Breaking Normal (Dream Weaver #3) (14 page)

             
Nick had Ivy unbound, semiconscious and leaning heavily against him. “I feel like a house elf,” I whispered thinking of ‘the boy who lived’ and his faithful elf that saved the day.
Let’s hope this doesn’t end as badly.
Ivy’s eyes fluttered, too mentally exhausted to hold them open.

             
“Hey, Sweets.” A tiny, weary smile curled her lips.

             
“Hey, Baby girl. Let’s get you home.”

             
“’kay.” The lilt of enthusiasm in her voice, and her unwavering faith in me renewed my strength and lured a smile to my lips.

             
I cast a glance at Sabre. “No Thomas?” He shook his head. “I don’t like this. Something isn’t right.”

             
“I know,” was his only response.

             
“Get there and stay there. We’re right behind you.”

             
I clutched Ivy to me. “Okay, Baby. Close your eyes.” She complied with a soft hum of relief, and I wrapped us in light and air, and phased back to the cottage.

             
What met me there wasn’t completely unexpected. Thomas sat at Jesse’s side on the bed, caressing the hair out of Jesse’s eyes. My stomach dropped to my feet. I sedated Ivy with a thought as I lowered her into the rocking chair and drew my sai.

             
“Get the hell away from him!”

             
“Aw, Miss Sweet. You cut me to the quick,” Thomas smirked.

             
“Get. Away. From him!”

             
“But I’m not finished with him yet.”

             
“I don’t care. Get away!”

             
“As you wish.” The words meant nothing like they did with Nick. His were razor sharp and destructive. As Thomas drew his hand away, Jesse’s body arched and bucked. The Wraith’s smirk grew insidious. A horrified scream curdled from Jesse’s lips, and Thomas chortled and evaporated.

             
I threw myself on the bed, the sai clanging to the floor at my feet. Jesse lay motionless, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, a silent scream still in his mouth. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell, quick. Too quick.

             
“Jesse?! Oh god! Jesse!” Was this what Nick experienced after Thomas messed with my head? When he’d climbed inside and rummaged around, savaging my memories? I clasped the sides of his face and tried to force him to focus on me, but whatever image Thomas engraved on his mind had his sole attention and horror.

             
“Emari! What happened?” Nick flew to my side.

             
“Thomas,” I panted. “He was here. He did something. Something really bad.” Nick placed a tender hand on Jesse’s face. His breaths convulsed against my side and his hand jerked away. “How bad is it? What did he do?” Nick’s eyes roamed to Sabre who leaned over to check on Ivy, and he shook his head. “What?” I balled Nick’s shirt in my fist. “What? Tell me!”

             
“I can’t…I don’t know how to fix this, Em. It’s like—like his mind has been completely scrambled or erased.”

             
“Erased?”

             
Nick’s shoulders slumped and his eyes grew murky with defeat. “I’m sorry honey. I don’t think…I don’t know if we can fix this.”

             
“No.” Denial was fast and unrelenting. “Try.”

             
“Emi, honey…”

             
He reached to touch my cheek but I batted his hand away. “Don’t ‘Emi, honey’ me, Nick. Fix him. Try.” The sorrow that shadowed his eyes snapped something inside me. I slammed my fists into his chest and bolted away from him. Everything my violent hands touched smashed to the floor or against the wall until bits of glass and plastic, metal and paper littered the floor and fluttered through the air.

             
Nick phased and whirled around me. He clutched my arms to my sides and gave me a shake. “Emari! Stop!” I struggled against him. “I said, Stop! It’s time for you to grow up now and accept that your life has changed forever. Stop acting like a spoiled little girl who’s not getting her way and face what you’ve got to face!” Tired and torn, I slumped into him.

             
“I can’t…”

             
“Yes you can. All of us have to grow up sometime.”

             
“No. I can’t…I can’t do this. It costs too much.”

             
Nick’s sigh seemed to come from a tormented place. His arms softened around me. A caress instead of a cage. “I know, Sweets. I’m sorry.”

Chapter 19 Hollow

              Nick and Sabre managed to guide Jesse’s mind into slumber, tutoring me as they did. Exhaustion, physical and emotional, pressed down on me like floodwaters. What strength I had eroded away under the force. I wandered from room to room absorbing the memories from every surface I touched and rooting them deep within my mind. My fingers grazed the lid of the magical titanium spider’s nesting place, and a thrill of energy zinged up my arm. Ari pulsed on my breast. I’d almost forgotten about her. The prick of her metal legs prodded my skin, and I reached up to hold her in my fist and wish on her like the first star at night. Images danced and flashed past my mind’s eye.

             
An ancient man, with a hoary head, and a beard that spills down his chest, shuffles over a cobbled floor in a dim room lit with candles and oil lamps. Ari pulsates in his palm. Her ruby and titanium glows with ethereal light. The old man places the spider on the chest of a young man laying prone in a shadowy corner on a straw-stuffed mattress. Ari throbs with each of his heartbeats. Her radiance dims and the old man picks her up and runs a palsied finger down her back. She shutters and shrinks into her smaller form. He places the spider on the younger one’s forehead, where the surface of her body glows an other-worldly radiance. The old man’s hand, pale and speckled with age, pats his patient’s cheek with obvious fondness and compassion. “All is restored,” he whispers, weariness heavy in his words.

              “That is…was Asa.” Despite the reverent whisper, Sabre’s voice startled me back to reality.

             
“Seriously, Sabre? I can’t have a thought to myself?” I groused.

             
He continued as though he hadn’t heard me. “Asa was my mentor—after William hanged me and left me for dead. He taught and trained me. For all intents, he was my father, as well as my teacher and friend.”

             
My hand drifted to the spider pendant around my neck. “Did you see it? The memory she showed me?”

             
“No, not all of it. I just—your eyes were so distant. I was worried maybe Thomas…” This was as close to an apology as Sabre James got.

             
“I think, with Ari, I can fix Jesse.”

             
“Emari…”

             
“No, Sabre. That man, Asa, he did some ritual sort of thing, using the spider. And then he said, ‘All is restored.’”

             
“That could mean any number of things, Em.”

             
“No. I know what she showed me. Asa meant that he restored the other man’s lost memories. I can do this, Sabre.”

             
“Emari, Asa was losing his mind toward the end. He was nearly seven hundred fifty years old. With that many centuries of memories in his mind, he was beginning to lose track of them. And lose a grip on his sanity.”

             
I couldn’t fathom having to live in this life for seven hundred years. “What happened to him?”

             
Sabre’s eyes grew dark and retrospective, observing the final scene, the final words of the old man’s life. “He gave up the ghost,” he said with a rueful smile. “His memories became so muddled, he simply sat down in the midst of the woods and went to sleep, never to awaken.” Sadness twisted the Weaver’s voice. “When I finally found him, slumped against the trunk of an ancient tree—it was too late. His spirit had gone and only the ghosts of his memories lingered in his dying blood.” His fingers quivered as though reliving the scene. “I took all I could handle. Then, his flesh turned to dust under my fingertips and the wind took him into its arms.” I watched him as he waxed nostalgic, no doubt the memories of his grief as fresh and painful as they’d been that day. “They grew up together—the man and the tree.”

             
I hated to pull Sabre out of his reverie, but I was absolutely positive I’d found a way to mend Jesse’s mind. “Sabre? I really believe Ari showed me how to fix Jesse. I have to try.”

             
Sabre ran a trembling hand down his face like a tired old man. “Yes, I suppose you do. You will need to gather as many of his memories from his family and friends to piece together his life. You’ll have to change the perspective of the memories, as well. So they will be his memories.” Sabre was quiet for several moments, scanning my face and eyes. “I will go to his brother and retrieve those.”

             
I smiled up at him. His chocolate eyes gazed down into mine. “I can do it.”

             
His warm fingers trailed down my cheek. “I know you can, Em. I just…I want to save you the torture it could become for you.”

             
Part of me wanted to stand my ground and retrieve the memories myself, but the sincerity and intensity in Sabre’s gaze quelled my stubbornness. “Thank you, Sabre.” His mouth twitched at one corner in some semblance of a smile, and he vanished before my eyes.

             
“What’s up with him?” Nick’s voice startled me.
Geez!
I’m still wound up like a spring. Probably best if everyone stands back. Bad things happen when a spring is sprung.

             
“Ari showed me a way to fix Jesse.”

             
Nick gave a subtle shake of his head. “Em, I don’t think…”

             
“Stop.” His mouth slammed shut and he peered down at me like he was tolerating a simple mind. “Why do you think I can do things most Caphar can’t?” I retorted.

             
His brows scrunched together in contemplation. “I don’t know.”

             
“It’s Ari. She holds the magic. She enhances my abilities and imparts the magic she’s received from other Caphar over the millennia. She
showed
me how to fix Jesse. Sabre went to retrieve Rico’s memories of Jesse as child. Ivy and I can gather our memories of more recently.”

             
Nick’s face still pinched with uncertainty, but he held his peace. “What do you need me to do?”

             
“Just help me and Ivy piece things together. Teach me how to manipulate the perspective. Is she awake?”

             
“Not last time I checked.”

             
I shouldered past him and strode into the living room. Ivy lay across the couch in a languorous stretch. Joints and tendons snapped and popped. I smiled down at her, so relieved she was all right.

             
“Hey, Sweets,” she mumbled through a yawn.

             
“Hey, Baby.”

             
“How’s Jess?” Her eyes scanned my face. “Em? How’s Jesse?”

             
I scowled. “Not so good, Ives. The Wraith—scrambled his brain. His memories are a jumbled mess or erased altogether.”

             
Ivy’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my god!”

             
I sat by her side and scooped her other hand into mine. “But I think I—we can fix him. And I need your help.”

             
“Anything for Jess.” I knew she’d feel that way.

             
I explained to her what I needed, every memory of Jesse’s life she contained. Nick sat patiently by as I rendered the memories from Ivy’s head, and guided me in the conversion to first person. The memory of Jesse’s affection toward me drifted by. “Wait! I want to change that.”

             
“Em, that’s never a good idea,” Nick argued.

             
“Maybe. But I’m giving Jess his memories back. Why not save him some heartache by changing the memories so he’s just my friend?”

             
Nick released a long, deep breath and nodded. The three of us sat huddled around the dining room table, garnering every minute memory we could find and delicately lacing them all together to create one cohesive series of memories. Sabre drifted in an hour later.

             
“You got ‘em?”

             
Sabre just nodded and diverted his eyes from mine.

             
What?
I queried.

             
Despite having seen those memories before—they’re still so—brutal.

             
Jesse doesn’t need those memories. They weren’t his to begin with.

             
Sabre simply nodded. “I was able to retrieve memories of when they were boys, up to and after they moved to the States from Puerto Rico and lived in foster care.”
Em? There’s something you should know—Jesse was abused at one of those homes—for years before he was removed.

             
“Oh god!” I dropped my face into my hands and scrubbed my eyes.

             
“What?” Ivy asked.

             
I ignored her. “Does anyone know? Did he ever tell anyone?” Ivy eyes widened in understanding.

             
“It doesn’t appear so. Just his brother,” Sabre reported.

             
“Oh! Poor Jesse!” Ivy’s wide eyes brimmed with tears.

             
“And what if I don’t make him remember those things?”

             
Nick spoke up, then. “How close do you want him to be to the Jesse you know? All of our life experiences make up who we are. I’ve told you this, Em. Our memories influence our decisions, and our perspective of life and people. To change those memories may have a dramatic impact on who he is now.”

             
“But I’m just piecing it together anyway. He’s not going to have a fully congruent memory of his life,” I argued.

             
“Emari, honey. There’s more to this than just missing memories.”

             
“Don’t you think I know that? I get it Nick! Really.” I turned to his mentor. “Go get Emma.”

             
A conspiratorial smile curved Sabre’s mouth.
Here comes Emari Sweet. Kicking ass and taking names.

             
“Just kickin’ ass. Forget the names,” I told him with a smirk as he phased out of the cottage.

*          *          *

              After our infusion of memories and some healing salve from Emma, I lulled Jesse into a deep sleep for the night. He awakened in the morning with a bit of a ‘hangover’, sprawled out on my couch, where he was accustomed to sleeping for our occasional slumber parties. I didn’t know if I’d done an adequate enough job putting his life back together for him. I knew there would be gaps, but any more memories that I discovered could be intricately woven in with rest of his life.

             
“Hey,” he groaned through a stretch, and nudged me with his elbow.

             
I turned from my seat on the floor in front of the couch, where I’d hovered all night. I’d checked on him every few minutes, despite my exhaustion and repeated attempts by Nick to get me to sleep. “Hey back.” I gave him a tired smile. The memories I’d implanted were of an evening spent together—him, Ivy and me. It wasn’t a hard fix. We had plenty of nights spent watching movies and crashing on the living room floor. And the movie choice was a no-brainer. His latent memories could be triggered by something as familiar as
It’s a Wonderful Life
or
Harry Potter.

             
“Thanks for letting me crash last night. Rico’s been an asshole lately.”

             
Rico? Oh dear. Something didn’t mesh right.
I’d have to go mind spelunking again and fix a few stray memories. I just nodded understanding. “You hungry?” I asked.

             
His face split with one of his charming smiles. “When am I
not
hungry?” We shared a laugh.

             
“Baby’s in my room, if you’d like to torment her.”

             
His smile twisted into a mischievous smirk and he rubbed his hands together. “Got any shaving cream and a feather?” I knew what he was up to, and I knew Ivy’d kick his butt if he did.

             
“Check the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. And there should be a feather hair clip on my dresser,” I told him as I headed for the kitchen.

             
While I scrambled some eggs a few minutes later, I heard, “Jesse! You ass! I hate you! Oh! No I don’t. I could never hate you.” I heard Jesse’s ‘ooph!’ as Ivy threw herself into his arms. “I’m so glad to see you’re…”

             
“Ahem!” I interrupted and constrained her with a scowl. She almost forgot the rules. No telling Jesse the truth about what really happened. As far as he was concerned, we spent a quiet night at home with us watching movies. I made her swear on pain of death…well, I made her swear to keep the secret because if I had to rewrite his memories again, I’d take hers, too.