Framed and Burning (Dreamslippers Book 2) (40 page)

His uncle reappeared, took off his fish head, and set it on the woman’s body. “Is that any better?” she asked him.

“You’re a fish stick,” said Jacob.

“You’re mad because I’m not kosher,” she said before disappearing.

Jacob heard the sound of heels clicking on hardwood, and he turned to see Cat walking into the gallery. But Cat’s dream self seemed not to see Jacob. She walked over to a painting on the wall, grabbed it, and threw it to the ground.
 

“Rubbish!” she pronounced. “Pornographic!”

“No, it’s not,” Jacob protested, but Cat in the dream didn’t seem to hear him. “Burn it all!”

At her words, the gallery burst into flames, and Jacob woke with a start, ending the dream and popping Cat out of it.

He sat up in bed, his breathing rough.
 

“You okay?” she asked.

He began to laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “I had the weirdest dream.” He snuggled back into her and chuckled softly till he finally fell back to sleep.

Cat lay in bed and wondered at her strange gift. She didn’t feel bad about the blonde woman at all. Whatever was going on in him with regard to that woman didn’t have much to do with Cat. As far as the rest of what the dream revealed, she could lie there and analyze it if she wanted, but she was tired, and she wanted one last night’s sleep with Jacob before returning to her bed in the Grand Green Griffin. She fell back to sleep thinking fondly of her room in Granny Grace’s old Victorian.

Chapter Thirty

After most of the activity surrounding the Langholm case had subsided, Mick found himself back at the fourplex with a beautiful day beckoning outside. Pris invited him to go for a walk on the beach. Mick had been watching his sister in the aftermath of the case and knew she’d been to see Ernesto a couple of times. Released on an astronomical amount of bail, he had engaged the same lawyer who worked with Serena Jones. It was a contrast to how Candace’s case was going down. She would definitely be doing some jail time for second-degree arson.

Unsure how to broach the subject, Mick stumbled into it. “So, uh, you okay with this whole Ernesto thing, Pris?”

His sister gazed out toward the water as they stepped from the wooden boardwalk and onto the sand.

“I won’t ever be seeing him again,” she said. “And I’m sorry about that, but I can’t.”

“You feel betrayed.”

“Yes.”

“You’re angry.”

“Yes, I am.”

Mick was quiet for a while. Anger was not an emotion his sister showed often.

“It’s something I’ll have to work on,” she added.

“I’m sorry,” Mick offered. “I dragged you and Cat into this.”

“Don’t be,” Pris said. “I lost a lover and old friend, and that is sad. But you and I, we’re closer than ever. And Cat? She’s reawakened. Look at us! We’re a family of dreamslippers!”

Mick smiled, but what she said made him think of Strickland and the strange conversation over sandwiches. “Pris, I think Agent Strickland suspects our, uh, superhero power.”

Surprisingly, Pris laughed. “He does?”

“Mine, anyway.” He told her about their exchange.

“Well, he’s an intriguing one, isn’t he? I wonder if he ever makes his way to Seattle. I rather liked working with him, and so did Cat.”

As they traced a path at the edge of the surf, Pris said, “Speaking of Seattle, you know we have a very exciting art scene. I’ve been so impressed with the quality of the shows I’ve seen lately downtown,” she said. “I’d say they rival Miami. Maybe even out-shine it.”

“You don’t say…” Mick allowed, but he was instantly suspicious, not to mention secretly flattered.

“Listen, Mickey,” she said, pausing to dig a seashell out of the sand. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Uh-oh.”

She ignored him. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t have anyone here, Mick. I mean, besides Rose. And I know to you she’s, ah…just a friend.”

“Did she tell you what I did to her? Or rather, what I couldn’t do?”

“Not in so many words.”

Mick kicked a piece of driftwood. “I’m a flawed human being.”

Grace sighed. “But I’m talking about family. You don’t have any here.”

“Are you trying to depress me? Because it’s working. I think I need a drink now.”

“Sorry, Mick. What I’m trying to say is that you have me. And Cat. And you’d keep us if you moved to Seattle.”

“All it does is rain there.”

“Well, yes, but it’s a spitting kind of rain most of the time. Never mind what you’ve seen on TV. Those downpours are just for the cinematic value.”

“Great. I love being spit upon.”

“You’d get used to it.” She spied him sideways. “I rather think it would suit your dour attitude better than this place does. You’re not exactly the Margaritaville type.”

What she said struck a chord in him. But there was the matter of the trouble she could conjure, being able to walk in his dreams.
 

As if reading his thoughts, she said, “Mickey, I’m so sorry about what I did to you back then. It was a long time ago. But I know it’s affected our relationship ever since.”

“Marla Gibbs was the only one who understood me as an artist.”

Grace winced. She flashed on the one dream of Mick’s she would never be able to forget. It had likely been an innocent pubescent fantasy. Marla Gibbs, a widower, had been kind enough to take an interest in Mick’s artistic talent. He spent time at her house, and she was still youngish and pretty. He’d dreamed of kissing her, and more. Home to visit her parents, Grace had tattled on her brother, to them and several others. It was enough back then to cause a stir, and gossip spread. Gibbs moved to another town.

“I was unbearably righteous as a dreamslipper back then. I’ll never forgive myself for it. What I cost you.”

“Never mind me,” Mick said. “I was young. I got over it. But Marla Gibbs didn’t deserve that,” he said. “You kind of ruined her life.”
 

“Oh, now you’re being overly dramatic, Mick.” Grace sighed. “I’m sorry she had to move. But I checked into how she was doing in the Eighties, and she seemed happier there. She’d reconnected with a sister, sort of like us.”

He felt swayed, emotionally, but he didn’t want to let her know this, yet. He thought about how he’d miss his short jaunts to the Keys, the inspiration he’d taken there, and the place he and Donnie shared in the Everglades. He told her this.

“It’s gorgeous in Seattle—the mountains, the trees, the artsy city life! There’s no greater city on Earth.”

“When did you become a walking commercial for your own city?”

“Since I rediscovered my own brother,” Pris said, linking her arm in his.
 

Despite himself, he felt a lump in his throat. He held his arm in hers, and the two of them walked along for a while in silence.

Truth be told, he’d already been considering a move, and Seattle had crossed his mind. He was also turning something else over in his mind, and it involved Rose de la Crem.

“What have I got to lose?” he said to his sister. “Sure.”

“Oh, Mickey! You’ll love it! You must live in the Victorian with us. We’ve got loads of room to spare. You can paint upstairs, in the Adorable Amber Attic. And we could use your help…”

The two of them walked onward, discussing plans.

Later that afternoon, Mick dropped in on Rose de la Crem, who was in her studio, painting.

“Did you notice the railing outside?” she asked right away as she continued to stare at her easel, the tip of the paintbrush between her teeth. “It’s loose again! I think it’s time to get it replaced.”

“Well, as my new building manager, that should be your first priority.”

Mick waited a few beats for that to sink in.

Rose took the brush and set it down on her easel. “Your what?”
 

“My new building manager.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Well, now how does that work, Mick, when you live here yourself? I can’t have you breathing down my neck as the owner.”

“I’m moving to Seattle. You’ll be my on-site manager. You can live here rent-free, plus I’ll set aside a maintenance account for repairs.”

She blinked a few times and then ran over and flung her arms around him. “Oh, Mick! I’ll be the best building manager in the history of building management!”

Mick laughed. “You sure? You’re not still…disappointed in me?”

“Oh, come on, Mick. You’re too old for me anyway. And you can’t rap worth a damn.”

>>>

The night before the three dreamslippers were to head to Seattle together, Mick found himself falling into a dream, and at first he could not figure out for the life of him whose it was. Only Cat, Pris, and Rose were in the building, and it didn’t seem to fit any of them.

He looked down at his hands, and they were a woman’s, and they bore a French manicure. But man that he was, that wasn’t enough to clue Mick in.

In heels, he stalked the streets of a ghetto he’d never seen before. He seemed to be looking for something, or someone. And there it was, a ramshackle house with peeling paint and a sagging front porch. That’s where his host in heels wanted to go.

Inside, a man had a belt tied around his arm and was feeding a needle into it. A woman was sitting on the couch in a daze. Mick-as-whoever-he-was walked past them to a room at the back of the house, more of a porch, really, too small to be a bedroom and not adequately insulated, as he could see the sunlight through cracks in the walls. Sitting on a mattress on the floor was the redheaded girl, whose name he now knew. Angie Ramirez.

Mick realized he must be walking in Serena’s dream.
 

Mick-as-Serena held out one hand to the girl on the mattress, and she took it. “It’s a long walk,” Serena said to the girl. “But you can make it. You have to.” The girl looked up into Mick’s eyes and nodded.

Serena took the girl out the back door and began walking with her down the street, and then the ghetto fell away, and they seemed to be in the scrub desert, and then that fell away, and they were on a beach. The dream had an endless quality to it, as if the walking took place over years and years.

Serena must have awakened at that point, as Mick was thrust out of the dream. He felt a deep longing in his chest, a longing to get there, to arrive somewhere.

He got up and walked over to the painting he had started when he blackened over the one about Cat’s dream. It had started out feeling like inspiration for him at first, as he realized he could use the black paint to obscure something bright and shining beneath it that wanted to come out, not Cat’s dream, but something really lovely and positive, something that everyone wanted, something that would be slipping out from under the black like it couldn’t be held back.

But he’d hit a stumbling block when he didn’t really know what that thing was.

Until now.
 

He realized it was
home
.

Read on for an exciting glimpse of the next book in the Dreamslippers Series…

Prologue

He held her hair in a tight nest at the back of her head, the tension making her scalp ache, like her desire. Pearls swayed in a loose arc beneath her chin. They reminded her of the Newton’s cradle on her desk at work, how she’d lift a metal ball to let it drop and hit the next one. The energy would travel through the three still balls in the center, forcing the one on the opposite end to rise upward.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
 

How many times a day she did that, she did not know. It was habit. It had been for years.

He released her hair. His fingers massaged her scalp. Her eyes rolled back with pleasure. Her saliva flowed.

“God, you’re beautiful like this,” he said. “I love it when you let go.”

She reset her gaze, and there he was, close in, staring into her eyes.
 

She touched his strong jaw, freshly shaven, letting herself feel thrilled by his masculinity. “I can only let go like that with you.”

The look he returned was one of surrender. She marveled at that. She was supposed to be the submissive one, and yet during their play, they both surrendered, to each other.

“You have no idea how glad I am to hear that,” he said.

Funny that he would say that, as she knew exactly how it made him feel. It was part of what drew her to him, his need to know their connection was real, that her responses to him were unique. And they were. He was the only dom she’d ever trusted like this, the only one who could unlock her body.
 

The only one she loved.
 

Following her craving, she moved his hands where she wanted them. “Please,” she said. “I need you to hurt me.”

>>>

He knew to smack her where she was fleshiest, and to do it until her skin turned pink, but no more. He knew she enjoyed the feeling of the silk ties against her wrists. He knew when she parted her lips just so, her tongue wet, to slip his thumb into her mouth.