“Jane, allow me to introduce Rashid,” Alistair said. “Rashid is one of our investors. Rashid, this is Jane Smith.”
The gallery light reflected off Rashid’s dark eyes, making them look like they had real, honest-to-goodness sparkles as he reached for her bare hand. “It’s lovely to meet you.”
Objectively, Rashid was attractive. His dark, curly hair was offset by lightly tanned skin. The lashes surrounding his eyes were thick and long. And he was super-fit. Even though he was wearing a loose-fitting tunic, Lizzie would have bet her entire life’s savings on being able to bounce a quarter off his abs.
Of course, quarter-bouncing abs was pretty much a given on Shifters, and unless Lizzie had completely lost touch with reality, Rashid had a habit of turning into a wolf during the full moon.
“Do you enjoy paintings, Miss Smith?”
Miss Smith? Who the hell was Miss Smith?
Oh. Wait. That was supposed to be her.
“I do,” Lizzie said, prying her hand from his and slipping her gloves back on, “but I don’t really know much about them.”
“All you have to know about art is how it makes you feel. Tell me, what do you see when you look at this one?”
Was that a big S See or little s see?
And if it was the big S, what was she supposed to say?
What she needed was a script. She wasn’t made for this film noir lifestyle.
“I See sadness,” she said, deciding it answered both questions since the painting in question was much darker than the others surrounding it. If he understood, he gave no indication, but his eyes did keep straying to her gloves.
What were the chances he knew who she was? Realistically, pretty high. She was, after all, one of the highest ranking members of the ruling body over all the Shifters and Seers in the world. Alistair didn’t do a stellar job of protecting her identity with the fakest fake name in the history of fake names, and she had a distinctive look. Not a ton of girls running around with hair the color of carrots and more freckles than stars in the sky.
But the unfortunate truth of the matter was, no one was looking for her. The world thought Lizzie Anders was dead. Even if he did recognize her, he would talk himself out of believing it was really the dead Alpha Pack member. And even if he did believe it, he was a Shifter working with the SHP. The likelihood of him running to the Alphas and telling them her whereabouts was slim to none.
Later, when she was back at Brownlow Manor, she would nurse the disappointment squeezing her heart, but for now, her concentration was needed elsewhere.
“Only sadness?” Rashid asked. “Nothing else?”
“There is always something other than sadness, but sometimes it screams so loud it drowns out everything else.” Any emotion could. Sparks of complete joy or shocks of utter terror could wipe out all other sounds in a person’s brain, but never for long. Sadness, however, had a way of silencing every voice but its own for hours, days, or even weeks.
“Perhaps Renoir would be more to your liking than Manet,” Alistair cut in, placing a possessive hand on her shoulder. Her instincts told her to shake it off, not because of her Sight, but because everything inside her revolted at the idea of being touched by him. “Or Degas,” he continued. “You actually put me in mind of a Degas painting. I could see you as one of his ballerinas.”
“Oh no.” Rashid’s eyes roamed her body, pausing long enough on her too-wide hips to make her long for another shower. “Jane here is much too interesting for a Degas. Picasso would have been the only one to do her any justice.”
Picasso? Because he screwed up everyone’s face, putting eyes and noses in the wrong spots? Or because he tended to forget to include clothes on his models? Either way, Lizzie didn’t feel even slightly complimented.
Actually, she was starting to feel like a scrap of meat lying on the pavement between two ravenous dogs. She wasn’t completely opposed to the idea of them ripping out one another’s throats, but there was no way she was going to allow either of them to devour her as their reward.
“Maybe I’ll paint myself,” she said, shrugging out from under Alistair’s hand. She walked over to another painting on the wall and pretended to study it intently. Really, she was just trying to put some space between herself and the mutts.
“And how would you paint yourself, Jane? Docile and melancholy like Manet’s Cat Lady? Or a flirting partygoer, like the Renoir Lord Langford suggested?”
Lizzie turned and crossed her hands over her chest. “What is the painting of the French Revolution called? The one with the lady waving the flag over a bunch of dead bodies?”
“La Liberté guidant le peuple by Eugene Delacroix?” Alistair guessed.
“Yes, Liberty Leading the People.” Her art history knowledge might suck, but her French was on point. “That one. That’s me.”
Alistair chuckled, looking pleased. He thought it was his revolution to be won. But one day this would all be over, and when the smoke cleared, he wouldn’t see his flag flying high above the Shifters and Seers of the world. In fact, Lizzie doubted he would be seeing much at all ever again.
Chapter 13
The rain was coming down in earnest when they left the National Gallery. Alistair produced a very stereotypical black umbrella from God-only-knows-where and escorted Lizzie back across Trafalgar Square.
“David won’t be around with the car for at least another thirty minutes,” he said once they’d reached the street. “Are you hungry? There are several pubs around here where we could get something to eat.”
She was famished, but the need for food was eclipsed by something even greater.
“Can we wait in there?” she asked, nodding to the nearest shop.
Alistair didn’t seem enthusiastic, but he ushered her inside nonetheless. Once through the door, Lizzie stopped, closed her eyes, and took in a deep breath. The smell of paper and ink soothed the raw edges of her nerves, making her feel more at home than she had in weeks. She went to the nearest shelf, running her finger along the spines lined up like toy soldiers.
“A bit of a bookworm, are you?”
“A bit,” Lizzie admitted, looking around for the romance section. In a bind, she would read anything at all, but in a store this big, they had to have what truly made her happy. “Do you read?”
Alistair snorted. “No. Never have been a reader. Used to drive my tutors quite mad, but I came by it honestly. My father only ever read The Telegraph. Brownlow Manor has a massive library, but I doubt anyone has touched a single one of the books in decades.”
Lizzie stopped mid-step. “You have a library in your house?”
“Yes.”
“Does it have a fireplace?”
“The house is over two hundred years old. Every room has a fireplace.”
“And ladders? Does it have those cool ladders on wheels?”
Alistair’s laughter was loud enough to earn them a few dirty looks.
“I don’t know. Maybe?” His smile was wide and honest. It might have been the first true thing to ever transpire between the two of them. “Would you like to see it someday? I wouldn’t mind taking you in there. You could read every book and throw it away after for all I care.”
“Sounds cool,” Lizzie said, aiming for nonchalance. “If you don’t have time though, it’s no big deal.”
“You’re trying desperately hard to not jump up and down and squeal, aren’t you?”
“Is it that obvious?”
Another of Alistair’s real laughs filled the room. “You, Lizzie Anders, have the worst poker face in the world.”
God, she hoped that wasn’t true. If it was, she and Layne were seriously in trouble.
“Speaking of your tell-all face,” Alistair continued, “you didn’t care for Rashid much, did you?”
Lizzie drifted towards a display of paperbacks. They were all of the dominant, rich boyfriend with issues variety, which wasn’t her normal bread-and-butter, but a good romance novel was a good romance novel. She hadn’t r
ead anything other than Dr. Seuss and Mo Willems in weeks. She would take what she could get.
“He’s an art thief,” she said, stating the obvious. After Rashid finished harassing her, he and Alistair got down to business, and the business at hand was the sale of a piece of art. Alistair was playing middle man, taking a good percentage of the cash exchanging hands. “And he’s creepy. I didn’t like the way he kept looking at me.”
And she especially didn’t like knowing what he planned to do to her if he ever caught her alone without Alistair to play bodyguard.
Alistair put down the book he’d been looking at - the cover giving some not-so-subtle S&M vibes - and gave her his full attention. “Nor did I. We will be having a discussion about that before our next meeting.”
He might has well have bared his fangs and growled, “Mine!”
“What else can you tell me about Rashid?”
Ahhh… Here it was. Her test. She knew it was coming.
“He’s apathetic to your cause. He plays the part, but for him, it’s about the money and the thrill of the steal. His greed and adrenaline addiction are constantly battling for biggest vice.” Both of which caused him to commit some truly horrid crimes. “He’s pretty sure the DaVinci on display isn’t real, and it’s making him wonder if he could pass off a forged Monet to you as the real thing. So if he suddenly starts talking water lilies, I would suggest passing on that particular money-making opportunity.”
Alistair’s finger was tapping out an eager rhythm on his thigh. “You got all of that from one handshake?”
“I was making an effort.”
“And did your effort gather you any additional information?”
She started to say no, but then thought better of it.
“Assuming you already knew he’s a Shifter, no,” she said.
Alistair’s smile could have outshone the sun. Apparently, that had been the real test.
“I did,” he said, taking the three books she was holding and tucking them into the crook of his arm. “Rashid is what I believe you would refer to as a ‘lone wolf.’ His parents weren’t associated with any pack, and when they died at a young age, he set off to discover the world on his own. His only interaction with others of his kind has been in fights over the right to exist. Therefore, he holds no allegiance to the supernatural society. He was eager to join up with my father and help supply a steady cash flow for the cause. Although, thanks to you, I now know it’s more about the cash than the cause itself.”
So Rashid thought he could sell out the entire Shifter and Seer population because he had never been part of a pack? What a bunch of bullshit. Lizzie had never been part of a pack until getting recruited. Her parents had been so in love in the beginning they ignored the wishes of their pack and married, despite both of them being promised to someone else. It was a romantic story, or it would have been if it all hadn’t gone to hell eleven years later.
Because they followed their hearts instead of the commands of the Pack Leader, they were kicked out of their pack. It could have been worse. They could have been Banished, but in a moment of grace, the Pack Leader simply told them to leave and never come back. It’s how they ended up in San Diego. Even though there was nothing official to keep another pack from taking them in, no one was willing to accept a couple who had defied their Pack Leader into the fold. So they moved to a city where no one had claimed territory and Lizzie grew up without knowing the stability and comfort that came from being part of a pack.
But despite never knowing another Shifter or Seer other than her parents, Lizzie would have never willingly joined the SHP. Her dislike of the organization wasn’t purely based on her status as a Seer, although that did make it a little more urgent. The main problem with the SHP was their entire agenda boiled down to hatred. Who on earth would support a group who hated another based simply on the way they were born? How was that ever okay?
And she was too logical to buy into Alistair’s one-big-happy-humanity propaganda. She knew what would happen the moment Shifters and Seers were outed. Once their existence was made public, the SHP would be the least of their concerns. Hatred was born out of fear, and what was more frightening than finding out one of the classic movie monsters was real and sitting next to you in Sunday morning worship services?
“How did you find him?” she asked, knowing if she kept thinking about Rashid she wouldn’t be able to keep the disgust off her face.
Alistair picked up a coffee mug with Benedict Cumberbatch and Morgan Freeman on it and added it to the pile of goodies in his arms.
“He approached my father… I think it was five years ago. Six maybe. Either way, he knew my father to be an aristocrat and asked him if he would be interested in an original Pollock for his collection. My father wasn’t really into art, but he asked Rashid to meet with him a week later. He said something about the man intrigued him. I think he might have suspected what Rashid was then, but he couldn’t be certain. However, by the time they met, he was. My father told Rashid he knew exactly what he was and was fully prepared to put him down like a dog if he didn’t do everything he could to assist with the advancement of the Society for Human Preservation.”
“So he joined under duress?” That absolved him slightly in Lizzie’s mind, but not completely.
“Not really,” Alistair said, grabbing a handful of chocolates off a display. “According to the story, Rashid laughed at my father and told him he could kill him seventeen different ways before he could even consider grabbing the gun he had stashed in his coat pocket. But in the end, he joined the cause anyway. As I said, he’s not overly fond of the other Shifters in the world.”
Lizzie snatched the latest Rainbow Rowell book off a shelf, forcing herself to stay in the conversation rather than read the description off the back. Not that she needed to read the description. She’d been waiting on this book for months.
“You said your dad knew Rashid was a Shifter. How? Did he have someone trail him during a full moon?” It was the only reasonable explanation she could come up with, but even that didn’t make sense. Shifters come in varying degrees of dominance, with the most dominant having the strongest senses of smell and hearing. Yet even the least dominant of Shifters would know they were being trailed by a human on the night of a full moon, and if Rashid had survived all the Challenges sure to be thrown his way as a roaming lone wolf, he was far from submissive.
“No, my father just knew,” Alistair said, looking unconfident for the first time in Lizzie’s memory. “I’m not sure how he knew. I think he had a source. He probably meant to tell me at some point, but then he died suddenly last year. I keep expecting someone to reach out to me, but no one has.”
Well, that was a small comfort. Although, if Lizzie ever found out who had been helping the late Viscount, she would make sure they stood trial in front of the Alphas.
“I’m not really surprised,” Alistair continued. “Everyone knows I’m not my father. Some of them appreciate it. They understand my new vision. But there are some that see me as weak. They want a war, even though we could never be victorious.”
Lizzie tried to hide her surprise. She thought Alistair’s ego was big enough to envision himself standing on a mountain of dead Shifters.
“They can’t see how my way is better. If we could just bring everything out in the open, expose the Shifters for the danger they are, then the world could be prepared. The way it is now, it’s like back in the dark ages when they had no idea a storm was coming to devastate their lives until it was upon them. Now we’ve got satellites and weather maps, and we can board up our windows and save ourselves from the worst of the damage. I want SHP to be the satellites. I want us to be the warning system.”
What Alistair thought he was warning humans about was beyond Lizzie. It wasn’t as if Shifters attacked humans and feasted on their internal organs for fun. During her four years in the Alpha Pack, she hadn’t heard of a single Shifter killing a human, even before the regime change. It simply wasn’t done.
“You understand, don’t you, Lizzie? You understand that it’s time for Shifters to be held accountable?”
Accountable for what? Being born different? For having gifts and talents normal humans did not?
And that is when Lizzie finally understood. Alistair was jealous. He was jealous of the power wielded by Shifters. He didn’t hate them because they were different. He hated them because he wasn’t, and because they had captivated his father’s time and attention when he could not.
Lizzie might not understand hatred, but she was on close, intimate terms with jealousy. And it was like the old TV ads used to say, knowing was half the battle. Now all she had to do was figure out how to use that knowledge to free herself and put an end to the SHP once and for all.
Letting her mouth curve into a smile she knew Alistair would misinterpret she said, “I understand.”
Finally, she really, truly did.
Chapter 14
“You’re Cinderella.”
Layne plucked the tinfoil tiara off the top of his head.
“No, I’m not.”
Caroline jerked the tiara out of his hands and placed it back on his head and then used her sticky little fingers to brush the hair back from his face. “You’re Cinderella,” she said as if he hadn’t just refused the post, “and I’m Snow White. She’s a princess too, you know.”
“I know who Snow White is, and I know who Cinderella is. Mainly, I know that she’s not me.”
Layne’s patience was running thin. Pari and Lizzie had been gone for thirty-six hours, thirty of which he’d been forced to babysit the world’s most rambunctious three-year-old while stressing out over what might be happening to Lizzie. Was she okay? Had she managed to escape? He didn’t know if he would be more relieved or disappointed to see her walk through the door.
“You’re not playing fair,” Caroline whined when he once again removed the tiara. “Put it back on so you can be Cinderella and say, ‘Oy. Snow White. You look rather lovely in your pretty, pretty dress.’”
Whispered Visions (Shifters & Seers Book 3) Page 11