I See Me (20 page)

Audrey grabbed a glass out of the cupboard above and beside the double stainless steel sink and filled it with water. “Desmond did what any good alpha would have done,” she said. “But the dowser won’t forgive him.” She glanced pointedly at us, as if reminding Lara we were listening to their conversation.

“Well, the black witch killed a bunch of us first,” Lara retorted.

Audrey placed the glass of water in front of me. Then she slid my pop closer to Beau, who’d already finished his first with a single gulp and a satisfied sigh.

I picked up the water and sipped it. I didn’t drop my gaze from Audrey’s. Something had shifted between us, between her and Beau, and I didn’t get it. She was suddenly like a foster mom with her first assignment. Careful but hopeful. Eager but reserved.

The beta werewolf smiled. “Family comes first,” she said to Lara. “No matter how evil they get.”

“Yeah,” Lara said. “I don’t think the dowser’s going to bring cupcakes.” She hopped off her stool and crossed around the island to pull a handful of napkins out of a drawer. Then, as the still-smiling Audrey leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms, Lara started setting the trestle table behind us.

I sipped at my water as Beau cracked his second can of Coke.

“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered to him.

“Yeah,” he said. But for the first time ever, I didn’t believe him.

“The dowser’s here,” Lara said as she slammed open the bedroom door. “All hell is going to break loose now.”
 

The brunette spun on her heel and exited the room in the same motion she’d used to enter. I’d never heard anyone so gleeful about pending hell-on-earth. The door ricocheted and slammed shut behind her, the doorstop protesting this abuse with a whine.

I turned to look at Beau. He was still sitting on the gold brocade chair next to the plush king-sized bed on which I was sprawled. The bed on which he’d refused to join me an hour and a half ago, when we’d been ordered to nap by Audrey. We hadn’t talked, so I’d finally dozed lightly. I don’t think Beau slept at all.

He sighed, rubbing his hand across his face and then over the back of his head. Then he locked his gaze to mine. “I can smell her magic from here. This dowser they’re talking about. Some sort of witch, who smells way too powerful to be just a witch. Spicy, like Chinese food. And she’s deep in the house. I’d bet way on the other side. I shouldn’t be able to pick up that much scent through that many doors. Maybe a wolf could, but not me. Not even if I was in animal form.”

A gleam of green slid across his eyes and then disappeared, leaving his breathtakingly dark aquamarine behind. He sounded scared. Way more scared than he’d been in response to coming to Portland in the first place. “Maybe this was a bad idea,” he continued. “I knew they’d be … protective. That they’d call in a witch …”

“But now?”

“Now … with the talk of killing and black witches … and … this power I can feel …” He shuddered and didn’t continue.

“Yeah, I caught that too. The killing part. We could go out the window?”

Beau shook his head. “We’re in deep now. We wouldn’t be able to get out of Portland without them tracking us. Maybe if we split up. You grab a cab, head for the Brave —”

“No.”

Beau laughed, then sobered quickly. “I’d find you, Rochelle. They’d have to kill me to keep me away.”

I climbed off the bed but managed to get completely tangled in the overstuffed duvet while attempting to crawl into his lap. I fell forward instead. He caught me, chuckling. Together, we freed my legs and then I wrapped myself around him.

I grabbed his face, as cheesy as the gesture was, and plastered my lips to his. He kissed me back, showing none of the hesitation he’d showed when he refused to join me in the bed an hour or so ago.
 

“The window,” I repeated after releasing his lower lip.

“This side of the house is on the hill,” Beau murmured, continuing to press me with light kisses. “I could make the jump, but I’m not sure I could catch my balance with you in my arms. And a fall like that would hurt you. Maybe even kill you.” This statement was paired with a bone-crushing hug. I didn’t complain.

Lara cleared her throat behind me. Beau glanced up over my head. I took a moment to just gaze at his perfect bone structure. How I’d thought up someone like him … that it was even possible that someone like him existed …

“Yeah, I expected you to follow,” Lara said. “Don’t make me drag you. Not that I’d mind laying hands on you, pretty kitty. But the dowser would get all pissy about it, and I’m still hoping she brought treats.”

Beau sighed, then stood with me in his arms. My feet dangled a good six inches from the thick carpet. He laid a blistering kiss on me, and still lip-locked, lowered me to the ground.

“Don’t leave me,” he whispered fiercely.

The idea was utterly preposterous. I laughed.

Beau let me go. Then, with his fingers twined through mine, we exited into the long hall after Lara.

∞

Desmond’s house was divided into two wings, like a castle would be. Audrey had shown us to a bedroom halfway along one of the wings. She was “claiming us” according to Beau. He had deduced that she was new to her beta position, which placed her just one step below Desmond in the pack hierarchy, and that we provided an opportunity for her to shore up supporters. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I liked listening to him.

The high white walls of the house were mostly unadorned, with no crowns or moldings around the doors. Modern architecture, I guessed, but I really had no idea. The hall floors were dark hardwood, while the entranceway and kitchen were dark granite tile. The windows of the living room were huge and didn’t seem to have blinds, at least not on the view side of the house. I didn’t know anything else about houses. Except that everything here — even the linens and the plates used for the pizza earlier — looked and felt really, really expensive.

Lara, who was walking ahead of us, wasn’t wearing any shoes. She led us back to the entranceway, then through into the living room with its leather couches and square glass coffee table. Then, after lifting her nose to sniff the air, she turned back and grinned at me. “Treat time,” she whispered.

Beau stumbled as we stepped from the entranceway granite onto the hardwood of the living room. He was looking toward the kitchen. His eyes were round suddenly, his mouth hanging open.

I followed his gaze across the dining room. A green-haired, slight-framed woman was leaning against the massive trestle dining table, balancing three pizzas boxes left over from our early lunch in one hand and eating a slice from the top one, which was open. She watched us as we entered.

“Emerald-green hair,” I murmured. Why did she look familiar?

“Werewolf,” Beau said, quiet and so, so scared. But it wasn’t the green-haired werewolf he was scared of. He was looking past her into the kitchen.

Audrey, having lost her pearls and pulled her hair back, was leaning against the kitchen island and once again looking like she wanted to wring someone’s neck. Desmond was wearing the same expression, though in his more inscrutable way, and leaning again the stainless steel fridge. Both of them were barefoot. Which was odd, wasn’t it? The house wasn’t cold, but it was January.

Lara skipped ahead of us, darting around the green-haired werewolf and the dining room table. I could now see the five bakery boxes piled on one side of the kitchen island.

And there, in the middle of all the werewolves, a blond woman was reaching up to pull a stack of side plates from the upper cupboard to the left of the sink. Her back was to me. Her golden curls cascaded down the back of her aqua-colored T-shirt. She was wearing jeans like everyone else except Audrey. Even Lara had changed into jeans. And yet there was something … something …

“Her eyes are blue,” I whispered as we continued to cross the living room toward the kitchen. “Indigo blue.”

“What?” Beau asked.

The green-haired girl frowned and placed the pizza boxes down on the table. She raised her nose and sniffed the air, exactly like a dog would. A green gleam rolled over her eyes, just as I’d seen Beau’s eyes do.

Audrey turned her head to look at us but didn’t move. She didn’t uncross her folded arms, and I saw that she was actually clenching her own upper arms so tightly that she looked likely to put a permanent crease in her pristine, fitted suit jacket.

Desmond’s gaze didn’t move from the blond woman.

“Jade?” the green-haired werewolf prompted.

The blond woman turned, her hands full of side plates, and looked at me.

Her eyes were indigo blue. A darker blue than the ocean I’d watched her drowning in only hours ago … in my mind. I’d watched her drown in the hallucination that Beau said Blackwell had triggered. The hallucination that had manifested within this continuing, all-encompassing hallucination. Right?

“Jade Godfrey,” I whispered.

She smiled at me. A blinding, white-toothed sunny smile meant to make me fall instantly in love with her.

“We haven’t met,” she said as the room began to dip and churn around me. “I’d never forget magic that tastes like yours.”

Everything before and around me melted into blackness. As if a dark cloak had been thrown across my eyes, over my brain.

Black, not white.

I’d never fainted before.

I’d been drugged to sleep by pills and overwhelmed by the pain of my hallucinations, but I’d never fainted.

I saw no white light, no shroud of mist. I felt no pain, no migraine. I didn’t desperately scramble for my charcoal and paper. I felt absolutely no need to sketch.

I just shut down. Fell down, actually.

I had a split second to mourn Beau. I was terribly sure that if I ever gained consciousness again, it would be without him. And what good would waking up be if I had to wake up without Beau?

∞

A man and a woman were arguing.
 

As I fought my way through the dark blanket currently enveloping my mind, I identified the man as Desmond, alpha of the West Coast North American Pack. So that meant I was still in the fantasyland meticulously constructed by my broken brain. But that was okay, because I was also nestled in Beau’s arms.

Actually, the man was the only one arguing. The woman, whoever she was, just wasn’t backing down.

“Stop railing at Kandy, Desmond,” another woman — Jade — snapped. “You’ll only freak the girl out even more.”

“The girl …” I could hear Desmond’s sneer. “… only fainted when she saw you, dowser.”

Jade laughed. The sound echoed through my cavernous mind, burrowing deep, reminding me of all the visions … oh, God, the visions. Of Jade and Blackwell. Of green knives and swords. Of demons and so, so much blood. Of tears and screaming … and Jade drowning.

I opened my eyes, fighting back the scream that rose in my chest. Beau’s face swam into focus. He was smiling, or at least trying to. His blue-green eyes were wide with tension, but he held me tenderly.

“Here. This will make you feel better,” Jade said.

I turned my head. I was nestled in Beau’s lap. We were on the floor near the dining room table. I could see one of its legs at the edge of my peripheral vision.

Jade was squatting next to us, holding two plates. Each plate held a cupcake. One was chocolate with chocolate icing. One was chocolate with strawberry icing.

“Chocolate cake with a kick of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, frosted with chocolate butter icing,” Jade said. “
Sex in a Cup
. Switch the spices for cayenne pepper and it would perfectly match your boyfriend here.”

She eyed Beau appreciatively. He swallowed and kept his eyes fixed to the cupcake.

Desmond swore somewhere behind us, unleashing a string of imaginative curses strung together with utter fury … and jealousy.

I sat up abruptly, smacking my head on Beau’s chin. “Ow,” I moaned.

Jade laughed, husky and low. Apparently, my jealousy amused her.

“I don’t like chocolate,” I snapped.

Every werewolf in the room snickered … except Desmond. Jade’s smile widened. “You know that shapeshifters can smell a lie, don’t you?”

“You aren’t a shapeshifter.”

“No, I’m not,” Jade said. “I sense magic, and occasionally mold it. Sometimes I can tell if it’s unbalanced or missing something. Your magic needs this.” She held the second cupcake out to me. “Chocolate cake with strawberry buttercream.
Love in a Cup.
To soothe you, Rochelle Saintpaul.”

I reached for the plate without even wanting to, as if compelled to do so. Compelled to accept her offering. It felt similar to how I’d been compelled to answer Blackwell’s questions in the restaurant, but less … sharply.

Beau took the chocolate cupcake without a word, but he didn’t eat it.
 

I stared at Jade over the cupcake, which — now that I held it so close — smelled intoxicatingly good. I wasn’t a strawberry person either, but I itched to sink my teeth into this cupcake, to lick the icing off my fingers after consuming every crumb.

She stared at me. Dowser, Desmond had called her. But she wasn’t looking at me … she was somehow looking beyond me. I dropped my gaze to the cupcake. I fought my desperate need to eat it.

“Your magic,” she murmured, but she didn’t follow through with the thought as she settled down crossed-legged before us. A gold necklace as thick as my mother’s chain in my pocket was wound twice around her neck. I’d glimpsed this necklace for the first time last night in my hallucination, but now I could clearly see that the dozen or so wedding rings were soldered to the chain like charms. The necklace glowed with a soft blur that caused me to blink if I tried to focus on it. It swung forward as Jade moved, then settled back against her chest. She caught me looking at it and smiled.

“Eat,” she said.

I felt Beau look up behind me. I followed his gaze to Desmond, who was now behind Jade, leaning back against the kitchen island with his arms crossed. The alpha was staring at the back of the dowser’s head, as if he either wanted to wring her neck or drag her to his bed. Even I could see that emotion seething from him, and I was usually blind to such things.