The Haunting (Immortals) (20 page)

Mai felt the prickle of magic on her skin and knew it was coming from Jenna. She hadn’t known Jenna was a witch. Neither she nor Sarah had mentioned it.

“I don’t need you telling me what to do,” Jenna shouted.

“Jenna—”

“No!” Jenna screamed, eyes closed and hands fisted at either side of her head. “Why can’t you go away and leave me alone?”

There was a flash of blinding light, a prickle of power like static electricity—and then a puff of smoke. When the scene cleared, Jenna was standing alone in her kitchen.

“Mom? Dad?” Jenna whispered, clearly in shock. “Where are you?” Eyes wide, she looked all around. Her parents weren’t there. Jenna began to wring her hands. “No. No. I didn’t mean it.”

Nick and Mai followed as Jenna searched the house, calling for her parents. She hurried back to her room and opened a chest, pulling out candles and incense, which she set about the room. Then she took out an old book. Leafing through the pages, she stopped when she found the one she wanted. Immediately, she began chanting under her breath, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Mai got a sense of time passing in which Jenna cast spell after spell trying to bring back her parents. Had this really happened? she wondered. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the guilt Jenna must have felt, but maybe it explained her dedication to providing a future for her sister.

The click of the front door opening echoed around them.

“I’m home,” a young girl shouted. “Where is everyone?”

“Sarah,” Jenna whispered. A look of deep regret and resignation was etched across her face.

At that moment, a young Sarah burst into the room.
“Hi, Jenna.” On Sarah’s seeing her sister’s face, the smile on her own froze and slowly faded. “What’s the matter?”

“Mom and Dad are gone.”

“When will they be back?” Sarah asked, not yet understanding.

“There was an accident. I don’t think they’ll be coming back.” Jenna clearly struggled to find the right words.

“What kind of accident?”

“It’s my fault,” Jenna said. “It’s all my fault. I should have listened to them.”

“What happened?” Sarah cried. “Where are they?”

“Don’t worry, Sarah.” Jenna hurried over and put her arm around her sister. “I’ll take care of you.”

Just then, everything around Mai blurred. Only the feel of Nick’s hand felt real. When the image cleared, Mai and Nick were standing in a familiar room.

With a start, Mai recognized Jenna and Sarah’s living room. Jenna, older now, was sitting at the kitchen table, which was still covered with Sarah’s school books.

“Jenna! Help me.”

At the faint cry, Mai and Nick turned toward the mirror, as Jenna did. An image appeared in the reflection, a familiar face.

“Sarah?” Jenna gasped, running over to the mirror. She laid her hand against the glass, trying to touch her sister’s palm through the glass. “Oh my God. How…?”

“Hurry, Jenna. He’s coming.”

Jenna ran into the kitchen and pulled out a drawer. Utensils went flying across the room and when she turned around, she held a knife in her hand. Hurrying across the room, she dragged the knife across her palm uttering a litany of words. A spell, Mai thought.

When she reached the mirror, she slapped her palm against the glass. It vanished and Jenna reached through to grab Sarah’s hand.

“Jenna!” Sarah shouted.

As Jenna pulled on Sarah’s arm, she chanted faster and faster. Mai saw the power gathering from the shimmer in the air. Then Jenna flung out her arms.

The instant the power hit the mirror, the glass shattered into thousands of pieces. Jenna caught the brunt of the blast and was thrown back. Mai didn’t think she noticed the cuts across her arms and face because she was staring at the broken mirror with a look of horror.

“Sarah!” she screamed, but her sister was gone. “Sarah.” She sank to her knees before the broken mirror. “Sarah.”

The scene faded and when it cleared again, Jenna was sitting on the floor before Mai and Nick, arms wrapped around bent knees. With head bowed, she rocked back and forth muttering, “My fault. My fault. My fault.”

Nick touched Mai’s arm. “She might be able to hear us now that the memories are over,” he told her softly.

At his encouragement, Mai knelt down beside her neighbor. “Jenna. It’s Mai.”

Jenna continued rocking back and forth, so Mai tried again, laying a hand on the woman’s shoulder to get her attention. “It’s not your fault, Jenna. What ever happened to Sarah wasn’t your fault.”

“She’s dead,” Jenna said. “I killed her.”

Mai turned to Nick. “How accurate is the memory?”

“It’s hard to say,” he said, crouching on the other side. “What we saw is what she remembers.”

“And all that about Sarah being in the mirror?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. There’s a lot of symbolism in dreams. Sarah being in the mirror could be a reflection of Jenna’s younger self, trapped behind the demands her parents made on her.”

“Yeah, but the mirror shattering—that was real. Maybe the rest of it is, too.” Mai paused, remembering everything they’d witnessed. “When Sarah told me they’d lost their
parents, I’d assumed they’d been killed. But now.” She glanced over at Nick. “Do you think what we saw is what really happened? Could Jenna have accidentally made her parents disappear?”

“I don’t know. She certainly is carrying around a lot of guilt.”

Mai rubbed Jenna’s back. “What can we do to help her?”

Nick scooped Jenna up in his arms and when he stood, they were suddenly standing in a sunny bedroom with a warm breeze drifting in through the curtains. Nick carried her to the bed and gently lowered her.

He sat beside her and began a low chanting. Mai couldn’t make out the words, but they sounded peaceful and soothing.

Still chanting, he began rubbing the palms of his hands together quickly. In just a few seconds, the air around them began to glow with a yellow light until an orb the size of a soccer ball had formed.

Holding the light in his cupped hands, he positioned it over Jenna’s head and released it. The orb floated downward until it touched her and was slowly absorbed. By the time the ball had completely disappeared, Jenna was sleeping peacefully.

“Sleep now,” Nick said softly, laying his hand on her head. “Sleep and know that you did everything you could to save your sister and what ever happens—this wasn’t your fault. Sleep and forgive yourself. Sleep and grow stronger so that you may meet the coming challenges. Sleep and when you are ready, you must wake.”

Mai watched in fascination as Nick worked. When Jenna was resting peacefully, Nick gestured for her to stand. She walked around the bed and took the hand he held out to her.

“Are you ready to return?”

“Yes.”

“Turn around.” When she did as he asked, he moved up against her until they were pressed together. Mai realized that they were now standing in much the same position as they were in lying on the hospital bed. “Close your eyes and concentrate on the sound of my voice. We’re going to leave now. When you open your eyes again, we’ll be back in the hospital room. Okay. Open your eyes.”

Slowly, she became aware that they were lying on the bed. It left her feeling unsettled because there wasn’t a defining moment when she transitioned from the dream realm to the waking state.

“You okay?” Nick asked.

She opened her eyes and put a hand to her head. “Wow. This is all a little too much like
A Nightmare on Elm Street
. Some parts of that dream seemed so real.”

He helped her off the bed and stood beside her, his hand steadying her, for which she was grateful. She still felt a little dazed.

“Think you can walk?” he asked after a minute.

When she nodded, he led her to the door and poked his head out. “All clear.”

A wave of tenderness for Mai washed over Nick as he stood beside her in the elevator. He’d forgotten what it was like to enter the dream realm for the first time. It had to be unsettling for her. He gave her hand another reassuring squeeze and was glad she didn’t pull away. When the elevator doors opened, they walked hand in hand to Jenna’s room.

They found her sleeping quietly in bed, curled on her side, much as she’d been when they’d left her in the dream realm.

“We can come back tomorrow and check on her,” Nick whispered.

“Do you think she’ll be okay?”

“I don’t know.” Judging from what they’d seen, Jenna was carrying a large burden of guilt on her shoulders. How much of it had been symbolic and how much had been real, he could only begin to guess.

He waited by Mai’s side for several minutes while she gazed at the sleeping woman. There was nothing more they could do for her at the moment. “Ready?”

She nodded and they left.

Mai was unusually quiet during the trip back to her apartment and Nick worried that taking her into the dream realm might have been a mistake.

“How are you feeling?” he finally asked her once they were at her place.

“I’m fine. It’s just that it seemed so—real.”

He understood. “It can at times, depending on whose dream it is and how much detail they’ve put into it.”

“Would it be possible for someone to be taken to the dream realm without their knowing it?”

He thought about it. “I suppose it could be done—theoretically.”

“Could you do it?”

“No. It would take more power than I have.”

“Who
could
do it?”

“A Keltok demon, I suppose,” Nick said.

“A Keltok demon?”

“Yeah. You know—the bogeyman.” Nick paused, noticing the ashen color of her face. “Mai, is something wrong?”

Mai bit her lower lip and was quiet for a long time before she spoke.

“Something happened to…a friend of mine not long ago,” she finally said. “She came home to her apartment and thought she was alone. Only she wasn’t. A man dressed in black and wearing a ski mask attacked her, beat her up pretty good. Busted lip, broken nose, swollen eyes. She thought he was going to kill her. Maybe he would have, except
that another man happened by. She thought he was one of her neighbors, but she thinks maybe now he wasn’t. He chased off her attacker. When she would have thanked him, he disappeared. She thought she was going to have to call an ambulance, but she passed out before she could.”

She paused. “When she came to, her injuries were gone. The blood was gone, her eyes weren’t swollen and there were no bruises. My friend thought she was going crazy. That she had imagined the entire episode. I just wondered if a bogeyman could have been responsible.”

Nick felt as if he’d been hit with a two-by-four. Mai had just described the dream he’d had when he’d been wounded and out of his head. He’d been so positive it had been a dream.

No, he hadn’t, a small voice interjected. The woman he’d been seeing in his dreams—making love to in his dreams—was the same one he’d saved that day.

His spirit mate.

A lifetime of fulfillment and happiness, eternal bliss—his for the taking.

Thoughts of his father sprang to mind. His father had found his spirit mate in Nick’s mother, but it hadn’t stopped her from leaving.

Nick could even understand why spirit mates might not stay together. Shit happened; that was life. What he couldn’t accept was the emotional devastation that came along with the split and knowing that he could never find that same level of happiness with any other woman. If that was eternal bliss, Nick wanted no part of it.

And yet all his careful avoidance had been for nothing. Despite his best efforts, he’d found his spirit mate; had even made love to her in his dreams. But while he’d been seeing her in his dreams, he’d been seeing someone else in the physical world. Not just anyone, it turned out. His spirit mate’s friend.

A horrible sinking feeling overcame him. He’d cheated on his spirit mate by sleeping with her friend. And no matter how tempting he found Mai, he’d never be able to make love to her again.

“Nick?”

He felt Mai’s eyes on him as she waited for his reaction to her story. “You say this happened to a friend of yours?”

She nodded.

He took a deep breath. “I’d like to talk to her—would that be possible?”

“I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone about the incident,” Mai explained.

He wanted to keep pushing, but he’d been around Mai enough to recognize the stubborn set of her jaw. He’d try again later. Until he’d had a chance to meet the other woman and verify that she was the one in his dreams, he’d have to make absolutely certain that nothing more happened between him and Mai—no matter how much the wood nymph turned him on.

An awkwardness settled over them, so Nick backed up to the door. “I guess I should leave. We could both use some sleep.”

Mai followed after him. “You could stay here,” she suggested, her voice husky and full of invitation.

The last thing he wanted to do was leave her, but he knew he couldn’t stay. The temptation would be too great.
“No. I’ve got some…work I need to do.” It sounded lame even to his ears. “Some of my friends are NYPD homicide. I thought I might drop by and see them. There was nothing in the paper about finding a body in Central Park. I thought I’d see if they’re keeping it out of the media on purpose—or maybe they never found the body.”

She followed him to the door, standing close enough that he could smell the faint scent of her perfume. She watched him with eyes full of worry and longing. They pulled him like a tractor beam and he found himself bending toward her before he’d made the conscious decision to do so.

She raised her face to his, her tongue darting out to moisten her lips. His gut clenched. There was nothing he wanted more than to taste those lips.

A memory of being with his spirit mate wedged its way into his thoughts and effectively killed his desire. At the last second, he dodged her kiss and gave her a brotherly peck on the cheek. “I’ll call you,” he promised. And then he left—as fast as he could.

Mai stood staring at the closed door, one hand against her cheek. What was going on? He’d made love to her that morning and told her they were dating the night before. But tonight he was kissing her on the cheek?