I See Me (27 page)

“And if I show you your death?”

“I will not go quietly.”

That was the point of this all, wasn’t it? I couldn’t ask him to be willing to die.

I nodded. “Okay. I’ll let you put that hairband on me. I’ll send you any sketches that feature you. I’ll answer any questions you have, if I can. You won’t harm or kill Beau. You’ll leave us alone, unless we mutually set a time and place. You won’t use me, or what I see, to deliberately hurt anyone, unless your life is in danger.”

“You could ask for protection, Rochelle,” he said. “I’m powerful enough to guard you against the majority of the Adept world. You could ask for money, riches. A home. A car. Jewels.”

I shook my head.

Blackwell gazed at me as if I was some enigma.
 

Then he nodded. “I will emphasize my ‘friends’ clause. I will not knowingly endanger you. If you get in trouble — and you will get in trouble — I will help if it’s in my power to do so. You’re an investment, Rochelle Hawthorne. I’m taking great risks standing in this parking lot, on this continent. The Godfrey witches and the pack are sworn against me.”

“Jade didn’t want to see what I’ve seen. Why do you?”

“She thought you capable of showing her? Without an object such as this?”

I nodded, though I wasn’t a hundred percent sure whether Jade thought that, or whether she just didn’t want to chance it being a possibility.

Blackwell smiled, showing me his teeth. “Jade Godfrey is very young, and we are very different beasts. But beasts we both are.”

I nodded again, not completely sure I hadn’t just signed some sort of deal with the devil. Then I stepped forward into the half-circlet. For Beau, I would bargain with any devil, any evil. The cool metal expanded to slide around my forehead. Blackwell didn’t remove his fingers.

He applied just enough pressure to the band at my temples to make me look up into his eyes. Then he whispered, “Keep eye contact, please. Show me, seer. Show me what you’ve seen.”

“I don’t know —”

The metal warmed against my forehead. My mind instantly flooded with the white light that usually accompanied a vision.

Blackwell grunted, satisfied.

I saw Beau lying dead on the ground, two feet ahead and to the right of me. I cried out and tried to reach for him.

“Not there, Rochelle,” Blackwell said as he held my head firmly in place by the band. “It’s all in your mind. Show me more, show me everything.”

Images began moving through my mind. First, I saw the details I’d frantically drawn of the vision of Beau’s death. The drops of blood on the concrete … my necklace in Beau’s limp fingers … the look in Blackwell’s eyes as he scanned the parking lot for me. The three wolves appearing, and Blackwell blasting them with his black orbs of light.

Blackwell grunted, surprised. “She said it was black,” he murmured. I didn’t understand what he meant, but I guessed that ‘she’ was Jade. Everything was apparently about Jade with Blackwell.

The recalled visions morphed in my mind. Snippets of past visions blurred by, including some bits that I wasn’t sure I’d seen before — still images, moving moments. Most of them contained Jade. Only some contained Blackwell.

Jade drowning. Jade being crushed by the stone roof of the temple. Jade screaming for someone — someone she loved who I couldn’t see …
 

Then we were on the beach in the dark … in the dreadfully dark darkness with monsters boiling out of a black ocean.

I jerked away. I desperately didn’t want to relive this vision. This was the hallucination that had landed me in the hospital last fall. Since then, I hadn’t even been able to finish and sell the sketches of the terror I’d seen on that gray beach after dark.
 

The terror that featured Jade in her red leather pants wielding a samurai sword.

Blackwell clamped his hands harder against my head, exerting more pressure than I thought possible with his fingertips alone. “Yes,” he said. “Show me what happened in Tofino. Show me what happened to the black witch.”

Dozens of dark-gray demons swarmed across the beach, their wicked claws at Jade’s throat, blood and sand everywhere. Then the other monsters appeared. The first was a pale beast, fanged and clawed and red-eyed as it danced across the sand like the battle was some kind of demon-slaughtering beach party. This pale monster fought by Jade’s side, standing over her as she fell, as she bled. It fought side by side with another monster — a seven-foot-tall terrifying mix of man and beast. The trio was surrounded by countless clawed and long-toothed monsters — an army of monsters, pitted against an army of hellspawn, with Jade Godfrey at their center.
 

I moaned. Was this the past or present I was now seeing? Had Jade Godfrey already led these monsters into battle? Or was this her future?

Blackwell laughed. “Those are your chosen protectors, Rochelle. Desmond Charles Llewellyn, the alpha of the West Coast North American Pack in beast form. And I do believe he’s standing side-by-side with Kettil the Executioner, of the vampire Conclave. Also known as the good guys.”

The idea that the monsters who fought at Jade’s side actually existed — and that one of them was Desmond — horrified me. But I also knew what it was like to be maligned for being different. Blackwell’s laughter bothered me.

“So I should trust you over them,” I said. “Because you hide your monster beneath human skin?”

“No. You should trust me because I don’t pretend to be anything different than what I am.”

I wanted to argue — though I wasn’t sure why I felt like defending people I didn’t even know — except the vision was pulling me farther across the beach, dragging me to follow Jade. I dug my heels in. I leaned away, but I managed only to pull against Blackwell’s hold, not affecting the vision in the least.

In my mind, sand hung suspended in the air. Jade was running before me, leaving everyone else behind her. I’d seen her move this fast in Desmond’s kitchen only a few hours before. Well, I hadn’t seen her actually move.
 

The dowser raised her sword above her head, leaping through crashing surf that would have cut me off at the knees.

I squeezed my eyes shut, as if that would shut out what was to come. I’d never seen a vision in so much detail before. Maybe Beau was right and the pills had been obstructing my magic.

“Open your eyes, Rochelle,” Blackwell said. “Remember our bargain. You show me everything.”

I opened my eyes, knowing that closing them did nothing to stop the vision anyway. My heart rate ramped up, beating painfully against my breastbone.

“Everything,” I muttered, becoming overwhelmed with the deal I’d made. “That … is that even possible?”

The images began to flip rapidly, somehow timed with my heartbeat. They piled on top of each other, fighting to manifest so quickly that they appeared as still images now. It was as if I was rapidly flipping through my sketchbook. More sand, a glint of moonlight off Jade’s sword, blood on a craggy rock. Then Jade falling, black light swirling around her —
 

“Slow down, seer,” Blackwell said. He sounded as if he was in pain, but other than the heat of the band, the cold of the day, and my own emotions, I hadn’t felt any discomfort yet. Not even a hint of a migraine.

Then the visions began to blur so much that I couldn’t distinguish between them. I became dizzy, and then queasy, from this deluge. Suddenly, I wasn’t going to be able to stay upright much longer.

I swayed forward, my knees buckling. I reached up to steady myself by grasping Blackwell’s wrists. His fingertips were still pressed to either side of the half-circlet against my temples.

I felt a pulse of electricity similar to what I’d felt when touching Jade, but this time accompanied by searing heat that flared between my hands and Blackwell’s wrists. Or maybe it came from him to me.

He hissed and jerked his arms away from my grasp, pulling the half-circlet off my forehead as he did so.

The metal hairband hit the pavement between us, but I heard this more than saw it. The whiteout of the visions made my actual sight hazy, though I could now make out the outline of the sorcerer and the parking lot behind him.

Blackwell was shaking his wrists.

“I’m sorry,” I cried.

“I told you to slow down.” The sorcerer’s face was pained. “I should have been more careful, but you must listen —”

He looked up and behind me abruptly.

I turned to follow his gaze, but I couldn’t see anything except the empty parking lot and the side road beyond. No cars had passed since Blackwell had appeared. I wondered if he’d set up one of those spells again, like the one that had stopped the people in the restaurant from seeing us.

The white haze was slowly dissipating from my eyesight, but I still felt dizzy. Drained, as Blackwell said I would.

“Remember our bargain, Rochelle,” the sorcerer said, pulling my attention back to him.

He stooped to pick up the half-circlet. This movement shortened the sleeves of his suit and shirt. The skin of his wrists was an ugly, painful-looking puckered red, burned with the pattern of my fingers.

I gasped.

He tucked the half-circlet into his pocket. “Your new friends are here, but they’ll never be able to protect you like I could.”

I looked wildly around the parking lot. I was starting to shake, and my legs still weren’t holding me upright properly.

Just as I was about to look back and question Blackwell about the burns, three wolves appeared on the grassy edge of the far side of the parking lot. They stood together, posed as if they’d just stepped out of my sketchbook and into the real world.

The darker wolf in the middle of the trio threw its head back and howled. The sound reverberated through the parking lot.
 

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I felt an intense need to run — or to fall on my knees and expose my neck. I didn’t do either.

If the wolves were here, then I’d failed to stop the vision. I looked around frantically for Beau.
 

Then I remembered the necklace where I still wore it. I slammed my hand against it so hard that the stone dug painfully into my breastbone and palm, even through my T-shirt and hoodie.

The wolves on either side of the dark gray wolf lowered their heads, flattened their ears, and bared their wicked teeth in a series of snarling, ferocious growls.

“Hunting at dusk in wolf form. I’m flattered,” Blackwell said behind me. “But the shifters have made a mistake, as they always seem to do. As they will with you as well, Rochelle.”

I kept my eyes glued to the wolves. “They found you, didn’t they?”

“Indeed. But they came without the warrior’s daughter.” The sorcerer laughed. “I’m oddly disappointed.”

“You’re insane.”

“Aren’t we all?”

An answering howl sounded out somewhere off in the distance.
 

As if they’d been waiting for this signal, the wolves crouched down, ready to spring.

“Remember, Rochelle,” Blackwell said.

“I’ll remember,” I answered, but I didn’t take my eyes off the wolves. I should be running, fleeing. The farther I took the necklace from the parking lot of the barbershop, the better. But could shapeshifters distinguish between friend and foe in their animal forms? And even if they could — would I be considered a friend? Or would they chase me if I ran?

All three wolves leaped for me.

I screamed, ducking and covering my head as I felt them blow past me. The fur of the one on the left actually brushed my face. A fleeting glimpse of a purple-paisley pattern obscured my eyesight. I blinked and it was gone.

The three of them landed behind me.
 

I spun, expecting to see the vision unfold before me. Expecting to see Blackwell throwing his magic at the wolves. Expecting them to fall, and knowing now that I couldn’t do anything about it. That maybe I’d been foolish to try. Maybe I’d brought the vision to reality by trying to thwart it.

Blackwell was gone.

Gone.

The wolf on the left — the one who’d brushed against me — let out a high-pitched yip of pain, then stumbled. It shook its head and pawed at the side of its face. Then it turned back in a blur of gray, lunging to snap its crazy-long teeth in my face.

I nearly wet my pants.

But I didn’t move. There was no way I was going to move. Only prey ran.

It would be ironic to save Beau from Blackwell — which, at least for this moment, I seemed to have done — but then die in a wolf attack myself.

The darker wolf, who’d been in the middle of the formation and was obviously the leader, slammed its shoulder into the snarling one, throwing it onto the pavement. The lead wolf then gnashed its teeth viciously at the wolf lying on its side, who didn’t move from its thrown position.

Satisfied, the lead wolf trotted away.

The other wolf righted itself, shook its head a second time, and then slunk away from me, all the while looking back resentfully as if I’d hurt it somehow.

The three wolves spread out across the parking lot, noses to the ground.

I lifted my hand to my cheek. I could still feel the trace sensation of the wolf’s fur there. I remembered Blackwell’s burned wrists. I wondered if I had hurt the wolf. I wondered what, if anything, I’d shown it in the brief moment it had touched me. Or had I just imagined the indignant look it gave me? Had I just imagined the glimpse of purple paisley? Purple was Lara’s color of choice. Was Lara the wolf who brushed against me?

The wolves continued to ignore me as they systematically crisscrossed the parking lot. Gathering scents, I imagined. Clues to Blackwell’s disappearance.

I knew how the sorcerer appeared and disappeared. I’d seen the day he found — no, stole — the amulet with the crimson stone he always wore. I always thought it had been a hallucination, but it wasn’t. I thought that hallucination had marked the beginning of the years of torture my broken brain had doled out.

Except … my brain wasn’t broken. It had been a vision, not an overly active imagination. Not a hallucination.

I didn’t have an unknown psychotic disorder.