“Bedroom.”
She didn’t answer, didn’t stop, couldn’t.
He pulled pack, his hands on either side of her face. “Jami. Where is your bedroom?”
“Hmmm?” She was foggy, felt drugged.
“Hey, Jami?” His voice now held a note of concern that pierced through the maelstrom swirling in her head. She felt weightless, as if letting go of him might mean floating off to join the stars.
That was fine, just fine.
She could be a star…be forever alone, apart from the world.
Forever...
22
THE STARS appeared so close he could reach out and touch them. The roof of the solarium was retracted, the heat from the pool rising in wispy tendrils to disappear into the night sky.
Teagan paced to the opposite end of the room, turned on his heel with a clean snap that was a call back to his days in the military, then paced back to stop in front of her. He kept his hands clasped behind his back, fluttering about with your hands made one appear weak.
“What do you mean you lost it?” He bit out the words, flinging them at her as though if they were sharp enough, she would feel them.
He glanced at his watch, he needed to get back, Jack would be reporting in soon. He’d better, he was on the trail of a bloodewitch, the last piece of the puzzle.
She didn’t answer.
Muriel opened her eyes, and before he could steel himself, he had taken a step back.
Her usually pale blue eyes now looked as if someone had cracked one of those emergency glow sticks and poured the contents into them. The blue glow wasn’t restricted to the irises but had filled the pupil so she looked like something from a sci-fi movie.
“Bloody hell. What’s wrong with your eyes?”
The color was already fading by the time she answered him, “I was connected, to someone, I don’t know who. I was interrupted.”
“How are you certain they were in Whisky River if you don’t know who you were connected to?”
“I used the earth you brought back to focus. I won’t be able to see until I’m fully connected, but I could feel what they felt…”
“And?” He was impatient and irritated with himself that it was showing.
She shook her head, standing from the lotus position and stretching. Muriel was in her sixties somewhere, but even Teagan wasn’t sure of her age. There was something about her that seemed blurred, as if someone had taken an eraser to the edges of her.
She stepped in closer to him and he pulled his head back in surprise. “I sensed the pendant, she was wearing it. I’ll be able to reach out again, after I rest.”
She moved her head to the side, her eyes cold. “I found a connection because they were—intimate. The instincts that humans listen to in their basest moments are fascinating, aren’t they?”
He held his disgust inward as she pushed into his boundaries even farther, moving her nose along his collarbone as if she were scenting an animal in the hunt. “Death. Birth. Sex. These defining moments seem to bridge gaps, open the soul.”
She stepped away and disrobing as if she were alone she walked towards the pool designed to look like a natural grotto, with fake rock formations instead of walls, a waterfall on one side, and plants landscaping the edges. “Do you believe in a god? Will you pray on your deathbed? What do you say, over and over, when in the throes of passion? Is it ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God’?”
She smiled, and he swallowed hard to push down his gag reflex as her lips pulled back from her teeth, and for a moment she appeared inhuman. “I found a way in. I will be able to find it again.” She was almost submerged now, and he backed out of the solarium with a measured pace.
He didn’t like working with someone when he didn’t hold all the cards, but he didn’t have a choice. He needed a psychic to connect to someone in Whiskey River during the equinox.
Everything was on the line now; this was his last chance.
23
Val was relieved to feel her heart beating steady and strong against his palm. She was breathing deep, peaceful. Thank God.
She’d scared the shit out of him. When he’d finally been able to shake her out of whatever that weird trance had been she had blinked at him as though she’d been startled awake from a deep sleep.
She said she remembered nothing after moving toward the sofa with him. She was exhausted, but insisted she was fine, so he’d carried her to bed. She was already undressed down to her t-shirt, thanks to their little romp, so he tucked her in, and she rolled to her side and smiled at him as she drifted off.
24
HART PUT his cell on the coffee table in the F&G. “That was Jack. He’s going to look for Nichole as soon as he’s finished with his meeting.”
Remi rested her hand on his denim clad knee and heaved a sigh. “Thank you. I completely forgot she told me she was leaving to visit her grandmother in Belfast. Lucas is on his way over here now, he was staying at her place watching her cat, that’s the only reason I was able to reach him.”
“Don’t worry. He’s already over there for a job, and this is what he does. He finds people. He’ll get her the message.”
“I don’t like it, that woman never takes longer than three minutes to answer a text. It’s been over twenty-four hours.”
“Don’t worry, Jack has had his issues, but I’ve never not been able to count on him. At the end of the day, he’s my brother. He’s a good guy, Remi, he’ll find her.”
Aubrie hobbled in from the office and eased himself down into a leather chair next to the sofa at the same table, setting a steaming mug of coffee down . “I’ve only met her a couple of times, but I have to agree, that’s unlike her. But I’m sure,” he hastened to add at Hart’s raised eyebrows, “that it’s a travel thing. She ran out of charge on her phone or is catching up with her grandmother. Or hell, it could be horrible cell service.”
Remi shook her head. “No, something is happening. Jami is behaving like a completely different person. She showed up last night with some guy I’ve never seen before, and he looked at her, like—”
“Like what, babe?”
“Like you look at me. He looked at her like you look at me. And I want that for her, so much. But I don’t know this guy—”
“Babe, look.” He held her hand, turned to her on the sofa. “I’m not trying to be the asshole here, but that’s for her. For Jami to know.”
She pulled her hand from his, stood. “I don’t think she’s ready for—”
“Hey.” Lucas entered the room like that feeling of a thunderstorm on a hot day, the one you can feel and smell, but can’t tell how bad it’s going to be yet. Remi rubbed her hands up and down her arms to get rid of the goosebumps. “I’m sorry it took me so long, I had to get Diana and all of her stuff, and she wouldn’t get in the kennel so—”
The cat, Diana, Nichole’s cat, named for Wonder Woman’s alter ego, jumped from the young man’s arms and pranced behind the bar as if she’d been there before. Lucas shook his head, droplets of rain scattering off of him.
Aubrie’s phone rang and after a murmured conversation, he hung up. “David will be here in five. Cam and Sebastian are tied up, they won’t be able to be here until the day after tomorrow.”
Remi turned to Lucas as he sat on the floor on the other side of the table from her. “What’s going on?”
He lowered his eyes, a lovely dove grey with slashes of blue, and ducked his head to allow his brown hair to fall forward and shadow his face. The first night they’d met Nik’s friend, just last week Remi realized in amazement, had been an evening of crazy revelations. She and Hart had been celebrating making it back from Spain alive, having a little party here at the bar. Niks had told Remi that she had a friend that was a psychic, and that considering all the weird stuff that had been going on it might be a good idea to have a little chat with him.
“I don’t know, yet. I was checking on Diana last night, then I had this bizarre flash.” He flushed, appeared uncomfortab
le.
“It was as if I were an observer I someone else’s, well, someone’s dream. Or fantasy—something. Anyway, whatever it was, they were—” he cleared his throat “occupied. And then she was floating away, getting lost, and then—”
“And then?”
“Nothing, they were just, gone.”
“And who was it? Did you see their faces?”
He nodded. “Yes, I didn’t recognize the guy, but the woman, it was your sister, Jami.”
Remi felt her heart still, then begin thudding in apprehension as she dialed Jami’s cell. What the hell was going on?
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