Читать книгу Fade To Midnight - Shannon McKenna - Страница 8

Edie Parrish scanned the entrance of the restaurant and the twilit street outside as she sipped her red wine. No sign of Dad’s upright figure striding, coat flapping around his legs. She deliberately released the tension in her chest, her face, her hands. Squeeze, release. Breathe, slow. In, out. This dinner would be fine. Dad himself had asked for her to meet him. She would take that as a gesture of peace. She had to.

Because she wanted to see Ronnie, desperately. She ached for it. Dad held the keys to that tower. It was his most effective instrument for controlling his uncontrollable daughter, and he used it mercilessly, punishing her for all perceived misbehaviors by keeping her away from her little sister. The strategy was brilliant in its simplicity.

God knows, if not for Ronnie, she’d have run away years ago.

She swallowed down the bitter gall of old anger. Maybe tonight she’d have some stroke of brilliance to persuade him. Maybe Dad would have a change of heart. She had to hope.

She sank down into her chair, glanced around to make sure she was unobserved, and gave into the guilty impulse, flipping through the pages of her smallest sketchbook until she found one with some space to fill. She shook hair over her face, for discretion’s sake, and resumed people watching. Her eyes softened, absorbing infinitesimal details that her conscious mind didn’t perceive as important enough to notice. This would get her into trouble for sure, but she couldn’t resist. When she watched people, her fingers itched for the pen, the pencil. She knew she’d pay for it, but there was a part of her that just didn’t care. And that part always, always won.

An obsession, her parents had called it. And so? What if it was?

Her eyes seized on the death-of-a-salesman type across the room, the stringy comb-over, the reddened nose, the eye bags. He was consuming his prime rib and baked potato with glum ferocity. Edie rendered him with a few swift pen strokes, and then tried again, trying to capture the set of his shoulders, the defeated look.

The weirdness started to happen, like it always did. Her brain kicked into a new gear. It felt like an eye, opening up deep inside her, seeing everything more deeply, more brightly. The world outside the focus of her eyes blurred. Her perception widened, deepened, softened. Her pen went by itself. Time ceased to move. God, she freaking loved it.

The sounds of the restaurant disappeared as she caught the dull anger in the broken veins across his nose, the aggression in his down-turned mouth, the heavy sadness of his hanging jowls.

He was avoiding home. Using work as an excuse to stay as far away as he could from the grandson he and his wife were raising. The child was violent, hyperactive, with learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder. His wife was exhausted, desperate, at her wit’s end. So angry at him for abandoning her to deal with it all alone. Again.

He fled that situation every day, just as he’d fled similar problems with the boy’s mother, his promiscuous, drugaddled daughter. He felt like shit about it, but he could not change. He didn’t have the strength.

Oh, God, how sad, how awful. Edie dragged her eyes away from the unlucky guy and stared out at the lights on the street, trying to get the taste of the man’s guilt and sour self-loathing out of her mind.

When she went into that place in her mind, she started picking up stuff from the airwaves. Whatever people were projecting. And there was no shutting it out. Not if she tried.

She looked around, for someone else to tune in to. Someone more upbeat, more hopeful. Like that cute couple across the aisle from her.

Yes, they looked promising. He was handsome, in a stiff, prosperous looking way. She looked sweet. Edie sketched her, smearing ink with her finger, trying to catch that glow, the shadows and curves, that unfocused, blurred look of shifting possibilities…oh, God.

Pregnant. That girl was pregnant. Just a few weeks along. It was still secret. Her dinner partner didn’t know. She was planning on telling him. Tonight. Nervous about it. Smiling until her mouth ached from it, but her guy was not responding to her smile. He looked preoccupied.

Edie drew the stern line of his Roman nose, his sealed, thin-lipped mouth. His eyes, deep-set, sharp, pinched looking. Energy was gathering inside him. A storm brewing. He intended to hold forth, say his piece, present some watertight argument. He would bolster himself with arrogance, condescension. He thought only of himself; his freedom, his future, his own best interests. They filled his mind so completely, he didn’t even really see the girl. How beautiful she was. How hopeful. The cliff she was poised upon. He was bored by her puppyish clinging. He felt suffocated. He was wondering if he could do better. Snag someone sexier, more interesting, more educated. Smarter. Richer.

He was about to to tell his girlfriend that he thought they should be seeing other people. Edie’s pen faltered, digging a hole in the paper.

Maybe she was projecting. Casting this guy as another Eric. An ex who had worn a similar hateful look on his face when he’d dropped that same bombshell on her. But probably not. She was never wrong in these things. Not even when she desperately wished that she were.

Ouch. She capped her pen, laid down the sketchbook. Threaded ink-stained fingers together. Studied her wineglass. She should stick to horse skulls, stuffed birds. Drawing real people was too dangerous.

So she defaulted to the next best thing. Fictional characters. She could draw them, have intense insights into their heads, and call it creativity, rather than delusional craziness. Or obscene invasion of personal privacy, depending on your mood.

She didn’t mean to do this, to anyone. She didn’t want to. It was just something that happened to her, since she was fourteen. Since the Haven, and Dr. Osterman’s cognitive enhancement techniques.

She’d been enhanced, all right. Practically into the mental ward.

But dwelling on that was not useful. She did some quick sketches of Fade Shadowseeker, the main character of her graphic novel, trying to catch the right pose for the part where Fade was holding the knife to the throat of the sex-trafficker villain of the fifth Fade Shadowseeker book. Demanding to know where the girls were, because his lover Mahlia was being held among them. His face was a taut mask of fear.

Drawing Fade made her think of the argument she’d had with Jamal that afternoon, while the kid was systematically inhaling everything in her fridge. Jamal was her eight-year-old upstairs neighbor and her very good buddy. He came down and slept on Edie’s couch when his mother was entertaining her clients in their two room-apartment, on the floor above Edie’s. Which was quite often.

The argument had come about because Jamal had been having problems separating fantasy and reality. Jamal was insisting that Fade Shadowseeker was real, and walking the streets of their neighborhood. Jamal claimed to know people who had seen Fade with their own eyes, people who’d been saved by him. Jamal knew of places to which Fade had given big wads of money that he’d taken from bad guys, after beating the shit out of them, of course. He had shown his Fade books to people who had seen this guy. They said yeah, it was him. He totally existed.

Jesus, what had she done? It gave her a wobble in her stomach. She was the one who had created Fade and put him into Jamal’s mind, so Jamal’s problem was partly of her own making. And it made her heart hurt, how intense Jamal’s need for escape must be. It wasn’t right. Reality should not have to be so bleak that the kid had to escape from it at all costs. But it felt hypocritical to scold him about it. After all, escape into fiction was one of her coping mechanisms, too. And it was a better one than most. Better than drugs, for sure.

It scared her, though, when Jamal’s fantasies strayed into the realm of actual delusion. Jamal’s mom was too busy with her clients and her own drug addiction to be bothered with the problem, so Edie wondered uneasily if she herself should track down Jamal’s social worker, or school psychologist. Someone ought to know. But who?

She spotted her father coming through the doors. The host pointed Charles Parrish her way. She popped up, waving. Smiling.

Her father jerked his chin, waving her down. His disapproving smile said, sit, Edith. Try not to make a spectacle of yourself.

She sank back down, trying to be decorous. Ever since she learned to talk, she’d been trying. Though come to think of it, when she’d learned to talk was more or less when the trouble began.

She shook away that unworthy thought as he walked toward her. Her cheeks ached with tension. They were both making an effort, and that was positive, right? Being defeatist or sulky would not help her get to see Ronnie. She was going to keep it together. Oh, so good, oh, so mellow, oh, so very normal and natural. No need for meds.

She got up when he reached the table, and they did the stiff, awkward kiss and half-body embrace. Always timing it wrong, jostling the eyeglasses, bumping chins, going for the wrong cheek and hitting a jawbone, or kissing an ear. Nervous, muttered apologies.

Finally, they were safely seated on opposite sides of the table. Searching for an entry point in the seamless marble wall between them.

Charles Parrish’s eyes fell on the pile of sketchbooks on the table, the pens scattered on the smudged tablecloth. Her blackened fingertips. She suppressed an urge to gather them up, mumbling apologies. She stopped herself. She was twenty-nine, a woman, a successful, well-known professional artist. Not a naughty child caught misbehaving.

The waiter arriving to bring water and take their order was a welcome distraction for a couple of minutes, but soon they were left alone, staring at each other. At a loss.

Her father made an unfriendly gesture with his hand toward the sketchbooks. “Hard at work?”

“As always. It’s going well.” She waited for him to ask for more details. In vain.

“Is it?” he murmured vaguely. “Is that so.”

The dismissal in his voice killed the urge to pull out the sheaf of reviews she’d printed up for him, for her latest graphic novel. They said things like “ground breaking,” “genre defining.” They referred to her, awkward, shy Edie Parrish, as “one of the freshest new voices of a disillusioned but stubbornly hopeful generation.” They used phrases like “immensely powerful,” and “full of pathos and palpable yearning.”

But Charles Parrish didn’t want to hear about it. His oldest daughter’s pathos and palpable yearning had been an embarrassment to him her entire life. Edie crumpled the printouts in the pocket of her long sweater, and scrambled for something else to say. “I, um, have a book signing this Saturday,” she offered. “At Powell’s. At seven p.m.”

“Oh. That’s nice,” he said, his voice distant.

“It’s for the release of my new graphic novel,” she persisted. “The Fade Shadowseeker series. The fourth installment. It’s doing well. It’s a pretty big deal, this event. I was wondering if…” She clenched her hands around the paper. Let him turn her down flat, right to her face. “Wondering if you and Ronnie might come,” she finished breathlessly.

Her father’s eyelids quivered. “Fade Shadowseeker?” he said. “That would be the character based upon that that horrible event that blighted your whole childhood?”

Edie cupped her hands around her wineglass and stared at the liquid trembling in the glass. “I wouldn’t say it blighted my childhood,” she said quietly. “But yes, that’s the one.”

“I’m sorry to hurt your feelings, but I disagree with you about that. And I find it ironic that you would actually suggest that I come and…celebrate this unhealthy obsession of yours. Or that you suggest I let your thirteen-year-old sister witness it! What are you thinking, Edith? To ask me that? It’s an offense!”

Edie felt her cheeks start to burn. “No. It’s not like that, Dad.”

“I understood working out your feelings about that experience through drawing, and I applaud the attempt, but this has gone so far beyond a therapeutic tool, it’s…it’s—”

“It’s a fictional character, Dad,” she said, her voice gentle and flat.

There was a strained silence as they both groped for a way out of this danger zone. Dad was half right, as far as it went. The event that had inspired Fade Shadowseeker had indeed been traumatic.

She remembered every detail. It happened eighteen years ago, on her eleventh birthday. Her mother had arranged a big party at the country club. Edie had been dreading the party. Her hair had been curled into a million dumb ringlets. She’d been dressed in a ruffly white thing with a scratchy lace collar. A wreath of white roses, baby’s breath and lacy fluff in her hair. They’d stopped at Daddy’s Flaxon office, so that Daddy could kiss her and give her his present in person, because he couldn’t make the party. He’d bought her a pink bicycle. Pink silk ribbon bows on it. Pink helium balloons tied to the handlebars.

A man had burst in, and run into Daddy’s office before anyone could stop him. He’d been hideously injured. His face blistered with burns, his hair singed off. His hands were black and swollen, his body bloody, covered with oozing cuts. He’d been raving about torture. Mind-rape. Kids thrown in a hole. Begging for someone to make it stop.

Her mother screamed for security, yelling that the man was trying to kill Daddy. They had come running. The enormous, shattering crash as the wounded man threw one of the security guards through the plate glass window and out onto the grounds still echoed in her head.

More security came running. The fight went on for a long time. The man was incredibly strong. It was terrible to hear, though she couldn’t see most of it. Mother screamed through the whole thing.

They’d finally subdued him. It took five of them to pull him out of Daddy’s office. His eyes had fixed on her as they dragged him past, still twisting and struggling. His eyes were bright green. They shone with a brilliant, desperate light, as if lit from within. She saw it in her dreams.

He’d twisted and strained to keep his eyes on her as they carried him away. He’d called out to her for help. His stark desperation haunted her. It haunted her still, eighteen years later.

She tried to grasp that fey light whenever she drew Fade Shadowseeker, the scarred hero of her graphic novel series. She never came remotely close. But she kept on trying. Obsessively.

After they hustled him away, she’d looked down at her ruffly dress. It had been speckled with a fine spray of tiny bloodstains.

Yes, that had been traumatic. Just not as traumatic as having both her parents withhold their approval for most of her life. That trauma beat the burned man raving on her birthday to hell and gone.

“It didn’t blight my life,” she repeated. “It marked it, that’s all.”

“The hell it didn’t! You were traumatized!” Dad jabbed the whispered words at her. “You’ve never been the same since!”

A hard point to argue, since she doubted that her father had noticed what she’d been like before. Shy and insignificant, for sure. Easy to overlook. No trouble to speak of. No problems.

It was afterwards that she’d become a problem to them.

Her mother had canceled the birthday party, pleading a stomach virus. That had marked the beginning of Edie’s oddessey with child psychiatrists and endless medications, to treat her nightmares, her anxiety, her so-called obsessions. Her utter, hopeless inability to be the daughter her parents wanted her to be.

She pushed it away, and shook her head. “It’s just a character. An artistic creation. It’s my work, Dad. It’s how I support myself.”

“Oh, stop. I’ve lost patience with your playacting at being a starving artist in that miserable hole of an apartment. It’s an insult to me and to your mother’s memory, when you could live in any of a dozen beautiful properties! You could have an allowance, a car—”

“I don’t need an allowance. I’m fine. I already have a car.”

“You call that thing a car? It’s a death trap! You know how I worry. How your mother worried! Her worry for you shortened her life!”

Edie winced. “That’s not fair!”

“That’s the truth!” Her father shoved out his jaw, in that self-righteous way that brooked no argument.

Not fair. Linda Parrish’s death had not been her fault, but it hurt, to hear it said. To know that he believed it.

Her mother had died of an unexpected heart attack fourteen months before. No one had known she had a heart condition. She was thin, fit, excruciatingly elegant. She played tennis, golf. She was active on the board of innumerable charities. But one day, at a Parrish Foundation board meeting, she had clutched her chest, and collapsed.

Edie had known it would happen, ever since her mandatory weekly lunch date with her mother. She’d been nervously doodling on her napkin during the lecture about her clothes, her hair, her attitude, the expression on her face. She’d sketched the sharp line of her mother’s profile on the napkin, felt that inner eye open…and realized that she’d surrounded the portrait with dozens of hearts. Big ones, small ones. And she knew that deadly danger stalked her mother.

She didn’t know how, what, or when, but something was going to happen. Something that could kill Linda Parrish. She struggled as best she could to translate the symbols her subconscious threw to the surface. The hearts made her think that Mom should go to the doctor, get tests done. On her heart. That was the best she could figure.

But her revelations had been met with derision and anger. The lunch had ended prematurely, and Edie had been banished in disgrace for forcing her sick delusions on her mother. And in a public place, too.

Linda Parrish died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, a scant week later. No chance to say good-bye, or part on better terms.

Edie had been over it in her head millions of times. She should have been smarter, sneakier. Told someone else to call her mother, someone with credibility. She should have begged her mother’s doctor to suggest it. There had to have been a better way.

Edie pushed away the grief and frustration, and tried again. “OK, never mind the book signing, Dad. I don’t want to fight with you. Let’s just talk about something else, OK?”

Her father looked down at his wineglass, tightlipped. “You don’t understand, Edith. By dwelling on that incident, you’re forever flogging it in my face. I can’t get away from it, no matter how I try to put it behind me. His brothers even came to harrass me! They held me responsible for that godawful nightmare! Me, personally! Understand?”

She gazed at him, baffled. “What do you mean? What on earth? Who, Dad? Whose brothers?”

He made an impatient gesture. “Don’t play dumb. The brothers of that…that person. The one you saw, in that incident at Flaxon.”

“He had brothers? They came to see you?” Chills ran down her spine. “You mean, you know who he is? You know where he is?”

“No! I most certainly do not know anything about him!” her father snapped. “I am sorry for what happened to him, but I assume that he is dead. Osterman hurt a lot of people in his disgusting illicit research, and that unfortunate person was one of them. I unknowingly funded it, Edith. It’s something I have to live with every day of my life! And your ridiculous comic books do not help me!”

Guilt clutched at her. Her eyes dropped. “I’m sorry.”

“His brothers thought that I was responsible for what had happened to him,” he went on heatedly. “It put me in a terrible position. What Osterman did to those people was despicable, but I was a victim, too, Edith. And Helix, and the Parrish Foundation. And when I think of what Osterman did to you at the Haven…” His mouth tightened with disgust. “God. Whatever happened there sparked these delusions of yours. If I had any idea what that man truly was, I would never have allowed him near you! I failed to protect you, Edith. I have to live with that, too. And it is not easy for me, believe me.”

She stared at him, startled and moved. A flash of what seemed like genuine concern for her. Wow. That was rare. And precious.

Laying aside the fact that the delusions were not delusions, but whatever. Laying aside the fact that she had told her father when she was fourteen that Osterman was crazy and evil, but Charles Parrish was not one to take the word of a depressed, underachieving fourteen-year-old girl over that of a distinguished scientist who was generating profitable patents for Helix. But whatever. Let bygones be bygones.

She reached out, impulsively, and touched her father’s hand.

Charles Parrish’s hand twitched, as if he wanted to yank it back and was forcing himself to leave it, by brute effort of will.

“One of the reasons that I’m retiring is because of that,” he said stiffly. “I want to dedicate myself to administering the funds of the Parrish Foundation in a conscious, ethical way, which involves scrutinizing everything that is done with that money. Nothing will ever slip by me again. I will monitor every single goddamned penny of it.”

She squeezed his hand. “Good for you, Dad.”

He harrumphed. “There was something I wanted to ask you. You’re aware, of course, that my retirement reception is in six weeks. I would like you to attend the banquet. Your mother would have liked for you to be there, with Ronnie. To represent the family.”

Edie wasn’t so sure of that, but saw no profit in saying so. Her mother had been even more embarrassed by her clumsy, unpredictable daughter than her father had. She stared at his handsome, patrician face in the light of the flickering candle. He looked ten years younger than his sixty-four years. Fit, elegant, hair silvering at the temples.

I’ll come to the reception if you and Ronnie come to the book signing. The suggestion hovered, at the tip of her tongue…and she swallowed it back. She didn’t have that kind of bargaining power. It would just touch off another ugly outburst, and she didn’t have the energy for it.

Besides. If Ronnie would be at that banquet, that was reason enough to grit her teeth, don an evening dress and heels, and go.

“Of course,” she said quietly. “I’d be proud to be there for you.”

“Good. You’ll consult with Tanya and your Aunt Evelyn about your dress and hair,” he added sharply, his eyes raking her critically. “And your shoes, of course.”

“Of course.” Edie forced herself to sit up straighter. She had nothing to be ashamed of. Her wavy mane was clean and brushed. The horn-rimmed glasses obscured her eyes, and she liked it that way. Her high-tops were comfy. She was what she was, ink stains and all. “If Tanya and Aunt Evelyn have time to shop with me, I’ll be glad to—”

“They’ll make time. If not, I’ll have Marta help you.”

She kept her face carefully blank at that unspeakable idea. Shopping for an evening gown with her father’s blond, perfect thirty-six-year-old trophy girlfriend, previously his secretary, was her idea of hell. She supposed she should be glad her father had some comfort in his bereavement, if only there were something real behind Marta’s bright, lipsticked smile, but there wasn’t. Just the grinding gears of a calculating, self-interested machine. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” she assured him. “Please, don’t bother Marta.”

“See that it’s not.” Her father looked down at her hands, frowning at the ink stains on her fingers. “You will have a manicure before the reception? Let’s not have people thinking you work in a garage.”

Edie snatched her hand back. “Of course,” she said.

The waiter arrived with her goat cheese, pine nut and arugula salad, and her father’s swordfish filet. After a few bites, Edie laid down her fork and dabbed her napkin to her mouth. “Dad. I was wondering if I could come home this weekend, and spend some time with Ronnie.”

Her father frowned. “You know the answer to that. I’ve established my terms. Dr. Katz told me you’ve missed your sessions with him for weeks now. I assume this means you’re being noncompliant with your meds. So why even ask? It’s a waste of both our time and energy.”

She gulped. “I don’t need the meds. I feel completely calm and—”

“Edie. You have hallucinations.” There was a savage edge to her father’s voice. “You are a danger to your sister, and to yourself!”

She wanted to screech loud enough to shatter glass. She gulped it back. “Dad, it’s not like that. They’re not hallucinations. They’re—”

“Keep your voice down! Does everyone have to know?”

Edie pressed her hand to her shaking mouth. No. Crying.

“Your sister is already stressed from your mother’s death,” her father raged on, his voice hushed. “Your abandonment is the final—”

“Abandonment? That’s not fair!” The words burst out. “I never abandoned her! I would do anything to see her! You know that!”

“Shhh!” He glared at her, eyes darting around to see if anyone was listening. “She’s acting out lately. We had another incident, with her firecrackers. She ordered them over the Internet, had the packaging disguised as books. Dr. Katz thinks she’s punishing me. Showing me how explosive and destructive her rage is. The last thing Ronnie needs now are further examples of mental imbalance and rebellion. You oppose me at every turn, out of habit. Ronnie does not need to see it.”

I oppose you because I have to, Dad. To survive.

Edie didn’t say it. Her father would see the words as a spiteful blow. He could not hear the anguished truth behind them.

Poor Ronnie. She wasn’t acting out with her firecrackers. She just loved things that spat bright-colored sparks and went bang. It was her bizarre karma, like Edie’s, to be born into the straitlaced Parrish family.

“Would you mind leaving this subject?” her father asked. “It’s ruining my meal.”

Edie nodded, and pushed the remaining salad around on her plate. The heavy silence was broken only by the clink of cutlery.

When they were almost finished, she saw the arrogant young man from the couple nearby striding past their table. He’d said his piece, and he was beating hell out of there. Edie glanced over at the girl. Her eyes were streaming. Her hand was pressed against her mouth. She looked like she needed to vomit, or cry. Or both. Soon.

The girl got up, lurched toward the bathroom. Edie’s hand shot out, grabbing her arm as she passed. “Wait,” she said.

Her father gasped. “Edie!” he hissed. “For God’s sake—”

“It’ll be a girl,” Edie blurted, looking into the girl’s wide, wet eyes. “A beautiful little blond girl. And that selfish bastard is useless to you. He’s done his job. It’s all he’s good for. Unload him, and move on.”

The girl’s mouth sagged. Wonder, fear, shock, chills. The usual.

Edie let go of her hand. The pregnant girl stumbled backward, and took off, in a wobbly, stumbling run.

Well. That had been stupid, with her father watching. It would have been stupid even if he hadn’t been. But she never had a choice. It had just…popped out of her. Totally involuntary. Like always.

Edie stared at the drizzle of balsamic vinegar on her plate, her eyes fixed on the frilly shreds of romaine and arugula that clung to it. Avoiding the look in her father’s eyes. She didn’t need to see the anger, the disgust. She’d memorized them years ago. They never changed.

“So. You’re still suffering from your delusions.” Dad’s voice was cool, expressionless. “I’ll make an emergency appointment for you with Dr. Katz, first thing tomorrow morning. If you do not go, there will be consequences. This is what happens when you don’t take your meds.”

Experience had proven time without number that her perceptions were not delusions. They had never shown themselves to be false or misleading. Not even once. But that argument was lost before it began.

“I don’t need meds,” Edie repeated, wearily.

The truth was, the meds did work—in a certain sense. They zoned her out into emotional flatness, and clogged the airwaves so that she didn’t get private newscasts from people’s heads anymore. They also, surprise surprise, killed her desire to draw. She hated the meds.

“Promise me that there will be no scenes like this at the reception,” her father said.

“I won’t embarrass you at the reception, Dad,” she said dully.

Who knew if that was true, though. She never had a choice. God knows, she would never have voluntarily chosen this hell. Being constantly judged, isolated. Punished. Never seeing Ronnie.

Her father’s eyes flicked to the table. He jerked as if he’d been poked with a pin. “For the love of God, Edith! Stop that, right now!”

She flinched. Her hand was holding a pen, which she hadn’t been conscious of picking up. It hit the bulb of her wineglass, knocking it over. She’d been doodling on the open sketchpad without realizing it.

A sketch of her father’s face and torso covered the page. Wine spread across it, over the sketchbook, the table, dripping onto her lap.

Edie grabbed a napkin, dabbed her skirt, murmuring a garbled apology. She’d been a compulsive doodler ever since she learned how to hold a pen, but her parents had gotten twitchy about it after the Haven. When the incidents began.

“I’ll make a strategic retreat now,” Charles Parrish said, rising to his feet. “Before I get my fortune told. Please, Edith. Don’t do this to people! No one wants to hear it! And take your meds, goddamnit!”

“I’ll try,” she said. Referring to the first request, if not the last. “Can I…would you at least tell Ronnie that I—”

“No!” He spat out the word with vicious force. “I’ll contact Evelyn and Tanya for you. Clear your schedule for them, please, and arrange to go to their stylist and makeup artist before the banquet as well, understand?”

She nodded mutely. He strode away. At least like this, they didn’t have to do the stiff, awkward, eyeglass bumping hug, she thought, bleakly. He shrank from any physical contact with her.

Do. Not. Cry. Not in public. Don’t even think about it. She sniffed back the tears, swallowed, blinked. Grateful for the glasses, the shield of hair, for privacy. Dad was paying, at the door. He left. No glance. No wave. Their meetings always ended this way. No matter how she tried.

The guy with the comb-over, the drug addicted daughter and the ADS grandson was chowing down on chocolate mousse cake, with the same grim sense of purpose with which he’d consumed the prime rib. Whoo hoo, she thought, staring at him. There was still more damage she could do, if she wanted to. Anything that she said to that poor guy would provoke a massive heart attack, clogged as his arteries must be.

Hah. What a fit ending that would be for an evening like this. Something else to pile up onto her overloaded conscience. As if Mom’s death wasn’t enough for her to bear. And Ronnie. Feeling abandoned.

She should just stop drawing altogether. Turn away from that part of her brain. Pretend it didn’t exist. But she couldn’t. Like a drug addiction. She couldn’t resist that free, whole, connected feeling.

It was just the consequences that she couldn’t bear to face.

She sighed and started gathering up her pens and charcoal, her sketchbooks, and shoved them into her big shoulder bag. She’d go straight home, not looking to the right or left. She’d lock the door. And if she ended up crying there in the dark, who would ever know?

She picked up the napkin, thinking to sponge at the sketchbook once more, hoping to salvage at least a few sheets of the—

She froze, staring down at the sketch she’d doodled of her father, still and cold as a block of stone. The wine had run over it in such a way that it seemed as if the stiffly upright figure with the disapproving mouth and the long, narrow nose was submerged in a pool of blood.

Chills shook her. That familiar far away drumbeat of doom.

I’ll just make a strategic retreat now. Before I get my fortune told. Her father’s words echoed in her head. He would never listen if she warned him. She could not help him. No more than she’d been able to help her mother. She was helpless. Hands tied.

And her father was in deadly danger.

The little girl floated over the tumbled boulders of dream landscape like a butterfly, darting out of sight, flitting back into it. Barefoot, thin, long dark hair. She wore a white tunic. When she looked back, her huge eyes looked scared, sad. She stopped beside a crack in the cliff wall. She bent. In a flash of thin legs, of dirty little feet, she was gone.

Sean followed her in, bound by the heavy inevitability that came from having dreamed it before. This feeling of being locked in breathless ignorance was horribly familiar. Like a rock sitting on his brain, blacking out the center of his being. Obscuring his sense of place in space and time. Leaving him blundering and helpless in the darkness.

The tunnel wound down, then the cavern opened out. Vastness around him. Cathedral ceilings, buttressed with gnarled stalactites and stalagmites. A forest of pallid, misshapen trees, glowing like radioactive tumors in the dark. Water, slowly dripping. The stink of batshit.

Dread grew inside him, but he had to go on, to do the hard thing. The path curved, through a choked grove of dead, white calcite columns.

A clearing was before him, a slab of stone in the center. Torches flickered in a circle around it, and the reddish light of dancing flames wavered evilly upon the man who lay on it like a pagan sacrifice.

Rocks were piled on his torso. Only his sprawled legs, arms, and head emerged. He had to be dead under that weight, lungs flattened, organs crushed. His head was turned away. He wore a blindfold. All Sean saw was the jut of a cheekbone, lank strands of ash colored hair.

A hole yawned in the rocks before the altar. Something stirred inside. Rustling, a chittering rasp. The flash of some nonhuman eyes in the hole, moving before he could make sense of the gleaming shapes.

Something monstrous, something hideous. Something…hungry.

Then a hairy, jointed leg extended delicately, prodding with its hooked claw. The chittering rasp grew louder.

Sean’s heart thudded, but he couldn’t run. He leaned down to grab the first boulder heaped on his brother, and the thing burst from its hole, eyes glittering, barbed feet slashing at Sean’s face like whiplashes—

Sean jolted bolt upright, gasping for air. Heart racing. Gasps racked his torso, as if he’d been sprinting. The dreams about his lost twin had been getting more frequent, more intense. He was zonked out from sleep deprivation. As if it wasn’t enough for them to deal with, the fallout they’d worked through together from that horrific encounter with the mad psycho scientist Christopher Osterman. They’d been supremely lucky to get through that with their lives and their sanity intact. More or less.

They’d been doing better. Convinced they were through the worst of it. And now, here he was. Tormented by fucking nightmares again.

Liv stirred, lifted her head. She shoved fuzzy, sleep-snarled dark curls back from her face. She touched his shoulder, in silent question.

“Shit. Sorry I woke you.” He hardly got the words out, his chest jerked so hard.

Liv sat up, curling her legs up, and putting an unconscious hand over her pregnant belly. “Another dream? Same one, I take it?”

His shoulders jerked in assent, and he hunched. Trying to hide, like a turtle in his shell. “I got farther into the cave this time.”

“Ah. That’s good.”

A harsh laugh jerked out of him. “Oh, yeah? Is it?”

She shrank from his ugly tone. “Sorry. Just said that, you know. To say something.”

He kicked himself. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I shouldn’t snarl at you.” He forced himself to go on. “I saw him, this time.”

She didn’t even have to ask who. “And? How was it?”

He let out an explosive sigh. “Bad. He was blindfolded. Laid out on a stone altar. Covered with a pile of boulders. Staked out in front of the lair of some gigantic insect. Could I dream up anything worse?”

“I see.” She had that careful voice his brothers used. Talking Sean down out of his freakout. Let’s scrape Sean off the ceiling again.

He hated it from Con and Davy. He hated it from his wife, too.

“Sounds like a picture on a Tarot card,” she commented. “How did you know it was Kev, if he was covered with rocks and blindfolds?”

“I just knew. You know how it is in dreams.”

“Yeah.” Liv dropped a kiss onto his shoulder. “Hey. Sean? Have you considered that these dreams might not be about Kev at all?”

“What do you mean? Who else could they be about?”

He could feel her caution, how she chose her words carefully, so as not to set him off. It made his teeth grind. “It’s been about four months since you started having these dreams,” she began.

“No,” Sean said. “I’ve had these dreams for eighteen years, Liv. Ever since Kev disappeared. And when we found out it wasn’t him, in the grave…” He shrugged. “I know he’s not dead.”

“I know. But nightmares where you wake up screaming? These are new.” She kissed his shoulder again. “I feel compelled to point out to you that they started right about when I found out that I was pregnant.”

He went rigid. “You think this is about that?” His voice was so tight, it felt like his throat would implode.

“Don’t be mad. Please, consider it. I’ve read that images in dreams are self-referential. Whoever you dream about, and whatever they do, it’s mostly about you. Your own feelings, your own issues.”

“Maybe for most people, but not these dreams,” he said.

“No? Why not?”

“For a lot of reasons!” He stopped, tried to modulate his voice. “Kev woke me up when Gordon kidnapped you. He stopped me from walking off a cliff. That’s not fluff crap about my issues, Liv!”

“I never said it was fluff crap,” she said quietly. “But couldn’t those incidents have been you all along? Your own awareness, your own intelligence? Just using Kev’s image to get your attention?”

“No.” His rejection of the idea was violent and absolute. “It is not.”

“Sean, please. I just want you to—”

“You think I’m scared because we’re having a kid?” His voice cracked. “You think I’m freaked out by fatherhood, Liv? That I consider myself buried under a ton of boulders? What does that make you in this dream? The monster? A giant bug who eats her mate? Jesus, Liv! What kind of coward wuss do you take me for?”

She pulled her hands away. “Well. I guess you’re a whole lot braver than me, then.” Her voice was clipped. “I’m certainly afraid. I keep having dreams that I’ll leave the baby at a public bathroom, or the seat of a city bus. But that just means I’m a cowardly wuss, hmm?” She swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Fine. Whatever.”

Sean lunged, grabbing her waist and wrapping his arms above her baby bulge before she could slide off the bed. “No. Stop.”

“You stop.” She batted at his arms, and he could feel the anger, but he just held her there, in a steely grip, taking care not to put any pressure on that precious bump.

She could pick and pry and pummel him to her heart’s content, but he wasn’t letting her go. No way. He knew what was good for him.

She finally gave up, with a sharp sigh of irritation. He took that as a cue to drag her back onto the bed, pulling her down, and rolling her over so her stiff, resistant body faced his.

He pressed his face against her throat, dragging in her sweet, hot scent of her skin, the silken tickle of her hair. “Please, don’t be mad at me,” he said, his voice muffled against her. “I can’t take that, too.”

He held onto her with all his strength. After a few minutes, she relaxed, with a shuddering sigh, giving in. She wound her fingers into his hair, which had grown into a shaggy mop almost to his shoulders.

“You piss me off,” she said, petting him. “You big, rude jerk.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He lifted his head, fixing her with a pleading gaze. “But that guy in my dream? He’s not me, babe. I swear.” She opened her mouth, but he cut her off. “And I’m not scared about the baby. Really. At least not any more than a normal guy would be.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And what would you know about normal?”

“You have a point,” he conceded, wiggling down the length of her body until he could press his face against her belly. It was something he loved to do. Just lie there, feeling the little flutters against his cheek. It gave him such a rush, imagining his kid in there. So small. Swimming, turning and spinning in the primordial soup. About the size of his fist, on their last ultrasound. A fucking miracle. An amazing little creature.

No way. It wasn’t that sweet tiny thing he was afraid of. No monsters there. Just everything that was fine, good.

“I’m ecstatic about our kid,” he repeated. “Over the moon. And you don’t have to be scared. You won’t leave the kid on a bus. You’ll be an incredible mother. A freaking Titan of a mother.”

She batted at his shoulders, vibrating with laughter. “Oh, shut up. It’s not like I have the greatest model for motherhood.”

He winced, in the darkness. True enough. Liv’s mother was one of his least favorite people on the planet. A total whack job, to put it politely. Unfortunately, Liv’s impending motherhood had inspired the woman to try to make peace with her daughter. She wanted that grandchild. God help the poor, unsuspecting kid. God help them all.

“No, really,” he pleaded. He shoved the oversized T-shirt she slept in up, and found her naked beneath it. Thank God, she had finally realized wearing panties to bed was just a blatant challenge to him.

He nuzzled the velvet of her skin, working his way down into the warm bush of her pubic hair, exploring all the angles and curves of her, changed by her pregnancy, but that soft, electrifying fuzz, the slick silky ringlets that adorned her pink girl parts, were as perfect in every detail as ever. No, better. Tender flower petals. Meltingly juicy, pulling at him.

“Sean!” Liv wiggled, giggling. “This is no way to win an argument!”

“What argument? Were we arguing?”

“Don’t be facetious. We have to communicate.”

“We are communicating. In the best possible way. And this isn’t an attempt to win an argument.” He slid his tongue teasingly across her slit. “This is just changing the subject.”

“Yeah, right. Tell me about it.” She smothered more giggles. “Your all-time favorite subject.”

“Busted.” He nuzzled her groin. “Now, let’s see. The new subject is better than the old one. I was just going to go on about how excellent and admirable you are. What a fabulous mother you’ll be. Your courage, your beauty, your character…” He slid his finger inside her, followed its path with his tongue, in a slow, hungry swipe that hit all her external sweet spots. “Your yummy succulent pussy. My princess, my queen, my goddess, my world. No arguments. What’s to argue?”

She dug her fingernails into his shoulders. “Seriously, Sean. Don’t change the subject. We’re not done with this subject.”

He raised his head, wiped his mouth. “We’re not?”

“No.” She tilted up his chin. “You make me feel like I’m one of the bad guys in this story. Trying to make you doubt yourself. Undermining you. About Kev, for all those years. You’re so angry at everyone for doing that to you, even Davy and Con. And I don’t deserve any part of that anger. Not one little speck. You hear me?”

The raw emotion in her voice penetrated the hot lust that gripped him, and he lifted up, sobered. “No, baby, you sure don’t,” he agreed.

She stared up, blinking in the moonlight. Her beautiful eyes were shimmering with tears. Remorse bit him in the ass, and he slid up her body, kissing his way apologetically over the curve of her belly, and into the bounty of her even more bodacious than usual tits.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he whispered. “Please don’t cry. You’ll make me cry, too, and I hate crying. Makes my nose run.”

She laughed, soggily, to his immense relief. “Oh, shut up, you clown. I just want…I want…”

Her voice trailed off, and he waited, in an agony of suspense. “Yeah?” he prompted. “What do you want?” He held his breath, hoping to God it was something he was humanly capable of granting her.

She blew out a sharp breath. “I don’t want you to be forever yearning for something that might not even exist, for the rest of your life. I just want you to…to get over it. To be whole. And happy.”

Whew. Talk about a challenge.

He positioned himself carefully over her body so that he put no pressure on that precious bulge, and pressed himself inside her. They sighed, in tandem, at the throbbing clasp of her body around him. “I’m working on that,” he said. “It’s complicated. But I’m trying. Just keep loving me. That’s gotten me the closest I’ve ever been. Closer than I ever deserved to get.” He sucked in air, at the perfection of being so close. “Just keep loving me,” he repeated, his voice raw.

“Oh, please.” Tearful laughter made her body contract, minute shudders of perfection around his cock. “As if I ever had a choice.”

He rocked inside her. “I’m not scared about the baby,” he told her.

She clutched at him, with arms, legs, every part of her. “It would be nothing to be ashamed if you were, doofus.”

“But I’m not,” he protested, stubbornly. “Really. I’m so happy about that baby, it just about makes my heart explode. Believe me.”

She gave him a tremulous smile. “Um,” she murmured. “OK. That’s nice to know. And now,” she wiggled against him, and he gasped with delight as she squeezed him, deliciously inside herself. “So. You were talking about, ah, exploding? You want to elaborate on that?”

He grinned at her, and proceeded to do just exactly that.