The Multitude, стр. 41
He scrambled back to his feet, staggered past Gaius’s dead body, and stared with welling eyes at the simple belongings spilling out of the rucksack—a sketch pad, pencils, some chalk, and a pitcher.
* * *
Brewster awakened in a sweat. Recognition of his time and place should have eased his pounding heart—his own bed late at night—but his anxiety heightened even as the dream faded. Quintus’s failure to protect Adala stirred deep worries over Carla, a real woman suffering from her own Latin dreams, not to mention nightmares about suicide. She needed a champion.
He glanced at the clock on his nightstand—almost the witching hour. Wow. Both of her visits had come around midnight, and he hadn’t thought to set the alarm for the next one?
He hurried downstairs, but the glow of a streetlamp out the living room window didn’t reveal any drop-dead-beautiful visitors stepping through wormholes into his cul-de-sac.
He collapsed onto the couch and groped for a reality check. He’d always been a practical man. So how could he now cast science aside in favor of the belief wormholes had reshaped the world into funhouse-mirror shapes?
By watching Carla disappear, that’s how. And, more recently, by getting stuck on something she’d told him during the second visit. She’d mentioned her hometown. He hadn’t paid the snippet of information much mind at the time, the time-travel story being the larger issue. The wine had gotten to both of them. But he’d performed a Google search later, and he did find a Sanders Creek Parkway in East Syracuse. Either Carla was delusional and thought she resided hundreds of miles away—to the point of knowing specific street names out there—or she was sane and lived on the other side of a portal.
He’d tried researching a store named Rag Thyme again, calling directory assistance to check within the Syracuse area, but he came up empty. That supported the delusion theory, only he still couldn’t explain her vanishing act or the word on her coin matching Kara’s tattoo.
He glanced over his shoulder to look out the window again. No Carla.
Wait, what was that? He shifted around and leaned over the back of the couch, almost to the point his nose pressed against the glass.
Only a deer. He kept on staring and tried not to blink. He didn’t want to risk missing the reappearance of a woman he’d fallen in love with, whether or not they’d both gone crazy.
CHAPTER 18
The Tug Hill Plateau in Upstate New York
Carla awoke with the glare of sunlight in her eyes. She shot an uneasy glance around the bedroom for clues where she might be. An old family picture hung from the wall from when she was a little girl and her dad was still alive. A dressing table that had been there forever held up her suitcase. She’d awakened in her mother’s cabin.
Relief barely had a chance to take a foothold before she realized with no small measure of disappointment she hadn’t had a single dream last night—yes, a reprieve from the nightmares but also an evening without Brewster.
If a sigh could echo off the walls, hers did. The change of venue from Syracuse must have cut off whatever psychic connection she and Brewster had, casting her adrift in a sea of loneliness.
She rolled away from the window and closed her eyes, willing to repeat her subway nightmare or endure whatever mayhem waited in Sanctimonia just to spend a little more time with the man fate had surely thrown into her life for a reason. And even if destiny never schemed, even if her encounters with Brewster had been nothing more than two lucky spins on the random wheel of alternate realities, she still wanted him. He fit her like a glove.
No. Far more than that. How could she give short shrift to their burgeoning relationship with a mere cliché? Even the most fleeting thought about the man quickened her breath.
If recent “dream” events were what her mother had confirmed—true interactions rather than the isolated fantasies of her subconscious—she was willing to endure another round with the barbarians to reach Brewster again. Twice she’d been vulnerable and twice he’d given her what she needed, hospitality the first time and tenderness the next.
Unfortunately, dreaming was no longer an option. Sunlight flooded the room, bouncing its rays from one wall to another, leaving no corner where she might scurry and hide. When she tried pulling the sheets over her head, asphyxiation picked up where nature left off.
Her cabin retreat wasn’t getting off to a good start.
She crawled out of bed and stood in the middle of the room, staring at nothing, until she summoned enough energy to shower and dress. The day stretched ahead as an agony of endless time to be endured until another night might come along, one that simply had to bring a visit to Brewster’s neighborhood.
She headed into the only other room, a tight living space merging into a dining nook and kitchenette. Stale memories permeated the cabin and sprinkled its trappings like dust, coating the old couch and upholstered chairs, the throw rugs thinned by time, the vases filled with cat’s-eye marbles, and the magazines scattered about for rainy days. She turned toward the fridge, but a billeted army of half-finished rag dolls ambushed her from their makeshift barracks on the dining room table. The few finished ones scolded with silent demands for her to stuff and sew their friends together. She shuddered and kept going, found a yogurt, wolfed it down, and escaped outside.
A gulp of crisp country air helped. She took another, spread her arms, gazed at a clear blue sky, and circled in a slow three-sixty. That did the trick. She