The single benefit of the strange appearance of a fictional character was that I now had inspiration to write the fourth book. In the two weeks since I’d called him, I’d written nearly half the story. Book four became my story, well, my story if all my dreams had been real and I truly was from another world. I wrote about the princess finding herself in a different world, Riona falling to the Gorum, and the hero coming to find the only person who could save them.
Lisa was eating it up. She loved the idea that the two worlds collided in such a new and exciting way. Every time we spoke, she wanted more of the story, but I was at a standstill. I had to decide if I was going to flirt with the line between fantasy and reality by reaching out again to the man who claimed to be Taeren, or if I was going to stick to my plan to remain rooted in reality by ignoring his existence.
I’d begun to think of Taeren as a person. It was freaking me out to think that my character could be alive somewhere, or even crazier, that he’d been real all along. I couldn’t hide it anymore. I was losing my grip on reality again, and I needed to tell Paula before everything went to hell. The thought of being locked back in the hospital made my stomach turn, but maybe it was where I belonged. After all, I had just had a phone conversation with a man I’d dreamt about repeatedly for the past few years. I had entire journals dedicated to his character, I’d written four pages describing his eyes.
The leather pouch lay abandoned on my desk. The note the mysterious man had tucked within the small pouch still sent chills up and down my spine. It was a warning and an invitation in one.
Princess Delia,
Riona is in danger, our world is dying, our people are losing hope. Enclosed you’ll find the amulet once worn by your mother, Queen Isadora. It belongs to you now. You are our only hope of survival, you are our way back to Riona. We are here to take you home.
Taeren
Commander of the Royal Guard
Knight of Riona
Baker’s Son
I couldn’t tell if the amulet it contained was an elaborate piece of costume jewelry or something more. It was breathtaking. The stone was set in an ornately decorated metal frame and hung on a heavy silver chain. I couldn’t believe the stone itself; somehow, it had points of light that moved of their own accord like the stars in the Rionian sky. But, there was something off about the gem. It was darker than it should have been, like the deep purple of the night sky was overtaking the orange and pink of the day.
The phone call to Taeren was a bad idea. I shook my head, I had to stop calling him that; he was just a guy who read my books, looked like one of the main characters and happened to have a replica of the Bloodstone I wrote about. Even I had a hard time believing my own excuses. No one else had noticed him at the signing, maybe he wasn’t real? Hadn’t the doctor at the psych ward told me his crazy theory about my real father having schizophrenia? Maybe he was right all along. No, that wasn’t right either; Paula had spoken to him at the party.
One thing seemed certain, one of us was crazy; I just had to figure out if it was me. I found Paula in the kitchen of our small house. She was mixing something in a large red bowl and had flour all over her shirt, in her hair and smeared across her forehead.
“What are we baking today?” I asked, hopping onto a stool at the counter.
“Cookies. I found a recipe online and had nothing better to do.”
“Can I help?”
She narrowed her eyes at me behind her wire-rimmed glasses. “Shouldn’t you be writing?”
I rolled my eyes and heaved an enormous sigh. “Can’t I take a break? You know you want to make cookies with me.”
Few things in my life made me feel normal after everything I’d been through, but cooking with Paula always did. I didn’t care that she wasn’t my mother, or that I only met her because of a psychotic break. All that mattered was we loved each other. When we finally had two full trays in the oven, we collapsed onto the couch.
“So, what’s bothering you, kid?” She knew me better than I gave her credit for.
“I think I may need to see the psychiatrist again.”
Paula shifted on the couch until she was facing me. “What makes you say that?”
I hadn’t told her about the man at the book signing. I’d kept it to myself, thinking I could somehow stave off the insane by ignoring it. A resolved sigh escaped me as I turned to face her, it wouldn’t do me any good to continue to hide the truth.
“I met someone at the book signing. Someone that shouldn’t exist.”
“Can you explain what that means?”
I furrowed my brow. I wasn’t sure how to explain it without her giving me that sad, scared look I remembered from my early days at the hospital.
“A man came up to me with a well-worn copy of my first book. He asked me to make it out to Taeren.”
Laughter erupted from Paula for one brief moment before she pulled it in and clamped her mouth shut. “Sorry, honey. I know this is worrying you. Don’t you think he was just a fan?”
“I thought so at first, but...well, he was older, but he looks exactly like the Taeren from my dreams. Not to mention that I didn’t introduce that character until the latest book. How could he have known who he was or what he looked like before reading the book?”
She bit her lip, deep in thought. “So, you think he wasn’t real and you were seeing things?”
I nodded, tears beginning to form in my eyes. “That would be the easy answer, but you spoke to him too. He was with me in the stairwell.”
“I knew there was something off about him. He seemed too interested in you. Not that you don’t deserve to have someone notice you.”
“There’s more, I went to lunch with him the next day. Things got...weird. It all seemed to change when he found out I had no memories from before I woke up in the hospital. Gino escorted him out, but he caught me in an alley on the next block. He told me he needed me to remember him. He looked so sincere, so real. He gave me something before he left.”
I bit my lip. There was no way I could tell her about the kiss. I couldn’t let her know he’d gotten in my head with that one intense moment. It all seemed so wrong, like a fated romance from some over-sensationalized book filled with teen angst. The best possible course of action was for me to ignore it, forget about it, and move on. But I felt drawn to him; it made me feel stupid.
“What did he give you?” Paula startled me back to reality.
“I’ll have to show you, hold on.”
I got up and padded down the hallway to my bedroom. For a moment, I considered telling her about the note and the phone call, but decided that could wait. First, I had to see if she saw what I saw when I looked at the amulet. When I returned to the kitchen, Paula was pulling cookies from the oven. I stuffed the Bloodstone in my pocket and helped her transition the baked cookies to the cooling racks. Once we had a new batch in the oven, I followed her lead and returned to the couch.
“So, what did he give you?”
I pulled the pouch from my pocket and carefully loosened the strings that bound it. The amulet felt warm as I removed it and held it out to her. Paula’s eyes focused on it and her pupils dilated.
“Is that...? How did they make it?”
“I don’t know! But, you see it too?”
She smiled and touched my cheek. “Of course I see it. It looks just the way you described it to me. How did they get the white spots to move around like that?”
Relief washed through me. Maybe I wasn’t as crazy as I thought. But the question still remained; who was the man claiming to be Taeren and how did he know so much about the world I’d created? Paula held the Bloodstone close to her eyes and turned it over as though looking for an opening. She found none and continued to examine it with great interest.
“We should take this to a jeweler. They would be able to tell us if the materials used to create it are authentic. It looks like it was handcrafted, and it looks old.” She grinned at me, “I think you have a big fan out there who made something beautiful for you.”
Part of me hoped she was right, but I had a sneaking suspicion that I hadn’t heard the last of Taeren. Was I to believe he’d had plastic surgery to resemble the man I’d written about, right down to the freckle below his left eye? Was I to believe the man somehow knew details about Riona and the princess that I hadn’t put in the books? It all seemed too coincidental to me, but at that moment, I preferred to believe I wasn’t losing my mind. I embraced the super-fan theory and agreed to accompany Paula to have the necklace appraised.
“It’s the strangest thing. The stone isn’t lab-created, but it isn’t exactly natural either.”
I watched uncomfortably as the jeweler ogled the amulet through a tiny jeweler’s loupe. His tone of voice led me to believe he was seeing something rare and unique; I wasn’t sure I liked it. He set down the small black eye piece and looked between us.
“How much do you want for this?”
“It’s not for sale.” The words shot out of my mouth before I had time to think. It was all I could do to keep myself from snatching the necklace from his hands.
“Oh...I uh...where did you say you got this?”
“I got it from a friend.”
“Hmm. Your friend has interesting taste. This stone, I’ve never seen anything like it before, I don’t even know what it is. I’d like to know where it came from.”
“If we find out, we’ll be sure to let you know,” Paula replied.
I met resistance as I retrieved the amulet from the jeweler’s hands. He had clearly thought the conversation would end a different way. The Bloodstone meant more to me than he would ever know, and there was no chance I would sell it to someone. We left the store with the necklace safely tucked away in the leather pouch.
We walked down the street toward the subway station that would take us to the outskirts of the city. Parking was a nightmare and everyone drove like there were no traffic laws. As we descended the steps into the subway, something caught my eye.
A nearby building was under construction, which wasn’t unusual for the downtown area. What gave me pause were the construction workers staring at me as though I was the first woman they’d ever laid eyes on. I looked at them with what I hoped was disdain when one of them caught my eye. Taeren. I stopped on the stairs, causing Paula to run into me from behind.
“Paula, do you see those construction workers?”
“You’ve picked a strange time to become interested in men, Delia.”
“Don’t be absurd! I mean, do you see them? They’re actually there?”
Paula sighed. “Not this again. Yes, of course I see them. Why?” She narrowed her eyes at them.
Satisfied that I wasn’t entirely crazy, I decided to try the next question. “The one in the middle, the one who took off his helmet and bowed? That’s the man who gave me the amulet.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember him. Well, he could be less attractive, but he’s real.”
I had no idea what she meant, but I wasn’t about to find out. As we stood there staring at each other, two things happened. The first thing was that Taeren began to lower himself from the scaffolding they were standing on, and the second thing was the man next to him shouted my name.
“Delia!”
“Maybe they’re all fans?” Paula whispered.
“Or they’re all a bunch of nut-jobs who want to kidnap me and make me their queen.”
“Or that. Let’s go before he gets down from there!”
Quickly, we rushed down the stairs. I heard someone call my name twice more before we disappeared into the hustle and bustle of the station below. As fate would have it, our train had just come to a stop as we reached the platform. The doors closed behind us just as Taeren saw us through the windows.
“Call me!” He gestured at his phone.
I was still catching my breath when Paula caught on to what his request meant.
“How does he suppose you’re going to call him?”
“Well...he didn’t just give me the amulet that night. There was a note with it.”
“That seems like important information to leave out of the story. What did the note say?”
I had read it so many times, I’d committed it to memory. Paula listened patiently as I recited the words to her. She looked troubled, but seemed reluctant to tell me why. By the time we got to our car, I’d worn her down enough that everything she was holding back came spilling out at once.
“No wonder you’re questioning your sanity, Delia! Somehow, this man is aware of the delusions you had as a teenager and is hell-bent on pulling you right back into them. You’re not crazy. You just had some things happen to you that your mind had to cope with in its own way.”
I blinked at her in response. I didn’t know what to say. She had been with me through it all; the coma, the delusions, the treatment, the aftermath, and the rebuilding. She knew everything there was to know about me. Of course Paula didn’t think I was crazy; she was a beautiful, kind-hearted woman who saw herself as my mother. I didn’t know that I could believe her assessment of the situation. I needed to talk to someone objective.
“All of that may be true, but I feel like I owe it to myself to be sure. I’m going to call the psychiatrist in the morning. I need to do this.”
Paula nodded and pulled me in for a fierce hug. “I understand. I think it’ll be good for you to talk to someone who knows your history. Maybe he can give you some guidance on how to deal with this man.”
I sat in the familiar office with the man I hoped I’d never have to see again. It wasn’t that he was cruel or treated me poorly, I just didn’t want to have to be on that couch for any reason. Dr. Larkin sat in his high-back leather chair with his legs crossed to allow a space for him to rest his tablet. I knew he was waiting for me to talk, but I didn’t know where to begin.
“It’s good to see you doing so well, Delia.”
“Thank you. Things have been going great.”
“Good to hear, but something must be going on that you wanted to see me so urgently. Do you care to tell me about the mysterious man you alluded to on the phone?”
My first reaction was to tell him “no,” but that would mean more sessions until I finally told him the reason for my visit. I glanced at the window. It seemed like only yesterday that I’d sat in that very spot and argued about what the sky looked like. It was the first time I recalled seeing the sun.
“Delia?”
I was forced back to reality. “Um, yeah. It’s a long story, but the gist is; a man showed up at my book signing claiming to share a name with the main character from the most recent release. He gave me a necklace and a note to call him.”
“Was there anything special about the necklace?”
“It’s almost an exact replica of the Bloodstone from my stories.”
“You mean from your delusions.”
My face grew hot, I didn’t want to talk about that. “I guess, but I know they weren’t real, so I use them as the basis for my novels.”
“Yes, I’m aware. I told Paula I didn’t think it was a good idea to immerse yourself into the world of your delusions by basing your living off them. I appreciate you knowing they’re not real, but you haven’t allowed yourself to disconnect from that world.”
“That’s not true. I’ve almost finished writing the fourth book and it’s completely based on new thoughts, it has nothing to do with the things I wrote while I lived here.”
Dr. Larkin wrote something on his tablet. I hated that thing. “I see. And what prompted this story?”
I didn’t want to tell him that either. “The note Taeren gave me.”
Two eyebrows shot straight up as he scribbled on the tablet again. “I don’t think it’s wise for you to give into the fantasy that this stranger is the fictional character you remember from your delusions. It will only lead to a deterioration of the constructs we established during treatment.”
“I’ve tried not to call him that, but it’s easier than calling him ‘that weirdo who called my book enlightening and gave me a strange necklace’.”
The doctor chuckled. “I have missed your sharp tongue. But seriously Delia, you need to be very careful. Schizophrenia isn’t a joke, it’s a very serious diagnosis. Are you still taking your medication?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Tell me about life with Paula, you seem to have adjusted well to the outside world.”
When I left his office, I wasn’t sure if I felt better about the situation. He only told me what I already knew; don’t go backward. Now that I was confident of the stranger’s existence, I had to find out why he was taking on the identity of the guard who simultaneously saved the princess, and let her get swept away by the enemy.