“All the same, if you have it again,” Flynn said. “Try to pull us into it.”
Even though I wasn’t looking at her, I could feel Maeve’s eyes in the back of my head as she said, “I don’t want to hurt you guys. If you see him like that…it’s so real. I hoped for a moment, but then I woke up, and it was horrible. I don’t want you to hope for something that can’t be.”
“Even you have to admit that you don’t understand everything about magic, Einstein. If there’s even a chance something about this dream is Corbin reaching out for us, then we all need to see it.”
Arthur and Blake nodded their agreement. I tore my gaze away to look at Maeve. She shook her head. I took her hand and squeezed it.
“I just want to grieve,” she said, yanking her hand away and pulling the sheets up over her head. “I don’t want to hope. Every time the hope fades, it’s like losing him all over again.”
The four of us exchanged a look. Maeve wasn’t going to talk about it any more. But it was still the middle of the night. If she wanted to keep sleeping, then that’s what we’d do, too. Maybe if I closed my eyes I’d get drawn into her next dream and I could see Corbin for myself.
She said not to hope, but my heart was already soaring with the stuff.
I remembered Corbin’s face when he shut us into the priest hole. He wasn’t afraid. His jaw was set, his eyes bright. He had a plan.
And one thing I knew about Corbin – he’d never, ever failed the people he loved.
Corbin hid Maeve and I away in part to keep us safe, but mainly because he didn’t want us to see what he was about to do. He knew we’d try to talk him out of it, or worse, throw ourselves into it alongside him.
Maeve was wrong. She couldn’t see past her scientific model of the world. She’d had prophetic dreams before, like the ones about all of us being with her, but she couldn’t read them as such.
Iknewit with every fibre of my body that Corbin showing up to speak to her tonight wasn’t just her grief-soaked subconscious talking.
Somewhere, somehow, Corbin was still alive.
CHAPTER SIX
SIX: MAEVE
Sunlight streamed through the open curtains, falling across the bed, warm and inviting. I cracked open an eye, revelling in the simple beauty of Rowan’s arm across my waist, his long fingers cupping my breast – dark skin against my milky white. Arthur’s barrel chest rising and falling. Flynn and Blake spooning each other. Corbin’s…
Corbin…?
Then I remembered.
Corbin was dead.
The room came into focus – soft cream walls and modern furnishings. A huge picture window overlooking an unfamiliar garden. No sign of the desk piled high with astronomy books and the huge beeswax candle Arthur made me and the giant cosmos made of metal leaves from Flynn. Even the bed under me suddenly felt foreign.
We weren’t in my tower room at Briarwood because Briarwood was destroyed. We were in Raynard Hall, and I was being haunted by dreams of my dead lover.
“Maeve.” A voice from the door startled me out of my thoughts.
I sat up, pulling the edge of the duvet over my naked breasts. Rowan’s arm flopped off my stomach, and he stirred awake. Arthur was already grabbing for a t-shirt.
Clara leaned her tiny frame against the high doorframe. “Please, don’t mind me. I used to be in the Soho coven – I’ve seen it all before. Good morning boys. I’m sorry to do this to you all now. I know how badly you are suffering. But we all need to talk.”
I rubbed my eyes. The last thing I wanted to do was get up and face the world, but Clara was right. So much happened last night that we needed to understand, and this was so much bigger than Corbin and Briarwood.
“Wait for us,” I said. My voice echoed in my head, hollow and strange. I shook Flynn awake. Clara waited for us to pull on clothes – someone had left a pile of new jeans and t-shirts at the foot of the bed (and taken away our torn, soot-stained clothes, I noticed) – and we followed her down the hallway. I remembered the hallway from last night; the drab portraits and cluttered, old-fashioned furniture. She led us into a bright, airy drawing room decorated in pale blue and cream. For the first time I realised how stark was the contrast between the modern rooms we’d seen and the dark, gloomy hallway.
Eyes followed me as I entered the room. Faces turned to me, rent with pity and pain. Too many faces. Too many people counting on me.
Ryan stood at the head of the room, one arm leaning against the fireplace. Paint flecks splashed across his black t-shirt and tight blue jeans and stuck to the ends of his red hair, the colours matching the vibrant painting of frolicking foxes on the wall behind him. Gwen and Candice settled into a cream sofa, cups of tea nestled in their laps. Clara bustled over and plopped down beside them. Isadora perched on a wing-backed chair across from Ryan, her elegant legs crossed at the ankles and her handsfolded in her lap like she was a model in a photoshoot. Absent was Corbin’s mother, but Andrew sat on the floor at Gwen’s feet, his back against the sofa and a hollow look in his typically bright eyes.
Aline stood by the window, her long hair swept off her neck in a messy bun. Beside her, Robert Smithers slumped in the window seat, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. My mother met my eyes, and I fell into her icy-blue pools, mesmerised by the pain that reflected back at me. My arms itched to wrap around her and hold her close, but my grief kept my legs glued to the floor.
“Please, sit.” Ryan indicated the empty sofa and chairs around the room. “Simon will pour you some tea.”
