“Yes, yes. I feel you.”
“Do you feel the visions, or whatever happens whenever you draw? Do you feel those things?”
“I feel pain.”
“Do you feel pain when you look at me?”
I pushed away from him, so that I could see his eyes. He settled back against the table. I lifted my hand and traced the lines of his face — up his cheekbone, around his eye, and across the top of his eyebrow. I still had charcoal on my fingers and I left traces of it on him, even darker than his mocha skin.
He shuddered at my touch, then closed his eyes. He squeezed me to him.
“Too tight,” I gasped.
He eased off on his hug. “Sorry,” he whispered. “I … I … my mother …” He shook his head, changing his mind. “I’ve met other Adepts, other magical people. Mostly in big cities, where I don’t like to be.”
“No jungle in the city,” I said.
He barked out a laugh, shaking his head. I continued to trace his face as he spoke. “Some of these Adepts, they don’t know what they are … their magic is weak, just a hint of a scent. They’re practically human, maybe gifted but not unusually so. But you … you …” His voice cracked. “I scented you from the highway. I tracked you to the diner. I saw you through the window.”
He was silent for a moment, as if fighting with his emotions to find the words he wanted.
“I know it’s crazy to feel this way about you,” he said. “So quickly. That kind of love doesn’t exist.”
“Doesn’t it?” I said.
“You think I’m in your head, Rochelle. That gives you some freedom, doesn’t it? To embrace what you think is a fantasy?”
I nodded. I couldn’t lie to him, not cradled in his arms. I knew he wasn’t real.
“So where does that leave me? Seeing you through that diner window. Knowing I should keep walking, and yet going in to talk to you. Figuring out that somehow you had no idea what you were, what you are? Then touching you? Feeling the magic on your skin? Seeing the sketches? I thought I’d have time. I thought I could slowly make you understand. Then that damn sorcerer showed up to ruin everything … to ruin us.”
“No …” I was crying suddenly, sobbing from the pain his words were causing.
“And you love me.” Beau was crying now as well, shaking with it. “You love me, without question. Like no one has ever loved me. Not because of how I look, or what you think you can get me to do for you. And you think it’s a lie. You think it’s a lie.”
“Not a lie. The love isn’t a lie.”
Beau wasn’t listening. “It’s killing me. Slowly, painfully.”
I could see him force himself into some sort of control. I wiped the tears from his cheeks even as I let mine continue to stream down my face.
“I’ll help you,” he whispered. “As best as I can. Even if you come into your power, and realize you don’t actually love the me who isn’t in your head.”
“That would never happen.” I pressed my hands to either side of his face, forcing him to look into my eyes. “Never. I could never not love you.”
He stared at me for a moment but didn’t respond. I could feel him closing off, withdrawing. It suddenly felt like I was losing him.
“Beau,” I whispered. “You say you can smell me lying. You say I’m lying to myself.”
“Yes.”
“Am I lying now? I love you. I do love the way you look —”
He laughed. It was a sound of pain and desperation.
“I love the way you make me feel,” I said. “I love the way I am around you. I feel lonely when we’re apart. I’ve never felt lonely in my life. I never fit with anyone before, never wanted anyone in my space. You make my heart race. You feel more real than anything ever has before. Do you understand? More real than anything.”
I dropped my hands from his cheeks. He had charcoal smeared on one side of his extraordinary face. “I saw you in the diner. I couldn’t breathe at the sight of you. And you’re right. There was no pain, no white light, no desperate need to draw. When you touched me … I knew I would never want you to leave. I couldn’t believe you’d stay. I couldn’t believe that …”
I had to pause, knowing he didn’t want to hear my doubts, didn’t want to hear my justifications. “I love you, Beau. Do you hear … smell … the truth in my words?”
He nodded. Relief flooded through my pained heart and spread through my limbs.
“I don’t want to go to this pack.”
Beau’s face hardened. “We’re going.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want to lose you.”
“That sorcerer is the most powerful thing I’ve ever scented. Scary powerful. He thought I was pack. That’s the only reason he walked away. He’ll be back, but he won’t be able to get anywhere near you. The pack will know witches. The pack will know someone who can help you … with the pain, and understanding who you are.”
“Beau —”
“No,” he said. He set me on my feet and determinedly walked back to the cockpit, leaving me standing alone and chilled without his embrace.
“I thought … I thought there’d be make up sex.” I hadn’t even gotten to kiss him. I desperately wanted to be continually kissing him.
He turned to look back at me. He was hunched forward with one hand on the headrest, ready to climb down into the driver’s seat.
“We weren’t fighting.”
“What was that, then?”
“That was moving forward.”
I stared after him as he slipped into position and turned the key. He pulled the Brave onto the road. I swayed, bumping into the kitchen table as he cranked the wheel and executed a three-point turn to circle back to the highway.
“I could get you cookies,” I finally said.
“That would be nice.”
My sketchbook slid across the table and bumped against my hip. I stared down at the blank page. Then I closed it and tucked it back in my bag.
I opened up the cupboard above my head and retrieved Beau’s second-to-last box of Oreos. Then I made my way up to the front and climbed into the passenger seat.
I felt Beau glance at me, but he didn’t speak. I opened the Oreos and pulled out the plastic insert that held the black-and-white cookies in protected rows. As I palmed three to pass to Beau, I saw the butterfly tattoo on my inner wrist. The Oreos were a weird reflection of the black tattoos on my pale skin.
Beau held his hand out.
“You think I only draw the hallucinations.”
“Visions, I think. But yes.”
“You think I can’t draw last night, can’t draw you … the tiger, because you aren’t a vision.”
“Yes.” Beau took the cookies I dropped into his waiting hand. He sounded exceedingly satisfied with my understanding.
“I draw the tattoos,” I said. “They aren’t from visions.”
“Aren’t they?”
The question hung between us. I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to be accused of lying. I knew the tattoos weren’t from visions. Why would I hallucinate the butterfly? The barbed wire? The peony?
Still … I did have a hallucination — within this hallucination that Beau insisted was real life — last night. One that came with the migraine and the whiteout. One that Beau claimed the sorcerer had triggered somehow. One in which the blond woman was drowning. The blond woman who Blackwell had named Jade Godfrey. The woman I had seen facing off against the sorcerer more than once.
She’d been drowning, her golden curls floating around her head. Then she’d awoken, her eyes a deeper blue than the water surrounding her …
My left hand started tingling. I rubbed my fingers together, feeling the kiss of charcoal still on my skin.
“What are you thinking?” Beau whispered the question, but it still made me flinch.
I glanced at him, shaking my head. Denying the sudden urge I had to draw the woman in the water — not of her
drowning, but of the moment she woke …
“Your eyes,” Beau said. “Your eyes glow white. I’ve never seen magic work like that before. I’ve heard some witches can see magic in color, but I never have.”
I clenched my hand into a fist, denying the itch to draw, denying Beau’s words. I looked away, staring out my window at the farmland streaming by outside. I tried to not remember the orbs of dark light in Blackwell’s hands, or the green glow of Beau’s eyes, or the way the woman’s hair in my hallucinations always glistened gold.
Beau grunted, satisfied.
“It can’t be true,” I whispered. “That would be even crazier than I already am.”
Beau didn’t answer, but he did press down on the gas pedal to take the Brave’s speedometer back up to 70 miles an hour.
I didn’t caution him. The Brave would only break down if my mind and my fantasy needed it to … right?
Right?
CHAPTER TEN
“How do you know about this pack … of shapeshifters …” — I stumbled over the terminology Beau had used — “…that lives in Portland?”
“My mother told me.” Beau didn’t turn his gaze from the highway. He was intently watching the green-and-white roadside direction signs as they passed, though I didn’t know if he was looking for a specific turn off. He was executing some plan he’d made while I was still sleeping, and wasn’t being very forthcoming about the steps.
“What are you looking for? I can help.” We’d cut east along Highway 18 until it turned into Highway 99, the farmland giving way to the outer boroughs of a city. Beau had driven all night to get us this close to Portland before the sun had fully risen.
“The turn off to Walmart.”
“We’re parking the Brave?”
“Yes.”
“Because of something your mother told you?”
“She told me to stay far, far away from the pack, so I’m already ignoring the most important thing she ever taught me. It might be difficult to park the Brave downtown, and this will … well, if we have to run, they won’t know where we’re running to … hopefully.”
Fear curled its way down my spine to pool in the small of my back. I’d never felt that before. I was so scared for Beau, though he didn’t sound particularly fearful himself. I didn’t understand why I was imagining any of this. I didn’t know why I would ever want to put him in any kind of jeopardy, even within my mind.
“We won’t have to run,” I said, summoning up every ounce of confidence I could muster about an imaginary situation of which I seemed to have no control.
“We’re running now.”
“The dark-suited … Blackwell, the sorcerer —”
“I know who he is. I was there.”
I could hear the anger in his voice, but didn’t understand it. “You’re mad at me.”
“No, I’m absolutely livid with myself. I never should have let you out of my sight. He might not have approached at all if I’d been there.”
“If that’s the case, then you wouldn’t be worried about him returning.”
Beau let out a frustrated breath. “I’m trying to do my best. What I think is best.”
“I hadn’t planned on coming to Portland,” I said, trying to alleviate some tension by changing the subject. “I hear it’s a lot like Vancouver.”
“Don’t play nice, Rochelle. I want you, not the fake you who’s just pretending.”
“What if the fake me is all I have now?”
“Look deeper.”
I shut my mouth with a frustrated shake of my head. I wasn’t sure I could give him what he wanted. I was worried that at any moment, I was going to wake up in some hospital, drugged as high as heaven and without Beau.
He found the highway exit he’d been looking for. Then with a couple of more turns, he had us parked on the far side of the Walmart parking lot. Except for two other RVs that dwarfed the twenty-one foot Brave, the massive lot was empty this far from the store.
“Are they even open this early?” I asked as I peered through the windshield at the biggest Walmart I’d ever seen.
“Yes.” His tone was blunt, but not unkind. He removed his seat belt and crossed to the exterior door.
Obviously now was not the time for small talk, but I missed the easiness that Beau and I had … before. Before I’d known this was all a massive delusion.
I followed him into the parking lot. It was chilly, so I tugged on my mittens.
Beau checked the contents of my bag, making sure I had my cell phone, sketchbook, and some money. Then he locked up the Brave and tucked the keys in the bag’s inner zipper pocket. Still without saying a word, he placed the bag over my head and across my body, testing the strength of the strap as he did so, as if he was afraid someone might try to rip it off me.
“Beau …”
He kissed me then. Pulling me into his arms and off my feet, pressing me back against the Brave in a lip lock full of need and passion.
I broke the embrace to wrap my arms around him, whispering fiercely into the warm skin of his neck. “I won’t let anything happen to you. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“I know,” he said, though his voice was choked with more emotion than acceptance. “I love you, Rochelle. I know everyone would think me crazy to say those words now, so early, and in this situation. But I want you to know.”
I nodded, offering him a smile instead of simply mimicking his declaration.
He smiled back and then set me on my feet. “Right. Ready for an adventure?”
“With you, anytime,” I answered.
“First we need bus tickets.”
“Well, that’s a bit of a boring start.”
He laughed like he meant it this time. The sound eased the fear I still felt in the small of my back. The tension didn’t completely diminish, but it eased enough to make it easier to walk next to him as he urged me toward the nearest bus stop.
∞
“Where are we going?”
“A park. Near the river.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“No, but we’re looking for wolves. Wolves like to run, and they hunt near water.”
We’d taken a bus into downtown Portland and were now standing on a railed streetcar, cutting through skyscrapers interspersed with restaurants and clothing stores. The streetcar was packed. It felt like the entire city was heading to work at the same time.
“So … we’ll be prey?”
“Yep. Let’s just hope they don’t come in numbers. I could maybe handle three if I had to, but not without them hurting me. Badly. Any more and we’re in trouble.”
“We’re talking about people, right?”
“Sure,” Beau said, turning a worried, tense gaze on me. “People like you and me.”
“So, they’ll ask questions. Listen to answers.”
“Yeah, at some point they’ll start asking questions.” He looked away from me, out the streetcar window at the city shifting by us. Every line of his body was bristling with tension — or maybe with barely contained terror.
I left him alone with his thoughts. I didn’t have any extra room in my head anyway.
Apparently — at least along these city streets — Portland had a larger homeless population than Vancouver did. I’d also never seen so many African-American people in one place before. Though I hadn’t seen an Asian person since I’d left Vancouver. When we’d first climbed on the bus that stopped by the Walmart, I thought people were staring at me, but it was Beau who fascinated everyone. I don’t think he noticed.
Twice, Beau had consulted maps he’d taken screenshots of and saved on my cell phone. Each time he tucked the phone back in my bag instead of keeping it.
I wanted to freak out, to demand we return to the Brave, but I’d already made the choice to follow him wherever he went. So instead, I curled both of my arms around his left arm and tried to just enjoy being here with him. Even if it was just going to be
for this moment, as the streetcar switched tracks and pressed me against the length of him.
Beau was peering out the windows. Then, seeing something, he tugged me to the back doors and off the streetcar when it stopped. People pressed against us, blocking our exit and the path to the sidewalk. Portland definitely felt like a bigger city than Vancouver, though I think Greater Vancouver’s total population — including its outlying cities — was higher. Beau tucked me behind him, twisted his shoulders, and everyone made way.
We hustled along the side of what I thought might be a luxury hotel in another skyscraper. The Marriott, according to the sign I barely had time to read. Then there was a park before us. It was narrow — really just a patch of grass that ran alongside a huge river — but it was pretty.
We jaywalked across the Southwest Natio Parkway, which was clogged with early morning traffic, to a path that cut down to the edge of the river. Here, a paved river walk ran parallel to the water in both directions. I could see an elevated expressway on the opposite side of the rushing water. I’d never seen a huge highway traveling over and around a city like that before, or so many bridges crossing a single river. From my vantage point, I counted five connecting the two sides of the city. The river was like a huge artery with overpasses and bridges for veins.
“That’s a lot of bridges,” I said.
Beau grunted, not completely listening. He was scanning the crowd anxiously in either direction. An older couple, obviously tourists by the paper brochures they were chatting over, stood up from a bench on the grass at the very edge of the river walk. As they wandered off, Beau and I took their place. He tugged me down to sit next to him, his arm slung over the back of the bench above my shoulders.
It wasn’t as chilly here as in Vancouver, but even with my hoodie underneath my jacket, a hat, and my mittens, it wasn’t really bench-sitting weather. Beau was wearing his usual plain T-shirt underneath his gray hoodie, which was unzipped about halfway. He should have been freezing but obviously wasn’t.
“So … we wait?” I asked.
“Yeah, we wait.”
I See Me (Oracle Book 1) Page 13