A brief moment

Adam considered turning back; asking Paul to take him back the way they came. Surely they would smell dreams on him, and if what the Withering Sun said was true, they would hunt him down. At the same time, running from here would be too suspicious. What to do?

What about Mary? Was she inside the house? If so then he couldn’t just turn back.

“What’s wrong?” Paul asked.

“Nothing,” Adam replied. He gave Paul a long, pondering look. “Come inside. Have a drink or something.”

“I am not sure about that,” he said, giving the cops looking their way a wary look after seeing one of them walking his way. It took him a moment longer to see it who it was. Paul smirked. “Hey, Jeremy.”

“You again?” Jeremy studied the car for a brief moment.

“What are the police doing here?” Adam asked.

“We’ve found Joseph Good,” he said, looking at Adam with a pitying glance. “Your brother…well, he isn’t very well. He seems to have gone through a traumatic experience. We’ve put him in the hospital for the time being.”

“What do you mean ‘not well’? What exactly is the problem?”

“He is catatonic,” Jeremy said. “He was shouting and speaking gibberish. His neighbors reported him when they heard him freak out. We’ve found him in an apartment. Did you know anything about it?”

“I wasn’t very close to him,” Adam explained.

Jeremy sighed. “It’s just so weird. He was in the room for a whole day. It was full of weird stuff in jars, some of it toxic. We think he got himself intoxicated by something.”

“Weird stuff in jars?” Paul cocked an eyebrow.

Jeremy scowled. “This has nothing to do with you, Paul. I don’t even know why you’re here.”

“I gave him a ride.” Paul pointed at Adam with his thumb. He grinned. “Maybe I should leave now.”

“Thank you for the ride,” Adam said.

Paul nodded. “Hey, will you stay long in town?”

Adam thought about it. “I don’t know. I should ask my wife about that.”

§

Jeremy accompanied him to the door then went back to speak with Paul who was already in conversation with another cop at the time.

Adam felt doomed as the entered the front hall of the mansion.

His nose tickled at the scent of dreams.

Sarah was talking with Christopher around a small table. Christopher’s expression was uncomfortably intense. He glanced at Adam for a moment but did not stop his conversation with Sarah.

Sarah seemed very saddened by the conversation, though she struggled to maintain a good face. She didn’t notice Adam’s arrival.

On the way to the stairs, Adam walked past the doorway to the dining room and saw Philip by himself, drinking tea at the table. The hulking fellow raised his eyes for a brief moment and sniffed. He held Adam in his sight and slowly lowered the teacup.

Adam paused at the intensity of that gaze, and the two shared a silent look. That gaze remained on his back even as he ascended the stairs.

Back in his room, Mary was sitting on the floor, cradling her head, looking fairly depressed.

Her state bewildered him. “What happened?”

“It’s all over,” she lamented. “They caught me using magic. They are going to kill me. It’s all over.” She shook her head lightly.

Adam put a hand on her shoulder and she flinched. “Calm down.”

She slapped his hand away. “You need to run away,” she continued, coldly, undeterred by his request. “You need to change your name again and go to another country.”

She turned away from him, biting her lip. Was it that serious?

“Mary, calm down,” Adam said, slowly. He sat on the floor too, trying to be level with her. “Explain to me what happened?”

She looked at him, confused at first, then with a flicker of understanding. Her face shifted between a grimace and a resigned expression until she finally sighed as if giving something up. “I was using John’s hair that he left in a brush to find him,” she said. “I discovered where he was, but I took too long and too much light leaked out. I became too covered in the smell of dreams. Like a fool, I went to meet with the police without suspecting the two disciples of Meriden would be with them. They couldn’t have missed it if they tried.”

Adam nodded. “I committed the same mistake when coming back here.”

She took a nonchalant sniff of him. “You smell of dreams. Well, it’s because you have amnesia. I don’t.” She sounded depressed. “Where are your glasses?”

“I broke them.”

She nodded, stood, searched through one of their trunks and handed him a brand-new pair of glasses. “I found the bat as well,” she mentioned, closing the trunk.

He felt a knot of agony twisting in his heart. “Where?”

She gestured for the window. “They were flying around the city and the woods. At the moment they are near where John is.” She walked to the window and gazed outside. “We should go get the bats. I’m not sure, but I think the part of you they took is like a fragment. They should have it with them right now.”

The knot in his heart tightened uncomfortably. “Mary, do you really think I should recover my memories?”

She turned to him, bewildered. “What do you mean?”

‘I am scared of what will become of me should I remember’, how wonderful the world would be if he could admit that.

Adam considered her for a moment. Adam was fairly sure he had been quite the terrible person before, but she had nonetheless loved him. She loved the him that was a criminal and a murderer who had no qualms killing his own family. She had loved the him that she was not sure loved her back.

Adam felt sad for her.

“What’s the matter?”

“Forget it,” he sighed.

She looked at him for a second longer then seemed to do as he asked. “My car isn’t down there. What happened?”

Weary, Adam told her all that happened with Pence.

Her expression grew increasingly heated as he continued. “That slimy piece of shit!” She bit on her lips. “He’ll come after us soon.” She fixed upon him a slightly bewildered gaze. “So you crawled out of the grave they dug for you after being shot in the head?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Since when can you do that?” She snorted in amusement. “Very in character.” She seemed far less surprised than he thought she would be.

A knock on the door interrupter their conversation. They looked at the door, then at each other. Adam stood and went to open it. Already almost to touch the doorknob, he hesitated slightly. What if it was one of the investigators? But then again, he if they wanted to meet him, he had little choice in the matter.

It was Joseph’s sister.

“What is it?” he asked, showing such plain relief that he doubted she didn’t notice.

A visible frown appeared in her face. She looked a lot like Joseph. “The cop who found Joseph said he was saying your name in his catatonic state,” she said, eyes fixed on him with a strange hardness.

Adam shrugged, still too relieved to be riled up by whatever suspicions she might have.

She sighed, looking askance, annoyed. “They took Joseph to the hospital. I’m going to visit him there.”

“Do tell me how he is when you return.”

“He’s at the psychiatric ward. They’ll transfer him to another city, so I need to visit him while I can.”

A few seconds passed in silence, still she didn’t walk away. “Is there anything else?” Adam asked.

“It’s been a long time since I saw my father,” she said, eventually. “You really do look just like him. It’s bothersome. I don’t particularly like you, and I think you don’t deserve this property as much as me and my brother, but from the way things look everyone else will die or collapse until you have it, won’t they?”

If she expected a reaction to her words, she was sorely disappointed. Adam’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. Now that he thought of it, he had done very little against this family, hadn’t he? If anything they sabotaged themselves in various different ways.

Her face became slightly more annoyed, perhaps because he didn’t react, then she walked away.

As he closed the door and turned back to Mary, Adam asked the name of the sister who just left.

“Violet Spencer. She changed her name when she married. She’s a window.”

He was not sure why he found her changing her name a bit funny, but he laughed at it.