Chapter 187: No Such Thing
- RORY -
"So, wait a second..." Luciano says, leaning forward with his attention on my sister. "You’re telling me that you and Dex shared dreams, too?"
Raya’s apparent discomfort with this subject seems to put Dex on edge, because soon he’s glaring at Luci—not something the laid back Dex would typically do. I’m sure it’s only because he’s anticipating his cousin saying something stupid that would make Raya more uncomfortable.
Maybe I shouldn’t have suggested they fill Luciano in on this. Now that I think about it, I don’t even really know much about the details of their dreams either. Just that Raya had been tormented by them until Dex showed up at her work one day.
It really does seem like her dreams made Dex appear. Or maybe they were just anticipating him like some kind of divine prophecy. But then what does that make my dream?
"Have you dreamt about me before?" Luciano asks, turning to me and wrapping his arm around my chair. "Did you dream me into your life, dolcezza?"
"No," I chuckle. "You’re lucky you made it into even one of my dreams. Maybe the witches were going to sacrifice you next."
His eyebrow shoots up again, but instead of being offended, he’s clearly amused. And I notice that his arm stays firmly behind my chair like this now gives him some kind of claim on me. If it wasn’t going to look childish, I would turn around and pry his fingers off of it.
"Witches?" Raya repeats.
"Stregas," Luci corrects, as if that makes a difference. "That’s what they seemed like to me."
"So there was nothing..." Raya starts and then abruptly stops. "They weren’t like ours."
"I’m assuming by how Dex has gone from looking like a puppy to a wolf with this subject that I shouldn’t ask what yours are about," Luci smirks.
"It’s just a complicated topic, I guess," Raya says quietly. "I had them for a long time before I met Dex. I wrote them down in a journal, because I thought I was going crazy. They came every night, and I could only get them out of my mind if I wrote them down like that."
"I never showed them to anyone, but uh..." she chuckles, but it’s not the funny kind. "Lawson stole them. He was the only other one to read them until Dex got them back. It sounds pretty stupid now... after everything."
The amusement bleeds out of Luciano and he takes his arm back from my chair, folding his hands together on the table like he’s found himself in the middle of a business deal.
"Is this why he wanted to get you that day?" His voice has turned cold—void of emotion. The shift is startling, because it happens so fast. "When he showed up at Dex’s house and threatened you?"
"You know about that?" Raya asks, surprised.
"Of course. That’s why Dex wanted him punished in the first place. He didn’t tell you yet about how we took Lawson that first time?"
Raya’s eyebrows pinch, and she looks at Dex. I guess when the whole mafia thing was discussed between them, this wasn’t something that was included.
"You kidnapped Lawson?" I ask, finding this actually quite amusing. "Maybe he should have just been taken care of then."
It’s meant to be a joke, I guess, but it is definitely not received that way. Dex goes from looking quietly pissed that Luciano brought this up to guilty in an instant.
"You’re right," Dex says, raking a hand over his face. And then I see all of the exhaustion appear—like with that one hand, he has done some kind of magic trick and unveiled a much older version of himself. "This was all my fault, Rory. I’m sorry. I should have known my brother better. I should have taken care of him before he had a chance to threaten you or anyone else again. I should have killed him myself."
"No, Dex. That’s not what I meant," I say quickly, noticing the way Raya’s expression shifts to one of shared guilt and pain. "It’s definitely nobody’s fault but his."
"Yes it is. It’s my fault. You should have never been taken that day."
"I should have never been taken, but that has nothing to do with you," I say adamantly, voice rising because I’m angry that he would feel guilt for this. I mean, I understand it. But how can he truly think he is to blame for his evil brother? "Besides, it’s over. Don’t you dare beat yourself up about it. You’re a good man, Dex. I don’t blame you. My shit goes much deeper than what happened that day."
Then it’s my turn to shut up abruptly, because now I’ve said too much. I sigh miserably, realizing that I can’t take that admission back. I fidget with the glass of gin on the table and then down it in one go.
"Excuse me," Luciano calls to our waitress and raises his glass again. "Can we get another round?"
I chuckle for no reason other than the fact that we could all probably use another drink. I know I could.
"The dream Luciano and I had wasn’t sexy. I was in a circle of older women. There was chanting, but not from them. I was handed a knife, and when I cut into myself, these awful creatures spilled out. It was so real. It felt like I was there."
I tell them this without glancing up once, because I’m not sure that I want to see their reaction.
"Luciano caught me when I fell after that," I sigh. "Then I woke up, and he was there. He had the same dream."
When no one says anything, I finally venture a glance Raya’s way. She looks afraid.
"So what does this mean? Why are we sharing dreams? You two must have come to some conclusion about it, right?" I ask.
Dex and Raya exchange a long, silent look, and then I see her reach for Nana’s locket and start playing with it. She always wears it.
"There’s no simple answer. I believe the dreams brought us together for many reasons," Dex says finally. "Raya was in danger. Her neighbor who was spying on her was Kenneth Driver. He was wanted for rape and murder, and the police said he always watched his victims first. If I hadn’t gone to her apartment and noticed the peephole in her wall, she would have been next."
"Jesus," Luciano says. Then his eyes cut my way, and I see him thinking—contemplating how that might translate to our situation.
"I’m not in any danger," I tell him with a frown and then thank the waitress when she returns and sets another glass in front of me.
"There’s always danger," Luciano mutters, turning his own glass around on the table.
"So no witches in your dreams then?" I ask Raya with a soft chuckle, trying to shift the subject toward something less ominous. What’s the point in thinking about some vague, mysterious danger that is probably not even coming?
"Nana showed up once," she says. "But I guess that wasn’t a dream Dex and I shared. She did tell me that this all happened for a reason... the car accident and everything."
When I recall the car accident that Raya was in, a detail stands out that I admittedly haven’t thought much about. But now for some reason it seems significant. An elderly woman died. She stepped right in front of that SUV.
A shiver of hidden meaning skitters down my spine like it wants to get in and tell me something, but I shake it off. It’s ridiculous to even think that poor old woman who died has anything to do with the women in my dream. It was just a dream. Just a weird, disturbing dream.
There’s no such thing as witches.
