The Dream Thief (7 page)

Will gets full points for staying with me until I'd thoroughly emptied my stomach of the last meal and what seemed like ten years of meals before it. When I was done, he said simply, "What?"

I closed my eyes. My family had inflicted enough damage. So even though this time it was not my fault in any way, shape or form, I wasn't going to look at his face while I told him. About the samples in the test tubes, and the way they smelled of memories—summer, and love making, and the sawmill.

When I was done he never said a word, just opened the truck door for me and waited while I got in.

 

 

I
still didn't have
keys to the padlocks on the barn. But Will and I had been kids here, running wild most of the time. One look at each other, and we were off to the lightning tree. The lowest branch was too high for me, but the spikes we'd pounded into the trunk so we could climb it were still there, rusted and nearly invisible unless you knew where to look.

"Careful," Will said, letting me go first. "That branch could be rotten by now."

Using the spikes as footholds and embracing the roughness of the bark with both arms, I worked my way upward. This exercise had been easier ten years ago, but I had some adrenaline going in the moment that fueled my muscles and kept me from the fear of falling. The branch in question was as big around as my thigh, and ran parallel to the open hayloft. Will was right, of course. It was dead wood, and had long been so, its surface marked by a haphazard pattern of holes. The ants had been busy.

Dialing my breathing back to a shallow setting I eased my body out onto the branch, moving slowly and restraining the irrational tendency to crawl madly forward before it had a chance to break. It held, and after a breathless moment of looking down at Will's upturned face below, I got my hands on the edge of the hayloft window and pulled myself up.

A thin matting of old hay still covered the rough boards, but all the bales were gone. Swallows fluttered about in the rafters and one of them dive-bombed me, not at all happy about my presence, but there was no other sound. I pressed my hands over nose and upper lip to stifle a sneeze. And then Will scrambled up beside me and the two of us crossed to the square cut into the floor and the wooden built-in ladder that led down into the rest of the barn.

Nothing moved below. It was near dark, with only a dim light coming in through a couple of windows too high and small to do much by way of illumination. As far as I could see, there was emptiness and dust and nothing out of the ordinary. The only sound was our own breathing and the fluttering of the disturbed birds above our heads. Will and I locked eyes for a long moment. He shrugged, and I swung my feet around to the ladder and made my descent.

What had once been a large box stall—a place to hold a sick calf for a few days, that sort of thing—was now set up with a long table and all of the paraphernalia you'd expect to see in an illicit lab in a TV movie: tubing and beakers and a big pot set on a hot plate.

Meth. That was my first thought. Asshole renters had made a meth lab in my barn. No wonder they'd been wanting to get back in here. I sniffed for the telltale odor of cat piss, but came up with nothing more than a snout full of dust that triggered another fit of sneezing. No cans of paint thinner, no fertilizer, no gas cans lying around. While I stepped closer to check out the apparatus—empty now, with no sign of whatever liquid had once bubbled through the tubes or simmered in the pot—I heard Will moving around behind me, opening feed bins and letting them fall shut.

A squeak of hinges. And then his voice, hushed. "Jesse, you need to see this."

Will stood in the doorway of the old tack room, where we'd once stored bridles and saddles and other paraphernalia connected to the two horses we'd owned. It had been swept spotlessly clean and somebody had built in wooden shelves from floor to ceiling. On three sides these were empty, but directly facing me was an extensive collection of small glass bottles containing clear fluid. Each was neatly labeled in black felt marker.

Will picked one up. "Romantic evening," he read.

"Don't drop that," I warned, as I read labels that said: Sex with a Stranger; Sword Fight; Fist Fight; Tender Moment with Child; Wedding; Car Crash; Playing Guitar.

My skin crawled so hard I checked myself for ants or some other plague of insects but there were none. Will was handling another of the little bottles, but I was already backing out the door. "Put it down, Will. Step away."

He followed my instruction without question. I closed the door and pulled down the wooden latch over it.

"Bootlegged dreams?" Will asked. "Gives the concept of moonshine a whole new meaning."

I felt sick. These weren't dreams, at least not the way the Merchant made them. "So, you don't remember ever playing the guitar?"

He looked at me like I'd lost it completely. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Just answer me."

"No, Jesse. I've never played the guitar. Why do you go on about that?"

"Because you do play the guitar. Or you did. All the time. You brought it camping. You brought it everywhere. If your hands were free, you were playing."

His eyes remained blank. "I don't understand."

A banging at the door of the barn froze us both into stillness, listening.

A thud. The padlock rattled on its chain. Must be my renters, back to collect the rest of their contraband.

I grabbed Will's hand and tugged him over to the ladder.  "Up here. Hurry!"

He shoved me ahead of him and there wasn't time to scuffle with a game of who goes first. When the doors opened my head was up in the hayloft, so I didn't see the light flow into the dark barn, or the sight of blue skies and trees outside. What I heard was a voice saying, "Hold it right there, Jesse, or I blow your boyfriend away."

Before I could react, Will's hands clamped around my ass and shoved me upward, so that I overbalanced and fell flat on my face into the hayloft.

"What's up, Marsh?" Will's voice, down below and out of sight, was calm, but I could feel his heart racing in my own chest, two sets of heartbeats galloping along as one.

"Tell your girlfriend to get down here before I shoot you."

"Jesse doesn't give a damn about what happens to me. You'll need another tactic."

"Do you think I'm stupid?" Marsh raised his voice, calling up to me. "Hey, Jesse—should I just wing him, or get him in the heart?"

Threatening me was one thing—threatening the last person in the world that I loved was another. Fury flooded through all of my fear and washed it away. I wanted to leap on Marsh's head with a Tarzan cry and flatten him. To pulverize his pretty face with my fists or maybe something a little more solid, like a tire iron, but at the moment he had a gun pointed at Will and I was afraid that surprise might make him pull the trigger.

I peered down on both of them from on high, staying out of sight and out of the line of fire, and trying to think of a plan. Marsh was fully clothed and appeared to be sane, but I had my suspicions about that. He had a rifle in his hands and was aiming it at Will, who stood at the bottom of the ladder, blocking my descent.

"Jesse, I know you're up there." Marsh tilted his head back in an effort to see up into the loft but I knew I was out of his sight. I stayed that way. Getting dead myself wouldn't help anybody.

"Send Will up here, and I'll come down."

"I'm not going anywhere," Will said. "Jesse, stay where you are."

"You have something I want. Don't mind shooting your boyfriend if it will help me get it." Marsh's finger looked a little too eager on the trigger, and apparently he'd been joking about the winging thing because he was aiming at Will's heart.

"Leave Will out of it. I'm coming down."

"J, no!" Will hissed beneath me, and an irrational little glow of happiness warmed my innards.

He might be hurt and pissed and disappointed in me, but he still cared. As for Marsh, I had half an idea of what he wanted, which meant there was hope of manipulating him. He'd never been overly bright, and between the two of us, Will and I ought to be able to take him down.

 

 

U
nfortunately, the soul bond
didn't mean Will could read my mind.

As my feet hit the ground, he turned himself into a human missile, fists at the ready. He lunged at Marsh, who sidestepped and swung the gun like a club. An ugly wet crunch, and Will's face went slack. A ribbon of blood opened up on his temple. His knees bent and he crumpled to the ground.

I gasped, feeling the concussion jar my own brain, then ease as Will slid into oblivion.

He lay where he'd fallen, not moving, blood darkening his hair and pooling beside his head. His chest rose and fell in shallow breaths, and I could still feel his heart beating in rhythm with my own.
Not dead. Not dead is good.

Everything in me wanted to rush over and stop the bleeding and call for help, but I didn't dare let Marsh see that I cared for fear he'd start shooting.

 "Tell me what you want."

"Saundra sent me to get the rest of her stuff. Remember? We agreed."

He said this like it made sense to him somehow, and I shook my head a little to clear it. "This requires a gun? And beating Will senseless?"

"You weren't supposed to see any of the equipment."

But I had seen it all now—the equipment and the little bottles. In that moment I wished I hadn't. If Marsh had only come an hour earlier and taken it all away, I would never have known what was here. And then it wouldn't have been my job to fix it, to clean up the mess. If I let Marsh walk away now with all of this contraband I would never be able to live with myself.

On the other hand, no way was I going to let Will die. 

I needed time to think.

Holding my breath and taking a gamble that Marsh didn't really want to pull that trigger, I turned my back on the gun and crossed the barn to the contraption that looked like a distillery.

"What is all this, anyway?" I ran my fingers over the tubing that connected the pot to the glass beakers, watching Marsh in my peripheral vision.

He blinked repeatedly, processing. His brow furrowed and he squinted at the apparatus like he'd never seen it before. Then he shook his head, exactly like a cow will do when the flies are pestering, and said, "That isn't important. Saundra wants her stuff, and she wants it now."

"So take it. Why are you waving a gun around when you have work to do?"

He just stood there, looking dazed and confused, as if this was a question for which he had no answer. I thought about Will, and the guitar, and the little bottles on the shelves in the tack room.

"Sorry about the whole spilled dream thing," I said, watching him. "I hope there are no lingering effects."

He gave an exaggerated sigh. "Stop stalling. You're going to load my truck for me. That's why I've got the gun. So I'm gonna count to ten, and if you aren't moving by then, I'm going to shoot Will. You hear me?"

Marsh's behavior just didn't add up. He'd never been overly bright and he'd always been a bully, but he wasn't stupid and he wasn't a killer. If I was right about what was going on, he'd been programmed somehow and wasn't driving his own boat.

 Which made me responsible. For him, for Will, for this whole stupid mess my mother had bequeathed to me. I hate responsibility. All I've ever wanted is freedom, me and Red and the wide open road. Well, and maybe Will.

But I couldn't walk away. Even if I could have disabled Marsh, grabbed Will and made a break for it, I couldn't run off and leave that room full of bootlegged dreams. And I really wasn't even good with the idea of letting Saundra have her hooks in Marsh.

"You don't have to do this." I took a slow step forward, holding out my hands and keeping steady eye contact, as though Marsh was a frightened dog who might be soothed and brought to heel. "Come on, Marsh. You don't hate Will. Just yesterday you were relieved he was still alive. You're not a murderer."

A deep, guttural sob caught in his chest. The gun in his hands wavered. "I am, though. I killed Tom. Threw him in the lake."

I took another step with nothing better in mind than getting close enough to wrestle with him for the gun. I figured if I was right up close and personal I'd be away from the business end of the damn thing, seeing as it was a long barrel and not a pistol. Maybe I could take him down without either of us getting hurt.

Not a great plan, as I'm better at running than fighting. By the time the guns come out I'm usually miles away.

"If you killed Tom—that's no reason to kill somebody else. Make a run for it. Get out of town. Do you think Saundra is going to protect you from the cops? You don't need to help her."

"I want to help her." His voice had steadied and there was a note of pride in it now.

"You? What could you possibly do? Stir the cauldron by full moonlight for the Witch Chemist in charge? Dance naked around a fire?"

He drew himself up straight. "I contributed, Jesse. Saundra said my memories were perfect and she'll give me 50% of the take when we sell them. Afternoon Seduction. That's one of mine. And the Tavern Brawl is, too."

"They stole your memories?"

"Nobody stole anything. I volunteered." He smirked. "Not like I can't afford to forget a sexual encounter or two. So many women are forgettable anyway."

"And when exactly did you have time to do this?"

"Stop it, Jesse. I see what you're trying to do. That's close enough. Not another step."

"Marsh—they took more than you meant to give them. Like the memory of the dream I spilled on you—gone."

His jaws clamped tight. "Just shut up! No more talking. I think I'll just shoot you now and get it over with."

"You can't shoot me."

"Why not?"

The indecision had cleared from his face. I figured he'd talked himself around the empty spaces in his head. That made him outright dangerous. If he truly believed the lines he'd been programmed with, he would pull that trigger and Will and I would both be dead.