I See Me (16 page)

I didn’t answer as I stared at the blank page of the sketchbook in front of me. The bright emptiness of its white expanse was like a void obstructing the welcoming, comforting lime-green of the table. The table was supposed to fold into a second bed, but I hadn’t tried it. Its Formica was a lighter green than Beau’s eyes, and somehow nowhere near as bright.

“Rochelle, do you hear me?” Beau called. “Did you have the pain, the headache, last night?”

“Yes.”

“But only after the sorcerer showed up and used that device on you, right? The one that made it impossible for me to stop my own transformation, even though I’d just run and had no need to change.”

“The amplifier, he called it,” I murmured.

“And what about with me? What about the night we met? You didn’t have the terrible headache then.”

My head was starting to ache now, but not in that way. This was like my mind was being overloaded. Like Beau was trying to stuff too much information into it. Trying to make me believe …

“Yes, I did,” I said.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“I can smell it on you, Rochelle. Even if you don’t know yourself.”

“I had a vision right before we met. It hit me here in the Brave. I took some pills, and when I woke up, I went to the diner.”

“When you woke up.” Beau repeated my own words back at me.

“Except I didn’t wake up!” I was screaming suddenly. “I’m just having hallucinations within hallucinations.”

“Rochelle —”

“No! No. Stop talking. Just stop.”

I switched the charcoal into my right hand. I didn’t usually draw with my right hand, but I had to draw. I had to.
 

Beau swerved the Brave off the paved road, taking it onto some gravel side road or driveway. I slid across the vinyl seat, but managed to grab the table and my sketchbook before both it and I tumbled onto the kitchen floor.

Beau hit the brakes. I slammed forward into the table, painfully crushing my lower ribcage against its edge.

Beau undid his seat belt with a click. He shut off the engine.

I scrambled to right myself and the notebook, then pressed the charcoal to the paper before me. I pressed and pressed, but didn’t draw. The charcoal snapped in my hand. I dropped the broken bits and scrubbed what remained in my hand across the page.
 

“I can’t draw,” I cried. “Why can’t I draw?”

Beau strode back to me, lifted me out of the seat, and cradled me to his chest as if I weighed nothing.

“I can’t draw,” I repeated.

“I see,” he said. His voice was thick with emotion, fear mixed with concern. “I see.”

“Why? Why?” I was getting hysterical. I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I kept everything so very carefully controlled. It was how I functioned. Now the pills, the sketching, and my mind were betraying me.

“Listen to me.” Beau pressed his lips to my forehead as he whispered fiercely. “Listen to me. It’s right in front of you. I’m right in front of you. You see me, you feel me.”

“Yes, yes. I feel you.”

“Do you feel the visions, or whatever happens whenever you draw? Do you feel those things?”

“I feel pain.”

“Do you feel pain when you look at me?”

I pushed away from him, so that I could see his eyes. He settled back against the table. I lifted my hand and traced the lines of his face — up his cheekbone, around his eye, and across the top of his eyebrow. I still had charcoal on my fingers and I left traces of it on him, even darker than his mocha skin.

He shuddered at my touch, then closed his eyes. He squeezed me to him.

“Too tight,” I gasped.

He eased off on his hug. “Sorry,” he whispered. “I … I … my mother …” He shook his head, changing his mind. “I’ve met other Adepts, other magical people. Mostly in big cities, where I don’t like to be.”

“No jungle in the city,” I said.

He barked out a laugh, shaking his head. I continued to trace his face as he spoke. “Some of these Adepts, they don’t know what they are … their magic is weak, just a hint of a scent. They’re practically human, maybe gifted but not unusually so. But you … you …” His voice cracked. “I scented you from the highway. I tracked you to the diner. I saw you through the window.”

His was silent for a moment, as if fighting with his emotions to find the words he wanted.

“I know it’s crazy to feel this way about you,” he said. “So quickly. That kind of love doesn’t exist.”

“Doesn’t it?” I said.

“You think I’m in your head, Rochelle. That gives you some freedom, doesn’t it? To embrace what you think is a fantasy?”

I nodded. I couldn’t lie to him, not cradled in his arms. I knew he wasn’t real.

“So where does that leave me? Seeing you through that diner window. Knowing I should keep walking, and yet going in to talk to you. Figuring out that somehow you had no idea what you were, what you are? Then touching you? Feeling the magic on your skin? Seeing the sketches? I thought I’d have time. I thought I could slowly make you understand. Then that damn sorcerer showed up to ruin everything … to ruin us.”

“No …” I was crying suddenly, sobbing from the pain his words were causing.

“And you love me.” Beau was crying now as well, shaking with it. “You love me, without question. Like no one has ever loved me. Not because of how I look, or what you think you can get me to do for you. And you think it’s a lie. You think it’s a lie.”

“Not a lie. The love isn’t a lie.”

Beau wasn’t listening. “It’s killing me. Slowly, painfully.”
 

I could see him force himself into some sort of control. I wiped the tears from his cheeks even as I let mine continue to stream down my face.

“I’ll help you,” he whispered. “As best as I can. Even if you come into your power, and realize you don’t actually love the me who isn’t in your head.”

“That would never happen.” I pressed my hands to either side of his face, forcing him to look into my eyes. “Never. I could never not love you.”

He stared at me for a moment but didn’t respond. I could feel him closing off, withdrawing. It suddenly felt like I was losing him.

“Beau,” I whispered. “You say you can smell me lying. You say I’m lying to myself.”

“Yes.”

“Am I lying now? I love you. I do love the way you look —”

He laughed. It was a sound of pain and desperation.

“I love the way you make me feel,” I said. “I love the way I am around you. I feel lonely when we’re apart. I’ve never felt lonely in my life. I never fit with anyone before, never wanted anyone in my space. You make my heart race. You feel more real than anything ever has before. Do you understand? More real than anything.”

I dropped my hands from his cheeks. He had charcoal smeared on one side of his extraordinary face. “I saw you in the diner. I couldn’t breathe at the sight of you. And you’re right. There was no pain, no white light, no desperate need to draw. When you touched me … I knew I would never want you to leave. I couldn’t believe you’d stay. I couldn’t believe that …”

I had to pause, knowing he didn’t want to hear my doubts, didn’t want to hear my justifications. “I love you, Beau. Do you hear … smell … the truth in my words?”

He nodded. Relief flooded through my pained heart and spread through my limbs.

“I don’t want to go to this pack.”

Beau’s face hardened. “We’re going.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want to lose you.”

“That sorcerer is the most powerful thing I’ve ever scented. Scary powerful. He thought I was pack. That’s the only reason he walked away. He’ll be back, but he won’t be able to get anywhere near you. The pack will know witches. The pack will know someone who can help you … with the pain, and understanding who you are.”

“Beau —”

“No,” he said. He set me on my feet and determinedly walked back to the cockpit, leaving me standing alone and chilled without his embrace.

“I thought … I thought there’d be make up sex.” I hadn’t even gotten to kiss him. I desperately wanted to be continually kissing him.

He turned to look back at me. He was hunched forward with one hand on the headrest, ready to climb down into the driver’s seat.

“We weren’t fighting.”

“What was that, then?”

“That was moving forward.”

I stared after him as he slipped into position and turned the key. He pulled the Brave onto the road. I swayed, bumping into the kitchen table as he cranked the wheel and executed a three-point turn to circle back to the highway.

“I could get you cookies,” I finally said.

“That would be nice.”

My sketchbook slid across the table and bumped against my hip. I stared down at the blank page. Then I closed it and tucked it back in my bag.

I opened up the cupboard above my head and retrieved Beau’s second-to-last box of Oreos. Then I made my way up to the front and climbed into the passenger seat.

I felt Beau glance at me, but he didn’t speak. I opened the Oreos and pulled out the plastic insert that held the black-and-white cookies in protected rows. As I palmed three to pass to Beau, I saw the butterfly tattoo on my inner wrist. The Oreos were a weird reflection of the black tattoos on my pale skin.

Beau held his hand out.

“You think I only draw the hallucinations.”

“Visions, I think. But yes.”

“You think I can’t draw last night, can’t draw you … the tiger, because you aren’t a vision.”

“Yes.” Beau took the cookies I dropped into his waiting hand. He sounded exceedingly satisfied with my understanding.

“I draw the tattoos,” I said. “They aren’t from visions.”

“Aren’t they?”

The question hung between us. I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to be accused of lying. I knew the tattoos weren’t from visions. Why would I hallucinate the butterfly? The barbed wire? The peony?

Still … I did have a hallucination — within this hallucination that Beau insisted was real life — last night. One that came with the migraine and the whiteout. One that Beau claimed the sorcerer had triggered somehow. One in which the blond woman was drowning. The blond woman who Blackwell had named Jade Godfrey. The woman I had seen facing off against the sorcerer more than once.

She’d been drowning, her golden curls floating around her head. Then she’d awoken, her eyes a deeper blue than the water surrounding her …

My left hand started tingling. I rubbed my fingers together, feeling the kiss of charcoal still on my skin.

“What are you thinking?” Beau whispered the question, but it still made me flinch.

I glanced at him, shaking my head. Denying the sudden urge I had to draw the woman in the water — not of her drowning, but of the moment she woke …

“Your eyes,” Beau said. “Your eyes glow white. I’ve never seen magic work like that before. I’ve heard some witches can see magic in color, but I never have.”

I clenched my hand into a fist, denying the itch to draw, denying Beau’s words. I looked away, staring out my window at the farmland streaming by outside. I tried to not remember the orbs of dark light in Blackwell’s hands, or the green glow of Beau’s eyes, or the way the woman’s hair in my hallucinations always glistened gold.

Beau grunted, satisfied.

“It can’t be true,” I whispered. “That would be even crazier than I already am.”

Beau didn’t answer, but he did press down on the gas pedal to take the Brave’s speedometer back up to 70 miles an hour.

I didn’t caution him. The Brave would only break down if my mind and my fantasy needed it to … right?

Right?

“How do you know about this pack … of shapeshifters …” — I stumbled over the terminology Beau had used — “…that lives in Portland?”

“My mother told me.” Beau didn’t turn his gaze from the highway. He was intently watching the green-and-white roadside direction signs as they passed, though I didn’t know if he was looking for a specific turn off. He was executing some plan he’d made while I was still sleeping, and wasn’t being very forthcoming about the steps.

“What are you looking for? I can help.” We’d cut east along Highway 18 until it turned into Highway 99, the farmland giving way to the outer boroughs of a city. Beau had driven all night to get us this close to Portland before the sun had fully risen.

“The turn off to Walmart.”

“We’re parking the Brave?”

“Yes.”

“Because of something your mother told you?”

“She told me to stay far, far away from the pack, so I’m already ignoring the most important thing she ever taught me. It might be difficult to park the Brave downtown, and this will … well, if we have to run, they won’t know where we’re running to … hopefully.”

Fear curled its way down my spine to pool in the small of my back. I’d never felt that before. I was so scared for Beau, though he didn’t sound particularly fearful himself. I didn’t understand why I was imagining any of this. I didn’t know why I would ever want to put him in any kind of jeopardy, even within my mind.

“We won’t have to run,” I said, summoning up every ounce of confidence I could muster about an imaginary situation of which I seemed to have no control.

“We’re running now.”

“The dark-suited … Blackwell, the sorcerer —”

“I know who he is. I was there.”

I could hear the anger in his voice, but didn’t understand it. “You’re mad at me.”

“No, I’m absolutely livid with myself. I never should have let you out of my sight. He might not have approached at all if I’d been there.”

“If that’s the case, then you wouldn’t be worried about him returning.”

Beau let out a frustrated breath. “I’m trying to do my best. What I think is best.”

“I hadn’t planned on coming to Portland,” I said, trying to alleviate some tension by changing the subject. “I hear it’s a lot like Vancouver.”

“Don’t play nice, Rochelle. I want you, not the fake you who’s just pretending.”

“What if the fake me is all I have now?”

“Look deeper.”

I shut my mouth with a frustrated shake of my head. I wasn’t sure I could give him what he wanted. I was worried that at any moment, I was going to wake up in some hospital, drugged as high as heaven and without Beau.