Two of those three things I could take decisive action about. Starting with the one that posed the greatest threat to my sanity.
“I want you to capture her,” I clarified. “And I want you to bring her somewhere I can question her.”
“You blew this off in Chester’s.”
I sighed. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Ryodan. You know he chews a bone until it’s nothing but splinters. I didn’t feel like being his bone at the time.”
“Do you believe it could be Alina?”
“No. I think it’s completely impossible. But I want to know what the hell it actually is.”
“You told me you buried your sister. You were certain it was her. Have you changed your mind?”
“Nope. I buried her.” I don’t bother mentioning that I also recently exhumed her corpse and it wasn’t there. I saw no point in further complicating an already complicated issue. I wanted to examine the Alina-thing first, then I’d disclose all, if necessary, to Barrons.
“I won’t be able to bring her to the bookstore,” he said.
I nodded. He was going to have to change from man to beast to hunt Alina, and I didn’t think for a minute any Hunter would permit the creature Barrons became on its back and fly them over our private tornado. “Do you have another place nearby that’s well warded?”
“The basement where you were Pri-ya is still protected.”
Our eyes met and we had an intense nonverbal conversation, graphic reminders of sex, raw and aggressive, hungry and obsessive. You are my world, I’d said. Don’t leave me.
You’re leaving me, Rainbow Girl, he’d said, and I’d known even then I was under his skin as deeply as he was under mine.
“Is the Christmas tree still up?” I said lightly.
I left it like it was. Best fucking cave I ever lived in, his dark eyes said.
One day, we’ll do it again, I sent back. I wouldn’t have to fake being Pri-ya. Not with this man.
He stretched and moved, began subtly changing.
“Uh, Barrons, we have a meeting. I thought you’d go afterward.”
“Ryodan canceled it,” he said around teeth much too large for his mouth. “He’s tattooing Dani. Jada.”
“She’s letting him?” I said incredulously.
“She asked.”
I narrowed my eyes, mulling that over. “You were inking Ryodan. Same kind of tats you wear. I never saw those on him before.” And I’d seen him naked. “Is he giving her a phone? Will he be able to find her like you found me?”
“Speaking of,” he growled, twisting sideways with a series of painful-sounding crunches, “you do still carry the cell, Ms. Lane.”
“Always,” I assured him.
“I’ll find this thing you seek, but when I return it’s imperative I finish my own tattoos.”
“Oh, God,” I said slowly. “When you’re reborn all your tats are gone. Even the ones that bind us together.”
“And until I replace them, IYD won’t work. That, Ms. Lane, is the only reason I wanted you to remain in Chester’s the other day. Until I finish them.”
IYD—a contact in my cellphone that was short for If You’re Dying—was a number I could call that would guarantee Barrons would find me, no matter where I was. “I’m not completely helpless, you know,” I said irritably. Dependence on him makes me nuts. I want to be able to stand so completely on my own one day that I feel like I measure up to being with Jericho Barrons.
“Head for the basement. I’ll see you there. This won’t take long.” He turned and dropped to all fours, loping off into the night, black on black, hungry and wild and free.
One day I want to run with him. Feel what he feels. Know what it’s like in the skin where the man I’m obsessed with feels most completely at home.
For now, however, I’m not running anywhere. I’m flying on the back of an icy Hunter to the house on the outskirts of Dublin where I once spent months in bed with Jericho Barrons.
—
Dreams are funny things. I used to remember all of mine, wake up with the sticky residue of them clinging to my psyche, the slumbering experience so immediate and intense that if I was in my cold place, I’d wake up freezing. If I was hearing music, I’d come to singing beneath my breath. My dreams are often so vivid and real that when I first open my eyes I’m not always sure that I have awakened and wonder if “reality” isn’t really on the other side of my lids.
I think dreaming is our subconscious way of sorting through our experiences, tying them into a cohesive narrative, and filing like with like in a metaphorical way—so in the waking we can function with a tidily organized past, present, and future we barely have to think about in the moment. I think PTSD occurs when something so shattering happens that it blows everything that’s stored neatly into complete chaos, disorganizing your narrative, leaving you drifting and lost where nothing makes sense, until you eventually find a place to store that horrible thing in a way you can make sense of. Like, someone trying to kill you, or discovering you’re not who you thought you were all your life.
I have houses in my dreams, rooms filled with similar pieces of mental “furniture.” Some are crammed with acres of lamps, and when I dream I’m looking at them, I’m reliving each of the moments that illuminated my life in some way. My daddy, Jack Lane, is in there: a solid, towering pillar of a lamp made from a gilded Roman column with a sturdy base. My mom is in that room, too, a graceful wrought-iron affair with a silk shade, dispersing in her soft rays all the gentle words of wisdom she tried to instill in Alina and me.