I See You (Oracle 2) (31 page)

“I have none.”

“By choice, or because of your mother?”

Beau shook his head but didn’t answer. He was still trying to protect his mother.

Desmond turned to look back at Ada. “Adelaide Llewellyn. Living like this, raising your son outside of the pack … you don’t recognize me?”

Beau’s mother shook her head vehemently, but even I could tell she was lying. Desmond stepped toward her, then went down on one knee beside the coffee table to reach out his hand. “It’s Desmond, your … second cousin. I was probably ten when we last saw each other. And you were what? Twenty? At Mount Whitney. For your father’s birthday pack run. Don’t you —”

“No, no, no!” Ada screamed, scrambling away from Desmond as she clutched the metal box to her chest.

“I won’t hurt you,” Desmond said. “You shouldn’t be like this. How … why have you been living like this?”

Ada crawled off the couch and scuttled over to Beau. She had the gall to cling to his leg and sob wildly.
 

Beau reached down for her. She clawed at his hands, drawing more blood.

“Enough!” Desmond’s alpha magic whipped around the living room, raising every hair on my body. “You’ve hurt the boy enough, Adelaide Llewellyn.”

Ada stiffened, then let go of Beau’s leg. She lifted her red-rimmed gaze to Desmond, who loomed over her as a mountain looms over a mouse.

“You’re like all of them,” she mumbled. “You just want to take. Take everything I have. Now you’ve taken Ettie and Cy … and you want Beau. I can see you want my beautiful boy.”

“Mom,” Beau said. “You’re mixing everything up.”

Desmond stepped closer to Ada, his shoulder almost touching Beau’s chest. “You are sly for a tiger, Adelaide Llewellyn. It doesn’t become you.”

“What do you know about it!” she screamed. Her changeability was intense … and awful.

“What do you mean by ‘take everything I have’?” Desmond asked. “Are you claiming you were abused? By whom? Why run when there are laws in place to protect you?”

“He wanted me to marry,” Ada mumbled.

“A wolf?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, what was your objection?”

Ada struggled to find the words to construct her accusation. Or maybe she was trying to formulate a lie? Except who tried to lie to a shapeshifter?

“Mom,” Beau said. “This … Desmond is … he’d shield you if you asked for help.”

“I don’t want it,” Ada screamed. “None of it. The magic, the change, the responsibility.”

Desmond snorted. He turned away to retrieve, then paw through, the metal box Ada had dropped in her bid for Beau’s sympathy.

“But … you said they beat you,” Beau said. “Raped you. Caged you.”

“Who?” Desmond asked.

Ada crawled over to where her electronic cigarette had fallen to the floor. She puffed on it, but it was empty. She eyed the cashbox, which was now irretrievable in Desmond’s hands.

“If I say it was no one, that there wasn’t any abuse, any rape, will you give me my medicine?”

“Was it no one?” Desmond’s tone was soft again, but laced with steel.

“They wanted to,” Ada spat. “They wanted … sex. In animal form. That’s criminal.”

“They?” Desmond asked.

“My father … demanded the bloodline be kept pure. That I was bound to breed with whomever he decreed.”

“I hear the same from my father every time we talk,” Desmond said. “Though perhaps with less … ritualistic fervor. If I’m understanding your objection. But he can’t force me to comply. And neither could your father. The Assembly relishes enforcing their rules and restrictions.”

Ada didn’t answer.

“Did they beat you? Rape you?”

Ada glanced at Beau, then looked away from us all. “No.”

“What?” Beau cried.

Desmond flipped the lid closed on the metal box and tucked it underneath his arm.

“You promised,” Ada cried.

“Oh, I’ll get you medicine,” Desmond said.

“I’m not going nowhere.”

The alpha turned away, crossing back toward the front door. Lara had appeared there at some point. He gave her the metal box and she passed him a cellphone.

“My entire life …” Beau whispered. “You lied.”

“So what?” Ada spat. “What do you care? You think being under his thumb would be better? Then go.”

“Whose thumb?” I asked.

“David,” Desmond replied, though his attention was on the text or email he was writing. “David John Llewellyn. Beau’s grandfather. He died about ten years ago.”

“Good for him,” Ada said. She began pulling the cushions off the couch, presumably looking for any trace of her drugs lost there.

“My entire life …” Beau repeated.

“You are so goddamn stupid. Pretty but so stupid. You think someone like my father would have accepted you?”

“David would have been pleased to have a strong, capable tiger in the family,” Desmond interjected. “I’ll have your uncle get in touch with you, Beau.”

“No,” Beau said.

Desmond glanced up from his phone.

Beau shook his head, just once. He was angry, and sad, and … overwhelmed.

“When you’re ready, then.”

“Sure, throw money at the boy. He’s good at turning tricks.”
 

Ada’s nasty words were barely out of her mouth before Beau had grabbed her by the neck and heaved her off the couch.

Then, in a blink, Beau was on the ground at my feet and Desmond was between Ada and her enraged son.

“She’s not worth it, Beau,” Lara whispered from her vantage point in the entranceway.

Beau’s shoulders were heaving.

I couldn’t tell if he was sobbing or laughing. I was afraid to touch him, then felt stupid. He was my Beau. I knew him. Ada wasn’t going to destroy that with words.

“We make our own family,” I said as I knelt down before Beau and pressed my hands to his cheeks. “We’ve made our own family.”

He pressed his hands over mine, met my gaze, and swallowed hard. Then he nodded.

“Me or Francois, Ada,” Desmond said. “You pick.”

“I’ll never follow a Llewellyn again,” Ada snarled. Her focus was firmly fixed on Beau.

“Good. Francois is already on his way. Beau and Rochelle will be coming with me.”

“Over my dead body,” Ada said.

“That can be arranged,” Lara said with a vicious smile from the doorway.

Desmond snorted at his pretty-in-purple enforcer.

“What?” she asked innocently.

“We give blood a chance.”

“One more chance, then.”

Desmond laughed. “As many chances as they need. I should check on Henry. Beau?”

Beau nodded, rising to his feet. He tucked me against him and we walked awkwardly to the front door, barely fitting through the archway side by side.

Lara stepped back as we approached, but she reached out to touch Beau’s shoulder as we passed. He paused.

Inexplicably, she touched my cheek lightly as well.

“Pack,” she murmured. Then she spun away, skipping out the door and down the stairs ahead of us.

I looked up at Beau. He looked down at me and pressed a kiss to my forehead.

“Do you want to say goodbye?” I whispered.

“Nah,” he said. “Been there, done that.”

We left Desmond in the living room with Ada. As we were crossing the front lawn to the Brave, another SUV pulled up to block the driveway.

A dark-haired, slim man in a cream linen suit stepped out of the vehicle. Lara skipped over to greet him with a pretty curtsy. Her giggle was a welcome contrast to the grim mood that still weighed down the muggy afternoon.

“Wolf,” Beau said, falling easily into our established routine of identifying and explaining magic to me.

“What is it with shapeshifters and gas-guzzling cars?” I asked.

Beau lowered his voice. “You know what they say about big cars …”

“Big egos?”

He laughed.

Lara twined her arm through the newcomer’s. Two more burly men stepped from the SUV, following behind Lara and her companion as she led him up the lawn toward the house.

Beau stepped off to the side of the front path as they approached.

“This is Beau and Rochelle,” Lara said as they passed but didn’t stop.

“Together?” the man asked. His Southern accent contained a blur of French. “A witch and a shifter?”

“Well, you know,” Lara said. “They’re young.” She turned back and winked at us.

The two bodyguard types eyed us, both of them a similar height to Beau. Then they followed Lara and their boss into Ada’s house.

“Francois?” I asked Beau, who hadn’t turned back to watch as the werewolves invaded his mother’s living room. “And did Lara just lie about me being a witch?”

“She omitted the truth. To an alpha. For us.” He sounded epically weary. “Let’s go home.”
 

I grabbed his hand and started pretending to drag him toward the Brave.

He laughed at my silliness.

“We’re only steps away,” I said.

Beau swept me up in his arms. “Let’s keep it that way.” Then he carried me to the RV.

∞

The drive west was slower than we’d come east. Mostly because Henry was healing in the back bed of the Brave. Kandy drove her SUV alongside, and tucked into bed with Henry every night. Supposedly, close proximity was important because she and Henry shared magic, but the werewolf wasn’t much of a long-term sort of caregiver. Desmond and Lara had flown back the same day they’d arrived in Southaven.

Desmond had vouched for Beau and his mother with Francois. He’d guaranteed that they’d had nothing to do with Cy and Ettie’s drug business. Apparently, the alpha had flown in from Portland at Kandy’s behest just to save all of us from the Gulf Coast North American Pack’s chopping block, possibly perjuring himself for Ada’s sake. Or maybe that was for Beau’s sake. As soon as Kandy had figured out Cy’s complicity, she’d alerted Desmond.

They’d kept me out of it altogether, which was cool. But it also reminded me of Blackwell’s prediction that the pack would protect me, but only by locking me in a gilded cage.
 

Granted, that was said when he was attempting to convince me to go away with him. And the sorcerer didn’t like other Adepts much. But then, neither did I. Apparently, that made us well suited for each other. Possibly unfortunately for me. Though, again, I really didn’t pick up the evil vibe everyone else did from Blackwell.

Maybe I was willfully blind. Maybe the sorcerer had lived in my head for so long that he was a part of me somehow.

Anyway.

So now we owed the pack and the sorcerer even more than we had before, but Beau didn’t seem weighed down by that obligation.
 

He also didn’t ask about Ada. Not about what had happened after we’d hidden out in the Brave, nor where she was now. So I didn’t either.

We played cards and ate. Henry was quiet most of the time, and really sleepy. Kandy and Beau downloaded and compared weather apps. They were concerned about the phases of the moon.

∞

Kandy stained the bathroom sink with her green hair dye, and then had a yelling match with Beau about it somewhere in the middle of Arkansas. We were dry-docked, so they took off into the wilderness to sort out the argument.

The marshal and I hunkered down while they were running, enjoying a cooler evening beside a small fire.

I’d almost drifted off to sleep when Henry spoke.

“I’ve been thinking about the tattoo you promised me,” he said.

“Promised?”

He laughed, then flinched as he pressed a hand to his waist.

“I thought it was healed?” I asked. “I thought when Desmond came …”

“I’m not a werewolf,” Henry said. “I might never be … functional that way. So the pack magic helped, but it couldn’t do all the work. Thankfully, sorcerers don’t take too long to heal themselves.”

“So? The tattoo? Let me guess. Handcuffs?”

Henry shifted his gaze from the dying fire to look directly at me. His lips were crooked with a smile that didn’t quite reach his dark-shaded, cobalt-blue eyes underneath his cowboy hat. “If that’s what you see. If that’s what you draw when you think of me.”

“You think the tattoos are magic. I don’t —”

Henry reached out, hovering his fingers over the skeleton key tattoo on my forearm but not touching me. “I think you’re just coming into your magic, oracle. I think you can help me … if the wolf arises with the full moon.”

“You want me to … you think a tattoo can suppress your … wolf?”

“I was damn lucky the bite didn’t kill me. But the bitten rarely fully turn. If they do turn and can control themselves, they only turn with the moon cycle and only partway. Half-human, half-beast.”

“Werewolf.”

“Exactly. Like the myths. But I have you. And you owe me a favor.”

“Do I?” I asked, already knowing that I did.

Henry finally rested his fingers along the tattoo of the key on my forearm. I could feel the burble of his sorcerer magic against my skin, but only barely. “You will think of me, oracle. You will think on a way I can harness my wolf, every day. Fold its power into my sorcerer power. Its strength, agility, and senses. Then you will draw.”

“I can’t do what you’re asking,” I murmured.

Henry withdrew his hand. “Maybe not today. But you will, Rochelle Hawthorne.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. I’d introduced myself to him with my legal last name — Saintpaul, not Hawthorne.

“Yeah.” He laughed. “I worked that out for myself. Next time you see Blackwell, you might want to ask him about your mother.”

“Why?”

“Rumors.”

“About her death?”

Henry nodded.

“And my father?”

“A sorcerer, judging by the magic I can feel from the tattoos. No idea who he was, though.”

Silence fell between us. I wasn’t surprised that Blackwell was possibly hiding some kind of connection to my mother. How else would he have known about me? If I asked him, he’d probably just say he’d been waiting for the question.

“A tattoo of handcuffs,” I said. “To harness the wolf.”

“Yes.” Henry’s voice was heavy with sleep.

“I’ll think about it.”

“And help me to bed?”

“And help you to bed.”

I stood, brushing sandy dirt off my jeans, then took the hand Henry offered me. I had no idea if I could do as he asked, but I had to admit I was intrigued by the idea. “A werewolf-bitten sorcerer could be pretty powerful,” I mused.