Visioness by Lincoln Law Read Free Book Online Page B

to
even trouble her little sister? She could not dream, so she was safe. Wasn’t
she?
    Over dinner, as she sat next
to Charlotte, she ate slowly, distractedly. She cut apart the potatoes with
some difficulty, struggling to pull apart a steak that was almost so tender,
she was sure she could tear into it with a bread-and-butter knife. Every now
and then, she glanced at her sister, and Charlotte would look back, confusedly.
It was only after she dropped her knife for the twentieth time that Charlotte
piped up.
    “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You’re all over the place tonight. You seem distracted.”
    Adabelle took a long time to
respond, staring at her sister, forgetting for a time that she was meant to
reply. What was wrong, exactly, with keeping her sister in the dark? Ignorance
was bliss, wasn’t it? No need to burden her mind with the troubles of others.
She had enough to think about herself.
    “Nothing,” she finally
replied. She sat her knife and fork down on the plate, wiping her mouth on a
napkin and then rising. “I’m sorry. I think I’m not feeling too well. I might
go to bed early.”
    Charlotte rose an eyebrow.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with visiting cousin Larraine, does it?”
    If only it didn’t, she thought. She forced a
smile to the surface and shook her head.
    “Not at all,” she replied.
“Just…a little out of it is all.”
    Charlotte shrugged,
returning to her own dinner.
    It wasn’t a complete lie.
Not really.
    She went up to bed, and
surprisingly, did manage to fall asleep rather quickly. She didn’t bother
Dreaming that night. She thought it better to keep her thoughts and mind to
herself.
    But she did dream.
    She and her sister were
running from her father, and he was catching up, and no matter how fast they
ran, they could go no further.
    But this doesn’t make sense, she thought. We’re in
the real world. We’re not dreaming!
    And then she woke up.
    Outside, it was raining, the
sun covered by overcast clouds spewing forth blankets of rain. She had a
multitude of matters to tend to that day, and it would not take long for them
to be done. To do them would involve the rain though, and, therefore, galoshes.
    “You’ve slept in,” said her
sister, who entered their bedroom fully dressed, books in hand. She had
tutoring most days, as was usual in Odillan households, but she had hers with
university professors rather than her parents. “Didn’t you have to post off
those letters?”
    “I did,” Adabelle said,
glancing at the clock. “And I will have missed the morning post. I’ll have to
have it in quickly if I’m going to meet the midday sorting. Then, off to work.”
     “Also, I don’t know
why, but Professor Oakley left a note for you requesting a meeting tomorrow
afternoon.” She looked confused, as she took the note from within her pocket.
“Why would you be seeing that oddball? He’s all silly-talk, I think.”
    “I just want to see him
about my nightmares. They’ve been getting bad lately, and I want his opinion on
what that could mean.”
    Charlotte nodded, shrugging.
“I suppose that makes sense. Don’t you usually go to Mrs. Abeth about things
like that?”
    “Usually,” Adabelle said,
“but there’s only so far she can go before it’s out of her knowledge. This is
one of those cases.”
    Charlotte didn’t press any
more. Thankfully. Adabelle didn’t want to have to lie to her sister, so
skirting the matter entirely would be easier.
    Adabelle got out of bed, changed
out of her pyjamas and into a nice dress for the day, before skipping breakfast
to deliver the letters. She carried her small change in a clutch, using the
silver within for the stamps for the letters, leaving them at the post office.
    She wandered down the avenues
and wide-open boulevards, rather than taking the tram, and the walk was only a
short one. Short, but long enough for her to clear her mind. There was a gentle
breeze blowing down the cobblestone roads, a cooling