Electric Blue by Jamieson Wolf Page A

help me find out who I am, can you help me find my father?"
    "That I can help with." Naomi smiled. "I was able to concentrate on your mother's hair, the sense of her and was able to focus on a name. Kyle Machino. I tried to concentrate harder, but can't get anything else."
    "Kyle Machino," Poppy whispered. The name was like an elixir to her. "I can always talk to Honey and see if she can talk to her private detective friend. Honey's the one who helped me find Lucy." She hugged both women. "Thank you so much for all your help."
    "We only hope it's enough," Cecelia said.
     

 
    Chapter Fourteen
    Dreams Demented
     
     
    That night, her head full of rampant thoughts, her mind a long corridor with many windows and dead ends, Poppy dreamed. She had not told Alicia what the de Bruyn's had said, had kept it to herself. She was keeping her own secrets now. There was something that told her not to reveal their conversation about witches. It had something to do with her feeling that Alicia was keeping something from her. On the other hand, she wanted her own secrets. She did tell Alicia about the name and that she would contact Honey in the morning. In the meantime, Poppy dreamed: The crow had appeared. Darkness streamed around her, clouding her thoughts. She was in a room, the walls around her white as sugar. The walls had a grainy sense to them, as if, when she touched them, they would fall away from her fingers. Poppy locked eyes with the crow through the thin glass of her bedroom window. A shiver always passed down her spine when she saw it and she felt it now; cold, icy. Intoxicating. Even fear could be an aphrodisiac. She wondered what it wanted from her. It came to her window ledge day in, day out. It made no sound but a fluttering of wings and black feathers, a rustling of shadows and darkness. Part of her wanted to open the window and let it in, but she was wary to do so. There was something about the crow, perhaps the intelligence in its eyes that chilled her, even as it excited her. In fact, the crow made her slightly horny.
    Poppy put her left hand against the glass, palm flat, fingers spread out, as if she could reach through the glass and ruffle the birds' feathers. The crow cocked its head to the right, blinked and began to peck at the glass. She kept her hand there, hoping, for some unknown reason, that the carrion bird’s beak would break through and pierce her skin, the blood from her palm sliding across the glass. She envisioned secrets pouring from its beak into her bloodstream, filling her head with dreams and visions. She would become a visionary, much like the Delphi Oracle, revealing bits of the future by telling parts of the past.
    The crow looked at Poppy with dark red eyes, cawed once and smashed a hole through the glass. It happened so fast; Poppy was shocked to see that her fantasy had come true. She was bleeding from a deep, round gouge that the crows' beak had made in the centre of her palm. The blood trickled down towards her wrist and, without thinking; she put her hand to her mouth and licked the wound. The crow cawed again. She could hear the wind blowing outside, the sound made more eerie by the hole in the glass. To Poppy, it sounded as if spirits had come to her, whispering their secrets to her, though she could not understand them. Her hand began to throb and sting as if it had fallen asleep and she had shaken the blood within it. Her blood tasted dark, seductive, and sexual. She looked at the blood that now ran down her arm and ran her tongue from elbow to palm in hopes of swallowing, tasting, herself. She felt that she could eat herself whole, from the inside out, revelling in her own blood for the sake of becoming something other than herself.
    The throbbing in Poppy's hand dulled and was replaced with a low grade hum. A subtle mmmmmmmmmmmm that filled her bones with warmth; like Honey poured over her skin, Poppy felt as if she were inside a womb, a bubble. Her skin began to grow hot and