Embrace the Night (23 page)
Authors: Crystal Jordan
“No,” he growled. “Not at all. It's just blank.”
“Why?” He could almost see the scientist's wheels spinning, running experimental scenarios in her head. The woman had to test everything. Him, his control, herself, her abilities, the world around her. “You're this amazing clairvoyant, even Luca sounded in awe of your skills, so why are some people blank and some not? What makes your sight go on the fritz like that?”
“It's complicated.” He swallowed and let his chin drop to his chest. “The last person I couldn't see anything with was my wife. Before her, my best friend growing up. Before him, my parents.”
“So, people who are important to you in some way.” Her eyes narrowed, her head tilting as she considered. “Or people who
become
important.”
become
important.”
“Yeah. The one and only vision I ever had of my wife was the first time I touched her. I shook her hand to introduce myself and got this flash of our wedding, where it would be, how she would look, how I would feel. Just this one single moment that burned into my brain.” One he'd done everything in his power to make come true. Good thing she'd been a scattered artist with no desire to ever
plan
anything, because most women he'd ever heard of would have balked at his controlling every aspect of their wedding. He'd just known he had to have that moment, that vision, that feeling.
plan
anything, because most women he'd ever heard of would have balked at his controlling every aspect of their wedding. He'd just known he had to have that moment, that vision, that feeling.
Now, it felt like a different person had been married to her, loved her. He wasn't that man anymore, young and with just enough cocky idealism left to think he could save the world. He suppressed a snort. He didn't even want to be that man anymore. Turning away from Chloe, he stared blindly at an ugly watercolor print hanging on the wall.
“Something bad happened to her, didn't it?” Her voice was soft, undemanding. He didn't have to answer her if he didn't want to. He sensed she wouldn't press the issue. So, why would he tell her anything? He hadn't spoken to anyone about this since . . . ever. Maybe it was the exhaustion that made him answer, maybe it was some heretofore unrevealed need to connect, maybe it was just Chloe and what she did to him.
“Yeah. Something bad.” Him.
He
had happened to his wife. If he'd walked away that first day, if he'd never shaken her hand, she might be alive and well today. The thought was a punch to the stomach, even to this day. “It's worse than that.”
He
had happened to his wife. If he'd walked away that first day, if he'd never shaken her hand, she might be alive and well today. The thought was a punch to the stomach, even to this day. “It's worse than that.”
“Worse than something bad happening?”
“I can'tâI can't even remember her face anymore.” Guilt dragged vicious claws down his flesh. She'd died because she was his wife, and a decade later he couldn't even recall what she had looked like. Ten years was nothing in a Magickal's five centuries-long life. If they survived to a natural death. His wife hadn't gotten that chance.
“What?” Chloe's arms looped around his waist, and her body warmed his back as she rested her cheek between his shoulder blades.
He swallowed. “My wife. I can't remember her face. If I focus on most people, I can see every detail of their lives, from the day they were born to the day they'll die. All the possibilities. I can see them as clearly as if I were standing there with them.” He closed his eyes. “It's not like that with the people who'll have the biggest impact on my life. And her face has faded from my mind until I have to concentrate to remember it. Even then, it's blurry, like one of those grainy old photographs.”
Her lips brushed over his back. “I'm sorry.”
Just that. He could feel her sympathy radiating from her, seeping into his skin, but she didn't coddle or fuss, didn't demand to know more, didn't ask questions. She just held him the way he'd never let anyone hold him since his family died. Not for comfort or solace or need. He kept the world at arm's length, and he liked it that way.
He'd had sex since his wife's death; he'd even had a relationship or two, but he'd always ended things before it got too deep. He'd always been able to foresee that it wouldn't go too deep. A humorless smile curved his lips that the one woman who appealed to him most was the only one who tried to run when things got intense. Not that she could push him away even if she wanted to in their current situation, but she didn't demand more than he was willing to give.
The problem was she didn't have to demand it, did she? He'd already given up his entire life for her, given everything for her. Cold clutched at his belly, twisting inside him, but he couldn't deny the thought. He was always honest with himself about who he was and what he wanted. He made no excuses to himself or anyone else about what he was. Most of the time, he was a cynical bastard, the product of his life and circumstances. But with Chloe, he dared to hope . . . for far too many things, most of which he didn't even want to acknowledge.
“What was her name?” Chloe linked her fingers together on his chest, dragging his attention back to a story he didn't want to tell.
“Laura.” He sighed. Everything tangled up inside him. The past, the present, the future. Things that he saw so clearly for other people, but not with himself.
Her fingers moved in reassuring circles on his chest. “That's a nice name.”
“She was a nice girl.” True, and not even close to the whole picture of who she'd been.
“Can you tell me what happened to her?”
He didn't want to. Gods, but he didn't. Not when the ugliness of it was etched into his mind, the memories that he couldn't forget. But since Chloe had had the guts to tell him her worst nightmare, he couldn't deny her the same. “She died.”
Chloe just waited, her arms secure around his waist. It was easier not looking her in the eyes, not having to see the expression on her face when he told her the truth. “We lived in ChicagoâI grew up there. I was a new detective assigned to their MTF Violent Crimes Unit. It was one of my first cases.” One he hadn't had the experience to handle, though he hadn't realized it at the time. He cleared his throat, pushed out the words that would revolt the average person. “A real bitch, too. A serial killer was targeting Magickal women, sexually assaulting them with wands, and then stabbing them to death with knives from their own kitchens.”
“Wands?” She stirred against his back, her arms tightening.
He could hear the surprise in her voice. Only little kids first learning magic used wands as a focusing tool. An adult Magickal would never need one, and wouldn't want to be that indiscreet anyway. “Yeah. Wands.”
“That's sick.”
“Yeah.” But he'd seen worse since then, much worse. At the time, it had horrified him, added another callus to his already scarred soul. “We arrested a guy who met the profile, had no alibis, and knew way too much about the crime scenes to be uninvolved.”
“And the wands?” Her fingers balled in his T-shirt, but she didn't recoil. He had a feeling the stubborn witch was going to stand there for as long as he wanted to keep talking, no matter how bad it got.
A brief smile touched his lips, and he covered her small, warm hands with his. “He was on a kind of antidepressant that caused impotence. All the pieces fit. We thought we had our guy.”
“You didn't.” The words came out a whisper, and a tiny shiver went through her.
“No.” He snorted. In retrospect, he should have seen it, should have understood the case would get personal when he couldn't get a clear precog read on anything. “Instead, we just pissed the real killer off by giving credit to someone else.”
She didn't ask how this related to his wife, but he could feel her going rigid behind him, knew she'd already guessed what had happened to Laura. Bile burned the back of his throat, threatening to choke him. Cold spread through him, freezing around his heart. Gods, he didn't know if he could say it. Didn't know if he could force out the words he'd never said to anyone. So he told her about his wife, instead of what had ended her life. That much, at least, he could manage.
“Laura, she was a Fae artist, you know? She had that stereotypical flakiness. Hell, she owned it, played it up. Frustrated the hell out of me, sometimes, but that was just her.” A sigh eased out of him. They'd been so young, so damn sure of themselves. “She forgot to set the warding spells on the house. Wasn't the first time.” And he'd given her hell about it every time, but Laura was Laura was Laura. She'd apologized, promised to remember, and then a week or two would go by and he'd come home to an unprotected house.
He was silent so long, lost in his own thoughts, that he jerked when Chloe spoke. “Who did it if it wasn't the guy you arrested?”
“His twin sister. That was how he'd known about the crime scenes. She told him.”
“A woman did that? To other women?” Her palms flattened against his stomach, and he could feel the deep breath she dragged into her lungs. He heard the trained medical professional in her voice next. “That's a fairly rare psychopathic trait to find in women.”
He nodded even though he doubted she could see it. “They were both abused as kids by their father. Seriously abused. Sexually. With wands, among other things.”
“Oh, gods.” Horrified woman washed the doctor away, and she wedged herself even closer to his back.
“I came home and . . . found Laura like that.” His belly heaved as the memories he'd have given anything to burn from his mind assaulted him in vivid, gruesome succession. The wand had still been inside her, a knife from a set her parents had given them for a wedding present protruding from her chest, her eyes blank, and her face waxen. He'd slipped in the ocean of blood around her, fallen in it before he'd reached her side. His mind had known she was gone, but he'd still radioed for an ambulance, praying someone could undo what had been done, that somehow the awful metallic stench of blood would be gone and she'd be there, smiling at him and telling him she'd burned dinner so it was Chinese takeout again. “We'd only been married five months, and it was over. I lost her.”
“And you blamed yourself.” The soft sob was almost his undoing, and he jerked away, every muscle in his body shaking. She came around him anyway, took his face in her hands. Like him, she wouldn't let him run away. She blinked back tears and searched his face. “You still do. Blame yourself. Your clairvoyance. For not seeing what was coming, for not saving her.”
He choked on a breath, but met her eyes and told the truth. “Yes.”
“It wasn't your fault.” Her fingers stroked over his jaw, and he wanted to lean closer, wanted to rip himself away from the tenderness that was so absent from his life.
Words, the ugly, vicious truth, wrenched from his gut. “She died because of my case, because she was my wife, because
I couldn't see to save her.
”
I couldn't see to save her.
”
“You can't save everyone, Merek.” A wealth of sympathy, of understanding, filled her eyes. The knowledge of a woman who
could
have saved her mother if she'd possessed the skills she did now. “When it's time for someone to go, it's time.”
could
have saved her mother if she'd possessed the skills she did now. “When it's time for someone to go, it's time.”
“No. No, that's not always true.” He couldn't allow himself so easy an excuse. Hadn't he wanted to? Hadn't he tried? But he'd been through this in his mind so many times, and then had forced himself to bury it deep inside and move on before he drove himself mad. “There are a lot of possibilities for when people's lives are over. That's what I see most of the time when I look into the future. The past is solid; the present is always in flux while people are making decisions, but the future is all possibilities. Roads people can take, choices people can make. If I had known what was coming, if I had made different choices, maybe it would have been a later possibility for their deaths.”
Her inky brows lifted. “
Their
deaths?”
Their
deaths?”
A harsh chortle crackled from his chest. “All those people I couldn't see? My parents, my best friend, my wife? They're dead. A murder, a car accident, a mugging gone wrong.
All
of them died. Horribly, unnecessarily.”
All
of them died. Horribly, unnecessarily.”
And he'd never let anyone that close ever again. Until now, until he'd had no choice. Until the alternative had been worse than letting someone in.
“You're never going to know that for sure. You can't torture yourself for being human. You're not a god, no matter how powerful your abilities are.” She slid her arms around him and pressed her nose to his chest, squeezed him tight. “You're not Superman, remember?”
He laughed, hot moisture stinging the backs of his eyes. He rubbed his hand over them until he knew he wouldn't embarrass the hell out of himself. “Yeah. I know.”
Sliding out of his arms, she took his hand and tugged him into the bedroom. He followed without protest, too drained to deal with anything else. Some of the weight on his chest had shifted, the ice cracking, just from telling her the truth. He pulled in a deep breath, stood placid while she undressed them both and urged him into bed.
She settled against him, hooked her leg over his thigh, and sighed. “You know, you had that same look on your face the night I met you.”
He grunted, pulled her closer. “What look?”
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