Whispered Visions (Shifters & Seers Book 3) (15 page)

Her tiny tear-fueled rainstorm had stopped, but there were still thunderclouds in Pari’s eyes.

“If there is one thing Alistair and I can agree on, it’s his father was a monster. Those first weeks were a living hell. When he didn’t have me drugged out of my mind, I was handcuffed to the leg of the table or getting some up-close and personal time with someone’s fists. He was furious I didn’t know anything about your kind. I kept trying to explain I had never even heard of Shifters and Seers before, but he thought I was lying. Eventually, I started showing him the true scope of my powers. Not as a threat, but as a bargaining tool.” She met their eyes briefly, as if daring them to condemn her for her actions. Neither of them did. They both knew they would have done the same thing in her shoes.

“When they came to tell me he died, I cried. I cried so hard I could hardly breathe. Everyone thought I was grieving, but I wasn’t. Those were tears of joy. I know I’m going to hell for it, but the happiest day of my life was when Robert Halifax took his last miserable breath.”

Even without Lizzie’s Sight, Layne knew Pari was drowning in guilt. She blamed herself for getting caught and subjecting Caroline to a life where getting to go outside for even a few minutes was a luxury. He could have told her it was stupid to blame herself for the actions of a madman, but she wouldn’t have listened. He knew better than most what it was like to only hear the condemnation you thought you deserved instead of the compassion you were given.

“So we know where we are and how we got here,” Lizzie said, a series of lines etched between her eyebrows as she started off at some unseen spot in the distance. “It feels like a major breakthrough, but is it really? We’re still trapped inside this house with no way out.”

“You’re only trapped here until your next assignment,” Layne reminded her. “Next time you go out, you run and don’t stop until you can safely call the Alphas and tell them where to send the extraction team.”

Lizzie’s teeth bit into the soft skin of her full bottom lip. Even though she’d been looking at nothing in particular before, now it seemed as if she was looking at everything but him. A ball comprised of fear and rage settled next to his sternum.

“Lizzie—”

“No. Stop. There is no reason to have this same fight again. Nothing has changed. Not really.”

“What do you mean nothing has changed? You have a place to send the freaking rescue mission. Now you can escape without worrying about me being trapped here forever.”

Lizzie’s eyes met his. There was something in her gaze that made him feel as if someone hit him in the chest, causing his fear and rage ball to come loose and drop into his stomach where it turned into something else entirely. Something even more terrifying: Hope.

It wasn’t hope they would escape. It was an old hope, one he thought he’d killed years ago.

“I’m not leaving you here,” she said, her voice shaking with some unnamed emotion.

Layne tried really hard not to think of names for that emotion. It would only feed the hope, and experience taught him nothing hurt quite so much as false hope.

“You know if I escape they’re not just going to keep you around here as Caroline’s nanny. They will kill you, Layne.”

“But you’ll be free. And you’ll send someone to free Pari and Caroline.”

“Do you honestly think our freedom is a fair trade for your life? Are you insane?”

She would say that to anyone
, he reminded himself.
This isn’t about you.

“What we’re doing here isn’t living,” he said. “So, yes, I think one life in exchange for three is a good deal.”

Lizzie growled, a real, honest-to-the-Shifter-gods growl, which was rather impressive since she didn’t have a canine half. “No, it’s not.”

Pari turned to fully face them for the first time, although she didn’t look directly at either of them. “But if there is a chance—“

“No,” Lizzie snapped. The light streaming through the window reflected off gold flecks in her narrowed eyes. “I’m not leaving him. Ever. Don’t ask again.”

Pari turned back to the window, discreetly wiping away a tear. With one last frustrated glare thrown his way, Lizzie took a stack of books and stomped out of the room. And in Layne’s chest, that old, long forgotten hope began to grow.

Lizzie had mistakenly believed her assignments would be few and far between, but shortly after her trip to the British Museum, she found herself being whisked off to London yet again. This time she and Alistair met with an elderly woman at Café Nero where she enjoyed a hot chocolate and shortbread before declaring the woman a fraud.

The steel-haired woman had claimed to know the whereabouts of a werewolf in Denmark where her daughter was living. Lizzie would have known she was lying without touching her since her description included the savage beast walking around on his back legs and standing nearly seven foot tall, which wasn’t anywhere near possible since Shifters fully transform into their animal halves. However, Lizzie might have been a bit more discreet about her declaration and softened it a bit by saying the woman was so old she didn’t know what she was talking about if she hadn’t touched her and seen the deep-seated greed that had guided her entire corrupt life.

Alistair was so pleased with Lizzie’s performance he took her to watch the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace after. Despite her complete boredom and inability to see over the heads towering in front of her, Lizzie pretended complete and utter delight. She hung on Alistair’s arm and gave him so many smiles her face hurt. She batted her eyelashes and laughed at his jokes. She made him feel like he was the center of her world, and in turn he started feeling like she was the center of his.

Lizzie knew it was a dangerous game she was playing, but there weren’t many options. It was either play simpering devotee to Alistair in hopes one day he would forget she was the enemy and let down his guard enough to let her find a way for them all to escape, or follow Layne’s plan of abandonment, which wasn’t really an option. Too many people had left him already. She wouldn’t do it, especially when doing so might cost him his life.

Living in captivity might not be truly living, but it was so far beyond living life without Layne it wasn’t even worth considering.

After their encounter with Granny Greedy the Liar, Lizzie and Alistair began going out on weekly assignments. Pari almost always accompanied them. Once they were at their destination, she would go off with David to do her Pari thing while Lizzie and Alistair interviewed informants, potential SHP members, and investors. Twice she was asked to confirm whether the person they were meeting was a Shifter. In one instance she was able to honestly say he wasn’t, and in the other she lied, begging him to go to the Alphas with her eyes. For the next two weeks she tensed with anticipation every time the doors of their apartment locked, hoping Liam or Charlie would be the person who burst through the door, ready to rescue their lost pack mates. But the calvary never came, and eventually Lizzie stopped looking for them to show up.

Most of their assignments took them back to London. She walked passed Parliament and Big Ben, smelled the breeze coming off the Thames, and even rode across Tower Bridge. She met people in pubs, coffee houses, and on benches in Hyde Park. Every experience was muddled by the fog of over-the-counter sleep medications. After her first assignment, she no longer had to endure Dr. Patel’s shots, but Alistair still insisted on blindfolds and double doses of whatever sleep medication he happened to have on-hand.

Only twice had she woke up to find herself somewhere other than London. Once it was to meet with a potential SHP member at Stonehenge, and the other was a weekend in Edinburgh. Pari hadn’t accompanied them on the Scotland trip, and Lizzie wondered if it was because Alistair worried someone might recognize her, or if it was because he wanted them to spend some extended time alone. Their meeting only took a few moments. A ten minute discussion on out-of-country bank accounts, a three second handshake, and a two minute assessment of the situation, and they were done. Once they wrapped up business, she and Alistair spent hours climbing the streets to the castle and looking through shops overburdened with plaid and wool. He bought her expensive gloves and beautiful yarn, and that night, he lingered outside her hotel room door, hoping she would ask for him to switch places with the woman who would guard her throughout the night.

Things were both going according to plan and not. Alistair had become uncomfortably obsessed with her, but it wasn’t making him careless. Guards followed them wherever they went, and Lizzie wasn’t given any more freedoms than on their first outing. She’d met many of his closest associates, but never did he speak freely in front of her, and never was she allowed to touch them, even with her gloves on.

Every time she returned to Brownlow Manor, Layne met her with a mixture of relief and disappointment. He never said what he was thinking, but he didn’t have to. She knew what he wanted her to do, just as much as he knew she would never do it. He may not have understood completely, but she thought he was beginning to.

She was keeping as tight of a grip on her feelings towards him as she could, but every day she felt herself drifting a little closer to the warmth he provided. They no longer sat on opposite sides of the room, refusing to meet one another’s eyes. Now, they shared a couch, often reading books or watching television together way past the time Caroline and Pari went to bed. They still didn’t talk to one another like they did when they were kids, but they didn’t exactly shut each other out like they had been for the past few years either. They hadn’t returned to where they had once been, but they were building something new.

While they built their new attempt at friendship during the day, at night Lizzie’s brain took their relationship somewhere else entirely. Some mornings she could barely meet his gaze, embarrassed by what the two of them had done in her dreams. It seemed her subconscious was way more creative and informed about certain activities than her waking self. She was in the middle of a scene that would make Nicki Minaj blush when she became aware of a hand on her shoulder in the waking world. Acting on instinct, she lashed out, slamming her elbow into a soft expanse of flesh. At Alistair’s muttered curse, her eyes flew open.

She was in a car, somewhere in London.

Slowly, her brain caught up and reminded her she was on assignment.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her hands hovering nervously in front of Alistair, who was trying to catch his breath. “I was asleep and dreaming…”

Oh God. What if he knew what she was dreaming? Had she talked in her sleep? She did that sometimes. Usually not anything intelligible, but heaven only knew what affect sleeping pills had on her dreamtime ramblings.

“My fault,” Alistair said, trying rather unsuccessfully to look as if he wasn’t really hurt. “My father always told me that waking a sleeping woman was putting my life at risk. I thought he was referring to my mother’s rather abysmal early morning moods, but I can see now he was talking in a general sense.”

“I really am sorry,” Lizzie said again. “I wasn’t being loud, was I?”

Alistair brushed a strand of hair over her shoulder. She forced herself not to recoil from his touch. “Of course not. You are as perfect in sleep as you are every other moment of the day. I was simply wanting to let you know we’re here.”

Swallowing back bile, Lizzie attempted to subtly scoot away from Alistair while taking in her surroundings. She was surprised to see they were already in the heart of London. Normally they parked the car outside the city and took a train in.

“Where are we?” she asked, unable to place their exact location.

“King’s Cross Station. Or at least, we will be if this traffic ever actually moves.”

Lizzie couldn’t have stopped the ridiculous smile spreading across her face if she tried. “King’s Cross Station? Are you taking me to Hogwarts?”

“Unfortunately, no. Not today,” he said as the car lurched forward. “But I think you might like this destination just as well.”

Reaching into the magical inner-pocket that girl’s coats never seemed to possess, Alistair pulled out some documents and handed them to Lizzie. One was a bogus passport which reported her to be Sally Newton, a twenty-year-old student from Portland, Maine. The other was a train ticket to Paris.

“We’re going to France?”

“We have an appointment at the Louvre later this afternoon.”

“We’re going to France by train, and we’re going to be there by this afternoon?”

Alistair chuckled. “It’s just a quick trip across the Channel, love. We’ll be there in a few hours.”

Sure enough, less than three hours later she was stepping out into a Parisian train station. After a lifetime of hearing about the City of Love and Paris fashion, Lizzie had expected everything in Paris to be very modern and posh. What she found was a crowded city buried beneath a layer of grime. Instead of svelte, beautiful people, she saw guards walking around with giant guns.

She’d grown accustomed to London’s busy streets, but traffic in Paris was something all together different. Motorcycles zipped around cars as if they didn’t have to obey the same rules of the road and most drivers pretended they couldn’t see the gaggle of pedestrians littering the streets. By the time they reached the famed museum, Lizzie had watched her entire life flash before her eyes at least five times.

Getting into the building was just as treacherous. People mobbed around the entrance, paying no heed to things like personal space. Despite the suffocating heat, Lizzie pulled on a thick sweater and slipped on a second pair of gloves. Still it took all of her will and concentration from having to endure a barrage of brain chatter.

Once they made it into the actual museum, the crowds thinned some, giving Lizzie room to breathe. The Louvre had a completely different feel than the National Gallery. As Alistair led her through a labyrinth of rooms and halls, the artwork threatened to overwhelm her in a way the paintings in London had not. Every piece screamed for attention, declaring, “I am important!” Since it was the Louvre, she was inclined to believe them. They rushed by one room where people were packed in so tightly she wasn’t sure how more continued to pour in through the door. Her heart skipped a beat when a lady pointed at the room and said to her friend, “Mona Lisa.”

She had ran past the
Mona Lisa
. Who ran past the
Mona Lisa
without stopping to have a look?

Lizzie knew the moment when they passed into a new section of the museum because the air changed. The room Alistair led her through didn’t have any paintings on the wall. The only artwork was a single statue.

A single armless statue.

“That is the
Venus de Milo
,” she said, coming to a stop in the middle of the floor. It took Alistair a few seconds to realize she was no longer sprinting behind him. Once he did, he trailed back, seemingly noticing the large slab of marble for the first time.

“Are you a fan?” he asked.

“It’s the
Venus de Milo
.” Seriously, wasn’t that the only explanation anyone needed? She could only recognize three sculptures in the entire world. Rodin’s
The Thinker
, the statue of David, and the
Venus de Milo
. Even someone like her, who knew very little about art, knew this hunk of stone was important.

“If you like that, you need to see what is in the next room,” he said, already leading her towards an arched door. With a final glance at the goddess, she followed, only to find herself soon surrounded by more figures. The room was considerably less crowded than the rest of the museum, and it almost seemed as if several of the tourist had suddenly turned to stone moments before she entered the room.

“Miss Smith.”

Lizzie turned, not at the name, but the voice. Even though it had been well over a month since she last saw him, she remembered the way Rashid spoke.

“Rashid,” she said, stripping off a glove and offering him her hand. “It’s good to see you again.”

Rashid was sensible enough to hesitate, but in the end, good manners prevailed, and he clasped her hand in his.

“Did you see your painting?” he asked. “It’s one of the reasons I picked this location. I thought you would enjoy seeing it in the flesh.”

Lizzie had noticed
La Liberté guidant le peuple
when Alistair tugged her through the various galleries. It was as large and richly colored as she expected it to be. What she hadn’t been expecting was her own potent response to the bodies littering the ground or the uncaring faces painted on the revolutionaries. For the first time, she wasn’t certain she was willing to pay the price freedom might ultimately cost.

“I did,” she told Rashid, trying to shake off the chill she felt despite the stifling heat. “I’ve decided when I paint myself, I’m going to go ahead and paint a shirt on there. I’m not sure how leaving your boobs hanging out for the world to see really helps promote liberty.”

Rashid’s smile was one hundred percent smarmy. “This is France, ma belle. Here, nudity is liberating. Perhaps you should give it a try.”

Lizzie crossed her arms over her chest, which was as overly-ample as her butt. When Alistair moved in front of her, as if to shield her from Rashid’s pervy view, she let him.

Rashid wasn’t just skeevy; he was a criminal complete devoid of morals. He would do - and had done - wretched things to people just for the sick joy it brought him.

“Did you bring the papers?” Alistair asked, changing the subject and effectively dismissing Lizzie.