Chapter Fourteen

Benedict was back in his family home. He was aware, on a subconscious level, that he was dreaming. The view out of the windows showed none of the gardens – instead the windows were tinted with the gray shadows he associated with the realm behind the veil. The furniture and decorations were a huge clue, too.

Standing in a small sitting room on a rug that no longer existed, that his conscious mind knew had been burned to the ground and hadn't been replaced, Benedict stared at the large portrait his father had commissioned a hundred years before that was hung above the wide mantel piece.

It was rare for his father to spend any money on anything he considered frivolous. He'd been born into a generation that believed sons were the curators of the history and riches were left by the ancestors who came before. Benedict had only been a young twenty-year-old when the finished picture arrived. The month before his father had told him he'd secured Benedict a position within the Magical Council offices in York, and all Benedict remembered at that time was how tired his fingers were from the endless paperwork he had to do in his lowly position as a clerk, wondering how soon could he move out of his family home, so he could have the social life other clerks in a similar position enjoyed.

My gods. I was thinking about moving out even then. Benedict stared at the picture as more memories started filtering through his brain. Benedict was the youngest son – the youngest Dule child, but as he looked over the family grouping he was struck about how physically alike his brothers were. His sisters were all very similar too.

But it was Benedict's brothers that really stuck out for him. Is this because I'm dreaming, although as Benedict kept scanning the various faces, he struggled to remember the original painting. "Am I hallucinating, or is this the original and I never noticed the craziness before?"

He stepped closer. It was a compulsion. He had to. The faces were real. Benedict would never forget what his brothers looked like, but seeing them all standing in a row behind the couch, as was the norm a hundred years ago… "It's like seeing a deconstructed set of stackable dolls." Benedict couldn't believe he'd never seen that before. All of his brothers were around six foot tall, give or take an inch. All of them had dark brown hair like their father. The blue eyes, the roman nose, the full lips… right down to the cleft on their chin.

"They're like exact clones of my father." Shaking his head, Benedict tried to remember if that was something anyone else had mentioned in the past. For himself, Benedict was on the left hand edge of the row in the picture. He was slightly shorter than his brothers and nowhere near as broad shouldered. But even at twenty, his hair was silver and white, his eyes were more gray rather than blue, his chin shape was more triangular than square, and he was the only one with a full set of lips among those standing together.

Narrowing his eyes, Benedict looked more closely at the four women sitting on the long couch. His mother sat in the middle, with his eldest sister to her right, and then the two younger girls, who were still older than Benedict, on either side of those two. They had more distinguishing features between them. Rose had blue eyes and lighter hair, than Violet who had their father's coloring. Anna's hair was really fair, and she looked the most like their mother.

"There is something seriously freaky about my brothers." Benedict couldn't look away. Admittedly, he was seeing the picture for the first time in a decade, and it wasn't like he paid much attention to it when he'd been living in his family home before the explosion. But looking at it in that moment it was like seeing it for the first time ever. Details Benedict never remembered noticing before all stood out to him now. The physical similarities between the brothers and their father – like carbon copies of each other.

He discounted the clothes. A hundred years ago a man was rarely posed for a portrait without a suit, unless the man was in the military or held a royal position. The Dules were part of the gentry, but again, Benedict remembered, his father had never stood on ceremony like many of his wig-wearing, robe-toting peers.

"What am I missing?" he muttered as he turned around. Unusually for a dream sequence, there was nothing else in the room that seemed out of place. The furnishings were in the muted brown and green shades his mother preferred, and there was a vase of flowers on the small occasional table sat under the window. Benedict got the sense his dream was an intentional one, but like everything else tied up with his UK life, Benedict felt like he was missing something important.

And it had to be something to do with the picture. Benedict wasn't imagining the way the picture lingered in his peripheral vision no matter which wall he was facing. So he faced the painting and really studied it. He checked the background, the foreground, and the edges, trying to work out what was niggling his senses.

When he didn't find anything out of the ordinary there, Benedict started studying the people – himself, first. I was so damned young and idealistic. Frowning he noticed what looked like a blemish on the painted lapel of his suit, but when he leaned closer, Benedict could see it was the small pin he'd been given to wear once he started work at the Magical Council.

I wasn't wearing that pin when I posed for the picture. The painting was a true oil painting and took over three months to complete. When he'd posed with his family, Benedict was still job hunting, not knowing his father was working on his behalf. Maybe it was added in after.

But then, when Benedict looked at the lapels of his brothers' jackets, they were all wearing Magical Council pins too. He stepped back, rubbing the spot between his eyes and then looked again. Why are they wearing pins? They didn't work for the council. A hundred years before, the York office was a lot smaller than the London office. Benedict would've known if his brothers had been working somewhere in the same building he was.

They weren't. I'm sure they weren't, and there was no way they could've been working for the London office at that time because they were always home every night. Father insisted on it.

And yet the pins were there – all on the top quadrant of the right hand lapel of his brothers' suit jackets. Why? Is my dream trying to suggest there's a connection between my brothers and the Magical Council? Is this picture indicative of a specific time in my life when forces were mobilizing behind the scenes? And no, Benedict had no idea of what forces, but he understood the importance of symbols.

"Or maybe," Benedict said out loud, "my brain is so fucked by what Dixon and I went through today, I'm seeing shit that isn't there." Unfortunately, when it came to dreams, that could also be true.

Benedict was aware time was passing, but being in the dream world meant he had no idea how long he'd stared at the picture. At some point his brain tried to convince him the figures in the painting were moving, but the moment he blinked, they were arranged as before.

The dream was also playing games with his head. In the painting, Benedict was barely twenty. There was a modern part of him that just wanted to grab his phone and take a picture of it so he could show Dixon, but even as his hand was moving toward his pants pocket, his logical core was reminding him he was in the dream world. Phones were not going to work, even if Benedict actually had it in his pocket.

Being in his old family home was also distorting his perception. Benedict felt as though he was twenty years old, and he tried to shake himself out of it. He was a hundred years older than when that picture had been painted. Do something proactive. Leave the room, take the damn picture off the wall, do something!

Because that's what modern Benedict would do. He would not be spending his time standing still when he had no idea when he'd wake up. Once he did that, the image, set up, or whatever else his brain or magic had concocted would be gone.

Striding over to the mantle, Benedict reached up with both hands to grab hold of the ornately carved frame, but as he did his eyes rested on the collar of the dress Rose was wearing. She was wearing a council pin, too, but it was a slightly different design to the one the men were wearing. A quick glance let Benedict know Violet, Anna, and his mother were also wearing pins, although he couldn't make out the precise details.

What's with all the darn pins? Women weren't even allowed to work for the Magical Council until nineteen thirty-six, and none of them were ever accorded pins. Benedict remembered one of the women from Charles's family, or so he thought, being the one to complain about the lack of respect shown to women employees in the Magical Council because they weren't awarded pins. But that wasn't until the middle of the nineteen seventies.

Looking around, Benedict grabbed one of the single armchairs, dragging it across the floor. For something in the dream realm, it was remarkably heavy, and Benedict didn't want to think of what his late mother would've said if she saw him manhandling the furniture and showing no respect for her meticulously maintained floors.

These floors in the real world don't even exist anymore. Get a grip on yourself. This is the dream realm. Save the grieving over your late mother and everyone else in this picture for when your mate and your best friend are safe.

Climbing on the chair, Benedict leaned on the mantle, studying the pin in Rose's collar more closely. The pin was the same size and color as the Magic Council pins, but it was a different shape. What the…? Quickly Benedict checked the ones on Violet's and Anna's collars. Everyone of them was different.

Getting more and more confused, Benedict forced himself to focus on the one that was pinned to the collar of his mother's dress. He felt a shiver down his spine as he identified the roman numerals IV. Four. The fourth. The pins the women in the picture were wearing were initials. B. H. J. and then IV.

"I don't understand," Benedict muttered, looking up to check the pins on the lapels of the menfolk's jackets. They were all standard Magical Council pins. Small and discreet, they were designed to provide a means of identification for any magic folk who might be in trouble with authorities, or even in their day-to-day life.

No one in my family ever worked for the Council except me. My brothers all worked with Father, and he was only associated with the Councilors. He'd never worked for them. I have no idea what any of this means.

With one last scan of the picture, praying that he'd still remember the initials when he woke up, Benedict went to climb down from the chair, when a hand reached out from the picture, slapping his arm as it was grabbed by skeletal claws. Shocked, Benedict stared into the now enlarged face of his mother.

"It's time to face your destiny." The loud words were nothing like his mother's dulcet tones. They were deep, harsh, and ugly. "Do what you were born to do. Be who you were meant to be!"

"I am." Benedict tried to pull away. "I'm everything I was raised to be."

"You're failing your position." The voice got louder. "You're meant to be so much more."

"You're talking crap. Tell me something useful instead of being all dire and spooky." Leveraging his other hand against the mantel, Benedict tugged his caught arm.

The grip got so tight it was painful. To his horror, Benedict found himself being drawn toward the painting. Maybe he'd seen too many horror movies, maybe he just had a highly developed sense of preservation, but Benedict knew he absolutely should not touch that painting.

Much like at the Tower, the noise got louder, but this time Benedict saw it for the diversion it was. Taking one last look past the twisted replica of his mother, Benedict prayed that Crystal was right and that his family was all right. Then, just as his face was about to be smooshed in a dream canvas of horrors, Benedict opened his mouth and screamed, "Dixon!"

The painting, the room, and more importantly the hold on Benedict's arm fell away. Benedict opened his eyes to the worried expression on his mate's face.