The Awakening (17 page)

She'd felt a few little twinges of jealousy, but then he'd met her eyes each time, rolling his own with impatience. Maybe part of his charm was a certain easy confidence in knowing that he'd go where he wanted to, but being immune, or even unaware, of the extent of his magnetism.

He was staring at her then, a flicker of irritation in his eyes. She realized that he'd strummed a few chords: her opening. She was supposed to be singing.

She turned back to the audience and began the number by rote.

They played through the set, and Finn announced their break. She didn't wait for him to tell her that she had missed a cue. She hurried from the stage, and headed for the bar, suddenly determined that she needed a drink to get through the night.

At the bar, a kid in a skeleton outfit hit on her. She could have managed by herself, and was startled when the boy whipped around because a hand had fallen on his shoulder.

Finn. He towered over the kid. In the black, he seemed a real menace.

She opened her mouth to protest; she moved to set a hand on her husband's chest, to reassure him that she could take care of the boy. There seemed to be such a leashed violence about her husband lately, she realized that she felt like she was walking on eggshells, worried that he would explode.

“Finn—”

“Hey, friend. The lady is my wife.”

Finn spoke softly.

The kid backed off. “Hey, sorry, should have realized . . . I'm outta here!”

As good as his words, he spun around and disappeared into the crowd. “You know, I was okay, I could have handled him.”

Finn leaned against the bar, looking out over the crowd. “Who can tell in this group?” The words should have been light, offhand. There was an underlying grate and menace. He seemed fierce, larger than life, with that same, strange, dangerous appeal.

The thought was shocking to Megan. She took a huge swallow of her beer.

He turned dangerous eyes on her. She felt something like an absurd jungle pleasure. Yes, the beast was hers. A beast indeed, but that was okay, as long as he was her beast.

“Did you order me one?”

“One what?”

“A beer?”

“No, here, take this, I'll get another.”

“Thanks, there's something off on one of the speakers. Hey, Joseph and Morwenna are here. They've ordered food again for after our next set.”

“Great!”

He disappeared. She ordered another beer. She felt as if she were being watched.

She was.

The man in costume who had helped her detangle her hair from the prop monster the night before was at the end of the bar. He lifted a glass to her. She smiled uneasily, lifted the bottle of beer she had just received, and slipped from her bar stool.

People stopped her—none she'd ever recognize again—as she headed back to the stage. She chatted, thanked them, acknowledged their compliments, and hurried back to Finn.

Later, they ate with Morwenna and Joseph. Conversation was casual.

The night came to an end.

They didn't linger. Finn was in a hurry to get back to Huntington House. They found a parking spot with near miraculous ease. She lay down while he hit the shower. She'd meant to take one herself when he came out.

She fell fast asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow.

 

 

He hadn't understood about the nightmare. He had pretended to, but
. . .

She turned, desperate to reach him, to get behind him, because the black-cowled spectators were coming too close, they were grasping at her, trying to touch her
. . .

She felt the breeze, a shadow of darkness. There was grass around her
. . .

“Finn!”

She awakened abruptly, only to find out that all of it hadn't been a dream, or a nightmare.

He was over her, teeth gritted, features strained, body convulsed.

His eyes
. . .

For a moment, it seemed that his eyes gleamed like fire.

She screamed.

A second later, a hand clamped over her mouth. She heard Finn's voice, quite normal, and incredibly annoyed.

“Megan!”

There was a moment in which it didn't matter in the least, in which she lay enshrouded between a world of wakefulness and sleep, lost somewhere between the conscious and real and the tricks of darkness and subconscious.

“Megan!”

He repeated her name. She started; a trembling swept through her. She felt the bed, her husband's form. She knew where she was, exactly, and that once again, she'd experienced a nightmare so real and terrifying that she'd been desperate to wake . . .

To escape.

Shaken, but released from the tentacles of fear the dream had wrapped around her, she gasped out a sigh of relief. She was still trembling. For a moment, he was still with her, at her side, holding her tensely. Thoughts ripped through her mind at lightning speed.

Part of the dream had been grounded in fact. They'd been making love. They were both bathed in a damp sheen of sweat. She was shaking; he was as rigid as a steel pipe.

“I had another awful dream! What a nightmare,” she breathed.

“Well, hold tight,” he muttered irritably. “The nightmare may be just beginning. Fallon could come knocking at the door any second now.”

Finn rose. She needed to curl into him; it seemed that he needed to be far away from her.

The room was dark except for the thin trail of light beaming out from the bathroom. She could see the agility and sleekness of his form as he moved about, going for a robe, impatiently shrugging into it.

He dug through his things, then stepped out on the balcony.

Megan waited several seconds. She saw the flare of his lighter. Finn was resorting to cigarettes frequently now, when he had cut down to smoking only on occasion. She held very still for a minute, trying to recall each phase of the dream, but once she had awakened, it had all slipped away. In the dream, though . . .

Something evil had been after her. It was because she had listened to Andy Markham. She had gone out to the strange “unhallowed” cemetery to meet him, which she never should have done, and she had listened to him again, and had nightmares. A psychologist would sniff at her, and point-blankly explain the reasons for her absurd dreams.

So now Finn was out on the balcony, disgusted with her again, smoking.

She gnawed on her lower lip, feeling a flare of her own temper. It was his fault just as much as her own. She didn't understand what was with him lately. He was so rough . . . and still, she had to admit, that no matter what . . . he was still exciting.

Megan rose as well and slipped into a robe. She walked out on the balcony. Finn was standing by the rail, looking out over it.

“Look, I'm sorry I screamed.”

“Hey,” he murmured with a shrug, not looking at her. “You had a dream.”

“Horrible. I can't even remember it now. But there was this awful thing attacking me.”

“Great. You're
dreaming
while we're making love. I hadn't a clue you were even asleep. You looked straight at me half a dozen times.”

“I couldn't have,” she protested.

“Megan, you did.”

“Then I've started sleeping with my eyes wide open.”

“And imagining that I'm an ‘awful thing' attacking you.” He looked at her at last. His eyes were distant.
He
was distant. Cool, aloof. “What a surprise. Fallon hasn't shown up yet.”

“Apparently, I didn't scream that loudly.”

“Either that, or he's decided that you're a hopeless, abused woman.”

“Finn, stop it.”

She could see that his jaw was locked. It took him a minute to speak again, then his words surprised her. “We should leave.”

“Leave? We're a huge success. We've sold hundreds of CDs in two days. We've had national news coverage.”

“Right. But look what's happening to us.”

She frowned, feeling a little ripple of fear, but it was all so absurd. They'd be idiots to give in to it. “We can't leave. You don't just walk out on a job like that.”

“If it's costing us our marriage, yes, we do.”

“Working here isn't costing us our marriage!” she protested. She shook her head vehemently. “We're the only ones who can cost us our marriage. It would help if you didn't suddenly consider yourself to be the Marquis de Sade.”

“What?” The word was sharp, fast, and furious.

“Finn, you're . . . you're just getting too rough! Like a conquering barbarian or something. I told you—”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!” he said angrily. “You dream that you're being attacked by ‘an awful thing'—your words, not mine—but it's me, I'm being too rough.”

“You don't even remember the other night—”

“Yeah, and you were asleep through it all tonight.”

She fell silent, then turned sharply and walked back into the bedroom. He followed her. “Megan, we should leave.”

She stood still for a long moment. She couldn't help but recall how old Andy Markham had terrified her in the woods.
Bac-Dal wants you.

And then there had been Morwenna's concern, when she'd done her “reading.”
There's something... I don't know, something bad. Did . . . Finn ever hurt you? I mean, really. There were the rumors of violence . . . it looks like something terrible in the future. A horrible danger, and it's as if it comes from . . . Finn.

She'd been irritated with her cousin. Rumor. All rumor, and everyone playing into it.

Right. Ruin their careers over old myths and legends and a crazy old man who liked to tell stories.

She spun on Finn. “You're saying we should leave. You don't believe in ghosts. The whole thing with Wiccans or witches or ghosts, spooks, goblins, whatever, is pure rot. But despite that, you think that we should take a chance on
never
getting work again—or getting really decent work again—because I, sorry—and I am sorry!—have had a few nightmares?” She was amazed at the scorn in her voice.

“Whatever, Megan. I agree, it would suck to walk out. But it might be the best thing. When we're here . . . you're very strange.”

She was strange?

She bit her lip, startled by the sudden flash of tears that threatened to spill from her eyes.

“Megan . . . this is all very strange, don't you think?”

“Yeah. And maybe it's . . .”

“Maybe it's what?”

She hesitated. “Maybe it has to do with our breakup,” she said quietly. “We could go home . . . and find out that nothing was any better.”

She saw the flash of anger in his eyes. “I never hurt you, Megan. I never would.”

“I didn't say that you did. At least, not physically. Maybe . . . I don't know, maybe beneath the words we say to one another, we're still lacking trust or something. The point is, I'm not acting any more strangely than you are!”

“I don't remember acting strangely at home, or in the Keys,” he said. “And I haven't been acting strangely. You're the one waking up screaming.”

“That's right. You don't bother to wake up,” she murmured.

“What?”

“Finn, we're going to see this gig out,” she said quietly. “If we were to walk out . . . well, what we did would surely make the news. We wouldn't be taken seriously. Maybe really big names could get away with it. Or people without any kind of a track record at all. But walking out would hurt our reputation badly. And in time, you'd really resent me. So . . . if I walk out on anything, it will be you . . . for the time that we're here.”

She was startled by her own words. She hadn't really meant them that way, but as she listened to her own voice, she didn't know how to stop. Or explain.

And when she finished speaking, he was dead still. Straight, tense as a bowstring, features in a deadlock. He turned his back on her and walked out on the balcony.

She stood still for a long moment, then fled after him, determined to explain herself. To suggest that, since she seemed plagued by the ridiculous nightmares, she should sleep at Morwenna's or something, and therefore, no one could ever accuse him of hurting her in the night.

But when she reached the balcony, he was gone. She stood staring out at the moonlit night. It was crazy. He had jumped the little wrought iron fence in the chilly darkness, and gone walking around with bare feet and nothing but a bathrobe.

“Finn?” she called his name softly, but there was no answer. “Finn!” she called more loudly, and still no answer.

“You didn't understand!” she murmured miserably out loud. But still, there was no one to hear, and no one to reply.

She stood on the balcony for a long, long time, until the chill of the night seemed to seep into her bones, and she was shivering so violently she had to go back in.

There, she paced by the bed. She alternated between being terribly hurt, and then angry. At last, she gave out, and wrapped in the bathrobe and the blankets, she lay back down. The tears that had earlier stung her eyes must have flooded over because her cheeks were damp.

How long had he been gone? How could he be out there in nothing but a bathrobe?

As last, still alternating between a growing fury and a deep, knifing pain, she drifted to sleep.

And did not dream again.

 

 

Megan was gone.

She had been there when he had come back in at last, cursing himself for having been the biggest idiot in the world. But now . . . peering at the bedside clock he could see that it was nearly eleven. And Megan was up.

He rolled out of bed and walked toward the bathroom. “Meg?” He hadn't really needed to call out; the room had felt empty. He knew, as well, that she wasn't out on the balcony, and he doubted that she was in Huntington House at all.

Last night had been a maneuver of sheer stupidity. And yet . . .

Walking away—even crawling over the iron railing and scraping the family package—had seemed right. He'd needed to get away. Into the cold night air, barefoot, barely dressed. He'd felt an unreasoning sense of anger growing. Albeit, a lot of it was due to the fact that
she
hadn't been awake. Impossible. Or worse. She couldn't have fallen asleep
in the middle
of their lovemaking. That would surely be one of the worst affronts to man, ever. And then, imagining, or dreaming, that he was some kind of a
terrible thing
.

His walk had taken him out to a large rock at the front of the property where he had sat, convinced that he'd be alone—it was past even the “wee” hours of the night, and Salem, even with all its happenings, wasn't Vegas or even New Orleans. It did close down. But hell, leave it to his luck, he'd been sitting on the rock, smoking another of the cigarettes he stashed into his robe pocket, when a young couple had sauntered by. She had screamed—he seemed to have that effect on women lately—and the guy had said hello, but they walked around him as if they'd come upon dog poop. But then the girl had looked back. She'd recognized him, and despite the man, she'd turned back, startling Finn at first, causing him to rise. Then she'd gushed about his music, and kept touching him, on the shoulder, the arm . . . and he'd found himself saying that he couldn't sleep, so he was sitting on the rock. In a robe. In forty degree weather. Well, hell, that would probably be all over town by now.

He showered and dressed, hoping that Megan would return while he was so occupied. She didn't.

He came through the house and found that, despite the fact that breakfast time had long passed, John and Sally, the picture-perfect young American couple they had met at breakfast their first day, were enjoying coffee by the fire.

“Hey!” Sally called in greeting.

“We caught your act the other night,” John said.

Finn paused. “You did? Great. Thanks for coming.”

“Well, it was strange,” John admitted. “We were just heading out to dinner, and we'd heard they had a decent meal out there, and usually, some kind of entertainment. We'd just happened to pick up the national paper and there was an article in it about you and your wife, and it mentioned you were playing. It was great. We'd just met you—and there you were. In color in the paper, and in person on stage.”

“I hoped you enjoyed it,” Finn said. “What paper?”

“I still have the article in my purse,” Sally said, setting down her cup and rummaging through her bag. “Here!”

She produced a folded sheet. “Some girl wrote it in New Orleans, it seems, but the article was picked up and syndicated along with some other suggestions for Halloween.”

He should have been jumping up and down at the national exposure. Instead, he found himself nearly surprised. They'd been interviewed for the article weeks ago—before leaving for their quickie Florida vacation. The woman had arrived when they'd been playing a local jazz club. Jade Deveau. She and her husband had been in the audience and he and Megan hadn't even known anything about the interview. They'd been pleased—and cautious, as well. Articles could become skewed.

Reviewers could do some major harm as well.

And her husband—not a writer, he had assured them—had still asked plenty of questions, especially when it had come to their playing for the week in Salem.

Neither of them had looked like reporters, but he'd checked the woman out the next day and, apparently, she was well known in New Orleans. She had her own little publishing company, and put out respected travel articles along with a number of guides to the Crescent City. She was exceptionally attractive, and well dressed, and her husband had been a tall guy, dark, with some of the strangest eyes Finn had ever seen, red, gold, ever changing, but never seeming to be the color eyes were supposed to be.