Dream Under the Hill (Oberon Book 8)

by P. G. Forte

  Lauren continued to gaze at him, mournful, irresolute. It appeared their conversation had ground to a halt, yet she didn’t seem inclined to leave, so...

  Nick gestured toward the chair by his bed. “Why don’t you sit down?” he suggested, adding, when she looked like she was going to decline the offer, “C’mon already, I’m getting a crick in my neck from looking up at you.” It wasn’t true, and he didn’t know whether to feel sorry for her or amused when her eyes went stricken and she scurried for a seat.

  Nick hid a smile. It was a relief not to be sparring with her for a change, and a surprise, as well. Despite all the permutations her personality had gone through in the past several years, the animosity between them had remained the one constant. This new, amenable Lauren was going to take some getting used to. He wondered how long her current mood would last? His smile faded somewhat when he realized he already knew the answer: long enough for him to grow tired of it. At which point, no doubt, he’d do something to piss her off again.

  Which was the same problem they’d always had, wasn’t it?

  “So, tell me something,” he prompted, when it appeared someone was going to have to say something to break the ice. “No one’s been able to fill me in yet. How’d you manage to get away from that place?”

  “L-Liam,” she answered softly. “He helped me.”

  “Ahh.” Nick nodded. Liam. Right. He’d been forgetting about him. “Well, good. I’m glad.” There were a lot of things he was forgetting, actually. There were more gaps in his memory than he would have thought possible. They’d close eventually. At least, he hoped they would.

  Lauren gazed at him uncertainly. “He said you sent him to... to watch out for me. Is that true, Nick?”

  Nick shrugged. “I might have mentioned something. He was going be there anyway.”

  “Why?”

  Why was he there? Beats the shit outta me. “I dunno. He didn’t say.” Or, if he did, I can’t remember.

  “No!” The troubled look on Lauren’s face intensified. “I mean, why did you care? Were you... were you really that concerned? About me?”

  Jesus, what next? “C’mon, Lauren. Don’t be stupid, huh? Of course I care what happens to you.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, as though she were trying to make up her mind about whether or not to believe him. Nick began to reconsider his stand on distractions. Yep, a little solitude was starting to look like a real good thing.

  “What happened to us, Nick?” she asked. “Why did things have to go so wrong? Why couldn’t we make it work?”

  Nick rolled his eyes. Like that was a subject he wanted to get into now. Or ever again. But, with so many answers to choose from, surely he could pick one that she’d agree with? “You already know the answer to that one, don’t you? I’m a bastard and a lousy husband. Remember?”

  It was what she’d been telling him for years, wasn’t it? So he was surprised when she shook her head. “No, actually, you’re not. Not anymore. I’ve heard things from Kate, you know, about you and Scout. And I’ve seen you two together. You’re different now, with her. It’s like... like you’re not the same man who was married to me.”

  “I’m older. Maybe I smartened up. Maybe you and I just got married too young.”

  That was an easy answer, but it wasn’t the right one, either. He knew it and so did she. A familiar spark of anger gleamed in her eyes. “That’s bullshit, Nick. Be serious. This is important, damn it.”

  “Important? Oh, jeez. Yeah, why’s that?” The only thing that was important, was that it was over. Nick figured they both should be thankful that was the case. He closed his eyes and considered feigning sleep. The idea of conducting a post-mortem on their marriage bored him to tears. But, then again, everything about them bored him. Once again, he felt his thoughts go winging after Scout. What was she up to? Was she being careful? Was she keeping safe? Would she call him if things went wrong, or would he only hear about it after the fact?

  “Was it me?” Lauren asked, ruthlessly dragging his attention back to the here and now. “Was it something I did? Was I the problem, Nick?”

  There was a real easy answer to that one, too. Almost too easy. He took it as a measure of her seriousness that she was trusting him not to go there, not to throw her cheating in her face.

  Could it be she thought that didn’t count now? That it hadn’t mattered to him whether or not his wife was faithful?

  Could it be she was right?

  Certainly it hadn’t bothered him enough to make him do something about it, although it should have been obvious to anyone what she was really looking for, all those nights, all over town. Things she couldn’t get at home. Things he wouldn’t give her: love, attention, validation.

  The truth was, that wasn’t what ended their marriage. He’d divorced her only after she took to using as a weapon the one thing that she knew would hurt him. The only thing he’d really cared about, back then. Their daughter.

  Apparently, some things never changed.

  The angry gleam in Lauren’s eyes intensified. “Talk to me, damn it. What’s changed all of a sudden? Or is it just that Scout’s given you something that I didn’t? Is that what did it? You wanted a son so bad that nothing else was good enough?”

  What? In a single flash of outrage, all the sympathy he’d been feeling for her evaporated. Caught between his desire to toss her out of his room and his need to make absolutely, crystal clear to her just what he would and would not stand for when it came to their child, Nick could only glare. “God damn it, Lauren,” he ground the words out through clenched teeth. “You know that’s not it.” And God help her if she’d been filling Kate’s head with that crap, poisoning her little mind with lies, injuring his daughter to punish him.

  Dropping her gaze from his face, Lauren huddled in her chair, arms wrapped tight around herself, eyes squeezed shut. Her voice, when she finally spoke, was so low he could barely hear her. “I don’t want to be alone my whole life, Nick. I don’t want to keep making the same dumb mistakes, over and over again; screwing things up, never knowing what I’ve done wrong, or, or–”

  “Quit using Kate to get back at me.”

  Her head shot up at that. “What? I wasn’t–”

  “You’re not happy with your life? That’s your problem. Deal with it. But don’t drag her down with you, Lauren, you hear me? You do anything else to hurt her, just one more thing, and I swear to God I’ll–”

  “Nick, stop!” She stared, wide eyed and horrified, at him, at the monitors that surrounded his bed. “I’m not. I, I wouldn’t. What are you talking about?”

  In the shocked silence that followed their outburst, Nick could hear the frantic beeping of the machine that tracked of his pulse. Jesus Christ, it’s like being hooked up to a fucking polygraph. As he struggled to catch his breath and slow his heart, before he brought a flood of EMTs to his door, he noticed that despite the arms she’d clasped around herself, Lauren’s tremors had become shakes, strong enough to rattle her teeth. Another chunk of reality dropped on his head. Oh, fuck me. He’d been yelling at a woman in withdrawal? And he still thought she was wrong for calling him a bastard?

  “Sorry,” he muttered, feeling lower than low. “I’m sorry. I guess we’re neither of us having a particularly good day, huh?”

  “I did try to be a good wife to you, Nick,” Lauren said after a moment. “Back at the beginning, when we first started out? Do you remember? I wanted to be. I-I–”

  The beginning? Yeah, he remembered. Before the cheat and the shrew and the nag, and the wide-eyed lunatic jumping from one self-help group to the next, there’d been the hero-worshipping girl who’d somehow thought the sun rose and set around him. The sweet-faced girl who looked too damn much like Scout for his peace of mind.

  That’s what hooked him. That’s what had drawn him back, time and again, even though kindness and common sense told him to stay away. That’s what had led him to marry her. Adoration and a fleeting resemblance to the gi
rl he’d loved and lost.

  “Was I that hard to live with?” she asked him now, and Nick could barely keep from laughing.

  Hard? She’d never know how hard. “It should have been easy.” And, man, he’d really thought it would be, too. He’d thought he could pull it off, that he could sleep-walk through their marriage, make believe she was someone else, and that she’d never know, never notice, never care.

  That was the real reason he hadn’t faulted her for her affairs. What grounds did he have? So what if he was physically faithful? In all the ways that counted, he’d been cheating from the start.

  “Why wasn’t it easy?” she whispered persistently. “What should I have done that I didn’t do? Tell me. I–”

  “Nothing.” The word exploded from his mouth on a new wave of temper – this one aimed at himself. “Jesus. Could you give it a rest? It wasn’t you, okay? There was nothing you did, nothing you could have done, that would have made any difference. It was me. I was every bit the bastard you always said I was. And, I’m sorry.”

  * * *

  This time Scout was eager for the chakra link. The momentary jolt of awareness and the accompanying vertigo as her mind connected with Marsha’s was nothing compared to the relief the contact brought her.

  Me, too, she heard Marsha thinking.

  Scout looked around her, surprised to find that they were once more in a hazy, featureless landscape. Where are we, she wondered.

  Marsha laughed. Nowhere, really. It’s kind of up to you. Picture us somewhere, if you want. Wherever you want to be.

  “Where I want to be?” Well, that’s easy. Scout blinked at the thought, and found herself in Nick’s hospital room.

  “Hmm. Not quite what I had in mind,” Marsha murmured.

  “What’s she doing here?” Scout asked, taking in the frown on Lauren’s face, the bored, resigned expression on Nick’s. “What’s she bothering him about this time?”

  “I don’t know,” Marsha replied gently, “but we don’t have time to worry about that right now. Could you pick someplace a little more... neutral?”

  “Neutral,” Scout muttered. “Right.” Reluctantly, she closed her eyes again and thought, but nothing came to mind. No wonder Lisa had chosen to spend all these years in their old high school.

  “Well, this is interesting,” Marsha said, sounding amused.

  I didn’t, did I? Scout wondered as she opened her eyes. I did. Sure enough, they were back in the same student lounge where she’d seen Lisa – was it only yesterday? Or years ago? Trying to block the sense of loss she was suddenly feeling, Scout wandered over to the window and looked outside.

  “She’s not here, you know,” Marsha said. “She’s moved on. It was time.”

  Scout nodded. “I know.” Sadly, she turned back to face Marsha and gasped in surprise. “Sinead? Wh-what are you doing here?”

  Amusement gleamed in Sinead’s eyes as Marsha’s laugh pearled out of her throat. “Just noticing, are you?”

  “How are you doing that?”

  “Not me. Chenoa. She does good work.” Marsha/Sinead shook her head. “These aren’t our physical bodies, you know. What you’re seeing is an energy pattern that your mind is interpreting as Sinead only because you know her, and recognize the pattern as belonging to her. Which is exactly what we hope Gregg does. I don’t look like Siobhan to you, do I?”

  Scout shook her head again, emphatically. “No, Ma’am.” And how weird was that? “It’s a shame Ryan couldn’t have gotten this view.” It had taken Siobhan’s husband a long time to discover the differences between the twins, a little too long for the comfort of everyone involved.

  “It is,” Marsha agreed. “But he really blocks this kind of perception, so I don’t know how much good it would do.”

  “Marsha? What now?” Lucy’s voice filtered in from the room around them.

  Good question, Scout thought as she, too, awaited Marsha’s answer.

  Marsha shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t have the energy to talk to her, Scout. You’ll have to do the communicating for both of us, this time.”

  Oh, okay, Scout thought, I’ll give it a try. She remembered other times when she’d been entranced, when speaking aloud was almost impossible. But now, tuning into Marsha’s thoughts was almost too easy, and relaying the information on to Lucy took hardly any effort at all.

  “Just get everyone to start raising as much energy as possible,” she directed. “Maybe have Chenoa do some drumming, or something.”

  She could feel everyone around them settling into place, quieting their minds. “Is that it?” she asked Marsha.

  There was a moment of hesitation. Marsha appeared to be thinking hard. “Not quite, I’m afraid. There’s one thing more you have to do, Scout. You’re going to have to shield your aura. We’re raising energy in order to create a beacon. We want to attract Gregg’s attention with it. But, if we succeed, he’s going to be looking for the strongest signature he can find. Right now, that’s you.”

  “Me?” Scout felt a shimmer of fear. Oh, good. A beacon. That’s just what I want to be.

  “Don’t worry. That’s not the plan. If you’re hidden, and I’m linked to you, all he’ll see is me. Or, if everything works the way we want it to, what he’ll see, or think he’s seeing, will be Sinead.”

  “But I don’t know how to shield myself,“ Scout protested, feeling somewhat cowardly. I’m just supposed to disappear and leave Marsha alone? That’s nice of me. “I never really knew how I did it. It always just... happened.”

  Marsha smiled. “Don’t feel bad about it, Scout. We don’t want him to see you, remember? Anyway, it should actually be a lot easier on this level. Just think yourself invisible.”

  Invisible. I can do that, Scout thought, feeling almost reassured. Invisible didn’t mean gone, after all. It just meant hidden.

  Scout concentrated on thinking herself into a shadow, while the drumming continued quietly in the distance. For a long time nothing else seemed to happen. Eventually, she felt herself start to float, as though she were riding a gentle crest that seemed to grow and grow and grow. It was such a pleasant, peaceful feeling that she was surprise when she felt Marsha shift restlessly beside her.

  “What’s wrong?” Scout asked, curious.

  “It’s too peaceful. I’m not sensing anything – are you?”

  Anything? Scout smiled. “You mean Gregg?”

  “No, I mean anything outside of this room. Or anything outside of this link, actually. We need to find out what’s happening. I don’t want to just wait here until he blindsides us.”

  I kind of thought that was the point, Scout sighed. Crap. She knew what Marsha wanted her to do. Astral projection. To split her consciousness into several parts, as she’d done in the past, and then project a part of herself outside the room. She took a deep breath, steeled herself against the disorientation, the pressure, the split. And then... and then nothing. Puzzled, she tried again, but, “Something’s wrong,” she could hear the tinge of panic in her voice. “Marsha, I-I can’t–”

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Scout almost felt like laughing at the irony. She wasn’t able to split her mind into pieces – and that scared her. Which made no sense at all. Who would have ever thought she’d be upset because she couldn’t do something she didn’t want to do in the first place?

  “It’s not surprising, really,” Marsha soothed. “You’re channeling so much energy right now, you probably feel as though you’ll blow yourself apart if you try.”

  “Well, yes, there’s that, too,” Scout admitted, reluctantly. That part was a whole lot less funny, come to think of it.

  “You’ll just have to project your whole mind then,” Marsha said. “And that shouldn’t be a problem. You’ve gotten real good at that.”

  Project my whole mind? Scout could feel herself growing nervous all over again. Oh is that all? But, really, it was less frightening. And, like taking them to see Nick just now, not difficult, at all. Except...r />
  “It is more difficult without a set target,” Marsha agreed. “You’ve always done better when you’ve had something to point yourself at, in a manner of speaking. And, since we don’t want to alert Gregg to the fact that we’re hoping he’ll find us, we don’t want you actively seeking him out. What we’re trying to determine is what effect, if any, we’re having. Tell Lucy to light some incense.”

  “We need some incense,” Scout repeated. “Something to aid astral travel.”

  In the shocked silence that followed her request, she could hear Lucy’s thoughts, quite clearly. A little vague, much? How about some suggestions?

  “Sandalwood,” Scout relayed dutifully, while Marsha laughed. “Benzoin, mugwort... ”

  “Oh, I have some mugwort here in my pack, if you need it,” Chenoa said, amid sounds of rustling and unzipping.

  Marsha sighed. What is she doing? She should have put that stuff away already.

  “Good. And I’ve got the rest,” Lucy said, dropping small chunks of resin on the coals.

  Even with her eyes closed, Scout could sense what was happening. Curling plumes of smoke rose toward the ceiling, creating a spiraling path that passed through the plaster, through wood and stone, through the roof itself, and on into space. She felt Adam’s interest spike, felt his thoughts focus more intently on her, but she brushed them aside. She needed to be clear to do this. She needed to trust that the link with Marsha would keep her fixed here, and let the rest of it go.

  She felt herself rise with the smoke. Out of her body. Into the air. Up toward the ceiling. A sudden thought chilled her and halted her flight.

  “If I’m gone... Marsha, you won’t be able to communicate with anyone.”

  Marsha sighed. “Thought of that, did you? Don’t worry about me, Scout. Just... go.”

  Go. It might have been meant as a suggestion, but Scout’s mind took it as an order. She felt an odd rush, like a sudden wind, as she passed through the ceiling. And then... she found herself floating in darkness. There was a sense of something watching her from the surrounding trees, again her mind thought owl. And again, she questioned the assumption. No. Almost, but not quite.