Wiccan, A Witchy Young Adult Paranormal Romance (25 page)

Rather than piled at the foot of the
bed as the others had been, the comforter on this bed had been
neatly folded and lay across the foot of the bed. It was a rich
gold and cream swirl.

Lying on heavy-looking ivory sheets was
a girl. Well, this one was more like a woman. She was probably in
her late twenties, older than the others had been. She had long
black hair and clear blue eyes and she watched me.

She was neither bound nor hooded and
she looked nervous. Not afraid, just nervous. She was dressed in a
solid white baby doll dress and her only other adornment was a
silver necklace with a charm on the end that lay perfectly centered
on her chest. The design of the charm reminded me of the symbol on
the Book of Shadows in the television show Charmed. It was sort of
a three-pronged flower looking thing.

When I looked at her, a gnawing dread
filled my stomach and I looked away. It was almost painful to
behold her, but I didn’t know why.

My head turned quickly back to her as
if she’d said something, but I couldn’t hear anything. I approached
the bed. I could see her lips moving, but I couldn’t make out what
she was saying.

She held out her hand and I hesitantly
stepped forward to take it. My hand wasn’t gloved and my arm wasn’t
wrapped. I could see that it was a man’s arm, muscular and
hairy.

The girl nodded encouragingly and then
she smiled and closed her eyes, almost as if she was waiting. That
feeling of dread swelled inside me, but with it came a sense of
purpose that I hadn’t felt before either, as if what was happening
had to be done, a dreaded inevitability.

I reached my hand out toward her and
slowly squeezed my fingers into a tight fist. A tear slipped from
between the girl’s dark lashes and slid down her pale cheek to
moisten the pillow. Her mouth opened in a silent gasp and I saw her
tense. A violent tremor racked her body and her eyes flew open. She
looked up at me, the blue orbs filled with sheer terror. And then
slowly, like water draining from a sink basin, the life faded from
her eyes and she went perfectly still.

The intense pleasure that normally
accompanied the extinguishing of a life was curiously absent this
time. I felt a deep, aching sorrow.

I didn’t move for a long time, just
stood by the bed and stared down into the beautiful, frozen face of
the girl. I waited to reach for the finger, as I’d done in all the
other dreams, but I never did. Instead, after several minutes of
what felt like mourning, I raised my hand and sliced the palm with
the curved knife I’d become so familiar with.

I fisted my fingers and squeezed. Blood
dripped onto the white sheets, but I felt no pain. Opening my hand,
I dipped the forefinger of my other hand in the blood and began to
finish the ritual by penning bloody letters on the parchment of the
sheets.

Minutes later, I stood back and read
the message. IT’S IN YOUR BLOOD.

When I read the letters, the heart in
my own body felt like it dropped into my stomach. For one instant,
I was aware of my body outside the dream and it was overcome with a
terrible sense of foreboding. If MH is me, then what’s in my
blood?

The flicker signaling the end of my
“dream” came and went, but, unlike previous times, I wasn’t able to
wake up. I felt as if someone was holding me in a dark room in the
middle of nowhere. There was no sight, no sound, no evidence of
life or activity. There was just a marked nothingness that seemed
almost purposeful, like I was being kept from waking for a
reason.

At first I struggled against it, but I
tired quickly. It was like trying to fight the wind, impossible and
futile. When my exhausted mind could fight no more, I fell into
some kind of deeply meditative state. It was neither restful nor
taxing. It simply was.

I could tell when wakefulness was
drawing near. It was like being deep under water and swimming
toward the surface. I could see the hazy lightness of the sun as it
shone down into the depths, but it looked so far away. I swam
furiously toward it, but my feet felt as if they were anchored to
the ocean floor by heavy weights. When I was finally able to open
my eyes, I was confused and disoriented at first, but my mind
cleared quickly and I sat up to look around.

I had no idea how much time had
elapsed. It could’ve been minutes, hours or days for all I knew. I
imagined that had to be how Rip Van Winkle felt when he’d
awakened.

Light was pouring out from between the
slats of my closed blinds and I could hear birds chirping. I turned
to look at the clock and it read 11:42. I’d been asleep for nearly
twelve hours and yet, in a way, I felt as though I’d just gone to
bed and had that dream.

Pushing my body into motion, I crawled
to the end of the bed and reached for my phone where it lay on my
dresser. I dialed Grayson and sat back and listened as it
rang.

“
Grayson.”

“
Grayson, it’s me. I had
another dream last night.”

“
Last night? What
time?”

“
It was after midnight, but
I’m not sure exactly what time.”

“
And you’re just now
calling?” I could hear the pique in his voice, but I bit my tongue
rather than responding in kind.

“
I was just now able to get
up. Literally.”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
I couldn’t wake up. It was
like I was trapped in- I don’t know where. What’s even weirder than
that, though, is that I think he did it on purpose.”

“
Who did what?”

“
The killer. I think he kept
me in some sort of trance or something so I couldn’t wake
up.”

“
How is that even possible?”
He sounded more frustrated than doubtful.

“
How should I know? How
is
any
of this
possible?”

“
But why would he do that?
He’s never done it before.”

“
It’s just a feeling I got.
This time, this…killing was different. I think he might’ve actually
cared for this girl.”

“
What makes you say
that?”

“
The way he treated her, the
way he killed her, it was just different, almost reverential. And I
think he wanted time with her after.”

“
After what?”

“
After he killed
her.”

“
For what?”

“
I don’t know. Maybe he
wanted to do something else before you guys got there. I don’t
know. I couldn’t see them anymore.”

“
Hmm,” he said, but it was a
low, worried sound.

“
What was that
for?”

“
I’m not sure,” he said. It
sounded like he was chewing on his lip as he thought.

“
Do you think that might be
bad?”

“
It makes me wonder if he
was buying time to pack up and leave,” Grayson said
gravely.

I gasped. I hadn’t even thought of
that.

“
Do you have any idea where
the body might be?”

“
I saw a notepad on the desk
that said Marriott, but I guess he could’ve planted it there for me
to see. To mislead us.”

“
He’s never bothered to do
that before. Why would he start now?”

“
Like you said, maybe he’s
giving himself time to escape.”

Grayson sighed. “Well, at least it’s a
place to start.”

“
Grayson?”

“
Yeah.”

“
This one, she’s
different.”

“
Tell me all about
her.”

I described in great detail everything
I’d seen, as well as all the other more subtle nuances of the dream
with the exception of the words. For reasons unknown, I wasn’t
ready to talk about them just yet.

When I was finished, Grayson sighed
again. The way he kept doing that gave me a bad feeling.

“
What are you
thinking?”

“
That this one’s
significant. I just don’t know how. He’s always been so careful. I
mean, he’s given us nothing so far. We have absolutely no useful
evidence whatsoever, not the slightest trace of anything. And if he
leaves now…”

“
I know.” I finished his
sentence in my head.
We’ll never find
him.

Another thought drifted through my
mind, one that caused my stomach to twist into a tight knot of
tension.

“
There’s one more thing,” I
began, taking a deep breath. I hadn’t wanted to consider the
implications of the words the killer had left; without even
thinking about them, I knew that they couldn’t possibly mean
anything good. And I hadn’t really wanted to share them with
Grayson because it might mean there was something awfully wrong
with me, more than we both already suspected. But if there was a
chance that what I had to say might give Grayson the upper hand,
might lead to Grayson catching him, I had to tell him. No
consequence was too great a risk when the stakes were so
high.

I’d paused too long. “What is it,
Mercy?” I heard apprehension in his voice. He knew this wasn’t
going to be good.

“
This time, he cut his own
hand for the blood to write the words.”

“
Are you sure?” Grayson’s
excitement at that good news practically oozed through the
phone.

“
I’m sure.”

“
What words did he write
this time?” He asked in an offhand way that said he thought the
most important thing was the fact that they had a sample of the
killer. I doubted he cared much what he had to say. Until I told
him.

“’
It’s in your
blood’.”

Our cellular connection
buzzed in the strained silence. With every second that went by, my
heart sank a little bit more. I knew that there was a limit to how
much Grayson could take, how much bad news
about me
he was willing to put up
with, to overlook or accept. Our relationship was new and fragile
and this could be the very thing that breaks it, the thing that
exceeds the limit.

“
And what do you suppose
that means?” he finally asked in a cool, steady voice.

“
I don’t know, but it can’t
possibly be good,” I said, my voice quivering, my heart
aching.

Had Grayson rejected me from the very
beginning, it would’ve hurt. But that would’ve hurt in a different
way, a wounded-pride kind of way. I could’ve recovered fairly
easily from that. But if he rejected me now, after my feelings for
him had grown so intense, it would be nothing less than
devastating.

It was pure torture to wait for him to
speak, but I did. Though none of this was my fault, he didn’t
deserve any of this either and if I gave him enough time, I felt
sure he’d come to that conclusion on his own.

The strained silence was shredding my
nerves, so I broke it. “So what happened with Dr.
Phillips?”

“
When we searched her house,
we didn’t find a wig, but we found some of the same synthetic hair
on a jacket in her closet. And we found the gloves. They were an
exact match to the material found under the girl’s fingernails. The
scratches were visible, too.”

His voice was carefully
devoid of even the smallest hint of emotion or inflection. He
sounded like the stranger on television last night, the one I’d
been so happy to know,
really
know.

I reminded myself that he’d been a
stranger once and I could survive it if he was a stranger
again.

“
Did she confess? Do you
know why she did it?”

“
She hasn’t confessed.
Hasn’t even admitted to a relationship with Bauer, in fact, but we
found some e-mails that she exchanged with her. We’re missing
something, though. I think maybe someone else was complicit, I just
don’t know who yet. Or why. We’ll get the rest of the facts
eventually. She’ll break or something else will turn up. Happens
all the time.”

He’d patiently and very clinically
answered my questions, just as he would anyone else I suspect.
There was no trace of a personal connection, no trace of the bond
we’d shared so briefly.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I
wondered if maybe I was just being too sensitive, imagining
coolness where there was none, making trouble where there was none.
But my exhausted and emotionally raw mind and heart couldn’t see
past the worse-case scenario. I was expecting Grayson to reject me,
therefore he was. I was convinced of it.

I willed myself not to cry. At least if
my heart was shattered into a thousand tiny pieces I could salvage
my pride so I said in an equally unemotional voice, “Well,
congratulations on closing the case.” To that he said nothing, so I
cleared my throat and let him off the hook. “I guess I’ll let you
go then. If there’s anything else I can do to help just let me
know. Goodbye, Grayson.” Without waiting for a response, I hung
up.

Flipping the phone shut, I
told myself that I
would not
lay down on the bed and cry myself back to sleep,
back to oblivion. I was going to get in the shower and scrub away
the dream, the fear, the uncertainty and the man, as well as the
last month of my life.