I See You (Oracle 2) (17 page)

“Wait.”

“The coin is burning up. Beau is near.”

“The vehicle’s coated with a weak distraction spell, but opening the doors and getting out is too much of a disruption for it to fully cover,” Blackwell said. Then he nodded toward the brick building.

A couple of guys were loitering outside the front doors, but I didn’t recognize either of them from the university lab. A night deposit box had been cut into the brick at some point. I couldn’t see much of the building’s interior beyond the well-lit reception and waiting area, but the bank appeared to have been recently renovated into office space.

“Humans,” Blackwell said as he rolled down his window.

Despite the fact that it was now after dark, stifling heat swamped us like an electric blanket on overload.

“So?”

“So, Adepts don’t tangle with humans. Well … I won’t with you in tow.”
 

He fished his cellphone out of his pocket and snapped a couple of pictures of the bruisers. One of them was sipping from a huge soda cup. “That tattoo is distinctive.”

I squinted at the loitering muscle. They both had tattoos, but I couldn’t see anything distinctive about their ink. Maybe I needed my eyes checked. A nearsighted oracle. Now that was ironic.

Blackwell attached the pictures he’d taken to a text message he was about to send to some guy named Marshal. He showed me his screen, zooming in on the tattoo on the neck of the nondrinker.

“A swastika?”

“Prison tattoos.”

Blackwell added the address of the bank to his text message and hit send. Then he went back to observing the building.

“So we just wait?”

“We wait.”

“But —”

“What do you see across the street?”

“An old bank.”

“And?”

“Two guys. Both smaller than you.”

Blackwell snorted.

“So?” I challenged. “What do you see?”

“An armored building in the middle of suburban America, possibly filled with human thugs working for your possible drug dealer. Humans who have the will and the capability to capture two shapeshifters in full sight of a campus filled with students, then bring them here. Not some clandestine location down by the river where the alligators roam.”

“I think that’s Florida. And they didn’t know they were shapeshifters.”

Blackwell ignored me. “Two guards out back watching a fortified door. Two guards out front, plainly packing. They have absolutely no concern about local police. Plus, the vehicles in the parking lot put the minimum count of hired guns up to five.”

I tried to come up with a snippy response, but I honestly hadn’t seen the guards at the back, or the fortified door. I’d honed in on the van, wanting to simply rush the building and find Beau.

Blackwell’s phone pinged. I read over his shoulder.

>
Both pictured have outstanding warrants. But why do you care?

Blackwell texted back.
They work for a possible local drug dealer and are currently holding a shapeshifter who is under my protection.

>Since when do you work for the pack?

Consider it a favor.

>
I’m hours away.

I’ll come get you.

>Yeah, it’ll be easy to explain that one to the office.

Blackwell didn’t text back. He handed his phone to me and started the car.

“Wait,” I said.

“Pay attention, Rochelle.” Blackwell pulled away from the curb. “Even shielded, if we linger, we’ll draw attention. A sorcerer is only as good as the tools he wields.”

“I’m not a sorcerer.”

Blackwell smiled, then deliberately eyed my butterfly tattoo again. This time, I turned my wrist away.

The sorcerer’s phone pinged. Flipping the phone up to read the text would put my wrist back into the sorcerer’s questioning view. Though I really wasn’t sure why I was attempting to hide anything from him. Instinct, maybe.

He slowed the sedan a few blocks down from the bank, indicating left into the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant. Then we waited for oncoming traffic to clear.

“The text?” Blackwell prompted.

I glanced at the phone.

>Ah, shit.

“ ‘Ah, shit,’ ” I repeated as another text appeared with a ping.

>
This will void our debt in full.

I repeated the message to Blackwell, who sighed. “Text yes.”

He pulled the sedan into the parking lot.

I texted.
Yes.

>Then meet me where I had the unfortunate experience of meeting you the 1st time. 15 minutes.

I read this message to Blackwell as he backed the sedan into a spot across from the front door of the restaurant.

Blackwell laughed. “Not everyone likes me as much as you do.”

“I don’t like you at all.”

“Exactly.”

Only a single table situated at the front window appeared to be occupied. But judging by the bags being loaded out of the kitchen door into an idling red hatchback, the place did a brisk takeout business.

Blackwell shut off the car, then turned to face me. “You will stay in the car.”

“Ah, really?”

The sorcerer made a show of dropping the car keys into his suit pocket. “You will not wander back to the bank. You will not call attention to yourself in any way.”

“This guy owes you something?” I asked, avoiding acknowledging his orders to stay put.

“Yes. And now he won’t,” the sorcerer answered pointedly. I ignored the implication that he was wasting a favor owed to him on Beau and me.
 

“And he can help us how?”

“He’s a United States Marshal.”

“A U.S. Marshal owes you a favor?”

“A sorcerer owes me a substantial favor.”

I thought about this for a while. Adepts had to have jobs, obviously, but I hadn’t had much reason to think about what those jobs might be. Beyond Beau working as a mechanic or Jade running a bakery, I mean. Now Kandy was a physiotherapist and some other guy was a U.S. Marshal.

“I thought magic didn’t work on humans?”

“Mind magic such as yours wouldn’t work on a mundane, nor could a mundane be turned into a fully realized werewolf or vampire. But sorcerers can wield other magic. Can’t they?”

He reached over and deliberately tapped my butterfly tattoo, hard. An electric shock accompanied his assault on my wrist.

“Care to tell me about the butterfly?”

“No.”

He laughed. “We have years and years to discuss such things, oracle. A long and fruitful collaboration. Do you think the pack can train you to wield magic?”

I didn’t answer.

“Stay in the car.”

He waited for me to respond. I grunted in acknowledgement.

Blackwell got out, locking the doors behind him, then sauntered over to the restaurant. The red hatchback zoomed out of the lot, laden with its load of takeout. It blew between the sorcerer and me, tires squealing as it hit the street.

I watched Blackwell as he pushed open the front door and entered the restaurant. Neither of the diners or the waiter appeared to notice him. He immediately turned right, crossing into the men’s room.

He didn’t come back out.

CHAPTER EIGHT

>Why isn’t Kandy answering her cellphone
?
D.

I stared for so long at the text message that had popped up on my phone that the oil coating the veggie spring roll I’d been about to eat started burning my fingers. I dropped the roll back into the takeout container, then sucked on my sizzling digits. I’d bought the spring rolls simply to prove to Blackwell that I could come and go from the car if I wished. But once I’d opened the container, I realized I was actually hungry.

At first, I’d hoped the text was from Beau, but it came from a number I didn’t recognize. Then the ‘D’ tag was a nasty shock to my adrenal gland.

D for Desmond?

Was the alpha of the West Coast North American Pack texting me? How did he get my number?

My phone pinged again. I flinched. I really needed to put it on silent. Yeah, I was twenty turning sixty-five — or at least my fried nerves were.
 

>
Answer me.

So yeah, it was Desmond. And I had no idea how to answer him. Lie? Tell the truth? Ignore the message? But if we were all ignoring texts, wouldn’t that confirm that something was wrong? We didn’t need the pack descending on Southaven. Not yet. Not without first understanding what was going on with Beau’s family. And certainly not now that Blackwell was involved.

The red hatchback zoomed back into the parking lot, drawing my attention away from my phone. As the car stopped by the kitchen door, the driver jumped out to grab more takeout orders.

Inside the restaurant, Blackwell finally exited the bathroom, glancing back to confirm that the man behind him was keeping pace.

That didn’t read as kinky at all.

I checked the time. It was 8:46 p.m. The sorcerer had been gone for twenty-one minutes.

I applied my thumbs to my phone’s keypad and messaged Desmond back.
Just about to go pick her up. I’ll tell her to check her phone.

The alpha didn’t reply.

I tucked my phone away and gobbled down one of my spring rolls as the two sorcerers exited the restaurant and crossed toward the sedan.

The U.S. Marshal was a cowboy — wiry frame, hat, boots, and all. He wore blue jeans paired with an unbuttoned suit jacket, a white dress shirt, and a skinny tie. The badge attached to his belt glinted as he paused to scan the parking lot. And I could see then that he wore a gun in a shoulder holster. I imagined him wearing one at his ankle as well.
 

He narrowed his eyes in my direction, then resumed following Blackwell to the car.

A cowboy sorcerer marshal. Huh.

I stepped out of the sedan as the two of them approached, yielding the front seat as I noisily crunched on my second spring roll. The rolls were pretty tasty for something I hadn’t really wanted but had bought to spite the sorcerer. As if he could lock me in the car. Sure, I hadn’t wandered back to the bank unaccompanied. But that was just from good sense, not because I was following his orders.

Blackwell ignored me.

The marshal held out his hand for me to shake. “Henry Calhoun,” he said, in a heavy but lyrical Southern accent. So maybe the cowboy thing was genuine.

I eyed him, thinking about dropping my sunglasses to do my intimidation thing. But I couldn’t be bothered.

“Henry,” I said, as cordial as I was capable of being while wiping greasy fingers on my jeans. “Thank you for helping me.”

Henry tilted his head to the side. His hair was dark underneath the cowboy hat, which also shaded his cobalt-blue eyes. He wrapped his hand around my outstretched, degreased palm.

Electricity passed between us.

“Rochelle Saintpaul,” I offered, using my legal name. Not my birth name.

“Rochelle,” Henry repeated. “You are not a witch.”

“No, I’m not.” I smiled, not really knowing why as Henry continued to hold my hand. I instantly liked him. That was weird.

Henry grinned back at me. “The tattoos are a good disguise.”

“Are they?”

“The whole goth thing.”

“I’m not a goth either.”

He laughed, finally dropping my hand. Blackwell, who’d been watching our exchange without comment, climbed into the driver’s seat and shut the door behind him.

Henry Calhoun eyed me. “You keep bad company, Rochelle Saintpaul.”

I nodded. “Wait until you meet the other two.”

The marshal laughed again. “Fair enough.”

He reached over to open the back door of the sedan for me. I settled into the seat, scarfing my last two spring rolls before we’d driven out of the parking lot. I couldn’t help but think that if I was that hungry, Beau must be starving.

Or maybe not. Because maybe he was dead.

No.

I wasn’t going to start letting my mind control me. Beau wasn’t dead, because the coin was still warm. The magic in his blood was an active part of Blackwell’s tracking spell, so if the coin was still tracking him, then he was still alive.
 

Right?

I desperately wanted to confirm my reasoning with Blackwell, but his earlier odd mention of blood magic made me think I should keep my mouth shut about the spell around Henry.

Instead, I squeezed the coin in my left hand — so firmly that it cut into my palm — and focused my attention on the sorcerers in the front seats.

The marshal was riding shotgun, which was an ironic position for a cowboy. Or maybe in this case, ‘appropriate’ was a better word.

Because we were riding to a rescue.

Right?

∞

We circled the block around the renovated bank, switching directions for a second pass. And, while I desperately sought a glimpse of Beau out the back window, Blackwell and the marshal had a muttered argument about the strength of the shielding on the sedan. Henry snapped blurry pictures of the new guards posted by the reinforced door at the rear. Apparently, he had some photography app on his phone that was good in low light.

We parked about two blocks away, down a side street where we still had an angled view of the rear of the bank. The houses on either side of us were lit with the glow from their flat-screen TVs.

“The van’s gone,” I said, unable to keep my dismay in check.

Henry was texting. “Make? Model?”

“Ford Econoline,” I said, surprised that I could remember. “Medium gray. No rear windows.”

“Maybe 2008,” Blackwell added. “Larger grill, longer hood. Diesel.”

Henry continued to text. His phone pinged multiple times as he did so. “Records,” he said, referencing the text message he’d just received. “But no outstanding warrants on the two new guys.” He nodded toward the bruisers loitering by the back door. One of them wore a black cast on one arm.

“Beau broke that guy’s wrist,” I said proudly. “What idiot asks for a black cast?”

“A shapeshifter revealed his strength in front of a human?”

Err, maybe I’d shut up now.

“Their attackers used force,” Blackwell said. I had filled him in on the details of the kidnapping while we were tracking Beau and Kandy to the bank. “As someone would with a person under the influence of drugs.”