He nodded.
“Will you tell me the story behind it sometime?”
He nodded again and returned his eyes to my sketchbook, to Clara’s name.
Feeling him retreat back into his dark thoughts, I elbowed his leg and whispered, “Hey.”
Jake blinked, and his eyes slowly found mine, relieved but disconnected as he resumed cleaning his rifle. I could feel his uneasiness and wondered if he was thinking of Harper’s prophecy about Clara.
When Jake excused himself to talk to Harper, I left my post by the blazing fire and headed for the barn. I situated myself in the sleeping bags in the corner of our stall, knowing they wouldn’t be the only things keeping me warm for long—Jake had slept beside me every night since we left Sarah’s house. Remembering the images of Harper and Sanchez having sex, I blushed. I wished we were still back at Sarah’s so Jake and I could find someplace to be alone; the barn was far too cozy for intimacy.
When Jake finally crawled into our joined sleeping bags, I savored the warmth of his body. After only a moment, he sat up, and his hands wandered down the length of my leg. “What are you doing?” he asked.
The feeling of his fingers moving over my sweatpants made my eyelids spring open. “What do you mean?”
“With your feet…” His strong fingers closed around my toes as they wiggled back and forth.
“It helps me fall asleep,” I said, realizing I’d been rubbing my feet together.
“Cute,” he said quietly, lying back down and wrapping his arms around my waist. “And when did you start wearing a beanie to bed?” he whispered, his breath brushing gently across my cheek.
I giggled reflexively, smoothing some flyaway hairs back into place before pulling the knit cap over my ears. “It’s freezing…my ears are cold.”
“Really?” I heard a purr in his voice, and as I opened my mouth to reply, his lips were on the sensitive skin behind my ear. I welcomed his hands as they traveled over my hips and down to my thighs, pulling me back against him. I suddenly felt way too hot.
“Are you warming up yet?” His voice was husky, saturated with the same desire that smoldered within me.
“You’re killing me,” I groaned.
He playfully bit the side of my neck, and his mouth lingered near my ear for a moment. “’Night, Zoe,” he said. Under the covers, his grip on my thighs loosened, and he ran his fingers over my hip like he was memorizing its contours. I shuddered.
Hearing Harper and Biggs’s hushed voices only feet away, I knew nothing would really happen.
Taking a long, deep breath, I sighed. “Night, you tease,” I said and pressed my backside against him, eliciting the exact response I wanted—a deep groan. Two can play this game.
48
DANI
“Oh…ooooooh!” I screeched as I dumped frigid river water over my head to rinse soap from my naked body. The purple bar of lavender-scented suds had become my all-in-one body wash, good for everything from my hands to my hair. Salon shampoo and conditioner, specially designed to control my wild curls, were a thing of the past.
I poured a second canteen full of water over myself and nearly slipped off my platform—a two-foot-wide, smooth, flat river stone. It was large enough that I could stand comfortably, and low enough to the water’s surface to make my bathing needs possible—and my bathing needs were needs. Since the disastrous encounter with Mistress Mandy nearly eight weeks back, we’d been avoiding nearly all houses and buildings…and the people they might be sheltering. It had been four days since we’d last seen piped-in water, and I was out of patience—thus the part where I was bathing in a creek in the middle of Utah…in the winter.
“Ooooh!” I exclaimed one last time, doing a little dance to shake off as many of the chilly droplets as possible.
Hearing a deep chuckle from the creek bed, I turned and glowered at Jason. “This isn’t funny! It’s cold! Like, COLD cold!”
“I just liked the shimmy. It was a really good shimmy.” His eyes glinted in the rich afternoon light as he reclined against a mossy, fallen tree.
“I’m sure it was,” I grumbled.
“Hmmm…much as I’m enjoying this, you’re turning blue. It’s fire time. Let’s go, Red.” Jason stood, crunching the underbrush, and held out the towel he’d been keeping warm under his shirt.
I hopped from stone to stone across the river, slightly hunched over with my arms crossing my chest. It was sunny and unseasonably warm, but I was still frozen to the core. I would’ve been embarrassed about being in front of Jason, naked and shaking with cold, if he hadn’t already done the same. Cold water could turn even the toughest man into a whiny, little boy. Plus, the weeks of hard travel and living off the land had trimmed and hardened my body—where once it had been petite with soft curves, my body was now a composition of lean muscle and smooth lines.
“I think…I’m ready…for spring,” I mumbled through shivering lips as Jason wrapped the towel and his strong arms around me. Like me, living in the changed world had altered him, making his body more compact and lithe, quickening his reflexes, and sharpening the angles of his face. Though he’d lost much of his excess, bulky muscle mass, he was far more lethal than he’d ever been before.
“No kidding,” he said. He dried me off quickly while I trembled, then tossed item after item of cold-weather clothing at me, enticing me to dress. I didn’t complain. “You’re lips are purple,” he said, leaning in for a slow kiss.
“I’m not surprised,” I said when he pulled away. “I think I have permafrost.”
“That’s not a medical condition.”
“Thank you so much for that enlightening information.”
“You know what’d warm you up?” Jason slipped his hand under my layers of tops to tease the chilled skin of my lower back.
“Stop it! I just got dressed!” His touch made a brand new set of goose bumps cover my skin.
Jason laughed. “What? I was thinking jumping jacks. Damn Red, get your mind out of the gutter.”
“You’re a huge butthead, you know!” I wasn’t the least bit ashamed of my immature insult. He’d earned it.
All he did was chuckle.
“Oh shut up. C’mon,” I said, grabbing his hand. “I’m sure everyone else wants their chance to wash up.”
“You’re bossy…I like it.”
I laughed softly. “That’s what Zo says. It was one of the first things she told me when we became friends.”
“That she likes you being bossy?” he teased, and still smiling, I shook my head. When he was around me, and only me, Jason shed some of his austere shell…some.
“Just that I’m bossy.”
“Yeah?” he asked, evidently interested. “How’d that happen anyway…you and Zoe? I mean, one day you were just…there.”
It seemed an odd question, like he should’ve already known how Zoe and I began. But then I remembered that Jason had always been distant, and that the story of Zoe and me and the fortuitous start of our friendship wasn’t something we’d made public knowledge. In fact, it was a little embarrassing.
Groaning, I said, “It’s no biggie…just a little playground incident.”
Jason grinned and his eyes lit up. “Come on, Red. Spill.”
I cringed and readjusted my hand in his. “Well…it was in fourth grade. I’d been cornered by a couple of girls behind one of the soccer nets during recess. They were teasing me about my hair, calling me ‘carrot head’…it was oranger back then…”
“I don’t think that’s a word,” he commented.
I glanced at him sideways. “It was oranger…and I was too small to do anything but glower and try not to cry. Zo found us and yelled something like, ‘What the hell are you doing you fat trolls!’ I’d never been good at standing up for myself, so I was completely in awe of her. I remember thinking that she looked like Xena with her long, straight, black hair and angry, blue eyes.” I smiled at the memory.
“Anyway, the other girls got mad, and one tried to pus
h Zo, but she was too quick—maybe because she’d had practice dealing with you. She dodged, and the girl stumbled and fell flat on her face and started crying. Zo and I ended up getting in trouble; the other girls tattled, saying we’d pushed and bullied them, but it was worth it.”
After I didn’t say anything else for several breaths, Jason pointed out, “That doesn’t explain the bossy thing.”
I flushed. “Oh, right. I, um, made Zoe take me home with her after school that day so I could tell your dad what really happened. I thought it was the most unfair thing in the world that she’d been punished for helping me. Then I made her play a game we invented and eventually called ‘Beat the Bully’. So dorky, I know. We practiced being the bully and coming up with insults so we’d be prepared next time. I think we ended up crying and laughing hysterically like a million times doing that. But anyway, it was after that second demand that she told me I was bossy.”
Laughing softly, I looked askance at Jason. “You know, when I got offended by what she’d said, she told me it wasn’t really a bad thing. She said her brother was way bossier.”
Jason shrugged, accepting the decades-old judgment with little concern.
“Ever since that day on the playground, we’ve been inseparable…more like twin sisters than just friends. I’m sure a psychologist would say it was because we both have ‘mommy abandonment issues’ or something.” I held up our clasped hands and nudged my sleeve to reveal the black tattoo on the inside of my wrist. “That’s what this is all about—the bond between sisters, not the abandonment thing. We got ‘em on Zo’s eighteenth birthday.”
Jason looked at me with an odd expression on his face, like he’d just solved a complex puzzle. “Huh,” he grunted. “I thought it was just something to do with your grandma. Since she was Irish and all that…”
“You didn’t know your sister has a tattoo?” I scoffed.
He shook his head. “We’re not exactly close…we haven’t been for a long time.”
Yet again, I mentally noted how similar Zoe and Jason were, and they didn’t even know it; they barely knew each other. I also thought again about how Zoe was going to react to finding out about me and Jason. Sometimes, when we were younger, my infatuation with her brother had really irritated her. How’s she going to feel about it now? Will she be confused? Happy? Disbelieving? Worried? Jealous? Pissed? Disgusted? I was unsure about the rules for getting romantically involved with friends’ siblings.
Seeing my frown, Jason asked, “What is it?”
“Nothing important,” I told him, forcing away my frown. “You have a second chance now, you know, to get to know her.”
“Yeah. If we could figure out where the hell she is. She could be at that ‘colony’ place…she could be somewhere else…” The frustration in his voice amped up my own worries. All routes of communication were completely and utterly dead. On top of that, trying to use my telepathy to find her mind had proven akin to searching for a needle in a haystack, except each piece of hay weighed a hundred pounds and shuffling through even a handful left me exhausted.
I chewed on one side of my lower lip for a few seconds, and then took a deep breath. “I have an idea…but you’re not going to like it.”
“What?” he asked flatly. Good old Jason, not one to pussyfoot around uncomfortable issues.
“Well, if I could talk to MG, I could ask him to visit her dreams, and he could find out where she is and where she’s planning to be by the time we get near the Colony. He’s the only person I know who can definitely find her. But…”
“But you need me to let him in.” He didn’t sound happy.
“Jason—”
“I don’t like it. I don’t like him being in your head. I don’t like him being somewhere I can’t protect you.”
“He’s not going to hurt me.”
Jason grumbled, “I don’t know if I can even make myself turn it off, not if I really don’t want to.”
“Don’t you want to find Zo?”
His sideways look told me he thought the question was ridiculous—not even worthy of an answer. Jason and Zoe may not have been close, but he’d always been protective of his little sister.
“Well then, he’s our only shot, aside from combing every square inch inside and around Colorado Springs. You should want to stop blocking him so I can talk to him. He can find her for us—I know he can.” My voice was tight, reflecting the edge I was teetering on with Jason and his jealousy and protectiveness.
With a deep, angry sigh, he growled, “Fine.” Relief relaxed my shoulders and loosened my grip on his hand.
~~~~~
Later on, when the full, golden moon glowed near the horizon and nocturnal predators sang their eerie, lonely melodies, Jason and I lay entangled in our joined sleeping bags, panting and completely satisfied. Over the past two months, the mountain sounds had transformed from disturbing to comforting—they currently mingled with our heavy breathing to create a peaceful, hypnotizing lullaby.
“Mmm…,” Jason rumbled softly. His body still covered mine, slick with sweat despite the cold, and I basked in the warmth the moonlight illuminated in his eyes.
“‘Mmm’ is right,” I purred.
After a slow, lingering kiss—one that made me wonder if he was starting round two—Jason said, “If you’re going to talk to this guy, we should probably call it a night.”
A few minutes later, I was clothed in sweats and falling asleep in the safety of Jason’s arms.
“Are you sure this’ll work?” I mumbled, momentarily shaking off the lure of sleep.
“Yes, Red, I’m sure. As soon as I can control it, I won’t block the bastard at all.” For some unknown reason, Jason always lost complete control of his Ability after we had sex—nulling every nearby Ability for a good fifteen minutes. Teasing him about it amused me to no end.
“Hmmm…” I snuggled against him happily and succumbed to unconsciousness.
I was sunbathing on my favorite stretch of Northern California beach. I’d been dreaming of something else—something that worried me. I thought maybe I’d been swimming, looking for something under violent swells of frigid ocean water. I was also sure that I was still dreaming, and confusion overwhelmed me as I thought about dreaming while I was dreaming.
Suddenly, my confusion cleared. MG.
It had been so long since I’d seen him—since I’d experienced the odd feeling of sleeping awareness—that it hadn’t made sense at first.
Where is he?
“Dani,” his smooth voice intoned as a long shadow suddenly shielded me from the sun. “It’s been a while.”
I stood and faced him, allowing a small smile. I really was glad to see him. “Uh, yeah. Sorry about that. I’m back with my people, and it turns out that one of them can sort of block other people’s Abilities. I think you guessed that before…you were right. Yay for you…” My words sounded lame, even to me.
“Right,” he said dryly. “I tried to get through. Can’t your friend control his Ability at all?”
“He’s getting better at it. Stronger.”
“So has the wall that’s been keeping me out,” MG retorted.
I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t really tell him that my boyfriend was blocking him on purpose and that, until tonight, I hadn’t asked him to stop. I just hadn’t thought…
“It’s nice to see you,” I said sincerely.
MG sighed dramatically and then grinned. “You too, Dani.”
“So…how’ve you been?”
He glowered for no apparent reason. “I’ve been better.”
My eyebrows rose of their own accord. “Okaaaay…Um, MG?”
“Yep?”
“I was wondering if I could ask you a big-ish favor.”
“Which would be…?”
“I’m looking for someone. We’re headed to the Colorado Springs area, and we’re trying to meet up with a friend, but we don’t know exactly where she is.” Or if she even made it, I thought sullenly.
> “And what exactly do you want me to do?”
“Well, you can find pretty much anyone’s dreams, right? Something about finding them based on the type and strength of their Ability?” I asked hopefully.
“Er…yes.”
“The person we’re looking for is Zoe, the woman you saw in the badminton dream. You know, gorgeous with long black hair and super blue eyes?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, she can feel people’s emotions and sometimes see their thoughts, or maybe their memories. And she should be near Colorado Springs. Do you think—could you look for her dreams and ask her where she is? You’re our only hope.” I added the last bit hoping the damsel in distress thing would ping his macho side and persuade him to help.
MG chuckled, and I held my breath. “Oh, little Dani, you are so adorable sometimes.”
I just smiled, unsure of how to react.
“I’ll do it,” he finally said. “Give me a moment…” Abruptly, he disappeared, and with him the dream faded around me.
For what felt equally like minutes, hours, days, and years, I floated from dream to dream, from ocean to forest to desert, completely unaware of myself. Only when he returned did I become aware of my wanderings.
Sitting across from me at Grams’s kitchen table, MG said, “Found her.”
“Found her?” I asked, still shaking off the remnants of my mind’s subconscious. I’d been in a desert—digging a hole, but the sand kept slipping down the sides, negating my efforts.
“Your friend. Zoe. Who you asked me to find,” he reminded me.
As always happened in his presence, clarity returned, and I remembered the conversation we’d had earlier. “That was fast…or slow. I’m not really sure actually.”
MG nodded. “Don’t worry about it. That’s normal. It took a couple hours…not too long.”
“Oh? So where is she? She’s okay, right?”
“Yeah, she’s fine…with some other people, I guess. She said they came with her from Fort Knox.”
The Ending Series: The Complete Series Page 47