I leaned my head against the bus window. The engine’s vibration, felt through the glass, made my teeth rattle. I wedged the caramel lolly between my teeth so I didn’t swallow it too soon and choke. The sugar always helped restore my energy after a session in someone’s dreams, so I kept a little packet of lollies in my bag for situations such as these.
By the time we reached the bus interchange in Civic, I was feeling a little better—less like a wrung-out rag, at least, although nerves made me fidgety. I stomped down the stairs and, after checking the bus timetables, made my way to another arrival bay to wait for Mum.
I’d called her as I was waiting for the bus following the appointment with the Blackwoods. She’d surprised me by offering to meet me in town for dinner and, delighted at this sign of her reengaging with the world, I’d agreed before thinking it through. Her first week outside the home and she wanted to catch a bus? At peak hour? On her own? I should have said no, pled a prior engagement.
“Boyfriend, love?” a man with a shock of silver hair and a three-day growth asked me, his pale eyes alight with amusement. The interchange was crowded with public servants waiting to head home for the day; he stood out in his paint-stained jeans and flannelette shirt.
“What?” I stared at him, unblinking, and his smile wilted a little.
“You waiting for your boyfriend? You look worried. That’s the third time you’ve checked your phone. Doll like you, I’m sure he won’t stand you up.”
Bristling at his tone, I opened my mouth to snap something at him, and then closed it without speaking as I realised how I must look: nibbling my lip, shifting from foot to foot, face tight with lingering grief at Felice’s awful memory.
I was saved from having to answer by the arrival of the bus, which groaned and sighed its way into the bay. Conscious of the man’s twinkly-eyed stare, I tried not to look too anxious as I scanned the passengers through the windows as they moved to disembark. I spotted Mum’s long, black hair immediately. When she clattered down the stairs, I hugged her enthusiastically; her brows rose with surprise.
“Anyone would think you hadn’t seen me just this morning.” Smiling, she swatted me with a rolled up piece of paper: the bus timetable, a distinctive green stripe down one side. “You shouldn’t worry so much.”
“When was the last time you caught a bus?” I looped my arm through hers and gave the silver-haired man a pointed look. He shrugged a shoulder, looking the pair of us up and down. Ew.
“Before you were born,” Mum admitted, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright with delight. “They have heating now!”
I laughed, steering her away from the interchange and the guy checking her out. “Some of them do.” Relief coursed through me, leaving me giddy. Despite my apprehension, I wanted her to acclimatise to life on the outside. It had just been so long.
“Anyway, I haven’t been living in a total bubble,” she continued as we wandered towards City Walk. “We did have TV, you know.”
I snorted, and then tried to hide it behind my hand, pretending to scratch my cheek. “Shall we have sushi?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I thought we’d have pizza? It’s been ages since I had a good, honest pizza. The ones at Wattle Tree Park always had fancy ingredients on them: spinach and sweet potato and strangely cooked chicken. Those are okay, but I’d kill for honest-to-god ham and pineapple.” When I hesitated, she added, “Please? My shout.”
I had almost a hundred dollars in my purse, most of it payment from Felice’s somewhat bemused grandmother, but my income was sporadic. Of course, Mum’s would be too if she wasn’t careful. Still, I nodded my acceptance of her offer. She looked so proud of herself, and one time wouldn’t hurt.
“Serenity called while you were out,” Mum said as we crossed the old chess pit, passing a gaggle of gossiping office workers toting bags from a brand-name clothing store. There was an odd note in her voice but, when I glanced at her, her expression was pleasantly neutral. “She’s found a new home for the shop.”
“That’s great news!” I grinned, thinking about my comfortable old office out the back of Serenity’s New Age Gifts. My visit to the Blackwoods had been a pleasant exception to my usual experience with house calls these past few months: more than I cared to consider had involved visiting houses that smelled of marijuana or stank so strongly of incense that my eyes watered. Sometimes both. I’d been growled at by an overprotective cattle dog, hit on by a stoner who thought I could give him dreams of his favourite supermodel—I could but didn’t want to—and arrived to find no one home.
House calls sucked.
“About that…” Mum said. My grin faded at the hesitation in her voice. “Serenity said she wants to talk to you. I … I don’t think it’s good news.”
“Oh.” My stomach swooped. That could only mean one thing: Serenity was cutting me loose. I couldn’t blame her. Even though I hadn’t held the matches, it had been my fault her shop had burned down. Been burned down. It still stung, though. When I’d worked with Serenity, she’d mothered me in a way my own mother rarely had.
Compressing my mouth into a grim line, I reached for my phone. “I’ll call her.”
Mum shook her head, nibbling her lip. “She’s meeting us for dinner.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or be shocked. It was sweet that Mum had arranged to be here so I wouldn’t have to deal with the disappointment on my own. That was what I told myself ... although part of me squirmed inside at the idea of being sacked with my mother at the table. “At the pizza place?”
“Turns out she likes pizza too.” Mum winked at me.
Serenity waited near the front of the café, wedged into a small booth. She filled the inside edge of the table, her generous frame seeming even larger in a flowing, tie-dyed dress. Serenity was huge: tall, and with broad shoulders and hips that would be well-suited to the football field. She smiled when she saw us, although I caught a hint of discomfort, too—and not from the seating arrangement, I was guessing. Suppressing a sigh, I smiled back and slid into a seat on one side of her. Mum sat opposite, picking up the menu with bright-eyed enthusiasm.
After the waiter took our orders, Serenity leaned back as far as the narrow space would allow. She twisted at the red serviette between her fingers until it tore, and I took a deep breath of warm air rich with the mingled scents of tomato and garlic, bracing myself for bad news. “Thanks for letting me gatecrash your dinner,” she said.
“No worries,” I replied, though I’d had very little to do with it. “How have you been?”
“Good.” Twist, twist. “The insurance payout arrived, did I tell you? And there’s this little shop in Griffith, recently redone and then vacated not long after. I could move straight in without having to do any refurbishments.”
“That’s great.” I tried to cram as much enthusiasm into my voice as I could. She tipped her head to the side to regard me, a frown marring her forehead, and I decided to bite the bullet. “But what’s the bad news?”
“Who said there was any…?” She stopped, shaking her head, and gave me a rueful smile. “I should know to just cut to the chase with you psychics.”
“That’s not how my power works, Serenity.” I kept my voice gentle.
“Then how did you…?” she began. I put my hand out and stilled her fidgeting fingers. Her serviette was half in shreds, fragments of thin red paper in a pile on the table’s glossy surface. “Oh.”
“So what is it?”
“The shop is smaller than my old one was.” She heaved a sigh. “There’s only one tiny storage room and the main storefront. I won’t have room for my guided meditation class. Or for your office.”
I didn’t want my disappointment to show so I nodded, examining the central arrangement on the table to avoid meeting her gaze. Salt and pepper shakers, container of sugar, serviettes, small plastic plant shaped like an olive tree…
“I still want to try and come to some arrangement,” she added hastily, engulfing my hand in one of hers. I looked up in surprise. “We can obviously put up a poster advertising your business, and if you have business cards printed I can stock them too. But I want to offer you a job working the shopfront. Eight hours a day if you want it. You know the customers and the work.”
Relief flowed through me, cool as saline. Serenity wasn’t trying to throw me out on my ear—she was trying to come up with a way to make the smaller shopfront work, to keep me involved. She wasn’t angry at me for what had happened to her shop.
But a worm of doubt nibbled. Did I want to work fulltime as a shop assistant, even at a shop like Serenity’s? What about my clients? I imagined the smug reaction of my uncle’s widow, Lacey, to the news that my “dream therapy” business had failed. A high-powered lawyer, she already regarded me as the family’s black sheep, only a step above my malingering, former hypersomniac mother. Of course, I could still see clients of an evening, after shifts at the shop, but that sounded exhausting.
“How about four hours a day?” I suggested. “Please don’t think I’m not grateful, but…”
“You have to look after your customers too.” She leaned back in her chair until the seat squeaked a protest. “I understand.”
“I could do the other four hours, if you’re looking for someone.” Mum’s tone was casual as she plucked a straw-like sachet of sugar from its container and shook it, a tiny maraca. I stared at her, and she lifted her chin slightly. “Don’t look at me like that. I know I need work, and it’d be good to have a reason to get out of the house.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
She grinned, the expression as sheepish as I felt. “It’s alright. I know I’ve been a slugabed lately.”
I nearly choked on my laughter.
Serenity’s eyes twinkled as she looked between me and Mum. Finally, she cleared her throat and straightened the front of her dress as if she was preparing for a job interview … which I supposed she was, only as the interviewer. “Do you have any previous retail experience, Davina?”
“Nothing in the last twenty years,” Mum said. “I worked the counter at McDonald’s before I got pregnant with Melaina.” The idea of my mother in a fast food uniform made my mouth fall open with shock.
“Which means you wouldn’t have any references…?”
“No.” A blush flushed Mum’s ears, and her cheek moved. Was she biting the inside of it? Still, she persisted. “I’m a fast learner, though.”
Serenity’s eyes widened as she took in Mum’s embarrassed but proud demeanour. “Oh, lord, don’t feel bad. It just means to start with I’ll have to roster you on at the same time as Melaina, or with me. Working a till isn’t hard to learn, and you have something far more important than retail experience as far as I’m concerned.”
“What’s that?” I asked when Mum seemed too stunned to answer.
“Knowledge that there’s more to this world than what there appears to be on the surface. You know there are spirits that haunt people’s dreams, because you’ve experienced them. I’m not saying you have to believe every silly thing that other people do: faeries, unicorns and whatnot. But folks who’ve been touched by the supernatural are better at understanding those who believe in it. My customers don’t want a doubting Thomas selling them incense. I can teach you how to reconcile the take at the end of the day, but I can’t teach you to have an open mind and respect others’ beliefs.”
Tension flowed out of Mum; only when it was gone did I realise how stiff her posture had been. “I definitely have an open mind.” Her grin faded a little. “At least, now Ollie’s gone I suppose it’s open.” She glanced at me.
“I haven’t tried going into your dreams since then.” I shrugged. “I assume the protections he built are still there.” But those protections weren’t perfect; they’d been overcome first by Ikelos and then by me, my father and Leander, working together. If the walls were intact, the holes probably remained too. “Maybe I should—”
“Shh!” Serenity’s voice was soft and emphatic as she reached over to squeeze my hand. I tipped my head to the side, noticing the direction of her gaze, up and over my shoulder. “Good evening, Constable Nelson,” she said brightly.
Forewarned, I managed to control my expression as I turned to regard the senior constable who had investigated both Serenity’s shop fire and, before that, Brad’s blight-possessed assault on me. I blinked in surprise: he wasn’t wearing his crisp police uniform but a pair of neat, dark jeans and a polo shirt. The clothes looked good on his tall frame, and the silver chain hanging around his neck, visible at the throat, made his steel-grey eyes gleam.
He smiled. “Please, call me David. It’s Serenity, isn’t it?” Despite the pleasantries, his eyes stayed cool, calculating, making me feel as if I’d done something wrong and he was trying to figure out what it was. Not all police officers made me feel that way; that power was all Nelson’s. I suppressed a shudder.
Serenity nodded, holding out her hand for him to shake. He did so, leaning across the table to squeeze it briefly before releasing it. Was the flush of red at her throat a blush, or was she flustered?
“Have you reopened your shop yet?” he asked, standing uncomfortably close to me in the crowded café—close enough that I could smell his aftershave: a fresh, spicy scent. If it weren’t for those eyes, I might have enjoyed the aroma. “You sold … alternative goods, didn’t you?”
The smile that twisted Serenity’s lips was a little sour. “Yes. I’m hoping we’ll reopen in the next month. Have you pressed charges against the man who burned it down yet? Ewan Wright?”
“That … is more complicated.” His gaze flickered to my face so quickly I would have missed it if I hadn’t been studying him. “We have his fingerprints at the scene and evidence of an injury consistent with a glass wound, but the prosecutor is waiting on a court-ordered psychiatric assessment.”
She nodded. “So they told me. What about his involvement at Wattle Tree Park?”
“Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do there.” He shrugged, and this time the look he gave me was longer, more uncomfortable. “With Ms Armstrong—both Ms Armstrongs—” he nodded at my mother “—refusing blood tests, we have no way to know whether he really did drug any of the patients as they claim. The other comatose patient hasn’t awoken, and his tox screen was clear.”
I unclenched my jaw and looked towards the kitchen as though eager for my food. Did Brad know the police had taken a blood sample from his grandfather? Surely that sort of thing would need the family’s permission … but, then, Belinda was the point of contact for the nursing home, not Brad. She might have agreed without Brad’s involvement, or even his knowledge. I was sure he’d have mentioned it to me if he’d known.
“At the time, I’d had quite enough of needles,” Mum said. “I’d make a different decision now, but I was delirious.” She sat back in her chair and gave him a flinty, narrow-eyed glare. “Now, if you don’t mind…?”
“Forgive me. I’m interrupting your meal.” He raised an eyebrow as he regarded the table, bare of food, and the shredded serviette. “I just wanted to say hello.” He looked at me a third time, finally addressing me directly. “How are you, Melaina?”
“Good.” I tried to sound distracted rather than nervous. “You?”
“Fine. Are you still dating Mr Peterson?”
“What if I am?” I snapped. It wasn’t smart, but his assumption that Brad was abusive and I was his battered girlfriend was infuriating. Understandable, given Nelson didn’t know Brad had been possessed when he attacked me—but it still got under my skin.
“Melaina,” Mum said, a quiet warning.
“I was just being polite.” Nelson raised his open hands before him in a pacifying gesture. I didn’t believe him for a second. He confirmed my suspicions when he added, “I’ve just been reviewing our records of the case and, when I saw you, I wondered.”
“Which case?”
He raised his eyebrows and assumed an innocent expression. “Given the assault, the fire and the incident at the nursing home involved both you and Mr Peterson, I’ve been treating all three events as one case.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.” I slid back along my seat towards Serenity. The smell of sandalwood incense that clung to her tickled my nose, but better that than being loomed over by Nelson. “Just because I had a run of bad luck…”
“There’s no such thing as luck.” Nelson’s gaze darted towards the counter. “Ah, I believe my pizza is ready. Have a wonderful evening.”
Before I could answer, he left, making his way across the café to the takeaway pizza counter. The fact he had an order to collect was somewhat reassuring. At least he hadn’t actively come looking for me.
“He’s such a Scorpio,” Serenity muttered, sweeping the fragments of serviette into her hand and then slipping them into a pocket as if she’d done something wrong. “Observant, determined and suspicious. Definitely in the right line of work, that one.”
“How do you know?” Mum asked, frowning at the constable as he paid for his pizza. Perhaps she expected him to sprout a segmented tail with a poisonous tip.
“When he shook my hand, I saw the pendant at his throat,” Serenity said. “Frankly, I’m surprised he believes in astrology at all. He doesn’t seem the type. Still … Melaina, maybe you should tell him what really happened? It would get him off your back, and he could redirect his energy to pursuing actual criminals.”
I shook my head. Nelson turned, pizza box in hand, and gave me a level look before heading for the door. I glanced hurriedly away. “Just because he wears an astrological symbol, that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have me committed right alongside Ewan if I told him dream spirits did it. Besides, they don’t have any proof we did anything wrong. And we were the victims, not Ewan. Why should I?”
Still, Serenity’s words rang in my mind, filling me with doubt. Observant, determined and suspicious. Oh, goody.