The Awakening (5 page)

“Very,” he said softly.

They exited through the gift shop, pausing to look at a few books, T-shirts, and other memorabilia. As they studied some titles and Finn tried to decide what book to buy that would give him a good overview of the area, a man approached them.

“Megan?”

She turned around, frowning, apparently not recognizing the man who had tentatively spoken her name.

He was twenty-five to thirty, nicely dressed in a tailored suit and suede jacket. His sandy hair was a little shorter than Finn's, and had the look of being run through absently and often with his fingers. Good-looking face, all well-spaced angles, dark brown eyes. Medium tall.

“Mike?” Megan said cautiously.

The man smiled. Dimples creased in his cheeks, taking away the somewhat severe look of the academic the man had.

“Yeah, it's me.” He caught both her hands, kissed her cheeks.

“It's great to see you,” Megan said. “What are you doing here—well, obviously, you still live in the area.”

“Grounded in the home haunting grounds, I'm afraid,” he said ruefully. “But you—I haven't seen you in years! Have you moved back?”

“No, I'm living in New Orleans now.” She turned then, looking at Finn. “I want you to meet an old friend, Mike Smith. Mike, this is my husband, Finn Douglas. We're back playing at the new hotel for Halloween week.”

“So you kept up with the music!” Mike Smith said, turning what seemed to Finn to be a too adoring gaze from Megan to acknowledge her introduction. “Hello, Finn. Nice to meet you. And congratulations. You've married the girl of my dreams.”

“Thanks,” Finn said, shaking hands with the fellow. “Nice to meet you, too.” Was it? He was disturbed by the sense of jealousy that took root inside him.

“So what are you doing these days?” Megan asked him.

“Working at the new museum.” He glanced at Finn. “A really good museum. No hocus-pocus. This place is great—they do a really good job with the facts. Not all of the ‘museums' here do. We're down the street, near the wharf, and cover the founding of the area, the Puritan tradition, and how it was possible for the craze to have gotten started. We also have a huge section on the seafaring days. Come by and see us.”

“We definitely will,” Megan said.

“We're a little booked for today,” Finn reminded her.

Mike Smith waved a hand in the air. “I'll be there all week. I'll give you a behind-the-scenes tour when you come. Just ask for me at the window.”

“Thanks,” Megan said, and Finn nodded, acknowledging the invitation as well.

“Just stopped by to get a new book that they've gotten in and we haven't,” he said with a grimace. “It's great to see you, Megan. And good to meet you, Finn. Congratulations on your marriage, and your music.”

“Thanks,” Finn murmured.

Mike Smith waved a hand in the air and walked off.

“Old beau?” Finn couldn't help but query.

Megan shook her head, smiling with a little wrinkle of her nose. “Way too academic for me, back then. I wanted to be a wild child. Of course, I wasn't very wild, either, but I suppose I was in my own mind. Mike was a few years older than me in school. Valedictorian and all that. Back then, he had huge, horn-rimmed glasses and his nose in a book all the time. I should have figured he'd wind up in a museum. Or teaching, or creating something in a laboratory, or the like.”

The guy was gone. Megan had been so offhand.

Finn dismissed his absurd sense of jealousy.

When they came back out on the street, the beautiful bright blue sky that had graced the morning was gone.

A gray pallor had settled over the town.

“Want lunch now, or later?” Megan asked.

“Let's stop by Morwenna and Joseph's first,” he said, wishing his grin didn't seem so forced now.

As they walked the short distance from the museum to the shop, he tried to tell himself again that the streets were still filled with tourists. Mothers, fathers. Children. Laughing. Some of them with costumes on already, though Halloween itself was still days away. Aliens, pirates, and princesses abounded, along with the more ghoulish. Movie theme characters were walking around as well—some sci-fi, others from horror flicks. Still,
normal
, he told himself.

They came down the street, heading for the centuries-old building with a large plaque that read “Spiritual Sustenance.” Megan started right in.

Finn was amazed to feel as if a foreboding washed over him. No . . . as if a heaviness had come into the air, so strong that it was hard for him to put one foot in front of the other.

“Finn?” Megan paused, looking back at him.

He stared at his wife. She had never appeared more beautiful—or even angelic. Pure, filled with light, golden hair streaming softly around her shoulders, eyes like blue pools of the ocean.

She had worn black that day, too. A long black sweater-coat kind of a thing over black jeans and a scoop-neck long-sleeved black knit blouse. Both hugged her form. He wanted to keep her from the shop. From whatever evil lay within.

He gave himself a firm mental shake.

“Great window display,” he said. He hadn't even looked at it.

“Yeah? Morwenna did major in art for a while,” Megan said.

She didn't feel it. Didn't feel the miasma hanging over the shop.

Because it didn't exist. Once, he'd almost lost his wife. And after her nightmare last night, he was just being a horse's ass. He was afraid. He'd spent a few years thinking that he was just too hot, that he wasn't going to bow to what he considered ridiculous fears and suspicions.

And now . . .

He was damned afraid himself.

“Hey, maybe they have some really great gargoyle bookends in here,” he forced himself to say cheerfully. Determined, he walked up the steps.

Bits of prayer flew into his mind.

Ass!
he charged himself. He was walking into a shop! And what the heck was the matter with him? He'd just watched a program on how feelings, suspicions, and spectral visions had sent more than a dozen innocent people to the gallows.
Get a grip, man, it's the twenty-first century, here. No such nonsense allowed.

Hand in hand, he walked closer to the entry with his wife, a smile glued to his face.

Even from the sidewalk, they could see that the shop was crowded. There was a man—all in black, naturally—sitting on the stairs that led to the upper level of the old place. He was monitoring the amount of people heading in and out of the shop. He rose, about to stop them, then recognized Megan.

“Hey, Megan!” The fellow hugged her. Megan's hand was dragged from his own.

“Jamie!” Megan said, and turned. “Jamie, my husband, Finn. Finn, Jamie Gray. He's worked for Morwenna and Joseph for ages.”

“Hey, there,” Jamie said. “Good to meet you. Go on in. It's wild in there today. Getting close to Halloween. Tons of gawkers are out.”

There was nothing evil or weird about the guy, Finn told himself. Lots of people wore black. He wore black a lot himself. Hell, they played a lot of Celtic music. Black jeans and loose-sleeved, medieval type shirts worked well on stage. That's what all this was, too, of course. Wiccan. They were performers. Living a lifestyle to sell their wares.

“Thanks, we won't stay long,” Finn told Jamie.

“You're family—you stay as long as you want.”

“Well, we're family, and so we shouldn't get in the way of the paying, tourist-season customers,” Finn said. He sounded all right, he thought. Sincere.

He was sincere. He wanted out of the shop as fast as sanely possible.

There were far too many people in the main store area for the space. When they slipped in, Megan was immediately lost to him. He looked around the best he could while being jostled by those anxious to purchase the right little semiprecious gemstones, herbs, oils, books, and curios. The displays were excellent, a rational part of his mind told him. And Morwenna and Joseph knew how to buy for the store. They carried really beautiful pieces, glass and pewter dragons, fairies, and gargoyles. Excellent pieces of sculpture and art. Really fine jewelry, mostly in silver.

“Finn!” He heard Megan calling him from across the store.

He turned. She was trying on a black cloak. It was gorgeous on her. He hated it.

“What do you think?”

“She's incredible!” someone else by her side cried out. It was Joseph. Raven black hair queued back as usual. He was tall. Finn was a solid six-three, and Joseph might have been even taller than he was himself. Lean and hard. He didn't like the guy standing by his wife, admiring her.

Don't be a complete asshole!
he warned himself firmly before speaking.

“Megan is always gorgeous!” he called back. He excused himself to the woman at his side bemoaning the cost of a pair of earrings and reached his wife's side.

“Finn.” Joseph shook his hand. “So—how are you enjoying Salem?”

“It's great,” he lied.

Morwenna slipped from behind the counter to join them, despite the long line. Jamie had come in to man the cash register. She looked anxiously at both of them.

“Heard there was a commotion at the B and B,” she said. Though she looked at her cousin, Finn was certain there was a note of accusation in her voice and that it was meant for him.

“My God, it is a small town!” Megan said with a sigh. “I had a nightmare and woke up screaming.”

“Bizarre,” Joseph said, and his single word seemed like an accusation to Finn as well.

“No more scary tales late at night for either of us,” Finn forced himself to say lightly. He wasn't going to take offense—at least he wasn't going to let them know he was offended.

“I think I should read your palm,” Morwenna told Megan seriously.

“You all are way too busy in here,” Megan said, and Finn was glad.

“Jamie has the register, Joseph can watch the store, and hey! We've got a new girl working for us who is great. Actually, she's not so new, we went to high school together. Sara. She'll give Finn a reading while I do yours.”

Megan laughed, shrugging, and looking at Finn. “You did say you were going to have a palm reading.”

He wanted to protest. No. This was all silly. He had said he was going to do it. Be nice to her weird relatives no matter what. Have a palm reading.

“Sure.”

“Call Sara,” Morwenna told Joseph.

Sara didn't have to be called. Finn knew that she had to be the woman who emerged from the curtain at the back with another young woman—one with piercings in her brow, her lip, and her nose, who seemed to be mulling over whatever the palm reader had told her as if she had just immersed herself in a serious article in
Time
magazine.

Apparently, some people took their palm readings very seriously.

“See you next week,” the pierced princess told Sara.

Then he was somewhat unnerved himself when Sara instantly turned to him, studying him with grave eyes. “You're my next reading?” she queried. She was a small woman, no more than five-foot one or two, with deep, dark, soulful eyes and long brown hair. Though small, she was shapely, like a compact dynamo, except that she didn't seem to move a lot, just to exude some kind of air that spoke of a leashed energy.

“Sara, this is Finn Douglas, my cousin Megan's husband,” Morwenna said, in way of introduction. “And, of course, this is Megan. You two haven't met yet.”

Sara turned to Megan first, smiling. “Hi. Morwenna talks about you all the time. Nice to meet you.”

“A pleasure,” Megan murmured.

“And Finn! Hm. Interesting. I must admit, I'll find this an intriguing reading,” Sara said.

Finn looked at Megan, trying to control a rueful grimace. “Well, what the heck? I'm all for a reading.”

Megan didn't reply with words. He could see the laughter and gratitude in her eyes.

“We're this way,” Morwenna told Megan.

Megan wiggled a brow to Finn and followed her cousin through a beaded separator to the back, where, behind the wafting beads, he could see worktables, chairs, and to each side, doors to small little square rooms within the large rectangle of the shop's layout.

“That means we're behind the door to the right,” Sara told Finn.

He had a strange feeling of being manipulated and overwhelmed again, but without being completely churlish, he couldn't back out now. And he was angry with himself; it was all ridiculous, and he wasn't going to take any of it seriously. They were in Salem for a week. He could be decent to Megan's relatives for that amount of time. He could listen to people extol the virtues of incense and gemstones. He could let a woman stare at his palm and pretend to see his past, future, and present.

“She's the best,” Joseph said lightly, moving back toward the register to help Jamie, since the line of customers eager to pay for their wares was growing larger.

Finn followed Sara. The door to the left was already shut. Sara preceded him through the right doorway. The tiny room was what he had expected. Dark. There was a table, and a chair on either side of it. There was a crystal ball on the table, Tarot cards to the right of it, and a lamp. Sara turned on the lamp. It emitted a small pool of blue light.