CHAPTER TWO
BITTERSWEET DREAMS
I
stood on a high plain in my modern-style black leather—my long hair whipping in the chilling wind that rolled past, swirling the mist that curled at my feet.
The clothing might have been modern, but the setting was ancient. The landscape was bleak and empty, and the air smelled of sulfur and dampness.
I felt the footsteps before I heard them, the ground rumbling just slightly beneath my feet.
And then he appeared.
Like a warrior returning from battle, Ethan emerged through the mist in garb out of time and place for twenty-first century Chicago. Knee-high leather boots, rough-hewn pants, and a long leather tunic belted at the waist. There was a rust-red gash in the middle of his chest. His hair was long and wavy and golden-blond, and his eyes were vibrantly green.
I walked toward him, fear circling my heart, making a vise around it, squeezing my lungs until I was barely able to sip at air. I was glad to see him alive—but I knew he was a harbinger of death.
When I reached him, he put his hands on my arms, leaned forward and pressed his lips to my forehead. Such a simple act, but so intimate. A precious affection that made my chest ache wn
with sentiment. I closed my eyes and savored the moment as thunder rumbled across the plateau, shaking the ground again.
Suddenly, Ethan raised his head and glanced warily around. When he looked at me again, he began to speak, the words flowing in a lilting language that sounded like it came from a time and place far away.
I shook my head. “I can’t understand you.”
His expression tightened, a line of worry furrowing his forehead, the words coming more quickly as he tried to get his point across. But the speed didn’t help.
“Ethan, I don’t know what you’re saying. Can you speak English?”
Panic in his eyes, he glanced back over his shoulder, then grabbed my arm and pointed behind him. A low, thick storm front was rolling toward us, the wind beginning to pick up as the temperature dropped.
“I see the storm,” I told him over the rising wind. “But I can’t stop it.”
Ethan yelled something out, but the words were lost in the howling wind. He started walking toward the thundercloud, pulling my arm in an attempt to drag me with him.
But I resisted, pulling back. “That’s the wrong way. We can’t walk into the storm!”
He was insistent, but so was I. Positive we’d be swept off the plateau and into the sea if we didn’t seek shelter, I began running away from the wall of clouds . . . and him. But I couldn’t resist a final glance back. He stood frozen on the plain, his hair whipping in the gale.
Before I could reach out to him, the storm reached us and broke, the wind knocking me off my feet, the pressure sucking the air from my lungs. The rain came as I hit my knees, blowing sideways and turning the landscape gray, the wind howling in my ears. Ethan disappeared in the onslaught, leaving only the echo of his voice on the wind.
“
Merit!
”
I jolted awake, bathed in sweat, gasping for breath, the sound of his voice in my ears.
Tears slipped from my eyes as I pushed drenched bangs from my forehead, and scrubbed my hands across my face, trying to slow the feverish race of my heart.
My first dream of Ethan had been miraculous; we’d bathed in the sun—a taboo to vampires. I’d savored that last memory of him.
But this was the sixth nightmare in the two months since he’d been gone. Each was louder and more vivid than the last, and waking up was like emerging from a tunnel of panic, my chest squeezed into a knot. In each nightmare we were pushed to some crisis, but the end was always the same—he was always torn away from me. Each time I woke with his voice in my ears, screaming out my name in panic.
I dropped my forehead to my knees, grief pounding at my heart like a kettledrum. The helplessness of loss overwhelmed me. Not just from the loss of Ethan, but from the frustration—the exhaustion—of being visited again by a ghost who wouldn’t let me go. Tears fell, and I let them, wishing the sting of salt would wash away the hurt.
I missed his voice. The sight of him. The smell of him.
And probably because of that, I was stuck in a cycle that kept me dreaming about Ethan—watching him die over and over again. My grief had become a hollow I couldn’t climb out of.
When my heart slowed, I sat up again and wiped the tears from my face with a shirtsleey t a shirve. I grabbed the phone from the nightstand and dialed up the one person who could calm me down.
“Crap on toast,” Mallory answered over the resounding bass of a man’s voice. “I’m on a study break—Catcher’s naked and Barry White’s on the stereo. Do you know how rarely I get study breaks?”
Mallory was a belatedly identified sorceress in training. She had just finished her apprenticeship with a cute boy-next-door type named Simon and had been prepping for her “finals” for weeks. Simon had seemed okay in the five minutes I’d been in the same room with him, but Catcher was definitely not a fan. That probably had something to do with the fact that Simon was a member of the Union of Amalgamated Sorcerers and Spellcasters (euphemistically called “the Order”), an organization that had kicked Catcher off its rolls.
Her voice was testy, and I knew she was super stressed this week, but I needed her, so I pushed on. “I had another dream.”
There was a moment of silence before she yelled out, “Five minutes, Catch.”
I heard grumbling, and then the room went silent.
“How many is this?” she asked.
“Six. I’ve had two this week.”
“What do you remember?”
Mal quizzed me every time I had a dream—her morbid curiosity and love of the occult combining into a post diem interrogation. I obliged and gave her the details.
“Mostly just the end, as per usual. Ethan was dressed like an old-school warrior. There was this storm moving in, and he was trying to warn me, but I think he was speaking Swedish.”
“Swedish? Why in God’s name would he be speaking Swedish? And how would you know what Swedish sounds like?”
“He was from Sweden. Originally, I mean. And I have no idea. Interwebs, probably. Anyway, he was trying to get me to move toward the storm. I was trying to run away from it.”
“Sounds like the sensible thing to do. Then what?”
“The storm hit. I lost sight of him, and woke up when he was calling my name.”
“Well, the symbolism’s pretty obvious,” she said. “You’re with Ethan, and then you’re separated by some sort of calamity. Pretty much the real life scenario.”
I made a vague sound of agreement and pulled my legs under me. “That’s true, I guess.”
“Of course it is. On the other hand, dreaming is never just dreaming. There’s always something more going on. The wanderings of the mind. The escapades of the soul. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—you and Ethan had some kind of connection, Mer. Not exactly a healthy connection, but a connection nonetheless.”
“So, what, I’m visiting his ghost in my dreams?”
She laughed mirthlessly. “Would you put it past Darth Sullivan to figure out a way to haunt you postmortem? He’s probably holding staff meetings in the afterworld. Offering up performance evaluations. Issuing dictates.”
“Those were the kinds of things he loved.”
Mal got quiet for a second. “Look,” she said. “Maybe we’re thinking about this the wrong way. I mean—we’re talking about what it means and how often it’s happening. But you’ve called me, what, half a dozen times about these thontout theings? Maybe we should start talking about how to make them stop.”
I wasn’t sure from the tone of her voice whether she was expressing concern about my mental state—or irritation that I’d been sharing it with her. I gave her a pass on the snark since she was stressed, but promised myself a good debriefing when it was all over.
As for her plan, I wasn’t exactly thrilled about it. Pathetic as it sounded, at least in my dreams Ethan was alive. He was
real
. I had no pictures of him, and few mementos. Even my waking memories of him were fuzzy—each recollection seemed to dull the lines of his face. It was as if he were a faint star on the horizon—attempting to focus on the image only blurred it further.
But in my dreams . . . he was always there, always clear.
“I don’t think there’s any reason to do that.”
“There is if your dreams become a substitute for real life.”
That stung, but I took her point. “They won’t. These aren’t those kind of dreams. It’s just—they make me feel closer to him.” At the cost, of course, of having sweaty night terrors.
“Well, if it happens again, you’ll have to talk to Catcher instead. Exams are starting.”
“Now?” I asked her. “I thought you still had a week to go.”
“Simon wanted to add ‘an element of the unexpected,’ ” Mallory said, and I could all but hear the air quotes in her voice. “The testing goes in phases. He’ll put me out into some situation; I have to fix it. I’ll go home and make something in my chemistry lab, and then I’m back on the streets for round two. He’ll ask me questions about the Keys, and I use the Keys to fix the problem. Rinse. Repeat. It’s gonna be a whole, big thing.”
The Keys were the four divisions of magic, which sorcerers had visualized by cutting a circle into four quadrants. It was apparently so important to sorcerers that Catcher’d had the four Keys inked onto his stomach.
“Well, if you can’t be available at my beck and call,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, “do you think Catcher would wear a blue wig in the meantime?”
Mallory’s previously blond hair was now a notoriously bright shade of blue. It was straight and reached a couple of inches below her shoulders.
“Probably not. But you could always threaten to have his cable disconnected. That’s how I got the kitchen cabinets painted.”
“How is Mr. Chick Flick?”
“Infinitely happier not knowing you referred to him as that.”
Be that as it may, Catcher was addicted. If a made-for-television movie featured a once-downtrodden lady doin’ it for herself, he was in. It was an odd fixation for a gruff, muscular sorcerer with a penchant for swordcraft and sarcasm, but Mallory tolerated it, and I suppose that was all that really mattered.
“I call ’em like I see ’em. Wanna schedule a dinner break? Maybe sushi?”
“Breaks aren’t really on my agenda right now. I have a lot to focus on. But you might think about not hogging down snack cakes right before bedtime.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Liar,” she accused, but I was saved the necessity of lying any further. My Cadogan House beeper—a guard necessitya guardessity—all but buzzed off my nightstand. I leaned over and snatched it up. OPS ROOM, it read. ASAP.
Unfortunately, “ASAP” translated only one way in Cadogan House these days: “It’s time for another meeting.” Once again, with feeling:
another
meeting. Kelley, our newly appointed guard captain, was a fan.
“Mal,” I said, climbing off the bed, “I need to run. It’s time to play Sentinel. Good luck with your exams.”
Mallory made a huffy noise. “Luck doesn’t figure into it. But sweet dreams to you.”
I hung up the phone, not thrilled about our conversation, but well aware that I needed to pick my battles. I’d done a really crappy job of supporting Mallory when she’d discovered she was a sorceress, mostly because I’d been knee-deep in newbie vampire drama at the time. I needed to be supportive, even if it wasn’t exactly the most comfortable place to be. This was not the time to lay into her about sarcasm. She’d given me slack when I’d needed it; it was time to repay the favor.
Besides—we both had other fights to wage.
Luc took his job seriously, but he also had a pretty good sense of humor. He brought a jokey camaraderie to the Ops Room, along with a taste for denim, swearing, and beef jerky. Luc was a great strategist and a big picture kind of guy. I was perfectly fine with all those qualities.
Kelley, his replacement, was smart, savvy, and skilled . . . but she was no Luc—cowboy boots or otherwise.
When she’d accepted the position, she’d chopped her silky dark hair into a short, sleek bob. Her hair became all business, and so did the Cadogan House guards. Our schedule became tighter, our meetings more formal. She scheduled daily workouts and required us to complete end-of-shift reports. Virtually everything in the Ops Room had become virtual, and the few bits of paper that remained were color-coded, tabbed, alphabetized, and collated. We had time cards and name tags, and we were required to wear the latter during our nightly patrols of the House grounds “for public relations.”
“Part of keeping a safe House,” Kelley had said, “is instilling a sense of trust in the neighborhood. If they know who we are, they’ll be less inclined to violence.”
It’s not that I didn’t agree. It’s just—name tags? Really?