Storm of Visions

  Jacqueline and Caleb, Martha and McKenna, lifted their glasses, and the Chosen Ones followed suit. “To our fallen heroes,” they echoed, and drank.

  “And to the saviors of the world, our newest Chosen. May God bless our righteous endeavors and illuminate the right path.” Irving looked around. “Even if the path leads to darkness. Even if the path leads to death.”

  The Chosen Ones froze with the glasses upraised.

  “I never signed on for this.” Samuel looked around at them critically. Suspiciously.

  To Jacqueline’s surprise, Charisma agreed. “I never wanted to be a hero.”

  Chapter 13

  As the others drifted out, Caleb caught Jacqueline’s hand and held her in place.

  Irving looked up inquiringly. “What can I do for you two?”

  “I forgot to mention—on my trip out tonight, I did see something of interest.” Caleb’s voice was offhand.

  But Jacqueline knew him too well. She read his mood, identified his posture, and recognized that this was important. Her hand convulsively tightened on his.

  “It was probably nothing,” he continued. “It didn’t seem worth reporting to the rest of the group.”

  Irving’s gaze grew sharp. “Yes?”

  “I saw a woman. An older woman, handsome, in her sixties. She was having a drink at one of the bars I visited, and I wouldn’t have noticed her, but her nose had been slit down the middle.”

  Jacqueline sucked in her breath.

  “She’s had work done.” Caleb bent toward Irving. “But my mother told me that years ago in the Mediterranean basin, they would do that to women for infidelity. To see a mutilation like that here and now seems so barbaric that I wondered . . .”

  Irving blinked in wide-eyed confusion. “Poor woman. I can’t imagine who she is.”

  Jacqueline didn’t believe him.

  Neither did Caleb, but he said, “No. I don’t suppose you can. But I thought I’d check.” Turning to Jacqueline, he kissed her fingers, intertwined as they were with his. “Shall we?”

  “No, we shall not.” But he’d hooked her with that last too-casual query to Irving, and she followed him.

  Before they stepped out the door, Caleb stopped and turned. “Irving, I forgot. When I left the bar, I heard a woman’s voice whisper, ‘Give Irving my regards.’ ”

  Irving stared back at Caleb. “You must have imagined it.”

  Caleb bent his head in sardonic agreement, then tugged Jacqueline out the door.

  She went because Caleb had asked a loaded question, and Irving had lied when he answered. “Who was the woman?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But she said something to you?”

  “Without speaking a word or standing close.” He stopped on the stairs and turned to look at Jacqueline. “She smiled at me.”

  Jacqueline contained her amusement. “Caleb, a lot of women smile at you. You’re a man worth smiling at.”

  He stepped down so his head was level with hers, and leaned his forehead against hers. “Thank you. But it was the smile that made me run to the next bar.”

  “She scared you?” Jacqueline asked incredulously.

  “Yes.”

  Jacqueline tried the words again with a different cadence. “She scared you?”

  “I heard her in my head.” His pale blue eyes were troubled. “And that smile . . . like she knew me. All my secrets, all the things I’ve done wrong, all the things I’ve done right. All my plans for the future.”

  “Okay. I understand that.” Jacqueline hunched her shoulders. “That would creep me out, too.”

  He put his arm around her and together they started back up the stairs. “I went to work for Zusane the day I graduated from college. That was nine years ago. I’ve met the Chosen Ones, and I’ve met their adversaries, and I have never had anything like that happen before.”

  She’d never seen him like this. She didn’t think he’d ever been like this. Troubled, she tried to put her half-formed thoughts into words. “I think today marks the end of the Chosen Ones as we knew them. Everything’s different now, and I don’t know what kind of changes we’re facing. But I know I’m frightened, too. I think anyone who knows about the Chosen Ones, and the Others, and the battle between good and evil, would be a fool not to be frightened.”

  “You’re good with a left-handed compliment.” He laughed. “But you’re right. No one would ever call me a fool.”

  “Exactly.”

  The corridor upstairs retained the appearance of a nineteenth-century mansion: wide, tall, and lined with dark oil paintings in ornate gilded frames. The doors that opened off led to lavish, chilly bedrooms heated by registers that puffed and groaned. McKenna had put the women to the right of the stairs, the men to the left, but without hesitation, Caleb headed right.

  Jacqueline stopped. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Caleb stopped. “With you.”

  “How do you know where I’m sleeping?”

  “I took my bag up after dinner.” With a confidence that set her teeth on edge, he said, “I bought you a few things. Underwear. Toothbrush.”

  “That is low.”

  “What?”

  “As if you don’t know. Enticing me with clean underwear!”

  “Are you enticed?”

  Of course she was. “Irving isn’t going to allow this. It’s his house and he has old-fashioned views about a man and a woman sharing a room.”

  Caleb’s face got flat and cold. “Irving doesn’t have a choice. I took on the job of making sure you’re safe, and I intend to do it.”

  “You weren’t worried this afternoon. You left as soon as we arrived.” Wrong! That sounded whiny and far too aware of him.

  “You’re wrong. I was worried. But you were awake and, as I’m well aware, able to protect yourself.”

  She recalled all the ways he’d taught her to fight. And she recalled her struggle—and surrender—in the bathroom in Napa Valley. “Not able enough, apparently,” she said bitterly.

  He smiled, a slow, wanton smile that warmed with memories and shimmered with sexual tension. “If you really want to win, I would bet on you every time.”

  He was saying she’d given in because she wanted him.

  Her fists curled at her sides.

  She hated him. Hated him and wanted him, and cursed herself for the ambiguity.

  “I’m not leaving you alone at night.” He took her gloved fist in his hand. He kissed it. “Resign yourself to that.”

  She turned her back and headed for her room. “You can sleep on the floor.”

  He followed. “You can sleep on the floor.”

  The room was nice, clean, well-tended, with antique furnishings and a girlishly flowered bedspread on a queen-sized bed. The trouble was—the room was small, and when Caleb stepped in, it got smaller. And warmer. Distinctly warmer.

  He shut the door behind him. “You should call your mother.”

  She threw up her arms. “To think I was worried you’d want sex!” Damn. She shouldn’t have said that, either.

  “I do want sex. I always want sex.” He waited a significant beat. “With you. But I’m not going to wrestle with you again. It’s up to you now.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just what I said.” He stripped off his tie. “You should call your mother.”

  He was a remarkable man. He managed to change the subject from sex—the one she thought she least wanted to discuss with him—to the one she wanted even less to discuss. With her hands on her hips, she demanded, “Why? She ran off and abandoned me to this mess.”

  He dug into the bag on the bed and threw a voluminous nightgown at her. “Because she went Dumpster diving for you.”

  “What?”

  “When you were an infant. When she rescued you. She climbed in a Dumpster and found you.”

  Jacqueline let the garment drop at her feet. “You know that? For sure?”

  He faced her full-on. “She ne
ver told you?”

  “No . . .” No one had ever told Jacqueline where she’d come from or how she’d ended up in Zusane’s care. She had just always known she should not ask too many questions about Zusane, or her past, or what she did and why she did it. Mostly, she knew she should be grateful to Zusane for saving her from a fate worse than death.

  Yet every time Jacqueline had wondered who her real parents were and why they had given her up, the color washed out of the world, leaving it sepia-toned like an old photo. Her whole life she had instinctively known that to open her mind to that other world was dangerous . . . and if she did, she could never go back.

  So it seemed safer not to speculate, and she didn’t.

  Now with relentless precision, Caleb filled her in. “I remember the day clearly. My mother and I hadn’t been in this country long, and Zusane was at the house, visiting my mother, asking after her health. All of a sudden, she stood up. Stood up quickly, stiff and straight, and said, ‘I can see her, shining like a pure gold nugget lost in filth.’ ”

  The bottom dropped out of Jacqueline’s stomach. She wanted to cover her ears. But unexpectedly, the sepia tone that hovered on the fringes of her awareness swamped her. She could hear Caleb, but that other reality called her. . . .

  “She walked out. Just walked out.” He rummaged in his bag, and pulled out a shaving kit and a stack of clothes. “My mother sent me after her. Zusane had bodyguards then, too, but she wouldn’t let them come with her. She let me. I was nine years old, and I was the only one with her while she scoured the alleys, ignored the people who shouted at her for poking in their garbage cans and the other people who stared at the crazy lady dressed like a goddess. She kept saying she knew the golden child was there somewhere.”

  Softly Jacqueline said, “It was hot, and I was buried. . . .”

  He swung on her so fast, she stumbled backward into the wall. “You remember,” he said.

  “That’s impossible.” Because she’d been a newborn.

  He watched her, waiting for her to talk. It was a method she’d seen him use to great effect. . . . God knew it worked on her.

  “I remember something, but it can’t be real.” She moved her shoulders uneasily, feeling her way through a series of impressions. “The woman who put me in there . . . I knew her. I knew her scent, her heartbeat. I knew she should hold me close inside, but she held me out away from her, like . . . shit. She kept calling me shit.”

  “You heard her?”

  “I didn’t understand the word, but I knew what she meant.” All her life, Jacqueline had had this buried in her mind. She’d never told anyone, because . . . well, if people knew she had premonitions, they thought she was crazy. And she feared if anyone knew about this, this bizarre fragment of memory, they would put her away forever.

  Yet from the time she was a girl, she could always tell Caleb anything, and she told him now. “This can’t be a real memory.”

  “It was the hottest day of the year.”

  Wrapping her arms around herself, she said, “Funny, because a chill just ran up my spine.”

  Still he scrutinized her.

  Giving herself up to the soft, sad remembrance, Jacqueline said, “I hurt. I was crying, screaming, starving. . . . The woman shook me. Then she threw me. My neck snapped around, but I landed in something soft, and she cursed me again. She wanted to . . . I think she meant to bash my brains out. I remember waving my hand to her as she piled garbage on me. But she didn’t see. She didn’t care. She slammed the lid and she didn’t come back.” As anguish built, her voice faded. “How could anyone hate their baby so much?”

  “Perhaps she was raped. Or suffered from a mental illness. Or perhaps she saw your mark.”

  “And rejected me.” Jacqueline flexed her hand in its glove.

  Caleb went into the bathroom and came out with a glass of water. He wrapped her fingers around it, and helped her lift it to her lips.

  To her surprise, her hand was shaking. The glass rattled against her teeth, but the water wet her dry mouth.

  “What happened then?” he asked.

  In a low voice, she said, “The darkness was bleak. Then white light flashed. It hurt my eyes. It burned my hand. Burned it all the way up my arm to my brain. Into my heart. I screamed and screamed, but stuff kept falling in my mouth. I was choking and it was so hot. . . .” She was sweating, breathing in loud gasps, the memory overlying the reality of this room, of this time.

  Baby could barely whimper now. The dark . . . the heat . . .

  “Do you remember Zusane?” Caleb’s voice sounded far away. “She opened the Dumpster.”

  Baby saw light, smelled fresh air.

  “She climbed right in,” he said.

  “Yes . . .” Baby was covered in filth. Something moved the rubbish around, muttering all the while. Baby tried to call out, but she could barely pant. Hopelessness washed over her. . . . Then something, a hand, touched her head. A voice crooned. The garbage was pushed aside, and Baby blinked at the glittering silhouette of a woman.

  Not the first woman. Not the one who rejected her.

  This woman stroked her face, made soft babbling sounds, picked her up and held her as if she were precious, and although Baby’s consciousness was fading, she thought the woman was crying, too. . . .

  “Jacqueline!” Caleb whispered urgently.

  She blinked at him. “I always knew Zusane saved me. I simply couldn’t believe I remembered. . . . She was so bright, she hurt my eyes.”

  “She was wearing sequins.” Caleb stood close, his arm against the wall by Jacqueline’s head, his body inches from hers, and he anchored her, kept her from drifting back to the place, the smells, the horror. . . .

  “Of course she was.” She laughed a little. “When doesn’t she?” But she knew Zusane never let anything damage one of her precious party gowns, and that she would climb in a Dumpster to rescue Jacqueline . . .

  “Call your mother,” Caleb said.

  Jacqueline snapped back to the present, and to Caleb, with a vengeance. “It’s always about Zusane with you, isn’t it?”

  “No, darling,” he said patiently. “It’s always about Zusane with you.”

  Jacqueline didn’t know what he meant, and she didn’t like his tone anyway. “Okay. I’ll call her. But I have to shower first.” Because she could still smell the garbage on her skin.

  Chapter 14

  Jacqueline stepped out of the bathroom and spread the edges of the voluminous nightgown like wings. “Where did you get this? From your mother?”

  “Yes.” Caleb had shed his jacket and belt and placed the clothes he’d brought into drawers in the dresser.

  “There’s enough material to make all the curtains at Tara.” Not to mention lace and white ribbons galore.

  “She hoped it would fit you.” He glanced at her calves sticking out from beneath the white cotton. “But of course you’re tall. She’s not.”

  He didn’t seem to want to look at her. Because she was in his mother’s nightgown? Because her legs were too long? Because he was mad at her, or mad about her? She hoped it was the latter. She wanted him to suffer. “I’ve never met your mother.”

  He smiled a sort of sloppy, sentimental smile Jacqueline didn’t associate with a hard-ass like Caleb. “She’s lovely.”

  “Why haven’t I met her?” She took a step forward.

  He glanced up sharply. “Do you want to?”

  “I’d like to thank her for . . . the nightgown.” Actually, she wanted to meet the woman who had borne and raised a man like Caleb.

  “When it’s safe, I’ll take you to meet her.” He didn’t show any emotion.

  But Jacqueline thought he was pleased. “What’s she like?”

  “She’s Sicilian down to her bones. She cooks, she cleans and she takes care of her dogs—”

  “Dogs?” Jacqueline sidled closer. “I love dogs.”

  “She has two. One is a retired assistance dog who thinks he’s a lapdog, and one is a Germa
n shepherd- chow who takes orders from Mama. Only from Mama.”

  “You put up with a dog who doesn’t do what you tell him?” Jacqueline couldn’t imagine him putting up with that.

  “Her. Lizzie is my mother’s dog. I don’t get to vote on who, or what, lives in my mother’s house.” Caleb picked up the receiver on the old-fashioned pink princess phone beside the bed. “Besides, Lizzie is very protective of my mama, and when I’m not around, I like to know she’s safe.”