Anathema (Causal Enchantment, #1) (11 page)

I briefly considered pulling my weary body up
to undress and get ready for bed, but I drifted off to asleep
before I could act on it, faintly aware of a burning heat against
the skin of my chest.

T
his feels
too familiar.

The same statue stood beside me. The same trees
towered over me. The same twilight challenged my eyes. The only
thing worse than last night’s dream would be last night’s dream
repeating itself.

I looked down to see my jade green evening
gown. That was different, at least. My pendant had come alive
again, burning hot and shining a brilliant orange–red.

“
We’ve been waiting for you,” a low
voice called from the darkness.

My body went rigid. My eyes scanned the trees
for the speaker. I sagged in relief as a woman with an angelic face
and springy curls stepped out from the shadows. Amelie. This was a
different dream.

“
We’re alone,” Amelie confirmed when
she noticed my eyes checking the trees for the others. “Sorry about
last time … we didn’t have much choice. Though I can’t say I didn’t
enjoy part of it.” She grinned sheepishly. “You are … an apparition
of sorts. I’ll explain later, but we need to get away from here.”
She stepped forward, then hesitated. “Sorry about this.”

I frowned. “About what?”

I regained consciousness as my bare feet hit
stone. Full darkness had descended and I couldn’t see a thing.
“Amelie?” I whispered.

“
Sorry,” Amelie said
again.

“
What did you do to me?”

“
Nothing, really. It was just easier
if I didn’t have to explain things yet. Besides, it would have
taken all night at your pace,” Amelie said, evading my question.
“Plus you probably would have tripped and knocked yourself out on a
tree root again.”

“
I’m not
that
slow,” I
muttered, reaching up to touch the bump on my head from the
previous night. I had excelled at track in high school.
The
perfect loner’s sport
.

Amelie laughed. “You are, next to me. Besides,
I’d like to see you run through the woods and up a mountain in
that
,” her eyes appraised my dress.

I pursed my lips, conceding to her
logic.

“
Come on, let’s build you a fire.
You’re shivering.” She grabbed my hand and began leading me through
the darkness.

“
How can you see anything?” I asked
incredulously.

“
I have great eyesight,” she
answered simply. “Stay right there.”

“
Where am I gonna go?” I mumbled,
wrapping my arms around my chest.

I heard a harsh scraping sound, like stone
striking metal, then a flame suddenly appeared. I watched as it
floated through the darkness, sparking other flames as it moved
until dozens of little fires lit the space around me.

The torchlight revealed we were in another
cave, this one much larger than the one last night—its ceiling
invisible from where I stood. It was empty except for a few cast
iron park benches arranged around a circle of stones. A
perfectly–formed teepee of wood, dried grass, and miscellaneous
shreddings was piled within. A firepit. A new one, given the lack
of ash. On the other side of the cave, three tunnel openings led
into oblivion.

“
You’ll be safe here for the time
being,” Amelie offered, walking up to me with a torch in her hand,
as I surveyed the place.

“
Cozy.” I hugged myself
tightly.

“
Right. A fire.” Amelie strolled
over to hold her torch to the teepee. In seconds a roaring fire was
blazing. “You’ll need to come closer to feel the heat,” she said,
giggling cheerily.

I walked over to sit on one of the benches. A
worn piece of metal lay where the wooden slats of a normal park
bench seat had rotted away. I awkwardly sat down, trying to avoid
the sharp corners on the metal, afraid of tearing my dress or
cutting myself.

Amelie slid in easily beside me, seemingly
unconcerned about injury. “I love your dress.” She reached out and
lightly touched the silky material with her fingertips.

“
Thanks. I was wearing this tonight
when I fell asleep,” I responded. And then it hit me and I began
laughing.

“
Why is that funny?” Amelie asked,
confused.

“
Because I’m worried about tearing
my dress on this bench!”

She frowned. “As you should be—it’s a pretty
dress.”

“
No, you don’t understand. I’m
dreaming. This cave, this fire, you—it’s fake. I know that, and yet
here I am, worried about my dress!”

“
You think you’re dreaming,” Amelie
said slowly.

“
No. I
know
I’m dreaming.
Last night I went to sleep, dreamed about you guys, then woke up in
my bed—right after you threw that man’s headless body into the
fire.” I shuddered.

“
Last
night … ?” Amelie
repeated, looking perplexed. “Maybe you did wake up in your own bed
but, here, you disappeared into thin air. And it wasn’t last night.
You’ve been gone for over a month.” Her tone and her expression
were so convincing that it was a struggle not to believe
her.

A puff of wind cooled my shoulder. I turned to
see Bishop and Fiona sitting on the next bench; the unexpected and
freakishly quiet entry made me jump.

“
Finally!” Bishop said by way of
greeting, his charcoal eyes twinkling. “You took your time coming
back.”

“
Where are they?” Amelie asked them
quietly.

Bishop shrugged, a serious look flickering over
his face. “Hopefully Rachel will prove useful.”

All three turned to me now, dismissing their
secret concern.

“
So, how does it work?” Bishop asked
eagerly.

I frowned.

“
Evangeline was just telling me how
she thinks this is all a dream and we are figments of her
imagination,” Amelie said, her eyebrows raised.

Bishop roared with laughter. “You think you’re
dreaming?”

Fiona cuffed him sharply upside the head, the
slap echoing through the cave. It didn’t appear to hurt him in the
least, though he looked unimpressed. “You’ll swear it’s a
nightmare, soon enough,” he muttered, standing up and stalking out
of the cave.

“
Ignore him, he has an odd sense of
humor,” Fiona apologized in that smoky voice, offering me a
pleasant smile.

“
So why are you dressed up?” Amelie
said, chucking another log into the fire.

“
I was about to ask,” Fiona
murmured, adding, “It’s gorgeous!” Her long, slender fingers
reached out and caressed the material, as Amelie had. “It’s been so
long …”

I glanced at their frayed clothing but averted
my gaze politely. They both laughed.

“
We look homeless, don’t we?” Amelie
said, holding the corners of her tattered shirt up with beautifully
manicured nails. It didn’t make any sense.
But of course—this
is a dream!

“
Isn’t Evangeline lovely?” Amelie
suddenly asked someone behind me.

I turned my head to see Caden standing a few
feet away, his piercing green eyes on me. My heart skipped a few
beats. “Hi,” I managed to sputter, feeling heat creep up my neck to
engulf my cheeks.

“
You’re wearing slightly more than
last time,” he observed, his mouth curving in a tiny smile. “What’s
the occasion?”

I felt a second wave of embarrassment flare,
remembering that obscene outfit. Now here I was, barely covered
again. “My birthday.”

“
Oh, I love birthdays! How old are
you now?” Amelie asked gleefully.

“
Eighteen.”

“
To be eighteen again,” she sang
dramatically, tilting her head back, her eyes closing as she
reminisced.

I frowned, looking at her childish face.
She’s not a day over sixteen, is she?

She clapped her hands together in small, quick
taps, a mischievous grin on her face. “Oh, goody! You don’t believe
me! How old do you
think
I am?”

I blinked. “I don’t know …
nineteen?”

“
Nope! Guess again!” Amelie
exclaimed, her face bright with amusement.

“
Okay … um, twenty?”

She shook her head, giggling wildly.

This didn’t seem like much of a game. “I give
up!”

“
Well … I’m not exactly sure. But,
if we’ve been keeping accurate track of time, I’d say I’m about
752, give or take a decade.”

I frowned, biting my lower lip. “I don’t get
it.”

“
We’re sorry, Evangeline. This isn’t
as much fun for you as it is for Amelie,” Fiona apologized, her
face softening with a sympathetic smile.

“
Humans never did find this game
fun,” Amelie said with a pout, her springy curls
bobbing.

Humans?
I stared blankly at
her.

“
Haven’t you figured it out yet?
What we are?” she asked.

I glanced at the others’ solemn expressions.
If they aren’t humans, what could they be?
It hit me then.
I started laughing. “Of course! You’re vampires!” Viggo’s twisted
adaptation was still fresh in my mind, and now in my
dreams.

“
We won’t hurt you, I promise!”
Amelie said earnestly, dropping to her knees in front of me to hold
my hands. “We just want to be friends.” Her eyes darted to Caden,
who was watching me with a concerned expression. I noticed Bishop
beside him; he must have snuck back in at some point.

“
Of course! You are,” I was on my
feet now, replaying Viggo’s conversation, “beautiful, emotional
creatures. Misunderstood.” I paced around the fire. “And you want
to be friends, right? With quiet, meek Evangeline, who has no
friends. People don’t even notice me. But you—” my arm swept around
the circle in rare dramatic flair “—all you want to do is protect
me.” I paused. “So this is how things manifest into dreams,” I
mused, more to myself. The events from the day were merging with my
… what? Deep inner fears of loneliness, perhaps? Forcing them to
the surface in this fantasy of super–powered beings.

I stopped pacing in front of Caden. “And you.”
I walked up to him. “Of course you’re in my dream. No guy has ever
even so much as blinked in my direction. And here you are, so
perfect, and beautiful, and sweet …” Caden’s eyes widened in
surprise. “When I see you, I want to …” I didn’t know how to finish
the sentence.

Luckily I didn’t have to, as Rachel suddenly
appeared out of thin air to wrap possessive arms around Caden’s
waist. His arm quickly found its place around her shoulder, albeit
stiffly.

A vile bitterness bubbled up in me. “And of
course you’re dating the gorgeous but trashy girlfriend that I
could never compete with. Typical. Is this what you like?” I
blurted at Caden, gesturing callously at Rachel. “She’s not a very
nice person, you know.”

Bishop’s head fell back and he barked
laughter.

“
Clearly I’ve missed an interesting
conversation,” Rachel said, smiling haughtily at me. Her voice
didn’t carry the same hostility as the previous night. It was
sickly sweet and therefore no more pleasant. “And I would love to
hear the rest of this tirade of yours. However, we have visitors
that I wasn’t able to deter. Eight of them.”

“
Great! Invite them in!” I said,
throwing my hands up in the air. “Another one of those monsters,
maybe? Is that supposed to represent my ugly inner
demon?”

Rachel turned to Caden, grimacing. “Has she
lost it?”

“
Let’s play it cool,” Caden
suggested, ignoring both of us.

“
And maybe we should get her out of
here,” Fiona added, eyeing me warily.

Caden’s hand—silky smooth and on the cool
side—latched onto mine, sending a frisson through my body. He
tugged me after him, running toward one of the tunnels and pulling
me with him into the blackness.

I ran blindly, unable to see in the darkness,
until my foot snagged on something hard and I stumbled, smashing my
shoulder against the wall. I yelped in pain.

“
Quiet!” Caden hissed, but followed
that with an apology.

“
How can you see?” I grated through
my teeth, rubbing at the burning pain in my shoulder.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he hoisted me up by
one arm and continued running. My pain instantly vanished, as if
his closeness had injected me with a shot of morphine.

Finally he stopped running and set me down
gently. He shoved something soft into my hands. “Put those on,”
Caden instructed in a whisper.

“
Put what on?”

He mumbled something incoherent. Seconds later
a flickering torch illuminated a tiny, low–ceilinged cave. “Change,
please,” he whispered urgently, turning to face the exit. I could
sense the apprehension in his voice. It was all too familiar from
the other night.

I looked down at my hands, which held a ratty
pair of pants and a shirt similar to what Amelie and Fiona wore.
They’re disguising me. Okay, I’ll play along.
I pulled on
the pants. Unclasping my dress’s neck strap, I let the dress drop
noiselessly to the ground, wishing it had allowed for a
bra.