WILDEST DREAMS
Love Is Everything
“YOU ARE SURE?” VALENTINE ASKED in her soft, throaty, sing-song New Orleans accented voice.
I nodded.
I was sure. Heck yeah, I was sure.
I could not wait.
“Finnie,” my friend Claudia hissed from my side, and I looked from Valentine to Claudia to see Claudia looked pale and alarmed. “This is crazy,” she went on then elaborated. “Crazier than when you bungee jumped. Crazier than when you jumped from a plane. Crazier than when you swam with the sharks. Crazier—”
I cut her off, saying through a smile, “I didn’t swim with sharks. They just crashed the party.”
Claudia’s eyes got squinty. “You know what I mean. And I’ll throw in treasure hunting with that guy who thought he was the Indiana Jones of this generation but who was, I will remind you,” she leaned in, “not. And that time you nearly got stampeded by elephants when you were on safari—”
I looked to Valentine. “That was unfortunate. And it wasn’t my fault no matter what anyone says.”
Valentine’s eyelids lowered a little, like a cat who was coasting to sleep.
Seriously, this bitch was cool.
“Finnie!” Claudia snapped and I looked back at my friend.
“I get it sweetheart. You think I’m nuts.”
“You are nuts if you . . .” she leaned forward again, her eyes darting with more than a little obvious distrust at Valentine before coming back to me, “think you’re going to a parallel universe.”
“I can assure you,” Valentine put in smoothly, “she will.”
I looked at Valentine. Her hair was a dark, shining auburn, real as far as I could tell. Her skin was alabaster. Her body was long and very thin. Her descent, she declared, was pure Creole. In other words, her people were there before our people were there (her people being the Europeans and when she explained this to us during our first meeting with her a couple of days ago, after, of course, corresponding with her for months to set up this gig, it was she who added the emphasis). She had a kickass place in the French Quarter. She had major class from her perfectly coiffed head to her killer Jimmy Choo clad toes. She reeked of money even more than me, and I was loaded.
And, incidentally, she was, I’d learned from a variety of reliable sources, an extremely powerful witch.
“Okay,” Claudia stated. “Say you do this. Say you send Finnie there—”
“Her name is, Seoafin,” Valentine cut in haughtily, her green eyes sliding elegantly to me. “That is far more chic than . . .” her lips turned down and one nostril quivered delicately, “Finnie.”
The nostril quiver, I thought, was a good touch.
“Well I, and all her friends who know her and love her and don’t want to see her get gouged by someone like you, call her Finnie,” Claudia returned.
Valentine forced her gaze to Claudia (and made it obvious she did so) and she said one word. The ice dripping from it underlining a meaning the word did not exactly have but could not be missed.
“Indeed.” Then she looked back at me and her face warmed, slightly. “Sjofn is the Goddess of Love. And love,” her eyelids suddenly fluttered dreamily. “Love,” she breathed then she focused on me with a strange intensity that made me—even me—squirm a little. “Love is everything.”
Okay, this bitch had style and class but she was whacked.
“All righty,” I whispered.
“Oh my God!” Claudia cried. “This is insane!”
Valentine’s eyes sliced to Claudia and her gaze grew sharp. “It is far from insane. Magic is entirely natural. It is not insane. And I will remind you of what I’ve told you repeatedly. This is not something I would normally do. It is because I like your friend, I admire her . . .” her green gaze traveled the length of Claudia seated in her chair, “ . . . outside her choice in acquaintances, that is, and she carries the name of a goddess, and that goddess is the goddess of love, that I’m doing it at all. She should feel honored.”
“I do, totally,” I assured her and Valentine smiled benignly at me.
“Yeah, she should feel honored,” Claudia cut in sarcastically. “What with Finnie giving you a million dollars, she should feel honored. Right.”
Valentine sniffed delicately and condescendingly as any uppity bitch would do when money was brought up.
Claudia was a dog with a bone. “So, say you can actually pull off this nonsense. Where’s she going? What’s she going to do when she gets there? And are you sure you can bring her back?”
“She is going to Lunwyn, a beautiful, snow-covered country at the very top of the Northlands. She is taking the place of the Sjofn who lives there who, by the way,” Valentine looked again at me, “actually spells it properly.” She turned again to Claudia. “She will assume the life of the other her. She will be there for the time we agreed. That is one year to this very day, this very hour, this very minute and then, in this very place.” She raised a pale, graceful hand and pointed a long, thin, lethally-rounded, blood-red tipped fingernail at the thick rug on the floor. “I will switch them back.”
“Right,” Claudia whispered, clearly thinking Valentine was a loon.
I grabbed Claudia’s hand and pulled it to me.
“Honey, listen to me. Valentine’s been in touch with this, uh . . . other me. She’s on board and she wants this as much as me. I’ve written a twenty page report on my life and all she needs to know about it to show her the way, and she’ll have you.” I squeezed her hand. “She’s going to write to me about what I need to know about her life. It’s all sorted. It’s all good. But if I do this, which I’m going to do, this has to happen very soon. The window is closing.”
Claudia stared in my eyes and I saw fear in hers. “Okay, Finnie, I get this. I get it. I’ve gotten it for years. I get what you want from this. I get that your dad, your mom—”
My lungs seized and my back went straight before I snapped, “Don’t.”
She squeezed my hand and kept at me. “I wouldn’t but you’re giving me no choice. You’re giving this woman a million dollars for something . . .” She shook her head. “For whatever this is and you have no idea if it’s going to work, where she’ll send you if it does and what will happen once you get there.”
I grinned and pointed out the obvious, “That’s the adventure.”
“This is why I like her,” Valentine murmured decorously.
Claudia’s eyes slid to the side, aiming a vicious shut up look at Valentine but they cleared when they came back to me. “Your mom and dad—”
I tried to pull my hand from hers, snapping again, “Don’t.”
She held tight, leaned far forward to get in my space and didn’t give up. “Your mom and dad, Finnie, they died because of this thirst for adventure. A thirst they taught you and a thirst you’ve never quenched, not once in all your wanderings and shenanigans. And I fear, honey, I fear you never will until you meet their same end.”
I yanked my hand free and looked hard at her. “They died happy,” I stated.
“Finnie, they died young,” Claudia said gently.
“And happy,” I returned.
She closed her eyes tight and then burst out, “God!” She opened her eyes and retorted, “You can’t know that.”
“No, she can’t. But I can,” Valentine butted in at this point.
Claudia’s face got hard and she and I both looked at her.
Valentine was looking at me.
“They did die happy. You are correct,” Valentine declared.
My heart tightened and Claudia muttered, “Freaking great. Now she communes with the dead.”
Valentine continued, totally ignoring Claudia. “Though, you must know, happiness is a line and that line has degrees. There is bliss at one end and there is contentment at the other. They were not blissful, as I would assume you think they were. Being in love, being together and dying doing something they enjoyed, the sheer exultation of thrill and excitement coursing their veins, life as big as life can be rushing through their systems. They were happy but this happiness held weight. And that weight was you.”
I pulled in a soft breath and heard Claudia do the same.
“They were sad to leave you,” Valentine said quietly. “Very sad. And you should know with what we do this evening, there is no guarantee. You do take risks with this venture. I do not know a great deal about this world. I know it exists. I get communications from it but infrequently. That said, although interesting, I have little interest in it. These communications are a nuisance. There is much going on in my world, I cannot find the curiosity to learn about both. I am also not a seer. So I do not know what will befall you there, what you can expect, if you will be safe or in danger. I do know there is another you and she wants to be here for a year. And I would caution you to understand that her motives might not be the same as yours.”
“This is true, Finnie,” Claudia whispered, grabbing my hand again. “Think about that.”
“But you can bring me back?” I asked Valentine and Claudia’s hand tightened in mine.
“Yes, Seoafin. I can bring you back,” Valentine answered.
“You can definitely bring me back,” I stated and she inclined her head regally. “So what do I care what the other me wants here?” I asked.
“While here, ma chérie, she will be you,” Valentine replied with a fluid twist of her hand.
“And I will be her when I’m there. Honor system,” I returned.
“There are as many ideas of what honor is as there are people, my goddess of love,” Valentine warned quietly.
Hmm. That didn’t sound good.
“I will, however, provide you with another service,” her eyes drifted to Claudia momentarily then back to me, “free of charge, because I like you. I will keep an eye on this Sjofn. And if I have concerns, I will get a message to you.”
I smiled brightly. “That sounds cool to me.”
Valentine’s lips tipped up about a half a centimeter at the ends.
“Oh boy,” Claudia muttered but Valentine again ignored her and continued.
“You understand what I have explained about this world? That it is parallel to ours. That most of the same people here are there—”
I interrupted her, “Yes, I understand.”
And I understood. I totally understood. That was why I was forking over a million dollars for this in the first place.
She studied me then she said softly, “And you understand the people there who look like us, sound like us, are not . . .” her eyes narrowed slightly, “us.”
I nodded. “I get it.”
“Finnie—” Claudia whispered and I turned to her.
“It’s going to be okay, Claudia,” I assured my friend.
“Right.” Claudia, as usual, sounded far from assured.
“It’s going to be,” I shook her hand, “all right.”
Claudia studied me. I let her. Then I smiled, big and bright.
Her gaze moved over my face, her eyes warming as it did so, she shook her head and whispered, “Just for the record, I do. I totally think you’re nuts.”
“I know,” I whispered back, still smiling.
“But I love you, mostly because you are nuts,” she told me something else I knew and my smile got bigger.
“This is, mes petites filles, touching, however, we had not much time when you arrived and our window of opportunity as to when Sjofn can make this switch is quickly closing,” Valentine warned.
“That’s another thing I don’t get,” Claudia muttered.
“Well, you will have to ask her when she’s here in five minutes,” Valentine returned coldly.
Claudia glared at her. Valentine accepted her glare, completely unperturbed. Then Claudia gave up, looked at me and rolled her eyes.
I smiled at the eye roll but I wanted to get on with it.
I was ready for my next adventure.
So I looked at Valentine and declared, “Valentine, I’m ready.”
She looked at me.
She smiled an actual smile.
Then she whispered, “Lovely. Shall we begin?”