Love Uncharted

by Berinn Rae

  Was she simply losing her mind?

  She knew she’d been exhausted and had gone through a lot of strange shit, but she’d never seen things before.

  She checked the whole clinic to be safe before heading back to the office. Gadget had somehow made his way onto the futon. The sight of him made her feel a little better, but she still closed and locked the office door.

  You can never be too careful.

  She glanced down at her temporary weapon of choice. It was a high school photo, the title across the top identifying the group of teens as the hip-hop dance team. Sydney sat front and center, looking incredibly young with her giant smile and braces. Cali carefully put it back where she’d found it. The adrenaline was quickly fading from her system. She dropped to the futon and pulled her cell phone from her purse.

  Sydney had left her number and the number to Felix’s house.

  Should she call?

  The idea was more than tempting. She wanted to hear Felix’s voice. There was something about his deep baritone that calmed her, made her feel safe.

  But he was using her.

  She stuffed her cell back into her purse, along with the sticky note. There was no reason to call. What would she tell them?

  That she’d seen a dark shape in the form of a man hovering outside the office doorway?

  She gave a derisive snort.

  • • •

  A keening howl woke Cali from a dead sleep.

  Her eyes shot open. She rolled to slam her alarm clock off, only to realize too late that she wasn’t at home. She rolled straight off the futon.

  Pain exploded all over her body and she cursed aloud only to be drowned out by that horrible howling.

  She quickly cupped her hands over her ears. “What the fuck is that?”

  She dug through her handbag to find her cell phone.

  10:02 A.M.

  She rolled onto her back with a groan, taking the blanket with her to cover her face.

  A knock came at the door. The knob jiggled. “Cali? You awake yet? I really need to get into my office. I tried to wait as long as possible so you could sleep, but I thought by now — ”

  The rest of her sentence was cut off by another low wail.

  “What the fuck is that?” Cali yelled.

  “That’s Yeller, my ten o’clock. He’s in quite a bit of pain and I really need to treat him.”

  Cali groggily got to her feet. She wrapped the blanket around her as a makeshift skirt to hide her state of undress and opened the door. “Quick, come in and get whatever you need to get that thing to shut the hell up.”

  Another high-pitched yowl started. With the door open the sound was even worse. Cali cringed in pain. She started to close the door only to be knocked aside as Joel came barging into the room. He quickly shut it behind him with a curse.

  He leaned against the door. “For fuck’s sake, as if my morning headache wasn’t bad enough.”

  Sydney cooed in sympathy. “My poor baby.” She dug around in her desk and pitched a small container over to him. “Take two of those to help with the headache.”

  Joel popped four pills into his mouth. “I wouldn’t have it at all if Felix had gone to bed at a decent hour. He kept pacing in his damn living room, restless, kept rubbing at his chest like it was hurting him.” He glanced at the clock on Sydney’s wall. Cali had gone stock-still. “And where the hell is he? I have to be in LA at eleven.”

  The dog howled from the front of the lobby. Joel cursed again. “I’m going to wait out front.”

  Sydney gave him a kiss. “Have a good day.”

  Joel’s face gentled. “You too.”

  The emotion on his face hit Cali right in the gut. She shut the door after him, her mind spinning after what he’d said.

  Felix had been restless too.

  She had no idea if that meant anything. Was she making something out of nothing?

  She stopped Sydney as she tried to follow after her boyfriend. “Cali, what — ?”

  “When you first met Joel, what did you feel?”

  Sydney drew back. “What do you mean, what did I feel?”

  “When you first touched, did it feel like you got shocked?”

  Sydney gave her a blank look.

  Cali tugged in frustration at the blanket wrapped around her. “You had to have felt something. He’s your Mirror Mate. Didn’t anything happen?”

  Understanding slowly dawned on Sydney. “Cali, I told you last night that Collette is the only one who found her Mirror Mate.”

  “No, no.” She shook her head. “You told me she was the only one who was full forced. I took that to mean that you and Joel haven’t bonded, or connected, or whatever, yet.”

  Sydney’s ever-present smile turned slightly bitter. “Joel and I aren’t Mirror Mates.”

  “But … ” Cali pointed uselessly behind her. “He. You. You’re dating.”

  Yeller chose that moment to let rip one of his ear-piercing yowls.

  Sydney didn’t even seem to notice. “We don’t have to be Mirror Mates to date. The thing with Mirror Mates is that we don’t know if they’re rare or commonplace. We only know that they exist. I’m all for a happily-ever-after ending, but I can’t wait around for my soul mate to find me, or me him. What if he lives somewhere like Latvia? Or was killed in an accident when he was seven? There’s no knowing.”

  “So what happens if you do find him?”

  Her expression turned solemn. “I’m not sure. Sometimes I hope I never have to find out.”

  Sydney hastily left to treat her first patient, leaving Cali alone.

  She pulled her hair back into a hasty ponytail and stepped into her shorts. She tried to fold the blanket as nicely as she could and left the office to join the others in the lobby.

  Her feet froze as soon as she turned the corner and spotted Felix. He was talking to Niella over the desk. One of his hands held a white paper bag. That same hand was also pressed to his left ear.

  The tenseness coiling within her chest gently eased.

  As Felix stood there, smiling openly at Niella, she didn’t know what to make of him. Was he playing her? Did she believe Joel? Was Felix feeling the same things as she was?

  She didn’t know what to think anymore.

  She stepped more fully into the room. Felix noticed her instantly. He straightened to his full height, the shirt he wore straining against his broad chest. Cali swallowed.

  “Morning,” he said brightly. He held the white bag out to her. “I brought breakfast.”

  She smelled fresh pastries. Her stomach grumbled, and she snatched the bag from his hand.

  “Aren’t you cheery in the morning?”

  She scowled at him and proceeded to dig through the bag.

  Felix watched her with amusement. “Looking for anything in particular?”

  “Anything with cherry filling?”

  Felix made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat and came up beside her to take a look into the bag.

  He smelled of fresh bread.

  Her heart skipped a beat.

  He reached into the bag. His shoulder pressed against hers. It felt like heated steel. “There might be a cherry Danish in here somewhere. Ah, here it is.” He held the pastry out to her. “I’ll make sure to add them to my repertoire.”

  She eyed him carefully. “Thanks.”

  Yeller let loose a baleful howl. Cali jumped, her breakfast jumping with her, right out of her hand.

  She stared at the splatter of cherry on the linoleum floor. “Seriously?” she mumbled.

  “All right, I’ve had enough,” Niella rolled out from behind the desk. “Take care of that, would you?”

  Sydney stepped out of the patient room and closed the door on another howl. “I can’t sedate him just because he’s loud.”

  “Not you.” Niella pointed at Cali. “Her.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Zero out the sound. Take it away. Use your damn powers.”

  She could
feel everyone’s attention on her. Her eyes, unbidden, turned to Felix for help. He smiled at her. There was no hidden seduction behind it. It was all warmth and support. It set her nerves at ease.

  Then he had to go and ruin it by raising two of his fingers and wiggling them. He mouthed, “Two?”

  That scum-sucking jackass.

  If he thought that she was going to ask for his help only to have to owe him one later, then he was sorely mistaken.

  His smile took on a wicked glint at her expression. He lowered his hand back to his side.

  “Sure thing,” she told Niella with more confidence than she was feeling. Now she had to figure out how the hell to do it. “Could you open the door back up so I can see the dog?”

  Sydney hesitated. “This isn’t going to hurt Yeller, is it?”

  Cali turned to Felix. “Does it hurt?”

  “Not at all.”

  Sydney looked less than convinced, but she did as she was asked. Yeller was lying down on the patient table, his snout on his paws, his big brown eyes full of sorrow.

  Sydney scratched him on the head affectionately. “I gave him something for the pain. Once it takes full effect, I’m going to check him over thoroughly for the cause. Maybe run some scans.”

  Yeller whined.

  Cali inhaled deeply. She’d never done this before. The one time she’d knowingly taken sound from something was when she was with Felix and they had been touching. Now there was no physical connection, and her emotions were a lot more stable.

  You can do this, she chanted to herself.

  She focused on Yeller, the low whine coming from his throat, and the way it seemed to reverberate through the whole clinic. She imagined that sound as a physical presence, one she could suppress. She tried to do what Niella had said and cancel the sound out.

  The back of her neck started to tingle.

  Yeller’s whine went in and out before the sound finally dropped off.

  Cali held her breath, half expecting the sound to come back with a thunderous boom.

  “Thank the lord,” said Niella.

  Sydney stared in amazement at Yeller, who now had his head tilted up as if that would help bring the sound of his howl back. It didn’t.

  “I have to admit,” said Sydney, “that is a nice trick to possess. What I wouldn’t give to be able to make all my animals shut up when I have a full holding room.”

  “I don’t know how long it’ll last,” said Cali.

  “That’s fine. The medicine should kick in soon enough, so he should stop with the baying once the pain recedes.”

  “One can only hope,” mumbled Niella.

  • • •

  “You ready?” asked Felix.

  Cali’s nerves were still a jumbled mess, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. “Yeah.” She buckled her seatbelt. Felix had “volunteered” to take her to the police station that day. She’d been prepared to call Jared to come and get her but Felix had protested the call, spouting something about blowing the location of their headquarters.

  She would have protested more if Niella hadn’t backed him up. She’d pointed out that they still didn’t know what was going on with the people who were after her, and that it’d be plain stupidity to go out by herself.

  Which left her to be chauffeured around. It was probably for the best that she didn’t drive anyway. She had no time to focus on the road. She was too busy thinking of what she was going to tell the police. It’d been a good long while since she’d had to deal with governmental authority. And she wanted to keep it that way. She’d spent the last few years keeping her record as spotless as possible, but she doubted seven years would look as good to the authorities as it did to her.

  She shifted in her seat.

  The last thing she wanted to deal with was punishment for being pegged as an accomplice. Could they even do that to her? She’d fled for her own safety — surely they’d see that.

  Not if Jared and Garnet already convinced them otherwise.

  She wrung her hands together.

  Beside her Felix chuckled. “What are you so nervous about?”

  “A lot, actually.”

  “Like what?”

  She stayed silent.

  They came to a red light. Felix nudged her with his hand. “Come on, hit me with it.”

  She eyed him for a moment. “Fine.” She punched him in the arm.

  His eyebrows rose in challenge. “So you wanna go there?” He feinted for her knee and she jumped, a small laugh escaping her.

  “Green.” She pointed toward the street light.

  Felix was forced to focus back on the road.

  She scooted closer to the passenger door in a vain attempt to escape his long reach. Why did he have to be so damn playful? “You asked for it, you know,” she pointed out.

  “So you’re saying I started it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He pretended to contemplate that. “Well, then, I should warn you I always finish what I start.”

  The look he sent her had heat rushing straight between her legs.

  “So are you going to tell me what’s got you so jacked up?”

  She pulled her mind from the gutter.

  What the hell, she thought. She’d already told him some of the story. The worst it could do was cause him to run from her. And wasn’t that what she wanted anyway?

  “I tend to try and avoid the police. I got enough of them when I was in high school. I earned myself a little record that I’m worried is going to creep up and bite me in the ass.”

  “It is a nice ass,” he commented.

  She wanted to punch him again but his humor helped ease the nervousness inside her.

  They drove a few miles in silence before he broke it. “What happened in high school?”

  “Two things happened, actually. Isaac Gregory and Tyson Miller.”

  Felix’s jaw tensed. “I’m not going to like this story. I can already tell.”

  Cali smiled. “That makes two of us. Isaac wasn’t so bad, it was Tyson who really screwed me.” She stopped as old emotions welled up within her. “The short version is that Isaac and Tyson were both druggies. With Isaac I got caught with possession of marijuana and got fined for it. No big deal. I dumped him the next day. Tyson … Tyson was like a cancer. The trouble with him just kept growing. I was young and stupid, he was eighteen to my seventeen, and I thought he was the coolest thing on the planet. A couple months after we started dating he took me to a party. There was drinking, weed, you name it, they had it. I was pretty drunk and high by the time Tyson slipped some kind of benzodiazepine into my drink.”

  Felix’s knuckles had gone white around the steering wheel.

  “When I finally woke up I was in the hospital. I was really messed up but luckily the cops had been on their way when I was given the drug so Tyson didn’t have time to do anything to me. But he sure as hell did enough. There was still marijuana in my jeans. I’m pretty sure he put it there, but it doesn’t matter now. I was fined, had my license suspended for a year, was sent to a detention facility, and had to do community service.”

  They were back at a red light.

  “If I ever cross that guy, Tyson, I’ll kill him.” The serious protectiveness on Felix’s face was as misplaced as his harsh words. It should have scared her. It didn’t. In fact, it did the exact opposite. It made her feel worthwhile.

  “Well, you can see why I have a problem with the police. My family never really believed that I’d quit drinking or smoking, so I can only imagine what the police must think.”

  “Fuck what they think. You’re not that person anymore. You never were from what I’ve heard.”

  They pulled into the station parking lot.

  Foreign emotions swirled inside her. Emotions she didn’t know how to deal with. “Thanks.” She reached for the door handle once they’d parked.

  “I can go in with you if you want.”

  The offer caught her completely off guard. She’d never had such sup
port. She suddenly wondered what it would be like to have a guy like Felix in her life. To always be there for her.

  Don’t even go there.

  She got out of the Hummer. “I’ll be fine.”

  As soon as she stepped into the police station she was anything but fine, which probably had a lot to do with the fact that she nearly ran face first into Collette.

  Chapter 9

  Cali’s first instinct was to duck and cover.

  Had it really only been less than twenty-four hours since Cali had seen her?

  For her part, Collette looked like shit. It gave Cali a brief satisfaction to see the bags under her eyes.

  But any satisfaction at seeing Collette’s haggled appearance was wiped clean when Collette fixed Cali with a murderous expression.

  For the tensest minute of her life, Cali did nothing but stare down her enemy. This was the woman who’d been sent to take her, the woman responsible for her being at the police station in the first place. But why did Collette want to take her? Who did she answer to? What did they want with her?

  “Can we help you, miss?”

  The voice broke the tension between them, and Cali stepped from around Collette to face down an officer sitting behind the front desk. She tried to walk over to the officer but was stopped when Collette grabbed her wrist painfully.

  “I know what you are,” she whispered. “I know what you mean to him, and I don’t care what my orders are. I’m going to make him hurt like he hurt me.”

  Cali ripped her arm from Collette’s grasp. She was taller than Collette by a couple of inches but what Collette lacked in height she made up for in presence. Still, Cali stared her down. “Don’t ever touch me.”

  Collette grinned. “See you around.”

  The officer behind the desk watched everything with a careful eye, one hand held ready to go for his belt. “Is everything okay, miss?” he asked once Collette was gone.

  “I’m here to give a statement. My name is Cali Crazar.”

  She waited patiently as the officer typed her name into whatever database they had. A few seconds later something flashed across his face. It was too quick for her to make any sense of it, but she had a good idea when he looked up and his expression was closed off.