“So they have the power to do something physical and instead of doing anything to you, they throw a glamour? Just doesn’t make sense,” he finished, shaking his head.
“Maybe he’s not trying to hurt me-”
“Shayna, he tried to throw you from a balcony in front of a few dozen people. I don’t think he has any hang-ups about hurting you,” Jensen said quickly.
“What’s your point?”
“My point is he wants to hurt you, otherwise he wouldn’t have tried to kill you earlier today. Maybe these things need him around to be able to be at full force?” He nodded then, as if agreeing with himself, and I realized he wasn’t so much talking to me as figuring out his hypotheses out loud. “Or maybe he didn’t know he couldn’t hurt you with those things from a distance?”
“Well, he’ll know the answer to that one now,” I said.
“Yeah, he will. Maybe he didn’t believe you that you could help him, that you knew what you were talking about? So either he’ll be more receptive to you or even angrier now.”
“Oh that’s great, because he was so calm and collected before.” I walked back over to the window, bracing my hands on the sill. I leaned out to breathe in the heady perfume of the new flowers.
“You know there is one other possibility,” Jensen said carefully. I heard him closer behind me now than he had been a moment ago.
“What’s that?” I asked, turning around and leaning against the edge of the sill, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Well, it seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to just to scare you. Maybe he was trying to distract you,” he said, taking the half step needed to close the distance between us. He put his hands on my shoulders and leaned down to press our foreheads together.
“Distract me from what?” I asked, automatically lowering my voice because his face was so close to mine.
“I don’t know, but it just makes more sense to go through all that trouble if he was trying to keep you from noticing what he was really up to. After all, you said that faerie queen warned you he meant to do someone harm, right?” I nodded, making him nod with me as I thought about what he said. It did make sense.
“If you’re right, he’s doing something to someone right now,” I sighed, my breath coming back at me in a warm whisper. It was near dark now, the shadows grown thicker in the tree house. If Jensen’s face hadn’t been right up to mine, I might not have been able to see him. “And I have no idea who he could be doing whatever it is to, wherever he is.” My voice sounded as defeated as I felt.
“I’m sorry,” Jensen whispered, turning his face to press a kiss to my cheek, just under my eye.
“What for?”
“If I had better control over whatever it is I can do, I could probably help you better.” He stood up straight and I saw the regret in his face.
“Jensen,” I said, reaching a hand up to his face to keep his gaze on my face, “I have a feeling your abilities wouldn’t help us now anyway.”
“Why not?”
“Because it seems like they only manifest clearly enough for you when someone important to you is involved,” I explained.
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“I can’t be sure, obviously, but today made me think so. You were really buzzing with power last fall and both me and your twin brother were involved in that. And then today, with me in danger at the bookstore. But the other day in the store, that guy almost shot Deb and you didn’t even have an inkling anything was wrong and you were there.” He started to open his mouth to say something and I could feel it was going to be defensive. I stopped him by putting a hand up. “You like Deb just fine, but she’s not extremely important to you, not like us, you know?”
“Yeah, I think I do,” he said, but not like he liked it.
“That could be just for now though. With practice and effort, you could be as good as any clairvoyant.” I reached up with my other hand so I was cupping his face between them and pulled him down into a kiss. “Don’t feel bad, Jensen. It’s actually a really common ability; most mothers develop it. If you can’t ever have your powers work for any one but those that mean the most to you, then that’s not a bad thing really. Kind of like a guardian angel for your friends.”
“Some guardian angel. I can’t seem to get to whoever needs me in time.” He pulled away from me and took a few steps back. I watched his face close down to hide his emotions. “It’s almost like I get the visions just in time to be late. What good is that?”
“That’s right now, Jensen. If you start working on it, and I mean working on it for real, not just reading books and trying to figure out what it is or isn’t, then I’m sure you’ll be able to figure out a way to channel your visions better, sooner.” I watched the emotions run across his face; he always seemed to have a harder time hiding his emotions than I did. “But right now, we don’t have time for this. We need to find out why Jeremy sent those things after me if they weren’t meant to hurt me.” Jensen looked up at me and I realized he looked a little embarrassed. “What’s wrong?”
“You are so good at focusing on the bigger picture; it makes me feel so childish, so damn selfish.” He laughed a little and shook his head, visibly clearing his mind. “What do we do first?”
***
A half an hour later Jensen, Jodi, Steven and I were sitting in my car, parked on the dimly lit street that Jeremy’s family lived on. We had all been to enough of Jimmy McCormack’s parties over the last couple of years to know where they lived. Strangely, both their parent’s cars and Jimmy’s car were parked outside the house. Jimmy had a very steady girlfriend, Cindy Wright, class president and too pretty for high school, and it was Saturday night, they should have been out on a date. There wasn’t a third car for Jeremy because he hadn’t done anything to make his dad think he deserved one. Jimmy got his truck on his sixteenth birthday, right on schedule for the pretty-boy jock. Who cares if he was barely passing most of his classes?
I expected to see Jeremy’s mother’s car to be missing from the rest, waiting at the station until the bail paperwork finally went through and they released Jeremy. “I guess his dad bullied his mom enough to stay home until the jail calls to tell them Jeremy’s released,” Jodi said, echoing my thoughts.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said.
“So, what are we doing here? I mean, what were you expecting?” Steven asked over the back of my seat.
“I dunno, maybe it’s nothing here. I guess I kinda expected him to be home already,” I answered, looking out the window past Jodi who was sitting up front with me.
“Oh no, ten hours minimum and it’s usually twelve hours on average before someone is bailed out,” Jodi said with a shake of her head. “Maybe we need to go to the jail then?” she suggested.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said but something told me not to leave. Something was wrong here, but from the outside, I just couldn’t see what it could be.
“Come on, Shay, let’s go down to the jail. If it has anything to do with Jeremy, you know that’s where he is,” Steven urged, reaching over to touch my shoulder. I finally agreed and drove us the short trip across town until I was pulling into the parking lot of the police station. It was past eight, which meant the station would only be open for less than an hour.
“Now what?” Jensen asked from the back.
“We go inside,” I said simply, opening my door and stepping out.
“And do what?” Jensen asked as he followed Jodi out on the other side of the car.
“I have no idea,” I replied and started across the parking lot to the visitor’s entrance.
“At least we have a plan,” Steven said as he followed me and Jodi, with Jensen beside him. I pushed the door open, holding it behind me so it wouldn’t fall closed on Jodi, and let go once I knew she was right behind me. We walked straight up to the woman at the counter and asked to see Jeremy McCormack.
“Visiting hours are over,” the lady said in a clipped voice.
“I unders
tand that, but I was hoping we could just have five minutes with him?” I fed the smallest amount of sympathy out of me and into her and watched as the suspicious frown lines in her face softened into something prettier, a shadow of the loveliness that she once was twenty or thirty years ago.
“Well, I’m sure I could ask Officer Adams if it would be okay, just this once.” She said the last with a conspiratory wink and smile.
“Do we need to involve Office Adams?” I asked quickly before her fingers found the call button she was reaching for.
“Oh yes, dear, you have to be escorted through the station. We can’t have four teenagers wandering through here.” She shook her head at me and pressed the button and spoke into a speaker I couldn’t see, requesting Officer Adams. I felt my stomach knot up immediately and felt the tension flowing off of my three companions like fire ants on my skin.
“Calm down or you all are going to send me screaming out of here,” I whispered at them, my voice sounding very closely to a hiss.
“Sorry, babe,” Jodi said and I watched her try to collect herself, but the air didn’t shift around me to make me more comfortable. As a matter of fact, as soon as we heard the heavy footfalls of the officer coming closer, my skin felt like it was alive with angry little welts and I was forced to put up stronger shields against them and cut them off from me. Jensen made a face as if he could hear something in the distance, but both Jodi and Steven turned stunned and hurt faces towards me.
“I told you guys to calm down,” I said quickly and quietly before Officer Adams was in earshot.
“How can I help you guys?” Officer Adams asked as he closed the last few feet between the five of us. “Did you finally go see a doctor and have more injuries to report?”
“Oh no, no, we’re fine,” I said deciding to take the lead since this was my idea. “We were actually hoping to talk to Jeremy?” I didn’t mean for it to sound like a question.
“Shayna, I already told you, that’s not going to happen. He attacked you. We can’t have you in the same room with him.” The one thing I liked about Officer Adams was that he remembered he wasn’t that much older than me, so he didn’t speak to me like a child or a wounded little girl; his voice was as matter of fact as it would be if he was speaking to anyone.
“What about through the glass on the phone, you know, like during visiting hours?” Jodi asked quickly before I was reduced to pleading with him.
“Visiting hours are over,” he said with a shake of his head and I realized I was going to have to break one of my cardinal rules when it came to cops for the second time today. I reached out to him until I felt the heat of his aura and tapped into it, creating a channel between us and started projecting at him. I watched his face go slack for a few moments while the feeling of total understanding washed over him. He furrowed his brow at me and then at Jodi. “Well, I don’t see why that would hurt anything. Yeah, sure, it’s not like there’s a ton of people on right now, just me and my partner.” He turned without waiting for us and started walking back the way he had come.
Did you just do what I think you did? Jodi’s yellow thoughts drifted into my mind like my own thoughts.
Shut up, I thought back at her and had the feeling my thoughts were bright green in her mind. She smirked at me and let her hand fall away from my arm. We followed Officer Adams down a hallway and around a corner to a flight of stairs I would have never known were there that led down instead of up. We went down to the floor below and through another corridor and around more corners until I knew there was no way I would find my way out on my own. Finally the smell hit me; a strange combination of industrial cleanser and something sour, like candy gone wrong. I reinforced my shields as we walked because I could feel the press of fear and anger growing stronger as we neared a door with a small rectangular window. Officer Adam had to unlocked the door before we could step through.
“Okay,” Officer Adams said, stopping in front of another door just feet away from the one we’d just come through. “Now, only one of you can go in and talk to him at a time and, since it’s after hours, I really can only let one of you talk to him at all.”
“That’s fine, I’ll talk to him,” I said, stepping forward and away from my group.
“Are you sure? I mean, you’re the one he attacked,” he asked, clearly not understanding my decision. I glanced back towards Jodi and Steven and they both gave me a small nod. I turned my attention back to Officer Adams and started feeding him an extra dose of understanding laced with the desire to help me. His face clouded over and for a moment he looked utterly confused, but he just turned around and unlocked the door and held it open for me.
I was sitting on a metal stool in front of a small counter with a Plexiglas window in front of me with a phone to one side of me. The space was smaller than your average stall in a public bathroom. I was concentrating very hard on not freaking out and letting my claustrophobia take over. I don’t have bad claustrophobia. I can handle elevators just fine, but this was more than a little creepy. I heard the slam of a door and looked off to the right and watched as Officer Adams led Jeremy to the stool in front of me on the other side of the window. Jeremy looked from me to Officer Adams quickly, completely confused. Officer Adams just shrugged at him and walked away to the door, stopping just to the side of it, not leaving the room.
I picked up the phone on my side and held it to my ear, waiting for Jeremy to do the same. He stared at me for a few tense moments, not moving. He finally picked up his phone and leaned in closer to the window. “I don’t get it, what are you doing here?” He asked.
“I told you in the bookstore, I just wanted to talk to you. If you’d let me, I can help you,” I said, careful of my tone, but still letting an edge of frustration leak through.
“I shoved you over the balcony. I tried to kill you. Why do you want to help me?”
“Because I think you’ve gotten yourself into something that you don’t know how to control and maybe my friends and I can help you out of it,” I said, letting my voice soften.
“You have no idea what I’m into,” Jeremy said in a distant voice.
“I think I do,” I said, drawing his attention back to me. He gave me a look that clearly said he didn’t believe me. “It’s all magic, Jeremy, all of it. Whatever those things are that you think are helping you, you flying off of the balcony outside the store, everything, it’s just magic.” He blinked at me, at my boldness and his jaw went slack, letting his mouth hang open.
“How did you… What are… How?” he stuttered at me.
“See, Jeremy, if you had just let me talk to you, rather than freaking out every time, then maybe we could have avoided this whole ugly thing,” I said and again I had to catch myself before my voice betrayed just how annoyed I had been with him. “I understand these things are kinda scary when they’re new to you, but you can’t let your emotions get away from you like that.”
“That’s the thing though,” Jeremy said suddenly, sitting up and inching closer to the glass and lowering his voice as he spoke into the phone. “I’m not sure that’s all me, the freaking out, I mean.” He stopped and glanced over his shoulder at the officer, but he was still standing sentinel by the door. “See, I’ll get upset, maybe mad, but nothing out of the ordinary and then all of a sudden it’s out of control and I’m just furious and then my faeries show up to help me-”
“Your faeries?” I asked, interrupting him.
“Well, yeah, I mean you knew, didn’t you?” he asked, his eyes going wide as if afraid he’d over-shared.
“No, no, I knew there was something, but I didn’t think they were faeries, that’s all,” I said quickly, lifting my free hand as if I could pat his arm to reassure him. I watched as he visibly relaxed and collected himself. He leaned towards the window again.
“Oh, okay. Yeah, they tell me they’re faeries,” he said, shrugging his rounded shoulders. I nodded, urging him to continue, not wanting to say anything else that might upset him again. “I really
am sorry about today. I really don’t know what was wrong with me. I just kinda lost it and then you were there in front of me and I felt trapped. I don’t know why though…” His voice drifted off and I got the impression that he was really talking more to himself than to me.
“And then the faeries showed up,” I said and he nodded slowly at me. “And that’s how you survived that jump from the balcony.” He nodded again. “So, you show a little emotion and these things come flying to your side and whatever emotion you’re feeling just gets worse?” He just nodded again, almost in a trance.
“I hate this, I really hate this,” he whispered urgently and I saw in the overhead lighting his eyes shimmered behind unshed tears. I had made sure to completely block out his emotions just in case he got out of control again, so the sight of those sad little tears took me by surprise. “My dad’s always hated me because I wasn’t like Jimmy. Jimmy’s always hated me because he does whatever dad does. Mom…” He blinked back the tears and shook his head. “Well, mom’s weak. I just…” He took a deep breath and I continued to hold mine, not wanting to say anything to scare him off. “I just wanted to be special, you know? I’ve always been so average, so normal. Not just not special enough, just not special at all.”
“Most people who have normal lives live for moments of wonder, Jeremy,” I said. “Me, magic is everywhere in my life, so I live for moments of normality.” He just stared at me, blinking, uncomprehending. “Jeremy, no one is entirely happy with their lives, no one. If someone says they are, then they’re either lying or are in denial. But whether you’re normal or special by your father’s definition, either way you have problems, it’s just a matter of which problems you get. But the more special you are, usually the bigger problems you have. Trust me, I know.”
“Yeah, like crazy people trying to kill you in a bookstore,” he said with a smirk and, for the first time, I saw what Jeremy could have always looked like had his father and brother not been there his entire life to beat him down. When he smiled, his eyes actually sparkled, making the gray of his irises look like quicksilver. Color flushed his cheeks, making his skin look fair rather than pale. He could have been cute enough, maybe not handsome standing next to someone like Jimmy or Jensen, but he could’ve held his own just fine. I could see then that if he found even a small measure of happiness, he’d be one of those guys that grows up to look handsome and distinguished in the decades to follow.
Elemental Series Omnibus Edition Books 1-4 Page 41
