Stealing Kathryn (26 page)

“This way,” he urged her, pulling her along.

She had expected to be cold, but she wasn’t in the least. She could just as easily be fully dressed. And no sooner had she thought that when a simple blue and white gingham dress appeared on her body. On her feet was a pair of brilliant ruby stilettos.

“Whoa.” She stopped to look at herself a moment. There was no way Dorothy ever wore a dress this short or this tight. She felt like something out of a bad porno movie. She touched her hair and found it very neatly plaited on both sides. “What the hell?”

“Sorry about that,” Adrian said as he pulled her along. “You nicked someone’s fantasy.”

“Eww,” she said. She shivered theatrically, making her bosom display prominently in the low-cut dress. “This is just so wrong.”

“People dream up all manner of things,” he told her. “That’s nothing. You ought to see what the really perverted ones dream up. Kids and stuff like that.”

“Eww! I don’t want to see that!”

“Then don’t think about it. Control your mind. Control your desires. Focus solely on seeing your family. And remember what I said before you agreed to this. You’ll be in their dreams. You’ll be seeing some of their darkest thoughts and emotions. You might not like what you see.” He frowned. “Maybe I should just have Aerlyn take you through from her side. She deals with a much happier plane than I do.”

“No. I want you with me, and you said you can’t go through her mirror.”

“I haven’t been able to for a while now,” he agreed absently. “Just like she is too good to come through mine.”

“Does that make me bad? Because I can come through?”

“No, sweetheart. We all have good and bad parts inside of us. The mirror is made to corrupt. It wants to corrupt. It welcomes those it thinks it can spoil. Aerlyn is too strong for it. She would never succumb to its powers.”

“And I’m weak?” she asked. “I could succumb?”

“You are simply not as strong as she is. Not many are, sweetheart. Don’t try to compare yourself to Aerlyn. Everyone would come up wanting against her.”

“Oh.” She followed him closely as he led the way. She didn’t know how he knew his way, but it seemed as though he did. “How do you know where to go?” she asked at last.

“Well, it depends on where the dreamers are. All creatures in all planes come here or to Aerlyn’s plane in order to dream. First you have to choose the plane the dreamer is on. Earth plane is in the center of everything, so we go to the center here first. Here.” He came to a stop, drawing her up close against his still-nude body. “Now you have to select the part of the Earth plane you want to focus on.”

“You mean Australia?”

Smoke suddenly whirled away from around their feet, exposing a map beneath them that rotated sharply to indicate Australia. With a gesture of his hand, Adrian focused on a specific part of the continent and then magnified it time and time again until, like a shot from a satellite, she could see her home.

“You see the red dots on the house? Those are the ports to access the dreams of the people sleeping under that roof. I wasn’t sure they’d be back from the hospital yet.”

“Are you kidding? My father would want to be out as soon as possible. But there’re three dots there.”

“Hmm. It looks like someone is sleeping in the house with Jillian and Connor.” He gestured again, plugging in to the port and suddenly a whole new world erupted around them. They were in a small kitchen with a table set for at least eleven people and there was rapid Spanish flying across the room between several people. In an instant she could understand the good-natured arguments between family members. The dream seemed to center around a woman named Rosa, and Kathryn quickly understood that it was Rosa doing the dreaming.

“But this is a good dream,” she noted.

“It might seem so to you, but all this teasing is a sore point for her. Her mother makes fun of her cooking, her brothers make fun of her weight, her sisters tease about her not having a man in her life. Listen to them and you’ll begin to feel her pain. They undermine her in every possible way and all the while cloak it in this so-called good-natured ribbing.”

“But who is she? Is she…is she sleeping with my father?” She flushed at the very thought. She didn’t want to be walking around in the mind of her father’s mistress.

“No. Look at how far apart the ports are. She must be a maid he hired to help with Jillian and the house.” He gestured out of the port and instantly the dream disappeared. “Who do you want first? Connor or Jillian?” He looked up and met her eyes, remaining neutral for her sake and letting her make all of her own choices in this situation…just like he’d promised to do.

“Connor,” she said quickly, before she lost her nerve altogether.

Adrian plugged them into the port in a heartbeat and Kathryn found herself at ground zero in her father’s nightmare. He was in their house, running from room to room frantically.

“Kathryn! Kathryn, where are you?” He was drenched in sweat, throwing open door after door over and over again. Even in rooms he had just searched. “Kathryn!”

“Can he see me?” she asked, her hands wringing together.

“Not yet. You have to step into the dream. Not physically, but mentally. Make yourself appear to him. And don’t worry, your clothes will change to suit. He’ll see you exactly as he expects you to look.”

Kathryn nodded and closed her eyes, willing herself to appear in front of her father. She had no idea what she was going to say to him, but she knew she couldn’t bear listening to him shouting for a daughter he simply couldn’t find.

Suddenly he threw open a door and looked straight at her.

“Oh, thank God! Kathryn, where have you been?” He rushed up to her, catching her up close to him in a hug so tight she could hardly breathe. She’d never known her father to be overtly affectionate, so the hug took her by surprise. The sheer desperation in it made her eyes tear.

“I’m here, Papa,” she said soothingly. “I’m safe. I’m sorry I had to leave you.”

“You have to stay,” he commanded her. “Your sister needs you.”

Her heart fell. How many times had she heard that same phrase over and over again? That same entrapment, keeping her perfectly caged.

“I can’t stay, Papa. I have to go.”

“No. No, Kathryn, don’t go.” He moved back away from her a little, searching her face and touching her hair gently. “Whenever I look in your face, I see your mother perfectly. How will I see her without you?”

She swallowed hard, anger welling up even as her heart went out to him. What about her? Didn’t he want her to stay because of anything he missed about her as a person? Didn’t he miss her laugh or the way she burned his toast nearly every morning or when they played gin rummy for hours before bedtime? Didn’t he miss her for her?

“Papa, don’t you miss me?” she asked.

“Of course I do. This place is going to hell without you. I had to hire some Hispanic gal just to keep up with the housework.”

“Oh, Papa,” she said sadly. “I…have to go now.”

She turned toward Adrian, reaching out to take his hand.

“Wait,” he father said. “Where will you be?”

“Somewhere safe,” she said, and stepped out of his dream and against Adrian’s side.

He hugged her close and pressed an apologetic kiss to her brow. But he didn’t have anything to be sorry for just then. This pain was squarely on her father’s shoulders—and on her own for letting things go on so long.

“Let’s go see Jilly,” he coaxed her, pulling the third port forward over them. The dream blossomed into Jillian’s room. She was sick in bed, looking miserable, and she had Kathryn sitting beside her tending to her, just as she had been doing before Adrian had swept her away. “This time, just step into yourself. You’ll take over the role like a possession.”

She only hesitated a moment, afraid just then to have her image of Jilly shattered as well. But she longed for her sister too much to pass up the chance to speak to her and touch her again. She moved forward and quickly sat down in the chair she was occupying. Her body fused to the dream image and she found herself leaning over Jillian and pressing a cool cloth to her forehead.

“Rest, honey. You’ll feel better soon,” she said to her ailing sister, just as she would have done were it not a dream.

“Kat, I missed you,” she said plaintively.

She laughed tearfully, relieved to hear Jillian say those very simple words.

“I’m right here. I’ll always be here when you need me, love.”

“No. You’ll be gone. I need you. Who is going to look after me when I’m sick? Who is going to teach me my lessons? Who is going to let me cheat them at cribbage?”

“Jilly, I can’t come back. I want to do all of those things with you again and again, but I-I need to find my own life right now. And part of that means I can’t come back.” She bit her lip. “But I’ll come to you just like this whenever I can, okay? When you’re dreaming.”

“Careful,” Adrian warned her. She knew he meant that she couldn’t expose her sister to the truth of what they could do. If she knew too much then she’d be taken to Beneath as well. Kathryn didn’t want that. She wanted her sister to have a normal life. A normal life that would occasionally include dreams of a big sister who had vanished from her life without explanation.

“Okay,” Jillian said. “I’m glad you got a life. You needed one badly. Is there a boy?”

Jilly was perpetually telling her to get a boyfriend, that she needed a good man in her life. Kathryn heard Adrian chuckle and she resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him.

“Yes,” she said with a flush creeping up her neck, “there’s a boy. But he’s a bit of a jerk,” she added.

“Aren’t they all?” Jillian questioned.

“That’s very true,” she agreed smugly. She felt him step up behind her even before he put his hand on her shoulder. “I have to go now.”

Jillian sat up and threw her arms around her neck, squeezing tightly.

“Don’t,” she said painfully. “Not yet.”

So she stayed a while longer, just hugging her sister and hearing soft words that made her feel so loved. It more than made up for what she had lacked from her father. But it also made it harder for her to leave. This was her sister’s nightmare, though, and the bad part had to happen sometime. Slowly she worked free of her arms and stepped away.

Then she turned to Adrian and hugged him hard. He knew she was thanking him and despising him all at once. It radiated into him through her very thorough and expressive hug. He regretted her sense of loss. He really did. But at the same time he could never make himself regret having taken her. She belonged with him. It was written down deep inside her genetic code, just as it was written in his. Because she was human, she didn’t feel the connection the way his people did, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t come close to an approximation of it. He knew she had to be feeling something already; otherwise she never would have given herself to him so quickly. He didn’t fool himself into thinking it had been because of any charm he had shown her. He knew well enough what a bastard he had been to her. But for now they had chemistry on their side, and that would have to be enough—enough to make a start, at least. And, he thought, perhaps they were starting to have understanding as well. He certainly understood her emotions of the moment. He didn’t have to lose his sister to know how much it would hurt him.

Now he did, anyway. Mere days ago he probably could not have cared less. But in his present state of clarity he knew it would tear him up. He had been responsible for doing that to Kathryn. He had a long way to go to earn her forgiveness for that, if that kind of forgiveness was even remotely possible. And at the moment, he was hoping it was starting with a heartfelt hug.

“Where have you been?”

Aerlyn was breathless as she asked the question, everything about her looking tense and anxious. That immediately worried Adrian because his sister was ever the calm and patient one between them. To see her standing there twisting her hands together meant that something was very wrong.

They had just stepped back into his workroom to find her waiting there for them. Adrian knew Kathryn was already in emotional turmoil from her mixed results with her family visit, so he didn’t want to include her in whatever was upsetting Aerlyn. He reached for the cloak she had worn down to his workroom and swept it around her shoulders. He didn’t care about being naked in front of his sister, but he knew Kathryn did.

“Kat, why don’t you go upstairs for a bit? I’ll be right behind you.”

“No,” his sister said, holding out a hand to stay his kindra. “This concerns both of you.”

Immediately Adrian felt like a lead weight had been sunk into his stomach. Whatever this was, it couldn’t be good. Everything about Aerlyn was broadcasting it.

“Speak,” he said sharply, more sharply than he’d intended. He reached out and curled a protective hand around Kathryn’s elbow.

“Earlier when you…when you made love,” she said quickly, “you released a tremendous amount of energy. I had no choice but to deliver it to the Ampliphi. I thought I was doing the right thing, showing them proof that she was who you had claimed her to be.”

“And?” he pressed, ignoring the blush of embarrassment he could see creeping over Kathryn. He couldn’t put her at ease. Not until he knew what was so distressing to his sister.

“They accepted the proof. Your life is no longer in danger.”

“Oh! That’s wonderful!” Kathryn exclaimed suddenly, reaching to lean her entire body against his side in an enthusiastic hug. “I was so worried about that.”

“I wasn’t,” he said flatly. “I knew you were my kindra. I had no doubts once I saw the effect you were having on my outside appearance. Not to mention the inside.”

“Well, you could have told me that,” she huffed in consternation. “I’ve been afraid for you ever since you told me your life was on the line.”

Adrian looked at her, wanting so badly to pursue this obvious line of concern for him that she was showing. Was it possible she was already coming to care for him? He wanted so badly to know the answer to that. But his sister’s anxiety was pressing against him and he knew there was more to come.