“Yeah, I’m fine,” I replied with a weak sigh.
The blatant lie might have worked had it not been for the fact that I winced as I said it-not to mention the fact that my free hand automatically went up to my neck.
“You sure aren’t acting like it, then,” she said. “What’s wrong with your neck?”
“Nothing,” I told her. “I think I just slept on it the wrong way or something.”
“Do you want me to give you a massage?” she asked, reaching up to move my hand. Before she could pull my fingers away, however, she let out a small gasp. “Rowan, you’re ice cold!”
I could feel her pressing the back of her hand against my neck and then my cheek as her maternal instincts took over and she slipped into nurturing mode.
“I just came in a few minutes ago,” I told her. “I haven’t warmed up yet.”
“Nice try, but it’s not that cold outside.”
Given how truly awful I was beginning to feel, I decided not to prolong the inevitable and simply conceded. “Okay, then maybe you’re right and I’m coming down with something.”
“You aren’t running a fever,” she countered. “You’re freezing.”
“So maybe it’s a cold,” I quipped, managing to squeeze out the last drop of sarcastic humor I had left in me.
“Not funny,” she replied sternly. “You’re helping Ben with another murder investigation, aren’t you? You’re channeling someone. Damn your eyes, Rowan Linden Gant, you promised!”
At this point the dogs had grown impatient, and the English setter was doing a halting dance nearby while the Aussie was letting out a nasal whine as an accompaniment.
“No,” I told her, giving my head an animated shake then picking up the food dishes from the island and stooping to set them on the floor. The canines were on them immediately, gobbling up the breakfast as if it was their one and only meal for the week.
“Don’t lie to me, Rowan,” she snapped.
“I’m not!” I barked in return as I stood. “I’m not helping him. But the victim apparently doesn’t seem interested in hearing that, okay?”
“You aren’t…”
“No,” I interrupted before she could finish the question. “I’m not letting her in. I’m doing just the opposite, but it isn’t working.”
“Are you grounding then?” she asked, referring to the conscious connection most any Witch makes with the earth in order to avoid mishaps with magickal energies.
Even though the question annoyed me on the surface, I knew she was right to ask. Grounding was a basic skill right out of WitchCraft 101 and moreover, the first step in protecting oneself from a psychic influence. However, following the first experience with my curse a few years back, I had been left unbalanced; therefore, it was also an important ability where I had fallen woefully short for quite some time now, no matter how hard I tried.
In recent months I had been much better at maintaining my focus-or at least I thought I had.
I took hold of my wife’s hand and said, “You tell me. Do I feel grounded to you?”
She twined her fingers into mine, pressing our palms tightly together. I knew she really didn’t need to have the physical contact to know one way or the other if I was truly grounded, but I wanted there to be no mistake. She looked into my face, and what had been a rising flash of anger in her green eyes now turned to concern.
“ Damnu,” she mumbled. “You are grounded… That fekking doiteacht , I’ll kill him.”
“Who?”
“Ben,” she snipped. “Who else? Come on then…”
She began dragging me by the hand toward the living room, and I had no recourse but to follow.
“You can’t blame him for this, Felicity,” I said as I lumbered along behind her, an overwhelming weakness starting to permeate my body. “This all started before I even met up with him this morning.”
“But he talked about a case, didn’t he?”
“Yes. A little.”
“And your channeling the victim, aren’t you?”
“Yeah… That’s my guess, anyway… Why?”
“Because this doesn’t happen to you when it’s someone else’s investigation, that’s why… Here, sit down.”
My wife all but shoved me onto the sofa-not that it took much for her to do so given my present state. She took a moment to situate me to her liking then began covering me with an afghan after shooing one of the cats from it.
She had a point, even if it wasn’t entirely on base. This sort of thing still happened to me even when it wasn’t one of Ben’s cases, but never to this extreme. I suppose even the tortured spirits of the dead had enough sense to know whether or not I had access to someone who would actually listen to what I had to say rather than having me hauled off for psychiatric evaluation.
“You stay right there,” she told me after she finished more or less tucking me in. “I’m going to go make you some sage tea.”
“Okay,” I told her.
There was really little else I could do. Even if I wanted to bring up the fact that I’d been using salt and try to argue the point with her I wasn’t feeling up to it. Oddly enough, however, my lack of fight wasn’t because I was in any major pain. In fact, I no longer felt a single ache. The pervasive weakness had actually transformed into a sense of absolute comfort and the earlier cold that had started to seep into my bones was now replaced by welcome warmth.
I allowed my eyelids to droop as the pleasantness washed over me. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so completely relaxed. I was on the verge of giving myself over to the darkness of sleep when I felt a quick flutter in my chest. It was followed by a second, and then a tickle started somewhere deep inside my brain.
I tried to ignore it, but it was on a mission. It persisted in the same way a nagging question would turn into a mindless obsession that kept you awake at night. As if giving in to just such a need to go check and make sure a light is turned off, I allowed the relentless itch to force me to move my arm. Had I been in any other state of mind I don’t know if I would have considered the unnatural degree of effort it took to accomplish that task to be worthwhile. But since the growing nag was going to continue pecking at me until I satisfied the curiosity it had awakened, I complied.
After what seemed an endless stretch of time, I managed to bring my hand against my neck. However, the action did little to quell the tickle in my grey matter because I discovered in that instant my fingers were now completely numb. Unable to feel anything at all, I gave up and allowed my hand to fall away as I offered myself to the comfort of the encroaching darkness.
At that same instant, I could have sworn I heard Felicity’s near panicked voice screaming my name.
CHAPTER 7:
I didn’t recall much of anything between hearing the echo of my wife’s voice and coming to once again. Of course, whether or not I had actually lost consciousness in the first place was a minor point of contention. I thought I had, but according to Felicity, she didn’t think so; or if I had, it was for no more than a split second. Since the whole event was all really just a blank spot in my head, I had to take her word for it.
The only thing I could say for certain was that I had suddenly found her concerned face hovering over me while she pressed her hand hard against my neck-hard enough to hurt, in fact. Prior to that, about the only thing I could remember was the sensation of floating in a dark, silent void. Of course, that was nothing new. Unfathomable darkness and general disorientation were all just part of the scenery when the dead were demanding my attention. It seemed to be their way of trying to gain the upper hand, and much to my chagrin, it usually worked.
What it came down to in the final analysis was that Felicity was probably dead on with her estimate about how much time I had spent unconscious-even if that fraction of a second had felt much longer to me. But, that was to be expected. Time had an odd way of becoming an unreliable reference point on the dark side of the veil, especially when you didn’t belong there.