“What is this?”
Lizzie’s eyes were feverish with excitement.
“I know where we are,” she said.
There was a loud whack as the books Pari was holding hit the floor.
“Where…? How…?” Pari fumbled for the fallen books, but all of her focus was on Lizzie.
“Cameras,” the Seer reminded her with a smile plastered on her lips.
Willing himself not to look at any of the electronic eyes scattered throughout the room, Layne folded himself into a chair and began flipping through the pages of his book, only taking in bits of information here and there.
“The book Layne has is a detailed record of the Hagan Line of Shifters,” Lizzie said, pretending to look through the refrigerator. “The library was full of them. One for every Shifter family in the world, if I was guessing.”
“Like an Archive?” He only had a passing knowledge of the giant Shifter libraries scattered across the world. Most of his knowledge came from the mini-lectures he got from Liam’s great-aunt who ran the one in the United States. Basically, Bibliothecaries, the Archives’ librarians, divided their time between documenting the whole of Shifter & Seer history and collecting every book ever written pertaining to the supernatural.
“Exactly like an Archive,” Lizzie said, pulling out a carton of ice cream and grabbing a spoon off the counter. “More specifically, the English Archive, which ceased to house a Bibliothecary either during or after World War II.”
Pari turned away from the window. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Lizzie settled into a chair at the rickety kitchen table and pretended to be engrossed in her ice cream. “The Archives are repositories of Shifter and Seer knowledge. Each one is ran by a Seer, typically one who was at some point in line to become the next Alpha Female. Her job is to gather information about the packs in her area and record their histories. There is one on every continent, but for a long time there were two in Europe. The one near the old Alpha Den in Romania, and this one near Bath.”
“Bath,” Pari said as if testing out the word. Her eyes flicked back to the window. “Are you certain?”
“Absolutely,” Lizzie nodded. “Story has it, a Seer came to London sometime in the 1800s looking for a new place to set up an Archive. It was after Napoleon was defeated, and England was the center of the world. The Alphas thought having a presence here was important for their image, so they sent one of their brightest Seers to accomplish the task. I’m not exactly sure what happened next, but some sort of scandal occurred. Knowing England in the 1800s, someone probably showed an ankle or held hands, but whatever it was, a noble family found themselves at the mercy of the Alpha Pack. A deal was struck, and the family agreed to house and fund an Archive for one hundred years. As far as I know, everything was going swimmingly until one day in 1940-something when the British Bibliothecary died. When the Alpha Pack sent someone to replace her, the family informed the poor girl that their service to the Alphas was over and shut the door in her face.”
“And we just let them keep the books with all of our top-secret Shifter knowledge?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so, but there is no denying that book you’re holding is an account of the entire Hagan Pack, complete with notations about Pack Leaders. It’s just like the ones Aunt Rachel showed me when we visited the Archives in Minnesota. And that room was filled with them, Layne. There had to be hundreds, if not thousands.”
Layne fanned the pages until he found the last page with writing. It only bore a single name: Samuel Hagan. His great-grandfather.
“This is how they know who we are and where to find us,” he said, still not quite believing it. “They have the name of every pack in the world.”
“And location,” Lizzie added. “I didn’t find one, but Aunt Rachel has a Shifter atlas. I would think they’re standard issue for every Archive.”
For years the Alpha Pack had been trying to figure out how the SHP knew not only about the existence of Shifters and Seers, but how to find them. Turns out, the bad guys had the equivalent of Shifter GPS.
“One day, I’m going to invent a time machine, and the first thing I’m going to do is go back in time and punch whoever left this shit laying around here in the throat.”
“It was a bit careless,” Lizzie agreed, “but who would have thought that a bunch of humans would use that information to try to hunt us down and kill us?”
Pari let out a huff of breath and leaned against the window frame. “Aye. Who would have thought that an aristocratic family forced to play servants to a bunch of supernaturals for a century would eventually try to put said supernaturals in their place? Bit mental, isn’t it?”
“If that’s the case, why did they wait almost seventy years to do it? Wouldn’t they have come out, guns blazing, back in the forties when they knew exactly where we all were? Most packs stay put for a good long while, but not all of them. And almost every person in those books are dead now. Figuring out who the current pack members are and where they could be found had to take forever,” Lizzie said, giving up the pretense they weren’t talking about something important. She sat on the edge of her chair, punctuating her points with wildly flapping hands.
“What I don’t get,” Layne said, his thoughts venturing down a completely different path, “is if Alistair knew about us because he has a library full of top-secret Shifter books—“
“Alistair’s father,” Lizzie interrupted. “Alistair has no idea what he’s got in that room.”
“Well, then, let’s thank God for small miracles.” Heaven only knew what that idiot would do if he had any idea of the wealth of information he had at his fingertips. “But if Alistair’s father knew all about us because of his Room of Forbidden Knowledge, it begs the question, how did he know about you?” The last he directed at Pari. He knew there was nothing on Thaumaturgics or Immortals in that room since the majority of Shifters and Seers believed them to be nothing more than the stuff of bedtime stories until a few years ago.
Pari didn’t turn to face them. Instead, her focus stayed on the yard beyond the window. It was then Layne realized she hadn’t been doing it to honor Lizzie’s request to seem nonchalant. She literally couldn’t pull her gaze away from her daughter. Layne wondered what it was like to care for something that much.
No, that was wrong. If Lizzie was out there, he would be doing the same thing. Watching. Cataloging every movement. Praying she stayed safe. Vowing to cause triple the pain to anyone who might hurt her.
He knew exactly what it was like to care that much. What he didn’t know was what it was like for someone to care that much for him.
“Robert, Alistair’s father, found me just after Caroline was born,” Pari said, a single finger tracing down the window pane. “Carol, the woman who raised me, had passed on her water talent just a year before. She had cancer in her pancreas, and we knew it was only a matter of time. When she asked me to bring a locked wooden box to her hospital room, I thought she was going to be giving me a will or her bank papers. Instead, it was a ceremonial knife. A few muttered words and a slicing of palms later, I was the one who could do water tricks.” She held her hand out, palm up, and tiny droplets of water rained onto it. “She died the next morning.” The small rainfall went from a drizzle to a sprinkle. When Pari cleared her throat and sniffled, Layne realized where the liquid was coming from.
“After Carol was gone, I was a mess. I practically lived in the pubs. I just couldn’t stand looking at the wallpaper and curtains of the house I grew up in anymore, you know? So I partied. I don’t know what would have become of me if I hadn’t found out I was pregnant. Nothing good, that’s for certain. But the moment the doctor told me I was going to be a mum, I quit. Problem was, I had pissed away every bit of Carol’s savings. I was able to work as a waitress for a while, but then the pregnancy got complicated, and I started missing work, and the next thing I knew, I was jobless and on the verge of becoming homeless.
&nbs
p; “It got worse after Caroline was born. I couldn’t afford childcare, but I couldn’t afford not to work either. That’s when I got the bright idea to use the one thing I had that no one else did to earn some coin.”
“Your ability to manipulate water,” Lizzie guessed.
Pari nodded. “I took a train into Edinburgh six days a week and worked as a street performer. I did all sorts of little tricks with a single glass of water, and tourists ate it up. I wasn’t getting rich, but I was getting by. And the best part was, I could do it all with Caroline strapped to me. Some people got annoyed when I would have to take a break to feed her, but mostly it just got me bigger tips.
“I thought I was being so smart. They were just simple little tricks, most of which any good illusionist could do. At first, I didn’t really notice the older gentleman who was coming around. I drew in big crowds, and eventually every face started looking the same anyway. But then he started asking questions. He made me nervous, but not nervous enough to give up my only source of income.”
She shook her head at decisions she could no longer unmake. “It was a perfect July night when I was grabbed. Because the sun stays out so late in the summer, I performed until nearly ten at night. One moment I was walking along North Bridge, back towards the train station, and the next I was waking up in this room to the screams of my daughter.”
Her tiny tear-fueled rainstorm had stopped, but there were still thunderclouds in Pari’s eyes.
“If there is one thing Alistair and I can agree on, it’s his father was a monster. Those first weeks were a living hell. When he didn’t have me drugged out of my mind, I was handcuffed to the leg of the table or getting some up-close and personal time with someone’s fists. He was furious I didn’t know anything about your kind. I kept trying to explain I had never even heard of Shifters and Seers before, but he thought I was lying. Eventually, I started showing him the true scope of my powers. Not as a threat, but as a bargaining tool.” She met their eyes briefly, as if daring them to condemn her for her actions. Neither of them did. They both knew they would have done the same thing in her shoes.
“When they came to tell me he died, I cried. I cried so hard I could hardly breathe. Everyone thought I was grieving, but I wasn’t. Those were tears of joy. I know I’m going to hell for it, but the happiest day of my life was when Robert Halifax took his last miserable breath.”
Even without Lizzie’s Sight, Layne knew Pari was drowning in guilt. She blamed herself for getting caught and subjecting Caroline to a life where getting to go outside for even a few minutes was a luxury. He could have told her it was stupid to blame herself for the actions of a madman, but she wouldn’t have listened. He knew better than most what it was like to only hear the condemnation you thought you deserved instead of the compassion you were given.
“So we know where we are and how we got here,” Lizzie said, a series of lines etched between her eyebrows as she started off at some unseen spot in the distance. “It feels like a major breakthrough, but is it really? We’re still trapped inside this house with no way out.”
“You’re only trapped here until your next assignment,” Layne reminded her. “Next time you go out, you run and don’t stop until you can safely call the Alphas and tell them where to send the extraction team.”
Lizzie’s teeth bit into the soft skin of her full bottom lip. Even though she’d been looking at nothing in particular before, now it seemed as if she was looking at everything but him. A ball comprised of fear and rage settled next to his sternum.
“Lizzie—”
“No. Stop. There is no reason to have this same fight again. Nothing has changed. Not really.”
“What do you mean nothing has changed? You have a place to send the freaking rescue mission. Now you can escape without worrying about me being trapped here forever.”
Lizzie’s eyes met his. There was something in her gaze that made him feel as if someone hit him in the chest, causing his fear and rage ball to come loose and drop into his stomach where it turned into something else entirely. Something even more terrifying: Hope.
It wasn’t hope they would escape. It was an old hope, one he thought he’d killed years ago.
“I’m not leaving you here,” she said, her voice shaking with some unnamed emotion.
Layne tried really hard not to think of names for that emotion. It would only feed the hope, and experience taught him nothing hurt quite so much as false hope.
“You know if I escape they’re not just going to keep you around here as Caroline’s nanny. They will kill you, Layne.”
“But you’ll be free. And you’ll send someone to free Pari and Caroline.”
“Do you honestly think our freedom is a fair trade for your life? Are you insane?”
She would say that to anyone, he reminded himself. This isn’t about you.
“What we’re doing here isn’t living,” he said. “So, yes, I think one life in exchange for three is a good deal.”
Lizzie growled, a real, honest-to-the-Shifter-gods growl, which was rather impressive since she didn’t have a canine half. “No, it’s not.”
Pari turned to fully face them for the first time, although she didn’t look directly at either of them. “But if there is a chance—“
“No,” Lizzie snapped. The light streaming through the window reflected off gold flecks in her narrowed eyes. “I’m not leaving him. Ever. Don’t ask again.”
Pari turned back to the window, discreetly wiping away a tear. With one last frustrated glare thrown his way, Lizzie took a stack of books and stomped out of the room. And in Layne’s chest, that old, long forgotten hope began to grow.
Chapter 18
Lizzie had mistakenly believed her assignments would be few and far between, but shortly after her trip to the British Museum, she found herself being whisked off to London yet again. This time she and Alistair met with an elderly woman at Café Nero where she enjoyed a hot chocolate and shortbread before declaring the woman a fraud.
The steel-haired woman had claimed to know the whereabouts of a werewolf in Denmark where her daughter was living. Lizzie would have known she was lying without touching her since her description included the savage beast walking around on his back legs and standing nearly seven foot tall, which wasn’t anywhere near possible since Shifters fully transform into their animal halves. However, Lizzie might have been a bit more discreet about her declaration and softened it a bit by saying the woman was so old she didn’t know what she was talking about if she hadn’t touched her and seen the deep-seated greed that had guided her entire corrupt life.
Alistair was so pleased with Lizzie’s performance he took her to watch the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace after. Despite her complete boredom and inability to see over the heads towering in front of her, Lizzie pretended complete and utter delight. She hung on Alistair’s arm and gave him so many smiles her face hurt. She batted her eyelashes and laughed at his jokes. She made him feel like he was the center of her world, and in turn he started feeling like she was the center of his.
Lizzie knew it was a dangerous game she was playing, but there weren’t many options. It was either play simpering devotee to Alistair in hopes one day he would forget she was the enemy and let down his guard enough to let her find a way for them all to escape, or follow Layne’s plan of abandonment, which wasn’t really an option. Too many people had left him already. She wouldn’t do it, especially when doing so might cost him his life.
Living in captivity might not be truly living, but it was so far beyond living life without Layne it wasn’t even worth considering.
After their encounter with Granny Greedy the Liar, Lizzie and Alistair began going out on weekly assignments. Pari almost always accompanied them. Once they were at their destination, she would go off with David to do her Pari thing while Lizzie and Alistair interviewed informants, potential SHP members, and investors. Twice she was asked to confirm whether the person they were meeting was a Shifter. In one instance
she was able to honestly say he wasn’t, and in the other she lied, begging him to go to the Alphas with her eyes. For the next two weeks she tensed with anticipation every time the doors of their apartment locked, hoping Liam or Charlie would be the person who burst through the door, ready to rescue their lost pack mates. But the calvary never came, and eventually Lizzie stopped looking for them to show up.
Most of their assignments took them back to London. She walked passed Parliament and Big Ben, smelled the breeze coming off the Thames, and even rode across Tower Bridge. She met people in pubs, coffee houses, and on benches in Hyde Park. Every experience was muddled by the fog of over-the-counter sleep medications. After her first assignment, she no longer had to endure Dr. Patel’s shots, but Alistair still insisted on blindfolds and double doses of whatever sleep medication he happened to have on-hand.
Only twice had she woke up to find herself somewhere other than London. Once it was to meet with a potential SHP member at Stonehenge, and the other was a weekend in Edinburgh. Pari hadn’t accompanied them on the Scotland trip, and Lizzie wondered if it was because Alistair worried someone might recognize her, or if it was because he wanted them to spend some extended time alone. Their meeting only took a few moments. A ten minute discussion on out-of-country bank accounts, a three second handshake, and a two minute assessment of the situation, and they were done. Once they wrapped up business, she and Alistair spent hours climbing the streets to the castle and looking through shops overburdened with plaid and wool. He bought her expensive gloves and beautiful yarn, and that night, he lingered outside her hotel room door, hoping she would ask for him to switch places with the woman who would guard her throughout the night.
Things were both going according to plan and not. Alistair had become uncomfortably obsessed with her, but it wasn’t making him careless. Guards followed them wherever they went, and Lizzie wasn’t given any more freedoms than on their first outing. She’d met many of his closest associates, but never did he speak freely in front of her, and never was she allowed to touch them, even with her gloves on.
Whispered Visions (Shifters & Seers Book 3) Page 14