I missed his voice. The sight of him. The smel of him.
And probably because of that, I was stuck in a cycle that kept me dreaming about Ethan - watching him die over and over again. My grief had become a hol ow I couldn't climb out of.
When my heart slowed, I sat up again and wiped the tears from my face with a shirtsleey t a shirve. I grabbed the phone from the nightstand and dialed up the one person who could calm me down.
"Crap on toast," Mal ory answered over the resounding bass of a man's voice. "I'm on a study break - Catcher's naked and Barry White's on the stereo. Do you know how rarely I get study breaks?"
Mal ory was a belatedly identified sorceress in training.
She had just finished her apprenticeship with a cute boy-next-door type named Simon and had been prepping for her "finals" for weeks. Simon had seemed okay in the five minutes I'd been in the same room with him, but Catcher was definitely not a fan. That probably had something to do with the fact that Simon was a member of the Union of Amalgamated Sorcerers and Spel casters (euphemistical y cal ed "the Order"), an organization that had kicked Catcher off its rol s.
Her voice was testy, and I knew she was super stressed this week, but I needed her, so I pushed on. "I had another dream."
There was a moment of silence before she yel ed out,
"Five minutes, Catch."
I heard grumbling, and then the room went silent.
"How many is this?" she asked.
"Six. I've had two this week."
"What do you remember?"
Mal quizzed me every time I had a dream - her morbid curiosity and love of the occult combining into a post diem interrogation. I obliged and gave her the details.
"Mostly just the end, as per usual. Ethan was dressed like an old-school warrior. There was this storm moving in, and he was trying to warn me, but I think he was speaking Swedish."
"Swedish? Why in God's name would he be speaking Swedish? And how would you know what Swedish sounds like?"
"He was from Sweden. Original y, I mean. And I have no idea. Interwebs, probably. Anyway, he was trying to get me to move toward the storm. I was trying to run away from it."
"Sounds like the sensible thing to do. Then what?"
"The storm hit. I lost sight of him, and woke up when he was cal ing my name."
"Wel , the symbolism's pretty obvious," she said. "You're with Ethan, and then you're separated by some sort of calamity. Pretty much the real life scenario."
I made a vague sound of agreement and pul ed my legs under me. "That's true, I guess."
"Of course it is. On the other hand, dreaming is never just dreaming. There's always something more going on. The wanderings of the mind. The escapades of the soul. I've said it before and I'l say it again - you and Ethan had some kind of connection, Mer. Not exactly a healthy connection, but a connection nonetheless."
"So, what, I'm visiting his ghost in my dreams?"
She laughed mirthlessly. "Would you put it past Darth Sul ivan to figure out a way to haunt you postmortem? He's probably holding staff meetings in the afterworld. Offering up performance evaluations. Issuing dictates."
"Those were the kinds of things he loved."
Mal got quiet for a second. "Look," she said. "Maybe we're thinking about this the wrong way. I mean - we're talking about what it means and how often it's happening.
But you've cal ed me, what, half a dozen times about these thontout theings? Maybe we should start talking about how to make them stop."
I wasn't sure from the tone of her voice whether she was expressing concern about my mental state - or irritation that I'd been sharing it with her. I gave her a pass on the snark since she was stressed, but promised myself a good debriefing when it was al over.
As for her plan, I wasn't exactly thril ed about it. Pathetic as it sounded, at least in my dreams Ethan was alive. He was real. I had no pictures of him, and few mementos. Even my waking memories of him were fuzzy - each recol ection seemed to dul the lines of his face. It was as if he were a faint star on the horizon - attempting to focus on the image only blurred it further.
But in my dreams . . . he was always there, always clear.
"I don't think there's any reason to do that."
"There is if your dreams become a substitute for real life."
That stung, but I took her point. "They won't. These aren't those kind of dreams. It's just - they make me feel closer to him." At the cost, of course, of having sweaty night terrors.
"Wel , if it happens again, you'l have to talk to Catcher instead. Exams are starting."
"Now?" I asked her. "I thought you stil had a week to go."
"Simon wanted to add 'an element of the unexpected,' "
Mal ory said, and I could al but hear the air quotes in her voice. "The testing goes in phases. He'l put me out into some situation; I have to fix it. I'l go home and make something in my chemistry lab, and then I'm back on the streets for round two. He'l ask me questions about the Keys, and I use the Keys to fix the problem. Rinse. Repeat.
It's gonna be a whole, big thing."
The Keys were the four divisions of magic, which sorcerers had visualized by cutting a circle into four quadrants. It was apparently so important to sorcerers that Catcher'd had the four Keys inked onto his stomach.
"Wel , if you can't be available at my beck and cal ," I said, trying to lighten the mood, "do you think Catcher would wear a blue wig in the meantime?"
Mal ory's previously blond hair was now a notoriously bright shade of blue. It was straight and reached a couple of inches below her shoulders.
"Probably not. But you could always threaten to have his cable disconnected. That's how I got the kitchen cabinets painted."
"How is Mr. Chick Flick?"
"Infinitely happier not knowing you referred to him as that."
Be that as it may, Catcher was addicted. If a made-for-television movie featured a once-downtrodden lady doin' it for herself, he was in. It was an odd fixation for a gruff, muscular sorcerer with a penchant for swordcraft and sarcasm, but Mal ory tolerated it, and I suppose that was al that real y mattered.
"I cal 'em like I see 'em. Wanna schedule a dinner break? Maybe sushi?"
"Breaks aren't real y on my agenda right now. I have a lot to focus on. But you might think about not hogging down snack cakes right before bedtime."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Liar," she accused, but I was saved the necessity of lying any further. My Cadogan House beeper - a guard necessitya guardessity - al but buzzed off my nightstand. I leaned over and snatched it up. OPS ROOM, it read.