I gazed around in bewilderment, taking in a room that resembled the old-fashioned library from my fantasy about Ian Booke. From the mahogany shelves to the cream and ivory wingback chairs, it looked exactly as I’d imagined. Even the heavy antique desk sat where I’d pictured it. Oddly I couldn’t see past the shadowy doorway, nor did the darkened windows shed any light.
After a night in Boys Town, why would I dream this? It made a pleasant change from licking flames and dire portents, however.
“Splendid! I can’t believe it worked.”
Though I hadn’t noticed him before, a man rose from the desk and came toward me. I recognized the voice, if not the face. With rough features, narrow slate eyes, and a shock of nut brown hair, Booke didn’t look at all as I’d envisioned him.
“What worked?”
“Oh, I was just messing about with some lucid dreaming and out-of-body experiments. I think you must be sleeping.”
“I . . . think so.” Somewhat disappointed, I tried to be discreet as I inspected him. “Is this how you really look?”
Was that rude?
“No.” He shook his head. “I daresay you aren’t like that, either. I’m afraid I’ve projected on you. But then, I didn’t think this would work. Never has before.”
When I glanced down, I restrained a snort. All I needed to complete my Wonder Woman costume was a tiara and a golden lasso. Enjoying the novelty of three feet of shapely legs and a spectacular bosom, I decided not to challenge the fantasy.
“What were you trying to accomplish?”
Could I move around as if this were the real world? I could, though the resulting strut suited Lynda Carter better than Corine Solomon. I sat down in the left-hand wing chair before I tripped on the expensive rug and made a fool of myself.
“Well, I was thinking about you . . . and your problem,” he added hastily. His obvious embarrassment struck me as endearing. “Sometimes magick leaves a trail or an astral tell. I can’t leave Stoke, or I’d come in person . . . but I wondered if I could help you this way. I focused on you and started trying to home in on where you are—”
“And wound up in my dream? Why are we in your library?”
Booke glanced around, sheepish. “This isn’t mine. It’s colored by your expectations. I must say, I’m quite flattered. You clearly take me for a man of taste and means.”
I realized I’d interrupted him. “Wait, did you learn anything? Did the warlock controlling poor Maris leave a tell?”
“In fact, he did.” He lost some of his diffidence and came over, sat beside me in the other chair. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” A side benefit of dreaming, he called pen and paper to hand, began sketching. I leaned close and saw what looked like a stylized U. “Near as I can find, it’s akin to an Aztec or Mixtec symbol for the moon.”
“And Chuch’s house is marked with this?” I wanted to be clear.
“Indeed. It’s marked with astral magick. You need to cleanse the place, top to bottom, or he’ll find it increasingly easier to work his spells there, even at distance.”
“What about the wards?” To my amusement Booke couldn’t tear his eyes away from the breasts that didn’t belong to me.
“Summoning Maris, bound like she was, probably undermined them. You’re not safe there any longer.”
With everything going on, I doubted I was safe anywhere, but we needed to fix things for our friends. “We’ll shore them up then. I can’t leave Eva and Chuch now, after dragging them into this.”
“No, I don’t imagine you could.” He sounded odd, eyes downcast.
I pushed the hair out of my face, bemused to find such a silky black mane. Oh, I could get such a color from a bottle, but dyed black, no highlights, made me look too Goth. “What’re you getting at?”
“You don’t seem the kind of person who would leave someone when they needed you most.”
Ouch.
“Don’t be so sure,” I said. “I’ve done a lot of running in my life. Let things start to heat up, and you’ll find me on the way out.”
Booke glanced up in apparent surprise, shadows playing over features that didn’t belong to him. “I never would have guessed. You have a very steadfast feel.”
“I do?”
He nodded. “Unshakeable. Like once you set a course, you don’t alter it.”
You think my feelings dried up when you walked away, Corine? I didn’t even know if mine had.
I managed a smile. “Isn’t it interesting, the preconceptions we form from a few minutes in a voice chat?”
“No.” Steepling his fingers together, he assumed a professorial demeanor. “By paying an astral call, I’ve seen your essence, the raw material that shapes your soul. You’re stone, Corine. While fire may score you, it won’t destroy who you are.”
On some basic level I almost understood what he meant, not intellectually but through some underdeveloped sense. If the human spirit could be reckoned in alchemical terms . . . The point I wanted to make slipped from me. Perhaps Chance might grasp it better.
“And you?” I asked. “What about you, Booke?”
“I don’t know. We can’t see ourselves as we are, can we?”
I wondered about him, this man who seemed to live for broken moments on the computer and perhaps spent the rest of his time lost in esoteric study. Was I actually communicating with him? Or creating the scene out of some subconscious desire? Our predicament meant I couldn’t afford to dismiss assistance, but until I checked the information he’d given, I couldn’t be sure this wasn’t a supervivid dream.
“Does that mean you’ve never looked?”
“There are a great number of things I’ve never done,” he said quietly.
A moment ago, he’d said: I can’t leave Stoke. The word can’t offered a wide variety of perplexing possibilities. In what manner was he bound? And why would our problems, half a world away, interest him so?
“There’re a lot of things I wish I hadn’t done,” I said.
“Such as?”
“Leaving my mother to die.” It slipped out before I could stem the candid response.
Booke regarded me with a somber expression for a moment. “We don’t have power over that. We don’t get to pick and choose.”
“Do you think it’s wrong to want revenge on the people who took her from me?”
He gave an odd smile. “What do I know? I’m just a voice, someone who doesn’t seem half-real to you.”
“You do that on purpose,” I accused. “Are you trying to will yourself out of existence?”
The mouth that didn’t belong to him twisted. “Perhaps. If it would work.”
I reached for him, intending to see if contact cut through the unreality of our dream selves. For just a moment, I wanted to see him as he was.
“No, you mustn’t. If we touch, you—”
Wake.
I found myself alone on the couch, still feeling Booke’s fingers beneath mine. When I touched him, in that instant, I saw a desolate pebble beach bounded by an endless gray sea. I didn’t know what it meant, but the loneliness of it made me ache.
In the silver predawn light I lay reflecting on the ocean between us and the secrets people keep.
A Little Butch
Eventually I managed to go back to sleep for a few hours.
By the time everyone else woke, I wondered if I’d dreamed the whole thing, as in a dream that didn’t mean anything, not a lucid dream or an out-of-body experience. Whatever. In the end I decided to share it because the symbol might mean something. We also needed to do something about the wards, if I wasn’t crazy.
Over breakfast, I said, “So, I talked to Booke last night. . . .”
“Dios.” Chuch looked worse for wear. I didn’t think he’d be crawling under cars anytime soon. “Does he ever sleep?”
“Well, I’m not sure on that.” I outlined what we’d talked about without mentioning how I knew.
Chance shot me a strange look while I spoke, but he didn’t interrupt.
When I was done, Eva cursed, soft and virulent, in two languages. “This is my fault, my stupid idea. I’ll redo the wards, mi vida. You just rest, okay? I’ll fix it. I can do this. I’ve seen you do it a hundred times.”
As she went off muttering about sea salt and wormwood, Chuch gave us a grin. “It’s not all bad, no? I get to sit on my ass for two or three days until she stops feeling guilty and figures out I’m milking it.” He got up from the breakfast table and rubbed his belly. “Time for some quality morning TV. I hope Jerry Springer’s on.”
The mechanic’s expression made me laugh as I went to refill my coffee cup. I hovered at Chance’s elbow with the pot. “Want some more?”
“No thanks. I would like to know how you spoke to Booke last night, though.” He regarded me with brow raised. “I couldn’t sleep, so I spent the night researching the sex trade. You never came into the office, Corine. It’s not like you to lie, so what’s going on?”
Oh. “It wasn’t what you’d call a conventional conversation. . . .”
“I’m listening.”
I swallowed my ambiguity as I told him the rest. By the time I finished I couldn’t interpret his expression; he gave no hint how he felt about my dreaming about some stranger. Maybe I wished for a hint of jealousy, but that was purely selfish. He never indulged in such displays. In fact, the only time I could remember him showing even a flicker of it was when I first met Jesse Saldana.
“But you’re sure you spoke to him?” he asked, neutral.
“As positive as I can be. We can call him up to confirm, if you want.” Although it would be embarrassing as hell for Booke to learn I’d been having incredibly vivid dreams about him, if I was wrong about the experience. I wasn’t eager to talk to the Englishman anytime soon. The whole thing had just been too strange.
Chance shook his head. “I trust you. Let’s see what we can dig up on that symbol.”
His casual acceptance warmed me. No matter how crazy the stuff I brought him, he always believed me. Smiling, I went back to the living room for my last clean outfit; we’d been away almost a week and I needed to do laundry. From inside my purse, my phone vibrated silently but insistently.
That meant I had a new message.
Huh. I brought it to my ear, input the code, and listened. “Hi, this is Lenny. Lenny Marlowe? You said not to help, but they laid me off at Delta and I got to thinking. You know in them movies how bad guys always return to the scene of the crime? So I got some doughnuts and went over to the warehouse. Sure enough, around two, they came back. They cleared stuff out of there, put crates in a white sanitation truck, but it wasn’t no trash they took out. Well, I was real careful and I followed them. They went to 6874 Hal—hey!” An explosive burst assaulted my ear, and then the call devolved into sobs and whimpers.
Oh, shit. The call was time stamped three hours ago. “Chance.” He didn’t respond right away, so I shouted, “Chance! Come on, we have to go.”
