Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
You can’t run from your nightmares—they aren’t bound by the same laws as you and I.
I t was a well known and documented fact that men believed they were superior in certain things. Finding the correct batteries for remotes, wallpapering, recycling, and parallel parking.
It was our job as women to let them believe these things, meaning that we were relieved of completing these tasks. They thought they were asserting their male prowess, but we knew it allowed us extra time in the bath. But this? Something that has been commonplace since the 1970s? This was the world’s biggest joke.
“If you place the plates too close together, then the water can’t get to them,” Hudson coached me and Rebecca like we’d never successfully loaded a dishwasher.
“Huh, never thought of that,” Rebecca said, looking like an ethereal princess in a floaty lemon sundress and white cardigan. I shot her a look, and she winked at me.
Dave grabbed the cutlery rack and moved the knives, forks, spoons around. “Also, make sure you arrange these handle-side down and organize them by utensil for ease of unloading.”
“Wow, that’s genius,” I responded. They were both utterly clueless as they schooled us, two women who had been running a guest house for years on domestic chores.
My wards gripped my mind. Pushing against them, I winced. What the hell? They released with a pop, and I jerked to my feet.
“What was that?” Rebecca asked. She felt it too? Oh, that couldn’t be good.
I hurried out of the kitchen with the rest of them on my tail. My front door swung open, and Aunt Dayna stepped through. Her honey-blonde hair was swept up behind a pink and silver scarf.
She grinned at me. “Sorry I took so long. I decided I should probably move here while we tackle your therapy.”
“This is your therapist?” Hudson asked as he came to stand next to me.
Aunt Dayna tilted her head. “I have an affinity for healing psychic pain.”
“Plus, it’s not like I can just spill my darkest secrets to anyone,” I reminded him, before turning back to her. “I don’t think I have a spare guest room for you.”
I would, if my stables hadn’t been flattened by my father proving a point. Maybe he could rebuild them as a present, instead of, you know, a beating heart. At least the glitter was gone.
“Oh no, that’s fine. I have somewhere to stay.”
Dave peered out of the window. “There’s a house on your lawn.”
I strode past Dayna onto my porch to find her house in place of the stables. That explained the wards. I had a sentient home on my grounds, and my wards were testing its intent.
“I could have found you somewhere to stay,” I told her.
“No need. Besides, he gets grouchy and lonely if I’m gone too long.”
“The house has feelings?” Dave muttered. “Just when I thought we’d hit our weird shit meter, you go and take it to another level.”
I glanced at him. “In all fairness, this isn’t my weird shit; it’s hers.”
“Aunt Stella and Anita will stay with me,” Dayna said.
“You guys have lives. I don’t expect you to drop everything.”
She snorted and crossed her arms. “Cora, one: we love you. Two: this isn’t just your mess. Eloise is our mother. This is a Roberts mess.”
A tiny amount of weight lifted from my heart at those words. I didn’t realize I had been carrying around the pressure. I couldn’t do this alone. It was bigger than me. However, first I needed to get healthy.
“Where should we do this?” I asked. It was time to stop running from the nightmares haunting me.
I sat on my sofa in my apartment, with Dayna on one side and Hudson on the other. Dave balanced on the arm of the chair Aunt Liz perched on, and Rebecca took up the other chair. Sebastian leaned against the wall, while Harry floated next to him.
“Tell me again why everyone is here to witness my pain,” I grumbled.
She took my hands in hers. “They are your grounding points. Taking a soul journey is a little tricky, and the call of the eternal plane can be rather seductive. Your soul is fractured. The nightmares, the pain, the lack of completeness, comes from it nudging you to glue it back together. Once you do that, everything will feel so much better.”
I dragged in a breath and released it. Soul journey, fractured pieces, glue. I totally got this.
“First, everyone should drink the tea,” Aunt Liz instructed.
Dave grimaced at the lukewarm herbal tea. “What does it do?”
“Opens your mind,” Dayna replied as I gulped mine down. That wasn’t too bad.
“Why?” he asked.
Dayna huffed. “We have to be open on the psychic plane to support Cora and tether her to this world.”
“Just drink the damn tea,” Hudson growled before downing his. They all followed suit.
My mind swirled as I glanced around the room. A faint pure white light with a hint of blue glowed around Hudson. I blinked, but it only got brighter. I turned back to Dayna, finding her also bathed in light, but hers was comprised of calming pinks and peaches.
“Why is everyone glowing?” Dave snapped.
Oh, so it wasn’t just me then. Cool.
“Your mind’s eye is opening, and you’re seeing people’s auras. It’s a good sign,” Dayna said. “Now shush. I need to concentrate.”
She grasped my left hand and placed it on her left shoulder, then she did the same so we were identical. “Heart to heart,” she whispered as her eyes fluttered closed. “Body to body. Soul to soul. Guide this child so that she may once again be whole.”
My eyelids drooped, and my heart thumped slower, calmer. My breathing deepened, and I let myself experience everything. The faint hint of vanilla from the candles in my bedroom. The hum of the dishwasher. The rustle of the wind against the window. The scurry of the wildlife in the garden. It was stunning. It made me feel small, but connected to something intangible—a force that weaved around all living matter in the universe.
“Good, Cora,” Dayna said. “Now go further, beyond what we can see with our eyes and hear with our ears. Focus on what is behind it.”
I squinted, and the world shifted, like a glitch. Another plane of existence that was parallel to ours. I reached out, my hand skimming the light, which fragmented into a million pieces, like stardust. So pretty.
“Deeper,” Dayna coaxed.
I blinked, and the world went utterly dark. Panic clutched my chest as I faced the nothingness. This was where my nightmares existed. It was the evil that had stolen parts of my soul and held them hostage until I grew a pair of balls and came to claim them back.
“You got this,” Hudson uttered.
I got this. I took a step into the abyss and surrendered to the storm.
My screams vibrated around me—bloodcurdling, agony-induced screams. A door on my left materialized, and as I reached for it, I paused, feeling the horror awaiting within. I swallowed down my terror and flung it open.
A red-haired little girl, no more than five years old, sat in the middle of the floor with her head in her hands, crying as she rocked back and forth.
I circled her before kneeling down in front of her. “Hey, you okay?” I asked.
Her crying got louder. A familiar woman stepped out of the corner and pointed at the child. “You are an abomination. If you hadn’t been born, he never would have left me. All I did was love him, and you stole him from me.”
“Mama?” I whispered. I didn’t remember her ever being this angry or chaotic, but then again, my memories of her were pretty fragmented.
Her gaze flew to mine, and she tilted her head, her eyes narrowing. “You grew up.”
I squeezed my eyes closed and fought back the tears. “I still love you, Mama. I understand you weren’t well. You were in pain.”
“You caused my pain.”
“I was a child.”
“You were a monster, but I leashed her. I pushed her down until I had the perfect pretty daughter.”
She did what?
“This is where your soul first fractured,” Dayna said, coming to stand next to me. “It might not be something you remember, but this was the first and most significant break.”
“What do I need to do?”
Dayna shook her head. “You needed to see this, but when we go on a soul journey, it’s better to start with the most recent and work our way back.”
“Do I have to experience it all?”
I didn’t think I could. “No. This isn’t a simple fix, Cora. The goal is to be open to the healing. We jump start the process.”
“Will you stay with me?”
She shook her head. “Not me, but one of us will be here. Come on.” She tugged me out of the room and away from my younger self, still crying on the floor. I vowed to come back for my inner child.
As soon as I stepped back into the abyss, Dayna disappeared, and Liz took her place. We were inside that glass cage, the familiar nightmare of my torture taking place before us. Aunt Liz sucked in a breath.
“I will never forgive her,” she muttered as she grabbed my hand. “We will protect you, Cora, and hold you together until you are strong enough to do it yourself. But I vow to you, she will pay.”
I squeezed my eyes closed for a minute before forcing myself to watch. “She stole something from me in here.”
“Then claim it back.”
“She’s my grandmother. She should have protected me.”
“You’re right, but that doesn’t make you unworthy, Cora. It’s not your failure, but hers. Stop bleeding for this woman; she will never thank you for it. You cannot earn her love because she is rotten. She isn’t capable of it. So. Claim. It. Back.”
There was the echo of a roar, and the thunder of feet. My family, my friends, my mate—they came for me. They risked life and limb to rescue me. I held on to that love and dragged into my body, clutching it tight, and closed my eyes, banishing the shadows this horror had caused.
I felt it. The tiny piece of my soul I’d reclaimed. There was more here, but this was the start of the road to processing the horror that happened in this room. Small steps.
My eyes flicked open, and Hudson and I were in the back of a car. It was dark, and in the front sat our doppelgangers.
“Don’t do this,” my identical self murmured. I could feel my heart breaking all over again.
My Hudson grabbed my hand. “I was so fucking stupid.”
My lips twitched. “Yes, you were.”
But I understood why this happened. He’d panicked and decided we weren’t worth the political cost.
“I’m sorry,” he rumbled.
“I know.”
“I don’t understand why this was something that damaged my soul. I accepted your apology and forgave you. We’ve moved on.”
“Still, I betrayed you here. I broke your heart and crushed our fledgling relationship with one stupid decision. I’m lucky to have won you back, and there isn’t a day that passes that I don’t regret making you think you came second.”
I sighed. He was right. It was a betrayal I was still nursing. But this was the man I loved, the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with. I gulped, and my heart stuttered for a moment before synchronizing with Hudson’s. He let loose a long breath.
“The mate bond,” he murmured. “It’s fully formed.”
I felt it. Stronger, more tangible than ever. It would only grow from here.
He turned my face to his and kissed me slowly. “Thank you for trusting me, Cora.”
My eyes flew open, and he was gone. Now, I was on the floor of my lab, and Dave stood across from me, staring at Mary, the battered wolf shifter he’d brought me to heal. His accusations echoed through the room, blaming me for what had happened to her.
“I had no right to blame you,” he growled. I snapped my head to the side, finding him next to me. “You carry enough guilt in your soul for the world. You didn’t need this as well.”
“All deaths weigh on doctors. We learn to compartmentalize, but it doesn’t mean we don’t feel each and every one.”
“But I blamed you.”
I clutched his hand. “Do you still?”
“No.”
I sucked in a breath, leaned my head back, and closed my eyes. I could sense my strength, but also exhaustion.
“Tell us the numbers,” my ex-boyfriend snarled.
I shook my head and refused to open my eyes. We’d skipped to something I wanted to face even less than my grandmother. This was my first attempt at a relationship outside of my family, and I’d gotten hurt. Scarred. It had broken a trust inside me only Hudson had succeeded in mending. So I didn’t need to be here. I didn’t need to see this.
“This haunts my dreams too,” Sebastian said. “I’d never seen someone in so much pain before. So much heartbreak inflicted by someone you put trust into.” I shook my head and let my tears fall. “Open your eyes, Cora. Let’s banish this together. It’s time.”
My lips trembled as I found the last of my resolve and flicked open my eyes. I bore witness to my torture, and I didn’t blink once. I let every emotion flood my veins, relived every lash, felt each scar forming. But I did not blink. I faced my fear, and in doing so, I won back a part of me I thought died in this basement.
The world darkened before transforming into my living room, where we all stood in a circle. “I’m done,” I choked out. I couldn’t take any more. Not right now.
“You did good,” Dayna said with a smile. “Now, for the tricky part.”
“What’s the tricky part?” Dave snarled.
“Umm, getting back.”
“What?” Hudson growled. “You don’t know how to get us back?”
“No, I do. Everyone just hold still,” Dayna said.
“Stop resisting,” Aunt Liz said.
“I can’t help it,” Dave grumbled. “She’s tugging on my soul, and it sounds like she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“Got it,” Dayna said. Then we were sucked out of this plane and back into reality. I opened my eyes. Since when was I sitting on the armchair next to Aunt Liz?
She turned and frowned at me. “Why are you sitting over my shoulder like that, you overgrown mutt?”
I squinted. My eyesight was a little blurry. Must be from the tea. “What?”
Hudson suddenly stood upright and spun in a circle. His movements were a little too graceful. What on earth was he doing?
“Well, this is different. I feel hungry for meat,” he snarled.
Umm, that was an odd thing to announce.
“Oh shit,” Sebastian muttered. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
He pointed her finger at a woman. Wait, no. He pointed his finger at a woman who looked exactly like me. “I told you not to resist.”
My twin snapped to her feet. “What did you do?”
Sebastian looked around at us. “We’re in the wrong bodies.”
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine hearing that sentence not only spoken, but spoken truthfully.
Hudson’s hand landed on his crotch. “My, my, Principal, you are packing something insane down here. No wonder Cora screams your name every night.”
Rebecca? “Hey! Hands off my man’s junk.”
He turned to me and winked.
“Honestly, I am not surprised by this turn of events,” Dayna’s body said as she placed one foot on her opposite knee and leaned back.
I choked and shielded my eyes. “Close your legs. I do not need to know what panties my aunt is wearing.”
“Cora?” Dayna said with wide eyes.
I nodded.
“You Freaky Fridayed us,” Sebastian said from Liz’s body.
“Sister, put us back,” Rebecca said.
Aunt Liz? I massaged my temple. “This is very confusing.”
“I can feel your hearts pumping like a siren call,” Rebecca, AKA Liz, said. “It’s distracting.”
Harry, who had been quiet until now, floated forward. “Everyone gets a soul swap, but me?”
“This is not something you want to be a part of,” I advised. It was very disconcerting.
“Why is the wolf inside our body?” Indigo snapped. “And why is the vampire inside our mate?”
“We need to hurry this along before my alter ego loses her shit,” I advised.
Sebastian shrugged. “I could try, but I might make it worse. Best to just let nature take its course.”
Dave shook his head. I had great hair. Shiny, wavy, thick. “Fix it now.”
Sebastian scowled. “Our souls want to return to our bodies. I believe with a little patience, everything will be fine.”
“How much patience?” Liz asked.
“A day, maybe two. We just need to lie low until then.”
“Awesome. We get to sleep like this,” Rebecca said with a smirk.
“You don’t get alone time with that body,” I snapped.
She pouted. Hudson pouting was not a good look. “Fine. Guess we are sleeping together.”
“Until we are back to normal, no one leaves the house. No shenanigans, no guests, no stupid shit.”
My wards clanged. Whoever that was needed to leave, unless it was my father. Maybe he could put us back?
We sat in silence for a couple of minutes, trying to will our souls back. It didn’t work.
Someone knocked on my apartment door. “Cora, we have guests.”
I squeezed my eyes closed and rose. Damn, the world looked different when you were tall. “Coming,” I said.
Dave rose in front of me. “Sit down.”
Oh, right. I slumped back on the arm of the chair with a huff. Dave could handle Maggie.
He swung open the door. “What is it?” he snarled. I never snarl. Maggie sucked in a breath. Tone it down, Dave. “Sorry, it’s, umm, the hormones.”
I snorted, and Maggie giggled. “We have guests.”
“We don’t have any spare rooms,” Dave reminded her.
“Oh, they aren’t for you.”
Rebecca grimaced. Why was she making that face?
“It’s Rebecca’s parents. They’ve flown in from England to see her.”
My head fell into my hands, and I groaned. Worst. Timing. Ever.