With Midge she was the house guest. She would praise the food and thank her profusely for the smallest kindnesses.
With Layne she was… Well, she supposed she played the same villainous role she’d been playing for years.
And with Alistair, she was alternately the cat and mouse in a game where the stakes were nauseatingly high.
She hadn’t been lying when she’d told Layne she’d accidentally taken everything when Alistair touched her. She had only made that mistake once before, and she was still dealing with the ramifications. She wouldn’t have done it again if she could have helped it, but at the time she was scared, tired, and in pain. Her Sight acted instinctively, doing its version of a full-on attack.
At first, she worried (or was it hoped?) it would have the same side-effects as the only other time she’d pulled a person’s entire mind into her own, but when she couldn’t get any hint of Alistair’s thoughts or emotions just by being near him, she realized it wasn’t the same at all.
She had three theories about that. One was when she’d done the whole brain suck the first time, she’d been trying. It had been an experiment, one where she’d been fully conscious and thoughtful about every single moment and action.
The second was Alistair was so unsure of his own mind there was nothing to project. From the hours she’d spent trying to unravel bits of information from the massive noise she’d grabbed from him, she thought this was probably her strongest theory. There was something off about Alistair’s brain. Everyone’s head is loud, but his was unbearably so. If the normal brain was a rock concert, Alistair’s was standing next to a bomb as it exploded. She had no idea how he hadn’t gone mentally deaf.
Her third theory was the most simple, and the most complex: Alistair simply wasn’t Layne.
She didn’t spend much time dwelling on her third theory. Thinking about why Layne would be a unique situation made sleeping harder, and since arriving at Brownlow Manor, sleeping was one of her few true joys.
Despite having full and complete access to his brain, in a manner of speaking, Lizzie was no closer to figuring out the proverbial chink in Alistair’s armor. His thoughts were simply too much of a mess. The few things she pulled out only confirmed her earlier theories. His father was a bully, his behavior bordering on abusive when he actually took the time and energy to notice his son’s existence. Alistair used the rage he felt towards his father as fuel to succeed in life. He did well in school; had lots of friends, whom he thought of as followers; and had a very active dating life, of which Lizzie had way too much intimate knowledge. It was truly outstanding how clear and unraveled his memories of his various and many sexual encounters were. Perhaps it was because there was zero emotion other than conquest attached to any of them.
When he came up to their rooms every few days, he acted exactly like Lizzie expected. He was kind and charming. He brought her presents. Sometimes it would be new yarn, others it would be an outfit or candy. After he brought her a box of chocolates, which she immediately turned over to a forlorn Caroline, he started bringing the little girl treats, too. He didn’t seem to notice how she flinched every time he reached towards her.
Alistair smiled and flirted and acted like Lizzie was the most beautiful and entertaining human being he’d ever met. He didn’t fool her in the least, but she was beginning to think he might be fooling himself. There was something in the way he looked at her. The more she pulled back from his touch, the more determined he was to touch her. She didn’t have to See him, the truth of it was clear in the way he leered at her as if she was a prize to be claimed. It terrified her, but she merely smiled and laughed at whatever it was he was saying, hoping like hell there never came a day she was alone with him.
Of course, she was beginning to think there was never going to be a day when she wasn’t trapped in the apartment with Pari, Caroline, and Layne as her constant companions. She’d expected to be taken out on a mission to prove her worth almost immediately, but as the days slipped by, one after the other, the thoughts of leaving dwindled. Which is why she was completely unprepared when the locked-down doors opened to reveal Mack and a spindly looking dark-skinned man with white tufts of hair.
“Dr. Patel, I wasn’t aware I would be seeing you today,” Pari said, her voice taking on the formal tone she normally reserved for the few short words she exchanged with Alistair.
“Pari. Caroline.” Dr. Patel nodded his greetings. “And you must be the Seer I’ve heard so much about,” he said, extending a hand to Lizzie. “I am Dr. Patel. I will be assisting you prepare for your journey today.”
Journey? What journey?
And how exactly was a doctor supposed to help her prepare?
Before she could stretch out one gloved hand and try to get some answers, Layne stepped in front of her. He crossed his arms and glared down at the doctor, who she hadn’t realized was so small until Layne towered over him.
“She doesn’t like to be touched,” he growled.
Dr. Patel held up his hands as if surrendering to Layne’s bad manners.
“My apologies.” His voice had a pleasant, sing-song quality about it. “I forgot. I did not mean any harm.”
“It’s okay. No harm, no foul and all that.”
Layne grunted his disapproval, which was collectively ignored.
“What are you going to do?” she asked even though she’d already figured it out.
Dr. Patel smiled, revealing a row of perfectly straight teeth. “Simply making your journey more comfortable. There will be no pain, and I will take efforts to make sure my contact with you, even through gloves, is limited.”
Across the room, Pari removed the thin sweater she’d been wearing and whispered something to her daughter. The wail Caroline emitted seemed to wrap itself around all of Lizzie’s internal organs and squeeze.
“You can do me first,” Pari said, her spine and voice so stiff they almost hid the tears swimming in her eyes.
Caroline wrapped herself around her mother’s waist, chanting, “Don’t go, Mommy. Don’t go.”
“You will keep an eye on my pup, won’t you?” she asked Layne, using Pack terms to remind Layne of his obligation to Caroline. Not that she needed to. Lizzie was fairly certain anyone who tried to touch the child would be fortunate to merely lose a hand.
Layne dipped his head in a show of submission. “I’ll guard her life with my own.”
Those weren’t idle words. It was an oath, one Layne would honor unto death. For the first time in years, she wished her Sight worked in reverse so he would know how proud she was of him.
“Listen to Layne while I’m away,” Pari said to her sobbing child. “He and Midge are in charge, okay? No fits. No whining. You just do as they say.”
“We’ll have a good time and be on our best behavior, won’t we, brat?” Layne said, abandoning his post as Lizzie’s protector to scoop the little girl out of her mother’s lap. She quickly transferred her death-grip from Pari to Layne, who held her not like an annoyed teenage boy, which was the way he had been packing her around for the past month, but like someone who knew what they were doing. He turned and caught Lizzie’s eye, and even without her Sight, she knew what he was thinking.
I’ll take care of her, if you’ll take care of you.
She would, but not the way he wanted her to. There was no way she was running off to leave him to God-only-knows what fate.
While Pari said her goodbyes to Caroline, Dr. Patel laid out his case of medical equipment. As Lizzie watched, he extracted a long, thin needle and bottle of clear liquid. The entire world fell away as he jabbed the needle down into the vial and pulled back the stopper, sending fluid rushing into the syringe. Once it was full, he pulled it free, tapped the side, and sent a small spray of medicine into the air.
Lizzie thought she might be sick.
“If you’re ready, Pari,” the doctor said, moving over to sit on the coffee table next to the couch. Pari blew one last kiss to her daughter and laid back on the couch,
allowing Dr. Patel to push the needle into her arm. Lizzie watched the room slip in and out of focus.
“Deep breaths,” came a voice close to her ear. “Don’t think about it. Just take deep breaths.”
Of course he would be watching, waiting for her to hit the ground in an ungraceful heap. After all, Layne knew her just as well as she knew him, which meant he was aware of just how profound her fear of needles was.
In what now felt like a vast distance, Pari was counting backwards from ten, her voice growing softer and more sluggish with each passing number. Lizzie was dimly aware of Dr. Patel holding Pari’s wrist as he watched her chest rise and fall. The scene managed to crank her terror up another fifteen notches since it looked like he was waiting for the last thud of her pulse and whoosh of her breath.
“I can’t,” Lizzie said, her voice shaking just as hard as her body. “I can’t do this. Blindfold me or pack me up in a suitcase or something, anything other than the needles. Please.”
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Patel said. “I did not know of your phobia. Next time, we will maybe try something different, but for now…” He shrugged apologetically and made his way back to his bag.
This time when he extracted a needle, Lizzie knew it was meant for her. The instinct to fight or flight kicked in, and she lunged for the door. She made it two steps when Mack stepped in her path. She tried to dart around him but a large, beefy hand shot out, stopping less than an inch from her skin.
“It’s sit and take your medicine like a good girl or get touched, princess. Your call.”
Lizzie had Seen Mack’s mind before and had no desire to repeat the process. Unlike Alistair, Mack’s brain was very neatly organized. His thoughts simple. In a child like Caroline, simple was beautiful, but in a person like Mack, it was disturbing at best.
Hurt.
Kill.
Destroy.
Not exactly the happy, sun-shiny thoughts one wants to hear on repeat.
“Where would you like me, doctor?” Lizzie asked through numb lips, never taking her eyes off of Mack’s hand.
The doctor puttered around as if oblivious to the tension in the room. “The chaise would be good, I think,” he said.
Lizzie made her way over to the chaise, forcing her legs to bend so she could actually sit. Her fingers were clumsy as she attempted to roll up the sleeve of her shirt. Dr. Patel helped her with the last few inches, making an effort to not come into contact with her skin. He wore at least two pairs of latex gloves, for which Lizzie was thankful. As long as she concentrated, she wouldn’t catch any glimpses into the older man’s mind, which meant she wouldn’t see something to make her not like him.
“There will be a little pinch, less painful than a bee sting.”
She squeezed her eyes so tightly shut little bursts of light flashed behind her closed lids. The pain was as insignificant as he promised, but she yelped in distress all the same.
“I don’t think it’s working,” she said, not feeling sleepy or sluggish in the least. “Are you sure you gave me the right thing?”
Dr. Patel smiled down at her. “Just count backwards from ten, my dear.”
It wasn’t working. He was going to have to give her another shot, and if he did, she might actually die from fear. But if counting backwards would make the good doctor happy, then counting backwards is what she would do.
“Ten. Nine. Eight. Sev—”
Chapter 11
Consciousness was slow in coming. More than once she opened her eyes only to decide being awake and alert was more effort than it was worth. She may have kept rolling over and going back to sleep for the rest of time if someone hadn’t set off a car alarm right next to her head.
“Make it stop,” she said, trying to burrow her head into her pillow.
“Sorry, but I’m not the one with super-powers.”
The unfamiliar voice was what finally pulled Lizzie firmly into the land of the alive and alert. Her eyes flew open, trying desperately to latch onto anything familiar.
Not my bed.
Not my television.
Not my walls.
Not my window.
Not my view of a busy city street.
Not my British girl in a one-piece jumper.
“Where—“
“The Indian chick is in the shower,” One-Piece Jumper said, not lifting her eyes from the phone in her hand.
Lizzie sat up, realizing for the first time the bed she was on was hard as a rock.
“Pari is Scottish,” she said, pushing a lock of frizzy red hair out of her face. She hoped Pari wasn’t going to be too much longer. It felt like she had a month’s worth of grime and ick covering her skin.
For all she knew, it was a month’s worth of grime and ick.
“What is today?”
“Thursday.”
“Of the same week I left Brownlow Manor?”
One-Piece Jumper looked at her as if she’d recently escaped from Bedlam. “No, you’ve been lying in that bed for two hundred years, waiting for true love’s first kiss. Unfortunately for you, princes and happily-ever-afters weren’t in the cards.”
Lizzie didn’t believe in insta-hate. It made even less sense to her than insta-love. But One-Piece Jumper was making her seriously reconsider her stance.
“Where are we?”
“A cheap-ass hotel.”
God, grant her patience.
“A cheap-ass hotel where?”
One-Piece Jumper made a show of rolling her eyes.
“London,” she said as if it was painfully obvious.
“I’m in London, England?”
“No, London, France.” One-Piece Jumper slid her phone into a pocket. “Are you always this stupid, or did the drugs they give you mess up your brain?”
Lizzie would have given a witty retort if she wasn’t too busy doing the happy dance in her mind. London! She’d dreamt of coming here since she was a little girl obsessed with Peter Pan. And now she was here! In London!
Okay, so maybe her visit wasn’t going exactly like she’d always imagined, but still. London!
“Which section are we in? Greenwich? Kensington?”
One-Piece Jumper obviously knew a losing battle when she saw it. “Westminster,” she said with a sigh. “Victoria Station is two blocks that way and the palace is about a kilometer away.”
Buckingham Palace!
Lizzie would not squeal. She wouldn’t. She was a prisoner being forced to use her talents to aid and abet an organization dead set on destroying all the people like her in the world. Squealing would be absolutely, positively wrong in such a situation.
But she could bounce up and down on the bed a few times.
“How far away are we from Hyde Park? Or Big Ben? Oh! What about the Tower of London? I’ve always wanted to see the Yeomen.”
“Jesus,” One-Piece Jumper moaned. “I hate Americans.”
The bathroom door swung open, and Pari ambled into the room, brushing out the miles and miles of her wet hair. If One-Piece Jumper was telling the truth, they’d only been out for a few hours, but Pari somehow looked thinner and more fragile than she had yesterday.
“Glad you finally decided to join us,” Pari said, sitting on the end of the bed. “I see you’ve had the pleasure of meeting Spring.”
“Spring?”
Spring, aka One-Piece Jumper, narrowed her eyes. “Don’t even think about it.”
Somewhere in the world there was a pair of British hippies who named their daughter for flowers and butterflies and got a thunderstorm instead.
Unwilling to sit around and spar with her newest warden - because what other purpose could Spring and her ridiculous outfit serve - Lizzie decided it was time to wipe the film of wretchedness from her skin. With a bag of clothes Pari helped her locate in hand, she locked herself in the bathroom.
Part of her wanted to stay in there forever. It was tiny, sparse, and just on the acceptable side of clean, but at least it was familiar. Bathtub. Sink. Toilet. Tiled floor and p
lastic shower curtain. Apparently no matter where you were in the world, cheap hotel bathrooms all looked the same.
Lizzie knew when she walked out the door, the next part of her life would begin, whatever that might be. Alistair still hadn’t told her exactly what she would be doing for him. It was all very vague, for-the-greater-good crap. She’d tried to explain that she wasn’t exactly the pull-bank-account-numbers-from-your-head kind of Seer, but she wasn’t sure he ever really heard her.
What if they asked her to do something she couldn’t do? Would they decide she was worthless and kill her? Or worse, what if they asked her to do something she could? Would she do it? What was she willing to give them? If it was only her life on the line, the answer would be simple. She could martyr herself all day long if need be. Self-sacrifice was practically the motto of the Alpha Pack. But her life wasn’t the only one at stake. If she failed the SHP, then Layne would be the one to suffer the consequences.
Which meant she would give them whatever they wanted.
Damn it.
Keep the important pieces to yourself. Just give them enough so they can’t question your loyalty.
The advice came from Mischa years ago when they were working together to bring down Sarvarna and her cronies. It was good advice then, and even better advice now.
She would give them just a little bit. A taste of what they wanted. And she would keep the important bits, whatever they might be, to herself.
It would work.
It had to.
Resolved to the task at hand, Lizzie finished getting ready, slipping on the stylish, yet understated navy sundress and white espadrilles. For the first time since she woke up on the floor next to an unconscious Layne, she put on makeup. The mascara and lip stain felt like war paint, emboldening her when she would rather blend into the textured wallpaper. Her last step was to slide on a cardigan and pair of soft leather gloves.
“What’s next?” she asked, tossing her bag onto the bed where Spring was now stretched out. It missed her head by less than six inches.
Whispered Visions (Shifters & Seers Book 3) Page 9