke, but she could only hold the expression briefly before reality set in. "If I told you, you probably wouldn't believe me."

  "Try me. I've had a very strange day."

  His voice shocked her with its edge of old hurt. Earlier that day, he'd been friendly but firm. Now he just looked exhausted, his tone impatient.

  Not sure, what to say, she blurted, "Aren't you on a patrol or something?"

  He glanced down at his attire but didn't state the obvious. "I was just on my way home."

  "Oh. Well, if I told you what I was looking for, you'd probably try to take me in for being crazy."

  "You wouldn't be the first." An almost-smile played around his lips. "There must be something in the water."

  "Or the trash? Wait a second…" She brushed her hands on her jeans. "Were you the policeman who brought the three women to the E.R.? The ones who randomly appeared?"

  He scratched the back of his head. "I'm not really supposed to talk about it."

  "You're the one. Maggie talked to you today. Redhead with wacky eyes?"

  This time the color faded from his face. "Okay, you should be moving along now."

  "No, really, this is incredible. Please tell me you're an ordinary mortal. You know—a normal guy." She bit her lip to keep the tears from starting. Please be normal, please be normal.

  "I'm about as normal as they come." His grin spread slowly, enveloping her in warmth and relief, and she couldn't help but smile with him. He held out his hand. "I'm Damien Lewis. I apologize. I should have introduced myself this morning after you so kindly offered to buy breakfast for me."

  She accepted the handshake and enjoyed the excuse to look into his eyes. "Audrey Sonoma."

  "Nice to meet you. Do you go to Java Lemur often?" He sounded like he wasn't used to making small talk, but there was something significant about this moment of mundane happening in the middle of the waking weirdness they'd both encountered. She pushed away the thought of how she felt more connected to him than she had to Kyle in a while.

  "I'm a freelance writer, so I like to haunt coffee shops." She cringed—maybe haunt wasn't the right word.

  "I read a fair bit to keep up with what's going on, but I'm sure I would have remembered an Audrey Sonoma byline. Do you write under a different name?"

  "Yes." She decided to take the plunge since she sensed they'd be tied together by their circumstances. Or maybe she just hoped they would. "I write as Annie Smith."

  "Oh, you're the exposé restaurant writer."

  "Right. For now. The hospitality industry is a small world, so I'm just hanging on 'til I get found out. Please don't tell anyone."

  "Your secret is safe with me." Now he teased, "Do you also cover things of the, ah, paranormal sort?"

  "Oh, hell, no." She shook her head to emphasize each word of her denial. "For me, it's usually restaurants and club openings with a few pet shows and festivals thrown in for fun." Something in his face made her reach out and touch his arm. "This is all new and weird for me, too."

  He jerked away. "So what exactly are you looking for?"

  She tried to ignore her stung feelings but crossed her arms. "Would you believe signs of a rift between this world and the dream world?"

  "At this point, I'm not sure what to believe." He glanced at the slightly open fence, but he didn't move toward it. "What have you found so far?"

  She crouched to look more closely at the charred grass. "It's burned, but the fire that destroyed this house was a long time ago."

  He knelt beside her and touched a singed blade. It disintegrated and left a sooty mark on his finger. "You may be right. This makes no sense. There haven't been any fires around here, at least none that were called in. Or that I saw when I was on patrol the past few nights."

  "So no bonfires or anything like that?"

  "No. I was here last night. Well, right down there." He pointed to a corner about a block away. "That's where I found the last one wandering. Buck naked."

  "Are you kidding me?
"

  "No, and she didn't care at all, either. She just asked if it would be good enough for the king, whatever that meant. Do you know?"

  "I haven't a clue. But this seems to be the spot."

  "And the point in finding it was…?" He stood and offered her a hand.

  She allowed him to help her to her feet. In spite of the cold, his hand was warm. "I really don't know that, either. I'm a beginner at this. Oh, crap!" A MARTA bus drove by, and Audrey checked her watch. "That was my bus. The next one's not for another twenty minutes, and I was already cutting it close. I'm going to be late for work." She huffed, annoyed with herself. "And it's my first night."

  "Let me give you a lift."

  "But not in your squad car?" The only car she could see parked nearby was a sensible dark blue sedan.

  He arched an eyebrow, which gave him an adorable, rakish look. "Not this time, but maybe later. Are you feeling naughty?"

  Audrey blushed again. "I just might be. Are you going to make me ride in the back like you would a criminal?"

  She couldn't get enough of his smile and his eyes. It was hard to remember he was a cop—and therefore not for her—when he kidded her.

  "This time I'll let you ride in front."

  Damien couldn't believe he'd offered the girl a ride home. Not that it took him that far out of his way, but she seemed to be tied up with that Maggie woman, whose sanity he still wasn't convinced of. But the things they'd talked about made some sort of sick sense. Plus, he didn't feel comfortable with her walking all that way by herself in the rain.

  When she got in the car, the ease he'd felt with her vanished, and he glanced at the rosary his grandmother had given him, its black wooden beads worn in the centers with the thousands of prayers she'd said. Not that it had done her any good. But it was a reminder of what he risked with this seemingly small act of kindness.

  "It's not too far," Audrey said, and he nodded.

  "Just tell me where to go." He started the car, and a faint moldy odor came from the vents with the initial blast of air. He hadn't noticed until then how she smelled of fresh air and rain.