Intuition: The Premonition Series (33 page)

I tug on my lip anxiously, seeing the risks associated with doing what I so badly want to do. I want to use this phone to call my voicemail. I want to see if I can hear Reed’s voice for just a second, to pretend for one moment that he is here with me. I want to pretend that I can reach out and feel his soft hair and his perfectly smooth skin. It’s such a tempting fantasy. My hands are beginning to tremble.
It has been three months. He might have given up by now,
I tell myself, and a crushing weight that I can barely hold up anymore threatens to bury me in grief. This grief is impossible to control and I’m growing so tired trying to survive it.

I could ruin everything that I set out to do in seconds if I make this call…but if I make this call, I could save myself from drowning. Making this call might be the worst thing I can do at this point. Can I handle it, or will it kill me to hear his voice again? Unconsciously, I dial the first three digits of the voicemail number then I slam the phone down on the desk near the computer I’m using. Backing away slowly from the phone, I turn and run to the front doors of the library, locking them all, and then I run back to the desk. I check the time; the cleaning crew won’t be here for at least another hour.

I feel like my life is already over; that everything I ever was is twisted out of place. I didn’t calculate the cost when I made my plan to leave Reed. I thought that I would have the strength to do this for him, but it turns out that I’m even weaker than I knew. All I can think about every single minute of every single day is him. With my new ability to think, I can process things differently than I could before. If I had thought I had overcome the kiosk in my mind devoted to Reed, I was deluded. One part of me doesn’t want to acknowledge that there was ever any danger to him and sees what I’m doing as being cruel. If Reed had left me, for any reason, could I have survived it? I am beginning to realize that things aren’t ever going to get better. If they were, wouldn’t I already know it?

Picking up the phone, I dial my voicemail number and wait for the phone to connect. I enter my password and the automated voice message service informs me that my mailbox is full. A second elapses in the space of an eternity, and then I hear the most beautiful and most gut wrenching sound I have ever heard in my life. It’s Reed’s voice. This must have been the first call that he made to me just after I left Crestwood. He doesn’t sound anxious, just concerned when he says, “Evie, where are you? Brownie said you weren’t feeling well after I left, and when she came back to class, you weren’t here. Are you okay? I found your necklace. It was in your bed. The clasp must have opened while you were sleeping. You didn’t lose it—so don’t worry. Call me back, I’m in the hallway outside of class.”

I cringe, remembering the lie I had told Reed that morning. It was after we had taken our seats in the classroom. I had pretended to notice that the necklace he had given me for my birthday was missing. It wasn’t hard to pretend to panic over it, since I was panicky and ill over the lie I was telling him. He offered to go and look for my necklace at home, his smile casual, as if it were no big deal that the priceless necklace was missing. He was more concerned about how I was reacting to losing it than the fact that it was missing.

As he had gotten up from his seat next to me, I reached out and grasped his hand. Pulling him back into his seat, I had leaned over and kissed him softly on the lips, breathing against his mouth, “I love you.”

“You’re worried?” he had asked me with a sexy smile.

“Yes,” I had replied honestly with my heart retracting tightly in my chest.

He had smiled at me, his green eyes staring into mine as he had leaned forward and allowed his forehead to rest against mine. “Don’t worry. I’ll find it,” he had said, before getting up from his seat once again. I held on to his hand. He looked at my hand in his—my fingers were holding on too tight. His eyebrow had quirked in question when he again glanced at me.

“Bye,” I had uttered, making myself let go of him.

Once Reed had left, it was easy to convince Brownie I was sick. I was sick. I had had to put my head down on my desk for a few minutes while my head spun. Brownie had left quickly to get me water and as soon as I knew she was gone, I left, too.

My legs are shaking now. I listen to the automated voice come back on the line to ask me if I want to save the message. Numbly, I press the save button. The automated voice says, “Next message.”

“EVIE, where are you?” Reed demands, and this time he sounds upset. There is a pause as if he anticipated a response, but his next words dispel that thought. “Russell is missing. Is he with you?” Reed asks. He sounds worried about upsetting me with the news that Russell was gone, too. “Call me as soon as you get this message.”

I have to sit down,
I tell myself, walking feebly to the lounge chairs positioned by the newspaper and magazine shelves nearby that face the window. I lower myself into a seat, feeling my heart pounding in my chest. I save the message when it prompts me.

“Next message,” the automated voice says without emotion.

“GENEVIEVE AVA CLAREMONT!” Reed’s voice yells into the phone, making me sit up straighter in my seat. “Whatever you have planned you need to stop right now! Turn around and come home. It’s too dangerous for you to be out there on your own. Think about Russell. He’s totally helpless—you both need protection,” he says in a stern tone, like I’m a child who has done something naughty. Then, his tone changes drastically, and he sounds desperate in his next breath. “I can’t feel you—are you okay—don’t do this, Evie! Please… don’t do this.”

My palms are slick with sweat as I depress the save button on the message again when it prompts me. It’s in the back of my mind that this is torture and not helpful in any way. I should just end the call, but I can’t.

“Next message.”

“Evie,” Zephyr says, and I don’t know if I’m relieved or crushed that it isn’t Reed’s voice speaking to me. “What you overheard us talking about in the library is not as bad as it might have sounded,” Zee says in a calm tone. He must have found the tablet that I had used to convince Russell to come with me. Russell said he had left it for Reed to find, so that Reed would know why we were leaving. “It must have sounded grave to you. But we have a plan. We are leaving in a few days. We planned to tell you and Russell tomorrow, but it seems we should not have waited. Evie, you are unorthodox, and although I admire that, in this situation, you are letting your emotions cloud your judgment. The best thing you can do now is call us and tell us where you are. We’ll come and get you. You will be safe with us… you are our family,” Zephyr says, and something twists inside of me and I can’t breathe for a second.

“Next message.”

“OKAY, YOU’RE REALLY PISSING ME OFF NOW!” Brownie’s voice booms. I have to hold the phone away from my ear. She was trying to sound angry, but there is fear in her voice that she can’t mask. “YOU BETTER CALL US BACK RIGHT NOW! WE’RE NOT PLAYING AROUND WITH YOU! CHICAGO IS A REALLY, REALLY BAD IDEA!”

They had bought it,
I think, feeling at once grateful and sick for what I had done to them and the dichotomy of the emotions is making me feel dizzy. I save the message instinctively. I don’t care if Brownie is yelling at me; I need to know that I can hear her voice again if I need to.

“Next message.”

“Sweetie…” Buns’s voice says and I close my eyes for a second, picturing her face. “We are all very worried about you. I want you to come back now. We’re going to go to an island that Zephyr owns. It’s really remote and I bought you the cutest swimsuit that will make you look hot. Reed will be unable to resist you. Tell Russell we are going to arrange to have his family flown out so that they can visit each other for a while. We can’t go without you two. You have to come home now… please.” I hear the catch in Buns’s voice as she tries to reason with me on the message. I save this one, too.

“Next message.”

“Evie… where are you? I need… I need you… I can’t exist without you—you have to come back to me,” Reed says, and the pain that those words contain cannot be measured. I can’t see. My tears are blinding me. I save it automatically, but I don’t think I can ever listen to that message again. I don’t ever want to hear his voice sound like that again.

“Next message.”

It is Reed again, but this time he is speaking in Angel and it is different than I’ve ever heard it before. The sound of his voice is so sad that I burst out in sobs when I hear the melancholy lilt to the beautiful language.

What have I done?
I ask myself, almost unable to breathe.
Heaven help the one who truly loves me.
When the message cuts off after an endless amount of time, the voicemail prompts me to save the message, but I delete it. I can never hear that again and expect to survive.

“Next message.”

“Sweetie,” Buns’s voice floats gently through the receiver, “you have to come home. When Reed found out you weren’t on the train… he completely lost it. I’ve never seen him like this—I’ve never seen a Power like this. It’s like he’s really sick. He can’t sleep—he can’t eat—he goes over every detail of the days before you disappeared, looking for clues of where you might have gone. We know that you boarded a bus. He got the surveillance disks, but your trail went cold in Mackinaw. If you care about him at all…it doesn’t matter what Dominion will do to him. It can’t be any worse than what you are doing to him now…” She pauses, taking a deep breath before she says, “But, if you decide you can’t come home, then I want to tell you—I will always love you, too, sweetie,” Buns says and it sounds like she was crying. “Brownie and Zee are here and they want me to says that they love you, too. We will always be looking for you, sweetie.” When this message ends, I save it.

“Next message.”

“Do you remember when I told you that I sometimes believe that you’re not real? That I imagined you just to hurt myself?” Reed says softly with a bitterly self-effacing laugh that has nothing to do with humor. “I know now that you have to be real. This kind of pain cannot exist if you were imaginary,” Reed’s sexy voice breathes. I feel like I could reach out and touch him, he feels that close to me. “I know you exist, but you’re like a sunset to me now—beautiful and so distant that no matter how fast I fly, I cannot reach you. You are always on the next horizon,” Reed says sadly, and my breath catches in my throat as an unbelievable ache throbs in my chest. “Tell me where you are. I will meet you—wherever you are in the world. I will be there. Just you and me, I swear it. We don’t have to endanger anyone else—we’ll make sure Buns and Brownie and Zephyr are safe. Just you and me, I promise…I will meet you anywhere at anytime…I will…” The message ends and I can’t move, nothing about me works anymore. After a few prompts by the voicemail to save the message, the voicemail automatically saves it.

“You have no unheard messages,” the voice says and I slowly pull the phone from my ear. I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, but the next thing I realize is pounding rattling the front doors of the library. Looking over at them numbly, I see Russell watching me from outside. He looks scared and I wonder fleetingly how long he has been out there waiting for me to notice him.

Numbly, I get up from the chair, feeling weak. Tears slide down my cheek and I’m almost surprised when my hand wipes at it and comes away wet. Haltingly, I unlock one of the main doors to the building. Russell is inside in a fraction of a second, grabbing me by the shoulders and pulling me to him. “What happened?” he asks with a grim look, holding me too close.

I feel dead, like if I tell him what I just heard I will break apart and there will be nothing left of me to love.
He can’t console me… there is no relief.

“Tell me, Red, whatever it is, we’ll deal with it,” Russell says near my ear.

“I found a phone,” I murmur as I lift my hand and pull back from Russell’s chest. I open up my palm for him to see the silver cell phone lying in it. Taking it from me, he looks at it in confusion. I’m beyond the point of being able to explain what I had heard, so I say in a hollow voice, “I called my voicemail.”

“Red,” Russell says, closing his eyes like he is disappointed in me. His hand closes tight on the phone I have just given him and in seconds he has crushed it into a hunk of metal. He opens his eyes and looks at me, surprised by what he had just done. I’m not surprised. I knew it was coming. His strength will rival my own and that thought is the only bright light in the darkness of my world.

“I want to go home,” I whisper, and I see Russell’s expression turn sad. He knows what I mean. He knows I mean home to Crestwood, not our shabby apartment in the U.P.

“I know ya do,” he says. “But, we can’t do that ‘til we know we aren’t gonna be killin’ them by bein’ there.”

“But…I can’t breathe anymore,” I retort. I break down again, putting my hand to my mouth.

“Hang on, just a little longer… y’all can do it, Red, I know ya can,” he says as he pulls me in his arms again. “Did ya make any other calls?” he asks tensely, waiting for my answer.

“No,” I reply, and he relaxes.

“C’mon. Let’s go. This place is creepy at night. No wonder yer makin’ calls to yer voicemail. Why are ya here alone?” he asks in an angry tone.

I shrug. I can’t think. I keep hearing Reed’s voice in my head speaking in his language, but with the sadness that tortures me. I let Russell lead me to the circulation desk to get my purse. Taking the keys from me, he holds the door for me and locks up behind us. Passing the garbage can outside, he tosses the crushed phone into it.