It was comical enough that I almost laughed, except I didn’t like the way Lara was deferring to her. I didn’t like the fact that Beau hadn’t spoken yet.
Satisfied in her assessment, she completed her circle around us until she was standing face-to-face with Beau again.
“Audrey Rothchild, beta of the West Coast North American pack, daughter of Edith Rothchild, lady of the Assembly.”
“Do you know what that means?” I asked Beau.
“Just the beta part,” he answered me. Then he lifted his head to address Audrey’s right shoulder. “I’m Beaumont Jamison. This is Rochelle Saintpaul.”
“Your names mean nothing to me.”
“Yeah, we’re getting that a lot,” I said. “The sorcerer called me Hawthorne, if you like that better.”
Audrey pinned me with her dark-eyed gaze. It wasn’t a happy look. “Control your pet, cat,” she said to Beau.
“You misunderstand our relationship,” he answered.
Audrey bared her teeth at Beau. This wasn’t a smile. He dropped his gaze, hunched his shoulders, and then stepped his left leg firmly and deliberately in front of me.
Audrey’s nonsmile grew. She stepped back, kicked off her shoes, and spread her legs as far as her tailored skirt would allow. She was four inches shorter without the heels, and yet she had seemingly grown a hell of a lot more intimidating.
I pressed my hand to Beau’s shoulder, not that I had any chance of holding him back if they were going to fight. Audrey was barely half his size, though. What person would attack another under those circumstances?
“I think you’re missing the pertinent part of the girl’s declaration, my beta.” A male voice coated with steel called out from the far hall.
“What part?” Audrey snapped without looking behind her.
“The part …” — the man continued as he strolled farther into the entranceway — “… about the sorcerer.”
Audrey whipped her head around to look at the massive figure behind her.
A mountain of man stood in the tiled hall. He was barefoot, with his hands tucked into the front pockets of dark jeans and a blue T-shirt stretched across impossibly wide shoulders. He was just shy of six feet tall and appeared to be almost as wide. His sandy hair was short and untidy, his face chiseled out of pale granite.
I’d never been scared of anyone at first sight before. But this man scared me silly … scared me stupid … speechless … breathless.
I froze like some deer or rabbit seconds from impending death. Unable to run, unable to drop his gaze, and unable to breathe. He scared me even more than the sorcerer had. At least I’d known Blackwell — had lived with him in my head for going on six years. I didn’t know this man, though, which meant he might do anything, might be anything. And I wouldn’t be able to stop him.
The man stared back at me. He hadn’t even glanced at Beau.
Then he turned and set his inscrutable gaze on Audrey. The dark beauty withered under his look. “Missed that, did you?” he asked, his tone soft and deadly. “Perhaps you should be listening rather than staking your territory.”
All the hair on my arms and legs lifted, even underneath my clothing. It felt as if I’d just brushed against a live wire with a very low current.
I hadn’t noticed that Lara had bent her head sometime since the man entered, but I saw now as she turned it into an actual bow, putting one knee to the ground. Audrey did the same, though she kept her head upright.
Beau grunted. His shoulders dipped as if he’d just picked up something heavy. The man glanced at him for a moment, then his gaze shifted back to me.
He removed his hands from his pockets. Curling his toes on the floor as he walked, he stepped closer. Though still out of arm’s reach, he was near enough that I could distinguish his eye color as light brown. Topaz, actually.
Beau was trembling before me.
Audrey spoke from her kneeling position. “May I present Desmond Charles Llewelyn, Lord and Alpha of the West Coast North American pack, son of —”
Desmond halted her introduction midsentence with a flick of his fingers.
Beau trembling turned to shaking, still as if he was bearing some terrible weight I couldn’t see. A bead of sweat ran down his temple. I looked to Desmond. He was still staring at me.
“It’s easier if you don’t fight it, fledgling,” he said. His voice was soft, even, and deadly. “I won’t hurt the girl.”
Beau collapsed before me with a moan. His shoulders heaved as he filled his lungs with air like he’d been drowning seconds before. I touched his shoulder. He raised his hand to cover mine.
I looked up at Desmond. He was gazing at our linked hands.
“Beaumont. Beau?” he said. “I don’t know your family, but we appear to share a distant lineage of some sort.”
“Yes, sir,” Beau answered, his voice heavy and pained.
I had no idea what Desmond meant by lineage. Beau, with his dark skin and light eyes, couldn’t possibly look more different from this man.
“And what magic do you wield, witch?” Desmond asked me.
I raised my chin. “I’m not a witch.”
“What are you then?”
I thought about this for a second, then answered, “Crazy. Though psychotic might be a better word choice.”
Desmond smiled, a tight, thin-lipped expression that only hardened his face further. “I won’t be fooled with, Rochelle,” he said. “Shall I kill your protector to provoke a display from you?”
The question was somehow phrased without threat, without malice.
“She … she doesn’t understand,” Beau said.
I didn’t like how scared he sounded. Something in Beau’s fear freed me from my own. Ignoring Desmond, I wrapped my other hand around the back of Beau’s neck. His skin was warm and sweaty. “Don’t worry, Beau,” I whispered to the back of his bowed head. “It’s not real. I won’t let anything bad happen to you. It’s not real. Nothing’s real but you and me.”
Beau’s hand convulsed on mine. “Rochelle, please,” he whispered. “Please listen.”
“She doesn’t understand her power?” Desmond asked.
“No, and she can’t control it,” Beau said.
Desmond pinned me with his predator gaze again. I straightened my spine, though it was an effort.
“And a sorcerer wants this unknown power?” Desmond asked, his voice barely a whisper.
“He wants her drawings,” Beau answered. “He wants what’s in her head. What she sees.”
“And you think I’m in your head?” Desmond asked me. “You think you can control me?”
I did my best to look defiant. “If I wasn’t afraid of losing Beau. I could end this all, right here and now.”
Desmond chuckled. “Has the fledgling not taught you that shapeshifters can smell a lie?”
Beau dropped his hands to the floor, and splayed them next to his feet. Readying himself for something I couldn’t see coming. I’d never been so blind in my life, not while my eyes could still see.
Desmond glanced over at Audrey, who rose. Her sneer was firmly back in place.
“The girl’s mental condition is a concern,” he said.
Beau rolled his hands into fists while Audrey eyed me coolly. Then the beta nodded and said, “We can keep her contained.”
“So I’m an idiot because I don’t believe that shapeshifters, and werewolves, and sorcerers are real?” I snapped.
Suddenly Audrey was standing in front of me. I hadn’t seen her move.
I felt her fingers brush my face even as Beau straightened, slamming his shoulders up underneath Audrey’s extended arms and throwing himself against her.
His feet slipped on the stone floor as if he’d hit a brick wall instead of a woman half his size. Still, he knocked the air out of Audrey’s lungs in a sharp expulsion of breath.
She clenched both hands to fists and slammed her forearms across Beau’s bac
k. Then, with her long hair sweeping swaths of blurred darkness across my vision, she pivoted around him as he fell forward. She grabbed his left arm as she moved, twisting it up behind his back.
Beau crashed forward onto his knees at Audrey’s feet. She grabbed his head with her other hand and twisted it hard to the side, exposing his neck. The hold looked painful.
“Stop it,” I screamed. I darted forward, only to slam face-first into the mountain known as Desmond. I fell back onto the granite floor so fast that I couldn’t even get my hands out to break my fall. Pain reverberated up from my tailbone to the base of my neck and through my jaw.
“Yes,” Desmond said. “Let the boy go, Audrey.”
“He comes into your territory —”
“For help. For protection,” Desmond said. He stepped over to Beau, who was straining against Audrey’s hold. “Where else would you have him go?”
I rolled to my feet with my hands flat on the ground before me. I was ready to lunge forward, to claw out Audrey’s eyes.
“He has no family —” Audrey started to say.
“Or he doesn’t know his family,” Lara interrupted. “In rare cases, the shapeshifter gene can pass through Adepts who —”
“How dare you interrupt me, enforcer,” Audrey spat.
“Take your hands off him,” I said. No. I growled.
They turned to look at me, surprised. Almost laughably so. But I wasn’t laughing.
“Take your hands off him,” I repeated. “Or I’ll snuff you out.”
Audrey did laugh. No one else, though. She glanced around. “Really? The witch is amusing —”
“Look closer,” Desmond said.
Audrey stared at me, the derisive look fading from her face. “Her eyes …”
“Smell the magic,” Desmond muttered. “Akin to witch, but not witch. You have no idea what power crouches coiled on my floor before you, beta. You’ve tested the fledgling’s strength. Now, can you neutralize him and stop the explosion simmering in an Adept of unknown power at the same time?”
Audrey opened her mouth as if to answer.
“And can you do all that without it catching Lara, to whom you owe protection? To whom you owe your wisdom and strength?”
Audrey snapped her mouth shut. She glared at me. Desmond was schooling her for some reason. I had no power to harm any of them, but they didn’t have to know that.
“Can I snap your neck, fledgling?” Desmond asked Beau without taking his eyes off me. “Without you even seeing me move?”
“Yes,” Beau answered.
“You understand your position in this house? In this city?”
“Yes, sir.”
At some signal I didn’t see from Desmond, Audrey let go of Beau. He turned his head to me, trying to smile.
“The eyes?” Desmond prompted.
Beau shook his head. “Some manifestation of her power. She gets headaches. She sketches.”
“She sees,” Desmond said. “A seer, perhaps. I never met one.”
He looked questioningly at Audrey, who shook her head. Then he turned and looked at Lara.
“I don’t know any seers,” the purple-clad werewolf said. “But her touch has a nasty side effect, like having a sliver of your soul ripped from you.” She rubbed her wrist where I’d touched her in the park.
Desmond turned to look at me.
I glowered at him. “I have no idea what she’s talking about.”
“The sorcerer?” he asked Lara, keeping his eyes on me.
A smile spread across the brunette’s face. “Blackwell.”
Desmond grunted in satisfaction, though he seemed to have been expecting to hear that name.
“Any power Blackwell wants …” Lara said.
“… we’re happy to keep from him.” Audrey finished Lara’s thought.
“May I see your sketches, Rochelle Saintpaul?” Desmond asked. His request, and use of my name, was oddly formal.
I glanced at Beau, who was still kneeling by Audrey. Though he looked grim, he nodded.
“I don’t have all of them here,” I said.
“What you have will be fine.” The alpha held out his hand toward me expectantly.
I tugged my sketchbook out of my bag, and begrudgingly passed it to him. I would have refused, if not for all the neck snapping talk and Audrey’s apparent super-strength. I didn’t like sharing unfinished work.
“It’s not good for me to be without it,” I said.
Desmond nodded, and holding it gingerly by the edges, he took the sketchbook from me. He flipped it open just as carefully, as if expecting it to bite him or something. He flipped a few more pages, then stopped at the sketch of the golden-haired woman’s jade knife that I’d begun three days ago at the bus stop. He stared at this for a moment, then looked over at Audrey.
The beta angled her head to look at the page he held open, then she snorted and stepped away from Beau.
Desmond closed the sketchbook, and handed it back to me. “Come,” he said as he crossed toward the kitchen. “I’ll feed you. As is my privilege and obligation.”
Beau gulped as if a life sentence had just been handed down with this offer of food. Then he straightened and held his hand out to me.
Audrey picked up her spiky-heeled shoes and walked away down the opposite hall from which she’d come. She didn’t bother to glance at any of us as she left.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered to Beau as I took his hand.
“An alpha protects his pack. Food is part of the ceremony of his acceptance of me here, but …” Beau faltered.
I hadn’t meant the food thing specifically, but I waited for Beau to continue anyway. He glanced over at Desmond, who was looking into a restaurant-sized stainless steel fridge. Lara had taken a seat at the granite kitchen island with her back to us.
The front door was right behind us. Closed, but not locked as far as I could tell.
“We could be gone before…” I whispered.
Beau shook his head at me once, sharply. Then, resolute, he took my hand and tugged me toward the kitchen.
“Text Kandy,” Desmond said to Lara as he closed the fridge, then opened the side-by-side freezer.
“Sure.” Lara pulled her phone from her pocket. “Text Kandy what?”
“Where is the dowser?” he growled. His inscrutability was cracking. He was really, really unhappy about something.
The brunette raised an eyebrow at Desmond’s request, but then applied her thumbs to her phone. Beau patted the stool beside Lara for me, then took the next one over.
“The sorcerer had an accent?” Desmond asked Beau as he moved from the freezer to look in some upper cupboards. They appeared to be filled with nothing but power bars and Gatorade.
“Yeah,” Beau said. “English, maybe.”
“Scottish.” Desmond sneered, though not at Beau.
I felt a little woozy, sitting perched on a kitchen stool while they discussed Blackwell as if he wasn’t some figment of my … construction. They all were, but I was losing sense of it. Losing footing, starting to forget it was a hallucination. Maybe I just wanted to forget. Though, if that was the case, why I kept reminding myself I didn’t know.
Lara’s phone pinged. “Bakery,” she said, reading from her text message.
Bakery? What was that supposed to mean?
“Good,” Desmond said. “Tell her to meet us here, now.”
Lara texted. Desmond turned away from the cupboards. “When was the last time anyone cooked … or shopped?”
“There’s Chinese in the fridge.”
“Not enough. The boy looks like he hasn’t eaten in months, or slept.”
Desmond and Lara stared at Beau. Beau stared at his lap, where he held my hand.
Lara’s phone pinged. “Kandy says the dowser won’t come through the caves, so they can’t get here before tomorrow. Ah, something about a vision from YKW. Who’s you-know-who?”
; Desmond steepled his fingers on the granite island as he selected his words carefully. “Tell her,” he said, “that the vision will never come to pass. I made sure of that myself.”
Lara’s thumbs flew across her phone.
“Visions?” I asked. “You know someone who has visions?”
Desmond crossed his arms and looked at me smugly. “Why? Do you?”
“No.” I snapped. I wasn’t interested in playing games with him.
Beau opened his mouth, looked at me, then snapped it shut.
Desmond huffed out a laugh. “It’s difficult to be circumspect and also help someone who desperately needs it at the same time, fledgling.”
“I know where my loyalty lies,” Beau said, keeping his eyes firmly fixed to the granite counter.
Lara’s phone pinged. “Kandy isn’t going to mention the black witch … not while the dowser is baking. She doesn’t want her to ruin a batch.”
Audrey padded back into the kitchen. She’d left her shoes somewhere else.
“Text,” Desmond snarled. “Blackwell.”
Lara did.
Her phone pinged. “They’re coming.”
“Kandy’s been away from the pack for too long,” Audrey muttered.
Desmond nodded.
“You think they’ll bring cupcakes?” Lara asked, hopefully.
Desmond and Audrey both looked like cupcakes would be some sort of brilliant boon from heaven. This was a rather abrupt change from their previous seriousness.
“We can’t actually ask …” Audrey said.
“I could hint …” Lara said.
They both looked at Desmond.
He sighed and shook his head unhappily. “We’ll have to settle for pizza and hope the dowser doesn’t hold grudges forever.”
“Does anyone deliver this early?” Audrey asked, glancing over her shoulder at the time on the stove, which read 10:53 a.m.
Lara opened a contact page on her cell phone screen. “Sizzle Pie opens in eight minutes.”
“Get the Heart Attack Man and the Good Luck in Jail,” Desmond said.
“Rochelle doesn’t eat meat,” Beau blurted, as if he was confessing some terrible sin.
The three other shapeshifters turned to stare at me, completely aghast. Like I was condemning their religion or something.
I See Me (Oracle Book 1) Page 15
