Hired Hunter (The Rover series Book 2)

by Amelia Shaw

  I crouched near her right knee. “Sol, can you hear me?”

  She didn’t answer but stared straight ahead through the trees.

  “Sol?” I called again, louder this time.

  Again, nothing. She sat like a robot waiting to be switched on. I reached out to touch the back of her hand. My fingers passed through her hand and leg. I jerked back so fast I lost my balance and landed on my ass in the pine needles.

  “Shit,” I whispered as I tilted over to my knees and then got to my feet. I brushed the needles off my dress and shook out the material.

  Sol never stirred. I wandered the perimeter of the clearing. The whispers had stopped, but I couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  When I made it back to Sol, she stared off into the distance, still and silent.

  “You know, you bring me here, the least you could do is tell me why. If you’re Sol, or Esteban, or whoever...I don’t want to keep doing this. Some people actually need to get some sleep at night.”

  She didn’t twitch, and I took a moment to study her. Her lips were fuller than her brother’s, her cheekbones a bit sharper. But just like him, her beauty stunned me. If she’d become a mage, it didn’t affect her perfect fae appearance.

  I sat down in front of Sol, hiked up the dress around my hips, and crossed my legs underneath me. Maybe this was a meditation thing. I sucked so hard at meditation, but I would try anything to get out of this.

  I closed my eyes and cycled through a few deep breaths. Thoughts flitted in and out of my weird dream head, but nothing magical, nothing that would help at all. I folded myself over my legs to rest my forehead on the ground.

  “I just want out of this damn dream,” I said on a groan.

  I leaned back and looked up at the wispy gray sky.

  “Fin,” I yelled. “If you can hear me, please do whatever it is you’re supposed to do. You are crammed into my shitty apartment right now for this very reason..”

  Silence answered me. Outstanding.

  I glanced back at Sol. Not a twitch. Maybe Fin was doing something, and it disrupted the signal as he’d said. I stood, walked over to her, and pressed my hands on top of hers and closed my eyes. I envisioned a connection between us, a way to communicate, but I didn’t feel that tell-tale tingle of magic, nor did she respond.

  This dream already felt longer than any other I’d endured so far. To be fair, I got bored easily.

  I turned around the clearing a few times and kept returning to Sol. But she hadn’t moved an inch. How long was I going to be stuck here? Fucking hell.

  With Sol rigid as a robot, and Fin probably somewhere out there napping on my couch, I decided to speak to the only other creature in this place. I marched toward the nearest tree and pressed my hand to its rough bark. This time, it didn’t elicit any noises like it did before. I closed my eyes, drew in a deep breath, and pushed my awareness toward the tree.

  Nothing happened. Should’ve seen that coming.

  It wasn’t as if I had any other options, so I tried one more time. I curled my fingers into the bark of the rigid oak tree, and simply said, “Hello.”

  At first, nothing happened. But then a vibration started, a deep rumble, like the tumble of boulders down a mountainside. The tree let out a long groan and seemed to stretch up toward the sky. Was that a hello? Should I keep my hand on the tree?

  My hands shook as I pulled them back from the tree and hugged them to my chest. The forest had gone silent again, and the trees seemed like their normal weird selves.

  What had Fin said about mage magic? He had spoken of it, as if it were a perversion of fae magic, unnatural. If that were the case, I shouldn’t be able to feel these trees, the kiss of ozone and mist on my skin. Damn it. The only thing this sending seemed to do was confuse me more. Not something I needed right now between the super-hot fae man I needed to avoid and the crazy mage man who wanted me dead.

  A charmed life I led.

  I headed back toward Sol, carefully stepping across the field so I didn’t trip. Not that it would matter.

  “Because no one’s here to see me,” I shouted my thought aloud.

  Sol sat in the same position as before, straight-backed and ethereal. She looked like a statue brought to life.

  I studied her, leaning in closer, trying to catch if she was even breathing.

  Her mouth flopped open. I stumbled away, almost landing on my ass again in the pine needles.

  She started moving her mouth like she was speaking to someone, but no sound came out. I crouched lower so I could see her face at eye level to make out the shapes her lips formed, but I couldn't discern the words. She seemed to be speaking to someone. Her face was animated, her eyes bright and alert, and her hands waved as she spoke.

  I shook my head and threw my hands up. “Sound on, Sol.”

  Of course, she didn’t answer me. She continued her conversation with another person I couldn't see. Were there ghosts here? I spun around, peering through the trees, trying to catch shapes in the darkness. Nothing moved, nothing shifted. Nothing was here except me and robot Sol.

  I really had nothing else to do but sit there and stare at her. So I threw myself down on the ground, folded my legs up again, and watched as she spoke. Her shoulders were relaxed and her hands flowed effortlessly, until her entire body tightened up and went rigid. Then her chin tilted haughtily, so like her brother it made me wince. It was a little disconcerting to watch fear wash over a person without being able to hear the effects of it. Whoever she spoke to, had scared her.

  I narrowed my eyes, bouncing my gaze from her lips up to her eyebrows and back, hoping I could find some word or gesture that would let me know how to help her. My heart told me this wasn’t Esteban. While convincing, he never seemed to drop his air of superiority. And right now, Sol looked fragile. I didn’t think an emotion like that was something Esteban could copy.

  She continued moving her lips and waving her arms again, but now her brow was tucked down, set in a determined way. Maybe she was trying to convince somebody of something.

  “Sol, tell me how to help you.” I didn’t know if I was speaking to her or this weird dream place or Fin. I just hated that I couldn’t help her. And I would feel the same way for any woman.

  Then her mouth turned in just the right way, so I recognized one word: watch.

  A watch? Had she dropped one for me to find?

  I dove for the pine needles, threading my fingers under their blanket, but nothing snagged against my hands, not even a stray pebble.

  I got to my feet and circled her log to look around for a watch, but nothing lay on the ground, nor was she wearing one.

  Maybe she’d meant for me to look at her. To see something. I spun back around in front of her and lined up our faces. She continued through her pantomime, and again I couldn’t make out the words, or any way to break through to her.

  Shit. Shit. Fucking shit.

  I really hoped I wasn’t about to have to watch Fin’s sister get murdered in front of me. Boy, would that be one hell of a conversation when I woke up.

  I didn’t like this at all. Right now, I wanted to open my eyes, snark at Fin, and have him stare back at me in his usual unbothered way.

  I rubbed my face and then skimmed fingers up over my head to push my hair away.

  “Wake up,” I whispered to myself, as I squeezed my eyelids tight together. “Wake up.”

  Nothing happened.

  Sol still carried on her invisible conversation. She’d relaxed a bit more, which boded well, but I still wanted out of here.

  I lay down on the ground in front of Sol and stared up at the sky, ringed by the tree canopy in my peripheral vision. Then I closed my eyes and walked myself through relaxing. It was a song my mother had taught me as a child. Fingers, toes, knees, and ears. A lullaby to relax each body part. It rarely failed to send me into a deep sleep. I figured if I could sleep here, maybe I would wake up in my world.

  I squeezed my eyes tighter and balled
my fists, counter to the relaxing advice, and tried to will my mind to quiet. When that didn’t work, I resumed my song, naming my body parts in my head as I traversed my entire frame.

  When I reached my face and ears, I slipped up. Drifting off in my own bed, into a proper sleep, was always soothing. This felt like slipping feet first into an oil well. In a way, it felt like a drug taking hold of my system, spitting me out the other side of a high I didn’t want any part of.

  If I made it home, I knew one thing for sure: it was time for Fin to teach me how to do magic. At least the basics. Right now, my world spun, and the out-of-control feeling of it made me want to punch something to re-establish my dominance.

  I squeezed my eyes as I reached the edge of the oil slick, and the last image burned in as I finally went under.

  Chapter Seven

  I awoke with a jolt and then a splitting pain down the center of my forehead. It took a few seconds of blinking and rubbing the spot to realize Fin hovered at the edge of my bed, clutching his forehead similarly.

  “Were you watching me sleep?” I asked.

  He took a few deep breaths before dropping his hand. “I could tell something was wrong. You were twitching and sort of whimpering while you were sleeping so I tried to pull you out of it, but I couldn’t reach you.”

  I fisted the covers up around my hips, just in case. I didn’t need him to see my sloth print sleep shorts. After what felt like an eternity in that dream world, being back in my skin seemed to be the strange place.

  “Are you okay?” Fin asked and plopped down on the edge of my bed.

  As always, he looked immaculate in a slim cut black suit, the jacket open to reveal a white shirt and a gray pattern tie. His hair hung loose around his chin but had obviously been brushed back by his fingers a few times since he woke up.

  I shook my head. “This time was different. Sol was there, but she didn’t seem to be able to speak to me. I kept trying different things to get her to talk, but she wasn’t responding. She just sat there, kind of like an animatronic robot waiting to be plugged in.”

  I debated on telling him about the trees, and about how the forest seemed to be alive around me as I passed through it. Would it matter? Did that information help him figure out her location? I doubted it, since he still believed the Black Mage behind her appearance in my dreams.

  I rubbed some grit for my eyes and brushed back stray hairs around my face that had fallen out of my ponytail while I’d slept.

  Fin patted the bedcovers and stood to button his jacket. “I’ll go make some breakfast. Come out whenever you’re ready.”

  Once the door sat firmly shut between us, I climbed out of the bed, grabbed some clothes from my dresser, and went into the bathroom to shower.

  The world seemed too bright and too big around me, like I stood in a bubble waiting for it to pop any moment. While I brushed my teeth, I thought about Sol and my short-lived hunt for the watch she mentioned. She’d said watch, but how could I know if she meant a wristwatch or that she wanted me to see something.

  I brushed my hair up into a bun. Because of the length of my hair, it would still be damp in the evening if I kept it up all day, but I didn’t feel like fussing right now. I stuffed my legs into a pair of jeans and pulled on a T-shirt. Once I was ready, I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders. No use stalling. Fin, or the captain would just come in my bedroom to hunt me down, anyway.

  I exited out to my living room quietly and then jerked to a stop as I surveyed the space.

  While I’d slept, Fin had completely rearranged. I ran a hand over the top of the bookshelf. No dust coated my fingers. The man had cleaned my apartment. On the good side, it looked about twice as big as it had before. On the downside, he’d cleaned my apartment and rearranged everything. I wasn’t an organized person, at least not by many people’s standards. It was the idea that Fin had touched all my personal possessions that ate at me.

  He stood in the kitchen at the stove stirring some eggs in a skillet. Damn it. The man had cleaned my apartment. I should be angry at him but yelling at the person about to feed me didn’t feel like a grateful thing to do.

  I leaned on the kitchen door frame. “So, busy night?”

  He waved the spatula toward the living room. “I should have asked permission, I apologize. I don’t sleep and movement helps me stay focused.”

  “Fae don’t sleep?”

  He tipped his gaze up to me before focusing on the eggs again. “No, fae sleep the same as humans. It’s just me who doesn’t sleep. Not more than a few hours at a time, anyway. Not since...”

  By the way he broke off, I knew he meant Sol. Sometimes I forgot I wasn’t the only person’s life the Black Mage had destroyed.

  Fin plated the eggs and carried them to the small card table I usually used to organize files in my little dining room. Now, he’d covered it with a lilac tablecloth, two napkins, two forks, and salt and pepper shakers.

  “What did you do with my paperwork?” I asked when I took the seat opposite him.

  He placed the food in front of me and waved at my desk. “Where the files live, in the file drawer of course.”

  He spoke as if I were adorable and knew nothing.

  Under normal circumstances, his tone would have grated on me, but I couldn't summon my usual ire.

  The eggs were delicious, of course. I dug in and alternated bites of eggs and toast he’d tossed on the plate.

  “Taste okay?” he asked

  I peered at him over the end of my fork, still shoved in my mouth. Once I swallowed, I nodded. “Yes, they are great. Thank you. I am trying to figure out how I didn’t hear you going all House Flipper on my place while I slept.”

  He shrugged as he stirred his food around his plate. “I can be quiet when I want to be.”

  It took me no more than five minutes to clear my plate and take it to the kitchen to rinse it off. Instead of washing, I stacked everything in the sink and returned to the table with a fresh cup of coffee. Damn. He even made better coffee than me.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  I appreciated him waiting to grill me until I’d put something in my stomach.

  Using the Snoopy print mug as a shield between us, I stared him down. “Shoot.”

  He slid his hand palm up across the table. “May I?”

  Oh.

  Asking me questions about my dreams weirded me out enough, but letting him inside my head...I didn’t know if I could let him do it.

  “What does it entail?” I asked.

  He shifted in the seat and met my gaze directly. “You picture what it is you want me to see and I’ll be able to see it in my own mind. No more, no less.”

  “Will you be able to read my thoughts?”

  The corner of his mouth tipped up. “Anything to hide?”

  I put the mug down on the table and flipped him off. “If I do, it’s none of your business.”

  He tilted his head to the side, studying me, the crystal in his irises catching what little sunlight my apartment received. “I wonder what it’s like inside your head. Is your inner monologue equally brash? Or do you play a part, and inside you’re a lot softer than you appear on the outside?”

  As usual, he’d hit a little too close to the mark for my comfort.

  I smiled one of my demented grins and batted my lashes. “Same on the inside, same on the outside. I don’t waste energy on playing a part for the sake of others.”

  Like the gentleman part he played, he let it go. “I promise not to encroach on anything you don’t wish to show me. I won’t enter your mind. All you have to do is push the thoughts you want me to see toward me. I’ll receive them like an email. Easy.”

  “Easy,” I echoed. There was absolutely nothing simple about giving someone else access to my mind.

  Showing him what I saw in my dreams might help more than describing what happened, though. I tightened my hand in his and closed my eyes. The soft mantle of magic folded around me and I tried to keep my breat
hing even so he wouldn’t sense my panic. But so far, he kept his word. I didn’t feel any mental pushes from him.

  I pictured the forest in mind and pushed it toward him.

  He hissed out loud, and I jerked my hand away.

  “What?”

  “Gently, that was like forcing too much laundry into a washing machine at once. Picture it and sort of float it my way. I can grab onto it and bring it to me. An exchange, if you will.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “Not at all,” he said, and took my hand again.

  I pictured the dress and the carpet of pine needles leading me to the forest. Then I gently willed it toward him.

  It winked out of my head and he said, “More.”

  Next, I pictured Sol’s back as I found her on the log.

  He inhaled sharply. Shit. I didn’t consider what seeing her would be like for him after everything he’d endured.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, eyes still closed.

  “Yes, please continue.” His voice remained steady, but his breathing pattern had picked up almost to match my own.

  Finally, I gave him the way she looked from the front, having her invisible conversation with someone I couldn’t see.

  Like a lightning strike, his emotions filtered through our connection. Surprise. Fear. Hope. Panic.

  I pulled my hand back, hugging it to my chest, and opened my eyes. His stayed closed. He didn’t acknowledge that exchange, so I didn’t comment on it.

  “Anything you notice?” I asked.

  He shook his head and opened his eyes. “I think I know that forest. We should go there and investigate. I have a helicopter and we could be there in a few hours.”

  I held up my hands. “Wait a minute. I didn’t sign on to join the Mystery Machine here. I understand you want to find your sister, but I don’t think we should run off and trudge through some kind of sentient forest right now. She couldn’t possibly be held there, with no bathroom, no food, no water. Then there is the obvious conclusion we need to discuss.”