Eternal Echoes, Emblem of Eternity Trilogy Book 2 (16 page)

“Hi,” I answered warily. I tried to move forward and turn, using the excuse that I wanted to see him better. The movement made his grip tighten.

I shot a glance at Jasmine. She noticed I was uncomfortable, but didn’t seem concerned. “Hi! I’m Jasmine,” she said in her usual, perky tone.

The guy forced his gaze away from mine to Jasmine. He staggered a bit as he did so and I wondered if instead of evil, he might just be drunk. “I’m George.”

“Like the monkey!” Jasmine said, referring to one of our favorite children’s books,
Curious George
.

George laughed, and Jasmine laughed with him, diffusing the situation. Smitten with Jasmine, he lifted his hand from me and turned his attention to her. To Jasmine, this was just some creepy guy who wouldn’t leave us alone. To me, it was a potential Daevos member, and I couldn’t even check for his vowmark because he had a sweater on. Who’d come up with such a stupid means of identification anyway? Geez! Did people not wear clothes when the Goddesses made that up? Or did they think the Daevos would only stick to tropical climates? Either way, it was a bad-guy identification fail.

Couple the annoying guy who might-be-evil-might-be-drunk with my already heightened paranoia, and we were quickly moving from tropical storm territory straight into hurricane levels. And that hurricane’s name was Alex. He’d undoubtedly be thrashing through sometime soon. Jasmine would not be happy and would start her stalker speech again.

Light from the hall flashed as the door opened again. Rowdy laughs mixed with flat-out guffaws hit my ears before I got a visual. When I did, three guys were pushing each other and stumbling down the aisle. One of them saw George talking to us and yelled, “Snuffy!”

Snuffy? That
had
to be a nickname. And not a very flattering one.

The guy pointed at us and brought his stumbling in our direction. His friends teetered along behind him. “Snuffy” George seemed just as pleased to see him. “Dude! You found me!” I glanced at Jas with a look that asked,
were they playing hide-and-seek
?

“We got the wrong time!” The guy who’d yelled said. “This is a
girl
movie!”

Snuffy seemed to think that was hysterical and couldn’t stop laughing.

The guy pushed Snuffy forward. “Come on! Jake’s got more beer at his house!”

Yeah, because
that
was exactly what they needed. At least my suspicions had been correct about him being drunk, not Daevos. Still, my observation skills could use some work. It was a good thing I wasn’t studying to be Detective Columbo. I’d watched the show with my mom growing up. She would be disappointed at my lack of sleuthing talent.

“We’ll hang out there until
our
movie starts!”

On the way out, they kept laughing and stumbling, pausing long enough to say, “See ya, girls! Have fun watching your
girl
movie!”

I kind of resented that. I knew plenty of guys who watched romantic comedies and liked them—even if they wouldn’t admit it.

Jas and I watched them leave. “That was weird,” she finally said.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“People are stupid on a whole new level when they’re that drunk.”

“You’re not kidding,” I agreed again, but in my head I was thinking her level of weird and mine were on two completely different planets. I’d watched a soul be destroyed after holding its body in place with my mind. That was weird. Jasmine hadn’t seen anything close.

She laughed a little and before long, previews were starting. I lost myself in romance and sexy men for the next two hours.

When the movie was over, we left the theater and drove to the town ice cream shop a few blocks away. I was feeling good about catching up with Jasmine.

We ordered our ice cream and sat down to eat and talk. Jasmine started sculpting her bubble gum flavored treat into a mountain in her bowl. She loved the flavor because it came with gum, so she always said it was two treats in one. Because she always saved the gum for last, she was very particular about how she ate it. First she made a mountain of ice cream. As she came to pieces of gum, she’d pick them out and line them around the edge of the bowl. Her precision was impressive. It was like watching an archeologist dig for artifacts.

I got cake batter and chocolate ice cream mixed with brownies. It was pretty awesome. I don’t have any special ice cream sculpting skills though, so I just ate mine like all the other boring people in the world.

“How are your classes going?” I asked between bites.

She picked out a blue piece of gum, carefully scraping some ice cream from the mountain onto her spoon. “Ugh,” she said, holding her stomach like she’d been stabbed. “Chemistry might kill me.” She paused to take a bite. “I don’t know if nursing was such a great idea for my major.”

“I’m surprised you’ve stuck with it this long,” I said. “Last year you changed your major at least five times. Your parents were concerned.”

She laughed. “They talked to you about it?”

I nodded. “They asked if I knew what you’d decided on. At that point, I think you were considering leaving school to become a Victoria’s Secret model. I didn’t tell them that.”

“Those angels make bank!” Jas frowned, pushing her brows together—like she was sad at her lost opportunity.

“Still, I think if you’d flip-flopped on your major so much this year, they would have staged an intervention.”

She sighed, dropping another piece of gum at the base of the mountain. “I’m still not sure this was the right choice, but we’ll see.”

I nodded. Picking a major is scary. You’re basically deciding what you want to do for the rest of your life, or at least until you can find something you’re passionate about that pays enough so your degree doesn’t matter. Some majors aren’t as exclusive. Like, business. You could get a job doing almost anything with that focus. But a major like nursing? There aren’t many directions to go with that…and they all involve needles.

We both took a bite of our ice cream. “What about you? Still happy with psych?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I think the subject is really interesting. I’d like to get my Masters degree and open a private practice.”

“Would you do general therapy, or focus on something?”

I sat up straighter in my chair while I pushed my ice cream around a bit with my spoon. I wasn’t sure how Jas would react to my answer, but she’d be hearing more soon enough, so this would be a good way to test the waters. “I’d probably do general therapy, but I’d really like to work with people who have had paranormal experiences.”

Jas didn’t seem fazed. “Like ghosts and stuff?”

“Yeah,” I answered slowly, thinking “and stuff” could cover
a lot
.

“So you’d be trying to help them deal with what they think they saw?”

“I’d like to.”

“That would be hard,” Jas said. “It’s not easy to convince someone what they thought they saw wasn’t actually real. Have you seen some of those ghost hunting reality shows? Those people are hard-core.”

And it had been going so well.

Apparently all the years we’d tried to conjure ghosts in the graveyard, or make Bloody Mary appear in the bathroom mirror, Jas had been doing it for fun and didn’t believe anything would really happen. I now knew better. “I’d help them whatever way I could. But I wouldn’t try to convince them they hadn’t seen something.”

“Why not? Therapists are supposed to cure delusions, not make them worse.”

I took offense to that. “Because there are too many unanswered questions out there,” I said, my tone firm.

Jas looked at me suspiciously. “Do you actually believe in ghosts and weird paranormal stuff?”

I held back a sigh. If she only knew. “Yeah, I do. I’d like to focus my Masters research on it, eventually.”

Jas’s spoon clattered to the table. “How is this possible?”

I took a deep breath. Her reaction didn’t bode well for future paranormal discussions. “Jas, I’ve always been interested in the paranormal. You know that. We used to watch those scary reality shows together! Remember when you were sure the Black’s house was actually the Amityville house and we conducted an investigation?”

“I was just goofing off.”

“What about in high school when we drove around the cemetery three times with our lights off and saw the big headstone at the top of the cemetery turn red? We were convinced it was a portal to hell.”

She rolled her eyes. “We lived in a small Montana town. Everything was a portal to hell. The light was just a reflection from passing cars.”

I shrugged. “Rationalize it any way you want, it still happened. You can’t deny there are things out there that can’t be explained.” As I said it, I realized my words sounded a lot like the ones Caleb had said to me in the cave last year when I’d pretended to not believe him about the Amaranthine and Daevos.
People like to explain things they don’t understand by calling them odd occurrences or impossibilities; really the rationalizations are coping mechanisms people use when they can’t deal with the truth.

“You’re right,” Jasmine agreed, “but that doesn’t mean they’re paranormal. It means we haven’t found the explanation yet.”

“Or that we have, and don’t want to believe it.”

She grabbed a napkin off the table, waving it in an “I give up” gesture. It was probably smart not to get in an argument right now. Our relationship was too fragile. Still, I was concerned about how she’d eventually take the news that I was a reincarnated Tracker who could sense soul mate bonds, and in a weird twist, seemed to have two soul mates myself. I had a feeling her immediate response would include a lot of giggling.

“So,” she said, leaning forward like we were about to exchange juicy gossip. “What’s it like dating two guys?”

“Not as exciting as you’d think,” I muttered.

Jas snorted. “I bet. Who’s the better kisser?”

I tried to hide my amusement. Jas was probably the only person in the world who could ask a question like that and get an honest answer instead of a snarky one. “I can’t even really compare them. They’re both completely different.” I paused for a minute, staring out the window into the dark night, thinking. “Kissing Alex is hot, intense, and passionate. But kissing Emil is consuming, unpredictable, and things tend to move fast.” I shook my head to come out of the memory and found Jas staring at me, a combination of curiosity, annoyance, and…anger?

She sat up straighter. “So help me, Evangeline Starling! If you’ve slept with them and not told me about it, I will be so freaking mad!”

My mouth fell open. Had sex? We hadn’t even come close! Well…I wrinkled my brow as I amended the thought. So I’d hit some bases with them both, but there definitely wasn’t a home run involved. And considering how fast my make-out sessions with each guy had ended, they’d really been more in foul ball territory. “I haven’t had sex yet, Jas. You would have been the third person to know about it. Trust me.”

She eyed me warily at first, then shrugged and leaned back in her chair, sufficiently satisfied that my virgin status was still intact. “The real question is: how much experience have they had?”

My eyes widened. I hadn’t really given that question much thought—on purpose. Every time my mind went there, I wanted to kick something.

“Because a guy who knows what he’s doing makes all the difference in the world. Hopefully they’ve taken a class or read some books. It would help if they know what you like. Maybe you should talk to them about it first.”

My mouth fell again. “I’m not going to sleep with both of them, let alone call a what-Evie-wants-from-sex meeting!”

Jas was indignant. “Why not?”

“Because that would be wrong!”

She lifted a shoulder like it wasn’t a big deal. “You’re already kissing both of them.”

“Sex with two guys I have feelings for takes wrong to a whole new level!”

She pointed her spoon at me. I knew I was about to get a lecture. “I thought you said the point of this little date-two-guys experiment was because they wanted to make sure you had
all
the information possible to make a well-informed choice between them with no regrets?” I stared at her, she stared back. “Just kissing is
not
‘well-informed.’”

I couldn’t stop staring, and couldn’t think of what to say. She was kind of right, though it didn’t mean I was going to act on her suggestion. But it did make me wonder if Alex and Emil had covered sex in their share-Evie discussion. Were they waiting for me to make a move? I snorted to myself. That wasn’t going to happen. I had enough to worry about. I didn’t need to add “seductress 101” to that list as well. Besides, considering the no-overnight rule, and Alex’s super pissy reaction to Emil kissing me on the porch, I was pretty sure sex was not on Alex and Emil’s list of acceptable dating activities.

“We need to get you a subscription to
Cosmo
,” Jas said with a thoughtful expression. “I got one by accident last year. It was delivered to the wrong house. I took it to the neighbors of course—after I’d read it. Changed my life.” She smiled.

I thinned my eyes. “I’m not having sex. With either of them. At least not right now,” I said, trying to convince Jasmine, and, if I was being honest, myself.

She moved her head back and forth like she knew better than I did. “The problem here is guilt. You’re feeling bad about wanting to be with both of them. You shouldn’t. They knew what they were getting into. Hell, you said they discussed it. Pretend you’re on one of those reality shows looking for the love of your life and you’re down to the final two guys.”

“Yeah, because those relationships always work out so well.” I picked at my ice cream for a few seconds. “I’m not sleeping with both of them.”

Jasmine scooped up her last bite of ice cream. “Then you’re probably missing out. Alex and Emil look like they probably excel in that category. Too bad you don’t know any of their ex-girlfriends. You could ask them about it.”

I laughed. I did know one of their ex-girlfriends, but unfortunately, my Cassandra sex flashbacks were still MIA. When I figured out how to conjure them up, those would absolutely be the first memories I tapped. And Jasmine’s experience guess was pretty accurate. At least one of them did have experience, and it had been with me, when we were married. That thought led me to another: would I like the same things I’d liked as Cassandra? I immediately shook myself out of the thought, focusing on Jasmine instead. “I’ll choose between them before I have sex.”