I See You (Oracle 2) (5 page)

The butterfly flitted across the road as someone turned off the idling SUV and the driver’s door opened.

Beau was holding his breath.

A slight, tautly muscled woman in green capris and a goldenrod printed T-shirt stepped out from the vehicle. The butterfly danced about three inches over her green-dyed, shag-cut hair. She lifted her face as if tracking its movements.

No, she was sniffing the air. And possibly smelling the magic of the butterfly?

Kandy, Jade Godfrey’s werewolf bodyguard, was in Yachats, Oregon.

That couldn’t be good.

“Real or not real?” I asked Beau. My voice was a tense whisper. My eyesight wasn’t obscured by the mist that normally accompanied my visions. But the butterfly tattoo thing was new, and I wasn’t sure anyone but me and the far seer could sense it. So Kandy might be a different sort of visual manifestation as well.

“Real,” Beau said. His single-word answer was filled with a completely different kind of tension. A possessive fierceness that instantly muted the anxiety building in my belly.

Kandy slammed the SUV door behind her, then leaned against it. She crossed her arms and grinned in our direction. The smile wasn’t a greeting. With her chin dipped against her chest and the green of her shapeshifter magic rolling across her eyes, she appeared deceptively relaxed.

Beau passed the salad to me as the butterfly tattoo returned to my wrist. That was the second time it had shown me the arrival of an Adept. Also, I didn’t often see magic in color, which instantly reminded me that Kandy was a particularly powerful werewolf.

Beau stepped off the sidewalk.

“Wait,” I whispered. “We go to her?” I’d been trying to sort through all the formalities that the pack insisted on.

“Yeah. Our territory.”

I trailed behind Beau, glancing around at the empty street. It was nearing dinnertime. I could smell our neighbors barbecuing and could hear kids playing, but I couldn’t see anyone.

Beau stopped a few feet away from Kandy. She eyed him but didn’t change her stance. She turned to look at me, dropped her folded arms, and nodded. “Oracle.”

I swallowed. “Kandy.”

Her goldenrod T-shirt was printed with a picture of a chicken and the question ‘Guess What?’ in green lettering. A red arrow was pointed to the chicken’s back end. Someone had used a black fabric marker to add a second arrow that pointed to an additional squiggle of black just behind the chicken.
 

Kandy also wore three-inch-wide gold cuffs on either wrist. These were inscribed with symbols and edged with hundreds of what looked like tiny diamonds. They were like something that belonged in ancient Greece, not on the skinny, muscled arms of a werewolf.

“I don’t get it,” I said, with a nod toward her T-shirt.

Kandy’s grin widened. “The shirt was a gift from the dowser, but it needed a little something.”

“Chicken butt,” Beau said. “Guess what, chicken butt?” His arms were loose at his sides, but he’d widened his stance as if he was expecting to be attacked.

“Guess what, chicken shit?” Kandy added. Her answer was full of laughter that was more threatening than joyful.

I tilted my head to look at her. She was actually only a few inches taller than me, but she came off as much larger. Intimidating and fierce.
 

Kandy lost her smile under my observation. Tension gathered in her shoulders. Though I only noticed it because Beau stifled a growl in response.

“Not interested in what you see, oracle,” the green-haired werewolf said. “Ground rules, you know. I’m here as requested, but not interested in what you see if it pertains to me.”

“The far seer sent you.”

“He did?” Beau asked.

“Audrey can’t stand me hanging around the place,” Kandy said. “So when the old man suggested I check in on you a few months ago, I decided I’d come the next time she asked. So here I am.”

“And the dowser?”

“In Vancouver, last I checked.”

I couldn’t help releasing a sigh of relief at that news.

Kandy curled her lip in a sneer and folded her arms, bringing my attention to the cuffs on her wrists again. “You’d be so blessed to have Jade at your side. I’m second best.”

“Chi Wen mentioned …” I hesitated, then pushed through. Beau and I didn’t keep secrets from each other, but I probably should have mentioned this before Kandy showed up. I always unwittingly erred on the side of us not having quite enough time to talk through everything, before the crunch of whatever crisis was about to befall us actually befell us. Well, this was the second time at least. So maybe I was making a big deal out of nothing. Or maybe I was stalling while being stared at by a scary-ass werewolf. “He mentioned being concerned about … Beau. But that he’d done something about it. I guess you’re the something?”

As anticipated, Beau hissed under his breath. He really didn’t like the idea of having the far seer’s concern focused on him. Who would?

Kandy barked out a laugh. “So I’m here to save your ass, hey kitten?”

Beau shifted his shoulders but didn’t answer.

“Don’t worry about it too much. I was bored out of my mind anyway.” The werewolf eyed the salad in my hands. “We going somewhere for dinner?”

Right.

Apparently we were.

CHAPTER THREE

“Did the far seer say why he asked you to come here?” I asked as I buckled into the back seat of the SUV behind Kandy. Beau had opened the door for me, then crossed around to climb into the front passenger seat. I gathered he deemed it less likely that Kandy could throttle me while she was driving if I sat behind her. Except I’d seen the werewolf in action — in my head, at least — and knew she was capable of anything she decided to do. So the seating arrangements probably didn’t matter in the least.

“Yeah, you know.” Kandy started the pristinely clean and completely conspicuous SUV, then executed a U-turn back toward the highway. “He laid it out in exquisite detail. Time, place, players, and ultimate outcome. Completely coherently. Like always. Then I bought him Oreos.”

“Right,” Beau said. “So no.”

The too-cold air conditioning blasted against my bare legs from the back vents, causing me to shiver. The vehicle was immense. I could practically stretch out my legs and not touch the back of the front seat. I attempted to ignore the leather interior, but my skirt was short enough that I could feel it underneath my thighs. I wasn’t a fan of slaughtering animals, not for food or furniture.

“Dinner?” Kandy asked as we rolled up to the stop sign at the edge of Interstate 101.

Beau glanced back at me over his left shoulder. I nodded. He stretched out his arm and pointed south without taking his eyes off me.

Kandy gunned the SUV onto the single-lane highway, slipping between two high-end RVs, then flooring it over the yellow line to pass the one in front. “Ah, you guys are so cute.”

I didn’t have to see her face to hear her heavy, mocking sneer, but that was fine. I didn’t give a shit what anyone thought about Beau and me. Though tension was rippling along my jaw as I attempted to ignore her manic driving and focus on getting us through the next few hours. “Our hosts are human.”

“Well, I doubted you’d be dining with demons.”

“She means that Tess and Gary aren’t Adept,” Beau said.

“They’re … I bought the Brave from them, back in Vancouver. Richmond, actually.” I stumbled over the explanation, weirdly awkward about why I’d formed a friendship with a couple old enough to be my parents.

Kandy’s silence didn’t particularly help. I’d figured out that werewolves were isolationists. Well, they preferred to be. Though Kandy was friends with Jade Godfrey, who wasn’t a shapeshifter, so maybe I shouldn’t assume. “We’ve kept in touch. They like to cook for Beau and me.”

“They’re parked at the Sea Perch RV Resort. About seven miles south,” Beau said.

I looked out the window and stopped talking. Forest stretched away from the interstate on either side of the winding road. A ton of hiking trails spread out for miles to the east, but the ocean was just on the other side of the bank of trees to the west. Gary and Tess had been parked at Sea Perch for about a week. The pad rental was crazy high, but the RVs there were parked along the edge of a sandy beach with the surf only fifteen or twenty feet away at high tide. So you got what you paid for.

This was the third time we’d seen them this year. I’d decided that Gary just liked checking up on the Brave, though they both really seemed to adore Beau. Tess fed him constantly, and Gary always had some project for him to look at.

Kandy was pulling off into the resort before any of us bothered to speak again.

“There’s visitor parking just behind the check-in,” Beau murmured, but Kandy was already turning that way, following the signs. “I’ll register the plates.”

Beau stepped out from the SUV before it had fully rolled to a stop. I waited to unbuckle until Kandy had shut off the engine, watching the werewolf as she watched Beau saunter into the tiny, gray-shingled admin building. A band of trees stretched between us and the ocean, though I could dimly hear the crashing surf even through the closed windows.

“Do you know why I’m here?” Kandy finally asked without turning around to look at me.

“No.”

She nodded, then lifted her eyes to the rearview mirror. I removed my sunglasses and met her gaze.

“Were you the third werewolf?” I asked, not really knowing where the question came from. “In the barbershop parking lot?”

“You mean, after the dowser helped you sneak out to meet with Blackwell?”

I was slightly surprised that Kandy knew the fine details of my getaway from Desmond’s house in Portland. But then, Jade did like to be pissy with the alpha, so maybe she’d deliberately told him she’d helped me.

“Yeah.”

“No. That was Christian, some flunky Audrey’s training.”

“Like she’s training Beau?”

“No.”

“No?”

Kandy looked back to the admin office, but Beau hadn’t reappeared. “Beau won’t be an enforcer, even if he decides to become a full member of the pack. Cats don’t fight in packs, and they aren’t as skilled as wolves are for tracking. Cats are single-focus stalkers. Precision killers.”

A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with the cool air trapped in the SUV. “He doesn’t want to be pack.”

“I know.” Kandy opened her door as Beau reappeared and stopped a few feet away to wait for us. “We all do things we don’t want to do for the people we love.”

“Is that why you’re here?” I stepped out of the SUV after her. “For Jade?”

“I have no idea.” Kandy slammed her door shut to saunter over to Beau. “I hope meat is on the menu, kitten. You need it. You’re easily twenty-five pounds underweight.”

Beau snorted. “Look who’s talking.”

“Yet I could outdo you on the bench press, even without the cuffs.”

Beau glanced over Kandy’s head as she brushed by him. His dark aquamarine eyes were bright in the dappled late-afternoon sunlight coming through the trees. I closed the space between us, curling my fingers around his.

Kandy whistled from around the corner of the building. “Nice rigs,” she said. “Wow, nice view.”

“See? Even werewolves can be impressed,” I whispered to Beau.

He offered me a grin, but I could see the tension that still simmered underneath it. Kandy showing up obviously bothered him. “Blond hair, brown eyes?” he asked. “In the vision?”

“Yeah. No one I know.”

“But someone important enough for the far seer to send Kandy?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think she’s here about the vision. Chi Wen isn’t exactly clear about these things.”

“But he thinks something is going to happen.”

“He knows that something is going to happen.”

Beau nodded, then dropped the questioning to tug me after Kandy. “We better give the werewolf some directions. Otherwise, she’ll start randomly pillaging people’s barbecues.”

∞

Gary was already heating his grill when we wandered up to the site. He always looked exactly the same as when we’d first met. Gray buzz cut, big gnarled hands, and modest beer belly. He and Tess had rented one of the primo spots, right on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Gary had placed their large gas grill between himself and the surf so the wind didn’t constantly blow across it. But based on the conversation he’d had with Beau last week, this method of cooking was a work in progress. I thought the grilled vegetables were great, but I gathered that nailing the temperature on the steaks was more difficult.

The screen door of a mammoth, forty-foot RV slammed open as Tess cried out, “Rochelle! Beau!” She climbed down into the seating area they’d set up with brand-new-looking wicker furniture underneath their side awning.

“Tess,” Beau said, reaching out to shake her hand and accepting a hug instead. Tess was only a few inches taller than me. Around Kandy’s height, actually. Her curly hair was short cropped and streaked with various shades of blond. She was slim and favored white and beige tailored clothing. At about seven or so years younger than her husband, she was maybe fifty-two or fifty-three.

Tess turned to take in Kandy with a welcoming smile. She didn’t hug me by mutual agreement.

“This is our … friend,” Beau said. “Kandy …”

“Tate,” Kandy said. She held out her hand for Tess to shake. “Sorry to drop by without warning. I wanted to surprise Rochelle and Beau. I shouldn’t have assumed they’d have the evening free on a Friday.”

My mouth dropped, then hung open. That was the most civil I’d ever heard any werewolf be.

Tess shook Kandy’s hand. “We’re glad to have you. Gary always puts on extra when he knows Beau is dining with us. Oh, that is if you eat meat?”

Kandy laughed, then looked back at me over her shoulder. “Yeah, I wouldn’t get far on vegetables alone.”

“Perfect. Come, come meet Gary.” Tess directed Kandy over toward the nose of the RV, where Gary was fiddling with the still-empty grill. “Gary. The kids brought a friend.”

Kandy tagged after Tess, but only after wagging her eyebrows back at me. “You’re going to catch flies, oracle.”

I snapped my mouth shut and looked at Beau, who was watching Kandy with narrowed eyes.