Chapter Eleven
He closed his eyes, trying to make it all go away.
I don’t want to see this.
She was going to lose the baby. Like so many others were losing theirs to this plague. He couldn’t lose her too.
Beth tried to comfort him as they unwrapped her from the blankets. “We’ll take care of her, Daniel.” Wet tendrils of short gold hair clung to her pale pixie face, her mask pulled askew.
I don’t want to see.
All he could see was her face. The rest of the room was darkness.
Mel.
Shut it off now.
“Daniel?”
Shut it OFF!
Like a switch had flipped, Mel’s face blinked out.
“Mel?”
Grace’s voice came from above his head. “No. It’s me.”
After the bizarre shared vision with Nick, Daniel had groped his way to one of the armchairs with Pooka’s help.
He must’ve dozed off there. He kept his eyes shut this time.
Pointless to open them and make the pain in his head worse.
He heard the hound happily thwack his tail against the floor as Grace settled on the chair arm next to him.
“Another vision?”
“Yeah. How’s Nick?”
She rubbed his shoulder, and he felt a whisper of warmth radiate through him. The nausea eased, but the pain behind his eyes didn’t vanish completely.
“He said he saw Lily, our Lily, and somehow you were there inside his head. It was a bit too much for his stomach to reconcile,” she said in a soft voice.
“Did he get a headache too?”
“Thankfully no, and the nausea’s already passed. He’s rummaging in the refrigerator for something to replace those cheese steak sandwiches.”
Daniel heard the noises coming from the kitchen. Apparently, it took a lot to faze Nick.
“Are you all right? I’m sorry I left you like that,” Grace went on. “I should’ve—”
“Hey, it’s okay. Pooka is a natural guide dog.” He stroked the hound’s furry flank.
“Nick says that Lily…” Her voice broke. “He says she was healthy.”
“And beautiful, like her mom,” Daniel reassured her.
“He’s still trying to sort through it all, but he said it felt like Lily was really there.” She frowned. “That’s impossible, isn’t it?”
“No idea,” Daniel said, even though he was pretty sure Lily had, somehow, been there in the vision. But he didn’t want to go there just now. “I’m still grappling with taking Nick along like that.”
“She’s healthy though? So, the other dream you had…?”
Daniel felt his stomach lurch. He’d called Grace after his first dream about the miscarriage plague, having feared it had happened to her. “She’s fine, sis. That dream wasn’t about Lily.”
Grace let out a breath. “Good.”
“She’s going to have the most unique eye color,” Daniel said, remembering the silver-green stare that had looked through Nick’s eyes right into his.
“So what…what did you see?” Grace asked.
“Nick’s gut is probably right,” he admitted. “It may be a risk, we should push forward with the yeast as fast as we can and do whatever testing we can on the fly.”
“I’ll add what I need for that to the list. We might have to dig further into the hill to expand the lab or move it elsewhere.” She was quiet for a long moment. “So why was Nick able to see it too?”
“Like I said, no idea. We’re in uncharted territory here. But Lily’s okay, right? You said she was doing gymnastics.”
“She was. Then Nick froze and you reached for his hand,” Grace replied. “Next thing I know, you’re on the floor and Nick is looking green. No time passed at all, for me anyway.”
“Is she okay now?”
Grace put a hand on her belly. “I think she fell asleep after all the excitement.”
“Probably sucking her thumb and listening to the silly grown-ups talk.”
“Probably.” Her tone was uncertain. “You don’t think…? You don’t think she was using her gift already? She was moving around a lot, before you…”
Daniel could hear the unspoken fear in her voice. She didn’t need to start worrying about her unborn child grappling with some overwhelming ability. “It could’ve been a fluke, or some combination of my visions and Nick’s intuition. It’s not like we have a manual.”
“True. It’s just…” She sighed. “I’m trying to figure out whether these gifts will have some long-term impact on us. I’ve gotten sick using it. Even passed out. But you…”
“Hey, I go to the cave, put my hand in the handprint and everything’s fine, right? At least, that’s the working theory?”
“Based on our limited data. But your condition and side effects are a lot more serious than ours. Things might not go as smoothly. I’d like to be able to observe you without interruptions for a while.”
“If that’s the case, I should probably wait until after Mel leaves to go to the cave. Worst-case scenario, I get to hang around you guys longer than you expected.” He tried to sound more confident than he felt.
“So, the prazosin doesn’t stop the dreams,” Grace said. “My Slumbertime blend didn’t either. What does?”
Mel’s Reverse Sleeping Beauty. Daniel grimaced. “Alcohol. But the side effects are almost as bad.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think it causes the same kind of damage as your visions. I could be wrong though.” Her voice was tight.
“So wine instead of tea?” Nick said loudly from the kitchen.
“I wouldn’t want to make things worse.”
“I don’t think you could make things worse, Gracie,” Daniel said.
“All right. Yes. I just want to make sure you wake up in the morning.” Grace’s voice sounded shaky.
“Hey.” He opened his eyes and found her hand with his gloved one, squeezing it.
Daniel could stand the light better now, and squinted as Nick came into the room juggling a plate, a bottle, and a wine glass.
“No board meetings without me.”
“No business being conducted here, sir,” Grace said. “How’s the stomach?”
“Your ginger tea helped, and I pinched the last remaining fake steak sandwich from the fridge, so I am a happy camper.” He handed Daniel the wine glass.
Grace’s hand rose to help guide his hand to it.
“It’s all right. Things aren’t so blurry now,” Daniel held the glass as Nick filled it and handed him the bottle.
Grace joined her husband on the couch. Nick leaned sideways, sandwich in hand, and kissed the side of Grace’s neck.
“If you get her all stirred up before I go to bed, I’ll poke you every time she kicks me, Nick McKenzie.” But Grace lifted her chin and didn’t stop him.
“It’s not her I’m trying to get stirred up.”
Daniel cleared his throat. “Um…ew.”
“Oh, yeah. Hi, Daniel,” Nick said.
“You sure you’re okay?” Daniel asked.
“Fine. But I’ve gained a whole new level of respect for your constitution and my wife’s ginger tea.” Nick took a large bite of the sandwich. “Grace warned me that things might get interesting around here. I hadn’t thought about Lily doing—”
“She just happened to be in the vision, in that future,” Daniel interrupted. He was pretty sure his young niece had reached out somehow, but he didn’t want to upset Grace further.
“Hmmm,” Nick said around another bite of sandwich.
“I understand your instincts. I’ve had them too.
You sense something, but you’re worried you might not be right, so you don’t say anything because you don’t want to look foolish or make something out of nothing.
” Daniel started to protest, but Nick held up his hand.
“I get that your instinct is to protect your big sister from whatever you see, but, in my experience, I don’t think keeping your thoughts to yourself is the best for any of us, do you? ”
Grace looked back and forth between them. “I don’t know what’s going on, but Daniel, you need to know there is no judgment here. There’s no getting it wrong. We’re all struggling with what the mountain has…gifted us with.”
Daniel huffed a laugh. “Gifted.” He took a long sip of his wine.
“I remembered more while I was getting my sandwich,” Nick said. “We were discussing the yeast thing and I had just said something about my very unscientific gut and then everything went black.”
“But…that was before Daniel even touched you.” Grace put her hand protectively over her baby bump. “Do you think… Did Lily—?”
“No idea.” He covered her hand with his. “But then I was in the kitchen. That’s where we were in the vision, and Lily patted my face and called me ‘Uncle.’ Well, more like ‘Unca.’”
They both looked at Daniel.
“All right. Fine. Lily was there. I mean really there.”
“Are you… Are you sure?” Grace said.
Daniel nodded.
“My gut…” Nick looked at Daniel. “Do you think she’s already using her gift?”
“Yeah,” Daniel admitted what he had sensed. “I think maybe she brought you along on my vision.”
“She… She said ‘Unca’ to you?” Grace said.
“She patted my face, looked into my eyes—”
“My eyes,” Daniel said.
“Our eyes,” Nick said. “And said Unca. I told her it was Daddy.”
Grace looked at Daniel. “She…saw you?”
“What kind of gift is that?” Nick said, more to himself than either of them.
“Well, in the interest of not keeping things quiet, I had a hint of this at Christmas,” Daniel said.
“Christmas?” Grace frowned. “Oh. When you had the vision of me telling Nick I was pregnant.”
“Yeah. I thought it was just another aspect of my gift—a positive one for once—but I swear I sensed her, or she announced herself to me or something. It was just a…touch.”
Grace and Nick exchanged a look. “We had a similar experience,” Grace said.
“We thought it was because of Grace’s gift,” Nick said.
“All I want is for her to be healthy and happy—to have a normal life,” Grace said in a soft voice. “Not that life has been normal around here for a while.”
“Hey, we strive for normal. I think we do pretty damn good at it,” Nick said.
Grace leaned against him. “And that’s why I love you.”
Nick nuzzled her hair, then turned to Daniel. “So, this dream you keep having. The one you called about from Italy. It has something to do with a baby?”
“It was about miscarriages. Some kind of global plague or virus affecting pregnancy. Everyone was wearing masks,” said Daniel.
“Respiratory?”