by Gareth Otton
“You mean me?”
“Eventually,” Amber agreed. “At first I wasn’t sure what to do. I stole us a few creature comforts, and it was a couple of weeks before I came looking for you.”
“Why me?” Tony asked.
“Because you’re the one ghost people ever talked about in a good way. I figured if anyone could help us, it would be you.”
Tony shook his head, glancing back into the living room to look at the kids while he thought Amber’s words over.
“I don’t know what I can do,” he said honestly. “I… I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Help me get them home,” she pleaded, pulling his attention back into the kitchen. “Andrew just wants to get back to his grandparents. Georgia wants to get back to her Mum and Dad, same with Millie and Vincent. The trouble is they’re so young. They know the name of the towns they’re from, but little else. I don’t know how to get them there.”
“I suppose we could find out where they live and take them on trains or—”
“Then what?” Amber interrupted.
“What do you mean?”
“You said take them on trains. I could have thought of that. But then what? We arrive in their home towns. How do we find out where they live? If we manage that, how do we get their parents to see them outside the borderlands?”
“Oh, I see,” Tony said as the problem dawned. “We’d need a Proxy too…”
His words trailed off as his own access to a Proxy was limited right now. For the first time in hours he thought of the mess with Tad, which led his mind to the constant tug of Dream. The sensation came back with a vengeance, pulling so hard he wanted to curl into a ball to keep himself together. Instead, he forced his mind back onto the subject at hand.
Amber’s smile was gone again as she waited for an answer and her large eyes were filled with desperate hope. That expression hit him in the same place her tears had earlier, and suddenly there was no question of whether he would help. The only question was how.
Normally he’d go to Tad with a problem this big, not that he’d had many problems this big. Now, though…
He thought back to his early days as a ghost, remembering how scared he felt. He’d tried going home, but his parents couldn’t see him. If Tad hadn’t been around to take him in, he didn’t know what he would have done. He doubted he’d have kept it together as well as Amber, and he certainly wouldn’t have been in a position to help other kids.
He suddenly wondered about her story. Just how long had she been a ghost? How had she died? Was she looking for her parents also?
A hundred other questions came to mind, but he pushed them aside as he concentrated on the main one. How could he help these kids?
He wished things had gone differently with Tad. For all his faults, Tad would know what to do in a situation like this. Now, he’d probably suspect Tony was bringing them over to try and get him to Proxy for them. It would just make matters worse.
Maybe he could see Stella. She would know what to do, probably even had a program in place to handle it. However, thinking on Amber’s story, he doubted she’d want him to go to the police, especially not as a first idea.
Try as he might, he couldn’t think of a solution and he needed advice. Tad was out of the question, which left him thinking of who else he could rely on. He was momentarily dismayed that the list was so short, but two faces came to mind.
“Are you going to help us?” Amber asked after the silence had dragged on a bit too long.
“I will try,” he said. “I don’t know what I can do yet, but I know where to start.”
“Where?”
“We need to find someone who’ll help. We need to see my mum and dad.”
21
Thursday, 14th July 2016
15:50
Wales had used up its yearly quota of summer heat, and the weather had turned cold. Stella didn’t mind. Compared to the heat of the hospital, that cool breeze was a welcome relief as she stepped through the double doors, one puppy under her arm and another following her while wondering why his brother was getting all the attention. Unfortunately, if she let Growler go, he’d only dreamwalk back inside the hospital to get to Tad’s side.
“Between Jen and that idiot, I’ve spent enough time in that hospital to last a lifetime,” she said to Freckles, half to appease his need for attention and half because she hated how familiar this place had become.
She wandered to a nearby bench and took a seat, setting Growler down beside her and lifting Freckles up to the other side. Freckles pounced and tried to lick her, but she fended him off and he soon settled for sitting next to her and being stroked. Growler was living up to his name.
“Don’t you growl at me,” Stella warned, and the noise died. “That’s right,” she said, then shook her head as she realised she was practically talking to herself. “That man’s sending me loopy,” she told Freckles, who wagged his tail as he leaned into her hand.
She couldn’t believe she was here again, waiting once more to hear the verdict of what kind of damage Tad had done to himself. Since she’d known him he’d been stabbed, knocked unconscious, burnt himself so badly he’d crippled his left hand, and now he couldn’t see. An inner voice she barely heard from anymore told her she should have expected this kind of worry after letting someone behind her barriers, but she pushed it down. She’d made her peace with her feelings and knew she was happier with Tad than without him. That meant she needed to figure out how to stop him getting hurt before she lost him for good.
I should have seen that trap sooner, she thought to herself.
The thought triggered the memory of that giant man running from that house to attack. Tad told her about the dreamcatchers, but she wasn’t prepared for how fast he was. She thought Tad was exaggerating. She should have known better.
Even through her shock she’d recognised there was something not right about that giant. It was written on his expression, in the way he moved, in his pattern of attack. Everything about him screamed of falsehood, and she’d been too stupid to put the clues together.
“They kick you out, or has someone pissed you off and you need to cool down?”
Stella was so lost in thought she hadn’t noticed the man approach and she jumped. Sensing her shock, Growler growled cautiously, as though waiting to see what she really thought before committing. Freckles, who spent more time at the office than his brother, was on his feet in an instant, tail wagging furiously.
Until today, Trevors was the biggest man she‘d ever met. He wasn’t as tall as Tad, but he was all muscle. However, for all his bulk, he was a softy when it came to the puppies and now was no different.
Without missing a beat he scooped up Freckles, accepting his face kisses like they were badges of honour, and took a seat next to Stella on the bench.
“Why does it have to be one or the other?” she asked.
“Because you’re too stubborn to leave Tad’s side unless they forced you, and you’re too grumpy to not be pissed at someone. So, it’s one or the other… or maybe both.”
Despite herself, Stella chuckled.
“You know me too well,” she accused.
“Which is it?”
“Both,” she admitted. “They kicked the puppies out because it’s a hospital. I think seeing the back of me didn’t hurt either.”
“Okay,” Trevors replied, talking to Stella but looking at Freckles as he played with the dog. “So that pissed you off, which is why you’re angry.”
“Good guess, but no. They’re just doing their jobs. I’m pissed at me… and maybe Tad a little, but mainly me.”
Trevors surprised her by not jumping to her defence and telling her she had nothing to be angry about. She suddenly realised she’d been hoping to hear it. It hurt more than a little that he so clearly weighed his words before he spoke.
“What happened?” he finally asked.
“You must have heard by now and seen the footage from the vest cams.”
/> “I have, but I want it from your point of view. What went wrong?”
Something about his tone made her think he had his own opinions on what happened. She decided not to call him on it, instead falling into report mode and running over the last few hours of her life.
“It sounds like this was new stuff. There’s no way you could have spotted it sooner.”
Stella shook her head. No one other than Tad knew about her supernatural ability with lies or her other changes, so he had no reason to understand how she had messed up. No matter how he spun it, this was still her fault.
She was about to answer, then hesitated. Slowly she turned to study him and let her inner senses tell her what troubled her. It took a moment for it to click, but finally she understood what was wrong. He’d never actually said it wasn’t her fault. He said she couldn’t have spotted it sooner and that this was all new stuff, but there was something in what he wasn’t saying that gave him away.
“You blame me for this,” she said, a statement of fact.
To his credit, Trevors never winced or went on the defensive. Instead he sighed, turned away from Freckles for the first time and looked Stella in the eye.
“I do,” he agreed. Before she could demand more of an answer, he asked, “When did you stop trusting me?”
The question surprised her enough that she couldn’t immediately answer. Trevors spoke again, filling that silence.
“We were put on this together. I know you’ve got the Director title, but we had an understanding. You run the day to day, the detectives, the technical team… hell, you run everything that isn’t tactical. As soon as we talk tactics though, you step aside and work with me. I thought we were partners in this.”
“We are,” Stella said, not understanding.
“Then why did you go to America without so much as talking to me? Rather than handing the tactical decisions to me as agreed, you ran off to play action hero and save the day.”
“The American’s wouldn’t let us bring you. I had no choice but to—”
“No choice?” Trevors asked, his voice tighter now, showing the signs of his rising irritation. “You telling me there were no strings you could pull or favours to call in? You could have at least spoken to me first, but you just ran off.”
“And you would have done things different? You would have saved those lives?”
“We’ll never know because you didn’t bloody ask.”
Growler started growling again and even Freckles stiffened as Trevor’s voice jumped up a few decibels. Sensing the change in the two dogs, the big man visibly calmed himself, but Stella could tell the calm was only surface level. Something was eating at him and she suspected it was more than just what happened today.
“Where’s this coming from?” Stella asked. “Has Harry been—”
“Forget Harry, this is about you and me,” Trevors interrupted. “It’s about how you’ve been making too many decisions about the Dream Team on your own, and how you’re interested in your own little projects, your dreamwalkers and your detectives, but you couldn’t care less about the rest of us. We’re just tools to be used as far as your concerned, and I’m getting sick of it. That attitude cost me the lives of two good men. It could have lost me more but for Morris pulling a miracle and a stroke of luck that we didn’t lose anyone in the rescue efforts.
“Harry may be an ass, but he’s right when he says they had no business being part of the rescue team in Pendine. They’re not trained for that. Who knows what could have happened if they moved something they shouldn’t have, gone into a building that was too far gone, or any number of things they just weren’t trained to look for.”
“So you would have left those people to die?” she asked, appalled.
“Of course I fucking wouldn’t,” Trevors snapped, no longer in control of his voice and shouting loud enough that passers-by looked up in surprise. “What I would have done is listened to my tactical team, heard their issues about not being trained and figured out an appropriate response. Maybe I’d have organised my dreamwalkers to help the actual search and rescue teams to get there sooner. Maybe I’d have taken a step back, realised I was out of my wheelhouse, and call for help from people who know what they’re doing. What I wouldn’t do is overrule the complaints of men who had nearly just died because of my mistake and force them into a situation they’re not comfortable with.”
Stella stared at Trevors, stunned to silence by the content of his words. It was more than just the fact he was repeating some of her own darkest thoughts back to her, it was the heartfelt truth she felt behind them. He believed every word he said and it hurt to hear.
“I’ve… I’ve done the best I can. It’s a huge job and—”
“I know you have. You’ve done an amazing job,” Trevors interrupted.
“But… You just said…” Stella’s words trailed off as she was thoroughly confused.
“I said you’ve stopped trusting me, that you’re making decisions unilaterally that are bad decisions and are getting people hurt. But you’re doing an amazing job at everything else. I couldn’t begin to cope with the things you deal with. There’s no way the Dream Team would be where it is without you.”
“Then why are you shouting at me?” she asked, suddenly exhausted and feeling like she wanted to cry.
“Because you’re making mistakes that don’t need to be made and you aren’t listening to people who can stop you making them. I lost two men, Stella. A whole tactical team was killed this afternoon. We lost Morris. Whether you made the right calls while you were in either situation we will never know, the important thing is they weren’t your calls to make. You running those situations is like me taking charge of a murder investigation. I have a cursory knowledge of what to do, but I will never live up to the abilities of people who work that job daily.”
He lifted Freckles onto Stella’s lap, then stood.
“You’ve hired good people. We joined your cause and we’re singing to your hymn sheet, but you’ve got to trust us to do the job we’ve been hired to do.” He looked at the hospital and said, “Look, I’ve got to get back to the office. The PR guys are having a nightmare trying to control the fallout, and unfortunately I’ve got experience with ops gone wrong so I might be able to help. Just think on this, please. And give my best to Tad. I wanted to pop in and see him, but if he’s still with the doctors I can’t wait around.”
“I will,” Stella said, answering both his requests with one phrase.
Trevors smiled, opened his mouth like he would say something else, then thought better of it and walked away. He only got two steps before he turned back abruptly and said, “Oh, I almost forgot. Miles showed me the footage from Chicago. Those weren’t just defences I saw around that house, that was an ambush.”
“What do you mean?” Stella asked, looking up sharply as his words knocked some of her thoughts into line and she could almost see the whole picture now.
“That barrier might have been there for a while to stop dreamwalkers coming on the property, but everything else screamed trap to me. The way that guy was ready to kill those men, and then the way he ran inside like he was luring you in. Then there was that explosion… Explosions like that don’t just happen by accident. Someone planned to blow that house up. My guess is they were expecting you.”
He said nothing else, just turned away and walked toward the carpark, leaving Stella on the bench with two puppies watching him go. She wasn’t really watching though, instead she stared into the distance as the puzzle pieces fell into place. She knew there was something wrong with what happened, and now she knew what.
It was a trap, and Trevors had spotted it even without her supernatural sense for lies. It was food for thought, and she was lost in those thoughts when the nurse came to find her to let her know Tad was finally done with the doctor.
Stella jumped, her feet leaving the hospital floor and landing on the hard wood of Tad’s living room.
“Told you I didn’t need my
eyes to get us here,” Tad said triumphantly.
Despite his unfocussed eyes, he wore a smug smile. However, Stella didn’t need her new abilities to see the lie behind it. That smile was for her benefit.
“So you did,” she muttered. “Now will you please sit down? The doctors said you needed to take it easy. Without Tony, you’ve got to heal like a normal person.”
“I’m fine,” Tad protested. “That explosion was more a shock than anything. It’s just my eyes that are the problem.”
“Well, that’s problem enough for now, why don’t you sit down and I’ll make us a coffee.”
Tad forced a laugh. “You’re offering to make a coffee rather than forcing me to do it, that’s a sign of the apocalypse, isn’t it?”
“Stop being an arsehole and sit down,” Stella said, losing her patience.
He grinned, genuinely this time. “Ah, that’s more like it. I’ve been waiting for you to finally tell me off for hours. It was making me nervous.”
She tried not to, but she chuckled. “You’re a dick sometimes, you know that? Why the hell didn’t you tell me your eyes were troubling you before we started?”
Grabbing his arm and ignoring how he flinched in surprise, she dragged him away from the centre of the room to the nearest sofa. He’d sit whether he wanted to or not. No sooner had she got him down when suddenly his lap was full of puppies. Strangely both were reserved, neither trying to lick his face but instead accepting his clumsy fussing as though they knew there was something wrong with him. Not for the first time Stella suspected they were more intelligent than the average dog.
“I thought I was tired and the stress was getting too me,” Tad admitted. “It never twigged what was actually happening. I haven’t been blind since I was thirteen and me and Charles had a falling out for a few days. It never occurred to me it would happen again now Tony was gone.”
Despite a need for Coffee, Stella sank onto the sofa beside him, staring at his sightless eyes and trying to keep her worry from her voice.
