He chuckled. “Fair enough.”
Thankfully, I escaped before my mother could act on the embarrassed look on her face and insist that I call him David right then and there.
I walked into my room to find Houdini sprawled across my bed, his head on my pillow, like it was his personal throne. I shooed him off and back to his pallet, saying in a stern tone, “We’re going to have a serious talk about boundaries, boy!”
By the time I’d washed my face and brushed my teeth, Houdini was once again on my bed.
I shook my head at his stubborn nature, then crawled into bed with my grandmother’s journal. Houdini was at least smart enough to jump off while I straightened the covers. As soon as I pulled them to my chin, he quickly hopped back up, but this time, instead of laying his head on my pillow, he pressed his body against mine and settled his chin on his paws facing the door.
I patted his broad back and tried to get him to turn around so I could scratch his ears, but he only turned to look at me, then resettled in the same position.
“Stubborn dog,” I mumbled affectionately as I flipped through the opening pages. I learned Margaret had many interests from art to music to volunteering. Gran had been right. My grandmother didn’t journal daily. She’d just written about events that happened in her life or memorable people she’d met that made an impact. Hence the reason she’d written about Freddie. Sprinkled throughout were anecdotes about family. She liked my dad but felt he was a hard read. She dearly loved her sister, Corda, was proud of her daughter, Elizabeth, and absolutely adored her grand daughter, Inara, which brought a huge smile to my face. I’d only made it halfway through her journal when my eyes began to droop as sheer exhaustion took over.
The moment my bedroom door opened, Houdini lifted his head and growled.
Mom’s gaze snapped to the dog. “Hush, Houdini!” she said in an authoritative voice at the same time I tucked the journal under my covers. When he blew out a snort and lowered his head to his paws, Mom’s eyebrows shot up. “Looks like I don’t have to spend a few grand on a security system anytime soon.”
I patted Houdini’s back. “Told you.”
A smirk tilted her lips. “I just wanted to say goodnight.”
“Night, Mom. Thanks for the gifts.”
“You’re welcome.” Mom started to walk out, then turned back. “I’d like you to work on calling him David, Nara. He’ll be coming over here more, spending time with us. It’ll feel very formal if you continue to call him Mr. Dixon.”
I’m not ready!
I wanted to scream. Instead, I pressed my lips together. “I’ll try.”
Which means, I’ll just avoid calling him anything.
Satisfied with my answer, Mom closed the door behind her.
After I yawned for the third time, I tucked the journal in my nightstand drawer and turned off my light. When the flashing light from my phone blinked, lighting up my ceiling in a strobe of red, I grabbed it from my nightstand.
Freddie had left me a voice mail. “Hi Nara. I just wanted to say what a pleasure it was meeting you. I hope you got plenty of information for your project, though I think you enlightened me more today.” A low chuckle rasped. “I’ll be waiting for you to claim your book. You
are
the rightful owner, little one. I know it in my heart. Take care and I hope you’ll come back and visit me very soon.”
Even though I felt a twinge of guilt that he still believed me to be “the one,” I couldn’t help but smile at his nice voice mail. I enjoyed my time with him very much. Visiting him was one of the first things I would do with Ethan when he got back.
Chapter Seventeen
Woof woof woof woof woof woof woof
!
I jerked awake, arms flailing, heart thudding in panic mode. Houdini’s bark was so deep and alarming that I glanced around the room, expecting to see flames, a flood, the roof missing, or something equally catastrophic. Houdini snarl-barked again, this time throwing himself against my window.
Wow, and I thought his size was intimidating. His roaring bark would scare the pee out of just about anyone!
“The roosters are barely up, Nara,” Mom’s sleepy voice floated down the hall. “Keep him quiet.”
I rushed over and gripped his thick collar, hauling him back from the glass. “Hush, Houdini!”
Patch stood on the ledge on the other side of the window, tilting his head back and forth. He gave an unimpressed squawk, then pressed his eye close to the clear surface before hammer-pecking three times, like he always did when he wanted in.
Houdini gave a low rumbling growl deep in his throat. He literally vibrated with the need to defend.
Defend?
My gaze slid back to the glass as realization dawned. That’s exactly what Patch had done the other day. The bird wasn’t being mean or temperamental when he wouldn’t let me get in my car. He was protecting me. If I’d come home at that time on that particular day, I would have encountered the intruder stealing Ethan’s book from my house.
“No, Houdini,” I said in a firm tone and released him to see how he’d react once freed. Instead of lunging at the glass, he turned brown eyes my way for direction.
Anxious to stop something I’d seen in my dream last night, I glanced at my clock. Six thirty. This afternoon, Gran would fall from a tree on the Westminster property and break her arm. She’d explained to me how it happened while they were putting on her cast. “Clara didn’t believe I climbed into your window on the second floor, so I had to show her I was still quite capable.”
I was really starting to not like this Clara person. I pressed my lips together as I stared at Patch, who was impatiently bobbing his head up and down, winding up to hammer on the window again.
It was too early to call Gran and tell her
not
to climb that tree (that was one benefit of Gran knowing about my gift. I didn’t have to convince her that it
would
happen), so I approached the window and said under my breath, “I’m probably going to regret this, but I have to see if we’re all going to get along.”
I was impressed when Houdini didn’t immediately attack Patch once he flew into the room. He watched the bird with wild, wary eyes and a snarling lift of his lip, but once he saw me set out a piece of kibble for Patch, he immediately whimpered and gave me puppy eyes.
I tossed him some pieces, which seemed to calm his raging beast.
Whereas Houdini kept one eye on Patch’s movements at all times, the raven seemed to adopt an I’m-going-to-pretend-that-big-animal-isn’t-here attitude. Patch focused on the raven statue on my nightstand, making low gurgling noises and bobbing his head up and down as if in deep conversation with the mute bird.
While I tossed a few more pieces of kibble to Houdini, Patch opened my jewelry box on my nightstand and had already removed several of my necklaces.
“Patch!” The bird let out a
crooooack
and flew over to my desk as I quickly moved to untangle the mess he’d made of my chains. I held up the necklace Aunt Sage had encouraged me to create to help me retrieve my dreams. Gripping the blue crystal hanging from it, I told Patch, “If it weren’t for this necklace and Ethan’s help, I never would’ve been able to tell Fate to back off from his ‘Nara must die for interfering’ vendetta. Shiny things might attract you, but claws off!”
I carefully set the necklace back in my jewelry box on top of the bangle cuff Aunt Sage had given me when I turned thirteen, then retrieved my grandmother’s journal to get some more reading in before I had to take a shower.
When Houdini let out a light bark forty minutes later, I looked up to see Patch pulling the crystal necklace from its new drawer. “Patch…” I began with a sigh as I stood.
He glanced at me, then lifted the chain with his beak. He’d protected me the other day. It wouldn’t hurt to humor him. I looped the chain several times around the raven statue’s neck, resting the crystal on the bird’s chest. “Now you can see it but can’t take off with it. Happy?” In answer, Patch fluffed his wings and approached the raven, eyeing the chain with pleased guttural sounds.
Patch started to tug at the chain with his beak, then he turned around and made an annoyed
raaaack
sound at Houdini. Apparently, the dog was too close.
“Okay, boys! Enough tolerance testing for one day. Time for you to go, Patch. I need to get a shower.” Once I’d opened my window, I spun a quarter and watched with amusement at Houdini’s bark of alarm when Patch snatched up the coin like a desperate kid in an arcade.
* * *
As I made my way to the park to meet with Drystan, my whole body was one tense ball of nerves. I felt guilty that I was already fifteen minutes late, but it’s not like I could call or text Drystan and let him know I was delayed. An hour and a half earlier, I’d been in the Starbucks drive-through line, waiting for my coffee, when I tried to call Gran. Fate decided to zap my phone the moment I hit Send. I gave the guy at the drive-through window quite a show when I screamed and threw my phone into the floorboard of my car.
I’d had no choice but to drive to Westminster, which didn’t open its main gates until eight. I got shocked when I pushed the button on the retirement community gates’ entrance. Another shock when I picked up the pen at the main desk to sign in. Yet another shock when I had to pull open the door that led to the elevators. To keep from grinding my teeth to nubs while waiting for the next electrical jolt, I bumped the elevator button with my elbow and knocked on Gran’s door with the toe of my shoe.
By the time she rustled herself out of bed, and then insisted on calling Clara over for me to tell her neighbor the story how Gran had most definitely climbed to the second story of our house, my hair was so full of electricity, the entire top layer floated around my head like a halo of gnats. I refused to touch either Gran or Clara for fear I’d give them cardiac arrest. I left as fast as I could, but it was already five after nine.
As I turned into the main entrance of the park, I tried to think of the best way to deal with Fate’s twisted form of shock therapy. Had he totally fried my phone? I grabbed it from my backpack and hit the On button. Thankfully it powered back to life. I set my jaw as I slipped it back in my pack. Even though my phone was fine, I saw another showdown with Fate in my not-too-distant future.
Ethan had helped me make Fate back off in the past. Would we be able to make him leave me alone again? Ethan hadn’t liked me interfering with others’ lives before, and since my life wasn’t in jeopardy this time, would he even agree to help if he thought that me facing off with Fate in my dreams was a bigger risk to my life than an occasional shock? I honestly wasn’t sure what Ethan would say.
You need to let me do this on my own, Nara
.
Ethan’s comment when he’d learned I was at the raven sanctuary had really hurt. I’d tried not to think too hard about what he meant by it, but with Fate up to new tricks, I couldn’t help but think about him.
Did Ethan think I was pushing him with the ravens? That wasn’t my intent, but now that I’d had such an amazing emotional experience with him through the ravens at the sanctuary, I desperately wanted to record my thoughts about it in Ethan’s journal. Not to mention, I wanted to jot down notes on the mysterious book Freddie had tried to give me. My heart ached that all the work I’d done…all the information I’d collected was lost.
Lost
!
When the realization hit me, I felt like smacking my forehead against my steering wheel. Drystan had proven his ability to find lost things. Could he help me retrieve Ethan’s journal? I missed my daily experience of working on it. Just like I missed my special time with Ethan.
Would Drystan be able to see it? Maybe his powers were different from mine and he wouldn’t be blocked from seeing the leather book like I was. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, while I considered how I could possibly ask Drystan to help me locate Ethan’s book yet still keep my ability and Ethan’s a secret. Guilt made my shoulders ache as I gripped the steering wheel tighter.
As I turned into the park’s entrance, I decided that if I asked for Drystan’s help, it was only fair that I told him about my own ability in return. It’s what he wanted to know. I could still keep Ethan’s power to myself. But what if I shared with Drystan, only to discover that he couldn’t “see” Ethan’s book either? I’d be risking telling another person about my ability for nothing.
“You’re late,” Drystan said in a curt tone from his leaning position against Matt’s Jeep.
I rolled up my cracked window, then stepped out of my car and held up my Starbuck’s cup. “Sorry. The drive-through line was extra long this morning.” Skimming my gaze past Drystan’s bed-head hair (Why couldn’t I roll out of bed and look that good? So not fair!) to his thin black zip-up jacket and track pants with three stripes down the sides, I shivered in my thick fleece, sweatshirt and sweatpants. “Aren’t you cold?” I wished my coffee was still warm as I wrapped my fingerless-gloved hands around the cup.
Drystan’s green gaze turned icy as he stared at my cup. “Does that have milk and sugar in it?”
“Of course.” Just as I started to take another sip, he took the cup and dumped what was left. I scowled. He didn’t say anything about my drink in my dream. “What was that for?”
Jaw set, he handed me the empty cup. “Black coffee only before sessions. Water is preferred. I was going to work on something else with you…” he began, then turned and opened the trunk of the Jeep, where he retrieved a foldable six-foot ladder.
As he walked off toward the park without another word, I glared after his retreating back and called out, “You owe me a latte!” If water had been so important, he’d have said something in my dream.
Why did I feel like I was being punished?
When I realized he wasn’t going to acknowledge my complaint, I put the empty cup in my car, grabbed my backpack, then ran after him, grumbling, “I’ll tell you what’s preferred.”
Drystan had entered the woods on a footpath. I followed, but kept my less-than-happy thoughts to myself. In my dream last night, we’d gone running for a couple of miles, then we’d worked on some self-defense moves. Now that I’d shown up late and apparently pissed him off, Drystan had changed his plans. My training session was blind now. Ugh!