Beau crouched down in a ball before me, shielding his face with his arms and me with his body. The shattered glass from the table sprayed everywhere, but only sprinkled over our sneakered feet. This reminded me that the shifters were all barefoot.
“They expected a fight,” I murmured. “They didn’t want their feet to slip on the tile or the hardwood.”
“They always expect a fight,” Beau responded. “But this is just a tussle. Dominance games.”
Kandy landed on her feet facing the kitchen, then immediately spun to glare at Lara, who was lying in a pile of broken glass.
Lara sat up, laughing. More glass fell off her, tinkling as it hit the ruins of the coffee table underneath her. Her violet-paisley print silk blouse was shredded, but she didn’t appear to be otherwise injured.
Audrey, her nose apparently healed but her cream blouse dotted with blood, went after Kandy.
“Tag teaming?” I asked Beau.
“Yeah, wolves do that,” he answered. “They fight in pack formation. You take on one, you take on all of them.”
Attacking from the side, Audrey barreled into the green-haired werewolf. Kandy twisted away at the last second, though, so that they hit the table instead of flying past it. The huge table lifted off the ground and then slammed back down into place. Kandy and Audrey fell to the side, grappling with each other as they rolled across the floor.
Lara leaped from the shattered remains of the coffee table and landed on the back of the couch. She perched there for a moment, watching the other two werewolves wrestle. Then — with a cackling laugh that was completely at odds with her outward pretty-in-purpleness — she launched herself at the pile that was Audrey and Kandy.
“Stop them, Desmond,” Jade said. “They’re ruining the furniture.” She was actually eating a cupcake, leaning back against the kitchen island now.
“I can’t stop them,” he replied. “Not until Audrey has exerted her dominance. Her position as beta is —”
Kandy screamed. Her terrible howl made the hair stand up on the back of my neck and my stomach instantly queasy with empathic pain. Something cracked nastily.
Jade wasn’t at the counter now. She was standing amid the tangle of limbs that was the werewolves. She reached into the mass and yanked Audrey back by her ponytail.
Audrey snarled. Her face rippled as her teeth grew into fangs.
Beau moaned, then looked resolutely at the floor before us.
Audrey reached wolf-clawed fingers up for Jade’s hand and arm, but the dowser didn’t seem to notice the werewolf’s attempt to free herself at all. She was gazing at Kandy hunched in pain before her, her face etched with concern.
I remembered the vision glimpse I’d had of Kandy before seeing her here in the dining room. In the white wash of my hallucination, I remembered Jade screaming for someone she loved, then carrying the green-haired werewolf’s body from the rubble of the temple, or wherever they’d been in my mind.
I moaned. Beau reached back and laced his fingers through mine. I shook off the echo of the hallucination at his touch.
Lara scrambled back from Kandy, keeping her body low to the ground. She paused a few feet away, her back to the front windows, panting and watching.
Kandy slowly rose. She was holding her shoulder.
Audrey was twisting and snarling, but still didn’t seem able to break away where Jade held her by the base of her ponytail and nothing else. The dowser’s arm was stretched out and down, which cranked Audrey’s head back at a vicious angle. The beta werewolf continued to claw at Jade, but didn’t leave a single scratch on her. To me, it looked like those claws could shred metal.
“It’s my fight, Jade,” Kandy spat.
“That arm isn’t fully healed yet. And now she’s —”
“My fight,” Kandy growled.
“It’s not a good idea to get between werewolves,” Desmond said. “My werewolves.” His voice was low, steady, and edged with a warning.
“Yeah?” Jade asked. “You think Audrey has any chance of laying a hand on me?”
“Unhand my beta, dowser,” Desmond said.
“Is that an order?”
“A request.”
“Screw you, Jade,” Audrey growled. “I’d rather die than kneel at your feet.”
“That can be arranged,” Jade snarled. She twisted her arm up and around her head as she spun and then released Audrey, throwing her down and to the side so that the werewolf slid across the wood floor and spun to a stop at Desmond’s feet. As she did so, she pushed the huge trestle table out of the way with what looked like just a brush of her fingers.
Then Jade stood — a warrior suddenly, in jeans and printed T-shirt — facing off against Desmond and surrounded by werewolves. She was holding a jade knife in her right hand.
My ears plugged.
“The knife,” I whispered. The glowing green stone of the blade and hilt appeared more vibrant than it ever had in my hallucinations. It fit in Jade’s hand as if it was a natural extension of her reach.
Any second now, the white light that preceded a hallucination would overwhelm my sight. Any second now.
“Now it’s a fight.” Though Desmond only whispered, his voice rippled around the room.
“You didn’t have to do it.” Jade’s voice was low and filled with epic amounts of sorrow.
“I did,” Desmond said.
“Oh, Jade,” Kandy whispered. She squeezed her eyes shut in a grimace of regret. When she reopened them, they were no longer glowing green.
Desmond stepped forward. His hands were loose at his sides. Jade didn’t move. He was maintaining his inscrutable expression, and I couldn’t see the dowser’s face. I couldn’t tell what, if anything, was passing between them.
I pressed my hand to Beau’s forearm. It felt like a twisted knot of muscle and bone.
Audrey rose behind her alpha. She looked worried, maybe even scared, for the first time since I’d met her. “Warrior’s daughter,” she said. Her tone was now measured, formal. “We have not communicated effectively.”
“I’m not confused, Audrey,” Jade said. “I know what he did.” She slowly raised her knife and pointed it at Desmond’s heart.
Some sort of energy washed around the room. It was similar to the wind that had accompanied Blackwell and the amplifier device he’d used in the restaurant.
“Magic,” I whispered, as I straightened from my crouched position behind Beau. Goosebumps rose on my arms and legs.
Beau tried to stand beside me and failed. He was shaking, as were Lara and Kandy.
Jade laughed. “Nice try, Desmond. But I don’t come to your heel.”
All the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
Beau moaned.
I didn’t understand what was happening, but I wasn’t going to just stand here and watch Beau suffer. “Please stop,” I cried. “Please. I don’t know what you’re fighting over, but … but … just stop.”
Jade looked at me over her shoulder.
I tried to smile — to placate her somehow — but failed. The tension in the room was almost suffocating, but the weight of my mother’s necklace was oddly soothing. I reached up to wrap my hand around the raw diamond.
Jade’s eyes followed this gesture.
“If we can’t have Paris,” Desmond said. “At least we’ll always have Blackwell.”
It felt like Desmond was attempting a joke of some kind, to ease the tension between him and the dowser, but I didn’t get the reference to Paris at all.
Jade sighed, which she seemed to do a lot. Then she slid the knife against her right thigh until it disappeared.
My ears popped.
“Cool,” Beau said, as if he hadn’t been shaking in pain seconds ago. “Invisible sheath.”
I turned to stare at him. He laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
Jade crossed to Kandy and reached for her shoulder. Then with a practiced twist and a sharp yank, sh
e snapped it back in place. Kandy yowled but stayed on her feet, though Jade might have been holding her. By the sound of the injury, I’d thought that the arm had been broken, not dislocated. And maybe it had. Maybe Jade had just straightened the bone so it could heal properly.
“Shapeshifters heal quickly?” I asked Beau.
“Yep, and some quicker than others. Depending on the strength of their magic. And their connection to their alpha and to each other.”
“The pack shares magic?”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t have a pack?”
“No.”
I stared at Beau. He didn’t sound like he regretted anything, not even this, but my heart suddenly felt heavy for him.
Desmond rubbed his hands across his face, as if massaging tension out of his jaw. Then he made a beeline for the boxes of cupcakes.
“I don’t get the Paris reference,” Jade whispered to the green-haired werewolf.
“Casablanca,” Lara said, grinning ear-to-ear as she padded by them on her way to the kitchen. “He was trying to be romantic.”
“We’re not done, wolf,” Audrey growled at Kandy.
“Audrey,” Desmond said. “Not now. Too much tension isn’t good for the fledglings.”
Beau snorted derisively, but then shuffled his feet uncomfortably when Desmond looked at him sharply.
Kandy stepped by Jade, looking resigned as she dropped to one knee before Audrey. She then very deliberately tilted her head to the left, exposing the side of her throat.
Audrey smiled. Though her face had returned to normal after Jade released her, her white teeth were pointier than I’d thought they’d been before. Her dark hair was half out of its smooth ponytail now, a mass of waves all around the beta’s head and shoulders as she reached down and wrapped her hand around Kandy’s neck. Somehow her French-manicured fingernails made this gesture even more aggressive.
“I owe you a life,” Kandy said.
“No, my wolf,” Audrey replied. “Yours was always mine to save.” Then she released Kandy, turning away and padding over to get a cupcake.
“Great,” Jade groused. “Like she wasn’t insufferable before.”
Kandy rose and turned to smile at Jade. “I’m not leaving you.”
Jade nodded, awkwardly and quickly. Then she turned to look back at Beau and me. As she moved, her golden hair blurred, streaking the air around her head.
“No,” I whispered.
The feeling of an impending hallucination bloomed at the base of my spine.
I gasped as I rolled all the way up and onto the toes of my sneakered feet. The feeling rose without pain, flowing up my spine and then wrapping around my shoulders and neck.
“Oh my God …” I heard Jade whisper.
The hallucination crashed over my mind and whited out my eyes.
“Jesus,” Desmond grunted.
Beau reached for me, his fingers brushing my arms. I threw my head back as the sensation of the hallucination flooded my chest, my arms, and my legs. I’d never felt it like this before.
It was as though I was filled with whiteness — somehow buoyed up with brilliant, white light.
“Don’t touch her,” Jade said.
“It’s fine —” Beau began. Then he grunted as if the air had been knocked out of him.
“You don’t know how you’re affecting the magic,” Jade continued. “It flows through her, unbidden. Almost as if it wants to communicate.”
Audrey scoffed. “Magic doesn’t work like that.”
“Normally I’d agree.”
The mist in my mind began to dissipate. I caught a glimpse of a paved road, then low buildings through the white haze. But I felt no pain and no terror. Not yet, anyway.
“You think she’s a harbinger,” Desmond said. “A messenger.” He didn’t sound like he was overly pleased with the idea of a so-called harbinger hanging out in his living room.
“Don’t know. Never met one,” Jade said. “Does she speak in riddles? Proclamations? Prophecy?”
“No,” Beau said from somewhere far off to my right. “She draws.”
“Probably not a harbinger, then.”
“You’re being deliberately obtuse, dowser,” Desmond growled.
“It’s not my place to name magic, Desmond Llewellyn. Not even at your lofty command.”
Desmond snarled, but the conversation finally faded out. The white swirling mist filling my mind and body resolved, solidifying into shapes and outlines. A building stood before me still partly shrouded in the haze. I stepped forward, reaching into the whiteout.
“Watch the glass in front of you, fledgling.” Jade’s voice was faint, saying something else about being here, or being near, or something, but I didn’t hear her.
I was within the vision.
I breathed in the white light. I consumed it.
It was me. It had always been me.
This was me.
I was standing in a parking lot. It appeared to be late afternoon or early evening. The sky was muted and gray, but I could easily see that the painted lines of the individual parking spots were faded and the pavement was cracked. Dead, frost-covered weeds were attempting to reclaim every rupture and edge. A barbershop to my right was empty, derelict. Its ‘For Lease’ sign had fallen to one side.
The red-white-and-blue barber pole was smashed as if someone had thrown a rock at it. Its broken glass littered the concrete step in front of the entrance. The edge of the concrete was eroded. I wondered how many footsteps it took to erode concrete like that. How many rain or snowstorms? Also, I thought the helical stripe of a barber’s pole was supposed to be red and white, signifying bloody bandages wrapped around a pole. Because barbers had performed bloodlettings in the olden days.
Was that foreshadowing? Please don’t let that be foreshadowing.
What had Desmond called me? A harbinger?
Please don’t let me be a messenger of doom and destruction. Though, even as I made the silent wish, I was aware that it might be futile. My hallucinations up to this point certainly hadn’t been filled with fluffy bunnies.
It was a deserted barbershop. An easy target for vandals, nothing else.
I was aware I was avoiding looking deeper, farther.
Everything was so clear, so defined. Usually, a haze of white permeated my hallucinations.
Visions.
Not hallucinations.
I was having a vision, but I didn’t want to turn my head. I didn’t want to see what the magic wanted me to see, if Jade was right about that part. If she was right about me being some sort of conduit for magic. Like a satellite dish or something.
I shifted my gaze from the cracked pavement before me, just a touch. I felt compelled to do so. I felt like it might be my purpose to do so.
I’d never had a purpose before.
Blood drops on the eroded concrete walk between the parking lot and the barbershop drew my attention. I followed them to a hand. Its fingers were splayed open.
Tangled within those fingers was the rose-gold chain of a necklace. My mother’s necklace. My necklace.
I reached up to touch the heavy stone I still wore around my neck. It felt strange … it was vibrating, at a subtle frequency that maybe only I could feel. A muted version of all the other electrical charges I’d felt over the last few days.
Not electrical charges.
Magic.
Beau’s magic, Blackwell’s magic, and Jade’s magic. Magic felt like different degrees of electricity to me.
Still, there was a problem I was steadily ignoring. A problem with the hand before me that was holding my necklace.
I was wearing my necklace.
As I breathed in to belay the panic I could feel churning in my gut at the sight of the blood trail leading to a limp hand, I became aware that I wasn’t breathing the air of the parking lot. By the frost on the weeds, the air in the vision should be crisp. I was warm.
> I looked beyond the hand.
Beau lay dead on the sidewalk next to the barbershop. His dark aquamarine eyes stared sightlessly at me. A trickle of blood ran from his mouth, though I could see no other mark on him. He wasn’t breathing.
My chest constricted. I clutched at the stone hanging between my breasts, the necklace digging into the back of my neck.
Beau.
A black leather-gloved hand reached down and plucked the necklace from Beau’s fingers. His hand rose as if fighting to retain its hold on the chain. Then it fell limp back onto the concrete sidewalk.
I tracked the movement of the gloved hand to see an arm that led to the dark-clothed shoulder of Blackwell.
The sorcerer looked at the necklace. He was wearing his usual suit-and-crisply-ironed-dress-shirt combo. The suit was dark navy blue. The thin scarf twined once around his neck was black. Probably cashmere.
Not that it mattered at all. Nothing mattered in this moment except Beau lying dead at the sorcerer’s feet. Except Beau lying dead and holding my necklace.
Blackwell glanced around the parking lot. A swirling, dark orb of light was pooled in his left hand.
I wanted to scream — Who are you looking for? Except I already knew the answer.
The sorcerer was looking for me.
I tamped down on my panic, reminding myself that Beau was alive and only a few feet away from me, sitting in Desmond’s living room right now.
I had to see more.
I followed Blackwell’s gaze around the parking lot. At one time, the lot must have serviced a small strip mall of some sort. All the stores were empty, though, and falling into disrepair.
Where am I? Shouldn’t I be at Beau’s side?
Then I saw the wolves.
Three of them, large and gray, were standing fifty or so feet away on a strip of frosted grass between the parking lot and the main road. A sign listing the defunct businesses stood behind and above them. I lifted my eyes, trying to read the names there, but they were flipped upside down and right side in. I looked around, feeling on the edge of frantic now, for an address or some other clue to the location of the parking lot.
One of the wolves lifted its head and howled.
I See Me (Oracle Book 1) Page 18