Stephanie didn’t hesitate.
“I heard her scream. It was intense. I came running just in time to catch her leaping out of bed. She was choking, crying. I thought she was just upset about what happened earlier,” Stephanie explained. “Then I realized it was something more. The crying stopped, the choking continued. She fought me like no mortal has fought me before. I almost couldn’t hold her. It was like she was being strangled by something invisible. She was fighting it and she was losing. Then you called and talked to her, the strangling stopped but she went limp and unresponsive. Honest to God, for a minute, I thought she was dead but I heard her heart beating and her breathing. I put her in bed and she just curled up, eyes open and staring at nothing. I think it’s safe to say she freaked me out!”
Lucien said nothing but he stopped stroking my back, his hand went under my hair and curled warmly around my neck.
“She’s still messed up. We need to call a doctor,” Stephanie announced.
“I’m fine,” I whispered and wished I didn’t.
My voice scared me. It scared me because it sounded like I’d just survived being strangled.
At the sound of my voice, Lucien’s body went solid.
“See!” Stephanie cried.
“Leah, sweetheart, can you look at me?” Lucien’s tone was gentle, his hand moving from my neck to grip my hair and carefully pull my head back.
I nodded, the effort at that simple movement felt like running a race but my eyes caught his.
“Do you remember anything?” he asked and I nodded again.
“All of it.” My voice still sounded painfully abrasive because it was painful and abrasive.
Lucien flinched when I spoke.
“Ow,” I whispered.
His face went hard before he commanded, “No more talking.”
I nodded again. I was happy with that. Way happy.
He let go of my hair but his fingers cupped the back of my head and pressed my face to his throat.
“We need to call a doctor,” Stephanie repeated.
“She’s fine now,” Lucien replied.
“I… do… not… think… so. She sounds like she’s been strangled!”
“Teffie, I’m here. She’s fine.”
The air in the room got thick. I tensed before Stephanie spoke angrily.
“I know pretty much everyone thinks you’re all that, including me most of the time. But as far as I know, you don’t have magical healing powers.”
“Teffie, leave us. Get some sleep,” Lucien ordered.
“You heard her voice!” Stephanie yelled and my body twitched at her anger.
I felt Lucien’s frame turn to stone.
His voice was ominous when he demanded, “Get the f**k out of here, now. You’re upsetting Leah.”
“I –”
“Now!” he barked and I jumped.
She must have left because the next second I was on the bed alone, bereft of Lucien. The second after that I felt his warm, na**d body the length of mine, his arms tight around me, his heavy legs tangled with mine.
I felt the numbness go, my strength and wits returning but the exhaustion stayed heavy upon me.
I melted into his heat and he gathered me closer.
Sleep was coming and I hoped it was the good kind because I needed it. I was battling real and invisible demons and I’d need all the rest I could get to endure.
I was nearly to dreamland when I heard his soft voice make a vow.
“That won’t ever f**king happen again, Leah. You have my promise.”
Tears slid up my throat but silently I swallowed them down and burrowed closer.
He couldn’t promise that. Even though I had no freaking clue what happened, there was one thing I knew through an intuition the source of which escaped me. Coming straight from the core of me, I knew the only way he could make good that promise was never to leave me.
Never.
And that was not going to happen.
I had more than one menace (the gentle one, Lucien) and more than two menaces (the frightening one, personified by Marcello but also Rudolf and Cristiano), now I had three (my own mind, which freaked me out most of all).
I was dead woman walking one way or another.
And I was terrified out of my skull.
* * * * *
“I don’t want Leah to overhear.” Lucien’s voice was low but angry. I shifted out of sleep and my eyes opened, seeing nothing but Lucien’s vacant pillow.
“I’m thinking Leah should be in on this conversation,” Stephanie snapped back.
“Teffie.” Another voice, male, vaguely familiar. Cosmo.
“I don’t understand.” That was Edwina.
“Can we move to the kitchen?” Lucien asked a question which wasn’t a question as much as a politely formed demand.
Silence.
“I just went in there. She’s sleeping. She sleeps very soundly,” Edwina offered in a voice that said she was playing peacemaker.
I guessed Stephanie was digging in and Edwina was hoping she wouldn’t have to repair plaster in the upstairs hallway.
Lucien must have thought that slamming Stephanie into the upstairs wall would likely wake me anyway and probably upset me, so he spoke.
And what he said freaked me out.
“She has a dream. It’s recurring and it’s connected to me. I know this because I hear her words in my head while she’s dreaming.” Lucien’s voice was low, curt and impatient. “I spoke to her mother and these intense dreams have been happening her whole life.”
I was totally freaked about me talking to Lucien’s head when I was dreaming, about what I might have said and about the dream being about him at all considering what that dream did to me, both before my near death experience and during it.
But what he said after that took precedence.
He spoke to my mother?
Now that made me angry.
For the last three weeks I’d been calling all my family, even Aunt Kate. But not Myrna as I had enough of channeling Myrna in daily life, I didn’t want to have to actually speak to her.
Desperate for advice, guidance and the lessons Lucien stopped giving me until last night; I was willing to talk to anyone. I’d even called Aunt Fiona twice.
Problem was, when they answered the phone, and I was suspecting they were avoiding that chore when they saw my name come up on their displays, they were busy.
Busy, busy, busy.
Even Lana, who could talk to a corpse until it reanimated, sat up and told her to shut the hell up.
This hurt.
I mean, I’d never moved away from home and I missed them a lot.