Shadow of Time - Book 1: (Paranormal Romance) (14 page)

“I see you had dinner by yourself?” he asked with a tilt of his head
toward the pizza leftovers on her plate.

“You
haven’t eaten yet?” Hannah said in surprise. “I thought you were still in Naabi’aani, having dinner with Josh.”

Ben shook his head. “No, Josh had to leave for Tuba City in the afternoon to get some registration forms for
college, and I’d promised him to drop by Yazzie’s in Wahweap to arrange for a permit. You know, to hike on the rez. He can get us a discount. Josh wanted to have some sort of official consent from the tourist board, because he’s taking both me and Nick for three days. We don’t want to steal jobs from the official guides and not pay anyone anything.”

“Well, you want me to make you a pizza?”

“That’d be awesome. I want to do some more cramming tonight, so I could use some fuel.” He tilted his head at the pile of textbooks on the table.

“Wow. Who are you and what have you done with my brother?” Hannah chuckled.

Ben smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, Josh kind of inspired me. He is so dead serious about college, you know. We talked a lot about the education system in Navajo Nation. Josh wants to set up some sort of program to stimulate young people to get a proper education and be more prepared for the world out there. So they won’t touch drugs, join a gang, or be hit by continuous unemployment. He says the country needs more schools. His latest idea is to found a college in Kayenta with some other people when he’s older.”

“Wow.
He sure is passionate about this whole thing.”

“Yeah, that seems like the right word for it.”
Ben dumped his shoulder bag on the floor and rummaged through it. “Oh, before I forget – Josh gave me this. He said it’s for you.”

Hannah smiled in surprise when her brother handed her a brown paper bag. “Really? What is it?”

“He said there’s things in it to make a dreamcatcher. He’s going to help you make one after we come back from the rez.”

Hannah blushed. “Cool. Thank him
for me when you see him tomorrow, okay?”

She curiously opened the bag. Inside, she found a ring of intertwined twigs, a brown leather cord, a reel of strong, thin yarn, feathers, silver
thread and red beads. The whole collection already looked pretty now. Josh would undoubtedly turn this into an awesome dreamcatcher.

After changing into her pajamas and crawling into bed, Hannah indecisively eyed the strip of sleeping pills. That
road would lead to another throbbing headache in the morning, for sure. Maybe she should give the night a try without medication.

After all, h
ow bad could it possibly be?

Pretty bad, it turned out.

That morning, she woke up screaming, sitting bolt upright in bed. Bewildered, Hannah stared up into Ben’s anxious face. Her brother was sitting on the edge of the bed, his hands around her shoulders.

“What’s the matter?” Her voice cra
cked in her throat. Her mouth was so dry she started to cough. Ben handed her the glass of water on her bedside table – the water she hadn’t used last night to take her pill. She gulped it down eagerly.

“You were dreaming
,” he replied, wiping the sweat off her brow with one hand. Only now, Hannah felt how clammy her pajamas were, sticking to her back.

“Why
are you here?” she asked, confused.

“You were screaming like crazy.” Ben shook his head in disbelief. “I swear, it sounded like someone was murdering you. I half expected to find
somebody in the room with you.”

“Was I screaming for help?” Hannah whispered, throwing the blankets off. She was still feeling way too hot.

“No, you kept yelling ‘Go away!’ and you were crying.” He rubbed his face and sighed, his gaze drifting to the pills on her bedside table. “Did you use those?”

“Not last evening
.”

Ben fell silent
. “I’m really worried about you,” he said at last, pulling Hannah into an embrace. “I heard you screaming a few nights ago, too, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it was now. It all started after you were stranded at the lakeside.”

“I’
m worried too,” she said timidly. “It’s like I’m losing my mind. I mean, really, what is the big deal? Some drunk lowlives threaten me and I chase them away with a gun that’s not even loaded. Why should I still freak out about that?”

Ben sighed. “I wish you could just wake yourself up from a nightmare. I usually do that when I have a really nasty dream.”

“Wake yourself
up? How?”

He laughed. “Well, you can do it on one condition – you have to be aware you might be dreaming. If you want to check if that’s the case, you just watch your own hands in the dream.”

Hannah frowned. “Why?”

“Because yo
u can never count the fingers of your own hand in a dream. The minute you try and you fail, you wake up.”

“Wow.” She shook her head. “Int
eresting. Unfortunately, I’m
never
aware I might be dreaming. I always think it’s real.”

He stroked her head. “And you don’t remember what you dreamed about
now?”

“Nope. Not a clue,” she blew out.

Ben got up. “Look, I have to go. Nick’s waiting for me. But I’ll talk to you later. We’ll be back here before going to the rez to meet up with Josh.”

“Thanks, Ben,” Hannah said quietly. “For everything.”

“Emily is coming over, right? Just talk to her about it. Take those stupid sleeping pills, even if you don’t like them. Drop by the police station – and once Josh makes you a dreamcatcher, you hang that next to your bed, okay?”

Hannah nodded, waving
feebly at Ben as he walked out the door. God, her entire body was covered in sweat.
She had to get out of bed and take a shower. That’d make her feel better.

When the hot jet of water hit her sticky back and she closed her eyes, Hannah suddenly remembered her nightmare.

She’d been standing on a hilltop in a storm. It had been near that familiar precipice, looking out over a canyon that looked a lot like Canyon de Chelly on the reservation. A long time ago, she’d visited the place with Ben and her mother, but she still knew what it looked like. In the dream, dark clouds had drifted across the sky, and those three sinister shadows had been right in front of her. They’d looked so terrifying that just the memory of seeing them made her gasp for breath again. Pure evil radiated from their faces.

In her nightmare, the three
creatures had driven her back toward the edge of the precipice, their red eyes aglow and teeth bared. Her arms had crawled with insects, all of a sudden. She could feel them walking on her skin, under her hair, her feet.

That’s where the dream had ended, because that’s when Ben had woken her up. Hannah
sucked in a breath and opened her eyes again. She sagged down to the floor of the shower cabin, puting her arms around her knees. Despite the hot water beating down on her, she was shivering.

This time,
she wouldn’t hold back when she talked to Emily. She’d describe every minute detail of her dreams and visions, and tell Em what fears were plaguing her during the day, constantly lingering at the edges of her mind. And she’d tell her friend about the strange things that had been happening.

Someone had really stolen her necklace and put it outside on the lawn. She’d bumped into three
creepy auraless lumberjacks in the supermarket. Three coyotes had shown up at the cabin to ominously stare at her. And so help her, something had definitely been off about the three people waiting for her in the Safeway parking lot. She just
knew
.

Quickly, Hannah
stepped out of the shower cabin and got dressed in a bikini top and a short skirt. Time to get out of here and leave the horrible memories of her nightmare behind for a while. Sitting on a sunny beach would cheer her up.

In the kitchen, she poured the la
st bit of coffee Ben had left in the pot. A cup of yogurt made for a nice, light breakfast. Hannah absently ate her yogurt and stared out the window. She should bring lots of sun cream, bottled water, her iPod, a book, and –

Her thoughts came to a screeching halt
as she spotted a familiar motorcycle coming up the road to their house. Her heart rate went up a few notches.

It was Josh. What was
he
doing here? He wasn’t even supposed to show up here today!

She swallowed hard, putting
away her coffee cup and walking toward the front door before changing her mind and charging back to the kitchen table.

Maybe he wouldn’t even come in. Maybe he would leave again when he saw Ben’s car wasn’t here. Maybe she should have put on
some more clothes. A bikini-top-short-skirt combo was definitely not in her top ten list of suitable outfits to conduct awkward conversations in. She’d been nervous about seeing Josh again for days, and this so did
not
help.

At that moment
, the door swung open.

“Hey,” Josh said softly, stepping inside.

“Hi,” she replied just as softly. She cleared her throat, edging toward the wall to get to the trash can and throw away the empty cup of yogurt she was still holding.

“Ben’s not here,” she went on, looking back at Josh. A flush raced up her cheeks
when she saw his gaze briefly linger on her breasts before settling on her face again.

“Yeah. I, uh, saw that,” he stammered. “His car’s gone.”

Hannah didn’t miss the hint of insecurity in his voice, and suddenly it dawned on her. Josh was nervous about this conversation, too. Maybe not as nervous as she was – she didn’t think it was humanly possible – but still.

“Yeah,” she managed to croak out. “He went to Page
. To pick up Nick.”

Josh nodded,
taking a deep breath as he stepped toward her. “Hannah. I want to say I’m sorry.”

In the silence stretching between them,
she felt a stone grow in the pit of her stomach. “Sorry for what?” she finally said, her voice tight.

Josh ran a hand through his hair an
d let out a nervous laugh. “For being so weird around you. I can see it makes you nervous. But I can’t help it.” He looked down to the tip of his feet. “I just wish I could be normal around you. You know, like we used to be.”

Her heart beat
wildly in her chest. So Josh thought she wanted things to go back to normal. Well, who could blame him? She’d frozen or freaked out whenever he’d tried to turn this into something more than it had been before.

Hannah bit her lip
. “I don’t know how to hang out with you anymore either. And sometimes, I can feel you’re so distant, you know, like you’re hiding yourself?”

Oh, d
amn her babbling. She had to get to the point.

“
It’s just difficult to be around you for me, because I like you too much,” she mumbled. There, she’d said it.

Josh
looked up with wide eyes, taking another step toward her. And then, he gently caressed her cheek with soft fingers, touching the skin of her waist with his other hand, slowly running it up to her ribs. A shiver ran through her. As his brown eyes fastened on her, she was sure her heart had never beaten faster than this.

“
Really?” he whispered, so full of longing it almost brought tears to her eyes. Josh bridged the small distance between them, pressing his body against hers.

Her heart skipped a beat. Then his lips kissed her mouth, soft and warm. She closed her eyes and pushed herself up
toward him to meet his mouth and kiss him back. Hannah heard him gasp for breath, pressing his mouth to hers more urgently this time. She circled his waist with her arms and slid up one hand under his shirt to caress the warm skin of his back. He pressed her up against the wall, letting one hand slide up her body and briefly cup her breast before landing in her neck. She moaned almost imperceptibly. Josh caressed the sensitive spot behind her ear, running his fingers through her hair.

This was even better than she’d imagined
. She’d never been kissed so cautiously, tenderly, tortuously slowly and sexily at the same time. This should never stop. Hannah softly pulled Josh even closer and kept welcoming his kisses. Somehow, this felt like they were lovers who’d been separated for years, trying to catch up on what they’d missed in mere moments. She kissed him and caressed him everywhere, keeping her eyes closed to let the moment last forever. Somehow, it felt like their bubble would burst once she looked at him again.