The Dreamwalker's Path

3/Ybor City, Florida

Lia had pushed the coffee table to the side to make room for the large cardboard box from the attic, and settled herself on the floor in front of her couch. On the other side of the box, Cavan sat cross legged, his back to the TV. Despite the scattering of tattoos on his hands and arms, the lip piercing, the dark, shabby clothes, and the knowledge that the man possessed a pair of vicious fangs behind his teeth, Lia couldn’t help but think that he looked like a child waiting for his Christmas present as he eyed the box that sat just a little off-center between the two of them.

“I don’t think we should do this,” she broke the silence, solemnly. “This is someone’s life that we’re going to be picking through. It feels morbid.”

“Eh, don’t worry about it.” Rocking to his knees, Cavan grabbed the corner of the box and tipped it slightly so that he could look at the contents. “They won’t be gone from home for long,” he assured her, pulling a small tupperware box out of the larger cardboard box. “They’re barely dusty, so even though they were up in the attic, they weren’t there for long. Someone will be looking for them, eventually.”

“That’s not exactly comforting.” Nevertheless, Lia found herself leaning over the edge of the box and peering in. There were a couple more, smaller boxes, a few books, packed tightly with the pages turned upward, a glass bowl, and a deep purple cloth folded neatly.

“No, not the first time. Say it loud and often, though, and it will. Eventually.” Cavan opened the tupperware and raised an eyebrow. “Ah, here,” he tipped the box over on the table to reveal a black silk pouch and a couple of semi- precious stones. “This is probably what I saw.”

Lia frowned. “A bunch of rocks?”

She hadn’t been joking, but Cavan laughed, nonetheless. Or at least he did until he realized she really wasn’t joking.

“Lia,” he picked up the silk pouch and tossed it to her. “They’re tarot cards. You come from a family of witches and you don’t know what tarot cards are?”

“Of course I do,” she put the pouch back on the table, having no desire to open it or look at the cards. She turned her attention back to the box and began pulling out the books one by one without reading them. “They’re fancy cards with pictures that supposedly tell the future. My grandma has a set that she uses all the time; doesn’t mean that I have to know why they’d be glowing.”

Looking a little exasperated, Cavan began organizing the stones in a neat row. “The cards absorb psychic energy. That’s where they get their intuition from. I see,” he pointed to his light blue eye, “psychic energy; a good use for a blind eye, if I had to choose a use.”

Lia fumbled with the book she’d been pulling out of the box. “You’re blind?”

“Half,” he gestured to his eye again and shrugged. “Seems to be a side effect of the two colors. My siblings were all blind in their blue eyes; Hannah was born blind and developed sight later, and Sebastian—” he stopped at her intake of breath and fought to keep his eyes from popping out of his head and rolling across the floor. He was going to smack that boy when he got back to the apartment.

Regardless of the sudden shift in the woman’s demeanor, he continued, “As you know, Sebastian was completely blind. The psychic sight didn’t come into the family until after my brother and I were turned.”

Now Lia perked up in interest, “Both you and your brother were turned into vampires? At the same time?” And then, “You have brother?”

“Actually, I’m the youngest of five, including a twin sister, who never let me live down being younger by several hours.” His delivery was full of candor, but his tone was slightly off. Lia canted her head, opened her mouth to ask him another question, and was very disappointed when the man waved the matter away. “It’s a long, boring story; don’t worry about it.” His tone was a little harder than before; it told her plainly that Cavan’s past was none of her business.

Well fine, Lia thought darkly, turning back to the books as Cavan opened up the silk pouch and let the cards fall into his palm, I didn’t want to know about your stupid brother anyway.

“So what do the glowy cards tell us, oh King of Spooks?”

“That the person who owned them used them a lot and for some reason felt the need to store them somewhere out easy access, and out of the normal realm of possibilities.”

“So basically nothing about the murder?”

“Well,” Cavan said distractedly, slipping the cards back into the pouch and pulling the cardboard box closer to him.

“It tells me about the person who’s been murdered, which is a lot more important than people give it credit for.” He peered into the box and added, “You’re a horrible detective, by the way.”

“What?” The sudden insult seemed marginally unnecessary.

Cavan pulled several books out of the box and read off their titles, ”Magic for Beginners....The Kitchen Witch’s Bible...Collecting Crystals—Are you noticing a theme? The Magick Behind the Name—”

“All right, I get the p—”

“And look! A Book of Shadows.” He produced a thick book from the bottom of the box and gave her an accusing, exasperated look. “I get that you avoided your family’s traditions for practically all of your life, but surely you’ve seen Charmed."

Scowling, Lia shifted so she was turned away from him, “Oh excuse me, but not everyone’s TV choices are based on whether or not Alyssa Milano is wearing a bra in them.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lia; Holly Marie Combs is the only reason to watch that show and she always wears a bra. Unfortunately. Help me pack up the box, I’ll take it back to the attic.”

Muttering under her breath, Lia began putting the books she’d taken out of the box back in. Heaving a sigh, she said louder, “So anyway, let’s pretend for a moment that your methods actually make sense; all of this stuff tells you that the mom was a witch.”

“Right. And we know that the last victim was a witch.”

“Well her mother was, that doesn’t necessarily mean she was, right?”

“It doesn’t, but in this case, she was a witch. She had a tattoo of a pentacle made of water.”

Lia wanted to ask how Cavan knew, but she decided that she didn’t want to know if he’d snuck into some place to peek at the body, dug up the grave, or knew the woman from before, so she focused on a question that had a smaller chance of having an icky answer: “And that definitely makes her a witch?”

Sitting back on his heels, Cavan cast his eyes up to the ceiling. “Your ignorance is physically painful, Ophelia.” He paused to grind the heel of his palm into his scarred brow bone in a very genuine display of frustration. “It’s a tradition, or it used to be. When a witch comes into power, he or she would receive a pentacle that had some design that represented whichever of the basic elements they had. When tattooing became popular in the modern world, people started getting the charm tattooed on them instead. Something about how it’s a statement of the fact that it’s part of them. Or something.”

Reaching over the box, Cavan grabbed a couple of the books that Lia had yet to put away. She couldn’t help but notice that among the tattoos on the inside of his arm, there was, in fact, a pentacle as well, engulfed in flame.

She wanted to ask, had opened her mouth to do so, but when she looked up at Cavan, she noticed the vampire’s lips were pursed tightly.

So instead, Lia sighed and looked away. Part of her wished that Cavan wouldn’t get so frustrated with her about her lack of mystical traditional knowledge. As far as she’d been aware, she was a perfectly normal non-magical person before all of the stuff with the Alchemist went down. Why would she have paid attention to mystical magic juju when it didn’t have anything to do with her? And how was she supposed to catch up with a lifetime of learning in only a few short months?

“It’s more the fact that you consciously avoid anything

that remotely has anything to do with magic.”

Lia jumped slightly. “Don’t read my thoughts! That’s so rude! What’s wrong with you!?”

“Don’t think so loudly, then! Goddamn, I can hear you and I’m not even telekinetic...strictly.”

“Well strictly remove yourself from my brain!”

“I’m n—you know what? I’m not arguing with you.” He turned around to pack up another tupperware container.

They continued in stony silence, and when the box was fully packed, Cavan stood up and moved the coffee table back to its usual position. “I’m going back to New York after I drop this off,” he told her. “I know you’re devastated at the prospect of my absence, but I have every faith that you’ll carry on.”

“Oh yeah, of course,” Lia pulled herself up onto the couch and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll cry into my pillow while you’re away.”

“Good, get those tears out before I come back.”

She wanted to call him an asshole, but having no desire to repeat their conversation from the little girl’s bedroom, Lia pursed her lips and looked away. Cavan, meanwhile, had picked up the box and was working out the most comfortable way to hold it.

Since the silence was awkward, Lia said, “Can I ask you something before you go?”

“Obviously.”

Lia snorted, and she let her gaze drop to the arm that she knew the tattoo was on. “How is it that you know so much about witches anyway?”

Cavan shrugged from behind the box. “I read.”

It was a simple answer, almost too simple, really, and Lia almost certain it wasn’t the truth. Or maybe it was. Maybe the tattoo was just a tattoo and she’d just hoped for something more exciting.

“Well, bye,” she settled further into the corner of her couch and looked at him in a sullen fashion. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Cavan smirked. “That’s exactly why I don’t take the door.”

And then he was gone, and Lia was left by herself to feel a little guilty, and a little annoyed.

Sighing, Lia stretched out on the couch and closed her eyes. She’d just managed to settle into a comfortable position when she felt something tug at the corners of her consciousness.

At first, it felt just like the beginnings of a dream, and Lia sank deeper into the feeling as her body relaxed against the couch. Then it felt like a long, knobby fingered hand, reaching greedily toward her. The fingers closed on her neck and the creature that belonged to the hand settled heavily on her chest, pushing downward. Yellowy teeth appeared from the darkness and lunged toward her face, and pulled backward in fright. She slapped at the creature as hard as she could, and felt a jarring pain when her wrist connected with the edge of the coffee table.

Lia’s eyes snapped open. Where she expected to see a great hulking, yellow-teethed monster, there was only the ceiling fan, revolving in a slow, wobbly fashion.

Sitting up, Lia pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes and groaned, “Great. Now it’s followed me home.”

4/Hall of the Hours, Sanctuary

Trite slipped through the half open door of the Eighth Hour’s apartment. For a moment, as it almost always did, the sheer amount of green and brown that colored the suite caused Trite to stand apprehensively in the doorway. It was, he thought, a better color scheme than the yellow and orange that decorated his own apartment. That did not, however, make it any good.

He shrugged out of the stiff orange surcoat that marked his rank and placed it on the peg by the door. Someone should tell Time that coloring the apartments to match the Hours’ garb was not as good an idea in reality as it was on paper. Perhaps it would save them all from eye-sores.

“We wondered where you had gone,” Gabriel called from across the room where a small, dark wood card table was set by a wide window. Like Trite, Gabriel had abandoned his green surcoat of rank by hanging it on the pegs by the door, and he was dressed in the black high neck and long sleeved pull over that went under it. On the other side of the table, the Fifth Hour was sitting cross legged in his own seat. His long black hair was plaited neatly down his back. He was still wearing the purple surcoat that marked which Hour he was, but Trite was not surprised by this. Sune often maintained a certain level of formality, even when he was among friends.

Eight was setting up the pieces of a board game on the table between himself and his first guest, but he paused when he noticed that Trite was alone. “Where’s the witch? I thought she was coming with you.”

Trite shrugged his shoulders and settled down in the third empty chair, his back to the window. “No, she opted to stay in the Temple. She said she wanted to make sure that the boy was all right.”

“I’m sure that he’ll be fine,” Gabriel waved a hand dismissively. “Anyway, as much as I don’t like the angel, I trust him; he’ll keep the kid safe enough.”

Trite made a noncommittal sound. “It was clever of you to pretend that you were unhappy with the decision to make him the Historian’s apprentice.”

“It wasn’t all pretend. The Historian was right when he said that his position and the knowledge he has gives him a great deal of power. I don’t know that I’m comfortable with someone training a boy who snorts his own mucus to weild the power of omniscience, but it will keep the child out of the way while we sort this issue, and hopefully he’ll get bored of the job.”

“That’s a pretty big gamble to take,” Trite muttered, glancing at the Fifth Hour. Sune, true to form, had his eyes politely turned downward, watching Gabriel set up the table for their game. It seemed he had no opinion to offer, so Trite added, “Who will be going through the crack to investigate?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Time said that she knows where it leads and she has agents on the other side who should be happy to help us look for Emelye.” He offered a set of dice to Sune who took them lightly from the man’s hand and let them drop.

Trite hissed. “I’m getting tired of that bullshit.” “Trite, don’t start—”

“No, it’s bullshit, Gabe. We’re Time’s task-force, but we’re not allowed to know what the hell is going on? She kept us in the dark when that girl was wafting in and out of Sanctuary, she’s kept us in the dark with this supposed elusive replacement for Twelve—who, by the way, disappears as soon as we’re meant to meet her—and with the changes in Sanctuary, now she’s keeping us in the dark about this too. I’m tired of not knowing what the fuck is going on! How am I supposed to do my job if I don’t know what my damned job is?”

“Our job is to keep the denizens of Sanctuary safe,” Gabriel insisted. “We don’t have to know the whole damn story to be able to do that.”

“I do!” Trite slammed his hand against the table hard enough to jar the pawns set on the board. A sidelong, only semi-apologetic glance was spared to Sune who, frowning deeply, had gone about the task of fixing the pieces. “It’s not right to ask us to operate in the dark. Why is it wrong that I want to know what’s going on?”

Having finished straightening the pieces, Sune spoke, “You just have to learn not to lash out, Trite,” his voice as much more soothing than Trite thought it had the right to be. He wondered if it was one of the abilities that Sune’s kind possessed: calming people with the voice. Trite wouldn’t be surprised; he knew that some of the other Hours had more bizarre skills than that tucked up their sleeves. “It’s clear that Time is just as confused as any of us, and I don’t think it’s fair that you keep barging in and shouting and making demands.”

“Agreed,” Eight picked a set of dice up and rolled them in his palm, he looked at the quiet, oval face of the fox demon dressed in the amethyst garb of the Fifth Hour. “Sune is right. We’re all confused, but lashing out at each other isn’t going to do anything but make the denizens upset as well.”

He let the dice drop from his hand, inspected the results, and winced. Grudgingly, he picked up the small metal figure and moved it two spaces along the board.

Trite, one hand under his chin, the other over his eyes, made a sound of discontent. “I still feel like she’s holding something back, like she always has been. I can sense it.” He removed his hand from over his eyes and slowly went about gathering the dice for his roll.

“Look, no offense, Trite, but it’s been a long time since you’ve been home and you haven’t really been able to take the time to commune with your great ancestor, or whatever, your telekinesis may be just a little bit rusty.”

Trust Gabriel to be the one person to bring that up. “I can’t exactly go back, can I?”

Gabriel shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know what you can and can’t do; I just know what you told me about your people; and you’ve said so yourself that your ability to read minds has diminished from the time you first left your realm.

Trite dropped the dice and didn’t bother to look at the roll. Sune looked from dice to Trite and then to the little piece on the GO space that Trite had yet to move. A few seconds passed, and when it was clear that Trite was only really interested in glaring at Gabriel, Sune moved the pawn for him.

“I just don’t want to see you banished from Sanctuary, friend,” Sune offered to Trite with a thin lipped smile. “You would have nowhere to go if you were banished from here as well.”

Trite sat back in his chair and huffed. He still looked angry, but there was a distinct air of defeat about him. “And she would banish me, too, wouldn’t she?”

Both his companions nodded.

“You aren’t like the vampire, Trite,” Gabriel said almost apologetically. “Your short comings aren’t looked on as strengths, as Sebastian’s were.”

“Feh,” Trite looked away, “Twelve has always been her favorite Hour.”

“To an extent, yes, but I think it’s obvious that Sebastian was her favorite Twelve.”

Sune nodded in agreement, leaving Trite in an even more sullen mood than when he’d left Caitell at the Temple of the Lost.

With a long, heavy sigh, he pressed a few fingers to the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes again, and shook his head. He heard Sune roll the dice, and listened as Sune and Gabriel exchanged money for property. It was a human game that Trite couldn’t wrap his horns around. Buying land, getting money for a profit...He had a hard enough time understanding why he had to purchase food from the vendors of Sanctuary most days, let alone understand why buying and selling the land was considered acceptable.

Maybe he was overthinking it. He listened as the dice tumbled across the board and Gabriel tapped his piece along the row of spaces. He was over thinking a lot of things lately: the crack in the wall, the gods, the missing girl, Sebastian Jaeger’s death—

“Trite, it’s your turn.”

Trite rolled the dice absently, moved his piece, paid for a space on the board.

Everything had started to go wrong when the Alchemist escaped the Clock Tower. When that woman wandered where she shouldn’t have wandered. When Time hadn’t told all of her Hours about the girl.

The girl who could destroy everything by just existing.

“It’s her fault,” he said suddenly, feeling like he’d woken up from a dream.

“Beg pardon?” Gabriel’s eyebrow arched in inquiry and he and the Fifth Hour shared a sidelong glance. “Who’s fault?”

“The woman. The one that let the Alchemist out. None of this would be happening if the Alchemist was still in the Cock Tower. Sebastian would still be alive and he’d be able to talk sense into Time. We’d know what was going on and how to stop it by now if Sebastian was here, and it’s that woman’s fault for letting the Alchemist out.”

“The thought hadn’t slipped our minds, Trite,” Sune broached carefully. “But it was clear from the girl’s upset that she didn’t understand what was happening or she was doing. Yes, her actions led to the Alchemist’s escape and Sebastian the Black’s death, but blaming her would be like blaming fox for stealing a goose. She wasn’t doing it to be malicious; she did it because it was in her nature to do it, and she didn’t know better.”

Trite scrubbed his face with both of his hands. “I know, I know; I just...I have this black dog on my shoulder...”

Except he was certain that he was right. Someone was at fault for this mess, and if he couldn’t blame the person that he felt was responsible, he was damn sure going to blame the next best thing.

“It’s not fair to blame the girl,” Sune said again, “But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t someone to blame.”

“The Alchemist, you mean?” Trite asked, giving the demon a side-long look.

Sune shrugged. “There are more knowing and more powerful creatures in our reality,” he offered, letting the words hang in the air as though they were meant to have meaning.

Trite felt a little sick as he contemplated the more obvious scapegoat.

“What is the point of being an Hour if Time is going to knock you down when she’s done with you?” he asked the pair before turning a blank gaze to the board between them.

Sune looked at Gabriel, and Gabriel, the font of useful ideas that he was, shrugged his shoulders.

“Being an Hour is a blessing, Trite” Gabriel said at length. He said the words, but there was a strangeness in his tone. Trite thought they sounded hollow, like Eight had said them to himself over and over again to convince himself that they were true, and still hadn’t managed it. “Time rescued you when your own people turned their backs on you, and she brought you to us; don’t turn your back on the only family that you have left.”

“I’m tired of accepting that. I’m tired of apologizing.” Trite huffed and ran his hand over his hair. “I’m going for a walk,” he announced.

“I think that’s best,” Sune said a little too quickly. He reached over the table for Trite’s money, pausing only when he realized both Trite and Gabriel were looking at him with identical suspicious expressions.

“What? Don’t look at me that way, he’s no good at this game; he should go for a walk and blow off steam. And give me his money because I’m his dearest friend.” He looked imploringly at Trite, hand still hovering over the money.

With the barest smile, Trite said, “Try to split it evenly as possible, all right?”

Ignoring the fox demon’s sputtering protest, Trite stood up and headed toward the door.

“Don’t forget your garb, Trite,” Gabriel called.

“I’ll come back for it. It’s too damned hot to wear it.” Yet another change in Sanctuary: the temperature was slowly rising.

He shut the door behind him and headed toward the end of the hall where he could take the stairway to the building’s main exit.

Gabriel and Sune looked for a moment at the closed door after their friend had gone. “I think he’s ready,” Sune noted, dividing the fake money between himself and Gabriel.

Gabriel shook his head. “Trite’s angry, but he has too much to lose. I don’t think he’d ever chance it.”

Sune shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps. Perhaps he feels he has nothing to lose.”

“No, Trite might be dissatisfied with Time, but in his heart, he loves her like a son.”

“You think?”

Gabriel took up the dice. “I know it. I was already an Hour when Time brought him to Sanctuary. There isn’t a more grateful soul. Even if he’s angry with her, he’d never agree to what we’re doing.”