Man of her Dreams

Ashes, ashes,

We all fall down.

Chapter One

New Orleans

Two months later

They were coming for her.

Another test, more poking and prodding.

She couldn’t let them know. If they ever found out what she could do…

Block the dreams. Don’t look. Don’t see.

They could never know the truth.

The man in the white lab coat smiled down at her. He spoke of his own daughter. He seemed kind. Much kinder than the other one. But she knew better than to trust even him. He wanted to know the truth so he could tell the others. And she would never be safe, never be free if they knew the truth.

It didn’t matter that they’d held her prisoner her whole life, even before she was born. She could see beyond the walls, beyond the hiding place where they conducted their secret tests. She knew the truth.

But they could never know.

Never, never, never.

If they knew they would keep her forever.

Darby Shepard bolted upright in her bed. Her breath came in ragged gasps. She shoved her sweat-dampened hair from her eyes and forced her respiration to slow.

She was safe.

At home.

In her own bed.

No need to be afraid.

Long minutes passed before her racing heart calmed. She hated those dreams. Shivering with the receding adrenaline, she cursed herself as she stumbled out of bed. 7:00 a.m. already. She had to hurry or she’d be late for school.

As she quickly showered and then dressed, she tried repeatedly to put the dream out of her thoughts but she couldn’t. It was always the same. The men in the white lab coats were coming for her. She had to keep her dreams a secret. Could tell no one. Couldn’t tell them what she saw. She paused, her fingers stilling on the buttons of her dress. The part that got to her the most was the idea that the dream was a little too real.

She never told anyone what she saw in those nightmares. Never shared the dreams that came, unbidden, with another living soul for fear of…what? The men in the white coats? Maybe.

Darby quickly brushed her damp hair and twisted it into a braid. There was no time to dry the waist-length tresses or even to grab a bite of breakfast. She would be late for school. What kind of example would the teacher set if she showed up late for school?

Teacher. She did so love her work, loved the children.

The crisp October morning sent goose bumps across her skin as she pedaled her bike as fast as she could, quickly moving from Cohn to Broadway and then along Sycamore Street. Halloween was scarcely more than a week away. The ghosts and goblins would be out well before then. Like the North Pole was to Santa, New Orleans was the home to Halloween and all sorts of other wicked things.

She bore to the right on South Claiborne Avenue, then took a hard right onto Jefferson. She scarcely had time to notice the eighteenth-century cobblestoned streets she loved or the tourists and fortune-tellers alike who were already moving about this morning. Soon the streets would be filled with vendors and leftover partygoers from the night before.

Usually she took her time, absorbing the ambience, the history and architecture that still fascinated her after a lifetime of exploration. New Orleans was the kind of place that one never tired of admiring. There was always some new aspect that drew one in, whether it was the varied architecture along the lushly landscaped streets or the ancient foreboding of the numerous cities of the dead. Or even the crumbling lanes and alleys in the less savory parts of town.

Good and evil shared this domain; only time would tell which would prove victorious. Or perhaps it was the ever-shifting balance that captivated visitors to this historical city.

Children between the ages of five and nine scurried through the towering main entrance of the Iris Goodman School as Darby swung off her bike and chained it to the rack near the front of the post-Civil War building. The prestigious elementary school had served this uptown neighborhood for nearly a hundred years and Darby for four. A private facility, the classroom sizes were small and the academic offerings large.

Her satchel banged against her thigh as she took the steps two at a time. She paused at the door and drew in a deep breath before entering the school. She did so love her position as kindergarten teacher. However, adopting the proper comportment was essential.

Inside the chatter and clatter made her smile. The smell of old books and history bolstered her sense of belonging. This was what she’d been born to do. Teaching the children…protecting them.

Uneasiness slid through her at that last thought. She swallowed back the anxiety that attempted to climb into her throat and strode determinedly to her room. Three or four of her charges were already storing backpacks in their cubbies.

“Good morning, boys and girls,” Darby offered as she settled her bag on her desk.

“Morning, Ms. Shepard,” echoed from the rear of the room.

Happiness bloomed in Darby’s chest as she watched more little ones filter into the room, leaving moms and dads waving from the door. She wiggled her fingers at the proud parents and wondered how it felt to have a child, to love and cherish it. It must be so hard to leave them at school, especially in the beginning.

She wondered then if she would ever know that feeling. Could she ever trust anyone enough to share herself that way? The hollow feeling she always experienced at the thought of family, past and future, often made her wonder if something else was missing in her life. She’d read somewhere that one in eight pregnancies started out as twins. According to the research, the surviving twin always felt as if something were missing in his life. Maybe that was her problem. She definitely felt an unexplainable emptiness.

Dismissing the extreme line of thinking, she focused her attention on taking out the papers she’d graded the night before and preparing for class to begin. And people thought the kids were the only ones who had homework.

In five minutes, the bell would ring and the school day would officially begin. Twelve sets of parents had entrusted her with not only the safety of their offspring, but also with the task of teaching the children everything they would need to know to begin their journey through the coming school years. Considering some of the headlines of late, that was saying something.

“Have you heard?”

Darby looked up to find Sandra Paige from the kindergarten classroom across the hall rushing toward her. Sandra had been the first person to make her feel welcome when she started here four years ago. They’d been good friends since.

“Heard what?” Every instinct warned Darby that she did not want to hear whatever her friend and coworker had to say but there was no way to avoid it. It was the bane of the white-collar world: gossip.

Her face pale and her eyes wide with worry, Sandra ushered Darby into the corner farthest from where her students still lollygagged around their storage cubbies.

“A third child has gone missing,” Sandra whispered, her voice as frantic as the worry in her eyes.

A peculiar stillness fell over Darby. Images flashed through her mind but she blocked them, refused to look. “Who was she?”

“Allison Cook from over at Isidore Newman.” Sandra frowned. “How did you know it was a girl?”

It had started with Christina Fairgate. In the three weeks since her body had been discovered, two more children had gone missing, one boy and one girl. So far, the police were stumped as to finding a connection among the three. There were no matching details whatsoever. Two were from wealthy families, the other from a single mother living in the projects. One black, two whites. Approximate age was all the three had in common, discounting the events surrounding their disappearances, of course. In each case, the child had been at home playing in his or her own backyard with one parent or both inside the house.

Darby swallowed hard, then shrugged stiffly. “Just a guess.” To stall her friend’s inquisition, she quickly asked, “They still don’t have any leads? No witnesses? Nothing?”

Sandra shook her head in weary resignation. “According to her mother, one minute she was there, the next she was gone. In broad daylight, just like the others.”

The scent of home-baked chocolate chip cookies abruptly filled Darby’s nostrils. The image of a little blond-haired girl skipping around in circles flashed before her eyes. Ring a-round the roses. Pocketful of posies.