I See Me (23 page)

Desmond rubbed his hands across his face, as if massaging tension out of his jaw. Then he made a beeline for the boxes of cupcakes.

“I don’t get the Paris reference,” Jade whispered to the green-haired werewolf.

“
Casablanca
,” Lara said, grinning ear-to-ear as she padded by them on her way to the kitchen. “He was trying to be romantic.”

“We’re not done, wolf,” Audrey growled at Kandy.

“Audrey,” Desmond said. “Not now. Too much tension isn’t good for the fledglings.”

Beau snorted derisively, but then shuffled his feet uncomfortably when Desmond looked at him sharply.

Kandy stepped by Jade, looking resigned as she dropped to one knee before Audrey. She then very deliberately tilted her head to the left, exposing the side of her throat.

Audrey smiled. Though her face had returned to normal after Jade released her, her white teeth were pointier than I’d thought they’d been before. Her dark hair was half out of its smooth ponytail now, a mass of waves all around the beta’s head and shoulders as she reached down and wrapped her hand around Kandy’s neck. Somehow her French-manicured fingernails made this gesture even more aggressive.

“I owe you a life,” Kandy said.

“No, my wolf,” Audrey replied. “Yours was always mine to save.” Then she released Kandy, turning away and padding over to get a cupcake.

“Great,” Jade groused. “Like she wasn’t insufferable before.”

Kandy rose and turned to smile at Jade. “I’m not leaving you.”

Jade nodded, awkwardly and quickly. Then she turned to look back at Beau and me. As she moved, her golden hair blurred, streaking the air around her head.

“No,” I whispered.

The feeling of an impending hallucination bloomed at the base of my spine.

I gasped as I rolled all the way up and onto the toes of my sneakered feet. The feeling rose without pain, flowing up my spine and then wrapping around my shoulders and neck.

“Oh my God …” I heard Jade whisper.

The hallucination crashed over my mind and whited out my eyes.

“Jesus,” Desmond grunted.

Beau reached for me, his fingers brushing my arms. I threw my head back as the sensation of the hallucination flooded my chest, my arms, and my legs. I’d never felt it like this before.

It was as though I was filled with whiteness — somehow buoyed up with brilliant, white light.

“Don’t touch her,” Jade said.

“It’s fine —” Beau began. Then he grunted as if the air had been knocked out of him.

“You don’t know how you’re affecting the magic,” Jade continued. “It flows through her, unbidden. Almost as if it wants to communicate.”

Audrey scoffed. “Magic doesn’t work like that.”

“Normally I’d agree.”

The mist in my mind began to dissipate. I caught a glimpse of a paved road, then low buildings through the white haze. But I felt no pain and no terror. Not yet, anyway.

“You think she’s a harbinger,” Desmond said. “A messenger.” He didn’t sound like he was overly pleased with the idea of a so-called harbinger hanging out in his living room.

“Don’t know. Never met one,” Jade said. “Does she speak in riddles? Proclamations? Prophecy?”

“No,” Beau said from somewhere far off to my right. “She draws.”

“Probably not a harbinger, then.”

“You’re being deliberately obtuse, dowser,” Desmond growled.

“It’s not my place to name magic, Desmond Llewellyn. Not even at your lofty command.”

Desmond snarled, but the conversation finally faded out. The white swirling mist filling my mind and body resolved, solidifying into shapes and outlines. A building stood before me still partly shrouded in the haze. I stepped forward, reaching into the whiteout.

“Watch the glass in front of you, fledgling.” Jade’s voice was faint, saying something else about being here, or being near, or something, but I didn’t hear her.

I was within the vision.
 

I breathed in the white light. I consumed it.

It was me. It had always been me.

This was me.

I was standing in a parking lot. It appeared to be late afternoon or early evening. The sky was muted and gray, but I could easily see that the painted lines of the individual parking spots were faded and the pavement was cracked. Dead, frost-covered weeds were attempting to reclaim every rupture and edge. A barbershop to my right was empty, derelict. Its ‘For Lease’ sign had fallen to one side.

The red-white-and-blue barber pole was smashed as if someone had thrown a rock at it. Its broken glass littered the concrete step in front of the entrance. The edge of the concrete was eroded. I wondered how many footsteps it took to erode concrete like that. How many rain or snowstorms? Also, I thought the helical stripe of a barber’s pole was supposed to be red and white, signifying bloody bandages wrapped around a pole. Because barbers had performed bloodlettings in the olden days.

Was that foreshadowing? Please don’t let that be foreshadowing.
 

What had Desmond called me? A harbinger?

Please don’t let me be a messenger of doom and destruction. Though, even as I made the silent wish, I was aware that it might be futile. My hallucinations up to this point certainly hadn’t been filled with fluffy bunnies.

It was a deserted barbershop. An easy target for vandals, nothing else.

I was aware I was avoiding looking deeper, farther.

Everything was so clear, so defined. Usually, a haze of white permeated my hallucinations.

Visions.

Not hallucinations.

I was having a vision, but I didn’t want to turn my head. I didn’t want to see what the magic wanted me to see, if Jade was right about that part. If she was right about me being some sort of conduit for magic. Like a satellite dish or something.

I shifted my gaze from the cracked pavement before me, just a touch. I felt compelled to do so. I felt like it might be my purpose to do so.

I’d never had a purpose before.

 
Blood drops on the eroded concrete walk between the parking lot and the barbershop drew my attention. I followed them to a hand. Its fingers were splayed open.

Tangled within those fingers was the rose-gold chain of a necklace. My mother’s necklace. My necklace.

I reached up to touch the heavy stone I still wore around my neck. It felt strange … it was vibrating, at a subtle frequency that maybe only I could feel. A muted version of all the other electrical charges I’d felt over the last few days.

Not electrical charges.

Magic.

Beau’s magic, Blackwell’s magic, and Jade’s magic. Magic felt like different degrees of electricity to me.

Still, there was a problem I was steadily ignoring. A problem with the hand before me that was holding my necklace.

I was wearing my necklace.

As I breathed in to belay the panic I could feel churning in my gut at the sight of the blood trail leading to a limp hand, I became aware that I wasn’t breathing the air of the parking lot. By the frost on the weeds, the air in the vision should be crisp. I was warm.

I looked beyond the hand.
 

Beau lay dead on the sidewalk next to the barbershop. His dark aquamarine eyes stared sightlessly at me. A trickle of blood ran from his mouth, though I could see no other mark on him. He wasn’t breathing.

My chest constricted. I clutched at the stone hanging between my breasts, the necklace digging into the back of my neck.

Beau.

A black leather-gloved hand reached down and plucked the necklace from Beau’s fingers. His hand rose as if fighting to retain its hold on the chain. Then it fell limp back onto the concrete sidewalk.

I tracked the movement of the gloved hand to see an arm that led to the dark-clothed shoulder of Blackwell.

The sorcerer looked at the necklace. He was wearing his usual suit-and-crisply-ironed-dress-shirt combo. The suit was dark navy blue. The thin scarf twined once around his neck was black. Probably cashmere.

Not that it mattered at all. Nothing mattered in this moment except Beau lying dead at the sorcerer’s feet. Except Beau lying dead and holding my necklace.

Blackwell glanced around the parking lot. A swirling, dark orb of light was pooled in his left hand.

I wanted to scream —
Who are you looking for?
Except I already knew the answer.
 

The sorcerer was looking for me.

I tamped down on my panic, reminding myself that Beau was alive and only a few feet away from me, sitting in Desmond’s living room right now.

I had to see more.

I followed Blackwell’s gaze around the parking lot. At one time, the lot must have serviced a small strip mall of some sort. All the stores were empty, though, and falling into disrepair.

Where am I? Shouldn’t I be at Beau’s side?

Then I saw the wolves.

Three of them, large and gray, were standing fifty or so feet away on a strip of frosted grass between the parking lot and the main road. A sign listing the defunct businesses stood behind and above them. I lifted my eyes, trying to read the names there, but they were flipped upside down and right side in. I looked around, feeling on the edge of frantic now, for an address or some other clue to the location of the parking lot.

One of the wolves lifted its head and howled.
 

The sound pierced my brain painfully. I covered my ears and cringed.

In the distance, another wolf answered the call.

They were hunting.

Hunting Blackwell.

Had Beau been the bait?

I whirled around to look back at Blackwell as the wolves gathered their hind legs and leaped as one toward him. But he’d seen the predators. He was ready for them.

He threw a mass of his black-colored light at the wolves just as they passed over me.

It hit them in their chests and faces, their bodies still extended in anticipation of landing.

All three fell howling and writhing to the pavement. They snapped and scratched at Blackwell’s black light as it twined around them like smoky rope.

Not black light. Magic.

Blackwell was gone. Just gone, as if he’d never been in the parking lot.

Beau was dead, only steps away from me. I reached for him.

The vision washed out of my mind in a blazing fury of white light.

I opened my eyes, not realizing I’d closed them.

I was back in Desmond’s living room.

Beau was pinned to the ground in front of the windows by Audrey and Lara.

“Take your hands off him,” I said. I’d never heard my voice sound so nasty.

Audrey and Lara looked over to Desmond, who I could see standing off to my left without turning my head from Beau. The alpha nodded. They loosened their hold and stepped away.

Beau straightened his back, but kept kneeling and holding my gaze. He started to speak but couldn’t seem to vocalize any words. He swallowed, then tried again. “What did you see?”

I shook my head, denying the vision.

“She’s going to need to draw,” Beau said as he rose to his feet. “Her sketchbook is in the bedroom.”

“It wasn’t real,” I said, but even I could hear the lie in my voice.

I’d seen Beau dead at Blackwell’s feet.

“You’ll draw.” Beau was speaking but I wasn’t listening. “You’ll feel better.”

I was looking for Jade. She was off to the side, leaning against the stone of the wide fireplace behind and to my left. Her arms were crossed and her eyes downcast. I stepped toward her and she flinched.

She flinched. All that power, all the electric magic I could feel rolling off her, and I made her flinch.

I stopped and waited.

She lifted her indigo eyes to mine, offering me a sad twist of her mouth as a smile.

“Who did you see me kill?” she asked. “Everyone?”

Kandy moaned. Desmond cleared his throat.

“No one,” I answered.

Jade nodded, but I could tell she didn’t believe me.

“Can you …” I faltered on the thought. Was I actually thinking this was all real? I could feel the painful urge to draw. It had started as an itch in the palm of my left hand, but now my fingers were convulsing with it. I clenched a fist and fought the feeling. “Do you believe in fate then? If I see it, is it fated to happen?”

“I don’t know,” Jade answered. “That’s a big question.”

“Tell us what you saw, fledging,” Desmond said. “And we’ll try to help you sort it out.”

I pressed my aching hand to my chest.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Beau said. “She needs to draw.”

“What I know,” Jade said, “is that I’ve only seen fate thwarted once. And maybe it’s only been delayed. Maybe it’s still to come.”

Delayed. I’d take delayed.
 

“By who?” My question was a tense whisper of pain. The itch to draw was crawling up my left arm now.

“By one who sees everything.”

“Like me?”

“No. Maybe. Maybe you with a thousand years of experience.”

“What did he change?”

“Me,” Jade answered. “He stopped me from … going back. Why, Rochelle?”

“I don’t believe in fate or destiny.”

Jade laughed. It wasn’t a happy sound. “It believes in you.”

I shook my head as I stepped by Jade to follow Beau back toward the bedroom.

“Who dies?” Jade asked.

I didn’t look back. I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t answer her. I couldn’t acknowledge what I’d seen. Not until I figured out what to do about it, and maybe not even then.

“Me?” Jade called out. “Desmond?”

“Eventually, I imagine,” I answered.

“Well, it can’t be that bad,” Kandy said. “If she’s flippant about it.”

“We need a plan,” Audrey said.

“We’ll wait until she shares the drawings Beau is talking about,” Jade said. “Then we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”

I turned the corner into the hall. Though I could still hear them talking in the living room, I could no longer make out distinct words.

Beau reached back and twined his fingers through mine. His hand was warm, and so, so real. But all I could see was my necklace laced through his limp fingers, and his hand lying so terribly still on the gray, cracked concrete of the sidewalk.