TEN
Staying awake all day was not what I would call an easy task, especially considering all the sleep I hadn't been having. However, I was surprised by what I could manage when the option of sleep was removed from my day.
My Netflix binge did not go as anticipated. Who would have known that sitting on the couch with a cat by my side while watching the new Voltron wasn't exactly an equation for wakefulness? When I nearly nodded off for the second time, I decided to get up and do something that had been nagging at me for weeks.
I was home. This place, small and simple as it was, was mine now, and I needed to really make that happen. I liked seeing my grandmother's knickknacks everywhere, and her books, and all of that...but they weren't mine.
So I started cleaning. I started with the shelves first. There were plenty of novels there, cute books, but not really my style. I put them in a box and set them to the side, replacing them with my own comic books, fantasy and science fiction novels, and even my very modest collection of Manga, all from team Clamp. They took up one shelf, but already I felt a little better.
I turned my attention to the big trunk that was also the living room table with a patchwork doily over the top. Inside was a huge collection of family photos, which I took a little too much time to look through.
I decided to leave those mostly alone. They were, after all, links to my own past. I was resituating everything when a letter fell out of one of the albums. I was just going to tuck it back in when I saw my name written on the front of the letter in my grandmother's handwriting.
The paper was soft beneath my fingers, as if it had been handled many times before. My fingers shook, and I had to put it down out of fear of ripping the aged paper when I unfolded it. My grandmother had written to me. The shock of it left me feeling a little lightheaded, though that might have been the four cups of extra strength coffee and the lack of sleep. What could she have had to say? Well, there was only one way to find out.
With a deep breath, I sat down on the floor, tucking my back against the couch, and ran my hands down my thighs to stop the shaking. Okay, stopping wasn't going to happen considering the coffee, but easing the shaking was.
I flexed my fingers and then picked up the letter. Yup, that was definitely my grandmother's handwriting. Between her journals and her grimoire, I knew the script well. And that was definitely my name scrawled carefully over the long flat plane. I cleared my throat and fixed my hair as if I was somehow going to make some kind of impression on a woman who had been dead for a while now.
"Just open the thing," I grumped at myself.
Carefully, I unfolded it. I read the contents, and then I read them again. It wasn't until the third time that I fully grasped everything that had been said.
My Dearest Lorena,
I am so sorry that I will never meet you. By the time you find this letter, you will know enough about me to understand how I know that you and I will never share the memories that a grandmother ought to share with her granddaughter. I hope you know that I regret not having a place in your life while I am alive, more than anything else.
There is a part of me that hates having told your father about the prophecy. Maybe then I could have helped you grow into the woman who took part in bringing magic into the world. That was my own hubris that couldn't believe that my own child might react how he did. Then again, it is my son we are talking about. My son, for all he was a smart boy, could be foolish when it came to girls. When he brought that wizard girl home, I thought he had just about lost his mind, but I remember how my mother reacted when I told her that Jake was going to be my husband. I had promised that I wasn't going to do the same.
I'm rambling. I'm sorry. I can't help myself. There is so much to tell you and I honestly do not know how much time left there is. Isn't that strange? A Seer who doesn't know when she will die. Well, I am sure it won’t be long now.
Let me start at the beginning.
My son brought home your mother, and he told me that she was pregnant. They were young, no older than you are now, and still fumbling around in the world. Even so, I was shocked. Your father, out of foolishness or rebellion, had taken up with a wizard girl. I do not like to think of myself as a bigot, but their way of looking at magic has always left a sour taste in my mouth. Even so, I secretly hoped that she would reawaken his love of magic, a thing he had given up shortly before he grew into a man.
They asked for help. They asked for a place to stay. I couldn't deny them. For all the girl was a little odd, he was my child and she was going to be giving birth to my grandchild. I wasn't going to turn them away now. I took them into my home. I had hoped that your mother would grow on me. I am ashamed to say she didn't.
Oh, she was a girl, the kind of girl that no matter how old she got, she'd never be a woman. One moment she was batting her eyes at my son, and the next she was snapping at me and then weeping about it all. For a while, I told myself that it was the hormones that come with being pregnant, but after a while, I knew better. The girl was a manipulative little hen, and I wanted little to do with her.
When she declared that she was pregnant with twins, my son was overjoyed. I was not. After all, I had already seen that my son would only have one child. How could there be two? Well, I figured that out well enough as well. There were two children in her belly alright, but only one of them belonged to my boy. When I talked to her about it, she threw a fit, a grand one if I do say so myself, and told me that my witchcraft wasn't perfect. That it was a lesser form of magical casting.
Oh, it took everything in me not to slap that little sneer off of her face. But I managed. My son, for reasons I could not understand, loved her, and at least one of those babies was my grandchild. She would have to do a great deal more to make me forget myself enough to lash out.
That moment, however, did come.
It was just before you were born. A week or two at best. I saw the prophecy. Oh, Lorena, my dear granddaughter. I saw what would happen. I saw the prophecy that was laid before you. It shook me. I don't know if I was scared for you or excited for what might happen. Looking back now, I think it was both.
I told your father. I told him everything that I had seen. I don't know what I expected of him. A part of me still hoped that he would remember who and what he was. That he was a witch, he was a Quinn. What a fool I was to see that he was angry at me. He called me names. Told me that his daughter was going to be normal. She was going to go to school. She was going to have friends. No one was going to make fun of her or be afraid of her.
Then, he asked about his other child, and I was so angry with him that I blurted out that he had no other child. That his little wizard had played him false. That she had been going around with someone else. He looked shattered. I hated myself a little for taking the light out of his eyes.
Oh, Lorena, it was then I knew.
I asked him to turn around. It took a good deal of convincing, but I managed. There, on his back, I found it. It was a wizardry. A circle of magic inscribed on his back. A love spell. Of all the terrible things. A love spell!
I do not know how much you have read into your studies, but love spells, and many spells of compulsion, are against the rules. It is one thing to bless a woman to have children, but it is another thing entirely to force a man to participate.
I think, somehow, your mother must have known something. How she knew that my son's child would be special I don't know, but I am convinced she did. After all, when I helped remove the symbol, we both realized that she didn't care two wits for him. It became even clearer when he confronted her. How it all would have turned out I don't know because the little twit chose just that moment to give birth.
What a night that was, Lorena. What a night!
Before it was all over, my son was already wrapping you up and packing. He said he needed to get as far away from this mountain and the women on it as he could. I begged him to stay, pleaded with him. Told him that his daughter, that you, were going to be special. He said that you were special, just not in the way that I saw. He let me take one picture with you, one memento for me to keep.
While we were fighting over you, that little wizard absconded with her other child. Where they went I don't know. I don't care to know. I only hope that little girl she gave birth to is alright.
So there you have it. How everything happened. I hope it answers some of your questions because now I have to tell you more.
I have Seen so much about you, Lorena. I have watched you grow up from the distant eye of a Seer. Every night, I go to sleep and I hope that I will See a little more about you. I know that you are creative and imaginative and a little stubborn. I know that you have grown up beautifully, if a little lonely. I know too that, when you get here, you will step into a world that you will fall in love with, and I am so happy for that.
What I also know, Lorena, is that you cannot trust everyone in your life. I wish I could tell you more, but my visions, especially as I grow older, do not come in as clear as they once did.
Someone, my dear, someone in your life is manipulating you, and I cannot tell you who. I am so sorry that I cannot offer you more than that. I have tried every tea and mixture and tonic I can think of to help clear up this vision. All I know is that you must be careful when you walk in dreams. I hope that helps you.
Be safe, my dear. Know that I love you and that I am here in every way I can be.
Blessings,
Loretta Quinn
P.S. Take care of Maahes. He looks forward to meeting you.
I put the letter down. There were tears on my cheeks. Weirdly enough, the shaking hadn't stopped. Funny how that kind of stuff happens when you've pretty much been told that at least one of the people that you trusted couldn't be trusted.
Maybe she was wrong. That was the first thing I told myself. Maybe my grandmother had been wrong about everything. Maybe I wasn't a prophecy girl. I was just plain ol' Lorena Quinn. I was not special. I was just here. I was just going to live my life, and nothing magical was happening, and I could trust everyone around me.
Yeah. Sure. And pigs with wings were going to fly out of my nose, and Bruce Wayne was going to make me the next Robin. Uh-huh.
I couldn't stop myself from making up a mental list of the people that I did trust. It wasn't a long list. There was Alan, the pretty vampire. I hadn't heard all that much from him since I moved out of the mansion. The same could be said for Dmitri. I trusted them. Okay, I trusted Alan more. Dmitri scared me a little. Then there was Wei. I wholeheartedly trusted Wei. Should I? He was so complicated. Maybe I couldn't.
I shook my head, but the thoughts I didn't want kept coming.
Jenny, Zane, Reikah. I trusted them too. Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I couldn't How was I supposed to know?
I tossed down the letter and began to pace the length of the living room. Who did she mean? Why did her seeing ability have to get all wonky later in life? Ugh! Okay, no, that wasn't fair. She didn't have any control over that, and I certainly wasn't going to spend the next who knew how long, blaming a dead woman for not giving perfect advice.
What I was going to do was prepare myself. I really wished I could do one of those nifty neato montages that they did in action flicks where I just got better over the next twenty minutes while “Eye of the Tiger” played in the background.
Since that wasn't going to happen, I decided to do the next best thing. I took a brief inventory of what I did know how to do.
In the past few weeks, I had learned how to tug at ley lines, talk to ghost cats, and play with the elements. I could create a wizard’s circle...usually, and I could multiply my magic when a vampire bit me.
It was not a very impressive amount of skills.
"Well done, Lorena. You were so focused on dating that you pretty much forgot that you were supposed to be practicing magic. Just had to get that job, didn't you?"
I shook my head and blew out a breath. Getting frustrated with myself wasn't going to help anything. Time to think.
Dreams. My grandmother had mentioned dreams, and someone was attacking me with dreams. That someone was probably Markus, but until I knew for sure, I wasn't going to make too many assumptions. I'd read enough plot twists to know better.
I pulled out my grandmother’s grimoire and read everything that there was to know about dreams and dream magic. When that was done, I focused my research on protecting myself and keeping my astral self, my dream self, connected to my body.
It was the best that I could do.
"Afternoon," Reikah said sleepily, coming out of the back room of my grandmother's house. "You ready?"
"Can I trust you?" I blurted, because I was Queen of smooth social interaction.
"Huh?" she asked, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. "Yes? With what?"
"Like, overall. Can I trust you? Why aren't you with the Order anymore? You still like the way they do magic?”
She gave me a look, but the sleep was slowly coming out of her eyes. "What?"
"I realized that I've never actually asked you why you wanted to leave your little hermit order. It's not because you don't agree with the way they practice magic, since you still talk the way they do. I guess I'm just confused."
Reikah narrowed her eyes. "You want to know why I helped you leave?"
"Yeah, I guess that's part of it."
She sighed and sat down on the other side of the kitchen table, still cluttered with all the notes I had tried to cram in the past few hours.
"I do believe that magic ought to be practiced with regularity. I believe that sigils, circles, and symbols are important. I think that a person should be careful when utilizing magic. Considering the lethal ability of magic, I don't think that is a bad thing to believe."
I sat back, crossing my arms over my chest. "You think witchcraft is inferior."
She sighed. "Inferior isn't the right word. If you wish to use a comparison, it is the difference between using a firecracker to remove a stump, or a tractor. Both can do the job, but a firecracker can cause a great deal of damage."
"So can a tractor."
She nodded. "Yes. But even so. Even if I believed that witchcraft was inferior to wizardry, even if I thought that you shouldn't fulfill the prophecy, I think hurting other people to make that happen is wrong."
I wanted to believe her. With a sigh, I dragged my hand down my face and told her about the letter.
"You are worried that I have been living with you, secretly still working with The Order?"
"It's stupid."
"No, it's logical. I commend you. Of all the people who could be against you, I am certainly the most obvious choice."
I don't know why her agreeing with me made me feel worse, but it did. "Okay, well, until I know better, I'm going to trust you."
"Well that's foolish."
I shrugged. "My grandmother said my dad is foolish, so I guess I take after him."
She gave me a look of complete exasperation. "If you aren't sure you can trust me, you ought to do this dream walking thing yourself."
I nodded. I probably should, but I just didn't know enough. Instead, I reached across the table and took her hand. "A few weeks ago, Connie was my friend. I would have done anything she asked of me short of committing murder. I screwed up there, and I know better now, but I'm not going to let that experience and a letter from a dead woman make me go crazy with who I can and can't trust."
I thought I saw a smile, but she quickly hid it. "Still foolish."
I shrugged. It was true. "Okay, so tell me how this is going to work."
She went over it; then, she went over it again. She was going over it a third time, with my help, when Alan crashed through the door.
"Where is Wei?"
I blinked. I had never seen Alan look so scared. In fact, I had never seen Alan look anything but mildly amused at everything.
"What do you mean?" I demanded. My heart had gone from zero to a hundred and eighty in less than two seconds. "What happened?"
"Wei did not return last night."
I felt lightheaded. My vision swam in front of my eyes. I am pretty sure I would have fallen to the floor were it not for someone catching me. When I felt velvet and lace against my cheek, I knew that it was Alan.
"What?" I whispered. Maybe I had heard him wrong. Yeah. That was it. I wasn't living in denial at all. "What do you mean he didn't return?"
"He went to guard you." Alan placed me gently back on the chair.
I raised my eyebrow. "Guard me?"
"We've been taking turns guarding you, watching over you. It was for your safety. But Wei did not return."
That was news, and none of it good.
"Oh my god," I whispered. I felt like I was beginning to understand something. An idea was pushing in the back of my head. "But Zane was here for some of the night."
Alan frowned. "Zane? Why was he here?"
I blushed. I assumed that Alan and Dmitri would have been informed. "I...I may have told him that I was going to fulfill the prophecy with him." Man, it was a really good way of saying sleeping together. Far less embarrassing...yeah.
Alan's eyebrows flicked up. "Why?"
The blush went from rose to tomato. "I don't know; maybe because I was told he was the best option?"
Alan frowned at me. "I thought love was the most important thing to you."
"Do you really want a play-by-play of how I ended up making this decision? Because that does not seem like the most important thing here."
Alan placed a hand on my shoulder. "Zane did not return last night either."
I felt my heart skip a beat. "Oh god."
Zane. Zane was the one I couldn't trust. Wasn't he? He was probably still in love with Connie. Maybe he had never wanted to leave the Order.
"But why would he agree to be my partner if he's bad?" I asked out loud. "What about all the dreams? It doesn't make any sense. It's just flat out confusing."
"Lorena?" Reikah took my hand. "What do you want to do?"
I wanted to go find Wei, but I was so tired. I had thought skipping a night of sleep or two once in a while was no big deal, but I was quickly growing aware of the effect that too much caffeination and not enough rest was having. My head was aching, my body was shaking, and I knew that there was no way I was going to be of help to anyone until I got sleep.
"Alan, you and Dmitri need to go looking for Wei, and Zane too. I think if we find one, we will find the other. Maybe Zane is the bad guy, maybe he's a victim. I don't know. Find at least one of them. Send Jenny over here. Tell her we are doing magic."
Alan smiled at me. "Taking this prophecy woman thing seriously, aren't you?"
I wanted to smile back, but I just couldn't. Not with Wei gone. The fact that I was more worried about Wei than Zane was not lost on me.
"Find Wei," I said.
Alan placed a kiss on my forehead. "I will."
I watched him go as quickly as he had come in and turned my focus back on Reikah. "Okay, lucid dreaming, that's what the sigils are?"
She cleared her throat. For a moment, she just looked at me as if to make sure that I was serious. It was a good thing that I had never been more serious about anything in my entire life. Yeah, Wei was missing, and so was Zane. There was a chance that something absolutely terrible had happened to them. Yeah, that was totally a thing. But the fact was I could not worry about it right now since some dream mage person was trying to kill me with my sleep. I mean, don't get me wrong; dying in my sleep was the preferred way to go, but not when I couldn't even legally drink. So, I had to compartmentalize.
Checklist:
Review sigil magic
Use dream magic to fight Somniamancer
Rest
Find vampire make-out buddy
Save world
Seemed like an average day in my life.
"Lucid dreaming is a stage of dreaming where you realize you are dreaming and can still be asleep," I prompted, encouraging Reikah to trust me. It worked.
"Yes, the sigils that I am making for you will help you dream lucidly. The way that most Somniamancers achieve victory is by making you forget that you are dreaming, so that when they hurt you, the damage is permanent because your mind believes it so fully. We are going to give you that boost. The sachets you made will help, but we are going to work some protective magics in too.
I nodded. "Okay, let's do this."
"Now?" she asked, looking shocked.
"Would you like to wait a week?"
"Well...yes," she admitted, "I don't think we are ready."
I spread my hands wide. "Clark Kent wasn't ready for Zod, but he made it work."
"Your comparisons confuse me."
"Please, being a nerd is status quo. Let's do this."
A few minutes later, Reikah was dipping a fine-tipped brush into a pot of dark blue ink. I was laying on my grandmother's bed. Maahes had curled up at the top of my head like some sort of protective kitty hat, and half of me was painted with complicated symbols that I truly didn't understand. I really hoped I could trust Reikah.
Every time the brush hit my skin, I felt another tingle of magic. I remembered what my grandmother had said about my father, about the love spell that had been imprinted on his skin and he hadn't even known.
"Hey, Reikah?" I asked.
"Hmm?"
"You'll be able to wake me up, right?"
She looked down at me with those big serious eyes. "When you are ready, you'll be able to wake up all on your own."
I hoped she was right, because it was getting harder and harder to stay awake. My eyelids were heavy. Maybe if I just rested for a little while…I'd be okay, right? Yeah. Just a little rest.
When I opened my eyes again, it was morning.