And when she forced it out, it left the lights on.
Thank God—and all the old Roman gods too, for that matter—that Ladon had smashed the damned thing under the heel of his boot.
Even though her abilities were stuck in the “on” position, she still needed to learn how to use them. And she’d never really considered the differences between hearing whispers of what-was-is-will-be and feeling motor plans for how to react to them.
Part of her wondered if, when her seers felt like tentacles, she should do, not think, and when her seers spoke, if she should think, not do.
If she could focus and pay attention well enough to do either.
She pulled a deep breath into her chest and held it for a long moment, listening to the New Mexico world around her. Crickets chirped somewhere in the night, but sparser and at a lower pitch than they did in Minnesota. The air smelled dry but clean, and still retained some residual heat, even in the middle of the night.
And the sky gleamed brilliant with stars. Taos and the dim lights in Bernard’s yard washed out some of them, but like Wyoming, they weren’t near a major city. What met her when she looked up was the truth of the sky, not the backwash of civilization. The few wisps of clouds looked more heavenly than they did at home, where they hung like a roof over The Cities, trapping inside the glow of millions of humans.
Here, she almost felt like her overactive calling scents might just waft away, drafted upward to the stratosphere where they couldn’t do anything harmful to anyone around her.
Unless, of course, she turned out to be a major source of greenhouse gases.
Rysa snorted, shaking her head and scratching at the back of her head. She needed to finish parking the car before she let her hyperactive brain roll out every single random permutation of “bad” it could think of.
Another breath and she lifted her brake foot slightly. The car glided backward and she just watched, allowing her seers to tell her muscles what to do. Optimal parking, she thought. Achieve optimal parking.
Because anyone with even the most rudimentary present-seer should be able to park a stupid car.
She stopped the vehicle one final time and glanced around. She’d maneuvered it off to the side, behind a big bush next to the garden wall. The driveway curved from the road around the plant, then back toward the wall, and ended in front of the detached garage at the back of the property. The bush blocked most of the sightlines from the road.
She cut the engine and killed the lights. Out on the street, the van started up. Derek deftly pulled forward and then swung the vehicle around, backing it into the driveway. He pulled to the opposite side, in effect blocking the remaining sightlines into the property with its bulk.
The van’s engine also cut, and its lights went out.
If Bernard needed to get his car out of the garage, he could, but it would take some effort.
Derek jumped out of the van, twirling the keys on his index finger. His hat sat on the back of his head, the brim up, as if it was about to fall off.
At that moment, he looked like a goofball. A handsome goofball with a disarming smile and a brilliant accent. A good big brother. A cowboy swagger added a hint of arrogance to his walk as he moved toward the car.
Yeah, she understood why AnnaBelinda had married him. The world held him down, but he hid it well.
Rysa got out, shutting the door hard, and met him square-shouldered to his squared shoulders.
Derek nodded toward the house. “Bernard runs security for Dmitri.”
The house was large, but not too big. Bernard didn’t have a gate, either, and the neighborhood looked nice, but not too nice. Comfortable. Dmitri must be paying him well, but he hadn’t been doing it long enough to build up any real wealth.
“Why did he leave Branson?” Rysa’s past-seer blipped a bit of drama: Dmitri had not been happy when Bernard wanted to move home. He didn’t like his main technician telecommuting from another state.
Derek shrugged. “Bernard likes the desert better. It is quiet here. The Land of Milk and Honey is decidedly not quiet.” A sniff. “And he doesn’t like other enthrallers.”
“Great.” It slipped out, complete with a tone so subzero Derek shivered.
“Listen. He may be younger than you, but he is not someone to mess with.” Derek nodded at the house again.
So this Bernard was younger. And he’d worked for Dmitri for two years before moving away.
A prodigy. “And he owns the house?”
“Flat-out. Paid cash. No one bothers him here.” Derek shrugged again. “Not that anyone would.”
She’d seen him briefly, when Ladon and Dragon entered the house. Bernard looked enough like Andreas it made her wonder.
Derek’s look soured. “He is several generations out from the First Enthraller. But sometimes Andreas’s genes show strong.”
Very strong. Bernard towered over Ladon, and stood at least six-seven. He was broad like Andreas, too, though he moved differently. When he’d stopped in the door, staring across the yard at the car where Rysa waited, his nose had crinkled like he’d smelled the deadest roadkill ever.
Derek nodded toward a gate separating the driveway area and a sliding patio door into the house from the backyard. “Bernard said that there is a shower and a bed in the pool house. You are welcome to use it.”
Rysa nodded. A shower would be nice. As would a dip in the pool.
“I will bring you food.” Derek patted her shoulder. “Try to sleep tonight. Anna will be here before dawn.” He paused as he lifted off his hand and looked away. “You both will need to be calm in the morning, okay? Not just you. And not just her.”
“Fine.” Again, it came out icier than she meant. AnnaBelinda and her damned dragon should stay the hell away, but Rysa knew that wasn’t going to happen.
Or that it should. The more help they got, the faster they’d find her talisman.
Rysa’s seers flicked all tentacle-like, but also whispering. The combination filled her head with a drone-buzz, a weird moving hive of information she couldn’t quite lock down. Something about Fates—but not just one family. Two separate, opposing groups of Fates.
Derek inhaled and exhaled slowly, doing his best to cover a groan. “You need to rest. I think all the fretting and fighting strains your endurance.” He frowned and thrust out his chin. “And your control.”
What did he feel? He picked up a sense of her abilities—she could tell by his responses. But how much, she didn’t know.
Derek frowned a big, exhausted frown, like her father used to do when she talked too much. Like a man on a Thursday evening who had just spent his drive home in bad traffic after working a ten hour shift, only to come home and find he had to cook dinner.
And all the beer was gone.
Derek needed a vacation as much as she did.
But she didn’t care that her attitude taxed him. She should, she knew, but she didn’t. They had bigger issues.
She wanted Ladon and Dragon back.
She realized her seers and her healer had just cooperated enough to give her a psychological truth—yes, she needed her talisman. Yes, she needed training. Derek did too, now that she’d upgraded him. Yes, the world was full of bastards. But under it all, more than anything, she was cranky because she couldn’t touch her sweetie and her wonderful Dragon.
She must have snorted because Derek looked at her like she’d just thrown up all over the driveway’s concrete. “What is funny, young lady?”
What should she say? I need to get laid, old man? She waved him off as she walked toward the gate. “Never mind.”
Frowning again, he watched her go. “Sleep, Rysa. For everyone’s sake. Please.”
Sleep. Yeah, sleep would be nice. But she didn’t feel tired. She hadn’t felt tired or sick or even anxious since she’d come back from the near-dead. Her calling scents flooded the world but her healer flooded her body with all things anti-fatigue.
But sleep did more than relieve tired bones. It helped a
brain integrate new information. To solidify learning. Her mind felt fuzzy. Unkempt. Like she accessed all her new skills through a hazy layer of too many options.
Sort of like the white noise surrounding the what-was-is-will-be before her seers whipped out and pointed along a path. All the possibilities and the probabilities of a moment were there, but her seers did the work of figuring out which one had happened, or was happening. Or was about to happen. Her learning felt the same way as if all her first tries were still there, messing up what should be a better, more perfect use of skill.
Parking the car, for example. Something that simple should not have taxed her present-seer.
Derek was right. She needed sleep. But her uncontrolled abilities weren’t going to let it happen.
She looked over her shoulder. Derek still frowned, concerned. Even with her bitching at him, he still cared.
Rysa nodded once before opening the gate and stepping though, hoping the pool house would offer some peace.
Chapter Fourteen
“Hmmmm.” Bernard connected cables to the phones before tossing them onto a pile of junk mail sitting next to one of the keyboards scattered around his office’s many desks.
Outside the cavernous room, in the kitchen where real lights shined, Dragon and Derek prepared a meal to take out to Rysa. Real light and real scents of fresh foods with colors so rich Dragon’s heightened sensing of the world already tasted them, though the beast had yet to take a bite. A bowl of fruit rested in the center of the kitchen table—oranges and bananas and apples. Common fruit, but Dragon’s conceptual constructs of orange and banana and apple burst on the edges of Ladon’s mind just as the fruits’ juices would burst on his tongue.
The flitting of the beast’s dragon perception did not help Ladon’s headache.
Ladon squinted at the harsh light of the monitors. They flickered, as monitors did, but out of sync. He could barely hold open his eyes.
The room crackled with energy. The wifi burned away at his head like tires across pavement—his brain had slammed on the brakes but the friction from the momentum set fire to his eyeballs.
“Are you okay?” Bernard stared at him wide-eyed and a hint of ‘alarm’ floated across the room. “Is it because of Ms. Torres’s scents?” He waved his hand toward the ceiling. “I had special air cleaners put in when I built the house. They don’t stop calling scents but they take out everything else.”
“Not her.” Ladon squeezed his eyes closed again. His eyeballs weren’t the only thing on fire. His gut rolled.
Ladon forced open his eyes one more time. The only light in the room came from the damned monitors; it backlit Bernard where he loomed over a desk and an oversized mechanical-looking chair on casters. But Ladon could still see the kid’s posture. And his tension.
“Oh. Is—” Bernard stopped speaking, stopped breathing—Ladon heard no more sounds—but the ‘alarm’ in the air took on a sharp and sudden turn toward ‘fear.’
Most young enthrallers like Bernard—and Rysa—had a difficult time controlling their calling scents. Life experience, more than training, mastered what wafted from their throats. Until they figured out how to put up those walls, their emotions hung in the air like a living, writhing mist. Like a ghost which, as Ladon always thought, left them more naked and vulnerable than a newborn babe.
Ladon’s words must have carried more threat than he meant. Bernard’s ‘alarm’ cast a shadow over the kid, one making even his huge frame look small.
Ladon forced a smile. “Headache, that’s all.” He pointed at his temple.
The kid nodded, but the ‘alarm’ didn’t lessen. “She’ll be okay.” He turned toward the computers and dropped into his chair. The room dimmed—his bulk blocked a good amount of the harsh light blasting off the monitor in front of him.
Ladon didn’t respond. Bernard knew only a little of the true nature of the situation. Dmitri told him “Fates are involved” and the kid understood not to ask questions. The less he knew, the less of a target he would be if any sniffed around for answers.
The kid looked over his shoulder at Ladon. “Mr. Pavlovich said you and your sister would take care of the problem.” He looked back at the lines of information now scrolling across the screen. “He said no one fucks with the Dracae. Or him.” His fingers danced on the keyboard. “I’ve worked for him long enough to know he never lies. At least not about stuff like that.”
Sometimes Dmitri’s arrogant bluster served a purpose. Ladon chuckled.
Bernard looked over his shoulder again, this time grinning, and the ‘alarm’ in the air diminished. “This will take me a couple of minutes.” He nodded toward the door. “There’s pain reliever in the cabinet next to the refrigerator, if that helps.”
Ladon nodded and turned away from the crackling machines. The wifi permeated the entire house, but Bernard’s office ate at his skull. Perhaps he and the beast would go out to the van. Get a few moments of rest before his sister showed up.
Three days ago—four, now—Sister-Dragon forced her brother awake and set off a chain of events that had ended in the best possible outcome for Derek, but, Ladon was beginning to believe, the worst for Rysa.
No middle ground. Just the ripping pull of two large bodies—upgraded Derek and downgraded Rysa.
Part of him understood why the other beast had done what she had. Neither dragon was immune to the emotional upheavals of their humans. More than once over their centuries, Ladon’s fury had found a precise piercing edge on the talons of his dragon. But rarely did the beasts turn their turmoil on their family.
Ladon glanced at Bernard again. The kid hunched over his keyboard, lost in his own space now and no longer aware of Ladon.
In Ladon’s experience, the emotions of the young might curl around them like a mist, but so did their certainty. The world had a natural order—not that everything fell into a natural line, but everything fit together. To the young, the shapes of some things were obviously meant to be together—on a map, the Old and New Worlds. In their lives, self-determination and happiness. When they looked at Ladon and Sister, power and control.
To Bernard, Ladon and Dragon must look more vexed by this challenge than threatened. Taking care of the problem was how these pieces fit together.
But to Rysa, those pieces must have already come together. And she did not understand how Sister and Sister-Dragon could have forced them apart.
Ladon doubted she would forgive such a rending of the natural order easily.
He’d spoken with Sister already. They had both tolerated using their damned cell phones in order to come to an accord. Now was not the time to deal with the underlying issues, as long as they admitted the reality of a need for dealing. Best to wait until the threats passed.
Sister, so far, had been accommodating. She had not argued with Rysa’s commands. Perhaps Derek’s continued breathing thanks to Rysa had stunned her into silence, at least for a while. Or maybe she did wish to repent. Ladon didn’t know. The dragons had not spent time together since they’d left Branson, so he could not get a sense from his beast.
He’d find out soon enough.
Bernard tapped away. Ladon walked out of the room, in the sterile air of the kid’s home, and headed toward the cabinet next to the refrigerator.
Chapter Fifteen
An oasis met Rysa when she swung open the gate. The property extended a considerable distance behind the house; so distant she had to squint to see the back wall in the dark of the night. Wide, too, it matched the horizontal spread of the house and the driveway. And the whole thing had been transformed into a place of incredible beauty.
Soft, reddish lights shimmered in the plants. Candles burned in stands next to the patio door. The place glowed with warm, inviting light, as if from a fire.
Bernard had built himself a wonderland, and not the kind of party-ready playground she expected from a just-turned eighteen-year-old. No permanent kegger or “bikini checking” stations lined up next to the loungers. No spiral poo
l slide. No jarring colors or statues of trolls and elves. She walked into an honest-to-goodness garden of serenity.
Walls rose to at least ten feet on all sides, as they did at the front of the property. Along one, more horses, similar but more stylized artwork than the ones out front, bucked and galloped across the adobe. Along the other side, dry landscape plants, tall grasses, and modern but exquisite statuary. And right down the middle, extending from a patio behind the house all the way to a little house at the other end, ran a pool that had to be forty feet long.
She didn’t smell chlorine. The pool must use one of the new, chemical-free cleaning systems.
But of course Bernard would use a chemical-free system. An enthraller with a hypersensitive nose would probably gag on the fumes from a chlorine pool.
Most likely his nose was the real reason he left The Land. The place smelled of fried foods and booze, not to mention sweaty tourists. A faint whiff of Dmitri’s horses mixed in as well, plus a tad bit of nasty ocean, from all the salt-water tanks.
Rysa’s past-seer confirmed what she had already guessed. The poor kid, though extremely thankful to Dmitri for taking him in, couldn’t take it anymore. So he came home to a land that smelled right. And where he could work in peace.
Though this was home, it wasn’t “home.” His family lived several hours away, the way he wanted it. They had no idea he’d moved back.
Ladon seemed surprised, too. Rysa’s past-seer had picked up something else—Ladon hadn’t been paying attention to the world in the months before he met her. Years, actually. He and Dragon did what was expected of them and blanked out the rest of life. So he hadn’t noticed when Bernard moved away.
Was the flat-lining of life part of being immortal? Were they all like that? Letting the blandness of existence wash right on by because it looked and felt and smelled no different than any other century?
Would she end up living the same way?
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