Catch Me When I Fall (4 page)

“Daniel!” Tabitha yelled as she clutched her tiny arms around me.

Tabitha had been recruited the same day as me, and she was one of the only individuals anymore who could put a smile on my face. She had become like my little sister. Her energy, her enthusiasm, and her unyielding compassion warmed my soul every time I saw her. Those traits were what also made her a Dreamweaver.

“Tabbi, what are you doing here? I thought you were training in Canada.” I hugged the forever-twelve-year-old girl gently to my forever-seventeen body, afraid that if I squeezed too tight, her tiny frame would break. She had died of starvation on the streets of Northern Ireland in 1814 after giving her last piece of bread to a little boy who was shivering under blankets. Or at least that’s how she explained it to me.

She stepped back, looked up at me with her gray-blue eyes and replied with a thick, Irish accent. “I’m your Weaver.”

My heart stopped. A loon would be receiving regular visits from the Nightmares. If I didn’t want Sam to be a part of this assignment, I definitely didn’t want Tabbi to be involved. Samantha could at least take care of herself.

I placed my hands on her shoulders and spoke quietly. “I will talk to Giovanni. You shouldn’t be taking on something like this when you haven’t been a lead yet.” Weavers usually trained twice as long as Catchers—forming dreams to fit individual personalities was a hell of a lot harder than fighting creatures that simply acted on instinct. Last I knew, Tabbi hadn’t even taken her trials.

Her eyes glassed over. “But I have. Please don’t talk to Giovanni.”

“You’ve been a lead?”

Tabbi rolled her eyes. “Don’t you read your emails? They gave me this old guy with dementia and made me pull memories from his head. There were, like, none left, but I still managed to find one from his childhood when his dad took him to this bike shop. And then he showed him how to ride the bike, and he was so happy. And when he was dreaming, he had this big smile on his face. Giovanni said I was the best he’d ever seen, that I was the fastest, and I really made the dream come alive with all the colors and everything.”

She was rambling, trying to convince me that she could handle Weaving for Kayla. Although I didn’t like it, if what she was telling me was true, she was wicked good. Dementia was a nasty disease and most Weavers struggled to navigate inside the mind of someone suffering from the illness. Even the ones who’d been leads for a long time.

I sighed and dropped my hands from her shoulders. “All right. Well then, if you’re sure you’re up to this, I would be happy to have you as my partner.”

Tabbi grinned from ear to ear and slipped her hand into mine like a little sister would, and we crossed the dining hall to eat breakfast and go over the details with Seth. We sat at a round, white table covered with silver plates of Italian sausage, scrambled eggs and buttered toast. Around us, a few of the other tables were occupied, and the “hired help”—as Giovanni liked to call them—wandered the room, cleaning up after the Catchers and Weavers. They were the only humans allowed inside our hidden mansion, and they were sworn to secrecy of our existence.

Seth handed us disposable mobile phones and yellow, rubber bracelets. On them was the name of our charge. Giovanni liked to color-code the humans based on how difficult and dangerous they were deemed to be. Most humans fell into the green category, like Eva had been, and about twenty percent were yellow. Red was uncommon, but I’d seen Catchers and Weavers wearing the bracelets several times over the years. The color was usually designated for people like Adolf Hitler or H.H. Holmes. Most of the Protectors on red-level humans didn’t last long, and Catchers always caught in pairs.

Tabbi and I slipped the yellow bracelets round our wrists, marking each other as partners.

“You both read through the file?” Seth asked as he scooped scrambled eggs into his mouth.

Tabbi and I nodded.

“Cool. Well, you guys know what to do. Take the day to get oriented with her, and make sure you perform the ritual so you know when she’s fallin’ asleep. Giovanni’s rented out adjacent apartments at a complex in Columbus. They sound pretty sweet.”

Giovanni liked for us to live in the same city as our charge so our bodies adjusted to the time zone change. It was our souls that were dead and held the powers the Angels gave us. Though we couldn’t age—and we could choose to be invisible—we still needed to eat and sleep like the rest of the living. We could choose to remain in Rome since evaporating was easy, but going that distance often took a toll on a Protector’s body. And the last thing we needed was to protect our charge while exhausted.

Seth handed us a slip of paper with the apartment building’s address and our keys. “If anything weird happens, report to Giovanni immediately, but otherwise, he has you on a weekly report schedule. Mondays, I think. Oh, and because I have to say this or he’ll kill me, remember the oath you swore to serve and protect. And remember our first Law: On penalty of ‘termination,’ under no circumstances will you reveal yourself to your charge.”

One of the nice things about being a Dreamcatcher was that you were a close relative of the spirit world. You could not be seen unless you chose to be. All you had to do was close your eyes and picture where you wanted to go, and when you opened them, you would be there. And anything or anyone you touched, while corporeal, could go invisible or travel with you. So when moving across the world, you were done in about five minutes.

The flats Giovanni had chosen for Tabbi and me were much nicer than I anticipated. The one I had spent eighty years in when I watched over Eva had been a studio piece of shit with beer-stained carpet and a sliding door that didn’t open. My new apartment overlooked McFerson Commons, a beautiful park in central Columbus whose focal point was an ornate, stone arch that reminded me of Rome. The place was a one bed, one bath apartment with a separate living room, dining area and kitchen. Everything was clean and well maintained. The walls were painted a light gray color, and the carpet was spotless and white.

Tabbi decided to “fix” my apartment, so I leaned against a wall and watched as she disappeared and reappeared with rugs, lamps, and other pieces of furniture. By the time she was done re-arranging everything, my flat looked like it could have belonged in a magazine.

“That’s better.” Tabbi plopped down on my sofa with a smile on her face.

“Yes, and now all those stores are without their merchandise. You better hope no one needed that navy blue rug or… what the heck is that?” Tabbi had hung a picture on the wall above the sofa of what looked like a black and white candy cane—if they had painted on an acid trip.

“It’s a
zebra
.” She gave me a look that suggested I was an idiot for not being able to understand abstract artwork. Or, at least, that’s how I interpreted her.

“Ah, I see. I can’t imagine anyone wanting that, so you should be safe.” I smiled at her.

“Ha, ha. Very funny.” She stood up. “So, are we going to go visit Kayla?”

Uncrossing my arms, I straightened up. “If you’re done making my place hideous, then sure.”

Tabbi stuck her tongue out at me then made sure the front door was locked. Although the humans couldn’t see us or hear us unless we wanted them to, our furniture was definitely real. We didn’t need anyone breaking in and stealing anything—one reason Giovanni had us burn our charges’ files. Nixon’s Dreamcatcher had left a piece of information out once about that Watergate scandal. It was supposed to be part of the weekly report he sent to Giovanni, but the file had been intercepted. Didn’t play out well for Nixon—or his Catcher.

Tabbi took my hand. Together, we closed our eyes and brought up the image of Kayla in our minds. When we opened them, we stood in her room.

Kayla sat in a rocking chair, staring out her window at the courtyard below, dressed in the white outfit that identified her as a patient. Her dark brown hair fell in waves over her left shoulder, and her full lips were tight in concentration. With pastels, she sketched the profile of one of the patients sitting in the courtyard.

Kayla’s large, hazel eyes flickered over the features of the old man below. She was more attractive than I could’ve imagined, so much more stunning than in the picture Giovanni gave me. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

A knock at the door made her jump. She turned her head as a nurse wearing SpongeBob SquarePants scrubs waltzed in with a glass of water in one hand. The other carried a small paper cup.

“How are you feeling today, Kayla?” the nurse asked.

“I’m all right.” Even her voice was beautiful. The way she said the words were as if she was singing, her tone a melodic alto sound.

“Glad to hear it, sweetie. I brought your medicine. You should take it before you come down for lunch. You had a rough night.”

Kayla pouted as she took the small, paper cup and swallowed the pills with the glass of water.

“What’s she thinking?” I asked Tabbi. As a Dreamweaver, she could read humans’ minds. Weavers were limited in the fact that they couldn’t read other Protectors, but if a human was within a certain radius of Tabbi, she could focus on the person’s thought pattern and hear what they were thinking.

Tabbi shook her head. “It’s all a jumbled mess. She’s trying
not
to think. And the nurse thinks she’s crazy. They gave her a shot two nights ago. The nurse hopes they won’t need to use it again tonight.”

They used a tranquilizer on Kayla? She couldn’t weigh much. How could she possibly be a danger?

The nurse took the glass back from Kayla and told her they’d be back for her in thirty minutes for lunch. Kayla returned to her chair and continued working on her portrait.

“Why did they give her the shot?” I asked.

“She was screaming, and when the nurses tried to calm her down, she fought them. She scratched one and wouldn’t wake up. She kept screaming, ‘He’s going to hurt me! Don’t let him hurt me!’” Tabbi shuddered, and I frowned.

“Are you sure you’re going to be able to handle this?” I’d seen some pretty freaky stuff before. But from what I’d read in the emails she sent, Tabbi had only helped Weave for old people who lived happy, quiet lives in nursing homes. She’d yet to see anything like this.

Tabbi’s green eyes bore into mine. “Stop babying me, Daniel.”

I raised my hands in defeat. There was no point in arguing that she was still, technically, a child. “All right, sorry.” I returned my attention to the beautiful girl in the chair. Who would want to hurt her?

e followed Kayla to her dining hall for lunch. The room was large with white walls and a white, tiled floor. Steel tables and chairs were bolted to the ground. Kayla sat near a window in the far corner of the room with one other boy, a red-haired, freckle-faced kid with glasses that covered the top half of his face. He spoke with a bit of a lisp, and he rocked back and forth as he conversed with Kayla. Still, he appeared to be quite intelligent.