Prophecy (Residue Series #4) (22 page)

She strolled to me, leaned in and kissed me softly on the lips. “You’ll be my first,” she said, her sweet breath brushing my face. “And my only.”

Oh my go-,
I thought as my body responded to her. It was so potent, my reaction, that I had to close my eyes against it. But when I opened them she did something I couldn’t have guessed was coming.

She stepped back, smiled lightly, and locked eyes with me as her fingers pinched the waist of pajama bottoms she wore. My heart leapt, stalled, and started beating double-time as she slipped them down and off her legs.

“Do you know how badly you’re teasing me right now?” I asked.

Still watching me with that trivial grin, she took the hem of her pajama top and started to lift it.

Unable to stop myself, I strode to her, slipped my hands around her waist and kissed her. She didn’t move, not her arms, her body, or her lips. Because she couldn’t. When I was done, I pulled my lips away but not my head, instead resting my forehead on hers. I was afraid if I looked up, I’d fail at what I was about to do.

With more control than I’d ever used in my life, I kept my hands where they were and warned her, “If you continue, there’s no stopping me. And this isn’t the way I want our first time to be.” When she didn’t respond, I forced the next words out of my mouth, because they were an incredible struggle to utter. “I can’t believe I’m asking this….” I stopped to draw in a shaky breath. “But would you mind keeping your shirt on?”

That was so hard for me to say that I had to exhale deeply at the end.

“I thought you’d like it.” She wasn’t hurt as much as confused.

“I do,” I said hastily before summing up the situation with complete honesty. “I just can’t physically take knowing that you’re naked beside me without acting on it.”

“I’m sorry, I-”

“Don’t be,” I said and laughed. “If you could respond to me…if we were alone and I could make sure your first time would be perfect, there would be no way we would be having this conversation right now. We’d be…well, we wouldn’t be standing any longer.”

That must have struck her as funny because she laughed, which was an incredible sound after feeling the suffocating tension that had been filling the room.

I took her hand and walked her to the bed. She laid down on it and again I sent out a silent curse to Charlotte, hoping she’d come down with the stomach flu just so she could endure a little taste of her own medicine.

When I laid my body next to Jocelyn, and she lifted her head to my chest, it was still a struggle to keep my arms wrapped around her torso and my hands on my forearms.

My heart was beating so damn hard I was surprised it didn’t keep her awake. But when she closed her eyes a few seconds later, she whispered, “Jameson?”

“Yes?”

“The pain was worth it to feel your lips again.”

And I realized that Jocelyn was teased just as much as me by our hesitant contact. As my heartbeat slowed, I began to doze, thinking about that touch, and smiling.

It was a good, solid sleep, and when the pounding on the door the next morning woke us, we found ourselves in the same position.

The knock came again, more rapidly, rattling the door with its force. Rufus called out from the other side, urgent and demanding. “Yu’ll wanna get up fer this ‘un. Yer people ‘er fightin’ back.”

Your people are fighting back? I thought
, and shot out of Jocelyn’s bed.

She was up just as fast. “I’ll meet you downstairs,” she said, sweeping her eyes down my body.

I nodded and headed into Eran’s room for my clothes while Jocelyn dressed in one of the various outfits that had mysteriously appeared in her room. I credited Miss Mabelle for them, just like I knew Miss Celia had left fresh ones for me on Eran’s dresser.

Thinking that a Vire uniform wouldn’t be the best idea when our own people are rebelling, I slipped on jeans and a white t-shirt, grabbed Flavian’s suspenders, and headed down.

When I got to the foot of the stairs, Jocelyn noticed and seem to appreciate the change. I, however, was paying attention to the fact that both doors, the front and the back, were wide open. From my vantage point, I saw my family collected on the porch and the Weatherfords in the back yard. Each of them appeared to be suffering from some type of injury.

Apparently, neither family recanted their casts after the earlier battle.

Besides those who resided here, there was only one other person standing in the parlor. Isabella – the only one with the courage to enter the house after what had been done to it the last time both families congregated – ran her hands through her now grey hair, remnants of one of my family member’s casts. She sighed heavily and then made her announcement, “After hearing about Sisera’s death, and now Flavian’s, preemptive strikes are being made against Vires.”

“Where?” I asked.

“The fifth and seventh provinces. And the others will follow.” Isabella was guarded, yet optimistic. This was something that I’d never seen in her before, which told me these weren’t random rebellions and they weren’t insignificant in size.

“Can you take me?” I asked.

“Us,” Alison called through the front door. “Can you take all of us?”

Isabella deserved a good dose of praise for setting aside our family feud in favor of the larger issue. It couldn’t have been easy. So when she nodded in approval and my family began streaming into the house, I leaned in and quietly thanked her.

She acknowledged me with a stubborn, “Mmhmm,” and trailed my family as they moved toward the back door.

Jocelyn did the same, which made me nervous.

“Jocelyn,” I said cautiously because she wasn’t going to like the point I was about to make, but at least she paused to hear me out. “With Sisera and Flavian dead, the rest of The Sevens will have merged their forces. They’ll be looking for us, so it isn’t a good idea for you to-”

“Again Jameson?” she asked, appalled.

“Yes, again, I don’t want you to go.”

“I am,” she replied flatly, starting for the back door. “Someone might need a healer.”

Eran, who overheard us, stepped up next to me as I watched her leave. “You really love her, don’t you?”

Without shifting my stare from Jocelyn, I admitted, “I’d give my life for her.”

“Well,” he said, clapping me on the back, “let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“Just keep an eye on her for me?”

“Already planned on it.”

“Thanks.”

Once outside, we found that the storm had reduced itself to a drizzle overnight, which allowed us the obscurity we needed to travel by levitation. Isabella thought it would be better to visit the fifth province first. This encompassed Eastern Europe, which meant there were uprisings in Norway, Germany, and Poland. We stopped in Norway first, a place I’d never been, and therefore was at the mercy of Isabella and her navigational abilities. We passed over Oslo, unseen at our height, and she deposited us at the base of a mountain range.

It was daylight and the sky was clear and blue here, which meant a rapid descent. Luckily, she was just as good as Jocelyn at catching us before we hit the ground at full speed. Once stationary, we got a good look around.

The field in front of us was littered with bodies, some in Vire uniforms, some in plain clothes. They were bloodied, frozen, or burnt. Not a single one was unscathed.

“We’re too late,” someone muttered from behind me.

Jocelyn shook her head in disgust and immediately went to work, checking the bodies for any sign of life. Maggie did the same, seeming to pay closer attention to their backs, for some unexplainable reason. The rest of us followed, keeping an eye out for any movement that would indicate life.

Midway through the field, I overheard someone ask, “Are you going to be okay?”

Turning, I found Estelle cautiously watching Charlotte, which was gratifying considering Estelle was a Weatherford.

“You look…greenish-grey,” Estelle pointed out.

There was no possible way that Charlotte was sickened by the sight of the bodies. If anyone could be as unmoved by it, it was her. But she did have a different skin tone, which I hadn’t noticed before. “You feeling bad?” I asked, with some amount of pleasure.

She waved us both off. “Stomach flu. Nothing that’ll keep me down.”

I noted that she was slightly bowed forward as she said this, a sign that she wasn’t being entirely honest.

“The stomach flu?” I repeated, remembering my inclination last night to see her suffer with it.

“Yes,” she said warily. “Why?”

Stifling a grin, I walked by her, muttering, “You’ll be healed if you recant your curse against Jocelyn.”

“Did she do this to me?” she demanded, appalled.

“No,” I replied, continuing to check the bodies. But I did pause to look up at her before answering, giving her the benefit of seeing the sincerity in my expression. “I did, Charlotte.”

She grunted, I looked away, and we didn’t speak again for the duration of our walk down the field.

When we reached the end, I turned to find someone leaping through the air, their legs bent and ready for a landing. He was wearing suspenders, a single alexandrite family stone on each side, to hold up his trousers over a round midsection. Below his balding head, his plump face was glistening and firmly fixed with apprehension.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said with a thick Norwegian accent before his feet even reached the earth.

His warning caused the rest of our group to turn around.

“Why are you here?” the man pressed. “It isn’t safe.”

Jocelyn laughed disdainfully under her breath. With her usual sarcasm returning, she replied, “We can see that.”

He pressed his lips together at her.

“Who are you?” I asked. “Do you live here?”

“We need to leave,” he said, checking the sky. “The cleanup squad will be here any minute.”

“He’s correct,” Lester said, stepping over a body as he approached us. “We should depart.”

Considering that Lester had worked at the Ministry handling that very task, I believed him.

“Isabella?” I called out, but we were already being lifted into the air.

“Come with me,” the man shouted back, elevating us across the field. “You won’t make it overhead without them seeing you.”

We darted across the ground, in a method I’d never seen used before because it left us easily visible. We reached a barn on the outskirts of the field but weren’t released until we’d all landed inside. Although I didn’t appreciate the man’s control over us, it turned out to be a good idea because the second we landed a group of black uniforms dropped out of the sky. The door was closed quickly behind us, and my instinct was to step between it and Jocelyn.

The barn had weathered over time, shriveling the boards that made up its walls until slim gaps were formed. Through them, we could see the Vires commencing their work. As fifteen or so walked the field, just like we had done minutes earlier, the bodies before them disintegrated, one by one.

“They’re casting,” Estelle determined, and was shushed by the man who had urged us off the field. His curtness kept her quiet for the rest of the Vires’ work.

Once finished, they levitated into the air, leaving as rapidly as they had descended.

The man waited several seconds and then turned sharply to address us. “What were you thinking? Don’t you know what happened here? Are you sightseers?”

The threat seemed to have shifted now, so I moved to come between him and Jocelyn.

“Sightseers?” Burke muttered in disgust under his breath.

The man angled his head toward him. “Yes, idiots who show up after the uprising has ended for a look at the dead.” To the rest of us, he repeated, “Are you sightseers?”

“No, sir,” my father said, stepping forward. “We came to help.”

“You’re a little late,” he ridiculed.

“We can see that,” Jocelyn said.

He didn’t appear to like her trivial remark, and with the Vires gone, he didn’t seem opposed to shouting. “Are you in the habit of insulting those who work to claim your freedom?”

Without waiting for an answer, he strode rapidly in her direction. His head was bowed as he charged her, his cheeks blowing out with each huff, and his short legs carried him quick enough that no one had time to consider him a threat until it was almost too late. No one, that is, but me.

With one hand, I took hold of Jocelyn’s wrist. With the other, I pointed my palm at him. He was one step away by then, but I had already used Jocelyn’s ability to levitate and channeled it into a hard burst toward the man. He flew off his feet, backward, into the barn wall on the opposite end, legs and arms flailing from the push. When he hit, the barn shook, sending pieces of loose boards and pockets of dust down on us.

A few screams rang out, everyone ducked, but the man didn’t move.

Then everyone was staring at me.

“Sorry for that,” I chuckled, heading for the man. I might have been too aggressive with my approach but he was blindly coming at Jocelyn, which is a bad idea if I’m around.