Second Sight (Prescience Series Book 1)

by Denise Moncrief

  He tapped the bottom bit of crystal of the chime. “That reminds me of the tube Sheldon gave you.”

  Her head swung around to study his face. No reaction. He hadn’t felt the same jolt of heat when he had touched the chime as she had.

  The front door flew open—well, at least, it seemed that way—and an older woman appeared in the doorway. She squinted through hooded eyelids at Jeri. Then, a delighted smile creased her wrinkled mouth.

  “Lorelei, is that you, girl?”

  Jeri shook her head. “No, ma’am. My name is Jerilyn.”

  The smile dropped from the old woman’s face, and a fresh shiver ran up Jeri’s backbone.

  “No, it ain’t. Lorelei is your birth name. The one your momma and daddy gave you. That other name…that’s the one that fool give ya. I ain’t callin’ you that.”

  Jeri’s heart rate escalated. “So…you know who I am?”

  “Sure. You’re Jackson and Darlene’s girl.” She stepped back. “Ya’ll come in.”

  Nick placed his hand on the center of Jeri’s back. She glanced back at him, and he nodded. Jeri drew in a deep breath and entered the house with Nick right behind her. He stood so close to her that she could feel the heat of his breath on the top of her head. His closeness gave her rapidly beating heart a bit of reassurance that she wasn’t alone in what was happening. Jeri sensed that she was about to be bombarded with revelations that might change her life or devastate her.

  Imogene pointed toward a rather new looking sofa, a surprise piece in the otherwise dated and worn furnishings of the small living room. Jeri and Nick sat next to each other on the sofa, as close as they could get to each other without being in each other’s lap.

  Jeri found the courage from somewhere and began the conversation she had dreaded since she had left New Orleans. The confrontation with her parents had only been a prelude. This was the real moment of truth. She felt the truth sitting on the bottom of her gut like a boulder.

  “I’m sorry to come out here so late and without warning you that we were coming—”

  The old woman cackled. “Girl child, I’ve known you was coming since yesterday.”

  Jeri tilted her head and studied the crinkled face of the woman. The truth popped into her mind, clear and bright. “You have the gift, don’t you?”

  Imogene settled into a chair across from them. “And you do too, now that my brother has passed it to you.”

  Nick rubbed his hand over his face. He grunted, and the vibrations of his discomfort pinged every fiber of her being. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who needed to face the truth.

  The half-smile dropped from Imogene’s face. She pointed a long finger at Nick. “You don’t believe.” Sadness filled her watery eyes. “Trouble is coming on you, son. You better get ready. Some things are out of your control, detective. The sooner you learn that lesson of life, the better off you’ll be.”

  Imogene knew a lot. She knew about Jeri, and she knew about Nick. She knew things she couldn’t possibly know unless someone had told her…or she just knew. Nick wouldn’t be able to accept that Imogene just knew. Jeri needed to rescue him before he spluttered something he’d later regret.

  “So my real father’s name is Jackson?”

  “Sheldon’s boy.” A dark mood passed over the old woman’s countenance, as quickly as a fast-moving storm. “Sheldon should have passed the gift to Jackson. That’s the natural order of things, but Jackson has an evil soul. Not like you girl. You have a good heart.”

  Nick’s arm slid across her shoulders and rested on the top of the sofa cushions. Maybe he could feel the tension cording her muscles.

  “But skipping a generation…that ain’t good. Puts the heavens out of balance.”

  Nick grumbled under his breath. “What the hell is she talking about? Jeri, this is…crazy talk.”

  Jeri stifled the urge to scald him for being rude. “What did Sheldon mean when he told me I was the chosen one?”

  A flash of pain darted across Imogene’s face. “Those are the words that pass the gift from one generation to the next.”

  “So then…what did he mean when he told me not to use it the way he had?”

  The woman wagged her head. “I can’t tell you that. No. No. You should never know. Knowing could ruin you.”

  Jeri wanted answers. The woman had been cooperating until that moment. What was so bad about the way Sheldon had used his gift?

  A thought shot through her consciousness, swift and powerful. “Does this have anything to do with…” She stopped before she said the word. But it was there on the tip of her tongue.

  “Don’t say it, girl.”

  “Blood.” The word popped out of her mouth before she could stop it.

  The color drained from Imogene’s face. One hand shot out in front of her, the other hand pressed against her chest. “Now that you’ve said it, you can’t take it back. What happens now is on you. The blood can be pure or it can be evil. Use it for good or use it for bad.” She jumped to her feet. “That’s all I got to say.”

  Jeri wasn’t done asking her questions. There was more to say. “So then…Sheldon used it for bad?”

  The anguished scream that erupted from Imogene filled the small house. “You don’t understand the way of things, girl. Nobody taught you. They took you away before you could be shown the ways of the gift. This is bad. Do you know what you’ve just done?”

  Jeri shook her head. She had no clue, except that the bad feeling swirling in the pit of her stomach made her believe the truth was horrible. The consequences of her uninformed blunder were terrible. She’d have to live with it the rest of her life, whatever it was.

  “You just doomed your grandfather’s soul. Oh my brother, my poor brother. What have you done, child?”

  Somehow, both Nick and Jeri had risen to their feet. Nick grabbed Jeri by the shoulders and shoved her toward the door.

  “You’re all crazy.” His verdict rang around the room as he pushed her forward.

  Jeri glanced at Imogene over her shoulder. The woman was bent double, wailing as if her world had ended. Maybe it had.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  Jeri wasn’t ready to leave. Imogene needed help.

  Nick had one more parting indictment to hurl at Imogene. “You shouldn’t mess with her mind like that, old woman.”

  “How is telling her the truth messing with her mind, young man?”

  “She’s already… The only thing you’re doing, old lady, is ramping up the crazy.”

  Of course, Nick was concerned for Jeri’s mental health. But she was fine. Better than she’d been because now she understood what had happened to her. The truth had been a part of her all along. All she had to do was open her heart and her eyes.

  Jeri knew what she had to do. It was her destiny to use her gift for good, to right certain wrongs, to close a circle, to purify the blood.

  ****

  It was after midnight when they starting looking for a place to stay. They ended up at a non-chain motel in Lebanon. The seedy, off-the-main-road dump had definitely seen better days. From the matted carpet to the bright orange curtains to the faint aroma of too much bleach, the two rooms they rented were depressing to the human spirit.

  Jerilyn dropped her backpack onto the worn bedspread, ran her fingers through her hair, and sighed. What a long, freaking day. Sometimes she didn’t like people very much. Today was one of those days.

  Nick had barely spoken a dozen words since they had left Imogene’s place. That was just as well. If Jeri had started a conversation with him, her comments might have initiated an ugly argument, and she didn’t have the stomach to start a fight.

  Her anger had begun as a small nugget in her heart and had grown into a boulder weighing down her soul. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure who had angered her the most, her adoptive parents, who had kept so much truth from her, or Nick for being an ass to Imogene. Sure, he was skeptical, but he didn’t have to be a jerk.

  She flopped
onto the bed, wrinkling her nose at the slightly off-putting mustiness of the bedspread mixed with the overpowering odor of bleach.

  Her heavy eyes closed, but they didn’t stay closed long. A hesitant tap tap on the connecting door indicated that Nick thought they ought to talk. She didn’t want to talk to him about what had happened, or really, about anything.

  The tapping on the door became harder until it turned into insistent pounding. “Are you okay? Answer me.”

  Jeri rose from the bed, trudged across the icky carpet in bare feet, and twisted the knob on the lock. She blurted her wishes before he could say anything that might change her mind. “I don’t want to talk to you, so leave me alone, okay?”

  He raised his hands as if she’d threatened to punch him. “Whoa! What did I do?”

  “You were an ass to Imogene.”

  He settled back on his heels and crossed his arms. “She was talking crap, Jeri.”

  She was beginning to hate his I’m-the-one-in-authority-and-I-know-everything pose.

  “I’m not going by Jerilyn Bowman anymore, so stop calling me Jeri or Jerilyn.”

  The thought had not yet occurred to her until that moment. Her demand would piss him off, and maybe that was the beauty of it.

  “So what do you want me to call you? You can’t go by Olivia Hammond any longer.”

  Sure enough, his confusion turned to irritation. His face flushed with just a tinge of pink.

  She crossed her arms to match his authoritarian stance. “My real name is Lorelei Deville. That’s what I want to be called.”

  He blinked at her with the most incredulous expression on his face. “You can’t be serious.”

  “That’s my name.”

  “You’ve been Jerilyn Bowman all your life—”

  “Yeah, that’s the problem, isn’t it? They should have told me the truth. They should have let me grow up knowing who I am and what my life was going to be like. Now, I’ve got this gift that I don’t know how to use. I’m responsible for sending my grandfather to a dark place because I didn’t know better. How do I know when I’m making a mistake that might damage a soul forever?”

  “You are buying her nonsense, aren’t you? Unbelievable. Here’s the truth. Okay? You’re not responsible for Sheldon Deville’s actions or where his soul ended up. That’s just…ridiculous.”

  His refusal to accept the truth caused a heaviness to encase her heart. “Why can’t you see what’s right in front of your eyes, Nick?”

  He spluttered for a while. “Because I live in the real world.”

  “How do you know my gift isn’t part of the real world? Are you going to dismiss it just because you don’t understand it? This gift is too powerful for me to ignore. My grandfather told me to use it wisely, and I’m going to. I just have to understand it first.”

  Yeah, that was the bigger problem, understanding the gift.

  His face had turned from pink to bright red. “You’ve got to stop this.”

  She’d had enough. If he didn’t believe her, she couldn’t believe him. Trust was a two-way street. “Why won’t you believe in my gift? In me?”

  He’d apparently had enough as well. “Because I don’t want to believe.”

  Nick didn’t get it. Mostly, because he didn’t want to. He was stuck in a black and white worldview, when the universe was made of infinite colors. Was part of her destiny to open his mind? She wasn’t sure she wanted the job.

  “This was a wasted trip. We’ve learned nothing. And you…all they’ve done is make you more confused…and delusional.” He wiped his mouth as if the words he’d spoken had been bitter.

  They? Was he talking about her so-called parents or her biological family? “Delusional? I don’t think so. For the first time in my life, I’m beginning to see clearly.” She stepped forward, which pushed him backward through the still open connecting door. One more step and she could have shoved him back into his room and out of her face.

  She held back. She didn’t want her relationship with Nick Moreau to end.

  Oh, come on, who was she kidding? What relationship? He’d already set the parameters. There was a professional line that he wouldn’t cross. He’d already bent the rules for her, more than once. But he would only go so far.

  She found her inner calm before she spoke again. “This wasn’t a wasted trip. I learned a lot about my heritage, about myself. You learned the name of the photographer.”

  He snorted as if she’d said something totally stupid. “What? I don’t remember anyone telling us his name. How does he have anything to do with any of this?”

  Was he that obtuse? Hadn’t he heard the same conversation? She had thought he was a better detective than that. Maybe his refusal to believe had made him deaf.

  “The photographer is my biological father…Jackson Deville.”

  That was obvious to her. Why wasn’t it obvious to Nick?

  The skepticism began fading from his face. His eyes flashed with curiosity rather than outright dismissal of her suggestion.

  She began to steadily build her case. “Do you remember what I told you he said to me when he let me go? He said he didn’t want to kill me. He said that Sheldon had skipped him and given the gift to me.”

  Well, he hadn’t exactly said that, but she was now certain that’s what he had meant. She hadn’t understood him at the time.

  Whatever Nick had been about to say stalled on his lips. Sympathy surfaced out of his curiosity. All hint of his former anger and irritation toward her was gone. “Then, your father is probably a killer.”

  That’s why she had to use the gift. She had to undo the evil that her father and grandfather had done.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The flight from Nashville to New Orleans had been tense and silent. Their plane had touched down on time at Louis Armstrong International Airport. There was no luggage to retrieve as they had only brought carryons and personal items. Once they were past security, Jeri told Nick she was going to find the women’s room. He waited for her for twenty minutes before he had security search the women’s restrooms. Jeri had vanished.

  His gut churned. One moment, he was certain she had gotten tired of him and took a hike. The next moment, he was equally certain that the photographer had somehow found her and kidnapped her. A trip to both her old and new apartments confirmed his suspicions. More than likely, she had decided she was better off on her own.

  He groaned from his internal distress. How was he going to tell Ed that he had lost her? More than that, how was he going to find her again?

  Before he had left town, he had asked Petrie to organize a search for Sheldon Deville’s squat. The old man had to have holed up somewhere at night. Nick hoped that Deville had left some clue as to his son’s whereabouts in his personal possessions. Finding the squat in New Orleans was like looking for a tossed firearm in the Mississippi River. The task was next to impossible.

  Nick snagged a parking spot on St. Peter and walked the short distance to Johnny J’s on Bourbon. When he shoved opened the door and entered the bar, he met the angry gaze of Darwin the bar owner. The man started ranting before Nick could ask his first question.

  “You messed me over, cop. She up and quit without giving me notice. I don’t care what her name is. She was a good bartender, and my regulars liked her. Where am I going to find someone to replace her, huh?”

  What the guy meant was where was he going to find someone who was willing to accept appalling wages off the grid?

  Nick was in no mood for the man’s bluster. If he searched hard enough, he was sure he could find something to arrest the man for. He had hoped that Jeri would be back at work bartending, but apparently, she’d taken his advice for once.

  “I’m sure there’s someone out there that wants to hide from the police. You shouldn’t have a hard time finding a replacement if you let it be known that you’re willing to break the law to hire them.”

  Darwin paled a bit. “Are you here to bust me? I wouldn’t if I were you.�
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  “Are you threatening me?”

  “No. I’m stating facts. I don’t think you want the world to know who she is, do you?”

  He suppressed the deep sigh that wanted to wiggle out of his mouth. “Do you know who she is, Darwin?”

  The man blinked at him. No, he probably didn’t.

  Nick headed toward the door. If Jeri wasn’t there, he had no reason to stay. The door swung open to reveal the photographer.

  Play it cool. Don’t spook him. Let him think you’re not on to him.

  As soon as the man caught Nick’s eye, he bolted out the door and sprinted down the sidewalk. Nick chased him, weaving in and out of the swarms of pedestrians. The photographer veered across Bourbon to the other side of the street. Nick kept up with him, but he didn’t seem to be gaining on him, so he pushed a little harder.

  He held out his badge to clumps of people on the sidewalk. “Police. Get out of my way.”

  Stirring the pedestrians was like stirring river mud with a thin stick. Both he and the man he was chasing had to break stride often and change course. The photographer bumped a woman, and she hit the ground on her knees. Nick cringed at the crack of her bones on pavement. He wanted to help her, but he had to keep moving if he was going to catch a suspected killer.

  The photographer rounded a corner. Nick was less than half a block behind him. When Nick turned onto the cross street, the man was nowhere in sight. Nick skidded to a halt, turned and gazed the other direction, and then searched the block. The man could have slipped behind any number of wrought iron gates that closed off inner courtyards from curiosity seekers.

  Nick bent over with his hands on his knees, struggling to catch his breath. He was in fairly good shape, but the full tilt run for several blocks had winded him. He shook his head in disgust.

  When he caught his breath again, he kept moving, checking every gate on the street. All locked. If the man had gone through one of the gates, he’d had a key. That would have been some quick work for the guy to unlock the gate and get through and out of sight before Nick came around the corner. He glanced through front windows, searched the inside of small shops, and checked street doors on private entrances. The man had disappeared, almost as if into thin air.