Gypsy Magic - J.R. Rain Page 0,6

laughing at Spongebob Squarepants who trilled his intensely irritating laugh into the interior of the room.

“Gran’s got a point, Mom,” Finn said, from where he was nearly lost among the numerous pillows on his bed.

“Gran’s got what point?”

“That you can’t let your relationship with Jeremy leave a bad taste in your mouth. There are still good guys out there.”

“I have yet to meet them,” I grumbled.

“Well… now you have probability on your side.”

I smiled. I didn’t even know the word ‘probability’ was in his vocab. “Oh, and how’s that?”

Finn shrugged. “L.A. has a large pool of douchebags. Haven Hollow, not so much.”

“Language,” I snapped.

He shrugged again. “My point still stands.”

“Because small town means fewer jerks?”

“Yep,” he answered and then looked over at me. “I have a good feeling about this place.”

***

I rarely dream and when I do, it’s usually because I’ve decided I need to.

And tonight, I was hoping for prophetic dreams—something from the Universe to help guide me on my path. Something to tell me whether I was making a mistake with this house, whether I should put it up for sale and buy something more… easily managed.

Everyone has a third eye, but almost no one uses theirs. For regular folks, it normally takes drugs, religion, or near-death experiences to find a way to see through to the other side. Even my own family had lost the knack. GG was the only one who regularly peeked beyond the veil to the beyond. For the rest of us, there was Dreamtime Oil: Carnation, Sandalwood, Vanilla and a kick of good ol’ fashioned gypsy magic.

I found myself so completely stressed out by the prospect of the house, I needed the distraction of dreams. And Dreamtime Oil was a great prescription for creative and restful sleep. I’d come up with some of my best ideas while using the oil. All the same, you had to be careful about overdoing it—meaning, you couldn’t use it too often, because it was quite a strain on your subconscious mind. Once a month and you were good to go. GG had learned that the hard way…

I plugged in the diffuser just after bath time. Finn grumbled about the smell, but was almost immediately pacified by the offer to watch one more episode of Spongebob instead of having to go to sleep.

As for me, I expected to lay awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering what the hell I’d dragged us both into. But when my head hit the pillow and I inhaled the scent of the oil, my eyelids slammed down like heavy steel shutters.

And the dream began almost instantly.

Ordinarily, Dreamtime Oil took me to my happy places: the scenic meadow that lay a mile from GG’s sprawling country home in Washington State. Sometimes I’d end up sitting on the teakwood patio of a friend’s vacation home in Belize, inhaling briny air, watching the crystalline blue waves roll in the early morning sun.

So, it was something of a shock to find my dream self in a darkened room I didn’t recognize, staring at a shadowy figure I didn’t know. A small shaft of moonlight trickled out from between a pair of green gingham curtains. A woman’s foot was illuminated, and I watched as she curled her painted toes into the carpet in apparent agitation.

I was standing close enough to feel the baby-fine strands of the woman’s hair kiss my face. That was when I realized I was locked into the woman, like a shadow moving just behind her. Not quite a part of her, but existing just on her periphery.

When she drifted, ghost-like, through the shaft of moonlight, I was forced onward, just behind her. And I could feel something—something heavy. Rage saturating the air. My mouth burned, like there was a habanero stuck halfway down my throat. I felt like I could spit pure flame.

But this wasn’t my anger. It was hers.

If I strained, I could actually catch the tenor of her thoughts. They popped like furious bubbles inside my head. As if her anger was my own.

He was upstairs. I could smell him up there.

The odious little man always wore too much cologne. He thought he was so much better than me...

The second the thought burst into my head, I strained to get loose of the dream because it was a type of dream you never wanted to have—one of those nightmares that threatened to submerge you, to take you along for the ride, whether you wanted to go or not.

I tried to separate myself