“Good. You left early.”
There it was, the hint of anger threaded in her words.
“I know. I couldn’t sleep and I wanted to get to the office early. I should have left a note or called you earlier. I’m sorry.” He closed his eyes while he waited for her to respond.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
She cleared her throat. “I have no idea. You seemed happy last night.”
“I was very happy, thanks to you.” No lie was required there at all. “Honestly, I wish I could have stayed in bed with you all day, but that’s not my life.”
A clanging of noises sounded in the background.
“What are you doing?” Jayce asked.
“Cooking breakfast. I would offer you some, but…”
He cringed. “Zahra, last night was amazing. I meant what I said, I need to work, and you know that.” Jayce rubbed his jaw, it was now or never. “Do you know you talk in your sleep?”
One second, two seconds, three seconds. “Um, no… What did I say?”
He held his breath. “You said, ‘Call me Raven’.”
“I, I don’t know. I don’t remember the dream.”
Jayce would have believed her if her voice hadn’t trembled. His blood boiled—she was lying to him! “You were trying to find someone called Dryas,” Jayce continued.
“Hmm… I really don’t remember it.” She had recovered now and her voice was calm and even. Fucking liar, Jayce thought to himself. More than anything, he hated being lied to—it was disrespectful and it made him livid. He ended the conversation: “Well, it sounded fascinating. Tell me about it one day if you remember anything. I’ve got to get back to work. Have a good day, Zahra.”
Jayce was seething mad when he put down his phone.
CHAPTER NINE – ZAHRA
Oh, my God, Oh, my God, Oh, my God, Zahra repeated silently. She sat on the edge of her bed, with her head in her hands. Nausea crept up to her throat but she pushed it down. When had she started talking in her dreams? Jemma had never mentioned it, and on average she slept over once per week. Why did this happen the night Jayce stayed over? And why had he been so interested in her dream? Zahra wished she knew exactly what she’d said aloud, how much of her dream she had divulged. It was a particularly gruesome episode of Raven’s life and even after she’d gotten the information she had wanted, Raven showed her victim no mercy—she was crueler than ever.
Covered in sweat, Zahra had awoken to an empty bed. Confusion had muddled her mind, followed by anger—had he really left without saying goodbye? She checked her phone but there wasn’t a single missed call or text message from him. She had thought about calling him but then shut down the idea; she would not chase him. When his number did finally flash up on her screen, she debated whether to answer or not and now she wished she hadn’t. She was embarrassed and ashamed of her dreams and now he knew about them. Even worse, he’d asked her about them. And she’d lied to him. That was not a good start to their relationship.
Zahra sighed and rubbed her eyes; it had been a wonderful night and a hellish morning, but there was nothing she could do now. He knew about her dream and she just had to hope that he thought nothing more of it, that he thought it to be just a bad dream. Everyone suffers from nightmares occasionally, Zahra thought, so why should it be such a big deal?
*
“I’m dying!” Jemma gasped, her feet pounding hard.
“No, you’re not. Keep going.”
It was the one night of the week that they ran together, each session a repetition of the past: Jemma whined, Zahra encouraged. Of course Zahra had fortified a superior stamina—unsettled nights and soothing morning runs would do that to a person—so they were hardly on an even playing field. “One more mile, Jem,” she said, refusing to let her sister hit the stop button.
The staff gym was busy—sweaty bodies puffing and grunting everywhere one looked. Personal trainers were leading solo boot camps and their unfortunate soldiers were red faced, their veins bulging in distress. The gym was getting busier, Zahra noted, and she wondered if they might need to change their workout time in the future. She much preferred the solitude that a 3:30 a.m. session afforded her, but she also loved this time with Jemma.
Jemma hit the stop button on the treadmill. “Thank fuck for that.”
Zahra laughed as she, too, hit the stop button. They were done, clocking in at four miles. “What is wrong with you today?”
“I’m tired.”
Zahra raised her eyebrows, thinking her sister’s snooty attitude was almost amusing. “And why are you tired?” she asked, wiping down her machine before stepping off and following Jemma to the stretching area.
“Because your shitty boyfriend is killing my team again.”
“Shhh!’ Zahra said, not impressed with her careless comment.
“Oh, no one is listening. How long do you two think you can keep it a secret anyway?” Jemma responded, one hand on her hip, one leg outstretched in her I-mean-business pose.
Zahra worried that there might not be much to keep quiet after all because she hadn’t heard from Jayce for four days. She replayed their last conversation over and over again in her mind. He couldn’t possibly care that much that she had a bad dream, so did he know that she had lied to him? It wasn’t a convincing lie, she had to admit, but it wasn’t like lying about her dream was a big deal. Zahra considered it more a little, harmless white lie. He’s probably just busy, Zahra thought, but how hard is it to pick up the phone and call?
“We’ll keep it quiet as long as we want to because you will keep your mouth shut or I will tell Dad what you were up to last weekend,” Zahra said.
“You wouldn’t!”
Zahra nodded, smiling. “Yes, I would, so don’t play with fire, Jem.”
Jemma had entertained her sister for hours at Sunday dinner, rehashing the stories of her weekend. She’d had Zahra rolling on the floor, clutching her stomach in a hopeless attempt to ease the laughing pain. It started with one too many watermelon mojitos and it ended with a free ride home in the back of a police wagon. But, it was the reenactment of Jemma’s impromptu rap performance that really had Zahra keeling over.
“Hey, Devon,” Jemma said, nodding her head. “Don’t get too close, Zahra nearly killed me and now I’m sweatin’ like a bitch.”
“God, she loves to whine,” Zahra said to Devon. “How are you? Long time no see.”
He chuckled. “I’m good, thanks. That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you girls about. We’re putting together a Mason running team for the New York Marathon. You in?”
Jemma cast him a look that insinuated he was a complete moron. “Ah, no. That’s the definition of insanity.”
Devon smiled and turned his attention to Zahra. “Come on.”
Her eyes diverted to the right while she considered it for the briefest of moments. “Sure. Let’s do it. Who else is running?”
“Nice!” Devon gave her a high five. “At the moment, there’re five of us but we’ve just started asking around. We’re going to begin weekly running sessions at a couple of different times so that hopefully we can work around everyone’s schedules. Jackson Coby is going to spearhead this thing—he’s run a few marathons before so he’ll be our running coach, as such. It should be good.”
Zahra ran through the Mason staff in her mind, unable to place Jackson. “Which division does Jackson work in? I don’t think I’ve met him.”
“He’s relatively new to the company. He will be replacing Liam, our head of engineering, when he leaves next month. He seems like a pretty cool guy… just don’t fuck up.”
“Got it,” Zahra said, laughing. She knew the type all too well.
“Are you sure, Jemma? There’s plenty of time left to train,” Devon asked, giving it one more shot.
“Uh-uh. I like my sleep and my boozy weekends. I’m out.”
“Maybe next year…”
Devon is obviously an ete
rnal optimist, Zahra thought, and persistent. She liked the guy.
“All right, I’m jumping on the treadmill. Zahra, I’ll email you some details shortly.”
“That would be great, thanks.”
Zahra lifted a stretching mat off the wall rack and rolled it out, her sister following suit. She sat down, her legs outstretched, and leaned over to hold both feet. The nerves in her lower back bristled in rebuttal, but she ignored the pain and held the stretch.
“He’s cute, don’t you think?”
“Do you think about anything else?”
“Come on, he is definitely cute. Anyway, I have a blood donation in a couple weeks’ time. It’s a Thursday night. Will you come with me?”
Jemma had the rare blood type of AB Negative and gave blood every three months despite her faint-inducing reaction to the entire experience. Last time she’d gotten up too quickly and subsequently face planted; Zahra hadn’t reacted in time to catch her.
“Of course I will. I’ll donate too, and then you can stay at my apartment just in case.”
“Sounds good, sis. We’ll build up some good karma.”
Zahra had told a lot of lies lately and she could do with a good deed to balance out her karma. “Email me the details so I can add it straight into my calendar.”
*
Zahra sat on the window seat with her phone in her hand. She said she wouldn’t chase him, but she also wasn’t going to spend another week worrying if he was going to call her or not, so she called him. And it had been two hours since that call and Jayce hadn’t called her back. He would still be working, but as far as she knew he didn’t book meetings at 11:00 p.m. Was he avoiding her or was she reading way too much into this? She gave him one more hour to get back to her before she went to bed. He didn’t call.
*
“I said no.” No. No. No.
“You don’t get to tell me no, you little whore!” he cursed as his palm struck my cheek and my head recoiled in response. Colored flash bulbs pirouetted before my eyes and I felt myself slipping into darkness, I was fading.
Fight. Don’t let him do this. “Stop. Please, no, Dad. Don’t do this, not again.”
I clenched my legs tight, but it didn’t stop his hands from ripping them open once again. I scratched at his face, drawing blood with my fingernails, but it only made him more determined.
“You fucking little bitch!”
He was breathing heavy now—arousal and the pleasure of the challenge married together to create a revolting resemblance of a man. As he lowered himself down and his hard penis lay against my bare skin, my blood curdled. Repulsive shivers ran up my skin, which only served to provoke him further.
“See… you are a little whore. You love playing games with Daddy, don’t you?”
Please God, kill me now, I prayed. Spine-chilling fear syphoned my lungs, stealing what little air was left in them. He placed his hand over my mouth, leaning on it to support himself while he guided his penis to my opening, my panties ripped off long ago. God wasn’t going to answer my prayers, I realized. There was no God to save me. My flailing arm hit him repeatedly although it did little good. My body burned and I feared I would split into two as he pushed inside, pushing me into the depths of hell.
I hit him again but this time a sharp, shooting pain ran up my arm. It was his knife—he had forgotten to take it off when he came in from the farm. Not a single doubt entered my mind as I pulled it from the holster and, using every shred of hate in my body, I plunged it deep into his back. He made a pitiful, wheezing noise as his wide eyes looked at me, his daughter. I pulled it out and stabbed him again and again, screaming until my voice had diminished to a hoarse whisper. It was done. I saved myself.
Zahra wiped away a tear that had escaped and was making a run for it down her cheek. Her eyes kept pooling, her mind devastated by her dreams. If they weren’t so vivid she could shake them off as a bad dream, but they were just too real; they didn’t feel like dreams, they felt like life experiences, like she was there in the moment. More tears leaked from her eyes, but this time she didn’t wipe them away, she didn’t have the energy. I can’t continue like this, Zahra thought. It was too grueling to bear. She wanted the dreams to stop and she wanted to be a normal woman—she wanted to go to bed at night without the fear of being terrorized by her dreams and she wanted her boyfriend to stay over and not think she was crazy. She wanted it all to stop, but she didn’t know how.
Zahra curled up into a ball and rocked back and forth in her bed. She had to change the way she thought about this, she realized, she had to approach it like she did a business problem to be solved. She wiped the last of her tears away with dogged determination and changed into a clean, warm and dry set of pajamas. Zahra opened her laptop and turned it on. She didn’t know what she was looking for but she started by googling the meaning of dreams and why we dream. After an hour spent reading various vague and hypothesizing articles, Zahra was about to give up but then she saw it—one simple sentence that piqued her interest: dreams can permit the mind to reinstate previously suppressed, undesirable memories. Her body shivered as she read it and processed the meaning. Her dreams were certainly undesirable but how was it possible that they were memories? Raven had lived in what appeared to be Ancient Greece! Zahra rubbed her eyes and thought it through. Her theory was getting crazier by the second, but she couldn’t stop now. Zahra typed reincarnation into the search field and she was not prepared for what came next. She had thought her dreams were nightmares, but she had been wrong—the real nightmare was just beginning.
Her phone beeped at her from the kitchen island, but she couldn’t draw herself away from her computer. If her dreams were memories, then reincarnation must be real. And according to a few prominent psychiatrists and neuroscientists, it was indeed real. If souls, after death, reincarnate into a new body, it was plausible that she had once been Raven.
Through reincarnation, the soul has another opportunity to learn an important lesson, one that they have not mastered in a previous lifetime. It also provides an opportunity for the soul to make amends for their past mistakes and to allow others to amend for their past mistakes. Every action creates an energy (positive or negative) that must be balanced with an equal, opposite energy—this is the principle of karmic debt. It is common for groups of souls, whom we call soul mates, to reincarnate together so that they can balance their debts and help each other to learn the lessons they each need to learn.
The chair fell over as she pushed it back, running for the bathroom—there was no pushing the nausea back down this time. Zahra retched until her back burned and then she sat slumped on her bathroom floor with her back against the wall. All she could think about now was the man with Jayce’s eyes. She wished she could remember more of him but it had been so quick and all she could remember were two baby-blue eyes staring back at her. She tried to recall the dream she had seen him in but still it was hazy. Was it possible that reincarnation existed and that Jayce was actually the man from her dream, the man she had seen in the elevator? And if so, why had she been watching him? Had she been Raven in the dream? “Stop, just stop,” Zahra told herself. Her mind was reeling out of control with scenarios, none of which ended well, but she forced her brain to slow down and think rationally. First she needed more research and then she needed scientific evidence to back it up—she refused to believe she was Raven until she couldn’t dispute it. Until then, Zahra thought, I’m not taking any responsibility or guilt for her actions.
CHAPTER TEN - JAYCE
4:17 a.m.
His eyes hung heavy in their sockets, but he knew it was senseless to go to bed now because he would only wake up groggier in an hour’s time. He made another cup of coffee and put some bread in the toaster, figuring he might as well start fueling for the day, but he kept his eyes on his phone, waiting for her to respond. Jayce had avoided Zahra all week. At first he had been raging mad—mad that she had lied to him, mad that their past would destroy their future, mad all over
again that Raven had betrayed him. But slowly, over the course of the week, his anger had subsided and he began to strategize on what to do from here. Jayce’s first thought had been to walk away her from her—fire her from Mason and get her out of his life. But, if she had debts to pay, which she did, that would only mean she would come back to him again and again, repeating the cycle until their past was resolved. So he had concocted a better plan: he would continue their relationship and he would balance the debt so that they could all be at peace.
He held his hands over the toaster, letting the simmering heat waves warm them. Jayce wanted to know how often she dreamed and how much she knew of her past lives. How much of their story had she seen? Did she know what she had done to him? Did she recognize him now? He had so many questions and none of the answers, but this morning he had come up with a solution and there was no time like the present to act. He called Kyoji and told him what he wanted: a tiny sound recorder.
“What the fuck are you going to do with that?” Kyoji responded.
Jayce took a bite of his toast. “I’m going to install it in Zahra’s bedroom. I need to hear what she says in her dreams. It’s the only way I can find out what she knows.”
“If you’re certain this girl is Raven, why does it matter what she knows? Whether she remembers or not is irrelevant, since it doesn’t change the past.”
“It’s not about the past, it’s about the present. The Zahra I know seems nothing like Raven; she’s kind and gentle and loving. Christ, the girl doesn’t even eat meat because she doesn’t want to harm an animal. But, I don’t know if that’s who she truly is or if she’s fooling me again. If she continues to lie to me, especially if she knows who I am, then she deserves everything that’s coming to her and more,” Jayce said.
“And what is that? What are you going to do to punish this girl?”
The Secrets of Their Souls Page 8
