Page 50 of Ex Somnis

“Lennon. Darling.”

This time, the voice is not inside my head.

It’s beside me, like someone standing close, speaking quietly, as if they don’t want to startle me. But there’s no one beside me except Tessa, and Tessa’s mouth is closed, and the voice is…

“I found you once. I will find you again.”

I turn around.

Garden. Roses, the long gravel path curving back toward the bench where my parents are sitting. Tessa is beside me watching me with her head tilted.

Nothing else.

“Come back to me, sweetheart.”

A different voice. Rougher at the edges.

“Wake up, Lemon.”

My chest aches so suddenly that I press a hand against it, right on top of my crystal.

Homesick.

The feeling hits me so hard and fast it almost knocks the breath out of me, except I don’t know what I’m homesick for.

“Can you hear that?” I whisper as the crystal warms against my chest.

Tessa frowns. “Hear what?”

The crystal turns hot, like it’s trying to get my attention. I look down at it. It’s the same as always—milky white with black specks threading through it and a blue sheen rippling across the surface.

“Those voices. There were…” I gesture at the air around us, which is garden, birds, the distant sounds of my parents, and nothing else. “Three of them. Can you hear them?”

“I can’t hear anything.” She’s watching me with her eyebrows slightly drawn. “What did they sound like?”

“Wake up for me, baby. I’m so sorry.”

“That.” I gasp and point as the last one comes again, sounding desperate. “Did you hear that?”

She looks at where I’m pointing, which is nothing, in the middle of the gravel path, the rosebushes, and the perfect afternoon.

“Lenny.” She steps toward me. “I can’t hear anything. Are you…”

“Ladies.”

He appears from the path ahead of us, not walking toward us so much as simply being where he wasn’t a moment ago. Two red roses in hand, freshly cut, the stems still beading. He holds one out to Tessa.

She takes it with a smile, tilts up her chin, and presses a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you.”

He holds the other out to me. Deep red, vivid, and almost too perfect, the way everything here is almost too perfect.

“It’s not your color, is it?” he asks with a smirk.

The red deepens, then bleeds through the petals, until a lighter color blooms outward from the center.

A downward smile.

Dark eyes behind glasses.