The young woman bent over the man from the other side of the bed. “What will I do without you, Tristan?” she whispered. “How can I live without you?” She looked across him to Amy. “What will we do? How can we live without him?”
All Amy could do was shake her head that she didn’t know. Her throat had closed and the tears had begun in earnest.
“Amy!” Faith said, her hands on Amy’s shoulders. “Wake up! It’s only a dream. You’re safe. Wake up!”
Amy opened her eyes and saw the two women hanging over her, but she couldn’t leave the place she’d been in her mind. “He was dead,” she cried. “Someone killed him.” She put her hands over her face and kept crying.
Zoë stood beside Faith. Both women were fully dressed so it wasn’t late.
“There was a girl there,” Amy said, still crying hard and her face still covered. “She was his sister and I could feel her pain. I could feel that she wanted to go with him. Who could have done such a thing? Why was such a horrible thing done to him? He was a good man.”
“Amy,” Faith said softly as she pulled her hands away from her face, “look at me. It was only a dream. You’re safe now and you’re here. The dream will go away.”
“It will never go away,” Amy said, looking up at her. “Don’t you understand that it’s real? It’s real and I’ll never be able to change it. I know I must go back and stop him from being murdered, but I can’t go. Primrose said I had to show up with both of you but you won’t even try to go!”
The two women were silent for a moment, then Zoë spoke. “Faith, if we don’t agree to go with her to see some witch doctor we’re going to be here all night.”
Faith sighed. “Okay. Amy, Zoë and I will go with you to see that woman tomorrow.” When Amy didn’t stop crying, Faith said it louder. “Did you hear me? We’ll go.”
“But it’s too late,” Amy said. “He’s already been killed. Murdered in his sleep. There was a man in a bedroom, crying. He was very ill. I don’t know who he was, but I don’t think he was going to live much longer.” She looked up at Faith. “I think he was Tristan’s father. No, he was an uncle. Yes, that’s who he was and he was dying. He—”
“Amy!” Faith said loudly. “Stop it! I mean it. It was just a dream.”
Zoë had picked up the old book from the bedside table and opened it. “It says here that Tristan Hawthorne was stabbed to death in 1797 by an unknown assailant.”
“So long ago,” Amy said, tears still rolling down her cheeks.
“Yes and no,” Zoë said. “Maybe if you can go back in history you could go to a time before 1797 and save him. You could prevent his death.”
“How? I don’t know who could do such a thing,” Amy said. “You should have seen it. Everyone was crying, even the maids. He was a man who was loved by everyone.”
Zoë sat down on the bed in front of Amy. “You need to get hold of yourself. Something is causing these dreams, and no matter what you think now, they will go away. I know because after I was in the crash I had horrible dreams.”
“About the wreck?” Amy asked, sniffing and wiping her face with the tissues Faith handed her.
“No, about things that made no sense to me. I saw a man shoot himself in the head. I saw it over and over. I’d wake up screaming and the nurses would come running. After a while they gave me pills so strong that I had no more dreams.”
“But Zoë,” Amy said, blinking back her tears, “don’t you see that that might have really happened? Maybe seeing that is what made you drive a car too fast or whatever made you crash. Maybe—”
“I have one therapist I don’t want, so don’t you start on me,” Zoë said. Her words were harsh, but she picked up Amy’s tear-soaked hands and held them. “Tomorrow morning bright and early, the three of us are going to this woman you met and see if her sister can help you. Maybe she can hypnotize you deeply enough that you can get rid of these dreams. Faith and I are getting tired of every morning seeing you with bruises all over your face.”
Amy looked at Zoë and managed a bit of a smile. “You’re a very nice person, aren’t you? And without all that makeup you’re quite pretty.”
Zoë stood up. “Now go back to sleep and don’t do any more dreaming, you hear me?”
> “Will you go with me?” Amy asked.
“I said we would,” Zoë answered.
“No, I mean back to the past.”
Zoë gave a little laugh, but Faith looked at Amy in wonder.
“You can’t possibly believe that that woman can really—” Faith began, but Zoë stopped her.
“Yes, we’ll go back with you,” Zoë said. “Won’t we, Faith?”
“Oh sure, why not? Better the eighteenth century than going back to New York and spending my days trying to make Jeanne believe that I am not suicidal.”