Sebastien said, “I called Meg’s son, and he said Meg had gone. But you know she’s gone before.” Gaspard clambered out the other side and Raoul followed. Raoul tugged on the padlock at the gate and it held firm, flakes of rust falling away at his touch.
“And the mine?” Gabriel stared at the locked gates. The rusted padlocks appeared as though they had been there decades. He bit back a sneer of disgust. They probably had been there for exactly that long. His gaze followed the chain-link fence as far as he could see. There were no breaks in it, and the razor wire at the top was still there to prevent the casual trespasser and protect the liability of the property owner.
“No one in there now,” said Sebastien firmly. “Although some geology students wanted to go there last month. Said they’d bring scuba gear for the flooded shafts. Hee-hee-hee.” Gaspard and Raoul remained silent. Each slowly looked around them as if searching for Anna and Meg, but neither was there. “But we’ll search it if we have to.”
“The back gate near the conja woman’s home was open,” said Raoul. “The lock had been pried away, missing, non? I would have thought it was hunters wanting on top of the bluff looking for squirrel or rabbits. We looked. But the mine, she is closed up tight. The mamselle, she could not be inside. It is tight like a drum.”
“Dieu, Sebastien. Was it ever like this for any of the children? Do they lose their minds while getting used to the gifts?” Gabriel ran an exasperated hand through his black hair. Anna’s vision of the mine had seemed so clear to him, so lifelike. But then so had some of her previous thoughts; someone chased her down a blackened trail, which had only been him concerned for her well-being, and dead women hanging in the back of a truck like butchered meat, which had been the ponderings of a psychotic.
Sebastien sighed. “Do you remember what it was like for you as a boy teetering on the edge of adulthood, Gabriel?”
“I remember the thoughts running through my head at a thousand miles an hour,” Gabriel said. “I thought that I could never turn it all off, and it would drive me insane.”
“Oui. Like that exactly. And the dreams? Did you have the dreams?”
Gaspard rumbled, “Dreams of death. Dreams of flying like the hawk above us. Dreams that we could understand each man’s innermost desires. So real.”
“At eleven, I was so certain of a young mamselle’s love I went to her father to ask permission to marry her,” added Raoul. “But it was all in my head.”
“And we were but les petits. Little children unsure of our gifts, unsure what was real and what was a trick of the mind.” Sebastien turned to the gate once more. “Anna never had that period of learning where she had only to ask an elder for guidance. She had only herself, and who can say what she conjured in her mind. She will adjust or…”
“Or what?” Gabriel’s voice was fierce.
Sebastien shrugged. “She will adjust.”
“You’ll look around the mine area?” said Gabriel. He didn’t want to think of what would happen to Anna if she couldn’t make the adjustment to the family. It was incomprehensible. “I will check the roads near the bluff and perhaps see if she went back to the garage.”
“Oui,” agreed Sebastien. “We will keep looking for her. Just to make sure she hasn’t hurt herself.” He hesitated before adding, “There are sinkholes near here, like the one which took her mother, treacherous quicksand. We must be quick.”
* * *
Gabriel was as tired as a dog after chasing a dozen rabbits and not catching a single one. He had searched every place he could think to look. He had waited at the garage for an hour. Finding her door unlocked, he looked in her apartment and saw that her possessions were still there. In fact there was even money under the Bible. The fact that the Bible she had spoken of as a prized possession was still there made him both sigh with relief and break out in a cold sweat.
He opened the old book and saw that the birth certificate she’d mentioned was still tucked away in the back, hidden under the binding where it had been placed years ago. She hadn’t lied to him. On the yellowed form, there was her name and the name of her mother, and that it was issued in Baton Rouge, twenty-four years before. Anais Tuelle. Arette Tuelle. Anna.
He opened his thoughts up and could find nothing. A void of blankness answered him. It was as if she were unconscious or dead.
“Not dead,” he snarled suddenly and threw the Bible down on her nightstand. Gabriel looked down and saw that his grandmother’s quilt was carefully spread across her narrow twin bed, all creases smoothed away, shown to its best advantage. This was the same quilt he’d so carefully wrapped her in when he’d brought her inside his house.
Gabriel touched the quilt and almost brought up a corner to his nose, hoping to catch the faint scent that was so uniquely Anna’s. Sunshine and woman altogether in one package. But that very moment he caught something else. A sigh of a thought that told him she was thinking of him. Gabriel?
Anna? Where are you?
For a single instant they connected; she allowed him back inside her head. Gabriel closed his eyes, and he knew where she was.
* * *
Stumbling down the side of the road, Anna had been positive that she didn’t want to return to the little apartment above the garage. She was unsure of her safety. They, whoever they were, knew who she was, and they knew where she would be. What was the saying? Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after me. Time to trust someone. But who?
She suddenly knew who it would be, who it had to be. Because that one person had sworn to her that they would never hurt her, that they couldn’t hurt her. He had thought, It would be like stabbing myself with a machete if I did that. Gabriel?
* * *
Anna was in Gabriel’s bed. Phideaux was stretched out along her length keeping her warm, his cinnamon head resting on her thigh, his brown eyes studying his master without moving so much as a muscle.
Gabriel stood above her, watching her. Not surprised to find Anna in his house, he was, however, shocked to find her asleep in his bed. One of her arms rested behind her head, the other across Phideaux’s body. She had a long scrape across her temple that had oozed blood down past her eye and a bit of dried blood at the corner of her mouth. Black rings of exhaustion circled her eyes, and her hair was wild.
But still beautiful, he thought, tilting his head to examine her more thoroughly. Her eyes twitched in REM sleep as she dreamed about something that he couldn’t quite understand. Dark dreams. Blackness shifting on blackness. Confused. Tortured?
Gabriel went to get a warm washcloth to wipe the blood away from her face, but first he stopped and called Aurore on the telephone. She would tell Sebastien that Anna was found and safe, to stop the men from searching. Gabriel knew that it was odd using the convenience, but he was tired of mental theatrics. Aurore spoke to him perfunctorily and was cordial, enquiring about Anna’s health.
“I don’t know. She’s asleep. She looks…tired.” Gabriel looked over his shoulder in the direction of the bedroom as if he expected to see her standing there listening to his conversation. “I think she’s going through the same kind of changes we all did as adolescents.”
“Pauvre p’tite. I will pray for her and light a candle.”
* * *
Anna woke up in Gabriel’s bed. Again. Same dark wooded sleigh bed. Same ceiling fan. The curtains on the window were shut as they had been before. However, the old fashioned quilt was missing, replaced by a newer blue one with appliqué stars and crescent moons made of reds and oranges. The old quilt’s gone because it’s on my bed in the little room above the garage, she thought. I kind of stole it.
There were a few other things different. Phideaux the spaniel was spread out across her shins taking advantage of bodily warmth. She felt like her body had been taxed to its limits, her lungs, like they had been severely tested, were sore in her chest. And Gabriel was sleeping in the chair beside the bed, his stockinged feet propped on the bed beside her legs and the dog.
>
Anna didn’t move. She looked to one side and saw that Gabriel was lightly grasping her wrist. Dressed in jeans and a plain white shirt, he sat in a simple oak armchair that was tilted slightly backward. One hand was on her wrist, the other hand lay on his thigh. His chin rested on his chest and his eyes were shut.
She stared at him for a long time. Anna hadn’t had the opportunity to look at Gabriel without being noticed herself. He had a five o’clock shadow, and she knew he had sat beside her bed all night long. She didn’t know what time she had walked in through an unlocked front door with Phideaux greeting her happily, but according to the way the sunlight was slipping around the edges of the curtains, it was the better part of the morning she had slept through.
But she felt stiff, aching as though she had run a race. I did run a race. I won. But Meg was gone. Missing or dead. Deep inside Anna knew which one, or she wouldn’t have crawled into Gabriel’s bed. She had known when Meg had sent her last thoughts out. Graveyard. Anna? Beware, Anna. Beware. Those were the thoughts Anna received before Meg had died.
Anna stared at Gabriel’s down-turned head, watched his chest rise and fall. He’s going to say it’s my imagination. Then where’s Meg?
Gone. His eyes were abruptly open. Gold eyes looked sleepily at Anna. Her son says gone. A troublemaker that one. She played on your insecurities, Anna. On the state of adjustment that you’re going through.
Gabriel sat up, and the front two legs of the chair loudly hit the floor. He drew his feet off the bed, and Phideaux moaned with canine protest. “She knows about us.” He cursed in French. “The whole world knows about us. Except you.”
“She was never in the mine?” Anna brought her hand to her face and felt the scrape left there, evidence to herself that she had tripped over a rail and fallen. The scrape had a Band Aid on it. “I heard her. It was so clear. She was dying!”
Gabriel’s thumb caressed the pulse in Anna’s wrist. “She has played these tricks before. She doesn’t like me much. I’ve never respected her the way she wished to be respected. It’s her petty way of revenge.” He sighed. “The family, we are only human.”
“Humans with a little extra,” Anna said bitterly.
“It’s true, we have the gifts, but we have all of man’s frailties. All are present and accounted for, Anna. But there is goodness among us. We trust in each other. We count on each other to hold us all together as a group, as a family.”
“You have secrets,” she said. His thumb burned along her flesh. She had an urge to slide her wrist up so that she could touch his fingers with her own, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.
Gabriel sat forward and took her hand in his. He examined her fingers, pulled them apart and looked at them. His thumb touched the marks left by the handcuffs. “All of us have secrets,” he said finally. “I told you our gifts are strongest between family members and ones who…love each other.”
Anna’s mouth opened and then shut again.
“We’re not related to each other, Anna,” he said. A faint blush stained his cheeks.
Her brow furrowed. “Are you trying to tell me that you love me? Gabriel, you don’t even know me.”
One of his hands shot out and captured her other hand. He pulled it around so they could both see the marks left by the man who had slammed a hood of a car across her fingers. “He wanted your job to go to another person,” Gabriel said firmly. The lines on his forehead creased as he concentrated. “I thought he might be your boyfriend, and I was jealous. I felt your pain as if it were my own.” He held up his right hand and showed her his palm where three stitches closed the wound there left by a lure. “Just like you felt my pain. If you were to die, I think that I might die too.”
“Gabriel?” she said falteringly.
He went on as though she hadn’t spoken. “You hit him with something. A wrench? I laughed because you were so alive with your outrage. I laughed, and then I was angry as well because you hadn’t come to me yet.” He paused. His fingers stroked hers. Heat flashed through her body, streaking like lightning, pulling at the depths of her soul. “It’s been known to happen this way sometimes. Pairs come together as if assigned by le bon Dieu Himself. Like Lisette and Varden, they were meant for each other. But each grew up knowing that the other was there and would be there for them as long as they lived. Sometimes these pairs happen to people we think are the least matched couples.” His fingers tightened on hers for a moment. “You think I want a woman who knows almost nothing of our culture, who I believed waited deliberately to taunt me?” Gabriel’s eyes rose to Anna’s. Gold fire blazed there. She froze.
Inside she received a clear statement of the remainder of what he was thinking, and she finished it for him, the words he couldn’t bring himself to say to her. “A woman whose imagination might be driving her mad?”
“Not your imagination, Anna,” he said sadly. “It’s only that you’re not used to the veiled eyes. And Meg didn’t help with her little trick.”
Anna slowly sat up, pulling her hands out of Gabriel’s and using them to lever herself upward. With a little blush, she realized she was wearing only her T-shirt and panties. Gabriel shrugged not very apologetically. “Your pants were filthy, ripped and torn, caked with mud, and your shoes looked like you walked through the bayou. I left the shirt and underwear. I could have taken everything off.”
“And you slept in the chair beside the bed like a gentleman.” Anna mocked.
“I can help you, Anna.” Gabriel ignored the tone and gritted out the offer.
“Help me?”
“Your father won’t appear to aid you. He won’t want people to know that he slept with a married woman, got that woman with child. He won’t come forward. But perhaps you’ll be able to identify him in time. Remember what I said.”
“The gift is strongest between relatives and loved ones,” she repeated.
“Oui. I hear my mother now and again. But Camille and I can have a conversation between each other a hundred miles away from each other. No other has that ability with me, except…”
“Except me. You heard me hundreds of miles away,” Anna said slowly. “I thought I was anxious over the trip. Fatigued with worry. I thought…”
Gabriel took a deep breath. He closed his eyes. “I felt you. Just like I feel you now. Your heart is racing. You want to believe. Oh Dieu, you want to believe that I’m telling the truth but you’re scared. Just a little girl inside who believes that no one will ever want her.”
Anna was shaken. He was there inside her, and she couldn’t do anything to prevent it. More heat sourced through her, hardening her nipples to insistent nubs and causing a vivid awareness to warm the place between her thighs. The things that Gabriel wanted to do to her were lingering on the cusp of her thoughts, visions of him licking her, suckling her breasts, stroking the flesh of her thighs, and finding the moist warmth that was making her uncomfortable. She didn’t want to think of it. So she said rapidly, “And you think that eventually I’ll know who my father is?”
“Changing the subject won’t make it any easier, chère. But yes, you’ll know who your father is. You’ll know exactly what you wish.”
“Meg said I was stronger than most. That some of the family, the elders, are afraid of me. Was she lying then, too?”
Gabriel’s eyes opened. Slowly he reached out and took her hand again. “No, she wasn’t lying about that. You are stronger than most. Your gifts are uncertain. You seem to be able to hear almost anyone within a certain range. It makes them uneasy because yours is so powerful but unchecked.”
“You really think I’m so selfish. That I kept away because I wanted to tease you?” Anna’s voice revealed her insecurity.
“I thought you were one of the family,” Gabriel admitted. “I thought you were something else. I was wrong. That’s why I was so angry with you that day.”
The day you grabbed me after I woke up. Anna couldn’t prevent the answer in her mind from veering outward.
Yes. You thought we were related. Instead we are…connected. Tied to each other. But I can see the good in you. You help my nephews without want. You don’t complain, not even in the depths of your mind. You defend your good friend Jane no matter what we say about outsiders. You accept your lot and keep as positive as you can. In spite of everything that’s thrown at you, you endure. You’re strong and intelligent and you can make your way through this obstacle too. Then it came unbidden to her. Gabriel also thought her beautiful. It lingered behind his eyes the curve of her lips, the way she walked so defiantly, the sweet smell that endured well after she had gone.
You…like me.
Gabriel couldn’t stop the snort of amusement at the sudden mental image that had escaped from Anna. He half shrugged in a purely masculine manner. “Yes, I really, really like you.”
“And the mine?”
“The mine?” His voice became instantly serious again.
“Was what I saw in the mine my imagination?”
“What did you see?”
“Something large, black, moving in the darkness.”
Anna. Let me help you. His thoughts were earnest, demanding. You couldn’t have been in the mine. It was locked.
She wanted to argue with him. Pictures in her head raced; shapes moving, the sound of her ragged breathing, and the glow of the salt under the earth in the single yellow light of the headlamp. But there was doubt in Anna’s head. After sleeping the night through and listening to Gabriel’s explanation about Meg, she felt uncertain. Everything from the night before was a distant blur of frantic energy. How can you help me?
Be inside my mind, Anna. Let me show you how I feel. What is real. What is not. Never letting go of her hand, Gabriel slowly stood up and leaned toward her. One of his hands cupped her face and a thumb ran across her lips. Come inside me. Know what I already know. Let me inside you.
Anna wrapped an arm around his neck and their lips met. Gently he kissed her and tried to prevent himself from crowding her consciousness. With growing trust she allowed herself into his hands and into his mind.
You do. You really do, she thought with amazement after long moments.