by Kari Cole
“I don’t know that it is,” Jessie said. “It seems more porous than leather, but maybe not. I don’t know. I grabbed everything I had lying around and a couple I found at the store in town last night.”
“But—”
“We’re going to try desensitization.”
“Excuse me?”
“Desensitization,” she repeated, slowly and with emphasis, as if Hannah were dumb as a stump. “We’re going to start with the thickest and work our way down, building up your tolerance and control as we go.”
“Okay. I’m willing to give anything a try at this point.”
“That’s the spirit,” Jessie said. She’d changed out of her work jeans and was now wearing a pair of running shorts. She hauled up a basket from the floor and set it down on the end of the table. “I’ve gathered a bunch of different things. Some personal, some brand-new nothings.” She tossed Hannah an unopened box of facial tissue to demonstrate her point. “You’re not getting anything off that with your leather gloves on, right?”
“No. These are the best I’ve managed to find so far.”
Jessie nodded. “Why don’t you start with the canvas ones then? We’ll see how it goes.”
“Uh...”
“Yes?”
“You do realize that at first all the gloves themselves are going to cause a reaction, right?” The look of consternation on her cousin’s face would have made Hannah laugh if the situation weren’t so dire.
“Well, hell,” Jessie said. Suddenly, she brightened. “I know! You said you wear surgical gloves in the shower, right? Why don’t you wear a pair under all the others to start? I bought a new box.”
Hannah looked at the box of generic sterile gloves and thought about it. “All right. Let’s give it a shot.” She took a pair of crumpled lumps from the box and started to remove her leather gloves.
“Maybe you should sit down for this,” Jessie said before Hannah could pick up the canvas gloves. “On the floor. In fact, let me move the table out of the way.”
“Good idea.” Hannah was tired of falling down. Though, since she’d arrived in Black Robe, every time she passed out or got dizzy, it seemed to conjure Vaughn out of thin air. She wouldn’t mind seeing him, running her hands over his warm skin again. Maybe finishing what they’d started last night before he had to go off with that IA agent.
Ugh. IA agent. Those two words alone were enough to derail her steamy train of thought.
“Hannah?” Jessie said, poking her in the arm. “You all right? You zoned out there for a second. Are you having trouble with the gloves?”
“What? No. Uh, sorry. Just thinking.”
She sank down to the soft, patterned area rug and crossed her legs yoga-style, resting her back against the couch. Frost lay down right in front of her. The expression clear on his face: do something interesting.
Hannah shook off that weird thought and said, “Okay. Ready. Hand me the gardening gloves, please.”
A look of worry passed over Jessie’s face, but she held out the gloves as requested. As soon as one touched Hannah’s fingers, she fell into a vision: Jessie standing over her, worried, hopeful; Jessie hefting a barberry bush out of one pot and into another; Jessie laughing at another woman as they—
“Whoa,” Jessie said. “What are you seeing?”
Breaths coming in a light pant, Hannah said, “You...just now...and working...okay. I—I’m okay, it’s fading. It’s over now.” Jessie was looking at her with speculation in her eyes. “What?”
“Hmm, let me see that glove again.” She held it in her hands, ran her fingers over it, closed her eyes. “Hmm.” She opened her eyes, handled the other glove, ran through the same motions as before. “Here, what do you feel with this one?”
Bracing herself for the next influx of sensations and images, Hannah grasped the scratchy fabric. Again feelings that weren’t her own washed through her. Satisfaction, tiredness, boredom, as Jessie cut back flowers, talked to an older man—
Everything stopped as Jessie pulled the glove from her fingers.
“You did it again, read the glove’s history,” Jessie said.
“Uh, yeah.”
“With latex gloves on.”
“Yes,” Hannah said slowly. “That is the problem we’re working on. I can’t stop.”
Jessie stared at her, then shook her head as if to clear it. “Damn. Know what I felt from the first glove? Nothing. Know what I felt from the second?” Hannah gave her a palms-up gesture. “More nothing. Not even when I really dug deep.”
Hands on hips, she paced toward the front door and back.
“At first,” Jessie continued, pacing some more, “I thought you were sucking the memories dry, but—”
“Wait. That’s a thing. You can use up all the impressions in an object?”
Jessie stopped in front of her. “Yes.”
A sick feeling coursed through Hannah, making her go cold. What if—
“Technically,” Jessie said. “Well, theoretically, I guess. That’s what Gran said, but I’ve never really tried. I have never gotten impressions off of something as mundane as a new glove, and I’ve only used that set twice. Absolutely nothing of interest happened while I did. Yet you saw me. I swear, I could almost see what you saw running through your eyes like a movie reel. You were that engrossed.”
“Mmm, getting lost in the object is barely a blip on my problem meter. But let’s get back to this sucking an object dry thing.”
“What about it?”
“Well, if I touch something enough, can I use up all of its history?”
“Like I said, yes. Why do you look like I ran over your wolf? I thought you’d be happy. If you used up the stored energies, you’d be able to touch an object anytime, without wearing protection.”
Hannah rolled her head back and gazed at the ceiling trying to remember how many times she’d touched the memory card. Twice, definitely. She fought back a shudder just thinking about it. But that was it. Two times. She’d gotten the hint that she couldn’t handle it after she woke up more than an hour later, lying in a pool of vomit, dried blood caked on her cheek from her nose. The headache that had lingered for the rest of the day had felt like she’d been hit with a sledgehammer. There was no way that vile little bit of silicon and metal was spent. It had enough hate and evil for a hundred seers to handle it with abandon before it gave up the ghost.
The tight band of panic across her chest eased. At least she hadn’t destroyed her shot at accessing the data on the memory card. Though she was in no hurry to repeat the process of trying to retrieve the password.
First things first—desensitize herself.
She took the gardening gloves from Jessie and started to pull them on, ignoring all the flotsam and jetsam of her cousin’s job. “Okay, so what should I try to touch first?”
When Jessie didn’t answer, Hannah looked up at her. Jessie was studying her again and the look in her eyes worried Hannah. She knelt down in front of Hannah on the floor. “What kind of trouble are you in? Don’t feed me any more BS. I’m not stupid. I don’t care how long it’s been since I saw you last, I can see something’s eating at you. Something that scares the crap out of you.”
Lies, excuses, and deflections raced through her head, but she didn’t voice them. She couldn’t. She also couldn’t tell Jessie the truth. It’d put her in too much danger.
“I can’t tell you,” Hannah said.
“Hannah—”
“Jessie, please. I can’t.”
Her cousin stood and started pacing again. “I think I should call Catherine.”
Hannah leapt to her feet, startling Frost, and making him jump up, too. “You can’t do that. Promise me. You cannot call my mom or anyone else. No one can know that I am here, Jessie. No one. Not anyone in the family. Not any of your witch friends, and especially not any shifter
s.”
“Whoa, whoa. Calm down. What’s going on?”
Hannah grabbed her arms. “Promise me.”
“All right. I promise, but what’s this about? Let me help you.”
Knees suddenly shaky, Hannah stumbled away to sink into one of the cushy chairs. “You are helping me, Jess. By teaching me how to control my psychometry so I can live in the world again without being a freak. That’s what I need.”
“Hannah, if someone is threatening you—”
She almost laughed at that. Okay, she did. A little. Going by Jessie’s wide eyes, hysterical laughter didn’t really inspire a lot of confidence.
Frost came to her and laid his head on her leg. She dug her latex-covered fingers into his soft fur and wished her hands were bare.
“Look,” she said, meeting her cousin’s worried gaze with more poise than she felt. “You’re right. I’m not in a good place, but I’m handling it as best I can. I came here because you were the only one who ever tried to explain this—this gift, curse, whatever it is. You’re the only one who ever tried to teach me how to use the part of me that’s witchborn. We’d only touched the tip of the iceberg when you left.” Jessie flinched at that, but Hannah didn’t let it stop her. “I need you to continue where you left off. I need you to show me what to do, to help me figure out how to live with this.
“Can you do that? Can you help me even though I can’t tell you everything? Can you keep my identity a secret and trust that I know what I’m doing?”
Jessie stared at her for a long time, the turmoil inside visible in her fleeting expressions. Finally, she nodded. “Because I owe you—”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“No. I do. I should never have let your mother run me off. You needed to be taught how to use your gifts. Denying the existence of things never works in the end. They always come back to bite you in the ass. I should have fought harder, or at least contacted you when you grew up. I’m sorry.”
In the last eight months, Hannah had learned a lot about regret. It ate at you, needled your peace of mind during the day, and kept you up at night with what ifs. Jessie might have been less than gracious when Hannah contacted her, but her cousin had taken her in despite their horror show first meeting. Forgiveness could heal a lot of regrets.
“I missed you,” Hannah said. “Yes, I was hurt, but I was a kid and didn’t understand. You couldn’t have changed my mother’s mind. You know that. When Mama wanted something, she got it, come hell or high water. I don’t blame you for that.” She gave Jessie a sheepish smile. “Well, not anymore. You’re helping me now, and that means the absolute world to me. You have no idea.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she closed her mouth before she started bawling like a baby.
“Ahem, uh, well,” Jessie said. “Damn it, do not make me cry, Hannah Jane Cochran.” She cleared her throat again. “Let’s get this done, shall we? I have to get back to the nursery.”
“Of course. Sorry.”
Jessie waved that away. “All right, got the pruning gloves on?” She reached into her basket of goodies and pulled out an issue of Southern Living magazine. “Okay, I thought we’d start with this. It doesn’t hold any personal value to me, but it’s guaranteed to have been touched by several people, at least.”
So that’s what they did. Over the next hour and a half, Hannah tested out different gloves and handled various objects: a plain ol’ black plastic hairbrush from Jessie’s purse; a pack of bubblegum; a garden trowel; a can of tuna; a hardcover thriller from the local library. With Jessie’s help—mostly the ability to recognize when Hannah was falling too hard into a memory and pull her out—she’d managed to stay conscious the whole time. A minor miracle, surely.
A real bonus was that Hannah worked up to using each pair of gloves without the latex barrier.
The gardening gloves were a definite bust—and thank the goddess for that. She couldn’t imagine walking around with those hideous things on her hands all day. When she’d left Atlanta, she’d lost all her pretty clothes and the ability to buy more. At least the leather gloves she relied on were attractive—well, they’d be better if it was winter. Still, they were quality. But the canvas gardening gloves... She repressed a shudder. Really, a female could only give up so much.
The winter wool pair with their adorable alpine sweater pattern were both too thick and too porous. Depending on how she touched an item, her reaction ran the gamut from feeling nothing at all to falling on the floor twitching. She was so tired of twitching.
A pair of long, black satin opera gloves left over from Jessie’s prom many moons ago hadn’t offered enough protection. She’d tried them with the latex, but the visions became distorted and murky, like looking through a lens coated in petroleum jelly. The effect made her instantly nauseous. Thanks to that experience, they’d decided it’d be best not to even attempt using the cheap dollar store find.
What worked the best, and meant the most, were a gorgeous pair of cream silk gloves with a row of tiny pearl buttons on the underside and a ruffle just past the wrist. The second Hannah touched them, she knew they’d belonged to her great-grandmother. Even if she hadn’t seen pictures of Gran when she was a young woman, she would have known the bright-eyed beauty with the wide smile was her kin. The sense of decency, verve for life, and all-out sassiness practically screamed Gran. Her great-grandmother had always been a loving, positive force in Hannah’s life. She’d thought she’d seen the woman happy, but she’d never even scratched the surface of joy the woman had been capable of.
Images poured into Hannah of Gran, maybe nineteen years old, holding on to the arm of a handsome young man with blue eyes the color of the sky on a crystal clear day and strawberry blond hair, hair just like Hannah’s. Well, hers before she’d doused it with the cheapest, ugliest dishwater-brown hair dye she could steal. She saw Gran and Pawpaw dancing together under a golden chandelier in a crowded ballroom, walking to their seats in an Italian Baroque style theater, staring into each other’s eyes as if no one else was around.
“What? What’s happening?” Jessie asked in a whisper.
Smiling to beat the band, Hannah said, “Gran and Pawpaw. They’re so in love.”
“Share it with me,” Jessie said. She removed the gloves from Hannah’s right hand and held it. “Show me.”
Hannah blinked. Her eyes were open, but all she could see was her great-grandparents. “How?”
Jessie clasped her hand. “Open yourself to me like yesterday at the clinic, but give the memory a little push. Gently. Like the memory is a ball and we’re a couple of kids playing. Just imagine that ball rolling over to me. You can do it.”
A little push. Gently.
Hannah gathered the images and feelings and...let them go with a puff of breath.
Jessie gasped, her hand tightening on hers. “Oh my God. They’re beautiful.”
Like a bubble popping, Hannah lost control and they broke apart as if a giant hand had shoved them.
Head throbbing, Hannah sprawled on the floor. “Ow.” Frost snuffled her. “I’m all right.”
“Wow,” Jessie breathed. “I mean...wow.”
Frost brought Hannah the tissue box. “Thank you,” she said, taking one to dab at the blood running from her nose. Jessie’s eyes popped wide. “No worries. Totally worth it for that experience.”
If she kept improving at this rate, she should be able to figure out the password on the memory card in a few days.
Then she could—what? Go back to Georgia? Become the society darling again? Her stomach churned. No. Thanks to Genysis and Apex, her old life was gone forever.
There was no going back.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The pack house glowed gold in the rising sun, its many windows winking in the light. It looked the same as it always did, same as it always had. Luke’s parents had been the previous Alpha and Luna, unti
l Greg had been murdered alongside Vaughn’s uncle, Darren. Even though Luke had stepped up right away to lead the pack, he hadn’t moved back into the house he’d grown up in until this winter, when he’d found his father’s killers and mated Izzy.
Vaughn pulled his department SUV up in front of the house, stopping in the middle of the circular drive. Dean’s department-issued F-150 was already parked up ahead, as was Rissa’s silver Land Rover. The gang was all here. Diego had wanted to follow in his truck, but fuck that. Vaughn wanted to keep the male where he could see him for as long as he could manage.
“That’s your deputy’s truck,” Diego said.
“My Beta right now,” Vaughn corrected.
“He was your deputy last night.”
Vaughn put the truck in Park and shut off the engine. “No, he was my Beta last night, too. You just chose to ignore that to cause me trouble.” He ignored Diego’s glare. “The Rover belongs to the Luna, Rissa Townes-Dodd.”
“Damn it, Vaughn. This case is sensitive. Did you call in the whole pack?”
Vaughn shot Diego a caustic look of his own. “I don’t know how Tomas is running things these days in the aerie, but when I was there, he wouldn’t have let a stranger—IA agent or not—hunt in his territory without even a by-your-leave from him. You expect a werewolf Alpha to be any different?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He got out of the Expedition and walked to the long, wraparound porch. When Diego joined him, slinging a messenger bag over one shoulder, he said, “Don’t worry. It shouldn’t go too badly for you unless the Alpha’s mate is here. She’s a hard case.”
Diego’s mouth twisted with distaste. “The human. I’ve heard.”
“Izzy is not human.”
“Raised by. Good as.”
Idiot. “Your funeral then.”
Vaughn opened the front door without knocking. He would have warned Diego off insulting Izzy or humans in front of the pack’s senior leadership, but he had so few things that amused him anymore. Why ruin an opportunity to see Diego get his ass kicked?