Airiana held up three fingers. "And that's three of the seven Prakenskii brothers right here in Sea Haven. What are the odds of that? They're here, and somehow our sisters are attracted to them, drawn like magnets, when both professed to never want to be with a man. And that, my sister, is a very scary fact."
"What are you saying?" Lissa frowned at her. "Don't even be thinking the other brothers are going to show up here. Thinking it might make it happen."
Airiana nodded. "Right?"
The nightmare faded a bit, just enough to take the edge off, now that they were talking about the Prakenskii brothers. The seven brothers were Russian by birth, taken from their parents and trained as agents for their government in a secret program. She was fascinated by their past because it was very close to her own, without all the brutality--until her mother's murder; but the brothers had seen their parents murdered as well--and they'd been separated from each other.
"You have to admit they're darned hot," Airiana said. "But dangerous as hell and just plain bossy."
"I do agree with them on self-defense training. Stefan and Lev know so much more than I do and are very good teachers," Lissa admitted. "I'm grateful you're all learning. I tried, but I wasn't tough enough on you."
Airiana chewed on her nail. "You did just fine, Lissa. Aren't you just a teeny bit worried that the other brothers will show up and somehow we'll be . . ." She frowned, trying to think of the right word. "Trapped? They have their own gifts, and we seem to just fall right under their spell. Judith was never going to marry. And Rikki? Who would have thought she would allow someone in her home, let alone on her boat? That's a miracle in itself."
Lissa slipped off the bed. "Don't say it. Things happen in Sea Haven that can't be explained, and I'm not tying myself to any man, let alone one of those Prakenskii brothers. Can you imagine my personality with a man like that? So domineering. I'd shove him off a cliff. You just can't put something like that out into the universe and not have it come back and bite you in the butt."
"My butt's pretty small," Airiana pointed out. She swept both hands through her thick hair, breathing deeply. She was beginning to feel normal again, although a residue of the nightmare had lodged in the pit of her stomach, leaving her with a vague uneasiness.
"Yes, it is. But I'm kind of curvy. Which means my butt is just big enough for fate to laugh its head off while it bites me. I'm not taking any chances."
Airiana found herself laughing. That was the beauty of having sisters. It might not be her biggest laugh, but at least she was thinking of something other than portents of danger. She sighed softly. "Thanks for coming over. I'm sorry if my screaming scared you. I should have closed my windows."
She never slept with the windows closed. Never. She needed fresh air touching her face even when she slept. Maybe especially when she slept, but the wind had sought help for her, carrying her cries to Lissa, and she should have realized that it would always happen after the first few times.
"I wasn't afraid, Airiana, just worried about you. I'll make tea. You're supposed to help Lexi this morning in the greenhouse, right?" Lissa said, pausing to look over her shoulder at Airiana.
"I forgot about promising Lex I'd work this morning. Sheesh, that's two mornings in a row I'll be late. I don't have time for tea."
"You have time. Lexi won't care. Take a shower and get dressed. I'll have tea waiting for you. In fact, I'll give Lex a call and see if she'll join us." Which was code for "I'm telling Lexi all about your nightmare."
Airiana sighed. Every single sister would know very quickly that she'd been having nightmares again, which was both good and bad. She didn't like worrying them, but on the other hand, she wanted the support. When all six women were together, the strength they had was empowering. Airiana always came away from a family get-together feeling strong and vibrant. Right now was a good time to get a little family boost.
"Maybe we could have a dinner together," Airiana suggested. A slow, wicked grin came over her face. "We could ask Levi to cook for us. He's actually gotten really good at it."
"You are mean. It's a dive day. Rikki and Levi headed out early this morning to go after sea urchin," Lissa reminded. "The sea is calm today and they've been waiting all week for a day like today."
Airiana nodded. "How could I have forgotten? Rikki was very excited last night. You know how she loves to be out on the ocean."
"Or, more precisely, in it," Lissa corrected.
Rikki was another sister, recently married to Levi Hammond, or rather Lev Prakenskii--although he could never use his given name and be safe. Rikki was autistic, and the sea helped her find balance. For Rikki, any day she could dive in the ocean was a good day.
"I'm glad she's so happy," Airiana said. "Although she still won't let Levi captain the boat."
They both laughed. Rikki was fiercely protective over her boat and Levi had somehow managed to worm his way aboard. All five of Rikki's sisters of the heart were very grateful that he was watching over her when she dove for sea urchins. She'd always been a loner and went out to sea by herself. None of them liked it, but they hadn't been able to stop her until Levi had come along.
"Go take your shower"--Lissa made a shooing motion with her hand--"I'll put on the tea and call Lexi in. She's determined to start on the greenhouse beds today, but right now it's very cold outside. The fog's rolled in."
Airiana waited until Lissa left the room before she slowly pushed back her covers and padded on bare feet over to the window. The fog had come in dense, so thick she could barely make out the trees in the distance. A light breeze came up from the ocean, swirling the fog into giant pinwheels.
She went very still, staring out the glass, half mesmerized by the spinning mist. There were the patterns she tried so hard not to see. Right there in the fog itself. As plain as day--and she'd seen them before. She knew if she called Lissa and pointed them out, Lissa wouldn't be able to see them. She would try, but the wind would snatch them away and Lissa would think Airiana was really losing her mind.
She pressed her forehead to the cool glass. Her gift was a blessing and a curse. Being bound to air had advantages, but not when her mind was so demanding. She didn't want to ever think about her childhood, the love she had of learning, of doing, the need and hunger that grew every day and filled her life until there was barely room for relationships. Until there was barely room for her own mother.
She jammed her fist into her mouth to keep silent when she wanted to cry loud and long for the selfish child who didn't understand that her mother needed her as much as she needed those amazing patterns and all that incredible knowledge just pouring into her brain.
Child prodigies were hailed as something unique and wonderful. In reality, gifts such as hers could be a curse for everyone around her. Sometimes, when she was alone too long and not occupied with the day-to-day running of the farm and the books for each of the businesses, her mind began to work out complex mathematical problems right there on the walls of her home. It always terrified her. She had actually turned her basement into a secret laboratory, one she never told anyone about.
Was she going crazy? Was her mind finally eating through her sanity and demanding more than she was willing to give to it? Her mother had been older than Airiana was now when she began resorting to drinking to calm her brilliant mind. She hadn't wanted to end up in an asylum, or worse, a government laboratory. Marina had tried to kill her brilliance; Airiana tried to run from it.
There in the swirling fog Airiana could see the portents of evil. How did one explain it to anyone? Worse, something bad was definitely going to happen to someone close to her. She had never told a single soul, not even Debra Jems, her counselor, but she had seen the swirling patterns in the clouds above her home before she'd ever walked inside.
She leaned her forehead against the glass and wept. She'd had a chance here, with these wonderful women who had accepted her as a sister, as family, when she had none. Now there was only madness, and if she was reading the
fog correctly, some horrible fate for one or all of them.
"Airiana?" Blythe's gentle voice brought on another flood of tears.
Blythe was the oldest of the women and all deferred to her when there was any kind of conflict. Blythe was tall and athletic, with very dark chocolate eyes and blond hair. Right now it was pulled back in a ponytail and she wore her running clothes. Her features were soft and her voice gentle and soothing. She was a cousin to the Drakes, the most powerful magical family in the town of Sea Haven.
Airiana allowed Blythe to turn her into her arms, and she cried for everything she'd lost long ago and everything she was about to lose. Blythe held her in silence, allowing the storm of tears to pass before she said anything. When Airiana finally looked up, Lissa was in the room, settling the tea tray on her bureau, and Lexi stood in the doorway with tears running down her own face.
"Lexi, you're so sweet," Airiana said, feeling a burst of love for her youngest sister. "You can't stand to see anyone cry."
Lexi attempted a smile. "I know, it's silly, but if any of you is upset and I can't fix it, I have to cry too."
"Well, let's sit down and have a cup of tea," Blythe said briskly. "When we're together, we always manage to resolve whatever is wrong. Perhaps we should sit in the sitting room rather than in here."
"I'm in my jammies," Airiana pointed out.
"They look like sweats to me," Blythe answered cheerfully, tugging on Airiana's arm.
She allowed Blythe to lead them all down the stairs into the soothing colors of her largest room. Comfortable chairs made a semicircle, with low tables allowing for conversation. She knew Blythe had deliberately had them come into the sitting room because everything about and in the room relaxed Airiana.
Light yellow provided a backdrop and paintings of golden sunbursts and sunsets adorned the walls. The overstuffed chairs were covered in splotches of yellow and gold with every shade in between. A few brushstrokes of burnt orange lent ambience to the soft materials. Her sister Judith had been her interior decorator and as always, Judith knew exactly what colors would be best for each of them.
Lissa placed the tea tray in the center of the low coffee table and poured each of them a cup. She handed one with milk to Airiana and settled in the chair across from her, leaving Blythe and Lexi to sit close.
"I don't think I can explain adequately," Airiana said and took a cautious sip of tea. She was beginning to shake and feared her tea would spill, but she didn't want to put the cup down. It gave her something to do with her hands.
"All of us have a past," Lissa said gently. "And all of us keep secrets. If yours is beginning to consume you, Airiana, then you need to tell us and let us help."
Airiana had to put the teacup down. If she didn't, she knew it would end up on her floor and she didn't want that. In more ways than she wanted to admit, she was like her mother. She preferred neat and tidy and everything in its place.
"I think I'm losing my mind." She blurted her fear out fast, wanting to get it over.
Lexi shook her head and Lissa frowned. Blythe leaned toward her, looking into her eyes and gently sweeping back the mane of wild hair Airiana hadn't yet brushed into some semblance of order.
"Why do you think that, honey?" Blythe asked, all practical and interested like she managed to sound. Sane. She always sounded grounded and sane. That was the reason the rest of them always relied on her.
"My mind won't stop seeing patterns everywhere. I can't stop doing mathematical theories and I see them in my head. I was like this before when I was a child, but for a time it stopped and I thought I'd be all right. But it's come back worse than ever. I'm devouring books. Textbooks. Anything I can get my hands on. I stay up all night on the Internet and read hundreds of articles," Airiana confessed quickly, wringing her hands together, terrified that she was already so much worse than her mother had been. She ducked her head. "I even set up a small laboratory for myself."
"Your mind was traumatized by finding your mother tortured in your own bedroom," Blythe said softly. "You know you need to stay occupied . . ."
Airiana shook her head. "Not like this. This is different. This is . . . madness. I can't make it stop. When I was young, I soaked up everything, absorbed knowledge, anything I could find or read. It was fun and exciting and I never considered the consequences of having a mind that couldn't be satisfied. But my mother . . ."
"You aren't your mother," Lissa said firmly. "And you have all of us to help you through this. When you were young, did it help to keep learning?"
Airiana nodded slowly. "Yes. My mind would be quiet in the evenings, and on the weekends when I went home to see Mom, I didn't have the chaos going on. The continual demand to keep working and learning abated a bit, although, when my mother wasn't drinking, we discussed theories. She was wicked smart."
"So there was balance," Blythe said.
"Yes. I could talk to people who were as excited as I was about all the discoveries we were making. Before Mom drank, I could always share with her, but once she began, half the time it was just impossible. The breakthroughs in . . ." She trailed off, shaking her head, pressing her palm over her mouth, her large eyes growing enormous. "There are things I can't talk about. For your safety as well as my own."
Blythe nodded. "We understand. My cousin Sarah's husband, Damon, works for the Defense Department. There's never a discussion about his work."
Airiana's heart jerked hard. Blythe was far too shrewd not to know why Airiana's mother had been tortured, not simply killed outright. In their group sessions, she had admitted to the others that she was responsible, but she had never said why. She'd never told them the kind of work she'd done back then.
She had explained that she lived in a dorm house that was really small apartments in a building the government provided for her and a few other remarkable students attending a special type of school. She couldn't tell them the type of things they were all working on. She wanted them safe.
She hadn't been able to keep her mother safe. Her mother, who resorted to drinking too much to still her brilliant mind and had talked to the wrong people--people who wanted her daughter's work. Marina had taken money, or at least the frightening agents investigating her death had claimed she had. When she didn't deliver the goods to the foreign agents, she had been tortured for the information and then killed. Airiana didn't believe them.
Airiana had been whisked away, back to the school in protective custody. The story didn't add up. Marina couldn't possibly have known enough about Airiana's work to sell it to a foreign government. In the beginning, she had chattered to her mother incessantly, but when her mother started drinking, she had stopped talking about her project so much. When she turned fourteen, she had taken an oath to keep her research secret, and she'd taken that very seriously. She had never so much as whispered about her work to her mother, even on Marina's good days. Sadly, that had been the wedge that had slowly driven them apart.
Airiana nodded her head slowly to acknowledge Blythe's revelation about Damon Wilder. The truth was, she had recognized Damon the moment she laid eyes on him when he'd first come to Sea Haven, only a couple of years earlier. She had studiously avoided close contact.
Damon had been aware of her, of course, but he hadn't approached her, and she knew he wouldn't. It had been years earlier that they'd met, and she'd been a child, but still, he couldn't fail to recognize her. She had a very distinctive look. At the time, he'd come to brainstorm her project with her, but until he'd shown up in Sea Haven, she hadn't seen him again.
"So what can I do to keep from going insane?" Airiana asked. She felt calmer now that she'd told them. She picked up her cup of tea, and this time her hands weren't shaking nearly as much.
"You said you see patterns," Lexi said. "What did you mean by that?"
"The day my mother died, I felt the wind on my face and I looked up at the clouds. I could see this amazing pattern forming, always moving, but immediately I knew something was very wrong. It was there, righ
t in front of me. Who sees forecasts of danger or death in clouds?" Airiana pressed her fingers to her eyes. She had the beginnings of a wicked headache.
"You do, obviously," Lissa said. "And why wouldn't you? Why doesn't that make sense to you? You said you felt the wind on your face just before you looked up. Airiana, everyone knows you're an air element. You're bound to air. Air is bound to you. Wouldn't it try to warn you of danger? You communicate with air. Could it be that it communicates with you?"
"Well of course, Lissa, but not in patterns. I just know things when I'm outside, I feel things in the wind. But the patterns are different."
"Warnings?" Lissa guessed. "Air warning you of danger, trying to tell you what is going to happen, or what has happened?"
Airiana frowned at her. "What are you saying?"
"I can read fire," Lissa shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. "The way it moves speaks to me. I can tell if the flames are angry or joyous. I can manipulate fire. I just presumed you could do the same with air."
Airiana shook her head.
"But you do," Lexi leaned forward. "A hundred times a day. You blow out candles without being close to them. I've seen you lift your shoes and bring them over to you from across a room without even looking up. You manipulate air. You read air all the time. You know before anyone if a storm is approaching. You know if it's going to rain. You always let me know days in advance what the weather will be like and I listen to you, not the weatherman. I plan my work around what you tell me. So if you're communicating with air, how come it can't communicate back?"
Airiana frowned. "I don't know."
"Think about what the element of air actually is, what it represents," Lissa said. "Isn't it the manifestation of communication? Of intelligence? Along with a lot of other very powerful things, air is definitely about intelligence and communication. You've got one of those incredible minds, Airiana. And air communicates with you."
Airiana shook her head slowly, trying to process what her sisters were saying to her. How could they know and not her? She'd been afraid her entire life of going insane because Marina had told her that her mind would eventually devour her.