Psychic Series Boxset: Books 1-3

by Lisa Freed

  Which lead me right back here, to Greece, sitting in a taxi while Mateo stared at me from the opened door with a frown pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Can we go to a different beach?” I asked.

  Mateo leaned his head into the car, “What is wrong with this beach? Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “It is, but it’s full of people,” I explained patiently. “I wanted a more isolated beach where I could hunt for sea glass. Remember?” I held up my necklace and shook it slightly as if that would rekindle his memory.

  “Oh,” he said, then climbed back into the car.

  The driver let out a loud sigh and motioned with his hand. Mateo said a few soft words to him and did an odd backward jerk of his head with a tongue click that had the driver throwing up both hands but then we were off again.

  “Sorry about that. I thought you knew.”

  “I did, I just didn’t realize that only certain beaches were good for sea glass.” His voice had a slight trace of annoyance to it and I couldn’t blame him for that.

  “Any glass there is already trampled into the sand. I need a beach that hasn’t seen a lot of foot traffic.”

  “Understood.”

  After about five minutes the driver stopped again, but this time he got out and opened the door for me. I gave him a cheery smile and a nod to express my thanks but he was too busy glaring at Mateo to notice me.

  Mateo didn’t seem to care about the driver’s animosity and pressed several more paper notes into his hand.

  Glancing about at where we were, I heard the taxi take off in a squeal of tires and a pattering of loose gravel. My nose filled with the pungent smell of exhaust fumes which I waved my hands in front of my face to dispel.

  “This should be perfect,” Mateo commented as he began to slowly walk between a gap in two large green scrub bushes that lined the road.

  The greenery swallowed him from view causing me to scurry after him. There was a faint path beaten into the tall wild grasses by the passage of countless feet over the years which lead from the road to a small rocky enclosure. Immense white rocks towered over us as we walked single file down to a pebbled beach.

  The smell of the ocean reached me the moment I had exited the car but I hadn’t seen it. Only after going around a curve in the rocks did I see the water lapping at the stones. The beach, narrow and more rocks than sand, was completely empty, Mateo and I the only people in sight.

  “This is perfect!” I exclaimed, my eyes darting over the multicolored brown and tan rocks at my feet in search of the out of place colors of sea glass.

  “Well let’s go, we have a plane to catch and it might take us a bit to get a ride back to the airport.”

  We walked in silence for a bit, both of us crouching every now and then to examine something. I wasn’t finding much, which disappointed me, but it was so beautiful and serene here I couldn’t let the lack of glass bring me down. Pausing to take out my phone and capture a picture, I saw Mateo a few paces ahead digging into the rocks with his hands.

  “I think I found something!” he called out.

  Snapping off a quick shot of the water and then one of a smiling Mateo down on his knees in the rocks, I walked carefully over to him and accepted the bit he handed me.

  It was a stunning piece of sunshine in my hands. Beautifully frosted, the glass had etchings in it, a long-ago vase or Depression glass. My breath froze in my throat as I held the piece up to the sunlight to better see it and marvel over.

  “Did I find something good?” Mateo asked, standing and dusting off his knees where the imprint of the rocks remained.

  “Incredibly good, yellow is super rare and this is amazing,” I gushed, still unable to believe what I was holding in my hands.

  “Excellent! A perfect souvenir for you from Greece.” He smiled, his dark eyes staring into mine with an intensity that made my knees a little weak.

  Without being aware of it, my right hand had gone to the red pendant and was rubbing it, Mateo’s eyes dropped and lingered.

  “Bad memories?” he asked.

  I let go of the necklace, tucking the yellow piece of sea glass securely into my purse. “No, starts bad but it’s good. Just painful.”

  “Connected to the man you are seeking?”

  “Victor?” I asked, misunderstanding him.

  “No, not the spirit. The man whose body he took over.”

  “Oh, Lance, yes,” I said wanting the subject to be dropped.

  Mateo either didn’t notice or deliberately pushed on. “Why do you want to help him so badly? You said Victor didn’t harm him before.”

  “That’s true, but…” I paused, not certain what I wanted to say.

  “You care for this man? This Lance?”

  “No!” The denial came out hotter than I intended, giving lie to my answer. “Well, I thought I did once,” I amended.

  “Victor will return him,” Mateo said confidently. “He no doubt knows you’re here.”

  I stumbled over a particularly loose patch of rocks. “How?”

  “He knows you, so he must have known what you would do.”

  “But he didn’t tell me he was going to Greece,” I argued.

  The look Mateo gave could almost be considered pitying. “Did he need to? Look how quickly you figured it out. When he wants to, he will contact you. So, relax, and let’s enjoy the rest of our walk, okay?” Mateo smiled, his lips spread wide over his teeth.

  “Sounds good,” I answered feeling suddenly very carefree and happy. Mateo had that effect on me. He sounded so certain, how I could I doubt him?

  For forty or so minutes we walked the beach, occasionally finding a piece or two of beautifully tumbled sea glass but nothing to rival the yellow piece Mateo found. I walked with my head down, my eyes scanning the rocks while listening to the waves softly push over the rocks, then noticed that Mateo had halted. He stared out at the water then back behind us.

  “Teresa, I think we have a problem.”

  Coming to stand next to him I looked back at where he was staring but could see nothing out of the ordinary. Just the water surging up against the sprigs of dry grass that sprouted near the large smooth white boulders that towered upward making this a secluded beach. Then I blinked, where was the beach?!

  “Mateo...”

  “The tide is coming in, I didn’t consider that. Come on, we need to make it back before we’re swimming!” He took off at a fast pace, his long legs soon up to the ankles in the incoming water.

  I glanced between my nice, new brown leather sandals and the clear blue water. Knowing the rocks under it would be painful on my feet I still groaned as I kept my shoes on. Hurrying to catch up with Mateo, I could feel my sandals absorbing the water and ocean’s waves tugging at them as I doggedly sloshed on.

  By the time we were several feet away from the opening that led to the path we had come down, the water pushed against my calves. A few times I felt something bump against my legs but determinedly I refused to look down. Scrambling, we made our way up the incline, our wet shoes lacking the traction of earlier and Mateo’s feet sent loose tiny pebbles raining down at me where they struck my toes with enough force to cause me to wince repeatedly.

  Once more we were up on the road, both of us breathing hard, Mateo started laughing. “That was something we both won’t forget for a while,” he gasped out between chuckles.

  “I can’t believe we didn’t check tides,” I said, completely disgusted with myself. “That’s one of the first things I do when I’m considering a beach walk.”

  “It’s my fault, I simply didn’t think of it.” He looked down at his wet sandals, shaking his head.

  “Let’s share the blame for this one and call it a day.”

  “Agreed.” Mateo pulled out his phone and dialed a number. After a while he got connected, spoke in Greece for a few seconds then disconnected. “It will be ten or so minutes until a taxi is by to get us. I would count on it being longer.”

  A car went by just then, the driv
er and passengers staring at us as the car zoomed past kicking up some road dust in our faces.

  “We better get back; road dust will be the least of our worries if someone runs over our feet.”

  I shuffled a few paces away from the road toward the scrubs that lined it. Mateo followed suit, still playing on his phone. “Will they be able to see us?” I asked anxiously.

  His dark eyes went over my white shorts, turquoise and white shirt, and then lingered on my hat. “I don’t think that will be a problem,” he said with a grin. “You look adorable.”

  I could feel some heat gathering in my cheeks. I liked that he had noticed. He was a hard guy to gauge, keeping his distance yet throwing out comments like that. Should I tell him he looked pretty good himself? Or just plain yummy? I liked his hair mussed up and tousled, not slicked back or gelled to perfection as it had been earlier.

  Mateo’s gaze went to me once again and this time I turned my back on him. I had forgotten how good he was at reading my thoughts!

  CHAPTER TEN

  A different, much friendlier taxi driver took us back to the airport and we hung outside letting our shoes dry out while we waited around for boarding. Captain Esteban greeted us like long-lost friends, cupping my hands securely between his hard, calloused ones, he nodded and smiled before ushering me up the stairs back into the tin-can plane.

  This time I beat Mateo to the magazine, yanking it free of the aisle seat’s pocket and taking it with me to the window seat I had occupied earlier. The two older ladies from the earlier flight didn’t return but the plane was almost full so Mateo and I got to sit together.

  The warmth of his body and the musky smell of his cologne mixed with tangy sea scents comforting me. He dozed during the flight. My eyes kept flickering to him and I found myself repeatedly wishing we didn’t live an ocean apart. To have someone understand me and to be able to speak about my dealings with the supernatural, what a relief that would be.

  My friendship with John was free of those restraints and it was wonderful. Sweet, caring John, my friend from high school. I never meant to let him in on my secret, it had just kinda slipped out during a tough math study session. Though John made me do the bulk of all our dissections in biology class, he seriously kicked butt when it came to anything math related. Which was wonderful because I struggled in geometry, algebra, calculus, basically I sucked in math period.

  Victor and I had had a strange encounter the day before, we had touched and what a mistake it had been! All day at school it kept replaying in my mind, an endless loop of misery. Which meant my mind was far away from my classes, not good when I was barely treading water in math as it was. John sat next to me in study hall and kept poking at me with his pencil.

  “T! You got numbers two through five wrong,” he hissed.

  We were up in the back of the auditorium, our seats the last so nobody was behind us and due to the sheer size of the room people were scattered about with endless space between them. So, there was no need for the pencil pokes or the low whispers, normal low tones would have been just fine. Nope, John was just being John.

  Without even commenting, I had just begun erasing everything, not even protesting when John snatched the paper from under my pencil.

  “Snap out of it! What’s got you in such a funk?” he muttered angrily, brushing eraser dust away from the paper so he could assess the damage.

  Instead of answering, tears had overflowed my eyes and dripped down onto the open math book in my lap.

  For such a usually clueless guy, John had immediately latched onto my real problem. “I’ll kill the guy!” he declared fiercely, pulling a tissue from the small pack he kept in his bookbag and pushing it at me.

  “He’s already dead,” I sniffed, the tissue no match for the tears that continued to patter down.

  In the act of pulling more tissues free from the cellophane wrap, John had paused. Looking up at me, an impressed look on his face he blurted, “Your dad got to him? Didn’t think he had it in him!”

  “No, it was his own brother.”

  “Well, if he bothers you again, you tell me, okay?” John had given up on the tissues and just tossed me the entire pack. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a boyfriend?” His tone was steady, but I could hear the undertone of hurt.

  “He’s not my boyfriend, it’s complicated.”

  “Isn’t everything?” John had muttered, looking away.

  When his clear blue eyes returned to meet mine, his feelings for me were carefully hidden, but I knew the effort it had taken to push them back. I had felt his internal struggle.

  That was when the first talk of my psychic abilities had come out. In an effort to not hurt John any further, I had told him about Victor, about seeing spirits, about my odd feelings and hunches that came true. And most importantly about how John was the only person besides my sister that knew. I wanted to emphasize to him just how very important he was to me. Not as a boyfriend or lover, I couldn’t give him that, but as a trusted friend.

  It had been hilarious, even now seven years later, his comment still made me smile. Instead of being in disbelief or wanting me to prove it, he had simply said, “So, if you’re a psychic why are you so bad at math?”

  I really did need to call John to check up on my babies and thank him again for all he was doing for me. Plus, it would be great to reconnect with a huge part of my life. Being here in Greece was starting to get surreal. Living out of a hotel room, eating in restaurants for every meal, taking a plane to hunt sea glass, oh my! How quickly I was losing track of the days, and honestly, even the reason why I was here.

  Sneaking another peek at Mateo, I found his dark eyes open and on me. I made a little involuntary squeak and flinched ever so slightly. His mouth pinched up in a grimace of displeasure at my reaction though his eyes didn’t break contact.

  Instead of scaring me that relaxed me somehow. Staring deeply into his eyes, I found the pinpoint of light in his black pupils and explored that glittering brightness.

  Heat, warm, tingling heat coursed over my body, a beat sounded in my head, one I didn’t recognize as my heartbeat because it wasn’t mine, it was his. Hard arms encircled my inner self pulling me in, I didn’t fight, went willingly along, not a care in the world. Voices whispered to me, though I could not make out their words.

  The airplane’s tires smacking on the runaway jolted me out of wherever I had been. My eyes, having been open the entire time, were dry from not blinking. Turning from Mateo’s still penetrating stare, I blinked my eyes rapidly to bring some much-needed moisture to them. “That was pretty wild,” I commented to him.

  “It was,” he remarked in a husky voice, little like his normal one.

  My toes curled up gripping at the rough leather of my sandals, that voice doing odd things to my breathing and composure. I quickly threw up my mental wall before pondering inviting Mateo up to my hotel room.

  Alas, it was not to be. After the plane stopped, Captain Esteban ushered us all off and we trudged into the terminal. Mateo, though friendly, seemed distant as I chattered about Milos and our experience avoiding the incoming tide. He checked his phone frequently and then excused himself to the restroom.

  I found an unoccupied chair and played with my phone while waiting for him. I didn’t want to presume that we would share a taxi back to my hotel and wherever he lived or was staying but I also didn’t want to just up and leave without him. Obviously, we had different reactions to that amazing joining or whatever had happened on the plane. Maybe it hadn’t been as wildly interesting to him as it had been for me. I was still thinking about that when he appeared suddenly at my side.

  “Ready to head back?” he asked.

  “Sure. But hey, can we talk about what happened on the plane first?” Normally I’m not the boldest or most direct person, but Mateo had more psychic experience than I did and when was I ever going to have the chance to talk and learn like this?

  He sat down on the seat next to me. “You got into my head,�
� he said simply. His voice remained even and calm, though his face looked wary.

  “I did?” That wasn’t quite what I thought happened and I decided to press him on that. “It felt more like we were somewhere else, I heard voices.”

  His dark eyes flashed at that. “What were they saying?”

  “I couldn’t make it out, it was odd. I don’t think they were our voices.”

  “My memories, probably. You’ll have to excuse me, I’m not used to this. Normally it’s the other way around.” He produced a faint smile then stood up. “I hope you don’t mind if we part ways, a few things have come up and I suspect some downtime is needed for both of us.”

  I stood and picked up my purse. “Sure, absolutely. Thank you once again for taking me to Milos and for the amazing piece of yellow sea glass, I’ll treasure it always.”

  Mateo seemed about to say something, his eyes had dropped down to my mouth and I felt a delicious swirl of desire take hold of me again but then his eyes moved away and he said softly, “You’re very welcome, Teresa.”

  He waited outside for the taxis to come and let me take the first one. Before my door shut completely, he halted its progress. “Breakfast tomorrow?”

  “That sounds great!” I exclaimed feeling relieved. Part of me worried that something had changed between us, and not for the better. Maybe he really was tired and had work to attend to but call me psychic – haha- I love my own little jokes- but I had a feeling everything went back to that mind blending moment on the plane. Yet why had it affected him so negatively when it had been purely the opposite for me?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The ride back to my hotel passed quickly, I grabbed a prepackaged Danish and a bag of chips for my in-room dinner and chilled on the bed watching TV. Mostly I tried to will myself to recall every detail about that body or rather mind jump that happened on the plane. Maybe I was beating a dead horse and it was exactly as Mateo had said, I had been in his head. Yet I truly didn’t believe that. Could it have been a memory? But of what? And why was he thinking about it while staring at me? Because he had been, very intently.