“Bad dreams, huh?” I asked.
She gave half a nod, then shook her head. “Not bad. Some of them are good. But they’re weird.”
Now we were getting to it. “Weird how?”
“It’s like I’m not me anymore.” Worry clouded her face as she handed me a plate. “Mom said I should tell her if I have dreams like that.”
“Have you? Told her, I mean.”
Her wet hand gripped my wrist. “What will she do if she finds out?”
I curled my fingers around hers and gave a little squeeze. “It’ll be okay, sweetie. I promise.” I picked up a dish towel and dried both our hands. She nodded, but doubt furrowed her forehead.
“Dishwasher loaded,” I announced. “How about some hot chocolate? That helps me sleep sometimes.”
“Okay.” Maria sat down again at the table.
I put two mugs of milk into the microwave. As they heated, I got the coffeemaker started.
“You look weird in a dress,” Maria observed.
Yeah, I could agree with that. Felt weird, too, not to be in my usual jeans. “That’s because I don’t have cool pajamas like yours.”
Maria looked down at her pajamas, blue flannel covered with yellow peace signs, and grinned. “Mom would freak if you wore pajamas to a dinner party.”
“You’re right, she would. But at least I’d be comfortable.”
Maria laughed. I stirred in the cocoa and carried the two mugs to the table. She took hers in both hands and sipped, then sipped again. She put down the mug and wiped off a cocoa mustache with the back of her hand.
“So tell me about these dreams of yours,” I said.
Maria drank more cocoa. “They start off normal—you know, just dreams. But then they change.” She wriggled in her chair, sitting up straighter. “Like, I had this one where I was walking down the hall at school, except all of a sudden I realized I was underwater, swimming. It scared me because I thought I’d drown. I kept thinking, ‘I need air. I need to breathe.’ But then I realized I was breathing. I could breathe the water.” Her eyes went wide with amazement as she remembered how that felt. “After that, it got fun. Except I was worried I couldn’t open my locker because I didn’t have any hands. Just fins. And then I laughed at myself because I thought, ‘Silly. Why would a fish need a locker?’ The laughing made lots of bubbles.” Amusement lit her eyes but dimmed at once to worry. “Do you have dreams like that?”
“Sure. When I was your age, I had them all the time. Swimming, running—but on four legs, right?—burrowing, flying . . .”
Maria leaned toward me. “Flying dreams are the best. It’s like, suddenly I’m up the air and I’m flying. And then somehow I realize I always could; I just didn’t know it before. It’s great. I can go anywhere I want. And part of me thinks, ‘Why do I even bother to walk?’”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s like—”
The kitchen door swung open. “How’s that coffee coming?” Gwen stopped and stared at the two of us. From the heat that rose in my cheeks—and from the way Gwen watched us through narrowed eyes like we were conspirators plotting an assassination—I knew we looked way guiltier than a girl and her aunt sharing some cocoa.
“What are you doing up, young lady?” Gwen asked Maria.
“Um, I . . .” Maria’s round eyes implored me for help.
“She came downstairs for hot chocolate,” I said. “It sounded like a good idea, so I made us each a mug. She helped me load the dishwasher, too.”
“Well, you get back to bed now, Maria. I’ll be up in a few minutes to tuck you in. Again.”
“Okay. Night, Mom. Night, Aunt Vicky.” Maria gave Gwen and then me a peck on the cheek. She fled up the back stairs.
I put the empty mugs in the dishwasher and got a carton of half-and-half from the fridge.
“So, what were you two talking about?” Gwen took the half-and-half and poured it into a cream pitcher, which she set on a tray. The tension was back in her shoulders, and her hand shook. That was Gwen. When upset, make things even more perfect.
“Oh, you know . . .” I so didn’t want to get between my sister and her daughter on this issue. Maria should confide in Gwen about the dreams, yes. But not until she felt ready.
“She’s having dreams, isn’t she? Preshifting dreams.”
“They’re just dreams, Gwen. She said she had a couple of odd dreams lately—flying, swimming, stuff like that. Norms get those, too. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”
“But it might.” Gwen’s biggest fear was that her daughter would become a shapeshifter. That was a big part of why she’d married a norm; she’d hoped human DNA would make her children something other than Cerddorion, something closer to “normal.” But as Maria grew, so did Gwen’s fears. It didn’t help matters that a crazy scientist with an ambition to map the shapeshifter genome had tried last fall to kidnap Maria and use her as a lab animal. I’d brought Maria home, but Gwen’s protective instincts had kicked into overdrive. Yet she couldn’t protect Maria from herself. She couldn’t shield the girl from her own nature—whatever that turned out to be.
“We’ll have to wait and see,” I said. “There’s no point in worrying yourself sick about it now.”
“We’ll talk about this later.” Gwen’s tone made the words sound like a threat.
I held open the door as she carried the coffee tray into the dining room. She’d forgotten the tiramisu. But it didn’t matter. The evening was over. Not even Kane could pull Gwen back from whatever dark place she’d gone in her worries about Maria, in her anger and hurt that Maria had chosen to talk to me—not Gwen—about what she was going through. Within fifteen minutes, we were saying good night.
4
“THAT WENT PRETTY WELL,” I SAID AS WE PULLED OUT OF Gwen’s driveway and headed back to Boston.
“Are you kidding? If that had been a trial, and the jury was starting its deliberations—like your sister and her husband are doing in their living room right now—do you know what I’d be doing? I’d be pacing the hallways, chewing my nails until they bled and trying to figure out how to tell my client we were going to lose.”
“Oh, come on. It wasn’t that bad. Okay, there were a couple of tense moments. But Gwen likes you. She gave me the secret signal.”
He scowled like he thought I was teasing him. “I wish you’d told me not to mention your aunt.”
“I should have. I’m sorry about that.”
But even if I hadn’t been distracted on the drive out here, I might have neglected to bring up the issue. In my mind, Mab’s household and Gwen’s family existed in such completely separate spheres that I probably wouldn’t have thought to warn Kane. Of course, without that warning from me, he’d think bringing up family would be a natural icebreaker. He’d probably expected that saying he liked Mab would win him points with my sister, not send him three giant steps back.
“What happened between them?” he asked.
“I don’t know, exactly.” The animosity had started nearly twenty years ago. “When Gwen was thirteen, she went to Wales for her first summer of demon-fighter training. Or that’s what was supposed to happen—she was home within a month. When I asked her why she came back, she burst into tears and told me to leave her alone. She never said what went wrong. But whenever anyone mentioned Mab’s name, Gwen would shout, ‘I hate her,’ and run out of the room.”
Gwen’s rejection of Mab had changed our family. No more Christmas visits to Maenllyd, Mab’s manor house in north Wales. Gwen flat-out refused to go. And all those summers I spent in Wales, Gwen never once asked about Mab or acknowledged that I’d been away. She hadn’t invited Mab to her wedding; she hadn’t sent announcements when her children were born. Because of Gwen, Mab hadn’t attended my father’s funeral.