I See You (Oracle 2) (7 page)

“Heading home?” she asked, smiling.

“Thank you for dinner. It was great as always.” Beau stepped forward and hugged Tess. Their heights perfectly matched while she was standing on the middle step of the RV. She laughed.

A splash of green caught my eye. I glanced toward the back of the RV to see Kandy shoving her cellphone back in her pocket as she crossed toward us. Her unfocused gaze slid across me, as if she didn’t want to look too closely. She plastered on a smile as she stepped up to shake Tess’s hand.

I was still surprised that the werewolf had joined us for dinner, and even more so that she had managed to chat amicably throughout the evening with nonmagical people. Maybe I was the judgemental one.

“Thanks for the marshmallows,” I said to Tess as Beau stepped aside. I glanced behind her to see Gary washing dishes deeper within the brightly lit RV.

“We’re here for another week, Rochelle.” Tess’s gaze was fixed over my head as she watched Beau and Kandy saunter back toward the visitors’ parking. “If you need us.”

“Okay.” I scuffled my feet on the mix of sand and dried fir needles that salted the ground everywhere in Yachats, then stopped. It was odd for Beau to wander off without me. And I wasn’t sure why I was just hanging out there in the comforting glow from the RV’s lights with Tess standing on the steps, almost looming over me.

“You’ll text me?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“Oh, wait.” Tess stepped back into the RV and retrieved the Tupperware I’d brought the salad in. She stepped all the way down the steps to pass it to me. It was heavier than it had been when it was full of salad. Suspicious, I peered through the side and saw what appeared to be cookie-like shapes inside.

I looked up at Tess to protest.

She grinned, cutting me off before I could speak. “If I don’t send them home with you, Gary will just eat them all. And we both know he doesn’t need more cookies.”

“I heard that, Tess,” Gary mock-grumbled. His hands were deep in soap suds.

I laughed, an involuntary sound that made it out of my mouth before I could edit it.

Tess chuckled and managed to squeeze a brief hug around my shoulders while my hands were occupied with the Tupperware. I didn’t twist away from the embrace.

“Goodnight, Gary,” I called over Tess’s shoulder.

“See you two next Friday?” he asked.

“Sure.” I stepped back from Tess and she let her arms fall to her sides. “Goodnight, Tess.”

“Sleep well,” she murmured. Then she turned back to climb the steps of the RV.

I walked into the darkness between the RV-occupied concrete pads, clutching the cookies to my stomach and feeling utterly unsettled. Torn between two moments, two lives. It was as if I’d built up an unaccustomed sense of security, and with the return of the visions, it was slipping away.
 

Beau had found me, saved me from myself, and showed me who I really was. But then, the visions had ceased and life had been … idyllic.

And now I was seeing his sister dead or dying.

What if trying to save Ettie meant losing Beau?

Again, I shook the idiotic thought off. I simply wasn’t accustomed to being content. I was sabotaging myself, based on nothing but a fleeting hint of reticence I’d picked up from Beau the moment after he figured out the dead girl was his sister. Who wouldn’t be thrown by that revelation?

Anyone. Everyone.

A werewolf and a shapeshifter were waiting for me in the deep of the night, my visions had returned with a vengeance, and I was going to do what I was supposed to do … try to trust the magic and go where it led.
 

CHAPTER FOUR

“
If you’re nervous and your hands are sweaty, then expect your grip to be compromised. Your strike will be less effective due to the pen slipping.” Beau folded my fingers around the tactical pen to demonstrate the grip, then stepped back and lifted his arms like he was going to grab me again.

I tucked the pen back in my satchel, from which I was supposed to grab it when attacked. I adjusted the satchel strap across my chest as I glanced up to
see a curtain twitch in Old Ms. McNally’s bac
k bedroom window. At least I assumed it was a bedroom, if the antique-white lace curtains were reliable evidence. It also had the best view of the backyard where Beau and I were doing our usual morning training session. She usually ignored us, except when Beau paid her rent every Sunday. Though I was currently trying to stab him with an odd-looking pen, so maybe that was intriguing.

“My hands don’t sweat,” I sneered, laying on the bravado.

Beau grinned, then wagged his fingers at me to attack.

I lunged forward, pulling the pen out of my bag in the same motion. He grabbed for me.

I tried to feint but tripped in the dead grass instead. I went down, managing to roll over onto my back in line with Beau’s right sneaker. Then, as if I’d meant to fall, I halfheartedly jabbed him in the thigh with the pen.

He collapsed beside me in a fit of laughter.

I twirled the pen in my hand with a flourish, as if it were a magic wand. Beau laughed harder and I giggled.

“You know,” he said, still laughing, “you should get a good three or four inches of penetration with that pen. A regular plastic ballpoint would break off at around an inch and just end up pissing off your attacker.”

“Even deeper if I manage to stab someone in the throat or the eye,” I said, as serious as I could be while posing the idea that I could manage to stab anyone anywhere at all.

Beau started laughing again.

Grinning, I enjoyed his contagious mirth as I watched the slow drift of wispy white clouds in the azure morning sky. The clouds would burn off in the next hour or so. It was going to be hot. Beau and I both had the day off. I was thinking that maybe we would go swimming later.

Beau’s laughter slowly subsided, enough that I thought he might have fallen asleep. I’d woken in the early morning to find him gone, then slept fitfully myself before he’d returned at dawn. I hadn’t asked him what he’d been doing. I could tell by the magic still sparking off him as he pressed his body against mine and we made love — still half-asleep and without whispered questions or worries — that he’d been running in his tiger form.

I’d never lain in the grass just watching the sky like this before. Not alone, and not with anyone I loved as fiercely and painfully as I loved Beau.

That sky was about to fall. And even if I tried, even if I pushed Beau to seek out his sister, I wasn’t sure I could do anything about it. Maybe pushing him was what made it worse. Maybe us contacting Ettie would turn out to be what caused her death. All I could do was breathe in this moment, so that was what I did.

“When I say run …” Beau murmured sleepily.

“I run,” I answered by rote.

“When I say run,” Beau repeated.

“I run, Beau. I know I run.”

“No questions, no hesitation.”

“You say run, I run.”

Beau rolled over onto his side, facing me with his head cradled in his arm. “Are you going to sketch more?”

I mimicked his movement, only a foot of flattened, dead grass between us now. “Probably.”

“Do you have an idea of place or time?” He was asking about the vision of his dead sister. I’d been waiting for his questions, even though I didn’t think I had any concrete answers.

“Hot weather, because the pavement is soft, but no hint of the location … yet.”

Silence fell between us. Not as comfortable as before, but I still waited. Beau never pushed me to talk about anything. I wasn’t going to push him.

“You think we can stop it,” Beau said. His eyes were closed now, as if he were sleeping.

“If it hasn’t already happened. I think we should find out. I think we should try. I think I have to try. I have to … take control …” I tamped down the well of emotion that pinched my chest. I wasn’t that girl anymore. I wasn’t lost.

“You’re not helpless,” Beau murmured, picking up on my thoughts. “You’re not crazy.”

“I know.”

“Didn’t the far seer tell you to not try to change the future?”

“Pretty much. Of course, he’s the one who sent Kandy. I don’t think she’s here for grilled steaks and s’mores.”

Beau sighed. “I don’t want you anywhere near them.”

“I’m not helpless.”

He huffed out a laugh, but he wasn’t remotely joyful. “You really think I should call.”

He was so torn, so out of sorts about it all that I almost didn’t answer. I almost lied before I remembered Beau would be able to smell the falsehood on me. Before I remembered that wasn’t who we were. I just didn’t want to drive a wedge between us — or push deeper the wedge I was fairly certain the vision had already created but hadn’t cemented yet.

“It’s the right thing to do,” I whispered. “This is your family.”

“No, you’re my family,” he said, his tone unyielding but not nasty. “They’re just people who couldn’t give a shit about me.”

Annoyed at myself for still feeling vulnerable and insecure about being rejected because of the visions, I reached out to smooth my fingertips over Beau’s eyebrow. He instantly captured my hand and pressed a kiss to my palm.

“We could at least … warn them somehow.”

He growled, resigned. Rolling over on his back, he laid my hand over his heart while he dug his cellphone out of his pocket.

He paged through the phone. He hadn’t carried one before, not until Audrey insisted. I was surprised he’d bothered to program any numbers into it. I lightly scratched his chest with my nonexistent nails, hearing him grunt contentedly as he selected a number and held the phone to his ear.

After a breath, I heard the operator. Or, rather, a recorded message of some sort. Beau hit end and tried a second number. Same result.

“Out of order?”

“Yeah. They aren’t so great with paying bills.” Beau continued to stare up at the sky. “Cy probably has some burner phone, or could possibly be in jail. But there’s no way I’m bothering with tracking down the son of a bitch.”

“Ettie’s dad?” My information about Beau’s family was sketchy at best. He’d never even called his stepfather by name and had always referred to his sister as Claudette. “It’s been, what? At least three years since you’ve seen them? You think he’s still in the picture?”

“More like four. But yeah, Cy Harris is like a cancer. He ain’t going nowhere.” Beau tucked his phone away in his pocket. “We’re paid up for the week,” he said. “I’ve bought tools.”

“Ms. McNally isn’t going to rent to anyone else. She likes you. You take the garbage out, lift heavy things.”
 

Beau grunted but didn’t continue the conversation.

So I pushed. I knew I shouldn’t do it. I knew that Beau had more than just issues with his family. I knew he carried scars. I knew this would reopen those scars. But I didn’t have anyone — no one blood-related, anyway — who called me sister, daughter, family …

“We could make a trip of it.”

“You won’t like it. It’s hot and shitty.”

“I’ll be with you.”

“I like it here.”

“So do I.”

Beau rolled over to look at me again. This time, he was the one to reach out and trace my eyebrow. “If we’re going there. If you’re meeting them … I should tell you … everything.”

“We have a lifetime to share, don’t we?” I smiled even as the pool of dread that had taken up residence in my stomach roiled.

“I don’t want you to see me with them,” he whispered. “What I’m like when I’m with them.”

“I see you, Beau. I only see you.”

He nodded. “I’m who I want to be when I’m with you.”

“So am I.”

He leaned toward me, lightly brushing his lips across mine. I wanted to throw my leg over his hip, to climb on top of him and claim him … show him … love him. But I didn’t. Sex was easy between us. Words and feelings about our pasts were way, way harder. But without the words, I was worried that the sex wasn’t enough to keep away the dark veil I’d felt fall between us last night.

He pulled away as if sensing my thoughts. “I could try some more phone numbers. Maybe find an email address?”

“Do you have more people to call or email?”

“No.”

“Why do you think Kandy is here?”

Beau sighed, the sound of which hurt my heart. “Well, I was kind of hoping she was here to teach me how to achieve half-form. But now I’m guessing not. There weren’t any claw marks on Ettie, were there?”

“Not that I saw. Geez, you don’t think …”

“No.” Beau’s voice was flat. “No shifter is going to kill my sister. Her own father is responsible for her death. I’m one hundred fucking percent sure.”

“Does he … hurt Ettie?”

“No. Not when I was there to take the beatings, at least. I’d just bet that the asshole has gotten himself in some deep shit. Probably having to do with stolen cars, drugs, or aggravated assault. Maybe all of the above.”

I waited, but Beau didn’t expand his theory about Cy. I wasn’t sure that the visions would center on anything as mundane as domestic violence or drug trafficking, but I wasn’t going to say anything hurtful like that to Beau right now. Or ever. The visions usually centered on magic — Adepts or magical confrontations. Large-scale magical events. Though maybe that was only when Jade or Blackwell were involved. And as far as I knew — based on Kandy’s say-so and my infrequent text messages with the sorcerer — both of them were currently out of the country, where I hoped they’d be staying.

“Well, I guess we’re going to Southaven, Mississippi,” Beau said. “I never wanted to say those words to you. Ever. Home sweet fucking home.”

Despite the fact that Ms. McNally was probably still spying on us from her upstairs window, I wrapped my hand around the back of Beau’s neck, then pressed my lips against his. He instantly deepened the kiss, pulling me closer until I was sheltered along the long length of his body. The trepidation that had built up during the conversation faded, though not completely. I wasn’t stupid enough to ignore that Beau was this wary about having me around his family, but I still thought it was the right thing to do.