I See You (Oracle 2) (12 page)

“It’s okay for him to walk?” I asked.

“Not yet, but I can’t exactly carry him out in the open.”

“Cy was just waving a gun around.”

Kandy shrugged. “Yeah, that’s just regular human garbage. Me carrying Beau would make a bigger splash on YouTube. Then we’d be in real trouble.” She grabbed one of Beau’s arms. “Get on his other side, oracle. I’ll do the lifting, but you can make a show of it. Don’t put any pressure on your ankle, kitten.”

I hunkered down to get Beau’s arm across my shoulder, but Kandy was already lifting him up. I tried to pretend I was holding weight that I actually wasn’t as we shuffled toward the door of the RV.

“That was a quick trip to New Orleans,” Beau said.

“Francois was out of town. His beta met me in Jackson. All is not well with the Gulf Coast North American Pack. They’re investigating the deaths of two of their younger wolves, possible drug overdoses. Which just doesn’t happen. I’m a complication. They want me gone, and quickly.”

Beau grunted. “Happy to oblige.”

We reached the door to the Brave, then awkwardly dragged Beau up the steps. He was suffering in silence, but it was obvious we were causing him more pain in the process.

Once inside, Kandy took over. She stuffed Beau in the far corner of the dinette, then lifted his injured leg at an angle that let him rest his calf on the edge of the opposite bench. I had to be careful not to bump his foot when passing through.

“Painkillers?” I asked Kandy as I opened the door of the bathroom.

The werewolf shook her head. “He’d have to down the bottle to make a difference, even if that was enough. We’ll hit the nearest gas station for ice.” She glanced at Beau.

“Two rights, three lefts,” he said wearily.

Kandy nodded, crossing to the door. “Rochelle, you follow me.” She took a step down out of the Brave, but then paused. “And Beau?”

“Yeah?”

“That wasn’t meth.”

Beau swallowed, closed his eyes, and rested his head against the wall. “Yeah, I could smell it.”

Kandy nodded curtly, not at all happy. She shut the door to the Brave behind her. I locked it, then stepped back to keep an eye on the house through the window over the dinette while Kandy darted across the street to her SUV.

“I’m so sorry,” Beau murmured.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“Rochelle …”

“No, Beau. I dragged you here. I feel like a complete asshole for bringing you back.”

He shook his head. “I left Ettie here. With them. I took off the second after I graduated. I barely made it out of school or out of town. You heard Ada. Even now any attention from the police would be … extra shitty. That’s who I am.”

“Beau …”

Outside, the SUV started up. I glanced out the tiny window over the sink, tracking Kandy as she executed a U-turn, then pulled forward to idle in front of the Brave.

“Go,” Beau said. “I just need a nap. Fuck them anyway. We get Ettie and we go. End of sob story.”

I climbed into the driver’s seat, buckled in, and started the Brave. “Beau?”

“Yeah?”

“What could you smell? If not meth?”

I pulled away from the curb, following Kandy’s SUV down the street. Beau didn’t answer until a block later.

“My mother. He smelled like my mother’s magic.”

“What do you mean? Like they’d been in contact? That makes sense doesn’t it?”

“No, not like that. I don’t know. It was like he was sweating my mother’s magic. I doubt Kandy could pick it up the same way, because she doesn’t know Ada. But that’s what it smelled like to me.”

“Is that … how could that be possible?”

“I don’t know.”

Carefully navigating the tightly parked streets to the gas station, I replayed pieces of the conversation with Cy. I was trying to tie something he’d said, or anything he’d done, to my vision of Ettie lying dead on the sun-softened blacktop.

“Beau?”

“Yeah?”

“Who’s Byron?”

He didn’t answer. I couldn’t look back at him and drive, so I elaborated. “Cy asked if Byron had sent you.”

“I know.”

I stole a glance over my shoulder as I rolled to a stop at a corner. Beau’s head was tilted back and his eyes were closed. I felt bad for poking at him when he was in pain.

“Just some asshole drug dealer who we’re going to stay as far as fuck away from as possible,” he said. “If Cy is on the outs with him, then that’s why Ettie’s in trouble. Asshole probably owes Byron money. He’s probably using what he’s supposed to be protecting.”

“Meth? Or whatever you smelled?”

“Yeah …”
 

Beau didn’t sound so sure, but I let the conversation drop. We weren’t there to rip open old wounds. I wanted to be gone even quicker than we’d arrived.

CHAPTER SIX

“Cy is a piece of shit. Too stupid to even deal,” Beau said. “His limited magic makes him valuable to the local dealer as a meathead. Nothing else.”

“That didn’t look like nothing
,
” Kandy said. “And it didn’t smell like nothing either.” She placed an entire bag of gas station ice on Beau’s leg, having bought three bags in the time it took me to park in the empty lot beside the station.

“It has nothing to do with why we’re here,” Beau said.

“Listen. I’m all for skipping the my-stepdad-is-a-total-asshole preamble. Been there, done that,” the werewolf said. “So why don’t you just jump to the part where you confess what shit you’re into so I can figure out why the hell I’m here.”

“Beau hasn’t even been in the state for four years,” I said.

Kandy turned her glare on me. I folded my arms, jutted my chin out at her, and leaned back against the laminate counter. She wasn’t going to intimidate me in my own home.

The werewolf pulled her phone out of her back pocket and scrolled back through her text messages. “So you know what happens when you throw a few bucks the way of an Adept who has a way with technology?”

“What?” I said snottily, though I was exceedingly aware that I was treading a fine line of ignorance. “She can find shit on people like any regular person with Google can?”

Kandy snorted. “She can find a whole lot of shit about an Ada and a Cy Harris, even though all she had was an address to work with, but Beau Jamison doesn’t come up with anything at all. Not. One. Thing.”

She turned her glare back to Beau.

He sighed. “But Beaumont Harris has a bunch of priors, no convictions. All under the age of eighteen. I reverted to my birth name, for obvious reasons.”

“So?” I asked.

“So?” Kandy echoed in disbelief.

“Yeah, so what? You think Beau wants to be here? Hell, I don’t even want to be here, but we’re here, aren’t we?” I yanked my sketchbook out of my satchel. “You want to know why? You want to see why? It’s right here in black and white.”

“Whoa, whoa, oracle,” Kandy said, throwing her hands up in mock-surrender. “We’re having a conversation, not a cage match. I’m asking questions because I need to know what I’m protecting Beau from. I’m not accusing or condemning anyone.”

I stared at her for a moment, then realizing I was still thrusting my sketchbook out between us, I tucked it back in my satchel. “Fine.”

“Okay, fine.”

“Cy mentioned a restraining order that I didn’t know about,” Beau said. “He could have been bluffing. I seriously doubt he went to court for anything permanent. The local police aren’t going to be my biggest fans, but I’m not skipping bail or anything.”

Kandy harrumphed, not wholly convinced, but then turned her attention to whatever food she could gather in the Brave’s kitchen.

Beau eyed me behind her back, then offered me a pleased grin. I narrowed my eyes at him. His grin widened. Apparently, he liked it when I freaked out while defending him.

Kandy started throwing things on the table. A loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese, cold cuts.

I snorted as I gathered the food back onto the kitchen counter. “I’ll make sandwiches.”

“Finally,” Kandy groused. “What were you waiting for?”

She hopped cleanly over Beau’s propped-up leg and settled down on the bench seat opposite him.

I clicked the cutting board in over the sink, creating a perfect workstation for sandwich making. Then I crossed back to the fridge for condiments.
 

Beau reached for me as I passed. I brushed my fingertips against his in response.

Kandy was staring out the window into the parking lot, toward the pumps and the minimart beyond. I didn’t think she cared about our PDA, but something was still seriously bothering her.

I’d spread mayo and mustard on the whole-wheat bread and was in the middle of thinly slicing tomato when Kandy finally broke the silence.

“Man, your parents are way worse than mine.”

Beau started. He’d been dozing. “Thanks,” he said dryly.

“Mine just didn’t give a shit, you know? Don’t give a shit.”

“Right.”

“Where do we go from here?”

“To Ettie. Whatever is going on with Cy has nothing to do with warning Ettie.”

“Sure …” Kandy trailed off. “I just don’t think that was it.”

“Was what?” I slid a plate piled with diagonally cut sandwiches into the middle of the table, then tore three pieces of paper towel off the roll to use as napkins.

“The far seer didn’t send me here to stop you from getting a few extra bumps and bruises.” Kandy was still looking out the window, but now she was playing with the cuff on her right wrist, twisting it around and around.

I poured milk for everyone. Beau eyed the sandwiches, then looked at Kandy expectantly.

She waved her hand toward the sandwiches. “Eat. Eat.”

He smiled at her pleasantly, still waiting.

She snarled, grabbed half a sandwich, and bit into it. “I’m not your alpha.” Her words were garbled around a mouth full of food.

I sighed and slid into the tiny wedge of seat beside Beau, careful to not jostle his leg. Shapeshifter games.

Beau twined his fingers through mine and reached for half a sandwich with his other hand. I’d made a veggie sandwich for myself, devoting the remainder of the bread to turkey sandwiches for Kandy and Beau. I could handle touching cold cuts.

“So something else is coming,” Kandy said.

“Okay,” Beau said. “Maybe it is Cy.”

Kandy shrugged. “He’s nothing. He’s not the threat.”

“Don’t know, then. Maybe that was it. Maybe Cy would have shot us.”

“In front of your mother?” Kandy asked.

“What would she care?”

“She was at the window, clutching the curtains.”

Beau eyed Kandy uncertainly. “Over Cy, maybe.”

“Maybe.”

Kandy looked back out the window. I knew we’d get kicked out of the gas station parking lot sooner than later, even if we filled up the RV and the SUV, so I nudged the plate of sandwiches toward Beau. He squeezed my hand, then ate another two halves in rapid succession.

“So we find Ettie.” Kandy finally turned her attention away from the window to grab another sandwich.

“Oxford’s only an hour and a half away,” Beau said.

“It’ll be after six by the time we get there,” I said. “And we didn’t get an address or phone number.”
 

Kandy snorted derisively. Snapping up two more sandwiches, she climbed out of the dinette over Beau’s leg.

“What?” I asked.

“We’ll track her,” Beau explained. “Get on campus, then track her from there.”

“Don’t you need a … like an article of clothing?”

“I know what she smells like,” Beau said.

“And I know what Beau smells like,” Kandy said. “And her dad is really delightful. I know what that pig smells like as well.” She left without further comment, shutting the door behind her and sauntering toward the gas station’s minimart.
 

I looked at Beau. “Families smell alike?”

“Shared blood smells similar,” Beau said. “Usually. I can’t track like a wolf can, though. I wouldn’t be able to find just anyone, other than you and Ettie, maybe. Not by scent alone.”

I stood to clear the table. “What was with all the staring out the window? Contemplation doesn’t seem like a werewolf trait.”

Beau laughed. “She was watching for Cy. The Brave kind of stands out. Wolves prefer to run in a pack. Makes them harder to pick out and pick off.”

“But cats hunt solo.”

“Most of the time.” Beau smiled at me.

I grinned back at him over my shoulder, rinsing the milk glasses and placing them upside down in the rack to dry.

Kandy banged on the front hood of the RV as she crossed back to the SUV parked beside us, startling me. I peered out the windshield, seeing the werewolf now carrying a bag of Doritos and a handful of pepperoni. I shook my head, pulled a bag of Oreos out of the upper cupboard, and dropped it in Beau’s lap. He grabbed for me at arm’s-length reach, wincing in pain as he did so.

“Rochelle? We okay?”

I stepped back to brush my hand over his closely clipped hair, then pressed a kiss to his forehead. “We’re always okay. Except you need to sleep. Food and sleep kick-start healing, right? Should I help you back to the bed?”

“Nah, here is good.” He let go of me, though not until after he gave my ass an appreciative squeeze.

I laughed. “Later.”

“Promise.”

“The vow is implied. Always.”

“Ah, good.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

I climbed into the driver’s seat, then once again followed Kandy’s SUV onto the main road and toward the highway.

Beau’s family had said a shitload of shit about him. By his reaction and his mini confession to Kandy, I gathered that a bunch of it was true. That made me livid. Not at Beau, though — who I imagined had done what he needed to do to survive — but at his supposed family.

Yeah, I didn’t see any Thanksgiving or Christmas family dinners in our future. And honestly, I was more relieved than mournful about that. I wanted Beau away from these poisonous people ASAP. I just hoped Ettie wasn’t such a shithead.

∞

“That’s her,” I said, just seconds after I laid eyes on the two women at the end of the gray-carpeted corridor.

The two twenty-somethings — a blond and a brunette — were standing together in hushed conversation in what appeared to be a study nook. Not that I knew anything about universities, but a couch and some chairs off to the side of a hallway in the science building was pretty obviously a student lounge area of some sort. The lack of snacks or a TV seemed to put it firmly in the ‘study’ category.