Seer (The Seeker Series Book 3) (19 page)

***

Rémy
was true to his word and kept his grandparents as busy as possible during their two-week stay. He took them to all the touristy sights: Old Town, the Tram, and the Breaking Bad locations—it turns out Phillipe was a huge fan of Walter White. He even took them to Santa Fe for a weekend, which gave me a nice break. I made good on my promise and took them out for Mexican food, since I knew Rémy would steer them away from it. I dragged Jack along and we took them to El Patron, one of our favorite restaurants. In addition to good food, it had mariachis, which no self-respecting tourist should miss. They were highly amused by the Mexican kitsch, and Phillipe loved the food. Kate was more reticent about trying the chile and seemed to share her grandson’s prejudice against American food, although she was much nicer about it. They were eager to meet Jack, since I had talked about him for the past two summers.

“So, Jack…” Kate began the interrogation as soon as the chips and salsa had been delivered. “Ally tells us that you are in the army?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m in the reserves right now, in officer training, and I’ll be regular army after I graduate.”

“What are you studying?” Phillipe asked.

“I’m a mechanical engineering major.”

“Ah, you must be very intelligent, then. Engineering is considered a difficult field.” Phillipe tried to butter me up by complimenting my boyfriend.

“Yes, Phillipe, he is,” I said. “In fact, he’s brilliant.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “No, I’m just good at math and physics. I can’t write to save my life. That’s Ally’s field.”

“So, when will you be graduating?”

“Well, I started college with a lot of credits from community college, so I could probably graduate at the end of next year if I really worked at it. But that would leave me very little time to spend with Ally, so I’ll probably just take the full four years.”

Kate smiled at both of us. “Well, I can certainly understand that. You are very lucky to have her, young man.”

“I know that,” he said as he took my hand under the table. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her.”

“I’m the lucky one,” I said. “Jack has put up with so much over the past few years with all this Seer business.”

“You’re worth it,” he replied simply and leaned in to kiss me briefly, regardless of our audience. “Besides, are you forgetting what a bad bet I was when we first met?” At Kate’s inquisitive look, he continued, “I was on probation when Ally and I first met. I got arrested and spent nearly a year in juvenile detention for selling drugs. Ally never told you that, huh?”

“That’s because it’s not important. It’s not who you are,” I said staunchly. I hated when he referred to his past as if he had been some kind of criminal. He had such a tender heart and had suffered so much when his mother was killed that he had gone crazy for a few years. He still bore the emotional scars from that time and probably would for the rest of his life.

“Well, she could certainly do better, but I kind of hope she doesn’t figure that out,” he said gallantly.

I was about to answer back when a vision struck, taking me by surprise. I couldn’t catch my breath and gasped for air like a fish. It wasn’t clear like most of the visions I’d had in the past; it was nothing but a series of disjointed, terrifying images.

Darkness…cold…screaming…blood. Lots of blood, on my hands, on my clothes, on my face. I could smell the coppery tang hanging in the air, surrounding me, encompassing me, smothering me.

“Ally!” Jack shook me. “Breathe, babe, breathe!”

I finally took a huge breath and slumped against him. I felt cold wetness against my cheek as he dipped his napkin in his water and wiped my face. “I’m okay,” I whispered, trying to believe it.

“What happened, querida? A vision?”

I nodded and looked up to see Kate and Phillipe staring at me, concerned.

“What did you see, Ally?” demanded Kate.

I shook my head, refusing to speak of it.

“Give me your hand.” Kate held hers out to me expectantly. I reluctantly put my cold fingers in her warm palm. She squeezed it, bringing her other hand up to cover and chafe warmth into mine, as she concentrated on seeing into my mind. “Oh, my dear. I’m so sorry that you have to see these things. I wish I could take this from you.”

“What? What did she see?” Jack demanded, pushing my hair aside to wipe the back of my neck with the cold napkin. “She’s white as a ghost.”

“She saw images for the most part. Blood, darkness. Nothing was very clear. Did you know that she can hear and even smell in her visions? I’ve never heard of anyone having such clarity. Oh, my gracious!”

“Yeah, well, do you see what this does to her? Do you see why she doesn’t want this? Goddammit! I hate to see her like this!” His ferocity probably shocked Kate and Phillipe.

“Jack, I’m all right, I promise. It was just so sudden.” I sat up and returned the wet napkin to the table. I made up my mind not to let the awful vision ruin what had been, up until a few moments ago, a perfectly lovely evening. These stupid visions had already ruined enough for me—I was not about to let them win. Besides, I had learned that there wasn’t a whole hell of lot I could do about them anyway. “You know what we need? Fried ice cream.”

Jack took my face in his hands and stared hard, looking to see if I was just putting on a brave front. I was, but it would have to be enough for now. He obviously decided the same thing because he nodded and said, “Okay. Fried ice cream it is.” He caught the attention of a passing waiter and put our order in.

“What in the world is ‘fried ice cream’? How is that even possible?” Phillipe puzzled.

I laughed, glad to move past the terrifying vision and into the culinary delight that was the staple dessert of Mexican restaurants across America. “It’s amazing! They take a scoop of ice cream, cover it in this crispy, honey cornflake-type coating, and then deep-fry it. Then they pour on chocolate sauce and whipped cream and top it with a cherry. You’re going to love it!”

“It sounds, um…delightful, dear,” Kate said with a disbelieving look at Phillipe. When the desserts arrived, it amused me to watch her poke at it with her spoon, trying to break through the outer coating to get to the ice cream within. She ate enough to be polite before surrendering the rest to Phillipe, who seemed to like it well enough.

Just as we were finishing, the mariachi band came to our area of the restaurant and Jack requested they play
Paloma Querida
for me. They stayed at our table, conversing in Spanish with Jack for a while. He also asked them to play
Las Mañanitas
for me since my birthday was the following week.

“A Christmas birthday?” Kate asked, surprised. “How do you like that?”

“It’s okay,” I began.

“As long as she gets separate presents,” Jack cut in, teasing.

“That’s right. No Christmas/birthday presents allowed.”

“That’s one of the first conversations we ever had. Do you remember, Ally?” Jack asked, putting his arm around me as the mariachis played.

“I remember you freaking out and backing off,” I accused.

He chuckled. “Yeah, well, that’s because I found out you were only 16 years old. I was 18 and had it bad for you. All I could think was ‘jailbait.’ Of course I was freaked out.”

“I went home and looked up the law online to make sure it was legal.”

“You did? I never knew that.”

“I had it bad for you too, Mr. Ruiz.” I realized that we were ignoring our guests, so I squeezed his hand and turned back to Kate and Phillipe.

***

“
Jack
, I really think Megan would love the unicorn dress we saw at Macy’s.” Jack had picked me up from work an hour earlier and begged me to go to the mall with him for a last minute gift for Megan. I was exhausted from a busy afternoon at the restaurant and wanted nothing more than to go home and put my feet up. Tara and I had driven together as we were scheduled for the same shift, but she had gone home early, saying she didn’t feel well, so I had called Jack to pick me up. “Jack, slow down, please!” I struggled to keep up with his much longer legs as he strode through the mall.

“Sorry, babe.” He slowed down for me. “I just want to look a little more, okay? I’m not sure about the color on that unicorn dress.”

What? Since when did Jack
ever
care about the color of any type of clothing? For that matter, I had never known him to even think about choosing clothes for Megan, preferring to have Trina, Shelly, or even me do that. “I thought you already bought all of Megan’s Christmas presents,” I accused, suddenly suspicious.

“Uh, yeah, but I want to get her a, um, a dress. Yeah.”

I guess I should be glad that Jack is a terrible liar; he’ll never be able to get away with cheating on me. “A dress? Okay.” I decided to play along and see where he went with this.

Another hour and the original unicorn dress later, we were finally done and headed toward the parking lot. I saw Jack check his phone right before he detoured us to Barnes and Noble, saying he wanted a cup of coffee.

“Coffee? Now? Really, Jack?” Liar, liar, pants on fire.

“Yeah. I’m parched. Shopping makes me really thirsty,” he declared as he dragged me to the coffee counter in the bookstore.

I waited until we were seated, waiting for our coffee order. I had ordered my usual mocha latte and pondered why Jack had ordered a white chocolate caramel mocha, extra hot, extra shot of espresso, in lieu of his usual cup of whatever was freshly brewed. Was he trying to stall for more time?

“What?” he sounded guilty.

“Who are you and what have you done with my boyfriend? Clothes shopping? Fancy coffee? Really? What is going on?”

“Shit,” he muttered. “I told her I couldn’t pull this off.”

“Told who? What is going on?” I demanded.

“Okay, look, sweetheart. I’m really bad at this. I promised Tara I would keep you away from the house for a while. Please don’t ask me why. Just go along with it. I’m begging you. She’s going to bust my…uh,
chops
if I screw this up.”

“Why would she need me away from the house? I thought she was sick?” I pondered what Tara could possibly be up to and suddenly remembered the calendar. Duh. My birthday. “A surprise party? Are you guys throwing me a surprise party?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that. Are you mad?”

“Mad? Why would I be mad? Nobody has ever thrown me a surprise party, Jack. This is so sweet! No, I’m not mad. I know I don’t usually love parties—”

“Understatement of the century,” he muttered.

“But when it’s for me, I can make an exception.”

“Can you please act surprised? Tara is going to kill me.”

“Don’t worry. I’m so excited it’ll look like I’m surprised. Who all is coming?”

“Oh, no you don’t! I’m not telling. At least you’ll have something to be surprised about.” He refused to tell me anything else. “Ugh.” He grimaced as he took a sip of his white chocolate caramel mocha. “This is disgusting. Way too sweet. You want it?” So, I alternated between sips of each flavor, thinking I would never get to sleep tonight with so much late afternoon caffeine.

***

I thought I did a fairly decent job of acting surprised, but I tried not to overdo it. I was surprised by how many people were there: my family, quite a few members of Jack’s family; my friends—including Travis and his new flame, Rick; Rémy and his grandparents; Mat, and even Alex. He and Mina had been dating for a few weeks now; the attempt to make Rémy jealous had turned into a romance for real. I didn’t know how I felt about it, since I knew she had deep feelings for Rémy, but figured it was none of my business and hoped she could grab some happiness where it was available.

I was in the kitchen, refilling the chip bowl, when Tara finally cornered me. “So, he couldn’t pull it off, huh? How long did it take you to figure it out? Give me that. This is your party. You don’t have to replenish the refreshments.” She took the chip bag from me and finished refilling the bowl.

“How could you tell? I thought I did pretty well when everyone popped out and yelled ‘surprise!’”

“You did okay, but Jack looked super guilty. I didn’t know for sure until now.” I threw a chip at her. “Hey! You should be glad that he’s a wretched liar.”

“Oh, I am. I just hoped I was better. So, you thought it was a good idea to get Rémy and Alex in the same room, huh? Just gotta stir stuff up, don’t you?”

“He’s in love with Mina, you know. And I think she’s in love with him too. I’m just trying to get them to see it.”

“What about Alex? He and Mina are dating. She’s with him now.” I needed Tara to see there was another person involved in this; her predilection for match-making could hurt someone this time.

“Ally, it’s not always a forever thing like it is with you and Jack. It’s not always true love.”

“I know that! I’m not naïve. But people have feelings, Tara.” We stared at each other across the kitchen. “Hey, I’m sorry. This is a great party. I love it. Thanks.” I crossed the room and hugged my best friend. “Just be careful, okay?”