"Tina Wainscott - Dreams of You [rtf]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wainscott Tina)

Her brows furrowed, and lines gathered around her eyes as she concentrated. "Heat. Fire. Some kind of explosion."
He couldn't believe it. Stella could not know about Madame Blue, unless she was really a psychic. ''Where is she now?"
"I see water. I can still feel pain, but this is a different kind. More inside, like the heart." Her eyes opened, and she blinked. "I lost her."
"You said our souls connected. What did you mean?"
''When we die, our souls leave our bodies and start down that final pathway to heaven. Sometimes they return to our bodies before reaching their destination. But something else happened to you. Your soul went to hers. At the moment you were hit by lightning, she was experiencing something just as traumatic. Perhaps it was that connection that united your souls."
"I see through her eyes, feel what she feels. It's like I'm inside her. It only lasts for a second."
Stella's eyes closed, and her fingers slid over his palm again. "Your destiny is entwined with this woman of the golden tresses and eyes the color of a stormy sky. Her life is in danger. If you seek her out, you may be able to save her. Or you may bring her even more risk."
"What kind of risk?"
Stella shook her head, coming out of her trance again. "I don't know. All I see is water."
He sat up straighter. "Water? Maybe that has something to do with a nightmare I keep having. I'm inside her soul, and suddenly I plunge into water. I fight to stay afloat, but eventually I tire out and sink into the blackness. When I can't hold my breath any longer, I feel the cold water rush into my lungs." He could feel the panic constricting his chest. "Then I wake up."
Stella's expression looked haunted. "The water I keep seeing is your nightmare. You're seeing her death."
Adrian snapped out of the memory, taking in a deep breath of air. He looked at the photograph again. Would she drown because of him, or could he save her? If Madame Blue existed, then he would find her. He realized then that he had no choice but to try. Adrian walked to the phone and set his travel agent to work.
The roar of flames engulfed Nikki Madsen, making her gasp great breaths as oxygen burned away. It's only a night mare, her conscience intoned through the horror. Wake up, Nikki; control the dream.
She jerked awake, inhaling the clean air around her. Despite three years' distance, still she kept reliving the horror over and over again. Now the images came just once a month, the ripping heat of the orange fireball as it ravaged her, the feel of the dirt as she dropped into a bed of petunias and rolled the flames out. The sound of her cries filled her ears as she screamed for her mother, saw her engulfed in flames. The worst part was not being able to breathe; even in her dream, the choking sensation panicked her.
Nikki snapped on a switch and grabbed her teddy bear to cuddle in the pool of light that encompassed her bed. Trying to push away the memories, she pulled out the leather-bound journal that had indirectly saved her life that day. If she hadn't forgotten it, hadn't started leaving the car before it exploded, then her life would have been shattered into blazing bits like her mother's. If her father had been alive then, he would have been killed too. He had loved the fair, where they were headed, though Mother seemed only to indulge their whims.
The webbed scar tissue on the back of her hand looked faint now, but the memories would never fade. Her fingers caressed the blue leather covered with tiny cracks. Scarred, too, but from age. She felt more aged and worn than the journal would ever look.
Nikki had always been a vivid dreamer. At thirteen, she'd decided to learn more about the dream world and what it meant. That's when her dream journal came into existence, where she recorded the strangest of her dreams in order to decipher them. A few years ago she had mastered lucid dreaming, the ability to control her dreams and redirect them.
The journal had been the subject of one of her last conversations with her mother, Blossom. More like an argument, really. Now it seemed so silly to have argued over the journal and what it represented, but neither of them could have known how their lives would be ripped apart only days later.
Blossom had been sitting on the edge of Nikki's bed when she returned from one of her photography forays. Her mother hardly ever came in her room, but there she sat, holding Nikki's journal in her hands. Nikki felt violated and defensive as she set her camera on the dresser.
Blossom stood, wearing a cream silk pantsuit. Those beautiful eyes of hers took her daughter in and then seemed to spit her out. She set the journal on the bed and walked forward, taking Nikki's hands in her smooth ones.
"Nikki, Nikki, Nikki," she intoned through perfectly red lips. "You are my daughter."
Nikki had heard that tone in her voice before. "Yes, Mother."
"And you are a beautiful young lady-"
"I'm not beautiful. I'm okay."
Blossom's eyebrow, arched dramatically with a brown pencil, quivered. "Nikki, hear your mother out. I have been patiently waiting for my daughter to bloom. You're twenty-three now, and look at you. You're dressed like a homeless person! What would my friends say if they saw you like this? They'd say, 'Doesn't Blossom buy her daughter clothes? Hasn't Blossom schooled her daughter, given her an education and the opportunity to meet wealthy, ambitious young men?' Have I failed you in some way? Have I not set a good example for you to follow?"
Nikki walked over and picked up the journal. "What were you doing with this?"
For a moment Blossom had the dignity to look a little embarrassed. "I was merely cleaning up in here after coming up and finding you gone. I saw that and was curious."
"Why don't you just admit you were snooping?"
Her mother looked away for a moment. "If I was, it was for your own good. I worry about you, darling."
Nikki glanced down at her drab clothes. "Because I don't dress as nice as you do? I can't walk around taking photographs dressed in silk and linen. I have to blend in. Besides, it's impractical." She could never tell her mother just where she'd been taking photographs and why she had to blend in.
"But honey, you shouldn't have to be practical. You're a Madsen, poised to inherit millions in a few years. You should be dating, finding a nice man to marry. Then you can photograph your vacations and babies."
Nikki rolled her eyes. "I want a career in photography. I don't want to marry any one of those snobs from the country club. I want to be respected for my mind, for who I am, not for how pretty I can look at social functions." That was her mother's expertise. "Or for my bank account."
Blossom walked to the window with a long-suffering sigh, watching the waves wash in from the Atlantic Ocean. "Your father would be so disappointed."
Nikki whirled around. "My father would be proud of me," her throaty voice said. "He was proud of my photography and encouraged me to pursue it." Even ten years after his death, she could still feel his encouragement from above.
Blossom had turned at the fiery tone in Nikki's voice. "He was just humoring you. He wanted for you what I want."
"And exactly what is that, Mother?"
Blossom cocked her head and smiled. "You spend so much time alone; you don't date, you're consumed with this photography thing, you seem to live in this-this dream world." She gestured toward Nikki's journal. "We just want you to fit in, darling. That's all we've ever wanted."
Nikki laughed, though the words hurt. "You send me away for my high school years, then off to college, and you expect me to come back and fit right in?"
Her mother did her best at a laugh. "Darling, you've never fit in. Even when you were young, you never wore all those ruffly dresses I bought you, never had a lot of friends, never went to the school dances. I just wanted the best for you. And I still do. Your brother may be an idiot, but at least he's trying to fit into the Madsen mold, trying to follow in his father's footsteps. You should do the same."
Nikki saw how the pressure to fit that mold had made Devlin a little crazy, reckless even. He wanted too badly to prove himself, but he just didn't have the business sense their father had. She took the journal and returned it to the place her mother just happened to find it: tucked beneath her mattress.
"I don't want to fit the Madsen mold. I've got to live my life my way. I'm really sorry I let you down." Her voice caught in her throat, and she cleared it. "But I can't be the person you want me to be. The men you approve of bore me to death, and the others just want to get their hands on my money. I can't pretend to like dressing up for stuffy parties where everyone tries to outdo the other, where even the conversation is a put-on to sound impressive. Do. you want that for me, Mother, to be married to a proper man I don't love, to exist in a place where I'm not happy, but you are?"
Blossom walked through the doorway and turned around. "I just want you to fit in where you belong. You've always been a rebel, Nikki. You need to grow up and join the real world."
Nikki tucked the book away, leaning her forehead against the leather. Maybe there was no place for her to fit in. Maybe she was destined to be a misfit her whole life. Or, did she fit in here? No, not even here. She lived a lie. What would her mother think now?
She smiled faintly, picturing the horror on her mother's porcelain face as Nikki changed from her silk nightgown into baggy denim pants and the faded lumberjack's shirt she'd bought at Goodwill. Peering out the tiny side window, she could see the first hint of the sun's rising. What would you think now, Mother? Time to go before she was caught. Nikki grabbed the glass cleaner and climbed out the back door of the plain, brown van parked at the rear of a used car lot in West Palm Beach. With three quick strokes, she wiped off the outrageous numbers she'd written in shoe polish the night before. Back inside, her fingers deftly pinned her long, blond curls back, tying a scarf over her head. She poured bottled water into a basin and brushed her teeth, tossing the foamy water out the back, then made her minuscule bed. After climbing into the driver's seat, she pulled out of the lot a full hour before it opened. Some of the used lots erected barbed-wire fences around their perimeters, limiting where she could park at night without being detected or towed away. She rotated between seven different spots, including alleys and hotel parking lots, to be sure she didn't arouse any attention.
Nikki pulled her camera from its hiding place beneath a towel and tucked it in the seat beside her. She had ten more shots to take before she could develop the roll.
Seamus, a skinny old man who was a regular in her photographs, was already out from whatever crevice he slept in at night. His white whiskers stood out against his dark skin. Beside him sat the baby stroller in which he toted all his worldly possessions. Nikki parked around back of the shopping center, nearly half vacant, and walked to where Seamus stood. His foot was propped on a bench, and he gestured during an animated conversation he had with no one. Sometimes he was lucid, and then there were days like this. She snapped a couple shots, showing that there was no one listening to his serious talk about the irony of war. She would call it, Just because no one will listen does not make me silent.

Chapter 2

Love is only a dream that death has shattered.