Now I did suppress a grin. “You’ll be fine. Let Pamela run interference.”
He shuddered. “When is Faris coming for you?”
“Seven days.”
“Shit, that isn’t long enough to plan.”
I smiled at him, but felt the fatigue pull at me even as I tried to work past it. Not fatigue of the body, but of the heart. Though some had lifted, after seeing Charlie. “Like you said, I’ll come up with something. You’ll have to trust me when I do.”
He brushed the nape of my neck with the tips of his fingers as I walked in front of him. “You are the only one I do trust, Tracker.”
I smiled back at him, feeling all fucking warm and fuzzy. Another time, I would have scoffed, but now, I was just damn grateful I had someone who loved me so completely.
We headed down the stairs for the second time that night, and I walked toward the kitchen, expecting everyone to be where I’d left them. In front of the living room, I froze in place. In some ways, I’d been expecting this.
Just maybe not this soon.
The blinds were all drawn, candles lit, and Giselle sat in the middle of the room looking as she had when I first met her. Young, vibrant, free of the madness that took her so quickly. Alex sprawled out at her feet on his back, grinning up at her, his tongue lolling out one side of his mouth.
“You don’t seem surprised to see her,” Milly said, drawing my eyes to the right side of the room. The witch sat in Giselle’s chair, the paisley material clashing against her vibrant red dress.
“No, not really.” I stepped into the room. “Giselle, you said you could only come through the veil a few times, that it cost you.”
Giselle nodded. “That’s true. But it is easier here, with my spirit guides helping me.” Her eyes flicked over each of us. “I will Read you all, because there may not be many more times to do so before I am summoned for the final time to the deep levels of the veil.” She pointed at Pamela. “Come here, little witch.”
Pamela didn’t look to me for reassurance. She walked forward and stopped in front of Giselle. “All right, then. Will this hurt?”
Giselle smiled up at her, reached out a hand, hovering over Pamela’s heart. “No, it won’t hurt.”
Her hand trembled, and then she pulled back and held her hand palm upward to Pamela. “You have a great deal coming your way. The darkness has not seen you yet, but it will. And when it does, it will make a bid for you that you will struggle to refuse. Hold to what you know is truth, to what Rylee is teaching you.” Giselle paused and tipped her head to one side, her eyes fluttering closed. “I see you at the end of it all; when the final battle comes, you will be pivotal. Remember, when darkness comes for you, when light seems gone from your life, you will be one of the flames that beckons to those who have lost hope, showing them hope is indeed not lost.”
Pamela nodded once and then stepped back. Giselle shifted and turned to Liam and me. She pointed at Liam. “Much has changed for you, Agent. Will you let me Read you?”
I found it interesting she hadn’t asked Pamela, but she asked Liam. He said nothing, only stepped forward, crouching beside her. Giselle cupped her hands around his face without touching him.
“Ah, wolf. You have fought the darkness well, and have fought to stay at her side. She’s a tough one to stick close to, isn’t she?”
He laughed and Giselle laughed with him. The mirth spread through the room, lightening the solemn mood created by Charlie’s visit, until everyone was laughing except me. I shook my head. I wasn’t that bad.
Giselle took a deep breath and lifted her hands back to his face, her eyes widening, filling with a sorrow I’d seen more than once on her face, and my gut twisted into a large knot.
“The rest of my words are not for anyone ears but yours, wolf.”
I knew a dismissal when I heard one. Pamela and Milly stood and followed me into the kitchen. Alex stayed, but since Giselle didn’t send him out, I figured it was okay. And no, I wouldn’t try and pry it out of Alex. Likely, he wouldn’t understand the complexity of what I was asking anyway.
But what did Giselle have to say to Liam that we couldn’t hear?
Stomach tense with all the possibilities, I walked out holding my breath.
He stood quietly, uncertain why the rest couldn’t hear what Giselle said to him. Her eyes were soft with a sorrow that made him think of the mermaid’s words, her prophecy of his immanent death. Made him wonder if this was about to be a repeat.
She stared up at him, her eyes searching his. “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”
“No, not for sure, and I’m hoping I’m wrong.” Hell, he really hoped he was wrong.
She lowered her hands, clasping them in her lap and he crouched down beside her. “The dark times have come, and they are interspersed with flashes of light. Of love. The moment you understand why you are what you are, when you fully come to know your own soul, you will give it all up to save the ones you love, those three who are most important to you.” She leaned forward, and her hands slid up to cup his face in a motherly gesture. “You will not be at the last battle with her, so you must prepare all you can now.”
Chills swept down and through him as her words hit him. “You mean I’m going to die?”
She closed her eyes. “We all die, Liam. Here I am, dead, yet not. There are tasks you must accomplish. Things only you can do; they will keep Rylee safe, allow her to do what she must. Seek out the Wolf, the one who can tell you the origin of the wolves and the guardians. Power is in that knowledge. Power you will need.”
He nodded, remembering the old wolf he encountered in the northern forests. “Why couldn’t anyone else hear this Reading?”
She laughed softly and opened her eyes. “You tell me.”
Liam let out a long, slow breath. “Because she would fight to keep me alive, no matter the consequences.”
Giselle smiled up at him. “She loves you as she will never love anyone else. For the first time, she truly belongs somewhere, and she would give up the whole world to keep you at her side. I tell you these things, but you must carry them on your own.”
His body stilled, feeling the weight of it, but understanding it was the only way. Rylee could never know he wouldn’t be around forever. But how could he keep a secret of this magnitude from the one person who held his heart?
Chapter 4
Less than five minutes passed before Liam came to get us from the kitchen, his eyes dark with shadows that had nothing to do with the poor light. I searched his face, wanting to ask him what Giselle said, maybe in large part because she couldn’t Read me. I thought of Doran and his words, the first time I truly had someone Read me and the heavy message he’d given. Maybe I didn’t want to know what Giselle told Liam. What if she told him he would love another? No, I didn’t want to know.
Giselle hadn’t moved from where she’d started. As we all stepped into the candle lit room, Giselle held her hand up. “Alex is next.”
Alex rolled from his back to sitting upright in a split second. “Alex plays, too.”
Giselle ran her hands over the top of his head and over the ruff of his neck. “A soul that is pure resides within you, Alex.”
“Yuppy doody, spooky lady.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, and Giselle laughed. “Yes, I suppose I am a spooky lady. You will see Rylee to the end; you will be at her side through it all, though not always as you are now. Loyalty is the core of your heart, and that will never change. Believe in all that you are, Alex, for you will be the lynchpin to this world’s fate, as Rylee is the key to its survival. But that is a ways off yet.”
Holy shit. I couldn’t stop my eyes from widening. Lynchpin? I needed to get my hands on Jack’s books again. If Alex was a lynchpin I needed to know how that was going to happen.
She lowered her hands and then looked to Milly who stood on my left side. “Come here. We have much to say to one another.”
I thought Giselle would dismiss us again, but t
o my surprise, she didn’t. Nope, she dove right in.
But not with the Reading, not right away.
“You have betrayed us all to your master. And even knowing the reason why—that you were tied to him—at no point did you come to Rylee or me for help.”
“I didn’t think—”
Giselle lifted a hand, cutting her off. “No, you did not think. And that cost me my sanity, and could yet cost this world its entire being. I have been given a gift. A form of punishment that I may hand to you in penance for the wrongs you have committed. Are you willing to take it?”
Sheee-it. I hadn’t expected this, and obviously neither had Milly if the size of her eyes and the pallor of her skin were markers.
Moment of truth … and Giselle brought us to it. Would Milly show her willingness to take some punishment for the wrongs she’d done?
The silence stretched and that last little hope I had nurtured flickered, as if a candle re-sparked by a cold wind.
“I will take whatever penance you have for me,” Milly whispered, dropping to her knees in front of Giselle. Giselle’s eyes shot to mine. “I need your help, Rylee.”
Surprised, both for the request and Milly’s willingness to take a punishment, I stepped forward before I thought better of it.
“Rylee,” —Giselle pointed at my hand— “pull back your Immunity.”
I did as she said, exposing my right hand to whatever magic she wanted to put on me. But she didn’t do anything to me, not in the way I thought. Giselle slid her hand over mine and took a piece of my Immunity. How the fuck she did it, I don’t know.
“What the hell?” I managed not to jerk my hand back, and watched as Giselle placed that Immunity on Milly.
“You will not have access to your magic until you grasp what you have done, truly understand the way you have broken our family and truly understand where you belong in all of this. Then, and only then, will your power return.” Giselle’s words rippled through the room, and with them, she faded away. As if she hadn’t ever been.
Pamela was first to speak. “You mean she took away your magic?”
Milly lifted her hand and whispered a spell, a doozy if I remembered correctly. One that should have taken out the entire sidewall of the house.
Nothing.
Like she was human.
“Damn it, Giselle!” I shouted. “Couldn’t you have waited until after we were done facing a big fucking demon?”
No answer, of course. No, that wasn’t entirely true. The bare echo of laughter floated through the house, Giselle’s guides finding our predicament amusing. Assholes.
Milly stood and brushed off her dress. “That was … unexpected.”
I shook my head and laced my fingers around the back of my neck. Understated much? Yup. “Can you still teach Pamela?”
“Yes, I should be able to.” Milly made her way back to the paisley chair. “But is she strong enough to take on whatever comes?”
I snorted. “Even I know you’re jealous because she has the potential to be stronger than you already.”
Milly’s eyes snapped with anger and I smiled. Oh, maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea, taking away her magic. A little humility would do her good.
I lifted both hands into the air as I attempted to organize my thoughts, choosing not to discuss Faris. Let’s move on from that.
“First things first. Who were those motherfuckers shooting at us? And how the hell did they get such accuracy on a Jeep full of supernaturals?”
“Someone was shooting at you, and you didn’t tell me?” Liam grabbed my arm and turned me around to face him. I frowned at him.
“You distracted me.”
Milly snorted. “We heard the ‘distraction’ all the way downstairs.”
Pamela snickered and Alex let out a sneeze. I was grateful for the candlelight because the heat in my face grew at a rapid rate I couldn’t control. I didn’t think we’d been that noisy; then again, it had been hard to think at all …
Liam snapped his fingers, drawing all of our eyes to his face. “Regardless, tell me what happened.”
We quickly went over the events, and the shock of the guns’ accuracy struck me again.
“Rylee.” Liam’s eyes were distant and I saw his mind working. “Have there been other times when the vibrations of supernaturals has been blocked?”
“No.”
“Think harder.”
What the hell was he getting at? I racked my brain and then it hit me like a slug between the eyes.
“The FBI’s private jet.” I wanted to bang my head against the wall. Between the dark cars that followed us and the jet, I should have known.
Alex sat up and moved to my side, pressing himself against me. He tugged at my jeans. “Alex hungry.”
“In a minute.” I dropped a hand to his head and he grabbed my hand in his mouth.
“Hungry,” he mouthed around my fingers. I stared down at him. This was weird, even for Alex.
“Alex, I said in—” He tugged me so I faced the side window, where the sash was closed except for an inch or so. Just high enough for me to see the ice blue eye staring in at us.
Holy fucking hell, Faris was here? Why now, why so soon?
I grabbed Alex around the ruff. “I’m taking Alex for a pee.”
“I thought he was hungry?” Pamela stood.
“That too. Could you see what there is for canned food in the house?” I was all but dragging Alex, who was now trying to go with Pamela. Liam stood on the far side of the room, opposite Milly, and seemed lost in thought. Another time I would have been worried, but at that moment I was glad he wasn’t noticing me.
“Pee first,” I said and opened the front door, all but shoving the werewolf out. I didn’t really want to see Faris, but since we all knew I was going to help him, no time like the present to start working with the prick.
Alex went tearing around the side of the house and I ran after him, our footsteps muffled in the snow. I yanked a sword from my back as I rounded the window where I’d seen Faris’s eye—just in case. A pair of boot prints were set in the snow, but no vampire waited for me.
Alex sniffed the ground, lifted his leg and peed on the boot prints. “Piss on vampires,” he grumbled, showing his teeth. I stepped closer and lowered my blade to rest into the snow. Etched into the window, where the sash covered, were two words:
Watching
You
Well, that was just fantastic, just the way to end an already shitty day. Like I needed that reminder when it had been less than twenty-four hours since I’d been locked in his stupid cement coffin of a room. A shiver traveled the length of my spine that had nothing to do with the cold.
“Come on, Alex. Let’s go inside. And don’t mention the vampire. Got it?” I slid my sword back into its sheath. No need to freak out anyone, or get Liam riled up. Fucking vampire and his games.
“Gots it.” Alex shook his leg a couple of times, shaking off extra pee. We went inside, and no one had missed us. Pamela puttered in the kitchen, and Alex raced into her, yelping about his empty belly. Milly sat in her chair, curled up and brooding. Liam sat on the other side of the room seemingly watching her, but I saw he was zoned out, not really here.
Good and bad, I suppose. I didn’t want anyone knowing I had to deal with Faris so soon, but to have Liam be so out of it … again, I wondered what Giselle said to him. The only obvious thing was, whatever she’d said, it likely hadn’t been good. And I had a bad feeling it had more than a little to do with me.
Just fucking peachy.
I sat beside him. No point in beating around the bush. “Hey. What did Giselle tell you?”
He glanced up, his silvery golden eyes, a not so subtle reminder he was no longer entirely human, there was no going back for him. “Nothing that concerns you.”
I blinked a couple of times, surprised. “No? Then why can’t you tell me?”
His jaw ticked, and his voice grew in intensity with each word. “It was for me, and no o
ne else. If Giselle wanted the rest of you to know, she wouldn’t have told you to leave.”
A pit opened, somewhere near my guts, rolling with acid. This wasn’t like Liam; he didn’t keep secrets. Neither of us did, not from each other.
“Seriously?” I strode away from him, hurt curling through me. Shitty part about loving someone was this kind of crap, and how easy they could stab you with mere words. I’d prefer to get run through with one of my own blades. Stupid-ass male.
He followed me out of the living room, through the kitchen and out the back door onto the rickety porch.
A whisper of voices made the hair on my neck stand up, even knowing what I heard was Giselle’s spirit guides. No time for that right now.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Liam growled. “You don’t get to know everything.”
Oh, so that was the game he wanted to play. “You’re right, but I thought with you, at least, I would have someone I could damn well finally trust. I guess I was wrong.” I kept my back to him, pissed off and worse, scared. I hated being scared.
“You can trust me, you know that. You’re just pissed you can’t bully me into spilling.”
I spun around, my jaw dropping. “Are you fucking serious? I know what kind of Reading would make you clam up like that. So I know it was bad, and the fact that even now you are pushing me away tells me it’s even worse than I think. Which is pretty fucking bad after everything we’ve seen in the last twenty-four hours.”
His mouth snapped shut and thinned to a hard line. That was it, I knew him; he would say no more. As if to hammer the point home, he turned his back to me and stripped out of his clothes, barely making it out of them before he shifted. The oversized black wolf glanced once over his shoulder at me before he loped off into the darkness.
I leaned against the house, the wall sagging with my weight. He decided he wasn’t telling me, and there was nothing I would be able to do to change his mind. Shitty part was, my imagination was more than apt at filling in the myriad of possibilities. Maybe Giselle’s words had echoed Doran’s.
Tracker: A Rylee Adamson Novel (Book 6) Page 3
