Free The Last Dream Keeper by Amber Benson

stone hearth that took up the entire back wall of the kitchen.
    The heady scent of sage and lavender lingered in the air, a remnant from the poultice she and Lizbeth had been working on the day before—but underlying those enticing aromas were other smells: the pungent manure stench of asafoetida or Devil’s Dung, the cinnamony heat of betel nut husk, the crisp mint of pennyroyal, the foul-sweetness of valerian root, the spicy warmth of clove, the decaying odor of cuttlefish bone. Usually, the scents infiltrating her kitchen, via the two Chinese apothecary cabinets that housed her herbal collection, put Arrabelle into a Zen state. But as she drank her espresso, she discovered she just couldn’t relax; the strange lucid dream permeated her thoughts, making it impossible to calm down.
    To try to change the flow of her thinking, she got up and grabbed a stack of mail she’d left lying on the kitchen counter and brought it to the table. There, she found the requisite bills and junk mail clamoring for her attention, but buried underneath the unwieldy pile was a padded manila envelope simply addressed to
Bell
.
    The delicate, looping script was immediately familiar to Arrabelle—and its presence was completely unexpected, filling her belly with both excitement and dread.
    Evan,
she thought, the name both a blessing and a curse—because the sender of the letter was none other than Evan Underwood, the only man she’d ever loved.
    She tore open the envelope, slicing her palm on the metal clasp so that bright red blood smeared across it. A Rorschach of color against the plain beige of the wrapping.
    â€œStupid,” Arrabelle hissed, annoyed with herself for being so clumsy—and for the way her hands were shaking.
    Just the thought of Evan was enough to make her heart start to race. It had always been this way. The calm, cool, collected woman she’d worked so hard to create was instantly washed away by a flood of emotion, and she was left as naïve and vulnerable as she’d been when she was eighteen.
    I’m like a golden retriever puppy, so excited, tail wagging, tongue lolling out of my mouth like an ecstatic idiot,
Arrabelle thought as she pressed her palm to her lips, stanching the trickle of blood with her mouth.
    She willed her body to chill out, to just take a moment to process the excitement it was feeling and then to calmly put that excitement away.
Compartmentalize
was her mantra where Evan was concerned—otherwise she could get very,
very
hurt by expectations.
    It wasn’t as if there were anything she could do to change things. As much as she loved him—and always would—they didn’t work. Not as a couple, at least. They were like night and day, oil and water . . . all those ridiculous idioms that basically implied she and Evan were polar opposites who did not combine well. But their attraction to one another defied their differences. Arrabelle didn’t know another human being who could light up her life the way Evan did. Just his voice set her ablaze, made her feel alive. Her world was cast in grayscale, and his presence turned everything Technicolor.
    Just stop it,
she chided herself, inhaling deeply. She held the breath—the lack of oxygen calming her down—then slowly released it through her nostrils in one long exhale.
    She slipped her hand into the manila envelope, removing the small leather-bound book that was tucked inside. As she lifted it up from its nest of padding, a folded square of paper fell out and landed on the tabletop. She set the book down and picked up the paper, opening it with shaky hands. A sense of foreboding, so deep she could literally taste its metallic tang, overwhelmed her. She had the bizarre urge to stuff the paper and book back into their envelope and burn them.Even with the horrible feeling swirling around inside her gut, she knew she would read whatever Evan had sent. Her curiosity was too great.
    Dear