Mind Games

“Tate, it’s Lucy Lannigan. I need you to do me a favor.”

Thea let the words wash over her while, just as Lucy told her it would, the dizzy started to pass.

The cold went with it, flooded away in a blast of heat that slicked every inch of her skin.

“Here, darling, you lie down. I’m going to make you some tea.”

“Don’t leave me alone. Please, don’t leave me alone.”

“The tea’s going to help. You trust me on that, Thea. Do you want to come down with me? Are you able?”

Nodding, she leaned against Lucy. “I won’t be sick.”

“Let’s not wake Rem, all right?” Lucy put an arm around her, and the arm still shook. “Here’s the steps. We’ll go slow.”

“I’m not dizzy now. I won’t be sick.” Outside her, everything felt hot. Inside, everything went numb. “I saw. I saw, and you saw, too. It wasn’t a bad dream.”

“I pray it was. You’re going to sit at the table, and I’ll make the tea. We haven’t talked about what we have inside us, you and me, darling. Your mama—”

“She doesn’t like it.”

“It worries her, that’s all. It worries her. Sit down now. Sheriff McKinnon, he’s going to call the police up there, and they’ll go check. And—and won’t we feel foolish when they call and say everything’s just fine?”

“Grammie—”

“Sometimes, lots of times, darling, what we’ve got inside shows what hasn’t happened yet.”

“But it’s not that.” Tears streamed again so she had to choke the words out through them. “They’re gone, Grammie. I can feel it. So can you.”

Her hair loose and wild around her shoulders, her face pale with shock, Lucy crossed her hands over her mouth as if to hold back a scream. “I didn’t see clear.”

“I did. I was there. I was there with them. I could see, and I could hear, and I could smell and feel. I was screaming, but they didn’t hear me. I think, maybe, he did.”

Suddenly exhausted, Thea laid her head on the table. “He killed them, and I was there.”

“We’re going to pray it was something yet to come, and by seeing, we changed it. We stopped it. That’s all we can do now.”

They could pray now, Thea thought, and they could pray forever. But it wouldn’t change it. Through the numbness, she felt her grandmother’s grief—a wild, terrified thing—and said nothing.

Lucy pulled out every ounce of strength and measured the hawthorn tea. She had to think of the child now, tend to the child now, and think of nothing else.

This child, she told herself, the child at the table swamped in shock and grief, and not the baby she’d carried inside her, given birth to. Not the child she’d loved with every beat of her heart, not the good, good man that child had grown up to marry, one she’d loved just as if she’d carried him inside her.

This child needed her to be strong, so strong she’d be.

This child she should’ve talked to about the gift long before this. To help prepare her, because she’d known, she’d seen that gift shining so bright, so strong.

Can’t change what’s already slipped away behind you, Lucy reminded herself. Right now, this child needed her strength to help her cope with that they both knew.

Her own grief had to wait.

She set the teacups on the table, stroked a hand over Thea’s hair. “Drink a little, honeypot. I promise it helps.”

“I can’t feel anything inside me. It’s like everything inside me went away.”

“It’s a way we protect ourselves.” But it would come back, Lucy thought, it would all come screaming back. “So drink a little now, and I need you to listen to me. All right?”

Thea lifted her head, picked up the tea. She nodded.