Airs & Graces (22 page)

“What did you see?” I asked.

“I saw myself talking to Michael, offering him Iaoel’s knowledge if he’d go and rescue you from Hell,” she said, rubbing her shoulder where I’d struck her. “And I knew she was just trying to get to me, while I was tired.”

“You knew?”

She nodded emphatically, kicking back to her feet with proper technique, even though the process jarred her shoulder a bit. “I knew it was just her, because it’ll be a cold day in hell before I give that bastard anything.”

I couldn’t help but smile. The vision may have been Iaoel’s, but the sentiment was pure Adelaide.

She once again ate two full meals at dinner, drawing a comment from the waitress. Adelaide just quipped back pleasantly, and went back to eating. By dessert, she was right back in Piorre’s journals, making more notes. This time, noting her resilience and bouncing back from what she’d seen during the day, I decided to inquire as to what had her attention. “Any thoughts?”

“Just him, kinda sorting through his stuff and talking about writing his will sometime. I guess he was trying to come to terms with his own mortality or whatever…” She fell silent. One might perhaps have assumed she was reflecting sadly on Piorre’s death, but I saw the look in her eyes and had seen it before.

I waited to see how she would react this time. I did not particularly expect her to come out of the vision muttering.

“Fuck you, lady,” said Adelaide. “You can do better than that.” Her eyes became distant again, before she emerged from the second vision with a vindicated mutter of “Thank you.”

Chapter Seven

Adelaide

Tab looked at me speculatively and I waved him off. There was no way in a million freaking years I would tell him half the shit I was seeing. It was like Iaoel and I were old high school frienemies. We were all well and good when I was falling in line with what
she
wanted but the minute I deviated she would get all pissy-pants and show me shit I really didn’t want or need to see. It was mentally and yeah, sometimes emotionally exhausting too, on top of all the physical things I’d been doing.

Tab and I didn’t really talk unless it had to do with training and for the most part, I was cool with that… but it was also kind of lonely even with another person in my head. Iaoel and I could at least agree on one thing. My body needed to stay intact. It was pretty much the only common ground we had.

She wanted me to leave Tab and strike out on my own, but I remained stubbornly obstinate towards that plan, which, predictably, pissed her right the fuck off. She couldn’t yell at me or scream at me or tell me in words, so the cruel bitch showed me some pretty horrific things. Like her shoving Tab into some kind of Hellmouth, for one. That hadn’t been special. It’d been fucking heartbreaking. The portal had opened up behind Tab, a bloodstain in mid-air, clawed hands reaching for him, grasping his arms and his wings and pulling him back and away from me as I’d stood there coldly and watched.

Well,
she’d
stood there coldly and watched.
I
had screamed silently and begged and pleaded and willed the vision to change. I’d prayed in vain that she would dash forward in the last seconds and grasp his hands, pull him free but no. All I got to do was relive the hurt and the anguish in his cool, liquid gray eyes as he was swallowed by the Hellmouth whole, and it roiled in on itself until it collapsed completely. I really fucking hated her for showing me that, and she did it at least once every other day, because she knew it bothered me so much.

Petty, vindictive,
manipulative
bitch.

I kept that in the front of my brain, on my mind, as much as possible. She was a manipulative bitch. I reminded myself not to listen to her, not to trust her or believe her too readily. No matter what she showed me.

“Adelaide?” Tab questioned. I closed my eyes and shook my head.

“It’s fine,” I lied. “I’m fine.” He didn’t look like he believed me.
Big surprise there
.

“You’re finished?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Let’s get out of here.”

We paid for our meal and walked in silence back to the hotel. Typically when you worried someone, they would cast sidelong looks at you, ask if you were okay, that sort of thing. Tab did none of these things, probably because he didn’t give two fucks. Over the last couple of weeks, you’d think I would have grown used to that. Not so much. I felt my mood sink a little further.

Back in Colorado I’d had a little mini-revelation, during the fight, I’d stayed surprisingly calm and Iaoel had done her thing and it’d made me realize a couple of things. One, my faith in Tab wasn’t misplaced, he really
could
and
would
get me through just about anything, which was great, but two, he would only do it in so far as I was useful to him. I wasn’t sure how much of those revelations were me versus Iaoel. I’d started second-guessing and triple-checking just about every thought I had once Tab had given me the heads up on what kind of person Iaoel was.

You must use your best judgement when it comes to the things that Iaoel shows you. She most certainly is not to be trusted, at least not entirely…

Yeah, well, neither was Tab, at least not entirely. Some of the things John said back in Wyoming had stuck with me, then in Boulder, after the fight, it’d occurred to me. I was only able to trust Tab as long as our objectives ran parallel to each other. If ever they diverged at any given point, my ass was on the line and the only person or thing I could trust then was
me.
So, I needed to be more useful, not only to Tab, but to myself so the whole training me up to handle myself in a fight? That had been more for my benefit than it’d been for Tab’s but I’d needed to spin it in such a way that he would teach me what I needed to know. Really, the whole convoluted mess made my fucking head hurt but it was true. Incredibly sad, totally isolating, cripplingly lonely, and true. The only person I could rely on was me.

Fuck. My. Life.

“Adelaide, stop.” Tab gripped my elbow firmly and halted us in our tracks.

“What?” I asked.

“What’s going on?” he asked. I closed my mouth resolutely and swallowed hard. Finally I shook my head.

“I’m good,” I said and plucked up every bit of courage I had to look him right in the eye and lie. I put on a smile and told him, “I’m just tired is all. Long day.”

He narrowed his eyes at me, that disconcerting flash of blue whirling through them, before he let my arm go and nodded once, solemnly.

It wasn’t one hundred percent a lie, more like only two thirds. I
was
tired and it
had
been a long day, but what weighed on my mind and my heart… it wasn’t exactly anything I wanted to confide in him. Nothing I wanted to bring up for him to relive all over again. We’d started walking again, and once back at our hotel room, I went straight for my neatly folded pile of new clothes, courtesy of the local Wally World, and picked through them for something suitable to change into.

“Going to grab a shower unless you want dibs on the bathroom,” I said.

I looked over to where he sat on the end of his bed, his head cocked to the side, almost like a bird as he considered me. It was almost like he was listening to something I couldn’t hear, but I knew that wasn’t it. It was just Tab’s considering look.

“No, go ahead,” he said finally, and I nodded once, before closing myself into the smaller room. It was really the only alone time I got to myself, and sometimes I needed that. Lately, I wanted a lot more of it. I stripped out of my gross workout clothes, which consisted of yoga pants and a couple of clingy tank tops over a sports bra, and let them live in a heap on the floor under the sink for the time being while I stepped into the shower. I stayed in for a long time, until my fingers pruned, and I felt as clean as ever.

I’d started sleeping in functional clothes. I had a military style backpack pretty much set and ready by the bed so we could bounce at a moment’s notice. Tab’s idea. Couldn’t say it was a bad one. A fresh set of underwear, back in a new pair of yoga pants and an oversized tee shirt, and I was as good as I was going to get. I went back out and dumped my dirty things into a trash bag. I did laundry every other day in the hotel’s small laundry room. Tab eyed me again, face as unreadable as ever, before he drew breath to speak.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, heading whatever he was going to say off at the pass.

“Twenty questions, Adelaide,” he said, and I sighed. First time he’d invoked it, and I’d started it. I dropped heavily onto the center of my bed and curled my legs underneath me.

“Shoot,” I said.

“What’s she showing you?” he asked me.

“A lot of things, nothing I want to tell you either,” I said and twisted my lips. I wouldn’t look at him, and I really didn’t want him to pry. He breathed out a sigh that almost sounded resigned.

“Your question,” he said gently.

“Swords aren’t really doing it for me, so can we try something else?” I asked.

“Knives might suit you better. And they’re more concealable.”

“Amen to that,” I agreed and raised my eyebrows.

“You’re sure you don’t want to talk about it?” he asked me.

“Nope.”

“You don’t trust me,” he stated.

I breathed out. “Look, I trust you to keep me alive. I trust that when the shit goes down, you’ve got this, but you’re right… I don’t trust you. You said it yourself, we aren’t friends; you’re just the closest thing to… I’m trying here, but I don’t believe for one minute that if it comes down to me or the rest of the human race that you’ll hesitate to kill me, and I get that. I mean, I want that too… it’s just… I’m lonely,” I confessed.

He cocked his head to the side in that considering look again, then looked at me intently. “Adelaide, I’m not going to leave you alone.”

“Yeah, well… you just go ahead and tell yourself whatever you need to believe to sleep at night Tab, because we both know that’s only half true.” My nose tingled, and I felt that hot pressure at the back of my eyeballs. I stared up at the ceiling and took some calm and measured breaths. He didn’t say anything, nothing at all. It was like he’d disappeared with how still and silent he’d gone but I knew if I looked he would still be right there.

“Your question…” he murmured finally.

“Pass,” I said. I didn’t have anything I cared to ask him.

“What did she show you in the diner?” he asked me. “What did Iaoel do to you?”

I didn’t bother pointing out that it was two questions. She’d started in on those heartbreaking images of Tab being dragged down to Hell, and I’d told her to fuck right off that she could do better and damned if she hadn’t one-upped even that. She’d gone all out. I mean I think that was the case, because she’d been quiet ever since. I think she’d worn herself out with the ‘better’ vision.

“Uh, I think it was when you took her out, I mean… You…” The tears welled and spilled this time because I was so afraid that it was a vision of a possible future,
my
possible future.

“Adelaide, tell me,” he urged.

“It hurt, you know? Your sword in my chest, it hurt.” But not as much as the detached and dispassionate look in his eyes as he’d stared into my own from inches away. Not as much as the look on his face that spoke to me that I was nothing. That I didn’t matter… because in the grand scheme of things I was well aware that I didn’t and that almost hurt more than the blade grating against bone. That hurt more than the burning, piercing pain of Tab’s blade running straight through my heart. I lay down, grabbed my pillow and hugged it to my chest and let myself give in to my despair and cry, the silent sobs breaking on an anguished cry as the door swished shut behind him.

Yeah. I wouldn’t want to watch me cry either.

***

“Again,” he said in his tone that was borderline bored. Yay! That meant I had done it right. Tab was short on praise in these training sessions. To earn a ‘good, very good’ I generally had to pull something off flawlessly. It didn’t happen too often, only a few times since we’d been here.

We went at it again, my vision phased out and did something
new
this time. Usually I ‘saw’ what was coming and just let my body do the walking – almost like a person wearing virtual reality goggles – but
this
time, I managed to hold on, for lack of a better word. This time, I didn’t lose my real world vision. I could still see what was right in front of me. I met Tab’s precise gray gaze, then whirled, ducked, and came up on his inside, the rubber practice knife pressed tight against his inner thigh, really close to his groin. I swallowed hard.

“Good,” he said, and I could hear the question before he asked it. I didn’t need any Angel’s Grace Superpower bullshit to hear it coming either.

“That was different. I didn’t lose my sight that time. The vision was like an overlay instead,” I told him.

“I see.” He cleared his throat, and I looked up at him from where I’d been staring at the knife… pressed practically all up in his junk. Fuck. My cheeks flamed with embarrassment, and I got up fast.

He hadn’t come back last night. I’d gotten up this morning to him coming out of the bathroom dressed and ready to go. So I’d pulled on my running shoes, and we’d done our morning cardio, running to the gym. He’d presented me with the rubber practice knife this morning after we’d stretched. We still hadn’t talked about my emo cry fest, and I was good with that. Nope. We were all business, and so I stuck to it.