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He accepted my answer to my great relief and grilled me about how my abilities worked. I didn’t see any point in lying about that. I’d wanted his help understanding the limitations of what I could do so that maybe I could find a way to have a future with Asher, or at least a way to not get myself killed by healing the wrong person. I described how I healed a person and what it felt like when I took on whatever I’d healed. He asked me a thousand questions about the process and what happened afterward. He’d noticed how I’d healed myself after taking Chrissy’s injuries, but left the cut on my head.

We’d finished our second cup of tea before I’d sated his curiosity. And that’s when he hit me with a request that left me reeling.

“I want to test you. You know that some in our group are working to understand how Healers get their power. The differences in your abilities may help them in their research. We can begin tomorrow.”

He sounded excited, and I hated to disappoint him, but no way in hell could I let him test me. Gabe had confirmed that my blood matched that of the Protectors. One blood test and the Healers would know exactly how different I was.

“No. I don’t want to be tested.”

My answer surprised my grandfather. Obviously, he hadn’t considered that I would refuse him and that irritated me. I should be the one to decide what happened to my body. I refused to be poked and prodded like someone’s lab rat. I told him as much.

“I don’t consider you a lab rat, Remy,” he protested.

“I’m sorry, Franc. I’m not going to change my mind on this.”

He blew out a frustrated breath, but he let the subject drop. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be for long.

Later, he hugged me before I headed up the stairs to my room. “You haven’t had it easy, have you?” he asked. “Just know you can always trust me. I won’t hurt you.”

I would die of guilt for withholding the truth from him.

In my room, I pulled my mobile phone from my purse and discovered that Asher had sent me several text messages. We’d planned to meet that night. I sent him a text telling him I planned to go to bed early. Then I slipped out of my clothes and under the covers.

I’d lied to Asher.

The dirty truth was that I couldn’t face him while the image of Yvette’s mutilated body burned fresh in my mind. He’d hear my thoughts and know that I was horrified that he was a Protector.

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

T
he next morning I told my grandfather I didn’t want to go to Pacifica. Last night burned fresh in my mind, and I couldn’t handle seeing the looks the others would give me. By now, they would all know that my abilities differed from theirs. A freak even among my own kind.

My grandfather offered to stay home to keep me company, but the phone had been ringing off the hook all morning. People wanted assurances that they were safe, that Yvette had been the only one discovered. They wanted to know what was being done to find the Protector who had killed her. I told him to go to Pacifica without me, and he looked so relieved that I knew I’d said the right thing.

I spent the morning calling my family back in Blackwell Falls. Lucy answered the phone on the first ring. As soon as I heard her voice, an urge to cry nearly overwhelmed me.

“Hey, Luce, it’s me.”

“Remy! How are things going with Gramps?”

I forced a lightness into my voice. “He has me darning his socks, but other than that things are good.”

“What’s wrong?” she demanded.

I should have known that I couldn’t fool her. My sister had a way of knowing when I lied to her. I heard a door slam shut on her end, and I closed my eyes, imagining her in her pink and purple bedroom. My dad and stepmom would be downstairs. Laura loved the kitchen, a place my mother had only liked to escape to when Dean was around. Laura might be cooking something that would make the entire house smell wonderful. Maybe Dad would be working at the dining room table—something he did to be near us, rather than locked away in his office. My stomach cramped.

My voice sounded even, though. “Nothing, really, other than a little homesickness. I miss you.”

“Then come home,” she whispered.

“Soon. I promise.” I changed the subject before she could break me down and force the truth out of me. “How are things? How’s Tim?”

Asking about her boyfriend did the trick of distracting her. She spent the next twenty minutes going on about a fight they’d had the day before. I happily listened to her complaints, wishing I could see her face. Afterward, my parents came on the line, and we chatted about my visit. I described all the sights I’d visited the days my grandfather and I had played tourist. It seemed an eon ago. Eventually we said our good-byes and hung up.

After talking to my family, the house felt emptier than before. I wandered from room to room. The house consisted of three small bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, a small dining room, the kitchen, and an attached garage with laundry room. As I studied the photos in each room on the first floor, it occurred to me that none of them were of my mother. Not even childhood ones. Had they been lost in the fire that had consumed my grandmother? Or maybe my grandfather kept them in his room.

I climbed the stairs and hesitated in front of my grandfather’s domain. I dared to open the bedroom door, calling myself a trespassing traitor as I stepped over the threshold.

I’m not sure what I expected to find. My grandfather was a neat man, and his room reflected that. The bed had been made, and his clothes all put away. Even the carpet had recently been vacuumed and neat horizontal lines marked the carpet.

His closet and dresser stood closed, and I couldn’t bring myself to go through his things. I hovered in the middle of the room, unsure what to do. The phone rang on his nightstand, and I almost jumped through the roof. I backed out of the room and practically galloped back downstairs as if I’d been caught snooping. In the living room, an answering machine clicked on. A moment later it clicked off again when the caller decided not to leave a message.

The silence threatened to close in on me, and I couldn’t take it anymore. My grandfather had asked me to stay close to the house. I considered the forest within that realm, and I headed in that direction as soon as I’d locked the front door behind me.

Sunshine shone through the trees. For once, fog didn’t coat their tops, and only a few puffs of cotton-white clouds drifted through the blue sky. Off in the distance I could hear hikers making their way along a Presidio trail, their shouts to each other echoing off the hills. My grandfather had mentioned the trails were popular, and I could see why. Even though I couldn’t let loose and run the way I longed to, I already felt calmer.

I was glad I showed caution when a man ran past me with his labradoodle. The dog’s tongue hung out of the side of his mouth, lapping up the wind and dripping slobber with each step. He looked like a cartoon character, all clumsy limbs and happy smiles.

I decided to follow the man and dog to see where the trail led. I guessed we went about a mile, winding up through the woods and through an open meadow before we came upon a set of steps built into the hillside. The staircase dropped us into a parking lot filled with cars and two tour buses. The man continued to the left, running toward the street, but I turned to the right to follow the tourists.

I gasped when I saw the view of the bay laid out in front of me. I had arrived at an overlook, replete with benches for taking in the sights. People lined up to take pictures with their backs to the blue water, framed on either side by the forest of the Presidio. It reminded me of home so much I had to get closer.

A concrete ledge enclosed the overlook, and I sank down on it, setting my chin on my knees. Just like at home, sailboats dotted the water, their sails billowing out as they crisscrossed the bay. More than anything at that moment, I longed to go home. An actual ache sprouted inside me.

After a while, the tourists loaded back into their buses, and only a few people remained lounging on the benches a ways from me. The air shifted, and someone sat down beside me.
Asher
. I wasn’t sure I was ready to see him. In silence, we sat side by side like that for long minutes not touching. I tried to figure out how to tell him about everything that had happened.

I shifted to face him, bringing my leg up to rest my cheek on my knee. The wind played havoc with his hair and it stood on end.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” he answered. “I missed you last night.”

At the mention of last night, a dozen images crowded into my mind. Me, healing Chrissy. The alarm going up about a Protector coming to town. Yvette dead. Asher reached for me right when the last memory popped up. I yanked away, but not before he had a glimpse of my thoughts.

Shock rounded his eyes. “What happened?”

I shook my head, staring at his throat because I couldn’t quite meet his gaze.

“Remy?”

He reached out to touch me, and I jerked back again. I didn’t want him to see what I’d thought, how I’d compared him to that other Protector. I didn’t want him to know how the thought still lingered today.

His hand hovered, frozen in midair, and confusion clouded his features. “You’re scaring me,
mo cridhe
. What happened last night?”

“A woman died, Asher. Another Healer.”

My voice sounded hollow to my ears.

“How?” he asked in a low voice.

“A Protector.”

Asher cursed. At least I think he did. He’d switched to French, his favorite language to swear in. He threw a sideways glance at the other people hanging about, but none had come close enough to overhear us.

“Were you in danger?” he asked.

“No. She was a nurse at the hospital. She healed someone and word got out. Whoever the Protector was, he didn’t know there were others. At least my grandfather doesn’t think he knows.” I pictured Yvette again, and my eyes burned. “It was awful. What he did to her. He—”

I cut off, shaking my head when words failed me. To get it over with, I pictured Yvette as she’d lain on the floor, unseeing and bloodied. I tapped his hand, allowing him to see the image in a quick flash before I pulled away again.

“You’re afraid of me.”

I hadn’t been fast enough, and Asher had seen more than I wanted him to. He sounded destroyed, his voice cut up and rough. I hated myself for doing that to him, but I couldn’t hug him or hold his hand in comfort. He’d know I’d dreamed of him killing Elizabeth over and over again last night. Except in my dreams, Elizabeth had looked like Yvette.

So I denied what he’d said. “No. You’re wrong.”

He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I really wish I was.”

“It’s not fear,” I protested. “Not of you, at least. I just had never imagined how awful it would be. You told me, but I didn’t understand.”

“How could you?” he asked.

“He tortured her, Asher. He cut her to weaken her so he could take what he wanted. How does someone become a monster like that?”

“A monster like me, you mean?” he asked bitterly.

“No! I know you’re not like that.”

Before I could stop him, he picked up my hand. His fingers cradled mine gently, not holding them hostage. I tried to think of us as we’d been in the forest, happy and full of hope. If he was testing me, I failed. Whatever he saw in my mind, a terrible sadness settled over him. He set my hand on my leg with the same gentle touch and then rose to his feet beside me.

“Come on,” he said. “We should get back to your grandfather’s.”

The silent hike back was agonizing. Where before the scenery had entranced me, now I walked blindly, trying to think of a way to fix this. I’d never hated our bond so much as I did at that moment because it allowed him to see what I wanted to hide.

At the edge of the forest near my grandfather’s house, we stopped, and I turned toward Asher. I would have hugged him, but he stood apart from me, his hands in his pockets and his expression remote. I wrapped my arms around myself instead and wished I could take back the last hour.

“Please don’t go,” I begged. “Not like this.”

His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I swear I’ll be nearby if you need me, but I think maybe it will be easier for you to figure out how you feel about this if I’m not around.”

He meant about him, but I already knew how I felt about him. I loved him. Why couldn’t I stop picturing Yvette, though? Why couldn’t I stop imagining how Elizabeth had died?

A truck engine roared in the distance. My grandfather had arrived home.

Wind whipped a strand of my hair out of my ponytail, and Asher caught it, tucking it behind my ear. He didn’t touch my skin, I noticed with a twinge of pain.

“Be careful, okay?”

A door slammed, and I turned my head toward the house when my grandfather called my name. A light breeze caressed my face, and I spun about in a panic.

Asher had gone.

 

My grandfather stood at the counter when I entered through the kitchen door.

“Hey,” I said.

I hoped he wouldn’t want to talk. All I wanted to do was go to my room and hide under the covers. I didn’t want to have to pretend I didn’t feel tired and scared and sad.

“Who was that?” my grandfather asked, nodding his head toward the kitchen window that faced the forest.

I grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge, giving myself time to think. What had he seen? I closed the fridge door and dropped into one of the kitchen chairs, slouching as if I didn’t have a care in the world.

“Just a boy I met when I went hiking.”

Asher and I hadn’t hugged or kissed. In fact, we’d done nothing to make my grandfather think I knew Asher that well. I hoped the mention of hiking would distract him. If he got busy yelling at me for going off on my own, maybe he’d forget about Asher.

I continued. “I was going stir-crazy in the house, so I went up to that overlook that’s near here. Inspiration Point, I think the sign said.”

I tossed back a sip of water while my grandfather eyed me.

“And you met him there?” he asked.

I shrugged and ducked my head like I was embarrassed. “Honestly, I got a little turned around on the trail. He was nice enough to walk me here.”

Did he believe me? My knuckles turned white with my tense grip on the water bottle. I relaxed my fingers before I spilled liquid everywhere.

“I’m sorry,” I added. “I know you said to stay close.”

My grandfather rested his hips against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest.

He gave me a stern look. “You need to be more cautious.”

“I will. I promise,” I said in a rush. “I’m going to shower before dinner.”

I jumped up and practically ran out of the kitchen. But not before I saw my grandfather turn to gaze out the window with a thoughtful expression.