Rising Darkness (Game of Shadows #1)(6)

“But why not?”

“Because he’s your partner and I socialize with him, dimwit!”

“Well, you kind of don’t, you know,” he pointed out. “You haven’t been over to visit with us in forever. When I try to set you up on a date, you won’t go. As far as I can tell, you don’t socialize at all. That’s the problem with brooding, silent Marlboro Man types. They’re not much for talking.”

Mary closed her eyes. It would do no good to ignore him. He cheerfully refused to acknowledge any silent messages that didn’t suit him.

She snapped, “Today is my first day off in a very long time, and I don’t want to spend it in a doctor’s waiting room.” She paused. “Besides, there’s nothing wrong with me.”

The lie reverberated in her throbbing head. She was cracked down the middle to her foundation. Whatever her mysterious internal ailment was, it was getting worse. If she didn’t figure out what was wrong she was going to break into pieces, deep inside where nobody could see but where the most vital part of her lived.

He ran a hand through his hair and glanced at his watch, looking hassled. “I don’t have time to argue with you.”

“Good,” she retorted. A belated curiosity struck. “Why did you come over this morning anyway?”

“Oh. Yeah. I wanted to know if you could dog-sit Baxter again. I needed to know, and you weren’t answering your phone.” He hesitated, and she listened to nuances shift in the silence. “Tony and I got invited away for the weekend, but we don’t have to go either.”

“I didn’t answer my phone because the battery is dead. It didn’t ring.” She repeated it with as much patience as she could muster. Then she remembered what she was doing and poured a second cup of coffee for herself. She held it to her nose, closed her eyes and let the steam warm her chilled skin.

He was right. Somehow between her work and preoccupation, Justin, Tony and that dog had become her entire social circle, and she hadn’t been to see them in months.

She would have to add another item to her to-do list. Fix toilet. Fix lamp. Fix self.

Out loud she said, “Of course I’ll watch Baxter for you. I love that dog.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.” He glanced at his watch again. “I’ve got a deposition and I really have to run. But I’m coming back, and we’re going to duke this out later. I’ll see you at two thirty.”

She felt the bones in her body compress with the urge to smack him over the head. She gritted her teeth instead. The quicker she stopped arguing with him, the quicker he would be out the door. “Hurry or you’ll be late for work.”

“Oh hell.” He bent forward, kissed the air by her cheek and dashed out of the house.

Mary moved to the large living room window to watch with narrowed eyes as he drove away. She tapped a fingernail against the glass. “You can come,” she whispered to his retreating car. “But I’m not going to be around when you get here.”

* * *

SHE FOLDED HER laundry, put it away and straightened her bed. There was another load of colorful cloth scraps waiting in the laundry room. After she put the scraps in the washing machine, she tidied the living room.

Since she lived alone and the two-bedroom house was more than big enough to suit her modest needs, she used the living room as one of her workrooms. She had four quilts in varying stages of completion. The most colorful piece, by far, was the patchwork crazy quilt. She fingered the cloth, but the quilt wasn’t speaking to her. It seemed a lifeless fact, separate from her existence, as though some stranger had left it in her house.

She moved down the hall to the second bedroom, which she had turned into a studio. There she spent two hours trying to capture on canvas something of the elusive imagery from her dream.

Those creatures had shone from within. The colors that had shifted within their bodies and flowed outward in whorls of light were too delicate and strange for her to capture on paper. The colors seemed indicative of emotion or personality, as if the creatures had senses so different from humans, they could actually see the pheromones their bodies released.

She had been plagued with strange dreams for as long as she could remember. The one she had labeled the sacred poison dream was only one of several that recurred on a regular basis. Sometimes the details of the sacred poison dream were vague or just different, but several details remained constant. There were seven people or creatures, of whom three pairs were mates, and an escaped criminal. They always drank poison, and she always felt terror and a sense of appalling loss when she awakened.

She shook her head and frowned. Some people believed each person had a soul mate, but she didn’t. The concept was too convenient, too romantic, without real substance. Since she didn’t believe in it, she could never understand why that was a major recurring theme in her dreams.

People met other like-minded people because they shared things in common and engaged in similar activities. Birds of a feather really did flock together. Either that, or they met by accident.

At least she could be grateful that, no matter how violent or overwhelming the sense of loss might feel in the aftermath of the sacred poison dream, it held her in its grip for only a brief time before fading away. No one could endure that kind of raw anguish for long, at least not that Mary had witnessed. People seemed to suffer intense grief in waves.