Blue Diablo

In Dreams

I hoped he wouldn’t ask me whether that was true. Eva claimed I was still half in love with him. At this moment, tired and overwhelmed, I was in no shape to analyze my emotional state. He studied my face for what seemed like a long time and then pressed a soft kiss to my forehead.

“You ready to go?”

This time I didn’t protest when we started for the car. To my surprise nobody had messed with it. Considering its purpose, the zona seemed peaceable overall, but then there was a significant presence from local law enforcement. We climbed into the Mustang and headed for the bridge.

I thought we might have more trouble on the American side, but they just glanced at Chance’s ID and waved us through. My blue eyes and long red hair weighed in our favor; I didn’t look like an illegal. If Eva could still manage it, I needed to have her cook me a passport, something that would withstand a casual inspection at land crossings anyway.

“Why do you think your mother worked in the zona?”

He glanced away from the road briefly. “I don’t know. I’ve been wondering that myself. It would help if I knew how she wound up in Nuevo Laredo in the first place.”

I watched him, such a lovely profile. His hair was longer now than when we’d been together and, right now, deliciously tousled. The dishevelment softened his fine, angular features, not that he needed further appeal.

Should I mention it? Yeah, I decided. Chance wouldn’t thank me for keeping things from him.

“I did some research earlier.”

I decided not to mention why, or what I’d suspected about his mother. Though Rivera had said she worked as a healer in Nuevo Laredo, there was no telling what she did in South Korea. Min had always been reluctant to discuss her past; she’d lived in Seoul once, and that was all we knew. Until now, there had been no reason to pry, no reason to question her secrecy.

“Yeah?” he prompted eventually, sounding tired.

“There’s a thriving sex trade between Mexico and the East, including Korea and Japan. I read about a woman who was promised a job in a plastic factory and when she arrived, she was branded with a rose and put to work in a Yakuza-run brothel.”

“What do you think that has to do with anything?”

I hesitated and finally just came out with it. “Does Min have any odd scars?”

“You think she might be running from organized crime?” His eyes seared me.

“I don’t know. We don’t have all the pieces in order to see the big picture. Did she ever say why she left Korea?”

Chance sighed as he guided the car onto highway 57. “No. I’m coming to realize I know very little about her.”

“Everyone keeps secrets,” I said. “It’s just a matter of how dangerous they are.”

“True.” He drove in silence after that. I would have given a lot to know what thoughts occupied his mind.

Shortly thereafter we let ourselves into the house, tiptoeing so as not to wake Chuch and Eva. I knew I should put on my nightgown and curl up on the couch. God help me, tonight I didn’t want to.

For once he didn’t press. Instead he merely murmured a good night and padded down the hall toward his room, surefooted as a cat. I heard the click of the door with equal measures of chagrin and astonishment. With a sigh I went to sleep by myself.

Usually there’s a drifting period, where I don’t know whether I’m asleep or awake. This time I shifted immediately into REM sleep—at least, I assumed so, because I had to be dreaming. I certainly hadn’t left the sofa, but I found myself standing on a lovely Oriental rug, woven in lush jewel tones.

I gazed around in bewilderment, taking in a room that resembled the old-fashioned library from my fantasy about Ian Booke. From the mahogany shelves to the cream and ivory wingback chairs, it looked exactly as I’d imagined. Even the heavy antique desk sat where I’d pictured it. Oddly I couldn’t see past the shadowy doorway, nor did the darkened windows shed any light.

After a night in Boys Town, why would I dream this? It made a pleasant change from licking flames and dire portents, however.

“Splendid! I can’t believe it worked.”

Though I hadn’t noticed him before, a man rose from the desk and came toward me. I recognized the voice, if not the face. With rough features, narrow slate eyes, and a shock of nut brown hair, Booke didn’t look at all as I’d envisioned him.

“What worked?”

“Oh, I was just messing about with some lucid dreaming and out-of-body experiments. I think you must be sleeping.”

“I... think so.” Somewhat disappointed, I tried to be discreet as I inspected him. “Is this how you really look?”

Was that rude?

“No.” He shook his head. “I daresay you aren’t like that, either. I’m afraid I’ve projected on you. But then, I didn’t think this would work. Never has before.”

When I glanced down, I restrained a snort. All I needed to complete my Wonder Woman costume was a tiara and a golden lasso. Enjoying the novelty of three feet of shapely legs and a spectacular bosom, I decided not to challenge the fantasy.

“What were you trying to accomplish?”

Could I move around as if this were the real world? I could, though the resulting strut suited Lynda Carter better than Corine Solomon. I sat down in the left-hand wing chair before I tripped on the expensive rug and made a fool of myself.

“Well, I was thinking about you... and your problem,” he added hastily. His obvious embarrassment struck me as endearing. “Sometimes magick leaves a trail or an astral tell. I can’t leave Stoke, or I’d come in person... but I wondered if I could help you this way. I focused on you and started trying to home in on where you are—”

“And wound up in my dream? Why are we in your library?”

Booke glanced around, sheepish. “This isn’t mine. It’s colored by your expectations. I must say, I’m quite flattered. You clearly take me for a man of taste and means.”

I realized I’d interrupted him. “Wait, did you learn anything? Did the warlock controlling poor Maris leave a tell?”

“In fact, he did.” He lost some of his diffidence and came over, sat beside me in the other chair. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” A side benefit of dreaming, he called pen and paper to hand, began sketching. I leaned close and saw what looked like a stylized U. “Near as I can find, it’s akin to an Aztec or Mixtec symbol for the moon.”

“And Chuch’s house is marked with this?” I wanted to be clear.

“Indeed. It’s marked with astral magick. You need to cleanse the place, top to bottom, or he’ll find it increasingly easier to work his spells there, even at distance.”

“What about the wards?” To my amusement Booke couldn’t tear his eyes away from the breasts that didn’t belong to me.

“Summoning Maris, bound like she was, probably undermined them. You’re not safe there any longer.”

With everything going on, I doubted I was safe anywhere, but we needed to fix things for our friends. “We’ll shore them up then. I can’t leave Eva and Chuch now, after dragging them into this.”

“No, I don’t imagine you could.” He sounded odd, eyes downcast.

I pushed the hair out of my face, bemused to find such a silky black mane. Oh, I could get such a color from a bottle, but dyed black, no highlights, made me look too Goth. “What’re you getting at?”

“You don’t seem the kind of person who would leave someone when they needed you most.”

Ouch.

“Don’t be so sure,” I said. “I’ve done a lot of running in my life. Let things start to heat up, and you’ll find me on the way out.”

Booke glanced up in apparent surprise, shadows playing over features that didn’t belong to him. “I never would have guessed. You have a very steadfast feel.”

“I do?”

He nodded. “Unshakeable. Like once you set a course, you don’t alter it.”

You think my feelings dried up when you walked away, Corine? I didn’t even know if mine had.

I managed a smile. “Isn’t it interesting, the preconceptions we form from a few minutes in a voice chat?”

“No.” Steepling his fingers together, he assumed a professorial demeanor. “By paying an astral call, I’ve seen your essence, the raw material that shapes your soul. You’re stone, Corine. While fire may score you, it won’t destroy who you are.”

On some basic level I almost understood what he meant, not intellectually but through some underdeveloped sense. If the human spirit could be reckoned in alchemical terms... The point I wanted to make slipped from me. Perhaps Chance might grasp it better.

“And you?” I asked. “What about you, Booke?”

“I don’t know. We can’t see ourselves as we are, can we?”

I wondered about him, this man who seemed to live for broken moments on the computer and perhaps spent the rest of his time lost in esoteric study. Was I actually communicating with him? Or creating the scene out of some subconscious desire? Our predicament meant I couldn’t afford to dismiss assistance, but until I checked the information he’d given, I couldn’t be sure this wasn’t a supervivid dream.

“Does that mean you’ve never looked?”

“There are a great number of things I’ve never done,” he said quietly.

A moment ago, he’d said: I can’t leave Stoke. The word can’t offered a wide variety of perplexing possibilities. In what manner was he bound? And why would our problems, half a world away, interest him so?

“There’re a lot of things I wish I hadn’t done,” I said.

“Such as?”

“Leaving my mother to die.” It slipped out before I could stem the candid response.

Booke regarded me with a somber expression for a moment. “We don’t have power over that. We don’t get to pick and choose.”

“Do you think it’s wrong to want revenge on the people who took her from me?”

He gave an odd smile. “What do I know? I’m just a voice, someone who doesn’t seem half-real to you.”

“You do that on purpose,” I accused. “Are you trying to will yourself out of existence?”

The mouth that didn’t belong to him twisted. “Perhaps. If it would work.”

I reached for him, intending to see if contact cut through the unreality of our dream selves. For just a moment, I wanted to see him as he was.

“No, you mustn’t. If we touch, you—”

Wake.

I found myself alone on the couch, still feeling Booke’s fingers beneath mine. When I touched him, in that instant, I saw a desolate pebble beach bounded by an endless gray sea. I didn’t know what it meant, but the loneliness of it made me ache.

In the silver predawn light I lay reflecting on the ocean between us and the secrets people keep.