A Fistful of Dreams Read online

  “Is he not supposed to get really bright?” Uncertainty flooded Cate’s question.

  “I’m sure he is, but I think we’ve found your gift.” Buck looked at her, she could see the question in his raised brows and careful look at Cate. Delilah didn’t disagree. What Cate saw as sparkles separated Fevered from non-Fevered. She wasn’t sure about the colors or what they meant yet.

  “Really?” Cate bounced. “What is it?”

  It was hard to not smile at the little girl’s enthusiasm.

  “You can see gifts. The sparkles, I think, are a sign they’re Fevered. If Tommy got brighter when he called the snow—the change is him using it. So you can see it and you can see when they are using it.” It was a simple explanation, but Delilah had only ever known one other who could do what little Cate could do. And he never explained what he saw.

  “So I can see gifts?” Skepticism and disappointment struggled in her words. Cate deflated. “That’s it?”

  “For now. It may grow to something more—still not sure what the colors mean, but we’ll work on figuring it out.” He frowned. “I thought you wanted to know what your gift was.”

  Cate shrugged hard. “Yes, but I wanted it to be something really neat—like setting things on fire or turning into an animal. Seeing sparkles doesn’t seem like much.”

  Giving in to the impulse, Delilah hugged Cate. The little girl wrapped her arms around her neck, returning the embrace.

  “It’s a good gift.” Tommy played with his melting snow. One by one, the others nodded and gave her words of encouragement. Cate wiggled away from Delilah and collected hugs from each of the boys.

  She still didn’t look entirely convinced, but their attention chased the shadows away from her expression. Buck touched Delilah’s hand and drew her attention. He mouthed ‘thank you.’

  Identifying the little girl’s ability only took really listening to her. Unfortunately, everyone seemed too busy with the problems directly in front of them to notice.

  “Buck, we need to get the kids packed and back up by the school with the others.” Cody called from the opposite end. “The snow is falling harder.” Three times this week, heavy snowfall blanketed the area, making travel more and more treacherous.

  “You heard him.” Buck rose and motioned to the children. Most could ride, but the youngest doubled up with an older rider. Delilah stayed out of the way, picking up around the long aisle while horses were brought out and saddled. But instead of riding out with the children, Cody and Micah, Buck caught her arm and drew her back into the barn.

  Jason worked his way down the hall, sealing the doors to the empty stall wings. They’d brought in several loads of new wood throughout the day, stacking the cords near the fireplaces.

  Looking questioningly from one man to the other, Delilah waited.

  “It’s time. We’ve been talking about it for a couple of days. The weather has been worsening, so we focused on the kids while we figured out how we want to do this.” Buck started the explanation.

  “So we thought we would wait until it grew too unwieldy to travel and then we’d work on your training.” Jason finished the thought, joining them near the great fireplace.

  They weren’t leaving the barn. And they waited until she wouldn’t be able to get away to let her know this. Uncertainty ticked through her.

  “It’s going to be okay. This is safer though— just us—well, us and him.” Buck nodded to Jason. “But we can ignore him. C’mon, sit with me.” He guided her over to the fire. Someone stacked several hay bales together creating a couch, albeit a prickly one. It was even warmer in the circle than the rest of the building.

  Her stomach twisted into knots and she perched uneasily on the sofa. Jason took a position closer to the fire, while Buck sat next to her.

  “We’ve been dancing around the issue of your abilities.” Thankfully, Buck began the conversation. “You can’t stay silent forever, it’s not a way to live and yes, I know you don’t want to risk influencing everyone. But you’ve seen the kids and you see their struggles. They don’t all know what they can do and those that do, can’t always control it. The key is to find out what sets yours off so you can recognize when you’re using it.”

  But I do know when I used it…

  “What Buck means is you have enough conscious control over it to choose not to use it.” Jason folded his arms. “You believe you use it all the time. But there were a few minutes in the cave where you didn’t. You talked to Buck and didn’t try to push any ideas or agenda on him. You spoke.”

  I let him go, with the song. It doesn’t always work so well.

  “Have you ever wanted it to work so well?” The telepath raised his eyebrows. “You don’t want to hurt him and I am pretty sure you don’t want to control him. You were horrified when you realized what happened.”

  Heat flamed in her cheeks. She didn’t dare look at Buck.

  “Look, no secrets, no hiding away from what you’re thinking or worried about. The only way we can do this is if you trust us…which means you have to show us what you do and how you do it.” Buck covered her hand. Icy dread curled up her spine.

  She couldn’t. No—she wouldn’t.

  “Delilah,” Buck squeezed her fingers lightly. “It really is okay. I said I would volunteer for this and I meant it. I trust you’re not going to make me do anything I wouldn’t want to do.”

  No. No. No. No. No. Pulling away from his grip, she walked to the edge of the circle and stared down at the sawdust. Jason, please tell him I can’t.

  When he didn’t comply with the request, she looked from one to the other. “If you want him to hear you, you’re going to need to tell him yourself.”

  I can’t.

  “You’re afraid of yourself.” Buck’s calm, the same serenity that drew her to him, baffled her. “You’re afraid of what you can do. Do you know a man with a gun who’s terrified of the gun is more dangerous than a man who respects it and knows how much damage he can do with it?”

  It’s not the same thing. A gun has a trigger and bullets—

  “You have a trigger, Delilah. You did what you were taught. You have always been told to compel with your voice and all you need to do is speak or, better, sing.” Jason seemed squarely on Buck’s side in this. “But you have to be willing to load it with the message and to fire it. If this is true, then you can unload it and choose not to fire.”

  Ridiculous concept. No. She wanted desperately to talk to Buck, to hear him tell her stories and to be able to respond. But not at the cost of what made him him. No. She wouldn’t do it.

  She forced her gaze to the fire and stared at it. Better to ignore their lunacy than commit an unforgiveable act. She wasn’t a child—she knew exactly how much damage she could do.

  Her fear ate at Buck. She refused to look at either of them. They’d been knocking ideas back and forth for the last several days on how to approach her gift. He’d sought his father’s advice in dreams every night for three nights and Quanto avoided answering the question. At first, Buck believed his father was merely stumped. Last night’s dream left him with an entirely different understanding. It wasn’t that the shaman didn’t know how to help him, he simply refused to assist in the matter.

  Oh, he hadn’t said it in as many words. Buck knew his father too well. He didn’t avoid the questions. He changed the subject entirely. In this matter—maybe in all matters—they were on their own. Jason stared at him, waiting for him to act. Their second agreement was if they were to do this together, Jason would let him take lead.

  “Would you give us a few minutes?” He wanted to go to her, but he fought the urge. Keeping his seat and his calm, it was a gamble, but for this to work, he needed her to come to him. It had to be her choice. She wanted to. Her body language was clear, but equally clear was the internal struggle and the fear hemming her in on all sides.

  Are you sure this is a good idea? He didn’t speak mind-to-mind with the Kane brother often, he preferred not to at all
if he could help it. But he didn’t object to the clarification this time.

  We’ve not allowed her to be alone with any of us except you and she knows she doesn’t affect you. We need to show her trust if we want her to trust herself. He liked the idea the moment it occurred to him. He wanted to be alone with her—away from Jason. Away from all of them. They shared a connection, Delilah and him, and he wanted to capitalize on the connection.

  The time spent with her without observation or interruption was simply a benefit.

  All right. I’ll go find a way to make food at the other fire. It wasn’t as far as Buck would like, but it was better than having him right on top of them. Jason snorted. Live with it. There’s a blizzard outside and we decided to wait for the heavy storm so she couldn’t bolt—which means we can’t.

  Buck nodded. Jason walked away without another word. Delilah remained with her back to him, her attention seemingly directed only to the fire.

  “When I was four summers old, my father returned to the mountain with a tiny baby in his arms. She was very small. Not even a full year old.” Leaning back, he steadied his breathing and urged his body to relax. “Most of us had no idea where he’d gone or when he would be back. It was several weeks. But the baby was learning to walk. You’ve never seen such a delicate, terrifying thing as a tiny human taking her first steps. We all encouraged her, but it didn’t take long for her to be into everything.

  “Oddly, she was the first girl on the mountain with us. The rest were boys and we were all pretty close in age, except Wyatt—he’s always been older. But we kind of liked having her around and we made a game of who would be her favorite.” Amusement flickered inside of him. “It wasn’t actually a contest. She adored Cody. Followed him everywhere and when she wasn’t following him he followed her. He would sleep in her room in wolf form and she would nap against his side. He was easily her favorite brother much to the consternation of the rest of us. Still, being her favorite wasn’t without problems.”

  Delilah turned toward him, not quite looking at him yet, but he had her attention.

  “But when she was three, Wyatt was going down the mountain for supplies. He let some of us go with him, but not Scar. Scar had to stay behind because she was too little. She got really mad because she wanted to go with Cody and when my—our—father told her no, she set the grass on fire.”

  He swallowed his smile at her sharp gasp. This part of the story always got people. They would never tell Scarlett it was one of their favorite memories of her. “There she stood—bare ass naked because all of her clothes burned off. A blackened circle of earth surrounded her and her hair. Oh her hair…” He laughed. “It stood straight up in places and singed in others. Her face was flushed with her outrage and her eyes practically glowed. None of us knew what to do, but Wyatt—he walked right over to her, ignored all the fire still burning in the grass and the heat—picked her up and paddled her sound.”

  Captivated by the story, Delilah stared at him, mouth agape. He waited for her to say something, but when she snapped her lips together, he nodded.

  “Yes, he spanked her and told her, in no uncertain terms, it wasn’t acceptable to burn the world down because she was angry. He told her to go inside and put clothes on and to clean up the burn spot before we got back or she would get another spanking.”

  A frown wrinkled Delilah’s forehead and he had to bite back another smile. “You think it was unfair, don’t you?”

  She nodded sharply.

  “It’s okay, it seemed unfair to me, too. But here’s the difference—when we’re kids, we are far more prone to our emotions—to our wants and our desires. She wanted to go. She was too young. But instead of understanding why, she got mad. She burned a circle about twelve feet in diameter and burned off all her clothes. What if one of us had been standing right there? It wouldn’t have mattered that she didn’t mean to hurt someone, they would have been hurt.” He had years to fully comprehend the risks Wyatt took in that moment. No matter how strong and resourceful their eldest brother was, Scarlett’s formidable abilities could hardly be contained by any of them. “We teach children to mind their manners, to say please and thank you, to ask for what they would like rather than take it, and we teach them to accept the word no, whether they understand the reasons behind it or not. Our gifts are absolutely no different.”

  Though they had not always agreed on the method of instruction, Buck had to admit he learned a great deal from both his father and Wyatt. He learned control and the consequences of not having control.

  “When a child is in danger or endangers themselves, you don’t try to explain all the things that could go wrong, you take action. If it sometimes means leaving a lasting impression so they will think twice about doing it again, then you do it.” Sitting forward, Buck rubbed a hand over his face. “Your gift, it’s a skill, a talent, an ability beyond the normal. But I would guess when you were a baby you didn’t compel people. You learned to talk at some point and, since Scarlett never shut up once she learned how to use words, I can’t imagine you were any different. So sometime between learning one ability and your talent surfacing, someone else decided to teach you to never speak unless you were using it for compulsion. But you don’t have to use it—do you see Scar burning everything down wherever she goes? Do you see Cody always in wolf form? I don’t live in dreams. We can turn it off. We can set it aside and step away from relying on it. Not all the time, no—and sometimes we have to let it out.”

  Did he continue pushing or let her stew on it? How far was too far?

  Micah and Sam said very little on the subject, but he’d heard the unease in their voices whenever the conversation turned to Delilah. In fact, the only Kane who didn’t seem to have an opinion at all was Kid. But he’d also been making himself scarce, choosing the jobs that took him the furthest out unless he was with his new admirer. Benjamin followed him everywhere.

  A shadow fell over him and he found Delilah had walked over to stand closer to him. He took it for encouragement and pushed.

  “I’m not saying it will be easy or that mistakes won’t be made. But it would be better for you to have full control, to know when you will compel someone and when you won’t.” He didn’t add the words ‘safer or happier’, because one might scare her further and the other had to be her choice.

  “I don’t always know when I’m doing it.” The whispered words were damn near inaudible.

  But she spoke them.

  “I know.” He patted the hay next to him. “So we talk, we work together—all of us—and we figure it out.”

  “What if—what if we can’t?” She sounded like Cate just then, terrified of being hopeful.

  “I don’t believe in can’t.” This he learned very well from his father. “I know we can if we find the right method, the right trick—the right key. But we can’t do it without you. You have to want this and you have to be willing to try.”

  “Maybe with someone else…”

  She couldn’t have kicked him harder in the gut if she’d struck him a physical blow.

  “…I don’t want to hurt you.”

  The second statement softened the blow, but not by much. He buried the hurt. She’s afraid and she doesn’t want to hurt me—it has to count for something. “I trust you.” At her skeptical look, he smiled. “You, I said. I trust you. I trust you don’t want to hurt me or anyone else. I trust you want to make this better. Your gift? I don’t trust that yet.” He wouldn’t lie to her.

  “Did she clean it up?”

  “I’m sorry?” The question threw him. Did who clean what up?

  “Scarlett. You said Wyatt spanked her and told her to clean it up before he returned or he would spank her again. Did she clean it up?”

  “Oh.” Chuckling, he shook his head. “No. But she tried. Ike helped her after a while, when he saw how much of the scorched earth she’d tried to scrape away looking for grass beneath. Ike is another of my brothers. You haven’t met him. He doesn’t live here. But he
can make anything grow. He got the grass to grow there again…after a while.”

  The sound of a clearing throat announced Jason’s return. He carried three bowls and based on the rich scent of stew, dinner had already been cooking when they sent the children home with Cody and Micah. Delilah accepted her bowl and stared into it.

  Buck took a bite—it was hot and peppery, but definitely edible. Jason sat on another hay bale, giving them distance, but not walking away. Delilah stirred her spoon through the stew, still clearly uncomfortable.

  “How do we start?” she asked, finally.

  “We’re doing it.” Buck patted the hay. “We sit, we eat—and we talk.”

  Taking the invitation, she sat next to him. Not quite as close as the first time, but nearer him instead of Jason. “What do we talk about?”

  I’ll be damned… Jason’s murmured thought drifted past him. Good job.

  “Whatever you want.” Shut up and eat. He ignored Jason’s faint snort of laughter.

  “Can we talk about whatever it was you did in my dreams?”

  He didn’t quite choke on his next bite of stew. “What do you want to know?”

  “Why were you in my dreams?”

  Chapter 10

  Delilah pushed her food around, but she didn’t eat. Buck looked thoughtful, but he didn’t answer right away. Jason scraped his spoon around the inside of the bowl, the noise inordinately loud in the silence. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked such a pointedly direct question. She dreamed of him for weeks, enjoyed seeing him in her dreams—reveled in the safety of being able to talk and sing to him in a place where she couldn’t hurt him. But it wasn’t my dream. It was him there, actually there…

  She sighed. The knowledge came at a price.

  “Truthfully,” the soft words teased over her senses and she transferred her attention from the bowl to the man sitting a few inches away. “I wanted to get to know you. You were—are, in some ways—a mystery. You visited the cabin often and you seemed so sad and lonely. I communicate with my siblings in their dreams when they are too far away. I thought—hell, I don’t know exactly what I thought. I wanted to give you someone to talk to and I wanted to talk to you.”