Between Worlds (Pendant Series Book 3) (13 page)

“No,” I moaned.

She persisted to thrust me into a truth that I never would accept. “No one else was in there except for you and Ray.”

After shuffling through her stack of papers, she let out a long, exasperated sigh. “The good news for you, Sidney, is that we do have a history of domestic violence here. I would feel comfortable diagnosing you with post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s a condition typical for battered women.”

The room was spinning and I felt as if I was going to vomit. “I don’t understand. Why would you need to say that?”

A look of disbelief washed across her face. “So that you wouldn’t be injected with a lethal dose of potassium chloride.”

She shut her manila folder and began to collect her belongings. Before departing, she gave it one last shot. “I do believe that you killed your boyfriend, but not with malicious intent. I believe something traumatic happened inside that mausoleum and you acted in self-defense. There were tabloid reports that said you declined Ray’s proposal of marriage the night before. Your best friend also reported a fight in which Ray punched a hole in your bedroom wall. You also suffered yet another injury to your head. Perhaps he became physical with you again and this time you defended yourself.”

I shook my head in disagreement to her theory, “No. I saw what happened. That’s not it.”

She scooted her chair back and proceeded to stand up, attempting to reason with me again. “The human brain has a profound way of blocking traumatic experiences from our memories.”

“I didn’t kill Ray out of self-defense. I told you already that Adrian killed him! Why won’t anyone believe me?” I shouted out as the doctor turned and headed toward the exit.

Exasperated, I draped my head across the cool metal table and concentrated on relaxing my breathing. Then I heard the metal chair scoot back, I looked up and saw that Detective Albright had come back for Round Three.

The day just continued to get better and better.

Chapter 18

Nightmare

It appeared Detective Albright had brought goodies with him this time. The first surprise almost made up for his earlier mistreatment to me as he handed me a delectably smelling double cheeseburger from In-N-Out.

I inhaled it.

The next two surprises were well-defined. I had no idea they were coming.

He placed my black laptop computer onto the table and then rested my mother’s journal on top of it.

“That’s my mother’s journal! How did you get it from Chrissy?” I asked.

If I was gracious for the cheeseburger I was doubly grateful for the detective’s consideration of bringing my mother’s personal journal to me. I had been desperate to read it and now it seemed I had finally been given a chance to do just that.

I just didn’t see the connection between that and my laptop. I wasn’t even sure the guards would allow me to keep it. Wouldn’t that fall under the category of contraband?

Then the detective clued me in. “Samael is a rather uncommon name, wouldn’t you agree?”

I slowly, very cautiously wiped my mouth with the napkin as my mind was reeling, trying to figure out how the detective knew that name.

I guess that’s how the laptop came into the picture. He must have read my dream entries.

“So?” I answered.

“Your friend Chrissy explained to me that you haven’t yet had a chance to go through your mother’s journal.”

I nodded in agreement. “That’s correct. I was hoping you could leave that with me tonight so that would be possible.”

Finally reading it would be a pyrrhic victory at this point. It didn’t really matter now. It probably could have helped me back while I was still in the mausoleum, maybe even before. But now, it was going to take much more than my dead mother’s thoughts scribbled down in a book to get me out of this mess.

The detective gripped the journal in his hand, making no sign of releasing it into my care. “I’ve gotten a chance to browse through it.”

Now he set down the journal and pointed to my laptop. “I’ve also had the chance to read some of your documents that had been saved to your computer. It’s a pretty big coincidence that both you and your mother wrote about a man named Samael. Wouldn’t you agree?”

I placed my hands on top of my forehead and tore my fingers through my hair in frustration; another one of Adrian’s traits I must have picked up along the way to losing my mind.

Didn’t Lilly mention my mother back in the mausoleum? Something about my mother wearing the
same
emerald pendant? Well, if Adrian’s story was true then I guess it would make sense. My mom was cursed with the similar absurdity that surrounded me now. All because of that damn necklace.

Then a very unsettling thought hit me; did Adrian know my mother? Did he have a relationship with her?

No way.

Adrian loved me.
I’m
Eve, not my mother. He loves me and only me.

My mother must have just dreamt about Samael and Eve. The same as I did in the beginning. I doubt she ever met him in real life.

As I was processing all of this conflict in my mind, Albright laid another bomb on me. He tossed the familiar manila envelope onto the metal table. It was the same envelope that Dr. Scott had brought with her during our visits.

It was my personal file. She must have given it to him on her way out. That only proved my theory that the two were obviously working together.

Against me.

“Dr. Scott was able to do me a favor and dig up some old medical records on your mother.”

He gripped a sheet of paper and laid it in front of me. “She did not suffer from post-partum depression as you were originally told.”

After hearing that sentence a great weight was lifted off my shoulders.

My mother didn’t suffer from post-partum depression?

All this time, I secretly harbored the guilt of killing my mother. Post-partum comes to mothers after child bearing. I believed that my birth was what caused her mental stability to spiral out of control which ultimately caused her to take her own life.

Now Detective Albright was sitting across from me telling me that everything I had ever known about my mother was a lie.

I asked him, “Well, if she didn’t suffer from depression, then why did she kill herself?”

“Your mother’s condition was much more serious than depression after childbirth.” He took a deep breath. “Isabel Sinclair suffered from schizophrenia.”

What? My mother was a lunatic. No freaking way.

The detective folded his hands and placed them in his lap as he spoke in a softer tone, “It’s a hereditary disease, Sidney, and the symptoms typically do not begin to show until you reach young adulthood.”

What was he implying here?

The detective continued his babbling but now the ringing in my ears began to go off as his voice faded into the background. Detective Albright was laying out too much information for me to process. This couldn’t be true.

First my mom was writing about Samael, which meant she had the same dreams as I, then she turned out to be a schizo and now Dr. Scott and Detective Albright believe that I have fallen into her genetic steps?

This was too much.

Maybe Adrian’s version of things would be easier to handle after all.

If my mother had experienced the same dreams as me, then they really must have been real. That gave me a comforting thought.

I can’t be crazy.

But now Albright was suggesting that Dr. Scott prescribe some anti-psychotic medication. “Your visions of Adrian will be suppressed and you will finally begin to see clearly again. You can start to accept the truth of what you’ve done and we can begin to round up the legal team that you will need to assist you in your trial.”

I jumped out of my chair and shouted at the unkempt detective, “I’m not crazy. My mother wasn’t crazy either! Just because we could see things that your simple mind can’t understand doesn’t make us crazy. Samael
is
real. Our dreams were real and Ray’s not dead. You’re just too stupid to see that there are other worlds than the one we live in.”

Now I felt a set of rough hands sink into my rib cage as Gonzalez appeared out of nowhere and snatched me into his grasp. “Let go of me,” I shrieked.

But as I began to fight him I only succeeded in getting swallowed up in his blubber. It was as if I was being attacked by Humphrey the Whale.

Detective Albright sat there assimilating all his “evidence,” and then stood up.

“I’m not crazy. You know I’m not!” I argued.

Now Gonzalez was dragging me back toward my cell. I watched wild-eyed and helpless as the detective shrank smaller and smaller, watching the big ape drag me out of his sight.

“Girl, you are the definition of crazy. You sliced your boyfriend up and you can’t even remember doing it,” the intrusive guard said to me as he opened the gates to my cell and threw me in.

I landed on my stomach, feeling the rough floor beneath me, but I didn’t bother to get up. Instead I just laid my flushed face onto the cold cement, strangely feeling like Samael must have felt after his father told him his plan to separate him from Eve.

Desperate.

I closed my eyes and begged sleep to come and take me away.

Chapter 19

All Along the Watchtower

The night was halfway through when he gently shook me awake.

I gasped at the sight of him and realized immediately I was both terrified and relieved at the same time. Terrified because the last time I was with him I watched helplessly as he murdered two people in cold blood.

I was relieved because he didn’t abandon me like I had initially thought. He had come back for me. He was going to fix this.

I tightly wrapped the thin blanket around myself and whispered, “Adrian, where the hell have you been?”

He shrugged his shoulders and casually answered, “Around.”

He remained kneeling in front of my bed wearing that familiar leather jacket and dark denim jeans. I waited for him to elaborate but he remained silent and detached as he stared at me.

I sat up in the bed and wrapped the blanket even tighter around my shoulders to keep my body from shivering. “Around town? Because so far, everyone I’ve spoken to seems to believe you’re a ghost that I’ve made up.”

It was cold in my cell but his presence seemed to make it icy. I could see my breath as I spoke to him in hushed whispers. “I need you to get in contact with Chrissy. She can take you to Detective Albright and get this whole mess straightened out.”

Adrian remained still. “I’m not concerned about that right now.”

“What?” I yelled before realizing that my shouting was going to draw attention to ourselves, which brought me to my next question, “How did you get in here?”

He nodded his head toward the cell gate. “Gonzalez let me in.”

I rolled my eyes as I silently thought to myself that Gonzalez must have quite the side business allowing guests to sneak in after visiting hours.

Still leaning in front of my bed, Adrian took my hand and held it tightly in his. I attempted to pull away but he wouldn’t allow it. “You remember, Sidney. I know you refuse to believe it but the dreams are true. Why else would you be drawn to me? Why else would you choose me over Ray?”

Now I found the strength to tear my hand away from his and once I did, I had to resist the urge not to use my newly-freed hand to slap him across his face for the audacity of his claim, “I never chose you over Ray!”

Adrian argued with a smile, “On the contrary. Ray asked you time and again not to see me but you continued to ignore his requests. Then he asked you to marry him and instead of saying yes, you ran straight to me.”

“I
did
say yes to Ray.

He smiled. “
After
staying the night with me.”

Now it felt as if Adrian slapped me with those last words. Slapped me right into silence. I had no clever comeback this time because there was nothing I could say. What he said was true.

Adrian continued to show me the ways of my wrongs. “Then the ultimate choice was laid out in front of you: Ray’s life or mine.”

Adrian shrugged his shoulders casually. “You chose me because you remembered our lives together, and you love me.”

“I chose not to shoot you because I’m not a murderer,” I argued.

“No, you chose it because you love me.”

I laid my head on my thin pillow and put my hands over my head. This whole conversation was pointless. It didn’t matter if I remembered my dreams, my life with Samael, or the fact that I still loved Adrian.

What did any of that matter
now
? My life was pretty much over.

Then I remembered the real issue at hand. “You killed your sister and Ray and now I’m about to go down for it. You also must have done something with Lilly’s body because the cops can’t seem to find it. They believe she’s just another ghost I made up.”

I shook my head in frustration. This time as my body shook, I wasn’t sure if it was due to my anger or the frigid conditions this place was causing me to suffer.

“They think I’m crazy, Adrian.”

Again, my words seemed to have little effect on him. He simply smiled. “They can’t find Lil’s body because they can’t see her. Just like they can’t see me.”

Oh God, I really am crazy.

Adrian’s here with me now, he’s actually come back for me but now he’s saying the same crap as Albright and Scott. I shook my head in denial as I continued to fight for my sanity. “But Ray could see you.”

Then a thought hit me.

It was a question I’d been burning to ask and now I finally had my opportunity. I sat up on my knees and gripped Adrian’s shoulders as I stared at him intently. “You referred to Ray as Adam that night in the mausoleum.”

Adrian shook my hands from his shoulders. “So?”

“So does that mean he’s a part of this too?”

Adrian stood up and began to pace back and forth inside of the cell as his gaze fell to the floor. “I suppose he is. A very small part that’s basically irrelevant to us.”

Realizing Adrian still saw Ray as competition, I began to accept that he would never give me the answers I sought. I sat back against the wall and crossed my arms. “Ray’s irrelevant because you killed him.”

“He’s not dead.”

I jumped up and ran to Adrian and asked him with more excitement than he cared to hear, “He’s not?”

“Ray could see me and my sister because he was part of this too. We are all connected.”

He struggled with the next line, looking as though he really did not want to share the information with me. “Just because Ray’s gone from this world doesn’t mean he’s gone completely.”

I knew it! This was exactly what I was trying to explain to that blockhead detective, but he just wasn’t getting it. I was so happy I could jump for joy. “He’s back in the Garden, isn’t he?”

Adrian cringed at my excitement. But then he creatively constructed his next words to allow me to see how dire the situation could be, “Yes. He and Lil are both back in the Garden.”

“Together?” I asked as I felt a new feeling arise; the feeling of jealousy. All of a sudden I wanted to throw up that double cheeseburger I’d eaten for lunch.

Adrian saw his opening and took full advantage of the situation as he fell back into his familiar role of comforting me. “Don’t be upset, Sidney. When you dream of the Garden are you ever emotionally wrapped up in Adam?”

“No. I’ve never even seen Adam in my dreams.”

Adrian brought his hand to my face and brushed a loose strand of hair back behind my ear. I didn’t flinch as I suspected I might. Instead I closed my eyes and leaned into his warm palm; allowing the heat of his body to sink into my skin. He still felt so good.

“And what about Samael?” he asked. “How do you feel about
him
?”

Without opening my eyes and without feeling the need to separate the two, I answered honestly, “I told you already. I love you in my dreams.”

He gripped the back of my head and pulled me into him.

“Exactly,” he whispered into my ear as he gripped a handful of my hair and sharply inhaled. “That’s how irrelevant Ray will be to us when we go back. You won’t even care if you ever see his face again.” He brushed his lips against my cheek. “You’ll be too busy being happy with me.”

The feeling was a bit unsettling. I couldn’t imagine living in the same world as Ray and not loving him as deeply as I do now. But it was time to finally push my selfish feelings aside and worry about what mattered most.

“But will Ray be okay in this other world? He’s happy and healthy, right?”

Still troubled by my attachment to my dead fiancé, Adrian answered as best as he could, “Ray’s just fine, I promise you.”

He reached over and took my hand, “Now can we worry about us please?”

My heart skipped a beat at his words. He still wanted to be with me. But after everything I knew, how could I agree?

I released his hand and scooted back against the wall. “But you’re Samael,” I reasoned. “You’re evil.”

He flinched and sounded almost offended. “Says who?”

“It’s in your book. You’re the devil.”

Adrian laughed at my outlandish accusations. “Where does it say that?”

Now he was truly making me feel as if I had indeed lost my mind. Of course I had remembered suspecting Adrian to be Satan after reading those lines in the book but now I seemed to be at a loss for proof as he was now demanding it from me.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. It says you’re regarded as both good and evil. That you are defined as an accuser, seducer, and destroyer.”

Adrian didn’t deny it; instead he remained rational. “So how does that translate into me being the devil?”

When asked point-blank, I didn’t have a very good answer. “I guess I just assumed it. If I am to believe that your Father is God then you must be…”

Adrian grew serious again. “The devil is such a person. But it’s not me.”

I knew who the evil one was before Adrian had a chance to elaborate. I had seen him in my dreams and had always known who he was. I just never realized
what
he was.

“Samjaza.” Just saying the name out loud brought shivers down my spine.

He nodded.

I looked into Adrian’s eyes as I attempted to understand all of this. I argued, “But you made a deal with him so that makes you just as terrible.”

Adrian gripped my hands firmly as he stared into my eyes. “So did you.”

I searched my memory, trying to remember what sort of deal Eve must have made with Samjaza, but realized that I hadn’t gotten that far in my dreams. I didn’t know what sort of deal Eve had made. Did she sell her soul to the devil to be with Samael? Or was this just his contract?

Adrian seemed so sure we were going to be able to live happily ever after in the Garden. If that were true, then what price did we pay?

As if on cue, Adrian began, “I’m going back home now.”

I chose to remain ignorant. “To New Jersey?”

He shook his head as his eyes never left my face. “No, not there. My real home, Sidney;
our
home. I want you to come with me.”

How could I go with him? Did he fail to see the three tons of mortar, cement, and the six-inch steel bars that kept me locked in here?

Don’t tell me this guy is Houdini.

Then Adrian pulled something out of his back pocket.

Even in the dark I could still see the red rubies glistening magnificently. It was the dagger I had seen so many times before in my dreams. The same dagger he had used to kill Lilly and Ray.

Immediately, I was filled with terror.

“W-What are you going to do with that?” I stammered.

“Stop asking questions when you already know the answer, Sidney.” Placing the dagger in my hands he said, “I told you before, this is nothing but a dream. You know what you have to do to wake up from this.”

This wasn’t making sense to me. “If you wanted me dead, then why didn’t you just let Lilly finish me off in the mausoleum?” I asked, more than a little confused.

He looked at me in surprise. “I don’t want you dead, Sidney. I want you living the life that was stolen from you, stolen from us.”

Again he held the dagger out toward me.

“In addition to the pendant, Samjaza also enchanted this dagger. Had my sister shot you with that gun you just would have been born into another life.”

He ran his fingers through his dark hair in frustration. “And having no other descendants to pass the necklace to, Eve’s soul would have been lost forever.”

It bothered me that Adrian used
her
name instead of mine. I didn’t understand the internal battle I was having with myself over a few choice words of his. If Eve and I were one and the same, then why did I feel as if I were competing with her for Adrian’s love?

Adrian continued his logic without noticing my struggle. “Whoever’s blood touches this blade is allowed access back into the Garden. All we have to do is plunge it into our bodies and when we awake, we’ll be in Eden.”

His eyes burned bright with passion. They were filled with hope. “We’ll be together, Eve.”

Saying her name was all it took to undo my commitment here. I broke away from his grip. “I’m not Eve!” I screamed. “And this knife; it’s the knife you used to kill Ray.”

I shuddered at the memory.

Adrian remained calm, despite my outburst. “The dagger is the only object that can get you back into the Garden.”

He was not giving up as he slid the dagger across the floor to me. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of my voice, instead I sat in silence, staring at it.

“Life is nothing more than a dream while your soul is sleeping,” he persisted.

After a long silence, I snuck a glance in his direction. Our eyes met and the spark that sent the butterflies fluttering inside me was still there. He was still just as beautiful as before and no matter how much I loathed him, I still loved him.