In Your Dreams (17 page)

         
No answer. He was gone.

         
Had she dreamed him? Dreamed the whole thing? The whole amazing experience of
what would forever live in her fantasies as the best sex of her life?

         
Every touch, every sensation, every movement had brought her to the brink and
back. Again and again and again. No living man had ever made her so totally
lose herself.

         
Hell, with Carlo, she spent most of their foreplay mentally writing a grocery
list. What had happened with Sean was...mind-blowing.

         
And impossible.

She
had to remind herself. Sex with Sean was impossible. Sean was a ghost. He
wasn’t a real person. If he were real, he never would’ve been able to climb
inside this dome with her. There was barely enough room to breathe in here. And
she had a metal box screwed into her head, for God’s sake, along with the
space-age colander. Yet, both items had completely disappeared during the
sexual fantasy she’d shared with Sean. She knew because he’d run his hands
through her hair, kissed her forehead, her eyelids, and licked that
oh-so-sensitive place behind her earlobe: all the flesh he could never access
if the box and helmet had remained in place.

Plus,
she was hooked up to enough audiovisual equipment to make a Kardashian leap up
and volunteer for the exposure. So if she and some strange guy started fooling
around during the procedure, the doctors would’ve seen them, would’ve stopped
it long before they reached their orgasmic conclusion.

The
heat of a volcanic blush infused her, swamping her with sweat. No way this
gamma knife thingy would have continued running while four people—four trained
medical professionals—watched her have sex with a dead guy. Right?

God,
she could just imagine
that
conversation.
Umm...Ms. Fichetti? Could
you please put your clothes back on and tell that naked, chiseled man to climb
off you so we can administer your radiation?

Her
clothes! She plucked at the thin sleeve of the surgical gown. Yup. Still
intact. And the box’s screws bored into her forehead like...well, like tight
screws, dammit.

So
there you have it, folks
.
Just a dream. She sighed. Too bad. A guy like that, sex like that, was worth
living for. No matter what pain she’d suffer later.

One
upshot came out of all this, though. She’d never again complain about the lack
of originality in the dreams Sean sent her. Because this one topped them all.
Forget swimming with dolphins. She’d just swum with the stars.

“How
we doing, Isabelle?” Dr. Regalbuto’s voice came through the headphones attached
to her helmet for communication between her and the medical staff while she was
inside the drum. “You okay?”

“Oh,
yeah,” she purred. “I’m great.” If not for the tightness of her current
quarters and the four eyewitnesses in the other room, she would have stretched
like a Persian cat. For now, she settled for a secret smile.

“Good,”
the doctor said, completely unfazed, which told her she had, indeed, imagined
the whole sex thing.

 Thank
God. And yet, at the same time, damn! How she wished what she’d experienced
with Sean had been real.

“It’s
just gonna be another few minutes, and then we’ll be done,” he said. “So hang
tight.”

“Okay.”
Hang tight. Please. She was too loose, too languid, too liquid to be tight.
She’d achieved a state of bliss between boneless and nirvana, if only for a
little while.
Thank you, Sean
. Closing her eyes again, she lay patient
and still, unafraid for the first time since she woke up this morning.

Time
passed, and before too long, she felt the bed beneath her shift and begin its
slide to the outside world again.

“That
wasn’t so bad, was it?” Dr. Regalbuto’s voice echoed in her ears.

No
comment. What could she say? That the whole thing had been one long, drawn-out
terror-fest until her guardian angel showed up and made love to her? Oh, sure.
That’d go over big time. They’d conclude her tumor had already damaged her
sanity, then whisk her straight from the hospital to some loony bin where
another version of Dr. Feelbeige would be only too happy to talk about her
mother issues. Or her father issues. Or why she preferred poodles over Poms.
Whatever hot button psychological disorder the social media had latched onto
this week.

“Okay,
Isabelle,” the doctor announced. “Just hang on a sec while we double-check a
few things on our end. Relax. The hard part’s over. In a couple of minutes,
we’ll send George in to remove the headgear. We’ll have you comfortable in a
room upstairs in no time.”

Yeah,
right. Comfortable. Lucky for them, Sean had left her drained or she’d have a
few things to say about their idea of comfort. She closed her eyes and sighed.
Whatever. The bed beneath her became a cloud of feathers, and she floated into
oblivion.

When
she opened her eyes again, the radiology suite had transformed into a private
hospital room. A vivid burst of colorful flowers in a squat glass vase sat on
the counter: wide-awake orange lilies, hot pink carnations, mixed with dark
lacy ferns. Mint green curtains filtered sunlight through the lone window in
the background, and an anxious-faced Justin fretted in an olive-drab pleather
chair in the foreground.

“Hey,
binky,” she murmured, drawing his worried gaze toward her. She cast a
meaningful glance around the room. “This place makes me homesick for my Barbie
bedroom at your house.” When she summed up her riposte with a wan smile, he
didn’t follow suit, and she sobered. “What’s up? What’d I miss?”

Scooting
to the edge of his chair, he grabbed her hand and squeezed. “Belle. Thank God.
You had me so worried.”

She
struggled to sit up and focus. “I did? Why? What’s wrong now? What’d they
find?”

“Nothing.”
At her sharp look, he added, “I mean, nothing new. Dr. Regalbuto said no one’s
ever fallen asleep immediately after the procedure before. You didn’t even wake
up when they removed that goofy frame from your head.”

The
frame. Her hands flew up to check her forehead, touched skin and scalp. No metal.
But her sensitive fingertips found the depressions above her eyebrows where the
screws had kept the frame in place. “It’s off?”

“It’s
off. You slept through the whole unscrewing.”

“Lucky
me.”

“Let’s
hope so.” His cheeks reddened.

As
if she hadn’t shared the same thought. If she was truly lucky, the gamma knife
thingy would kill the malignancy and she’d still have decades of living to
experience. If not...well, best not to go there right now.

“Hey,
are you hungry?”

Her
stomach must have heard Justin’s question because a low rumbling erupted in her
belly. She placed her palm flat against her abdomen to muffle the sound. “Now
that you mention it, I could eat.” She hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.
Even then, her nerves wouldn’t allow her more than a one-egg-white omelet with
two skinny strips of white meat turkey.

“While
you were still in la-la land, Tony stopped by with steak sandwiches.” Justin
rose from his chair and pulled a bright red thermal lunch sack from the counter
near the flowers. “He had to go back to the shop, but I figured you’d be ready
for one when you woke up so I kept them wrapped and warm.”

“You
figured right. I’m starving. Then again, great sex always makes me ravenous.”

“Sex?”
He whirled from the counter, a lascivious grin stretching his lips.

Whoops.
She’d said too much. How would she cover up that little
faux pas
? “Just
a really hot dream, I guess.”

“That
explains the glow on your cheeks. I thought it was from the radiation. Aren’t
you a little old for wet dreams, sunshine?”

Her
careless shrug didn’t come off with the aplomb she strived for, and she
giggled. “I guess not. ‘Cuz this particular performance was Academy
Award-worthy.”

“Ooh,
do tell! But not yet. Give me a coupla minutes.” He opened the sack and removed
two dinner plates, two sets of silverware bundled in scarlet and gold tapestry
napkins, two wine glasses, and a pair of miniature sterling salt and pepper
shakers.

“Jeez,
Justin, what’s next? Candelabra? A sommelier? Where’s the tuxedoed piano player
I ordered?”

“Ha
ha.” After arranging the place settings on her tray table, he unwrapped the
sandwiches, laid them with a flourish on the dishes, and rolled the feast
toward her bed. “Just because you’re stuck in this disease factory doesn’t mean
we can’t savor our meal like civilized humans.”

While
she raised the back of her bed to a more upright position, Justin settled on
the mattress next to her thighs. “Okay, now I’m ready,” he announced. “Who’s
the guy? Anyone I know?”

“No.” To hide
her smile, she leaned close to her plate and inhaled the aroma of beef on
toasted garlic bread with melted mozzarella and horseradish. God, she was
starving
!
“Definitely not.”

“Was it Sean?”

She jerked her
head up. “What do you know about Sean?”

“Honey, there
isn’t a pair of ears in a five-mile radius that didn’t hear you screaming his
name. And that was
before
your alleged sexual romp. So...who is he?”

“Forget it.” She
waved him off. “No way in hell you’d ever understand.”

He bit into his
sandwich, chewed, and swallowed. “Try me.”

Yeah, right. Try
him. How? How could she possibly explain what happened with Sean without
sounding delusional?

Well, see,
it’s like this. Sean’s my guardian angel. He killed himself when I was in
pre-school, and now it’s his job to watch over me, to make sure I don’t commit
suicide like he did. So when I called him to stay with me during the gamma
knife thingy, he showed up and distracted me by making mad, passionate love to
me.

Even she didn’t
believe the story. And she’d lived it!

Taking the
coward’s way out, she concentrated all her energy on her food, taking a bite
and allowing the sharp, beefy flavor to pop her taste buds. “Mmm...God, this is
soooo good!”

“I bet Sean said
that, too.” He smirked and waggled his brows.

She shook her
head and took a huge bite to keep any reply from escaping her mouth.

“So he’s a
seeee-cret,” he sing-songed. “Okay. I can wait. Eventually, I’ll find out all
about this Secret Sean.”

Doubtful. But
she let him think what he wanted. His innuendo and vivid imagination would
never come close to the truth.

Xavia’s fingers
dug into Sean’s shoulders. “What the hell are you talking about? Are you sure?”

“No.” He paused,
cocked his head, revisited whatever the hell had transpired between him and Isabelle.
Tried to find words to describe the machine, the moment he gained a solid form,
and the potent pull toward a very alluring Isabelle. But he came up empty. “I
don’t know. I mean, it’s been a while, you know? And I certainly haven’t had
sex since I got here.”

“Hold up.” She
frowned. “You didn’t say you had sex. You said you made love.”

“Same thing.”

Her harsh
laughter scorched the air. “For you, maybe. For
most
men, I’d imagine.
But women don’t see it that way, Martino. There’s a whole Grand Canyon-sized
difference between the two in our minds. Sex is just…sex. Making love, though,
that’s the World Series, the Super Bowl, and Mardi Gras all rolled into one.
So, which was it?”

“I don’t know.
I’m still working on the how, forget about the what.”

She quirked her
lips. “Yeah, I’d like to know more about the how, myself. I didn’t even know
such a thing was possible.”

“I’m not a
hundred percent sure it is. I just don’t know how else to describe what
happened.”

“Try harder.”
She pushed him onto one of the strange, wooden crates that lined the area. Once
she had him in a seated position, she towered over him, arms folded across her
chest, in full boss-lady attitude. “Let’s take this one step at a time.”

He shot up,
nearly head-butting her chin. “Can’t. I want to get back to Isabelle.”

“Wow, you really
have a soft spot for your wounded bird, don’t you?” Shaking her head, Xavia
took two steps back—out of range. “Quite a hero complex you got there, Officer
Martino.”

“Hardly.” He was
far from anyone’s hero. “Don’t be an idiot. She’s my priority, remember? Your
words. I wasn’t to worry about anyone except Isabelle. Not you, not the
Elders.”

“I meant when it
came to keeping her alive. You’re the one who’s gone overboard with this whole
‘I think Isabelle and I just made love’ routine.” She paced the orb ball grid
from their end to the wall. “You know what I think?” She turned around and
strode toward him again, each step intense, a predatory gleam in her eyes. “I
think you’ve fallen in love with your offender.”

Oh, hell, no.
She was not about to hold him up to ridicule. Just because something weird
happened between him and Isabelle didn’t mean he’d gone gaga over his first
offender. He couldn’t allow anyone to get the idea that he was unfit for
probation service. If Verity thought he was too soft for this job, who knew
where they’d send him next? The Chasm?

He shuddered.
For all his false bravado around Xavia, the images of that land of eternal
damnation still lingered just beyond the fringes of his memory. No one could
experience the Chasm and not relive the emptiness, the desolation, the
bleakness that ate a soul, and the howls of the damned piercing the fetid air.
He had no intention of ever returning.

“I got sucked
in!” he exclaimed. “I don’t know exactly what happened. That damn machine they
had her in...it whipped me into something...almost human. Next thing I knew, I
was kissing her, she was kissing back, we were both naked, and...” Her arched
brow registered disbelief, and he lowered his voice to a whisper. “I know it
sounds incredible, but I’m telling you, I have no idea what happened. Something
just...happened.”

“You’re still
not answering my question, though. Was it sex or lovemaking?”

“I don’t
friggin’ know, okay? Let it go, goddammit. Let the whole damn thing go.”
Tunneling fingers through his hair, he strode to the opposite wall from her.
“Christ, what a fuck-up. There’s no way the Elders are going to ignore this.
Whatever test they were administering, I think I just failed. Big time.”

The clipboards,
ignored and neglected on top of a pile of crates, burst to life.

With a snort of
derision, she grabbed the boards and placed a palm on her screen to stop the
noise. “Looks like we’re about to find out how badly you fucked up.”

He covered the
distance between them with long strides then pulled his board from her grasp.
“I’m not going to let them take you down with me. You didn’t do anything
wrong.”

Chuckling, she
shook her head. “Wrong again, Martino. I not only let you go, I gave you the
extra power to reach Isabelle when the Elders put up the barriers. That makes
me your willing accomplice.”

Shit. He’d
forgotten about that detail.

“I don’t regret
it, Sean,” she proclaimed.

He stared at her,
at the steely glint in her ebony eyes and her proud, erect carriage. “Christ, I
can’t figure out if you’re that brave, that crazy, or that plain stupid.”

“All three. And
one more: I’m friggin’ pissed, too. You and me and Isabelle—the Elders seem to
be manipulating all three of us for giggles. And I don’t play headgames. But if
someone screws with me, I don’t back down, either. If they think they can play
me, they’re about to find out Xavia Donovan is nobody’s toy.”

“Okay, then,” he
replied. “Let’s go kick some Elder ass.”

“Damn straight.”

One last grin in
her direction, and he focused his energies on transporting from their orb ball
court to the exterior of the court of the Elder Council, the auditorium. He
barely landed in front of the doors when a sixth sense danced icy fingers over
his nape. His senses went into alert, and he scanned the mob for danger. A
familiar figure strode by again, only to blend into the crowd. The kid.

Sean stretched
upright to watch, hoping to catch his eye. All he needed was a nod, an
acknowledgement from the kid, and he’d use the opportunity to actually talk to
him. Find out why he was here.

Beside him,
Xavia rose on tiptoes. “What? What are we looking at?”

“Just someone I
think I knew on Earth,” Sean murmured.

“Who?”

With a frown, he
pointed toward the middle of the throng of newcomers. “There’s a kid over
there. Black t-shirt, closely shaved head, gold stud in one ear. Every time I
show up here, he’s here, too. I think it means something.” He narrowed his
eyes, scanned the multitudes, but couldn’t find the exact combination he’d just
described. “Shit. He’s disappeared again.”

Xavia turned in
that direction and studied the crowd. “Where?”

“Forget it.”

“No, wait. I
think I see...” On a sharp gasp, she swayed. Eyes wide, she stumbled against
him. “Noah!”

~~~~

         
“Noah!” she called again, waving her arms. “Noah, it’s me!”
      Although her shouting drew plenty of attention
from onlookers and staff alike, her son never turned in her direction. “Noah!
Over here!”

“Xavia.” Sherman
suddenly stood in front of her, his hands on her forearms, preventing her from
signaling Noah or letting him see her frantic motions over the heads of the
crowd. “Stop. He doesn’t know you anymore.”

She shook off
his hold, and glared down at the Elders’ chief minion, questions piercing her
head with the ferocity of wasp stings. “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t he know
me? I’m his mother. Of course he knows me.”

Beside her, Sean
sucked in a sharp breath. “Son of a...”

Shifting her
gaze to him, she demanded, “What’s with
you
now?”

What the hell
had she missed? She switched her focus from Sean to Sherman and back again. Why
wouldn’t either of them look her in the eye? What was going on?

Gaze pinned to
his feet, Sean murmured, “Not now, Xavia. I’ll tell you later.”

“Tell me what?”

“Later,” he
repeated through his teeth.

Okay, fine. He
wanted to be a jackass; that was his prerogative. Once again, she sought out
Noah among the throng of newcomers, but he’d somehow slipped away.
Disappointment, shaken with her swirling doubts, brewed a noxious cocktail in
her belly, and she swerved back to Sherman, prepared to spew venom all over the
wizened gnome. “Where did he go? Why didn’t anyone tell me he was here?”

Sherman’s
expression softened, making his elfin face pathetic and mushy. “First of all,
you know exactly why you weren’t told.”

Her hands curled
into fists at her sides. Right. The same excuse they always gave her. She’d
love to punch every one of these bastards. They were still holding her suicide
against her. And against Noah—the one innocent in this mess.

“Secondly,” he
continued, “he doesn’t know you because he’s lived three other lifetimes while
you’ve been here. He isn’t Noah anymore. He hasn’t been Noah in close to half a
century now. He doesn’t remember his life as your son. You could stand right in
front of him, and while he might feel a pull toward you, he wouldn’t know why,
and he’d easily dismiss the feeling as just some kind of Afterlife empathy.”

The wasps inside
her grew angrier, buzzing and stinging with the impact of a thousand red-hot
needles. Noah was lost to her forever. They’d told her so. Time after time,
Uriah had pounded into her the fact that she would never get the chance to see
her son again. But now, she did see him. He just didn’t see her. And that was
the cruelest blow of all. “Why is he here, Sherman? Why isn’t he on Earth where
he belongs?”

Sherman’s
lentil-brown face took on a sickly green hue, mottled with spots of white.
“Because he works here now.”

Oh, God, no. As
far as she knew, the only employees in the Afterlife were—she swallowed the
lump of fear in her throat—
suicides
. While chills rattled through her,
she grabbed Sherman by his gold-braided lapels and shook him ‘til he rattled in
direct rhythm.

“That’s a
goddamn lie,” she exclaimed. “What’s he really doing here? Tell me the truth,
damn you!”

“H-he’s a
b-bounty h-hunter, Xavia,” the little man replied while his head snapped back
and forth with the force of her anger.

“Xavia.” A
soft-spoken Sean stepped between them and pried her hands away from Sherman’s
wobbly neck. “Stop. We’ll talk later. I promise. We’ll get you some answers,
okay? Come on. Calm down. Please.”

She took a
half-step back to keep from wrapping her hands around Sherman’s throat. With
the help of several deep breaths, she calmed enough to ask one more series of
questions. “Tell me, Sherman. What are the Elders up to now? Why let me see my
son here, knowing he’s now as doomed as I am, with me unable to help him? He
doesn’t even know who I am. Is this some kind of special torment reserved for
me because of what happened with Sean and Isabelle? My own personal penance to
be performed through eternity?”

Sherman sighed
and shook his head. “I honestly don’t know.”

“I think...” Sean
interjected, “I know.” He held up a hand before she could say a word. “Please.
Don’t ask me for details now. I promise I’ll tell you.” He jerked his head at
the masses of souls encircling them from the queue. “But not here. Not right
now.”

“The Elders are
waiting for you both,” Sherman added. “Again.”

“Yeah, well, we
mustn’t keep the Elders
waiting
.”

The acid in
Sean’s tone could burn the plaster off the walls, but Xavia was immune. Numb.
Scar tissue. Nothing mattered but Noah and how he’d wound up here. Her poor
son. Her poor, beautiful boy who’d never stood a chance.

“Come on,
Xavia.”

Overwrought, she
followed Sean, blinded by the storm of tears threatening to rain down her
cheeks. Her son was now an employee. Which meant, in his last incarnation, he’d
somehow ended his own life. He’d become an Afterlife bounty hunter. Sean’s old
job. How long had Noah been here? Had he replaced Sean? What had happened to
him? Could she have changed his fate if she’d had one opportunity to talk to
him, to reach out to him? How long would he remain here?

So many damn
questions. No answers.

Well, she could
get at least one answer.

As they strode
down the carpeted aisle toward the jury of twelve Elders, she nudged Sean with
an elbow. “How do you know my son?”

“Later,” he said
through gritted teeth.

“No, Sean,” the
red-haired woman who was his Elder Counselor proclaimed from the table on the
dais. “Tell her now.”

The chill inside
Xavia turned glacial. She stopped in the middle of the aisle and grabbed Sean’s
hand to pull him to a halt next to her. “Tell me what?”

 Instead of
facing her, he looked up at the dais, at the twelve ageless sages with their
emotionless, timeless countenances. “I gotta hand it to you guys,” he addressed
them. “This was evil genius. And I never saw it coming. I should have. Luc
warned me. Samantha warned me. Hell, my own logic told me you were up to
something truly heinous. But I never even considered...” He snorted a derisive
chuckle. “How do you get to become an Elder Counselor anyway? I’m guessing your
work résumé must have some dandy references. Like being the chief advisor to
some despot like Hitler. Or Rasputin. Or Pol Pot.”