Chapter 21 #2
“What, you’re psychic now too?”
“No, I know you. And your yellow aura is even more shadowed than the last time I saw it, which is strange, because it can’t be your men. I made sure they all understood the assignment.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Which is?”
His smile is way too self-satisfied for my liking. “Remember the Ace of Wands?”
“Oh, shut up.”
He chuckles. “I just let them know they’re all destined for you. That’s all.”
“And they believed you?”
He tilts his head, eyes bright as he says absolutely nothing more.
I think about Paul in the dreamscape, holding out his hand. Ridge saying, “You’re mine, and I’m yours.” And Nevan’s, “Something is always pulling me toward her.”
“Apparently they did,” I say under my breath, and Jasper’s smile widens a degree.
“Okay. What do you need? Books? Crystals?”
I reach under my sweater and pull out the moonstone on its chain. “I still have mine, thanks. But I wanted to ask your mom about her herbs. The tea she told me to make, I think, could help a friend reach the dream space. Is she home?”
Jasper steps back and opens the door wider. “Sure. Come on in.”
I step inside, then eye him suspiciously. “Wait, why are you home? Isn’t it a school day?”
He shrugs, walking ahead of me into the living room. “Mabel had some things to sort at the inn now that Nevan’s on his little vacation. So I’m here with Mom.”
I open my mouth to say something about missing school for that, but then it hits me. Nevan is on his vacation because of me. He’s not at the inn because he’s been sleeping on Ridge’s floor watching over me, and the ripple of that…
Shit.
I hadn’t thought about it extending to Jasper, Mabel, and the inn.
The very real consequences of my absence sit somewhere uncomfortable under my ribs as we find Seraphine on the sofa in front of the television, her long, silver hair loose, a cup of something cooling on the table beside her.
“Mom, hey.”
Seraphine’s eyes find mine, then drop to my chest. She stands up faster than I’ve ever seen her move and crosses the room to me, closing her hand around the moonstone pendant. The chain pulls taut at the back of my neck as she pulls hard enough that I stumble forward.
“I thought it was lost,” she gasps out.
“Mom.” Jasper pries her hand off the moonstone, and I take a few backward steps as I reach behind me, checking the chain.
“My moonstone,” she whispers, her gaze still locked on it. “My dream stone.”
Her fingers twitch at her sides as if she wants to reach for it again, but Jasper keeps an arm around her, keeping her in place.
“I thought it was gone. I looked everywhere. The garden, the inn, the woods.” Her gaze wanders around the living room. “Mabel helped me search. We searched for weeks.”
“Mom,” Jasper says quietly.
“When I realized it was really gone…” She swallows. “I thought maybe that was the point.”
“What point?” I ask.
Seraphine’s eyes meet mine. “The point where I stopped being able to find the right words. The point where names started slipping away from me.” She presses her hand to her chest. “I thought losing the stone was another sign that I was supposed to let go.”
Something in Jasper’s face crumples.
“Tell me about it,” I say gently, taking a step toward them. “Why is it important?”
She smiles at the crystal like she’s looking at an old friend. “It helps you dream. Moonstones belong to elsewhere, at least they used to. Long ago.” She takes a slow breath. “They’re anchors.”
My hand rises instinctively to the stone. “Anchors? To what?”
“To your subconscious and to yourself. It gives you stability and helps you lock yourself in your dreams. But I lost it. I lost it, and with it, my stability. My mind was already going, and then I lost it, too, and I…” She trails off, staring down at her hands.
“My mind was the thing that made it, that let me go where I needed to go, that let me see clearly, that let me know. And it started slipping through my fingers. This sickness, this fog that was stealing everything. My clarity, my focus. I couldn’t hold the dreams long enough to go deep enough, and then the crystal was gone, and the last bit of anchor with it. ”
She looks up at me, her blue eyes bright. “But everything I needed was in the dreams. Everything I wanted to keep.” She shrugs Jasper off and reaches toward me. “You understand that? Don’t you? You know what is on the other side.”
“Yes,” I say slowly. “I understand that.”
Even if I hate that I do.
Jasper’s hand closes on her shoulder from behind. “Mom, what are you…”
She shrugs him off again. “I wanted to stay. I always wanted to stay in the dreams. But I had the boys, and so I always came back. Until I couldn’t anymore.
Until coming back felt like stepping into someone else’s life.
And in the dreams, I was myself, even when waking life couldn’t hold me right.
So when my anchor was gone, I couldn’t stay.
And because I couldn’t stay, I had to pay. ”
“Pay?” Jasper rears back, looking offended. “What are you talking about? Is being here with us torture for you?”
I carefully step close to Jasper and take his hand, squeezing it gently.
No wonder Nevan is the way he is. Hearing something like that from your mother is hard.
“My payment isn’t in waking life,” Seraphine mutters. “I wanted to be locked in dreams. Now I’m locked in the dreamer.”
“What dreamer?”
God, I always only understand maybe half of what she’s saying.
Her eyes go fuzzy at the edges.
Shit.
“He has the most beautiful dreams. I try to teach him, I try to teach him everything I know, love, and protect him from the wandering souls that come through.” Her expression tightens when she turns to look at Jasper.
“He thinks he’s not enough, but it’s me.
My mind. I love them both, but I can only protect one at a time, because I’m locked in the one that needs me more. ”
Jasper has gone very still, the color draining from his face.
“Are you talking about your sons?”
“Crystals are more than stones, if you know how to use them.” Seraphine looks longingly at the moonstone again.
“They can be charged. Worked. Given intention so strong it becomes instruction. They can hold power over sleep, the mind, and where you go when you close your eyes. I got myself stuck. I wanted to leave this waking life, this sickness, and rest somewhere I could still be myself, but I got myself stuck.”
“Okay.” I keep my tone as gentle as possible. “How do we get you unstuck? What can we do?”
She points at Jasper.
“He knows. I told him. I’ve told him so many times. But that’s my curse, isn’t it? I don’t remember in waking life, and he, he doesn’t remember in dreams.”
She abruptly turns, walks back to the couch, and settles back in front of the television, as if she’s just returned from checking the mail.
Holy shit.
Jasper closes his hand around a black stone pendant on his chest with a panic-filled expression.
“Jasp—”
“My mom is stuck in my dreams.”