For once, understanding took the lead over my anger.
“Jack, we’ll come back. You know that, right? Even if you kick the bucket while we’re gone, we’ll come back. I’ll come back. You won’t be forgotten.”
He shook his head and put the letter opener back on the table, spinning it in place. “This is one of the problems you’ve got to learn to deal with, kid. The downtrodden, the miserable and lonely, they will be drawn to you. Those that are lost, whether in the physical sense or in their souls, they are drawn to you, and they will fucking use you up if you let them.”
I clenched my hands tight. I thought about Eve, Alex, and Pamela. Even O’Shea to a degree—Jack was right, they had been all lost in one way or another. “So, I try not to take on too much, that’s what you’re saying?”
“Not just that, even me, I want you to stay, I want you to not leave. I’ve been fucking stalling.” He took a breath, and in the split second I could see the fear on him, heavy like a gargoyle sitting on his shoulders, gripping him tight. “We’re both Trackers but, as a woman, you have some characteristics that I don’t carry. Almost like a maternal instinct to protect, to care for those who can’t care for themselves.”
“Not news to me, Jack.” I rocked on my heels. That had been my whole life really, why should this be seen as something new?
He held up his cane, poked me in the chest with it, right where the demon mark was etched into my skin. “Maybe not, but you aren’t grasping what it means to you. They will bleed you dry, surround you with their needs and you will never be free of it. You will end up no longer able to Track because you are too busy taking care of those around you. Stop taking on the goddamn fucking charity cases. Or be ready to stop Tracking.”
His words jammed my brain, and in a burst of understanding, I realized he could be right. Taking on Eve, Pamela, and even Alex, though it had been nearly a year ago, they had all taken some of my focus. Before Alex had come into my life, there had been nothing other than bringing children home to their families. Though I hadn’t stopped Tracking, maybe I hadn’t been as dedicated? No, I had still gone after missing kids, that hadn’t changed.
Had it? Doubt nagged at me. Maybe he was right.
I shrugged, but lowered my eyes so he wouldn’t see any of the indecision I knew would be there. “Fine. No more charity cases. What else you got?” I itched to go after O’Shea and Milly. Though I knew Tracking Milly might not get me anywhere, I could Track O’Shea. Free him from her.
Have him back in your arms and your bed.
Yeah, that too.
Jack grunted. “You master the group Tracking?”
“I Tracked some Druids, I think in some ways it was—”
“Easier, yes.” He nodded tapping his cane in rhythm with the bobbing of his head. “Easier, but also harder. You don’t know if the group you Track are the exact ones you seek. Try Tracking a human, for example. Not a person, just humans in general.”
I frowned and thought about the traits of humans that I could use to Track them as a group. Contradictions: love and hate, fear and bravery, oblivious to the supernatural. Using those simplistic traits, I sent out a thread of Tracking to the closest human.
What happened was not what I expected. Like feeling my head expand, curiously filled with millions of sparkling lights that hurt my eyes, frantic and panicked, the sparks danced around the inside of my skull, each one desperate to be seen, to be heard, demanding my attention. Painful? No, more overwhelming than anything, in their calls for attention, their desperation and fears, all crashing around inside my head. Each spark was a life, a human within my proximity, which apparently was the whole of Britain. Fuck me.
I let go of the thread, unable to take the sheer volume of humanity. Somewhere in that brief moment I’d fallen to the ground, and had ended up curled on the floor, hands over my ears as if that would stop what I’d been feeling.
“That’s why you bloody well never Track humans as a whole. When it comes to them, make sure it’s only one at a time.” Jack held out his hand and helped me stand up. My legs wobbled as if I’d been running flat out for miles.
“Holy shit.” I put a hand to my head. I wouldn’t be doing that again anytime soon.
Jack let out a grunt and settled himself back into his rocking chair. “Your blood will be favored by anyone who works magic. For some fucking unknown gods-blasted reason, Tracker blood is a catalyst.”
I nodded, my thoughts whirling to the piece of paper I had tucked between my mattress and the box spring at home. A recipe of how to turn a Daywalker into a true vampire. My blood was in that recipe or, more accurately, the blood of a Tracker.
“You don’t seem surprised by that,” Jack said, lifting his cane to poke at me again.
I batted it away. “No, it makes sense with what I’ve run into before.” Perfect, ridiculous sense.
Jack gave me a tired smile, one that drooped on the edges and didn’t reach his eyes.
“It gets worse. Much, much worse.”
Oh fuck, how could it get worse than having half the magical world after my blood? I rubbed my hands across my face, feeling the distant tang of a headache at the back of my skull. “Just spill it, Jack. The theatrics are getting tiresome and I have to get my ass in gear and go after O’Shea. I’ve dicked around long enough waiting for you to find your balls and tell me what I need to know.”
Jack didn’t frown, didn’t lash out at me for once. He laughed. Barking until he heaved for breath, he ended up bent over his knees, pounding his cane into the floor. It took him a full two minutes to get himself under control, and by that point I was really starting to get pissed off.
“Oh gods, Rylee, I needed that.” He swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. I realized he was stalling, trying to divert my attention away from not only the supposed training, which I realized now was just superficial, but more importantly, he was avoiding the issue with the prophecies.
Well, there was one way to fix that. “What’s with the books?”
Leaning heavily on his cane, Jack made his way to the far side of the library and stood in front of the big oak table. I moved to stand beside him, though he didn’t answer me. I tried another question, tried to find a way to get him talk.
“Is this Ogre skin?”
“Yes, it holds the old books together better than anything else, but it has to be taken from their bodies while they’re still alive. Good eye; you run into many Ogres?”
Diversion, diversion. Like a magician, he just kept trying to keep me occupied.
I thought about Dox, “Just one. He’s a good guy.”
“Must be a blue.” Jack stared down at the books, his hand hovering over the black skinned tome, and then he surprised me. “You read them all?”
“Except the violet-skinned one.” I pointed to it, a web of fear tangling along my spine.
Whatever good humor he’d had running through him was gone. His tri-colored blue eyes were angry again, and maybe even a little afraid. “You had no right to this. None of these were for your eyes.”
“Are they about me?”
“Get out of my library.”
I stepped up, put my nose to his. “Are. They. About. Me?”
He slammed his cane onto the center of table in a small depression, and the air shifted, a spell he’d obviously planted there. With a crack, the books disappeared.
“You’re an asshole, Jack.” I grabbed my sword and strode from the room, equal parts anger and fear biting at my insides. I clung to the anger.
Much easier than admitting that the words I’d read scared the shit out of me.
Chapter 4
The November rain hammered down on the conservatory where I’d chosen to hide, though if anyone asked, I’d tell them I needed a place to think things over. Jack never went to the conservatory, and Pamela didn’t like the way the shriveled up plants looked. She said it reminded her too much of Anna’s rooftop and what had happened there.
Me, I was just happy f
or the peace and quiet as I let my head try to sort things out.
So there were some supposed prophecies that looked like they could be about me. But none of that really applied to me now. Not really.
Really?
I shook off my doubts, had to if I was going to move forward. Fear was a paralyzer, that much I knew. Right now I had to find O’Shea; that was the first and foremost issue I had sitting in my lap. And if I was going to find him, I couldn’t be scared out of my mind because of things that might, or might not, be about me.
Not much of what Jack had told me was going to be helpful; in fact, there wasn’t much at all I hadn’t already learned. A few quirks of Tracking, like not being able to feel people’s life threads across large bodies of water, the ability to Track groups of supernaturals. All good information to have. But not worth waiting three weeks for.
And sitting here was getting me no closer to going after O’Shea. There was nothing in my way now, I just had to get my gear, my weapons, and I’d be off after the FBI agent turned werewolf, kidnapped by a witch and held captive against his will.
Yup, no problem at all.
I stood, already planning the things I would need, as Jack hobbled into the conservatory, much to my surprise.
“What do you want?”
He leaned on his cane, his face even more haggard than just an hour before.
I opened my mouth to ask if there was anything else he had for me, anything he could teach me, when Alex came bounding into the room.
“Cookies, cookies, coookkkkiiiieeeessss!” He howled and then took off running around the conservatory at top speed, tucking his tail between his legs and grabbing at plants with his mouth and paws as he ran. Twice he stopped to spin in place, not chasing his tail, just spinning as fast as he could. Tongue hanging out, spit flew and I put myself between him and Jack. Just in case.
Jack grumbled and took a swing with his cane at the werewolf as he raced by for the third time. “Let’s go get some damn cookies.” Again, a diversion. Even though I understood some of his reasoning, his diversionary tactics pissed me off. As in royally fucking pissed. It took everything I had to not lash out at him.
Walking beside him, Jack acted as though we’d never had a fight.
Classic male pattern avoidance. Fine, I’d pretend like I didn’t remember the previous hour either, then.
“The last thing you need to know, you already know part of it. You can Track people who are dead already.”
I nodded, and he gave a double tap of his cane. “Then you need to know that you can also Track the spirits of some people. Not all. But those who have work left, or who are in limbo. They float between the first level of the Veil and the human world.”
“Ghosts you mean.”
“Ghosts. You can Track them. They move around a helluva lot more than most people realize, going wherever the fuck they want.”
“Do I have to know them? Or can I Track them like I would a group?”
“Both. But be careful because Tracking Ghosts has its downfalls too. They can yank you through the Veils. Heard about Brin getting dropped into the third level once. When he came out, his hair was white as snow and the prick was only twenty one at the time.” He paused and then gave me a tired smile and a wink. “The ladies loved it though.”
We made our way into the oversized kitchen. Copper pots hung above the granite-topped island, wooden barstools lined up along the edges. The kitchen was equipped with two of everything. Handy I suppose, but—I glanced at Jack—I wondered how many people it had served since Jack became the owner of this place.
The kitchen was warm; both stoves were running full tilt. Pamela had flour all over her face, the floor, the counter and even on a few of the hanging pots. But she was smiling and pointing at a cooling rack covered in irregularly shaped cookies. The smell of chocolate and peanut butter wafted through the air, and my stomach growled loudly, demanding some the warm, calorie-packed treats.
“I made chocolate chip peanut butter.” Pamela dropped a dirty mixing bowl into a sink full of sudsy water, earning a glare from Jack.
“Don’t break my shit, witch.”
She opened her mouth and I shook my head, stalling her. Her lips turned down in a hard frown, but she kept her mouth shut.
Alex side-stepped closer, and then sat on his haunches, drool slipping from his lips in great gobs that splashed onto the white tile floor as he stared without blinking at the cookies. Subtle he was not.
“Give him a cookie quick before we get flooded the fuck out,” Jack said, taking a cookie for himself. Pamela handed Alex a cookie, which he took without hesitation and popped into his mouth.
I grabbed one, and tossed it back and forth between my hands to help it cool off. Alex downed at least three in the space of ten seconds, Jack had his eyes closed as he savored the cookie. Pamela puttered about, cleaning up the mess. All so fucking domestic it made my head hurt.
And me? I bit into the cookie, the perfect blend of sweet chocolate and nutty flavors doing nothing to still the roll of my gut. Between the prophecies I’d read, the desire to go after Milly and O’Shea, the knowledge that Berget was alive and, whether she knew it or not, waiting for me to Track her, not to mention attempting to train Pamela, and keep Alex and Eve out of trouble … I wasn’t sure what I was feeling was true gut instinct and what was just stress. Fuck, I hated stress. I wanted things to go back to the way they were. Simple and easy. Get called out on a salvage and go after the kid. In that, at least, Jack was right. With everything else going on, I was being pulled away from what I should be doing—Tracking kids. How many back home were waiting on me? Just the thought of how many kids would die, how many were going missing as I stood there eating a cookie, made me sick to my stomach.
The phone in the kitchen rang, actually jumping in its cradle, startling me. Jack walked to the wall where it hung and lifted the receiver, a sour look twisting across his face.
“What the fuck do you want, witch?”
I choked on the cookie in my mouth. Jack was a Reader, like Giselle. Which meant he would know who was on the phone the minute he picked it up.
Pamela’s blue eyes went wide and she mouthed the name I had come to hate.
Milly.
I strode to Jack’s side and he handed me the phone, but didn’t let go right away.
“Don’t let her manipulate you. Remember what I said about people using you.”
I pulled the phone out of his hand and put it to my ear, the crackle of static hissing ever so lightly. “You need to let O’Shea go, Milly.”
“He’s already gone. There is no way to bring him back, Rylee, so don’t bother trying. The wolf in him has taken over completely.”
The phone creaked under my grip. “You calling to gloat, you piece of shit?”
“No, I’m not. You should know, though, that he will be taken care of. You won’t have to worry about him anymore.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I didn’t care that my voice rose in intensity, didn’t care anymore that Pamela was hearing me swear.
“He is hunting witches, actively hunting them. The local Coven has sent a team to deal with him.”
“You mean kill him.”
She drew in a breath and I could almost see her bite her lip before answering me. “Yes.”
I had to find O’Shea. As in now.
“Why are you telling me this?”
She was silent for a heartbeat, maybe two before answering. “You’re like my sister, I don’t want you to be hurt—”
Anger, sweet and hot, made it hard to speak evenly. “The next time we meet, witch, be ready to pay your penance to the gatekeeper, because I will be taking your head. You don’t give a shit about anyone, just yourself.”
“Don’t hang up!” She called out, like I hadn’t just threatened her life. “Please, Rylee.”
The phone was already away from my ear when she screeched out words that stopped me.
“I’m calling to ask if you
would be the godmother of my child.”
Not much could have thrown me for a loop. But that did. I stared at the wall. Milly was pregnant?
She kept on talking, quickly, as if to stall me.
“It’s Ethan’s baby. I thought he was going to come to Europe to be with me, but Terese won’t let him. I need to know my baby will be safe if something happens to me. I don’t expect you to help me or anything—I know better than that. I get it, we are on opposite sides; you’ve made that very clear.
“But if anything happens to me, I need to know that you will take care of my child, that you’ll raise him and protect him. Please.”
This was not happening. It couldn’t be. The ‘Milly is pregnant’ scene wasn’t what was throwing me for a loop. Shit, that had been coming for years. But for her to think that after she tried to kill Alex and Eve, compelled O’Shea, and now O’Shea was being hunted by other witches as a result of what she’d done, not to mention she’d essentially killed Giselle, that I would for one instant do what she wanted—
“You took an oath to protect and save children at all costs, even to the loss of your own life,” she said softly, her voice dropping into a whisper. “Please, Rylee. For whatever love we had as sister-friends, promise me this.”
I struggled to find the words. “How far along are you?”
“I’m due in April, right around Easter.”
Jack’s admonition still rung in my head. “I’m not promising you anything.” I slammed the phone back into the cradle before she could beg anymore. Before I could buckle under the weight of my oaths.
The kitchen was still; no one moved. Jack, Pamela, and even Alex stared at me, waiting for me to say something. Saved by the bell, a buzzer sounded through the house announcing someone at the front door. Jack glared at us, and then glared at the general direction of the door. The buzzer went off again. And again. And again.
“Company, who fucking needs it? You three, you need to get the hell out of here so I can bloody well die in peace.” Jack thumped his cane into the floor with each step he took as he left the kitchen, presumably to greet whoever was buzzing us with such glee.
Shadowed Threads Page 3
