“Dad!” Ettie cried, more ticked off than worried.
Something was wrong with Cy. His face was bleeding. No, correction — his eyes, nose, and ears were bleeding. He was looking beyond Ettie, beyond me. He was focused solely on Beau.
Then before I could blink, he tossed Ettie through the window like she was a piece of trash in his way.
It happened so fast. Even within the vision, I nearly missed it.
Ettie had been standing between her father and Beau. Cy had taken the straightest route to his intended target.
The mist of the vision swirled through my mind’s eye, blotting out the sight of Ettie crashing through the window. Blotting out her fall onto the sun-softened asphalt two floors below. That was fine with me. I’d already seen that part.
I became aware of the sound and feel of the real world around me. Beau’s warm hand creating a pool of sweat on the small of my back. The blanket of heat the earth still held from the hot day. The dry grass underneath my bare feet. Dogs barking, sirens in the distance, cars … the noise of a suburb.
“Why wouldn’t the far seer have told her?” Kandy asked. “About needing to be near the earth?”
“I don’t know,” Blackwell answered. His tone was distant and thoughtful, yet still tinged with wryness. “Perhaps because oracle magic doesn’t affect a guardian dragon the same way.”
I loosened my grip on my necklace, having no idea when I’d managed to grab it. Oddly, the diamond was still cool in my sweaty hand. Whether that was because of the necklace’s magic or simply a characteristic of the gem, I didn’t know.
“Okay?” Beau’s whisper brushed against my neck.
“Getting there,” I replied. “Sorry … that was … different.” My hand started itching. “Beau —”
He pressed my sketchbook into my right hand, along with a pristine piece of charcoal. He must have been waiting, ready with the items I would need when I surfaced from the vision. Warmth flooded my chest, sometimes I just loved him so crazy much that all I could do was wait it out until I was a normal, functioning human being again.
Well, not a human, or anywhere near normal. An oracle. An oracle with a vision ready to bust out of her head.
By the feel of the paper, the sketchbook was already open to a blank page. I slipped into the back seat of the sedan again, already hunched over the sketchbook. I’d regained my vision enough that I could see a blur of green as Kandy placed my sneakers on the floor beside my bare feet.
I pressed the charcoal to the paper so fiercely that it broke. I caught and held the second piece without missing a stroke.
“I’ll be back,” Beau said.
I nodded, falling into the vision as I replayed it in my mind. There was so much to record. So many little details I could miss. And missing something might cost Ettie her life.
So I just wasn’t going to miss anything.
∞
When I finally became aware of my surroundings, I’d worn both pieces of charcoal down to nubs and it was full-on dark.
I flipped through the last three pages I’d drawn. Ettie’s bloodshot eyes … dropping a cube of something into a diffuser … Beau unconscious with his cheek pressed against what looked like broken concrete.
I always drew more detail than I necessarily remembered seeing. It was too much information to process quickly. Hell, it might take me days to go over the sketches one by one, refining them and pulling out clues.
Beau at the scene of Ettie’s death. Beaten and angry, then collapsing on broken concrete.
And Cy, as Beau suspected, being the person who was going to accidentally kill Ettie while attempting to kill Beau. Or, at least, attacking his stepson.
And Ettie possibly using whatever she was selling. Plus her being complicit. At least with whatever was in the diffusers.
I shut the sketchbook. I just couldn’t look at it anymore. I was already trying to figure out how to tell Beau about Sara wanting to buy crimson bliss from Ettie. And now … this vision.
A dog barked, drawing my attention outside. We were still parked outside of Beau’s mother’s house.
Cy’s muscle car — the Mustang he drove, not the ones he parked — wasn’t in the driveway. The lights in the house were all ablaze. The living room curtains were wide open.
Inside, Beau appeared to be ripping apart the recliner.
“Jesus.” I set my sketchbook aside and scrambled out the open car door.
“Leave it.” Kandy’s hiss came from behind the sedan. I straightened, blinking away hazy splotches as my eyes adjusted to the shadows and the bright haze of the streetlights.
Kandy was leaning against the trunk of the car, cellphone in hand and arms folded as she watched the drama play out in the living room.
“Like hell I will.” I slammed the car door behind me.
Inside, Beau seemingly paused at the sound. He turned to look out the window.
“He’s handling it.”
“Yeah? And he shouldn’t have to handle it alone.”
I took off across the front lawn, only realizing I was still barefoot when I stepped onto the uneven front path. Blackwell appeared from the deep shadow of the hedge, crossing in to follow behind me.
“Fine,” Kandy said. “I’m always up for making things worse.”
The front door was open. Nothing looked immediately different, but the house smelled like fried grease. I veered right into the living room.
Ada was all but insensible on the couch. She appeared to be watching Beau, but I wasn’t sure she was actually in a state of understanding.
Pieces of the recliner, the car magazines, and the TV were strewn about the room.
Beau looked terrible. His face was a mask of pain and hate. I actually stopped short at the sight of him. He reached out as if to catch me, though he was too far away to do so.
“This the mind reader?” Ada asked. So she was more cognitive than I thought.
“Oracle,” Beau snapped.
Kandy leaned in the archway behind me and whistled. “Jesus, what is she on? What the hell could take down a tiger like that?”
Ada started laughing. It was a low, creepy, burbling noise that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.
“I don’t know. This maybe.” Beau tossed a plastic sandwich bag toward Kandy. It was light, and the werewolf had to step into the room to catch it before it hit the ground.
“Be my guest,” Ada said. “It takes all the pain away.”
Kandy opened the bag, starting to sniff the red powder it held. Blackwell snatched it away from her. “Bad idea, wolf.”
Kandy snarled, but more at the situation than the sorcerer. Then she fiercely rubbed her nose.
Blackwell stepped over to a lamp that had somehow managed to avoid Beau’s tantrum. In its light, he peered at the contents of the bag.
“Smells like magic,” Kandy said.
“Looks like magic. Mixed with or bound to something else. Crystalline …” Blackwell trailed off thoughtfully.
“Is this what you’re using in the diffuser?” Beau asked his mother, pointing to the bag that Blackwell was holding.
Ignoring him, Ada leaned forward, shuffling the romance novels around on the coffee table and looking for something.
“No,” I said. “That’s cubed shaped. In the vision, Ettie … I mean …” I trailed off. Beau was staring at me as if every word coming out of my mouth was another betrayal.
“You saw that in the new vision?” Beau asked hollowly. “Ettie with the stuff in the diffusers?”
I nodded.
“Shit,” Kandy muttered.
“And that …” I glanced over at the baggie that Blackwell was holding up to the light. “Well, it’s red. So … that might be crimson bliss.”
“And did you see that in the vision too?” Beau asked.
“No,” I whispered. “I heard it from Sara.”
“Ettie’s friend at the university.” Beau’s face was utterly blank, devoid of emotion.
I no
dded instead of speaking. My throat was closing up, and I could feel myself starting to shake. I shouldn’t have said anything, not in front of other people.
“Who doesn’t want to feel invulnerable?” Ada screeched in a singsong voice.
“Would you shut up?” Beau bellowed at her.
“I thought you wanted me to talk to you, little Beau.” Ada reached out a limp arm. Then she suddenly scratched Beau’s leg viciously.
He leaped away from her, knocking the coffee table tumbling toward me as he did so.
I froze, knowing I couldn’t jump out of its way fast enough.
Right before the table took my legs out, Kandy nudged it to the side. It spun toward the windows and embedded its legs into the wall.
Beau stared at me, looking as if he was going to be sick. Then he whirled around and put his fist through the diffuser that was still happily smoking away on the mantel. In fact, he put his arm right through the drywall and snapped one of the two-by-four studs behind it.
He withdrew his arm, cradling his bleeding hand.
A moment after Beau locked his gaze to mine, I realized I was covering my mouth with my hands. I quickly dropped them. But just for that split second, I’d been scared … scared of Beau.
“Walk it off,” Kandy ordered.
Beau brushed by me and exited the house before I had a chance to reach for him. Before I could speak a single word.
“Give him a second,” Kandy said. “Then go out.”
Blackwell crossed over to pick up the pieces of the broken diffuser, examining each section as he did so.
“Who the hell are you?” Ada said, struggling to sit up.
“Have you got anything to make her talk?” Kandy asked Blackwell.
“We’d have to wait for whatever she’s taken to wear off. Or risk scrambling her brain further. Unless you know of a reader nearby.”
Kandy shook her head.
I stepped out of the living room, crossing through the front door to sit on the concrete steps. I couldn’t see Beau anywhere, but I knew if I sat there long enough, he’d come back. So I gazed out at the well-lit street and waited.
“Do you think this crimson bliss could be deadly?” Kandy asked from inside the living room.
“Well, I suppose that depends on what crimson bliss is,” Blackwell said. “And where you’ve heard about it.”
I could practically hear Kandy clamp her mouth shut. The werewolf had obviously forgotten who she was talking to for a moment.
“I see. Pack business,” Blackwell said. “And what’s in the diffuser, pray tell? Have you got that figured out too?” The sound of his voice faded as he moved farther into the house.
Kandy didn’t answer the sorcerer, instead turning her attention to Beau’s mother. “You understand we’re trying to help your little girl, right Ada?”
“I don’t know you,” Ada mumbled. “Cy will take care of Claudette.”
Kandy snarled. “Cy probably got her into this in the first place.”
Ada didn’t answer.
I felt oddly ill about invading her home like this. Harassing her in her own living room. But the echoes of my recent vision still reverberated around in my head. Beau beaten badly. Ettie turning on the diffuser to further incapacitate him. Cy busting through the door in a rage.
Ada was culpable in all of that, even if only by willful ignorance.
“I would never hurt you.” Beau’s voice was a whisper from the pocket of darkness at the corner of the house.
“I know.” I reached my hand through the wrought-iron railing to my right.
“Your face …”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m not scared of you. I’m just terrified of the situation …”
Beau touched my hand lightly. Then he crossed to sit at my feet with his back to me. I rested my hand at the base of his neck. We stared out at the sporadically lit houses of the neighborhood, listening to Kandy moving around the living room. I thought the werewolf might be tidying.
“This is not who I want to be,” Beau whispered.
“This is not who you are.”
“Ettie …” He trailed off.
“It doesn’t change anything, Beau. The drugs, the diffusers. We still try to save her. She doesn’t deserve to be killed. Why else would I be getting the visions?”
“Is it Cy? Did you see that too?”
“Yeah. It’s Cy.”
Beau cradled his head in his hands. Thinking the worst of Cy, then having it confirmed were two different levels of torture.
Blackwell stepped out from the carport. He must have crossed around to it from the back of the house. He glanced over as he spoke. “Nothing. No more drugs, no evidence of spell work. Other than a diffuser in each and every room.”
“Can you do a tracking spell?” I asked.
“I don’t have access to potent genetic material. Beau is only Ettie’s half-sibling. I might be able to make something work with his blood. But my understanding is that Ettie is nonmagical, not a shapeshifter. So even though they’re siblings, the magical connection between them is most likely weak. Ada is her mother, but …” Blackwell looked away.
“She’s too fucked up,” Beau said matter-of-factly.
“Indeed. I don’t know for certain that this drug does anything to her bloodstream, but it seems a safe bet.”
“I’ll track them,” Kandy said from behind us.
I pivoted around to see that she was carrying some loose articles of clothing.
“I really, really don’t want douchebag Cy in my nose, but I think his scent will be more reliable. Judging by Ettie’s scent, she hasn’t been here in a week or so.”
Blackwell nodded. “Starting from the bank?”
“Seems like as good a point as any.”
“It might be difficult to access right now. I’ll contact the marshal.”
“Whatever.”
Kandy jogged down the steps beside us. As she passed Beau, she lightly touched the top of his head. The gesture of comfort was seriously out of character for the werewolf, but it appeared to settle Beau further.
He sighed, nodding as if he’d come to some decision. Then he stood up and held his hand out to me.
I took it, actually forcing him to drag me to my feet in an attempt to be playful. He grinned, then dropped my hands to follow Kandy to Blackwell’s sedan.
“I would like to look at your new sketches,” the sorcerer said, falling into step beside me on the front walk.
“They’re not finished.”
“I would still like to look at them.”
I nodded. Saying no wasn’t really an option. Without Blackwell, I’d still be figuring out how to get to Beau and Kandy.
“Beau?” Blackwell called ahead of us.
Beau turned around, catching the keys that the sorcerer had tossed to him in the same motion.
“Back seat,” Kandy said as she climbed into the sedan. “I want my car back ASAP.”
“Me too,” I said.
I slid into the seat behind her, retrieved my sketchbook, and passed it to Blackwell as he climbed into the front seat.
The sorcerer took the sketchbook reverently.
I knew he wouldn’t deface it in any way, but my stomach still ached for the entire time it was in his hands and not mine.
CHAPTER TEN
“Six Big Macs, four double Quarter Pounders with cheese, two chocolate shakes, and four fries. Supersized.” Kandy barked her order at the blurry-eyed cashier behind the glossy white laminate counter.
“We don’t supersize anymore,” the cashier said. “I can upsize.”
“Then do that,” Kandy growled.
“A southwest salad, please,” I said, interjecting before Kandy climbed over the cash register and ripped the kid’s head off. “Oh, and a baked apple pie. Thank —”
“Make that three pies,” Kandy said. Then she elbowed me harshly in the ribs when I went for my wallet.
I could practically hear the skeleton-crew kitchen staff groaning
as I took off for the bathroom. They’d probably been cleaning up in anticipation of closing. A few of the tables in the restaurant were still occupied, but it was ten minutes shy of midnight.
Despite Kandy’s insistence on being ‘lean and mean’ and keeping their edge, she and Beau had to eat. He had opted for McDonald’s. Blackwell refused to even enter the fast-food place, choosing instead to stay in the car and pore over my sketchbook.
Beau and Kandy had eaten three Big Macs each by the time I made it back to the fire-engine-red booth. Beau looked apologetic, then dug into his Quarter Pounders.
“That is not enough food,” Kandy said as she watched me squeeze the lime wedge that came with my salad over the greens. “That is not enough food,” she then repeated to Beau. He only shrugged.
Beau looked terrible, and it wasn’t because of the horrible overhead lighting or the garish mishmash of red, orange, yellow, and white on the floor-to-ceiling tiled wall behind him. His face was haggard, lacking any of the joy I normally associated with his everyday attitude. But then, I’d never seen him so … assaulted. Not as badly as he had been today. He looked as if he’d been mentally battered, multiple times.
And it wasn’t over.
Kandy downed a large fries in two mouthfuls, then reached for a second helping. “We get rid of the sorcerer next,” she said between masticating mounds of deep-fried potato.
“How?” Beau asked.
“We cite family business.”
“He won’t go,” I said.
“Then I’ll make him,” Kandy snarled.
I glanced at Beau. He was watching the green-haired werewolf, wary but not overly concerned.
“You see the way he’s poring over my sketchbook?” I asked.
“So?” Kandy asked. “He’s obsessed with you … and Jade.”
“He’s not obsessed with me, and these visions don’t have anything to do with the dowser.”
“Then what?”
“The drugs,” Beau said grimly. He was carefully wiping each of his fingers with a napkin.
“Yeah,” I said. “The stuff in the diffuser and the drugs.”
Kandy glanced sideways at Beau, then answered somewhat carefully. “I could text Alain, the beta of the Gulf Coast pack. See if Byron’s or Cy’s names come up, and figure out how deep this shit runs.”
I See You (Oracle 2) Page 17