My dad slowly looks up at him. “Then how are you here? And how come she’s not?”
“Dad,” I say carefully. “Remember the conversation we had with Dex and Perry on Christmas Eve? Right here?”
“I’ve tried to forget,” he mumbles under his breath. A lot of ugly truths came out over that dinner, including the truth about my abilities.
“I’m sure,” I tell him softly. “But that’s still all true. You don’t have to believe it, but it’s true. Basically, I was able to reach into the Veil, to the world between worlds, and I was able to pull Maximus out.”
“And you can’t do the same for your mother?” he asks quietly.
I never told him that I had to get Mom out of Hell, that she was taken there by the same demon that took Max. I don’t want to get into that now. It would break him.
I shake my head and put my hand over his. God, it’s still shaking. “Dad…Mom is dead. I really wish she wasn’t, but she is. We can’t reach her. She’s at peace.”
“But she isn’t,” my father says sharply, eyes piercing into me. “I told you she isn’t. I told you I’ve been seeing her.”
“You’ve been seeing her?” Max asks.
My father nods but doesn’t go into detail. The fact that when he sees my mother, she keeps repeating the same thing over and over again. Don’t let her, don’t let her. So far none of us, Perry included, have any idea who she’s talking about and what it means.
“Have you seen her?” Max looks to me.
I shake my head.
“So, if I’m seeing Ingrid, and she’s a ghost, how do I know you’re not a ghost?” my father asks him. Back to the ghost thing.
Max shrugs. “I guess you don’t. I hope I’m not, though. I feel real. And I’ve been interacting with people, contrary to what Ada might think.”
“In The Sixth Sense, it looked like Bruce Willis was interacting with people, but he wasn’t,” I point out.
“Ada, that was a movie,” my father chides me, losing his patience.
“An awesome movie,” I add.
“Anyway,” Max goes on, spearing the last piece of lasagna with his fork, “I’ll figure it all out soon enough. Just got to get back on my feet, so to speak.”
My father eyes me. “Please don’t tell me he’s living here.”
“I’ll be next door,” Max says quickly. “For a little while, anyway. At the Knightly’s. They’re old friends of mine.”
“Of course they are,” my dad says with a loaded sigh.
“And with that, I should probably go,” Max says, getting to his feet, towering over the table. “Let Dawn and Sage know I’m alive and well. Or, if not alive, at least well. Thank you for a lovely dinner, Mr. Palomino.”
He picks up his empty plate and glass of wine, finishing the pinot as he takes the dishes over to the sink.
I get up and go over to him. “You’re going so soon?”
“Don’t want to overstay my welcome, little lady.”
“Can you not call me that?”
He grins. “Sure. Blondie it is.” He gives my father a nod and then heads off to the foyer. I follow, right at his heels.
“I told you how I feel about Blondie.”
“Uh huh,” he says, pulling on his coat. “Too bad I don’t care. Now you know what it feels like to have a nickname you can’t shake.”
“But your nicknames are funny,” I whine as he throws on his scarf and opens the door, the cold air flowing in.
“It’s only fair, Blondie,” he says, shooting me a smirk over his shoulder as he heads down the steps and crosses the yard toward the Knightly’s.
I close the door, feeling chilled from head to toe, and then go back into the kitchen, sitting in my place.
My father is staring at me, but I can’t read his expression.
I have a sip of wine, swallow. “What?”
“What is it with you and redheads?”
I have to laugh.
Four
“Want a reason? How about because.”
– Turnin’ On the Screw
I’m dreaming.
Dreaming that I’m standing in the Knightly’s front yard, staring at their house. I know it’s a dream because the world is white, with only the house having some color and features, like I’m on overexposed film.
And I’m lucid dreaming, too. I’m controlling this ride.
But what I want in that house isn’t there. I can sense Jacob, Dawn, Sage…and Max. But Max isn’t the man I’m looking for.
I’m looking for Jay.
And he’s not here.
I doubt he ever will be.
I feel the dream starting to fade from my mind, feel the control slip away into the black.
Then I stop myself. The world freezes over.
Once upon a time, Jay used to visit me in my dreams. I was never sure how he did it, other than it being a supernatural skill he had in his toolbox. Now I’m wondering if I can do the same. If I can concentrate hard enough in a dream state, if I can bring him into my dream.
So I focus all the energy that’s running through my veins, that same kind of white hot lightning that forms in the depths of me when I need to manipulate the space around me, punch holes through dimensions, fight baddies, and all that crazy shit.
But instead of bringing Jay to me, the scene in front of me starts to change. The house recedes, fading and fading, getting smaller and smaller, until another house appears. A ranch, blue, with a cactus garden out front. A house I’ve never seen before, though the more I try to focus on it, the blurrier it gets.
And then I realize what I’ve done. I haven’t brought Jay into my dream. I’ve brought myself to him.
Feeling no fear, only curiosity, I start walking toward the house, because this is real and yet it’s not real at the same time. The closer I get, the more real it becomes. I open the door and walk on in.
It looks like a typical house. There’s a living room to the left, a kitchen to the right, everything looks tidy, with some subtle southwestern décor, like terracotta pottery on the shelves and a Santa Fe style tapestry hanging from the wall.
I don’t think, I just let the energy take me, like I’m being pulled until I’m walking down a hall to a door.
I stare at it for a moment, giving myself a moment to think about what I’m about to do. I know it’s just a dream. But if Jay is in there like I think he is, then that might be real to him. More than a dream. And this will be the first time I’ve seen him since he left.
I take in a deep breath, even though there’s no air in this world, and I open the door.
Jay is standing in the middle of a bedroom, his back to me, facing a window that glows white. The walls of the room are black and it’s hard to tell if there are even walls at all or if it’s just endless space.
Everything inside me stills, like all that energy just froze on itself.
Just being in the same room as Jay makes me want to crumple to my knees. It takes everything to remain on my feet.
“You came,” Jay says, and his voice makes my heart lurch, tears rushing to my eyes.