The Last Dream Keeper (14 page)

“That is something we don't really know ourselves,” Desmond said, and sighed. “Well, I do know one thing. Your logic is sound. Not letting the Dream Keeper out of your sight is key. Now tell me what your plans are. I have people around the world ready to do your bidding at a moment's notice.”

“We need to let the Council know that The Flood isn't just coming. It's here. We need to prepare—”

Desmond interrupted her, waving his hands to stop the flow of words.

“If only it were so easy. There are people on the Council who'd throw you out on your ear if you even suggested that. They believe nothing terrible could ever touch them, and they have no interest in someone like you, or your mother, crying wolf and upsetting the status quo.”

“It's not true. We've been attacked with magic a number of times,” Daniela protested. “And something or someone is out there burning witches . . . making monsters to do their bidding.”

Once again, Desmond held up his hand for her to stop.

“Listen to yourself. You sound hysterical . . . though
I
know you're being anything but—”

“I don't think—” she tried to interject, but Desmond was still talking.

“—and remember how impenetrable the Council is, especially the high council: The more facts you collect, the more information you obtain, the easier it will be to convert the naysayers. That's all I'm saying to you.”

Even though Daniela knew Desmond was just trying to make a point, she didn't like being referred to as “hysterical.” She'd seen how difficult her mother's job had been. Getting anyone to agree on anything was an almost impossible task. And the Greater Council was not just one group of women governing their world, but a series of committees that each, in their own right, possessed a level of power.

The high council—where her mother had been installed until her untimely death—was like the Supreme Court, taking the opinions of the other committees, weighing them against one another, and coming to a final decision on the matter. Desmond was a member of the Autonomous Committee—an objective group of scholars and academics who didn't possess magic, but who acted in an advisory capacity to the high council. These men and women were highly important to the blood sisters but were not
of
them.

Desmond had spent enough time among the covens to know how they maneuvered and what would and wouldn't fly. As much as she hated to admit it, he was probably right.

“So how do we proceed, then?”

“You follow the Dream Keeper, see what she discovers in Italy, and then you bring everything to me. Together, we can go to the high council and make our stand . . .” He leaned forward in his seat, rheumy eyes alive with excitement. “If they believe us, then the rest of the committees will be more inclined to do so, as well.”

He sat back again, having said his piece.

“I'm not as energetic as I once was,” he said, closing his eyes. “It's almost too much for an old man.”

Daniela wanted to reach out and touch him, reassure him he wasn't old—but she didn't want to lie to him. It would be a first in their relationship. Desmond had always inspired the truth from her. Instead, she chose to remain silent.

“I'll have people on the ground in Rome. They'll stay in the shadows, but they'll be there if you need them. Or if something goes wrong.”

He was looking at her now, waiting for an answer.

She nodded.

“I know you can take care of yourself, but these are dark times and you're going to need all the help you can get to protect Lyse—”

“You mean, Lizbeth . . . ?” Daniela said, correcting him.

Desmond shook his head, trying to clear it.

“Of course, that's what I mean,” he sighed, deep frown lines creasing the skin around his mouth. “Between the two of us, my mind isn't what it once was . . . it's not terrible . . . yet.”

He stopped there, taking a deep breath, and Daniela's heart fluttered in her chest. Fear, as cold and mercenary as a vise, squeezed at her insides. She didn't think she could listen to what he was about to tell her.

“I didn't want to tell you like this,” he said, looking down at the tabletop, unwilling to meet her gaze.

No. No. No. This can't be happening,
Daniela thought.
I can't lose you, too.

“What's wrong? Are you okay?”

She couldn't help herself. The words came out in a rush, her fear a living thing inside her.

“It's Alzheimer's. There's nothing that can be done. I've known for a while, but the disease is progressing faster than the doctors expected.”

Daniela's face fell. It was like being kicked in the gut. She dropped her head, cupping her face in between her hands, and began to rock back and forth in her seat.

“Stop it,” Desmond said, his voice stern. “I don't need you
to fall apart on me. I want the opposite. I want what's happening to my brain forgotten and for you to do the job that your mother gave you.”

Daniela nodded, fighting back tears.

“Yeah, okay. I can do that.”

She said the words out loud but had no idea if she'd be able to stand by them. This news was devastating: The last link to “family” was fading away right before her eyes.

“I think it's time for us to go,” Desmond said, throwing a hundred-dollar bill down on the table and climbing to his feet.

Daniela followed suit, dragging herself from the booth, her legs unsteady beneath her. She rested a gloved hand on the Naugahyde seat and steadied herself.

“Oh, I forgot to ask you something . . .”

Desmond, who was already moving toward the front entrance, turned back around.

“Yes?”

“Does the name Temistocles mean anything to you?”

For a moment, Daniela thought she saw a flash of recognition in Desmond's eyes, but it was so fleeting she couldn't be sure she hadn't just imagined it. He made a show of thinking about the question for a moment and then shook his head.

“Outside of an historical context?” he asked, a curious frown on his face.

Daniela nodded her head.

“Then the answer is no.”

*   *   *

Daniela woke up as the plane began its descent into the Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino International Airport in Rome. She'd watched a few mindless films, and then she must've just passed out because she didn't remember falling asleep.

“We're here,” Lyse said, her head turned toward the window, watching the abstract geometric patterns slowly resolve into the trappings of the human world.

“Good,” Daniela said, stretching in her seat.

“You were unconscious for hours,” Lyse said. “I was jealous. I never sleep well on planes.”

Daniela shrugged, the nasty taste of cotton mouth making her wish she had some water.

“Any word from the kids?” Daniela asked as she pulled a pack of spearmint gum from her pocket and popped a stick into her mouth.

Lyse shook her head.

“Weir slept. Lizbeth read through the journals I brought.”

Lyse had removed Hessika's Dream Journals from their hiding place in Eleanora's closet and presented them to Lizbeth at the airport. Like the notebook Lizbeth had retrieved from the dreamlands, the Dream Journals appeared blank to anyone who did not possess a Dream Keeper's talents.

“Ah, more knowledge she may or may not share with us,” Daniela mumbled.

Lyse shot her a disapproving glance.

“Please don't do that. We need to close ranks, not cause more rifts.”

Daniela sighed.

“All right. Team effort from now on,” she said.

Lyse smiled at her.

“Thank you.”

*   *   *

Their pensione was tucked away from the center of the city in one of the quieter, more residential quarters of Rome. Once it had been a single-family home—a mansion, really, with Doric columns on the portico and the classical, clean lines of a Roman villa—but those days were long gone. Its latest owners had sectioned off the massive interior space into a number of charming, sun-drenched rooms, each one taken up by two single beds and a rococo desk and chair.

Lizbeth and Weir were bunked in one room; Lyse and
Daniela would take over another. But they didn't stay long enough to enjoy their new surroundings. They dropped their stuff off and headed out again with little delay, only making a pit stop at a small café to get paninis and coffee.

Daniela had insisted they move quickly, so they'd hopped in a cab and headed for the Villa Nomentana, the international home of the high council—and the very place where her mother had spent the last few months of her life.

*   *   *

“Drop us here, please,” Daniela said to their driver, and the four of them piled out of the taxi. They were at a busy intersection, and Daniela threw the man far more euros than necessary before waving him on his way.

She and Lyse had decided not to take any unnecessary risks, not wanting to alert anyone to their presence here in the city. Which was why they'd chosen to get out of the cab a few blocks away from the villa, among the crumbling old buildings and tiny shops of the Trieste district.

The afternoon sunlight beat down on their heads as they wove their way through a sidewalk filled with pedestrians—and Daniela wondered what the local Italians thought of them.

With our American accents and backpacks, we must look like the worst kind of tourists,
she mused.
Weir busy scanning the crowd like he's expecting to be pickpocketed at any moment, Lizbeth off in some fantasy land of her own making, Lyse's whole body as tight as a drumhead.

Lizbeth and Weir had been strangely silent since their arrival in Rome, and Daniela tried not to let her suspicions about that silence influence how she behaved. She knew Lyse was right—creating an atmosphere of distrust wouldn't be good for anyone—but it didn't mean she ignored her gut feelings. She just put them aside for the moment—though they always remained within easy reach.

It was warmer than usual for October, and Daniela began to
sweat as they walked the remaining blocks to the Villa Nomentana. She'd spent some time in the city while her mother was in residence with the high council, and she had a basic understanding of the layout of the area around the villa. She just wished she knew a way to get to the catacombs without having to enter the grounds.

“We'll just be tourists,” Daniela said as they turned off the crowded sidewalk, leaving the terra-cotta-colored buildings and high stone walls to cross to the other side of the street. “We'll walk around the grounds, looking as normal as possible. And we stick together, don't split up—we're safer as a group.”

“Sure,” Weir said, but his tone was unconvincing. He pulled his backpack up higher on his shoulders and let his gaze drift away—almost as if he were too embarrassed by the obviousness of his lie to look her in the eye.

I'm gonna have my work cut out for me,
Daniela thought. They reached the end of the sidewalk, and the rough stone wall separating the park from the street gave way to a wrought-iron gate that led into the villa's manicured grounds. The high council only used the main building, which was separate from the rest of the grounds. Those were open to the public and many tourists could be found inside its gates, snapping pictures and enjoying the bounty of its gardens.

It was an impressive piece of real estate. Sprawling lawns, cultivated Italianate gardens leading to marble-sculpted fountains, and Roman statuary intermixed with verdant shrubbery and luscious floral beds in neon-hued pinks, yellows, and reds. The four of them followed the dirt path through rows of statuary of mythic Roman gods and goddesses, their human musculature—long-limbed bodies, rounded bellies and breasts, massive hands and feet—sculpted from aging white marble. A large oval fountain sat in front of the gated entrance into the main villa, and all along its sparkling aqua pool, water burst in fanlike arcs from urns held by lounging water nymphs, their budded breasts and
curving hips making them appear wanton and lazy in the heat of the afternoon.

“It's so beautiful here,” Lizbeth said, spinning in place so she could get a three-hundred-sixty-degree view.

At that moment, she resembled a teenager again—only one whose wistful eyes had seen far too much suffering for such a short lifetime. Daniela found herself feeling sorry for the girl. Daniela knew what it was to be different. To be physically unable to connect to other people because reaching out was impossible.

Now she began to feel guilty for being so suspicious of the girl.

“Where do we go from here?” Lyse asked, brushing her thick black bangs out of her face.

“This way,” Daniela said, taking a deep breath. “This is where we access the catacombs.”

M
elisande and Delilah Montrose arrived with the dawn, the ring of the doorbell dragging Dev from the warmth of her bed. She threw on her chenille robe and headed downstairs.

“Mama?” A sleepy voice called out in the darkness, and Dev stopped at the head of the stairs.

Marji stood in her bedroom doorway, hair unkempt and eyes still half-closed with sleep. She yawned, raising a hand to cover her mouth.

“Yes, baby?” Dev whispered.

“Tell Grammie they wanna talk to her.”

“I will, sweetheart. Now let me go let Grammie in . . .”

“Okay.” And like a sleepwalker, Marji returned to her bed, leaving the door wide open behind her.

Dev waited until she could hear the rustle of Marji climbing back under the comforter, and then she continued down the stairs. She yawned as she hit the bottom step, her brain on autopilot. It didn't help that she'd barely slept the previous night, having been on guard duty in the Mucho Man Cave
until three in the morning. Freddy had graciously called in sick to work in order to take over for her—but as exhausted as she'd been, sleep had proved elusive.

And now a bunch of little old dead ladies were using her elder daughter as a messenger service. Could her life get any more bizarre?

Dev pulled her robe tight around her middle as she padded through the sitting room, shivering a little in the chilly morning air. The heat was on, she could hear the gentle thrum of the compressor, but because heat rose, it was always warmer in the upstairs bedrooms than it was in the rest of the house.

There was a quiet comfort in being surrounded by the everyday familiar. The creaky old Victorian was like a tried-and-true friend—she knew every nook and cranny in the place, had played hide-and-seek with her sisters in all of the drafty high-ceilinged rooms, had cried herself to sleep in what was now Marji's room when the boy she liked in middle school wouldn't go to the Sadie Hawkins dance with her.

Its walls were privy to all of her sorrows and joys, from her idyllic childhood to the excitement of falling in love with Freddy to the birth of her two precious daughters. It was a part of who she was—in fact, was a part of each Montrose woman who had lived and died there before her.

“Coming,” she called out softly as she crossed to the front door and looked through the peephole.

She blinked as her sister's patrician face came into view, features distorted as if Dev were observing her through a fish-eye lens. Dev was reassured beyond measure to see her tiny mother standing just beside Delilah, both women with overnight bags at their feet. She sighed with relief and reached down to undo the chain. She threw back the deadbolt and opened the door.

“I'm so glad you're here,” Dev said, crossing the threshold and enfolding both women in her arms. They hugged in silence, enjoying the familial connection of being with people who loved you unconditionally no matter what. “Come in, come in.”

She picked up her mother's brown-and-mauve floral carpetbag, gesturing for them to follow her inside. Her mother, who was barely five feet tall, was a smaller, more compact version of Dev. She wore her gray hair in a chin-length bob, but it was so thick that it poofed out around her cheeks like a puffin's chest. She wore a pair of round spectacles on a silver length of chain that hung from her neck, holding them up to her eyes whenever she needed to read something, but otherwise ignoring them.

“It's just like a snapshot,” her mother said as she stepped into the sitting room, her eyes roving from the dark oak love seat and settee to the antique empire rolltop desk to the Victorian green-and-beige tiles that lined the fireplace, offsetting the polished glow of the thick wooden mantel. “It never changes.”

“And that's why we like it,” Dev said, nodding as they passed through the wooden doorway leading into the kitchen.

“But do we
really
like it that way?” Delilah asked, half jokingly.

She was the youngest of Dev's sisters and the free spirit of their already very bohemian family. She'd joined the Peace Corps, traveled all over South America, and then taught English at a secondary school for girls in Rwanda. She'd never planted roots anywhere, was constantly in motion, never settling, always off on another adventure.

“I mean,” Delilah continued, removing her green knit cap and revealing an inch of gold-blond stubble. “I love the old place. Don't get me wrong. I'd just never want to be tied down to it indefinitely.”

Delilah had been in the middle of her yearly visit with their parents when Dev had called for backup. She was happy to have her youngest sibling there to help, but older sister and baby sister were about as different as two people could be.

“I'm not being mean, Dev,” Delilah added, realizing by Dev's silence she'd offended her older sibling. “You know I love the house. I really do. I'm just not cut out for a sedentary existence.”

Dev knew she shouldn't take umbrage at the word
sedentary
, but it rankled a little bit. Especially coming from her baby sister. She opened her mouth to reply and was interrupted by the pounding of small feet on the stairs. With a sharp squeal of happiness, Ginny burst into the kitchen, brimming with excitement at seeing her grammie and aunt Delilah.

“Grammie, Grammie, Grammie,” Ginny cooed as she danced around the room. She was so full of energy that it made Dev tired just watching her. “You're here! I wanna show you my ant farm—”

Ginny took her grammie's hand and, because Melisande wasn't much bigger than her granddaughter, almost succeeded in dragging her from the room.

“Gin, let me talk to Grammie for a few minutes before you drag her off, please,” Dev said, turning to shrug helplessly at Delilah. “Maybe your aunt Delilah wants to see the ants instead?”

Dev only felt a little bad for throwing Delilah under the bus—besides, Ginny just wanted a little attention and Delilah was amazing with kids. In point of fact, without further prodding she took Ginny's outstretched hand, tiny fingers slipping easily into Delilah's palm, and pulled her niece in for a bear hug.

“Show me the ants.”

Ginny, pleased with her hug and the prospect of having her aunt's undivided attention, grinned.

“Okay!”

She pulled Delilah along behind her, leaving the warmth of the kitchen and heading back upstairs. Dev watched them go, relieved that Ginny had saved her from being rude to Delilah. She wished she could just let her baby sister's condescending tone wash over her without affecting her state of being, but it was almost impossible. Delilah was aces at making her feel like she was being judged.

“So shall I make us some tea?” her mother asked, already
starting to putter around the kitchen, which she knew as well as Dev did, if not better. “And then we can sit down and discuss what to do next?”

It was so rare to not feel the overwhelming yoke of responsibility around her neck that Dev
almost
enjoyed her mother trying to take over and fix everything—it was like being ten again . . . and she knew she'd only be able to handle it for a little while before it started to bug her.

“The tea is in the—”

“I know,” her mother said with a smile, bustling over to the other side of the kitchen, where she opened a cabinet door to reveal a whole shelf full of tea tins. “You've changed less than you think.”

Her mother winked at her.

“Now sit, sit and tell me what's happened.”

Dev did as her mother asked, pulling out one of the spindle-backed chairs and taking a seat at the kitchen table.

“Lucretia's memento mori,” Dev began, her hands busily pulling at a loose string in the tablecloth as her mother filled the kettle. “Well, it didn't start there, but it's where I found the letter . . .”

Dev pushed back her chair, careful not to scrape the wood floor as she stood up. She left her mother pulling teacups from the shelf and went into the living room. Dev retrieved a brown envelope from inside the antique armoire where she kept her good china and her grandmother's silver service, careful with its handling. She worried that too much jostling would damage its fragile contents. She carried the envelope back into the kitchen and set it on the table.

“It's from Lucretia. Addressed to me and written so long ago it boggles my mind.”

Her mother stopped what she was doing and turned to look at Dev, brow wrinkled with concern.

“Why didn't you tell me about this sooner?” she asked—not angry, exactly, but definitely unnerved. Now Dev really
did
feel ten again, but with the caveat that this time she was a kid who'd done something bad and was about to get punished for it.

“I'm telling you now,” Dev said, shrugging as she retook her seat. “The letter concerns a tarot spread—”

Her mother held up a hand for Dev to stop speaking, then crossed the kitchen and knelt down beside her carpetbag. She unzipped it, digging through a mound of clothing and toiletries before she spied what she was looking for. She lifted up a plastic Ziploc bag and held it aloft.

“Here,” she said, handing the plastic baggie to Dev before climbing back to her feet. “Open it.”

Dev did as she was told and pulled out a rectangular object wrapped in paper towels. As she unwrapped it, the kettle whistled and her mother turned off the eye of the stove and began to fill the teacups.

“I found the Russian tea,” her mother said, spooning the sweet tea into the hot water. “Hope that's okay?”

Dev nodded, but she was hardly paying attention to her mother's words. Inside of the nest of paper towels was a slim stack of tarot cards. She began to lay the cards out on the tabletop, her hand shaking:

The World

The Magician

The Hierophant

The Devil

The Fool

It was Lucretia's spread. The one referenced in the aged and crumbling letter Dev had found hidden inside the frame of Lucretia's memento mori.

“Why . . . ?” Dev asked in wonderment.

It seemed like only hours since she'd pulled these very cards for Eleanora—it was hard to remember that those “hours” were
actually many days ago and that Eleanora was dead now. She didn't want to hate the spread laid out on her table like a portent of death. She tried not to blame the cards for everything that had happened. They were only the harbinger of evil, not the evil itself.

Her mother set one of the teacups down in front of Dev and then took the chair opposite her.

“They've cropped up over and over again these last few weeks,” her mother said, frowning as she lifted the teacup to her lips and found the liquid too hot to sip. “And it's not just me. Darrah, too.”

Darrah was only eighteen months younger than Dev, so their parents had always called them the Irish Twins. She and Dev emailed frequently, but Darrah hadn't said a word to her about any of this.

“She never mentioned anything to me,” Dev heard herself say, the defensive tone of her voice making her sound childish and petty.

“I don't think either of us realized the significance until you called—and Daphne and Delilah don't ply the trade, so they wouldn't have known one way or the other.”

Dev realized that this was probably the case—the Montrose women were notorious for focusing on the positives and ignoring the negatives. Plus her mother was right: Delilah and Daphne were completely out of the loop.

Delilah led an itinerant lifestyle that seemed at odds with Dev's life, but at least she still believed that magic existed and being a Montrose woman meant you came from a magical heritage. Daphne, on the other hand, was willfully ignorant of this fact.

By far the most conventional of the sisters, Daphne had moved to Chicago and married a wealthy pediatrician. She loved playing society wife and mixing with the Windy City's movers and shakers, but she'd really found her bliss by working
with charitable organizations across the city. Not just sitting on their boards, but going out into the city and actually getting her hands dirty. Dev admired Daphne greatly, but she didn't appreciate how her younger sister pooh-poohed their family's facility with the cards.

“Does the coven have any idea what it might mean?” Melisande asked, finally taking a sip of her tea. “Because I have some thoughts.”

“Like?” Dev asked.

“The cards are both literal and not literal in this instance,” Melisande said. “The World isn't just the human one, but ours . . . the world of the covens.”

Dev nodded.

“And maybe it's even more than that . . . once upon a time, I knew someone from another world. It was similar to ours, but with marked differences.”

Melisande stopped speaking, her eyes far away.

“But that was a long time ago. As for The Fool . . . this person is blinded by the sun, unable to see the truth right in front of them.”

“A literal ‘person'?” Dev asked.

“Yes, a real person. And they think they're doing the right thing,” Melisande said. “But they're being used.”