by Abby Blake
“Because swirling vortex transport thingy-stuff is not something I expected an arrogant, know-it-all, pain-in-the-ass Navy SEAL to know about.”
“Well you’ve got him pegged correctly,” a man said with a laugh as he stepped into the circle of people surrounding her. He was rather handsome, around thirtyish, and bulging in muscle. Devlin stiffened when the man stepped closer, but he didn’t let go of her. “I understand you’ve been looking for me, Lillian.”
“Who are you?” she asked, feeling even more confused than she had a moment ago. Maybe she was finally having that breakdown she’d been planning for days now. Admittedly she’d thought it would be more along the lines of physical exhaustion, but she supposed hallucination was probably an early symptom. Any moment now she was going to fall flat on her face and wake up in a psych ward somewhere.
“Sorry, Lillian,” the man said with a slow shake of his head. “I forgot that last time you saw me I looked about eighty years old.” He tilted his head and gave her a lopsided grin. “It’s me, Jed Mathewson.”
She nodded her head and could feel a strange, maniacal type of grin curve her lips before hysterical laughter burst from her throat. Seriously? That had to be some sort of record for delusional episodes. Who in the hell imagined the old man she’d flirted harmlessly with for most of her adult life would turn the clock back fifty years and be exactly what she wanted him to be? And the ex-lover who hadn’t changed a bit since she’d seen him would suddenly appear and hold her in his arms.
Fuck. She really was crazy.
Chapter Two
Jed moved quickly to catch her as she lost consciousness. It was obvious Devlin had no intention of letting her go, but the reflex to protect the young woman was undeniable.
“Bring her inside,” Andrea said as she took control of the situation. Faster than Jed would have thought possible, the alpha female of the pack had everyone moving to clear up the mess of discarded clothing, dropped food, and spilled beer. Almost before they made it into the house, the party was back in full swing. Even most of the naked people had somehow managed to drag on some clothes.
Instead of laying Lillian on the sofa that Andrea indicated, Devlin lowered himself to a sitting position and held the woman cradled in his arms. Andrea gave him a knowing smile but didn’t comment.
“Who is she?” Xavier asked as he stepped into the room. Thankfully, he was once again fully clothed. The last thing they needed was Lillian waking up only to collapse again.
“Lillian Connelly,” Jed supplied. “She was a waitress at a diner I used to frequent. She left town unexpectedly about five weeks ago. She rang her aunt to let her know she was okay, but I don’t think she ever adequately explained her reason for leaving so suddenly.”
He glanced at the woman unconscious in Devlin’s arms. Jed had always cared deeply for Lillian. She was a polite and efficient young woman who offered everyone a bright smile and a warm welcome. Unlike many kids who grew up in small towns, Lillian had seemed quite content to stay close to her family.
He watched as she wriggled slightly. Despite being unconscious she snuggled trustingly into Devlin’s embrace. It was obvious that they knew each other, but it didn’t explain the green haze of jealousy clouding Jed’s thought processes. Yes, she was beautiful, loving, and sweet, but she wasn’t the reason he’d gone through the warlock regeneration process. He’d reverted to his thirty-year-old-looking self so that he could protect the Oracle’s receptacles, not so that he could find Lillian Connelly and claim the woman for his own.
“Is she a witch?”
“Not that I know,” Jed said as memories of the woman ran through his head. “As far as I can tell she’s human, but that sure doesn’t explain how she ended up in the middle of your party.”
“Lillian,” Devlin crooned softly as the woman began to stir. “Baby, wake up. You’re safe here.”
“Where’s here?” she mumbled adorably. She didn’t open her eyes, just snuggled closer.
“We’re in a friend’s home. If you wake up, I’ll introduce you.”
Lillian opened her eyes, glancing at the people in the room before coloring in embarrassment and pushing herself into a sitting position. “Sorry,” she said with a small smile. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“Not a problem,” Andrea said as she handed Lillian a glass of ice water. “But we would love to know how you got here.”
Lillian winced. “I was hoping you could tell me. That’s why I was looking for Jed. He used to talk about magic all the time. I often thought maybe he knew something more than what he was saying.” She shrugged tiredly. “It was a long shot, but I didn’t really know who else to ask.”
“So you got here just by thinking about me?”
Lillian gave him a half smile. “The Jed Mathewson I was thinking about is over eighty years old, but that does seem to be the way it works. I think about the person I want to talk to and that swirling thing takes me to them. Most people don’t seem to notice it though. They don’t seem to see me for a few minutes either. It’s almost like I’m invisible for a little while.” She sat up and her gaze bounced around the room once more. “But you saw me.” She seemed excited, confused, and everything in between. “How did you see me? I mean, are you like me?” She shook her head. “No, I’ve never morphed into a wolf so you’re not like me, unless…I can change into a wolf, too. Can I change into a wolf?” She looked on the verge of passing out once more.
“Breathe, Lillian,” Jed said as he squatted down in front of where she was sitting. “We’ll figure it out. Just breathe, sweet thing.”
* * * *
Lillian stared at the man in front of her and tried to take his advice. She probably seemed like the most ditzy person on the planet, but after five weeks of searching for answers it seemed incredible to finally have at least some of them in her reach.
“Are you related to Jed?” she asked.
“Sweet Lilly, I know this isn’t going to be easy to understand, but I am Jed Mathewson. I am the old guy you knew from the diner.”
“You said that before,” she said, shaking her head, “but I thought I was maybe hearing what I wanted to h—I mean I thought I heard you wrong.” She stared at him, taking in every detail of his face, his mannerisms, the mischievous glint in his eye, and wanted to cry in relief. After everything that had happened recently, who was she to argue with a man who suddenly looked fifty years younger than she remembered? Of course that also didn’t mean she was going to believe blindly. He might look and act like the man she’d known, but if he really was Jed Mathewson, he’d be able to answer a question or two.
“How do you take your coffee?”
“Just coffee,” he said with the same grumpy inflection he’d always used. “With a slice of Ida’s famous pie.” He winked at her, and she truly could see the old man she’d waited on at the diner for years.
“How?” she asked reflexively, but shook her head quickly to cut him off. “Scratch that. Explain to me how I ended up part of some magical freak show.” She glanced at the woman whose house she seemed to be in and immediately apologized. She was probably a wolf also.
“No need,” the woman said as she waved away Lilly’s earnest apology. “You’re coping with your introduction into paranormal life a lot more calmly than I did.” Three of the men in the room laughed. Two of them, who seemed to be identical twins, dragged her into an embrace between them and smiled indulgently.
“Trust me when I say that is a serious understatement.” A man stepped forward and held out his hand. She took it self-consciously, dipping her head in deference even though she wasn’t really sure why. He seemed to be the leader—he’d said as much outside—but there was also an aura about him that commanded respect. “I’m Xavier Cloveck. Apologies for the unfriendly welcome, but we’re not used to paranormals dropping into the middle of a claiming ceremony.”
“Paranormal?” she asked, looking around. She wasn’t even sure she knew what the word meant but she did know it a
pplied to everyone in this room. Well, except for her, maybe. “I’m…human. At least I thought I was until I blinked a few weeks ago and found myself halfway across the world.”
* * * *
Devlin was starting to get a really bad feeling about all this.
“Lil,” he asked softly, trying not to startle the woman sitting next to him, “any chance the name on your birth certificate is Lilly Wicks?”
Her eyes grew as wide as saucers for a moment before her suspicion kicked in. But far from launching accusations of stalking, she took a deep breath and nodded her head. “Why do you ask?”
Devlin smiled at the woman’s ability to remain polite even under all this stress.
“Because, sweet thing,” Jed said, cutting off Devlin’s reply, “we’ve been looking for you as long as you’ve been looking for me.”
Devlin ground his teeth at the reminder that she’d gone looking for Jed and not for him. Of course the woman had no idea he wasn’t human. The man she’d dated was supposedly a well-trained, experienced, human Navy SEAL. He’d never told her about his paranormal leanings despite how tempted he’d been to spill all. If he were truly honest, he’d admit that at least part of the reason he’d left her was the fact that she was human. Maybe he’d been a coward, but he worried he wouldn’t be strong enough to watch the woman he loved age and die hundreds of years before he would. Walking away had seemed, at the time, to be the easier choice.
Being so close to her now was making things a whole lot less clear.
“So,” Lilly said, glancing around the room, “can anyone explain what’s been happening to me?”
At the risk of offending their hosts Devlin mumbled the standard line, “As soon as we have clearance, we’ll explain everything.”
“Clearance?” she asked, sounding shocked. “Clearance? As in I’m some sort of military experiment?” She levered off the sofa and started pacing back and forth. “I knew dating a Navy SEAL was a bad move. You guys have more secrets than numbers in a phone book. When? Where? How? Am I strapped to a medical bed somewhere right now? Is that what this is? Some sort of mind control brainwashing exp—”
But before Devlin could correct her wild assumptions—he never would have pegged her as a conspiracy theorist—Benjamin stepped into the fray.
“No, Ms. Wicks, you are not part of a military experiment. What happened to you is of paranormal origins. I promise you we’ll explain it all as best we can. Xavier, do you have a secure room?”
“Of course,” the leader of the wolf pack said with a calm smile. Jed wrapped an arm around Lilly’s shoulders and turned to follow Xavier. Again jealousy burned through every cell in Devlin’s body, but he ground his teeth together and managed to keep the emotion under control—for now. When this was over, they were going to talk, whether she wanted to or not.
Xavier led them through a series of hallways, finally coming to a stop in front of an ordinary-looking door. He unlocked it using a rather long password on a keypad and then stood back as it swung open.
“I think you probably need to hear this, too, Xavier,” Benjamin said as the others each took a seat around the large table. Xavier nodded, closed the door, and sat down beside Samuel. It was a measure of the man’s confidence that he sat with the rest of them and ignored the larger seat at the head of the table.
Devlin did a quick headcount around the room—Benjamin, Samuel, Skye, and Jed from PUP Squad Alpha, himself and Xavier, and of course, Lilly. Seven people in all. Devlin didn’t miss the reassuring smile that Skye gave the other woman as they sat down. Devlin had only met the young vampire a few times, but it would seem that reports of her calm demeanor and good people skills weren’t exaggerations. Now, if only he could follow her example.
This assignment had been far easier when he thought they were searching for “Lilly Wicks, the stranger who was now an Oracle’s receptacle” and not “Lillian Connelly, the ex-lover he missed with every breath.”
“When did you change your name?” The question was out before he really gave it any thought. Considering why they were here, it was probably also the least important detail. Lilly looked annoyed but answered the question anyway.
“My mother dumped me with Aunt Ida when I was seven so that she could run off and marry some drug dealer in Vegas. She never came back. Everyone referred to me as a Connelly because that’s Aunt Ida’s last name. It just stuck. When I turned twelve, I decided to go by Lillian because it sounded more grown up.” She gave him a look that should have melted him into goo. Considering the strange abilities the Oracle’s receptacles were developing, he didn’t even want to consider the possibility that one day she might be able to do just that. “Does that answer your question? Are you happy to learn that I was a confused and angry kid? Does it make it easier to leave me behind?”
“Lil,” Devlin started, but Benjamin cut him off.
“Ms. Wicks, we’ve identified several other women who share your sudden change in abilities. For want of a better title, we’re calling them the Oracle’s receptacles. All of you are being targeted by assassins.”
Devlin literally wanted to punch the guy for being so blunt, but he knew Lilly needed to know up front the danger she was in.
“We’re still trying to unravel the reasons why, but we believe that the Oracle who was murdered on the day you were born passed her information to six or seven babies born in the same area around the same minutes that she died.” Samuel gave Lilly a reassuring smile. For a guy with the nickname “The Iceman” he certainly wasn’t living up to it. Despite the fact that Samuel was not only sitting next to his wife but also deeply devoted to the woman, Devlin still felt his blood boil when Lilly smiled back.
Fuck, he needed to get a grip on his own rampaging emotions before he did something truly stupid.
“Don’t Oracles tell the future?” Lilly asked, ironically seeming a lot calmer now.
“Not exactly,” Skye said. “The Oracles collect the history of one or two species. They know everything that has ever happened involving every person within those species, so they can occasionally predict an outcome accurately, but it’s not a gift of foresight.”
“That sounds like one very painful migraine, but how does it relate to me somehow traveling all over the planet in the blink of an eye?”
“About five weeks ago, a human woman named Bethany Childes was murdered by a pixie assassin,” Samuel said. “We recently found a type of diary that she wrote and believe that she was the human child who received all of the Oracle’s information for witches and warlocks. When she died, that information was somehow sent to the next five or six females born on the same day Bethany was. We suspect that it was set up that way by the original Oracle as some sort of fail-safe.”
“Still doesn’t explain the blink-and-I’m-gone travel.” Lilly was obviously impatient to get answers of her own, but it was important for her to understand how this whole mess started.
“No it doesn’t,” Samuel said with a soft laugh. “We’re not sure how exactly the Oracle’s receptacles are doing it, but we believe they’re interpreting the information they’ve been given and are somehow putting it into practice. They also seem to be collecting information from every species, not just witches and warlocks.”
“So they can all travel like me?”
“Not quite,” Jed said, reaching for Lilly’s hand and holding it tight. “At the moment you seem to be unique in your ability to travel, but I suspect that once you meet the others, that will change.”
“How so?” Xavier asked, looking rather concerned by the conversation.
“It seems that they can somehow share their abilities with each other, and maybe even with a small percentage of other humans.”
“That could be problematic,” Lilly said with a wince. “I have no idea how to control it. I haven’t managed to stay a full day in one place since it started happening.”
* * * *
“Seriously?” Jed asked before he could stop the inane question. Lilly had
no reason to lie or exaggerate. It even explained why she had only called her aunt once in the couple of weeks before Hannah took her place at the diner. “Hannah!” He’d blurted again before he could call back the emotional-sounding word. “Sorry, it just occurred to me that Hannah was the waitress who filled Lilly’s job after she left. Maybe Hannah stopped there for more reasons than even we realized.”
“Agreed,” Benjamin said with a decisive nod. “It does seem to be a rather strong instinct to seek each other out, but Lilly’s right. If she can’t control her talent, chances are the others won’t be able to either. It’d make it rather hard to protect them if we can’t keep them still.” He scratched the side of his face and frowned. “None of them have been able to master their telekinesis or that shield bubble thing that Ava taught to her husband, Nathan.”
“And if Kali digs one more hole in my backyard, we’re going to have a swimming pool,” Skye said with a grin, obviously sensing Lilly’s tension. “Lilly, we’ll figure it out, but it probably is wise to put off meeting the others for a little while. Maybe see if you can get some control over it first.”
Lilly nodded, and squeezed Jed’s hand just a little bit tighter.
“Is there anybody who can teach me?”
“None of us have ever seen the type of travel that you’re using, but it does seem to be similar to a warlock’s bounce tunnel. As long as we’re touching, I should go with you through any tunnel you create,” Jed assured her.
“And if you don’t?” Lilly asked, her fear and exhaustion leaking through her usual calm demeanor.
He dragged his cell phone out of his pocket. “This phone has tracking and GPS. Always keep it on you. That way if you disappear without me I’ll only be a minute or so behind.” She nodded, taking the phone quickly as if she feared she’d disappear any moment now. Considering what she’d been through the past few weeks, it was also quite likely.