The Three Fates of Ryan Love (16 page)

Ryan listened, trying to place her words into a frame of reference. While he'd been going about his life, managing the bar, trying to keep his family together, walking his dog, Sabelle had been trapped in her own head, forced to use voyeurism as a means of escape. It troubled him, thinking of her seeking him out, spending her only free time watching him. He couldn't imagine how lonely she must have been.

“It's not like Google, having visions. You can't simply enter your search criteria and click
go.
What we see is random. Except for me. I can search. I can find.”

“Anything?”

She shrugged. “I suppose, but in order to find something, you have to know what you're looking for. And you have to want to find it.”

And she'd wanted to find him.

“I never told anyone I could do it, though. It's a dangerous power and I was afraid Aisa would find a way to use it against me.”

“How?”

“If they knew what I could do, they'd force me to focus on important people. Like your president, like rulers all over the world. Imagine the havoc they could wreak knowing every political move and countermove of the future.”

He nodded, dreadful understanding filling him. With that kind of knowledge, these terrible three could destroy the world as Ryan knew it.

“Have you ever tried to call a vision of anyone else?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Did it work?”

“Yes.”

“Don't overwhelm me with the details.”

He glanced over and caught a small smile.

“I practiced on others and I was able to bring them into focus, but the only vision I ever wanted to call was you.” Her voice grew very soft. “With you, I learned how to create order. How to bring sequence into the vision.”

“You mean you could call these visions chronologically?”

“Yes. I could pick up where I left off. It made me feel like I was part of it. Like I knew you. Like you knew I was there.” She gave a small laugh. “Like you called me, too.”

Ryan's skin felt tight. Once again the conversation had taken a turn, and he felt strangely stripped by it. His thoughts tumbled back through the years, making him wonder if he
had
felt her. He remembered times when he'd been alone with his problems and he'd bounced them out, needing guidance but too stubborn to ask for it. Had she heard?

It was such an invasion of privacy, what she was telling him. He should be pissed off, but what moved beneath his breastbone wasn't anger.

“I marked the passing years by you. How you changed, how you didn't. In the Beyond, we don't count time the way you do. Where I live, the sky is painted with perpetual sunset. Enough to light the way, but not enough to keep us awake. With no dawn to follow, there's no way to track the days or tally years. It's all one continuous flow with no way to measure it.”

“Is that why you asked me how old I thought you were?”

She nodded. “I wasn't quite sure what your answer would be.”

She pulled in a trembling breath and squared her shoulders. Ryan noted the signs and prepared for another confession he probably wouldn't like.

“I wasn't altogether truthful when I told you that I saw the explosion that destroyed Love's, Ryan. It wasn't me. Nadia heard the Sisters planning the destruction and she told me about it.”

“Does Nadia know what you can do?”

“No,” Sabelle said quickly. “I've never told anyone before. But she probably guessed that I was . . . interested in you.”

An intriguing silence followed and Ryan wanted to probe it, but they'd already gone places he thought best avoided. Deeper would only put him in the borderlands of reckoning and emotion. Sabelle might be from another world, she might not think herself a woman, but Ryan knew enough about females to recognize what was happening. If he allowed it, they'd be toeing a line of confessions, declarations of feeling. Not anywhere close to a place Ryan wanted to be.

“After Nadia told me you were going to die, I searched and searched, but I could never see it. I didn't believe it. Then I saw the headlines—just a flash, but I knew it was true.”

“I still don't understand why they'd want to kill me.”

“Because of me, Ryan. Once I started calling your visions intentionally, my mind stayed fixed. Most of my visions focused on you. I knew better than to report them, so I lied. My productivity dropped. Aisa was not pleased. Somehow she figured out what was going on and she planned for your death. The explosion was sabotage, arranged by Aisa.”

He thought of Love's, turned to rubble and ash, all because some bitch from the Beyond didn't want her slave distracted.

“Nadia bribed a reaper to help me escape. I've never been so scared in my life as I was moving through the darkness with him. It hurt, like nothing I could imagine. I entered your world as naked and vulnerable as an infant. I couldn't even believe I'd survived it.”

Ryan exhaled and the hand still gripping the wheel clenched, but he said nothing and tried to disguise the way his insides tightened at the thought of Sabelle trusting a reaper with her life. Letting one touch her soul with its dark, corrupted fingers.

“I didn't have time to plan or prepare. I never really thought it was possible. But watching you had taught me how meaningless my existence was. How warped the Sisters had become. They use our searchlights to mine the unfolding drama of civilization, and when they can fan a flame and change the course of the world, they do. When they can bring disaster, they rush in for the thrill of it. The Sisters don't care about the Ryans or Rubys or Reeces in the world. They care about presidents and overlords. Wars. Mass murder. These are the things that make history books, that shape the past, present, and future.”

Sabelle looked out the window and shook her head.

“I was willing to risk death if that's what I needed to do to save you. You'd become
my
searchlight, in some strange way. I knew you'd help me. Now I see that making that decision was as wrong as all of Aisa's twisted manipulations. Because of me, you're on the run, too.”

That was a lot of baggage she'd just loaded in the trunk and Ryan didn't know how to respond. Was she waiting for him to give something back? Did she want him to share now?

“Do you know where your sister and her reaper are?” she asked, catching him off guard.

He looked away from the road long enough to give her a surprised glance. “Why do you want to know that?”

“I just wondered. I was curious, I guess. When he was allowed to stay . . . I never understood.”

Ryan almost laughed. “That makes two of us. Roxanne tried to explain it to me. She said he'd passed for human or something like that. I guess there was a test. I don't know. She even brought him to Reece's funeral.”

Ryan still hadn't forgiven her for that.

“What's he like?” Sabelle asked.

Ryan shrugged, remembering the big, dark man with the sardonic smile and razor-sharp eyes. The body might be human, but those eyes . . . Ryan hadn't liked him on sight. Still, it had been a shock to learn that Santo Castillo, his little sister's new boyfriend, wasn't even human. Roxanne had explained how he'd managed to fool the reaper police, or whoever they were, and stay on earth. The whole time, Ryan had felt like he was trapped in a nightmare. He hadn't been able to accept it. Still couldn't understand how his sister had become so entwined with the reaper that she refused to leave him.

He slid a glance at Sabelle. Well, maybe he understood a little bit.

“I don't want to talk about Roxanne with you,” Ryan said.

Instantly, Sabelle's eyes shuttered and the fragile link of
sharing
that had joined them broke. She tugged her hand away and folded it in her lap. Ryan realized too late just how sharp his voice had sounded and how Sabelle had interpreted his tone. He'd shut her down when he'd only meant to push her around a curve and onto another topic. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk about it with Sabelle specifically, though in his haste to nip the subject at the bud, that's what he'd said. He just couldn't go there. Not after his
father's
visit and accusations. Not yet, maybe not ever.

“Sabelle, I didn't mean that the way it came out.”

“Don't,” she said. “I get it.”

“It's not that I don't trust you with it,” he pushed. Her head turned and her gaze was steady on his face. He pulled his eyes from the road once more and met it. “I just don't talk about Roxanne. What's going on with her is her business and she's got enough people talking about her already.”

“How convenient for you,” Sabelle said flatly.

“Meaning?”

“Do you understand what I just told you? I told you how I came to be here. I just gave you the secret to how to give me back. I trust you not to do it. But you? You can't share anything that's important to you. Call it what you want, Ryan, but you're so good at not letting people in that you don't even know you're doing it anymore.”

The tires hummed against the blacktop in the silence that followed and Ryan let it stretch. Maybe she was right. With a shake of her head, she went back to looking out the window, ignoring him. Brandy's head popped up from the back and the big dog wedged her upper body between the seats, a position that couldn't be comfortable, and whined. Sabelle stroked her and Brandy sighed with contentment.

Ryan let a few miles pass before he spoke. “With me,
in
isn't such a great place, snowflake.”

“Do you have a stockpile of convenient excuses for your lack of trust?”

“You're going to psychoanalyze me now? You're probably qualified, what with all the hours of clinical observation you've put in.”

“You know what I see, Ryan? I see a big, strong man with all the right parts in all the right places. Women get near you and they lose their minds. They know you're the real deal inside out, and they want to be a part of it. They want to wake up to your scent, hear your voice say their name, feel your body next to theirs.”

Her voice wavered and the longing in it struck a note in Ryan that made him want to pull over and drag her across the console and into his lap. He hadn't had sex in a car since college, and he'd been about five inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter back then. But Sabelle was just the kind of motivation to make a man achieve the impossible.

Sabelle went on before he could act on the impulse. The longing in her voice vanished. Bitter truth replaced it.

“They flock to you, don't they? A different woman every night if you want. They don't realize that's all you'll ever want.”

“You looking to become something permanent, Sabelle?” he asked, his voice steady, his emotions in turmoil.

She laughed. “If I was?”

“I guess I'd need to know how that was going to work.”

“Nice bluff, Ryan. You know how it works. Faith. You're quick to point out how I lack it, but when was the last time you took a leap of faith?”

Something reared up inside him, a great beast of desire to prove her wrong. To show her that he was more than the man who said hello and good-bye while giving nothing in between. But proof was a flipping coin that only she could catch and this woman had no place in his life.

She was transient, as fleeting as a summer storm. Only a fool would think she'd be a keeper.

She shook her head. “Didn't think I'd call you on it, did you?”

“I could say the same to you.”

“Really? I've been watching you for years. That's no passing thing.”

“You're in the trenches now. The view has changed a bit.”

“Not so much.”

His heart thumped hard and heavy in his chest. One word could change everything.

Stay.

He wanted to say it and that scared the hell out of him.

“Don't worry, Ryan,” she chided. “There's no hook. Even if you wanted me, Aisa would never allow it. After tomorrow, I won't be your problem anymore.”

“I never said you were.”

“That's the point, isn't it? You never say.”

Ryan stared at her profile, wishing she'd look at him. Wishing he had the words she wanted. Maybe he did. Maybe it was for the best that he kept them inside. Maybe he was just trying to convince himself that this leap of faith wouldn't destroy everything he considered himself to be.

S
abelle held her breath, wanting to see his face, needing to hide her own. They'd wandered close to a razor's edge that had appeared out of nowhere, leading to a drop into a vast unknown.

“Got me all figured out, don't you?” Ryan said, his voice a deep rumble in the tight space.

She heard frustration in the question, but she sensed it was directed at himself, and a desperate kind of hope filled her no matter how she tried to stop it.

“Am I wrong?”

Please, tell me I'm wrong.

The silence siphoned the air from the hissing quiet, leaving her light-headed and afraid. Why was she doing this? She couldn't stay. Aisa would hunt her down and destroy her before she allowed it, and the only way
out
was the one Sabelle had planned all along. Destroy Aisa and take her place. Only Sabelle would bring justice to the fates. She would guide with hope and benevolence.

Ryan didn't fit into that future. Knowing this didn't stop the yearning or the need to hear Ryan say he wanted to, though.

She turned her face and stared out the window so he wouldn't see her confusion or dismay. One word and he could crumble all the carefully constructed rationalizations she'd built.

Stay.

The blacktop and lighted advertisements blurred as they sped past. She should break the silence before it became unsurmountable. But there was safety in the unsaid. She was fast learning that every time she peeled back a layer of Ryan, he managed to do the same to her.

Still, it seemed cowardly to hide. She'd risked
everything
to come here. Cowering behind her dread now was unacceptable. Fate stretched out like the road ahead. Hers, his. Lit only so far, it might change in the next second. It might twist after the next bend and spin them both in another direction. More than anything, she wished she could see
their
future, wished she had some way of knowing if her blindness was caused by the tangle of their lives or simply by geography. Maybe her gifts didn't work in Ryan's world.

“I'd be a poor stalker indeed if I didn't understand you after all this time,” she said, finding that within her hurt was anger. “You'll be relieved when I'm out of your life.”

“Will I?”

“Do you deny it?”

“Would it do any good?”

“No. You'd only be doing it to be contrary and we'd both know it. Even before . . . when I tried to guide you from the Beyond, you never listened to me. If I nudged you to the right, you'd go left. If I whispered yes
,
you'd say no.”

“Maybe I didn't like being pushed.”

“I never pushed.”

“You're pushing now.”

Was that what this was? Not Ryan waking up and realizing that he needed her, but Sabelle backing him into a corner, trying to take what he would never give? She curled her fingers into her palms, refusing to let him see how shredded she felt by that perception.

It was time to change the subject, steer clear of this vicious cyclone. She knew exactly what to say to distract him. Of course she did.

“I won't push anymore, Ryan. I won't ask about your sister or her—I won't tell you they were fated to be together. I won't tell you how long it will last.”

He glanced at her in surprise. “Fated? Is that true?” he asked with heartbreaking predictability.

She wanted to cry.

“You don't believe in fate,” she reminded him woodenly.

“I don't believe in angels either, yet here you are.”

At least he hadn't called her a demon.

“I need to know something,” he went on. “Before we go another mile. Did you know about my brother and sister? Did you see what was going to happen to them when you were pulling strings and playing with my fate?”

His words offended her to her core. She never
played
. She never
pulled strings
. She guided. She did the best she could. He didn't appreciate it. Not then, not now.

She cleared her throat and said calmly, “I saw them, but I didn't know what the vision meant. They were pet projects for the Sisters.”

“Which means?”

“Even if I'd fully understood what waited in their future, even if I could have guided you with that knowledge, there was nothing you could've done, Ryan. That's what you're asking me, isn't it? Not if I could have changed things. You're asking if
you
could have.”

He cast her another look. In his eyes she saw the veneer of rage, but beneath it glimmered a vulnerable light. A need for reassurance. She felt her anger die as quickly as it had flared.

“You couldn't have altered the course of their fate. It wasn't yours to change.”

The uncertainty she saw in his face cut deep. He didn't know whether or not he could trust Sabelle. She felt the pain of that to her core. She'd devoted every moment of her limited freedom to him, wishing that she wasn't invisible to him. But now that he could see her, he couldn't—or wouldn't—see deep enough to know her. She should be grateful for that. He saw too much already.

Twenty interminable minutes passed before she tried speaking again.

“God created the Beyond before He created earth,” she said when the silence grew too long again. “Did you know that?”

“Before last month, I'd never even heard of the Beyond,” he answered.

“It's true. He populated it with all manner of creation, wishing to make His world diverse and unique in every way. What He didn't plan for was jealousy. Vanity. He never imagined those with horns would envy those with wings. Or those with cunning would use it to destroy those who were good.”

“Everybody wants what they can't have.”

She nodded. She was living proof of that. “Each time unrest and violence broke out, He would try to fix it.”

“By creating something better.”

It wasn't a question, but she answered anyway. “In the beginning, He made us all immortal, but it didn't take Him long to see the error in that. It's why our world is separate from yours. By the time He realized He needed to start over with
only
creatures that could be destroyed, there were already too many of us to control. Eliminating the few of us that were capable of death wouldn't have made a dent in the problem. So He settled for containment.”

“What about you?”

“Can I be killed?”

He looked away from the road and caught her gaze. She didn't understand what she saw there. Maybe she'd never understand the moving depths and shifting shades of Ryan's eyes.

“Can you?”

“Yes. I'm disposable, just like you. Does that make you happy?”

He laughed. “Not even a little bit. What about the sisters?”

“I don't know. They're goddesses.”

“Self-proclaimed, no doubt.”

He turned back to the road, leaving her to overthink what he might have meant by that. The flashing scenery offered no clues, and at last she continued. “The lesser demons—the ones your sister and brother faced—they were the first to find ways out. They'd have gotten away with their escape, too, if they hadn't killed anybody. But of course that went against their nature.”

“Of course,” Ryan muttered.

“No human death goes unnoted in the Beyond. There are battalions of light keepers cataloging deaths, looking for anomalies. Humans can rip themselves to shreds and bomb themselves off the planet and no one in the Beyond cares. But a human death caused by a demon—that sets off alarms throughout the Beyond.”

“Then how were they going to get away with killing me?” he asked.

“The Sisters aren't demons,” she said stonily.

“You sure about that?”

“They haven't been banished to the underworld. Not yet, anyway. Which is not to say that what they've been doing is right. They are too clever to be caught breaking the laws of the Beyond, though. They work through others and cover their tracks. You've seen how they manipulate. Convincing someone to turn on the gas was child's play. As a seer, I'm an accomplice to their crimes. As a slave, I'm theirs to blame if they're ever caught. My visions are their looking glass. My
only
purpose is to spy.”

Spy on the people she longed to be.

“Things have been pretty screwed up for you,” he said softly.

The statement slipped beneath her guard and struck something deep and fragile. “I didn't know any different,” she said.

“Yes you did. You knew me, and I'm all about friends and family.”

A warm inner circle that she could only see from the outer rim.

“What was it like for you when you were seeing me? I mean, was it like watching TV or was it like being here?” he asked.

“I wasn't in some glass bubble hovering up above,” she said, imagining that's how he pictured it. “I was right beside you. Always. You just couldn't see me.”

You still can't.

“I've watched you make wrong choices,” she said, once again luring him away from a topic that had become too volatile. “I've watched you long to change them.”

“What wrong choices are those?” he asked on cue.

“To take care of your family and sacrifice your dreams.”

“Who said I sacrificed?”

“Of course you did.”

“Because I know
I've
never said it.”

“You've thought it.”

“I thought it a lot. But if I'd
felt
it I wouldn't have stuck around.”

“You always knew you'd end up taking over for your dad.”

“So? Love's has been in the family for generations and I'm the oldest.”

“But I've never felt like you were happy.”

“Maybe that's because I had someone pushing me in the opposite direction I wanted to go in. Ever think of that? Ever wonder if your
guidance
might have felt like doubt? And doubt's like poison no matter who you are.”

His words were so cruel that she stared at him in stunned silence.

“I wasn't pushing you,” she said in a voice like stone. “I was trying to
help
you.”

Ryan exhaled and rubbed the shadow of his jaw. Sabelle sat stiffly beside him, furious and hurt, then hurt and furious. A sign up ahead told her that Sedona was only fifteen miles more. Suddenly it was too close. Sedona marked the end of her time with Ryan.

“You hated the responsibility,” she said carefully. “It's no secret that you were unhappy there. You wished your father had sold Love's. You wanted to leave it all behind.”

His glare was meant to discourage her. Sabelle chose to ignore it.

“Yet when Ruby said she was glad that Love's was gone, her words wounded you. I saw it.”

Ryan said nothing. The smart thing to do would be to let it go.

“Is it because of your father?” she asked softly. “Is that why you're so . . . conflicted?”

“My father's dead.”

“Not in your heart he's not.”

Ryan glanced her way and she felt something within him give, crack . . . crumble. She knew then just how right she was. In his heart, Ryan's dad lived on, larger-than-life. Driven, mostly misguided, leading Ryan to a destination he resented to this day. Using the image of Ryan's father had been both conniving and brilliant on Aisa's part.

“Maybe,” he said.

He didn't want to talk about himself and she could see that he liked discussing his father even less. But to move on, he had to let go. It was a simple fact of human nature that even someone who'd only observed life knew to be true, and as much as he'd hurt her, Sabelle couldn't leave it alone to fester.

“You loved him,” she said.

“He was my dad,” Ryan replied with a stony expression.

“That's not an answer.”

“You're suddenly Oprah?”

She paused, proceeding with care. “Your feelings for him . . . it's why Aisa used his image. She's a master at identifying weaknesses and exploiting them.”

He didn't look away from the road as he spoke to her from the muted darkness. “I know you're trying to help, but I don't want to talk about my dad either.”

“It hurts too much,” she said knowingly.

“It fucking pisses me off,” he corrected. “I loved my dad, but there were times . . .” He hesitated, searching for a way to describe the complexity of their relationship. “He had tunnel vision. He only saw what made sense to him.”

“You don't think you made sense to him?”

“Not a single minute of my life.”

“I think you're wrong. What I saw of him seemed likable. Charming. A lot like you.”

Ryan flashed a bitter smile at her. “You think I'm charming?”

“You have your moments.”

“Everything looks a little different from the outside, I guess,” he said.

It was a cold reminder that he felt as warmly about the Beyond as the Sisters did about humans. No matter what they'd shared, Sabelle was not part of his inner circle. Not human. Not someone he trusted or cared about. Not someone he'd mourn when she was gone. She'd always be on the outside when it came to Ryan.