“But what if you can’t?” Jade asked.
He shrugged. “Then you can stop practicing on me. All I’m saying is, give it a shot. You won’t know if it might help until you try.”
Jade nodded. “Okay. I’ll try. But we’ll have to go somewhere where neither of us can hurt anything.”
“It’s all in the plan,” he said, tapping his temple. “I know the perfect place. When can we start?”
“You’re awful anxious to get beat up,” she said, unable to stop a grin from rising to the surface.
“Bring it on, girl.”
~
The watcher is in her head again. He fights it and gets bursts like before. The enchanter in the shower. Then she’s putting on her heels. Now starting the engine of her car. Each is just a glimpse, but the dream is inevitable, and he finally succumbs.
Now the enchanter is sitting in her BMW, scrolling through photos on her phone. They’re all of the history professor—her next target. Her need for him tightens like a clasp on a buckle, cinching in as she sucks in a breath. There are so many layers to that need, and the watcher can’t quite get a grasp on them all. All he knows is, this need will not be satiated. Can’t be. But she doesn’t seem to understand that.
As the object of her obsession exits a nearby building, she leaves the car and approaches. The watcher realizes they are on the college campus. Her narrow hips sway from side to side. She’s milking the walk. The flick of her hair and the fire in her eyes are all focused on this professor who clutches a leather satchel. He digs a key chain out of his pocket. When he looks up and meets her eyes, his own eyes widen with happy surprise.
She takes his arm, all smiles and enthusiasm. Pride radiates from her. He was her conquest, now won. But her journey won’t stop there. A new hunger rises inside her, a darker urge than before.
Distracted by a familiar voice caught on the wind, she lifts her gaze. Staring at her from across the campus is another familiar face. And it’s one she didn’t expect to see here.
Graham woke with a start. Seeing himself in this out of body way was unsettling. It was worse than just being in her head. It was creepy—like he was a traveler, glimpsing himself in another moment in time, but all through Violet’s eyes.
He wondered what the significance of the history professor was—a new character in the ongoing soap opera that was now his dreams. Could this be a foreshadowing of something to come? The fact that these dreams seemed to be sequential disturbed him.
Rolling over, he covered his head with a pillow to block out the early morning rays of sunlight. Hopefully he’d be able to fall back asleep and erase the strange dream from his mind. Otherwise, work in the morning was going to be dreadful.
~
Violet knew she had to get rid of Ras’s Honda after the incident on the overpass. Keeping it was too risky, but she wasn’t sure how to dispose of a car, either. Then a thought hit her. Maybe she could hide it instead. Not in her own garage, but somewhere else. Somewhere that wasn’t directly connected to her. Somewhere it wouldn’t be found.
She remembered Holly mentioning Ashley’s parents were going to Europe for the summer. Their suburban home with its large garage would be the ideal place to stash it. They’d given Violet the key the summer she’d house-sat for them, and they’d forgotten to ask for it back. And even though Holly was checking up on the house, she’d have little reason to enter the garage. It was perfect.
After ditching the car inside the Langstons’ garage, Violet walked several blocks diagonally to another house and called a cab to take her home. She would have to find another place to stash the car later, before the family got home, but it would be several months.
That night, she stopped to pick up some camping supplies. The next morning, she woke up early and drove to a spot just up the street from Logan’s place. She pulled her BMW off the road by some trees that would hide her. Then she waited. Ras had said Logan was leaving this morning, and though she didn’t know when, he would drive past her on his way into the mountains. While she was waiting, her phone buzzed. She checked and saw it was Holly. Silencing the call, she turned her focus back to the street.
She might have been able to sense him, the way she could sense Ras as he neared her. But something about Logan was more elusive. Almost as if he had some invisible barrier against her powers. That was fine—she could do things the old-fashioned way. Forty minutes later Logan’s dinged blue truck rattled by. Violet pulled out and followed him. If he recognized her car, her plan would be toast, so she stayed back far enough to keep from being noticed.
When he turned off into an empty gravel lot, she passed him then turned around at the next overlook. A few minutes later she returned to the same lot, hoping he’d had long enough to exit the vehicle. After parking, she planted her new hiking boots on parking lot gravel and struggled into her new, enormous, heavy backpack. She muttered a curse. Violet had never dreamed she’d go camping again. Not after last year’s unexpected encounter with the badger. She’d sworn she’d gotten enough of wild beasts, but Logan had changed everything.
She finally managed to get the pack on her shoulders and shut the car door. Then she entered a gap in the woods. The trail was overgrown. Hopefully she wouldn’t get lost trying to catch up to him. After several minutes of picking her way through, she saw a bright pop of red and recognized the shirt he’d been wearing. From there it was just a matter of watching her step so she didn’t trip and go tumbling down the path.
Following him on his camping adventure hadn’t been her initial choice of where to stake her claim over him, but the more she had thought about it, the more perfect it was. This way she’d get him all to herself for an entire weekend—which meant no worrying about the faculty suspecting anything.
When Logan finally stopped, he tossed his gear onto the ground in a small clearing and passed through to the other side. She wondered why he didn’t seem anxious to get the campsite set up. Violet tugged off her backpack and let it drop next to his. Then she followed him through the trees.
She found him just a little way off, sitting on a large, flat rock. Pushing through the foliage revealed a boulder jutting out high above a cliff, creating an overlook of the entire valley. He sat near the edge with his elbows resting on his knees and his head propped on his fists. She realized he was still sulking about the breakup. But he’d be over that soon enough.
Her foot made a twig crack.
Logan turned suddenly, his eyes wide and alarmed. The moment he registered her, his expression darkened, and his brows pulled down. “What are you doing here?” His voice was thick with frustration, but it wasn’t quite intense enough to be anger.
Violet drew the strands from her hand in a flash. The colors spewed forth in a burst like a fountain.
“Because you need me,” she said in a soothing, buttery voice.
“You need to leave,” he said. But there was no power behind the words. He was wounded, lacking any passion. He was a shell of what he had been.
She stepped up behind him and lowered into a crouch. The tips of her fingers curled with the energy flowing from them. Each colored tendril coiled in the air, hungry for something to latch onto.
Her hand slipped forward and touched his shoulder. She didn’t need skin contact since she’d already initiated the transfer. He bristled and turned his head to glare at her with narrowed, golden-brown eyes. “Get your hand off—”
Violet’s cords explored, searching for a place to connect. Finally, one inserted itself into his skull. Then another. She sank the rest of her threads into his head, feeling a surge of adrenaline when they took root. She sucked in a breath of triumph.
Logan’s eyes widened then his lids went halfway slack. His jaw hung open. The unfinished sentence hung from lips that had lost their purpose. He blinked. Closed his mouth. Stared at her.
Barely suppressing a smile, she rose to her feet, still looking down at him. She arched a brow—a challenge for him to defy. Would her hold on him break as
it had before? She took a step back.
He scampered up to his feet, face colored with new interest. As she turned to walk through the woods to the clearing, she tossed her head back in one final glance at him.
His neck craned forward, and he hovered on the balls of his feet in a pose of eagerness. She had his attention. He scurried off the rock and straightened, maintaining his professional college professor posture, but with a new sparkle in his eyes.
“Come on, Logan,” Violet said. “I’ve been waiting too long for this.”
Making out with Logan in the woods was even better than Violet had imagined. The smell of the outdoors entered her lungs with every inhalation. It mixed with Logan’s woodsy man-scent and made her a little crazy—in a good way. He was all brute muscle and chiseled angles and rugged good looks, and every piece came together under her magic touch. The colored strands wrestled with one another playfully as he kissed her. Violet reveled in the energy between their bodies.
However, when the sun lowered and the underbrush became orange then gray with shadows, she ended the make-out session. No part of her wanted to spend the night under a piece of nylon with all the wild animals lurking around, especially with no shower nearby. Roughing it was way overrated.
All it took to change Logan’s mind was a suggestion. He packed up the gear, grabbing his stuff and lugging her giant backpack to the vehicles. They drove back to his place in two cars to ditch the equipment and pack Logan some clothes for the trip. Violet helped him pick out the outfits she liked best.
“Honestly, you have little fashion sense,” she muttered, rifling through his shirts. “Do you live in flannel? I know the retro lumberjack look is in right now, but geez…let’s be a little more creative.”
His dark brows tugged together. “How?”
“Don’t worry, babe. I’ll teach you. Just come with me, and I’ll show you everything you need to know.”
His expression perked. “Yeah? Will that make you happy?”
“Incredibly.”
She tossed several shirts into his overnight bag along with jeans and some nicer things. “Get everything else you’ll need for the weekend,” she said, heading to the living area. “I’ll be on the sofa.”
Violet strode through the house and perused the kitchen. It was dinnertime, and she was hungry. She peeked into cabinets and rifled through drawers, finally grabbing herself a bottle of water from the fridge.
They’d have to stop and get dinner on the way home to her condo.
She plopped on the sofa and glanced around for reading material. Hardbound novels that looked almost antique lined one end table. On the coffee table stood a stack of textbooks. She scanned all the other surfaces in the room but saw no magazines, and didn’t feel like diving into a novel. She used to enjoy reading, but ever since the accident, she’d had no interest in it. Maybe it was her pain pills, but her concentration wasn’t as great as it used to be.
“You done yet?” she called several minutes later. “I’m starving.”
Logan appeared with his bag slung over a shoulder. “Want me to cook you dinner?” he asked. His expression was expectant, hopeful even. Such a nice change, she thought, pleased with herself.
“Nah. I don’t want to hang out here any longer. My place is way more comfortable.”
“Oh.” His expression fell.
“But you can buy me dinner,” she said.
“Okay.” He brightened at that.
Violet couldn’t help but think how much he needed her. He’d been like an empty shell just waiting for her energy to fill it. He was so lucky to have her in his life.
~
Though Graham had tried to arrange a time to help Jade practice, work schedules, her homework, and being Chloe’s on-call mannequins kept them busy. Jade hadn’t backed out of the show, and Graham was betting she would play it by ear. They weren’t able to meet until Friday afternoon.
After work, they climbed into Graham’s car, and he drove them to the spot he’d had in mind. Old memories came flooding back as he pulled into the parking lot of his old high school. Memories of riding his bike here every day—until he’d saved enough to buy his clunker of a car. Of working late afternoons in the newspaper office. Of waiting on the bleachers, scribbling in one of his notebooks while his old girlfriend had track practice.
“Why are we at a high school?” Jade asked.
Graham parked his car and looked at her. “You’ll see. Follow me.” He led her around the school building and past the shrubs that delineated the back of the school grounds. The sun had sunk behind the trees. They passed those same faded bleachers.
“The football field?” she asked.
He strode out into the center and plopped down cross-legged on the grass. “I figured this was pretty isolated. Plus, there’s not really anything to hurt.”
The corner of Jade’s lip twitched as she joined him, sitting on the grass facing him. “Just you.”
Graham smiled. “I may be short, but I’m pretty sure I could take you.”
“You think?” she said, but she returned his smile.
“Ready for this?” he asked.
She blew out a sigh. “I don’t know. I guess. How are we going to do this?”
Graham thought. “We need to stir up your emotions.”
Jade gave a wry chuckle. “Right. The opposite of what I’ve been attempting for so long. So, what? I need to think of things that make me happy or sad?”
“Try that, and we’ll see what works. Step one: see if you can make me feel anything. It doesn’t matter what. I’ll let you know if it’s working.”
“You sure you’re ready for this?” she asked.
“Bring it on.”
“Okay.” Jade squeezed her eyes shut, and Graham watched her chest heave in and out, her poise one similar to a meditative relaxation, except for her tensed face.
He waited. A soft breeze ruffled his hair. Low and distant, an owl hooted. Another one answered the call.
Jade peeked an eye open. “Anything?”
“Nope.”
She sighed, and her shoulders drooped. “Didn’t think it would be this hard to call up. Yours must be messing with it.”
Graham frowned. “What?”
“It’s like what I told you earlier. Usually, I’m feeling other people’s emotions, not the opposite.”
“So what makes it flip?”
“I’m not sure. I just get these bouts that sorta flare up and take over everything.”
“Like the Hulk coming out,” Graham said.
She chuckled. “Sorta, I guess.”
“So we just have to figure out how to release your Hulk side.”
She bit the tip of her nail. “Never thought I’d be trying to do this.”
“Are you fighting it?”
“I don’t think so…I mean, not consciously.”
“Not consciously. But maybe part of you is resisting the idea of letting your real emotions out.”
“A lot of me resists that idea. But I’m trying.”
Graham rubbed his jaw, thinking. “Okay. So we just need to push you over the edge somehow. Dangle something in front of the Hulk that he’s unable to ignore.”
Jade ran a hand through the loose strands of her hair.
Graham cocked his head. “I’m sorry, should I stop comparing you to a giant green monster?”
She chuckled. “No, it’s okay. I’m just…I’m a little nervous to let him out.”
He grinned. “You mean her. The She-Hulk.”
“You a comic book fan?” Jade asked.
“Moderately. Anyway, I think I have an idea.”
“What?”
He hesitated. “It might make you uncomfortable. I mean, that’s part of the point, right? To make you deal with stuff that’s not so awesome. I’m just not sure it’s my place….”
“Just tell me.”
“Okay. Well, you said you and your boyfriend recently broke up. That was part of what set you off Monday, right? So, I
thought maybe we could find something that stirred all that up again.”
“That’s actually a great idea,” she said.
“Yeah? You’re okay with it?”
“Might as well try. You’ve already seen me at my worst, so I’m counting on the fact that you won’t hate me when the Hulkess comes out again.”
“It’s She-Hulk. If you’re going to use the metaphor, at least get it right. And there’s not a chance I’m going to get mad at you. So. Do you have pictures of Hunky Mister Hulk on your phone?”
Jade gave him a dirty look.
“Too far?”
“A bit, yeah.” But she reached for her phone.
Graham held out his hand. “Can I look for it?”
“Why?”
“If I can find a pic and then show you it might have more of an effect—sneak attack, you know.”
“Okay.” She handed the phone to Graham.
He flicked through the different apps clumsily. “I have a different phone, so I don’t quite know my way around. Oh, looks like you have some unplayed voicemail. I can’t stand to leave notifications on my phone.”
Jade dipped her head. “Those are from Logan. I haven’t been able to bring myself to delete them.”
“You never listened to them?”
“No. After we broke up, he kept calling and I…I didn’t want to deal with it.”
“Perfect,” Graham said.
She frowned.
“I think this is just what we need. You ready for this?”
“You’re going to play his messages?”
“Yep.”
She let out a breath and nodded.
Graham hit play on the first one and turned up the volume. The phone rested on his palm in his lap as he listened to the man’s voice, low and hitched with emotion.
“Jade.” A pause as he seemed to swallow or maybe just gathering his thoughts. “Can we talk about this, please? I know you’re scared, but I’d never hurt you—and if you’re afraid of yourself, well, I understand, but we can get through this together. Please call me back.”
Enchanter: The Flawed Series Book Four Page 15
