He couldn’t promise that. Even though I had no freaking clue what happened, there was one thing I knew through an intuition the source of which escaped me. Coming straight from the core of me, I knew the only way he could make good that promise was never to leave me.
Never.
And that was not going to happen.
I had more than one menace (the gentle one, Lucien) and more than two menaces (the frightening one, personified by Marcello but also Rudolf and Cristiano), now I had three (my own mind, which freaked me out most of all).
I was dead woman walking one way or another.
And I was terrified out of my skull.
* * * * *
“I don’t want Leah to overhear.” Lucien’s voice was low but angry. I shifted out of sleep and my eyes opened, seeing nothing but Lucien’s vacant pillow.
“I’m thinking Leah should be in on this conversation,” Stephanie snapped back.
“Teffie.” Another voice, male, vaguely familiar. Cosmo.
“I don’t understand.” That was Edwina.
“Can we move to the kitchen?” Lucien asked a question which wasn’t a question as much as a politely formed demand.
Silence.
“I just went in there. She’s sleeping. She sleeps very soundly,” Edwina offered in a voice that said she was playing peacemaker.
I guessed Stephanie was digging in and Edwina was hoping she wouldn’t have to repair plaster in the upstairs hallway.
Lucien must have thought that slamming Stephanie into the upstairs wall would likely wake me anyway and probably upset me, so he spoke.
And what he said freaked me out.
“She has a dream. It’s recurring and it’s connected to me. I know this because I hear her words in my head while she’s dreaming.” Lucien’s voice was low, curt and impatient. “I spoke to her mother and these intense dreams have been happening her whole life.”
I was totally freaked about me talking to Lucien’s head when I was dreaming, about what I might have said and about the dream being about him at all considering what that dream did to me, both before my near death experience and during it.
But what he said after that took precedence.
He spoke to my mother?
Now that made me angry.
For the last three weeks I’d been calling all my family, even Aunt Kate. But not Myrna as I had enough of channeling Myrna in daily life, I didn’t want to have to actually speak to her.
Desperate for advice, guidance and the lessons Lucien stopped giving me until last night; I was willing to talk to anyone. I’d even called Aunt Fiona twice.
Problem was, when they answered the phone, and I was suspecting they were avoiding that chore when they saw my name come up on their displays, they were busy.
Busy, busy, busy.
Even Lana, who could talk to a corpse until it reanimated, sat up and told her to shut the hell up.
This hurt.
I mean, I’d never moved away from home and I missed them a lot.
But it seemed like they were getting on with life without me just fine.