Time Mends (22 page)

“
Talley?”

“
Am I squeezing too
tight?” The manic grip on my arm loosened slightly.

“
You’re whispering in my
head.”

“
I’m what?”

“
Whispering in my head.
Like normal Seer communication, except it’s not a full
moon.”

Talley pulled back so she could see me. Her
eyebrows and lips were all scrunched up. “What am I saying?”

“
Basically that you’re not
going to let me die, which is ironic since I just had this really
awesome dream where some Indian chick stabbed me in the stomach
with a knife.” I rubbed a hand over my scars. “You know, my stomach
hasn’t ever done anything to anyone. I don’t know why it gets so
mistreated.”

Talley pulled herself up and immediately
started working her hair over with the fingers on her left hand.
“You saw that? How…? Why…?” She squinched her eyes together and
shook her head back and forth as if trying to rearrange its
content. “Scout, that isn’t possible.”

I pulled myself up into a sitting position,
dread a heavy weight in my chest. “We specialize in the impossible
around here.” God, sometimes I wished I would wake up and realize
this entire past year had been a dream. “So, you’ve seen the whole
Scout gets stabbed in a far away field thing, too? That’s got to be
good news.”

I leaned over to flip on my retro Mickey
Mouse lamp and grab Guido, who had fallen onto the floor. If we
were going to start delving into some crazy Shifter/Seer stuff
which was most likely was going to end with me getting my guts
ripped out again, I wanted to have both my sight and my sock
monkey.

“
Start from the
beginning,” Talley said. “Have you ever had this vision
before?”

I started to say no, but then realized it
was a lie. It had the mental flavor of something familiar. “Maybe.
I’ve been having bad dreams all summer, but haven’t been able to
remember them when I wake up. I think maybe I’ve seen the people in
the field and the blood before, but not the actual stabbing.”
Surely I would remember that part.

“
Have you ever seen it
while you were awake?”

“
No,” I said, dragging out
the word. Was this some sort of Is Scout Crazy Test? If so, was I
passing?

Talley wrapped a strand of hair around her
finger, unwrapped it, and then wrapped it up again. “And when you
heard my voice in your head, was there anything else?”

“
I saw me falling to my
knees, which was weird because I didn’t actually make it to that
part in the dream.”

I could almost see a theory formulating in
her head.

“
Did you feel anything?
Like emotions that were strange, not yours?”

“
No. Just the panicky,
unsettled feeling everyone has after a nightmare.” Something about
her question had me concentrating on the dream. There was something
there… “I had a panic attack right before the dream started. I was
having my normal A… awesomely lame dreams and then, boom! A panic
attack hit me out of nowhere.”

Twirl. Untwirl. Twirl. Untwirl.

“
Can we try
something?”

I hugged Guido a little tighter. “Sure.”

Talley reached out her hand and laid it on
my forearm. Then, she closed her eyes. At first there was nothing
and then Steve from Blue’s Clues popped into my head. Strange
enough, but even stranger given he was wearing a Super-Girl cape
and glittery tiara.

“
What do you
see?”

“
Evidence that our
favorite children’s TV host didn’t so much overdose as go a little
bonkers.”

Talley jerked her hand back, her eyes wide.
And then she started to giggle. And it wasn’t the happy, this is
funny type of giggling, either. This was more of the prepare my
padded room variety. By the time she quit, which was a substantial
amount of time later, she had to wipe tears off her cheeks.

“
What’s going
on?”

“
I can project now.” She
closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I can project,” she said
weakly. “Scout, why can I project?”

“
Because you’re the most
awesomely awesome Seer to have ever Seen?”

She snorted. “Any other brilliant
theories?”

“
Could it be because you
have a mate now? Does that, like, strengthen your abilities or
something?” That’s what would have happened if this was one of
those trashy paranormal books I like so much.

“
Highly doubtful. For one,
that’s not a normal side effect of mating. And for another, I’m not
mated.”

“
But you will be.” I took
a tentative step out onto the thin ice that was the whole
Scout-as-til-death-do-we-part-matchmaker. “There is no way I can
say ‘I’m sorry’ enough times.”

Talley has always been the most generous of
my friends, but at that moment she went beyond her normal level of
amazing. “You have nothing to be sorry for. It’s not anyone’s
fault.”

“
Tal, I’ve bound you to
Jase. For life.” He was my brother, and I loved him dearly, but the
idea of living with him forever was not appealing. “You should be
very, very angry with me.”

“
I’m not.”

“
Maybe you just don’t know
how to be mad at someone.” Since I was a pro, I decided it was time
to educate her. “First thing you need to do is think really nasty
things about me. Tons of them, but be sure to remember the most
scathing remarks so you can pass them on to others. And there needs
to be glaring. Lots of glaring. And the occasional snide comment
thrown my way, just so I don’t get confused as to whether or not
you’re actually pissed.”

“
Scout, I’m perfectly
capable of being angry when the situation warrants it. This one
does not.”

How could she not be mad? She should be
livid. I mean, it would be one thing if she wanted to marry Jase,
but…

Oh. My. God.

“
Talley, are you in love
with my brother?”

Her head came up so fast I worried she might
have whiplash. “What?”

“
Is that why you’re not
mad? Do you want to be mated to Jase?”

“
Scout, did you
purposefully mate me to your brother? Did you maliciously
manipulate him into making an oath?”

“
Of course
not.”

“
That’s why I’m not mad.
You did nothing wrong. The whole thing is…” She took another deep
breath. “It’s not ideal. I mean, the childhood dream isn’t going to
come true for me. I don’t get to meet some fantabulous guy who is
going to look at me like I’m beautiful and thinks my jokes are
funny. No awkward first dates and breath-taking first kisses. No
two hour phone conversations over nothing just so we can hear each
other’s voice. But so what? I don’t get to fall in love. Not
everyone does. And, let’s face it, I was already destined to be one
of those people. At least this way I’ll spend my life with someone
I care about, someone who is a good person and won’t ever do
something to purposefully hurt me. A lot of people have it a lot
worse.”

“
Tal—”

“
It’s Jase who got the raw
end of the deal.” She pulled up her knees and tucked in her arms,
somehow achieving the fetal position while sitting up. “I mean,
he’s Jase. He would have ended up with someone beautiful and
fabulous, but now he’s stuck with me.”

“
That’s not true,” I said,
but she didn’t believe me. I know because I didn’t really believe
myself. It’s not that I think Talley isn’t beautiful and amazing
and every single color in the rainbow of awesome, because I do.
Honestly, I think she’s way too good of a person to have me as a
best friend. But she doesn’t match the Jase girlfriend profile. She
knew it, I knew it, and God knows Jase knew it.

“
We’re losing focus.” She
cleared her throat as she pulled herself out of the Talley ball.
“I’ve developed a new super-power. That’s the big deal here,
remember?”

“
How is you having a
vision of me getting killed not the big deal?”

Talley’s face tightened. “It’s not a vision.
It’s a nightmare. Everyone has them.”

Of course it was.

“
Well then, maybe you’re
like Rogue,” I said, allowing her to pretend she couldn’t See the
future and everything was peachy keen. “You suck the powers from
other Seers.”

“
Good theory, but I
haven’t been around any Seers other than my mom, and I’m not
whipping up a sparkly unitard anytime soon.”

“
Have you recently fallen
into a vat of radioactive goo?”

“
Well, I did make the
mistake of opening the bottom drawer of the bathroom
cabinet.”

“
I told you not to do
that! Do you want to grow a third eye in the middle of your
head?”

“
That depends. Would I get
a snazzy new power with said eye? Maybe the ability to See
profitable stock investments or who will win the Kentucky Derby?”
Eventually we quit speculating on the origins of Talley’s new power
and ran some more tests. As long as she was projecting strongly, I
would catch a glimmer of whatever it was she was trying to
communicate, but never anything as solid as what she got off
us.

The next day we expanded our experiments to
include Charlie and Angel. Charlie didn’t get anything, and Angel
didn’t fair any better in our Let’s Pretend to be Psychics game.
Jase, of course, refused to be touched by Talley, despite the fact
she was trying to put things in his head instead of taking them
out.

With his aversion to touching Talley, I was
surprised at how much time Jase started spending with her. They got
so used to having to be seen as a couple in public they actually
started to act like it at home. Talley would sit on the bed beside
him, reading a book as he played video games. They watched a
ridiculous amount of BBC together, laughing at jokes neither
Charlie nor I realized were supposed to be funny. They even started
fixing each other sandwiches without ever asking what the other
wanted. It was weird. The two had always been friends - the four of
us were pretty much a package deal outside of school - but there
was a bond forming there. For a brief moment in time, I thought
everything might actually work itself out.

Then, the full moon came.

I should have known something was coming.
There was evidence all over the place, and my instincts were
screaming out in warning, yet I ignored them in favor of my
imaginary world where everything was okay and normal.

It started the day after
my birthday. Luckily, the whole removal of Scout from the Hagan
Pack didn’t translate into the removal of Scout from the Hagan
family, which meant I was now the owner of a spumoni cake and
detailed family tree, thanks to Gramma Hagan, world’s most devoted
baker and ancestry buff. Angel and I were sitting around scarfing
down the final pieces of the cake while watching
Fish Hooks
. My sister
was convinced I needed to watch it to learn the finer points of
friendship, a skill she found me lacking.

“
There is someone in the
woods,” Angel announced as she angled her spoon towards my
plate.

“
Nice try, Munchkin, but
no. Eat your chocolate and cherry layers and leave my pistachio
alone.”

Her lower lip jutted out. “But I don’t have
any.”

“
Because you ate it
already.” The kid was a menace. She had somehow finagled both
Talley and Charlie out of their pistachio cake the night before.
“Try the cherry. It’s delicious.” I took a big bite of mine and
made the appropriate sounds for experiencing culinary
excellence.

Angel’s face lit up. “I’ll trade you my
cherry layer for your pistachio.”

“
No deal.”

“
But—”

“
Eat it or I’ll take it.”
It was getting near the full moon, so my appetite was similar to
that of an Olympic swimmer combined with a sumo
wrestler.

Angel dug in, pouting with every scrumptious
bite. As she ate, her attention returned to the French doors
leading to the back yard.

“
There is still someone in
the woods. Is it deer season?”

“
No, and you can stop with
the ‘someone is in the woods’ routine. I’ve already eaten my
pistachio, so there is no more green cake for you to
steal.”

“
But there
is
someone in the
woods,” she whined. “Look.”

I followed her pointer finger out to the
woods with my eyes. At first I didn’t see anything, and was about
to say as much, when a low bush rustled even though there was no
wind to speak of.

“
Do you see—?”

“
Shhh…” I strained to hear
something, but even with my super-ears I couldn’t pick up anything
from so far away. I got up to move closer to the door. As soon as I
did, there was another rustle of bushes, and then what could have
been movement in the dense trees.

“
You see him, right?” I
shot her a look. “You see him, right?” she repeated, this time in a
whisper.

“
I don’t know,” I said.
“It was probably just a deer or raccoo
n.”

Angel shook her head, eyes wide. “Nope. I
saw an arm.”

It’s a testament to just
how much I hate
Fish Hooks
that I decided we needed to investigate. It was
another twenty minutes before we made it to the spot where Angel’s
man with an arm had been seen since I had to wait for her to put on
her “undercover” outfit, which consisted of black leggings, a Team
Ninja t-shirt, and her black snow boots.