Chosen Fool (Forever Evermore #5) (22 page)

He nodded once. “Okay, I’ll make that happen.” He blinked. “By the way, Isolde is going batshit crazy.” Another blink. “Like, seriously batshit crazy.” A zoning blink. “Is there any way you can pull her through to the Temple?”

“Shit,” I muttered, nibbling at my bottom lip. “I’ll work it out.”

“Thank you.” He flicked his fingers. “Now close the display, or whatever it is.”

“Yep.” I lifted my glowing hand. “Have…uh…fun.”

“Smart-ass,” he muttered. But he was wearing a grin.

And he started to turn back to Queen Cooper.

I quickly swiped my hand across the screen and shut my power down. I cleared my throat in the silence of the room, and I pointed absent-mindedly where the screen used to be. “He was busy.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Reese’s lips were actually trembling. He choked, “We got that.” A cut-off snort. “You do know there’s a way to knock before viewing?”

I stared. My cheeks were still flushed from a moment ago. “How?”

He laughed, a real smile on his handsome face. “You ask instead of call, then you can
hear
whomever you’re trying to reach. Instead of
seeing
them.”

My brows lifted, a small smile gracing my lips. “That would have been nice to know before I saw that.” My head tilted, evaluating him. “I need to pull my Vizoac through. Any clue how to do that?”

His brows lifted as he caught on quickly. “Isolde is your Vizoac?”

I nodded once. “Sin and I have used that name since we were little, and the meaning behind it fit perfectly when we found out I had a Vizoac.”

“She should be connected to you,” the One drawled languidly, cutting into our conversation. “Find your tether, and you’ll find hers.”

“Ah.” I nodded, staring back down to Tristan’s fur. “Thank you.”

He hummed quietly.

I closed my eyes, ignoring everyone around me. I opened my Core.

When I floated through the cosmos, through the deep abyss of the galaxies, instead of looking outward as I normally did, I peered inward. I found my shimmery white tether, brighter now that I had the Prodigy power. I found a tiny white sliver circling my tether. I pulled it to my lips, whispering, “
Come to me.”

I cut off my power abruptly.

The One was lunging over the table, grabbing onto Tristan’s collar as the tiger snarled. Tristan tried to raise up, damn near crushing me painfully as Isolde ran in circles on top of his back. She was altering between howling and growling, literally racing up to his head then down. And moving to do it all over again.

With my arms pinned and crushed against the seat, I ordered on a pant, “Isolde stop.”

She jerked to a halt, her head flying toward me. She instantly started yapping.

But the One was barking, “Tristan, get down.” He jerked on the diamond collar. “You’re hurting her, you big oaf.” When Tristan readjusted, I could take a large breath.

Although he didn’t get down.

Knowing stubbornness when I saw it, I grabbed Isolde with my freed hands and set her on the table. She continued yapping at me, clearly pissed I had left without her. “I’m sorry, all right?” I petted her tiny furry head. “It won’t happen again.”

She growled once at me, then sat primly. Her head cocked at the tiger.

The One ordered, “Tristan, try not to hurt the bitty furball.” A shake of his collar. “Understand?”

“She’s not completely bitty, anymore,” I stated defensively. “She’s grown.”

The One waited for Tristan to huff at him before he released his collar. He flopped back onto his chair, running a hand through his hair before flicking a finger at Isolde. “That is most definitely a bitty furball. Anything smaller would be considered a cotton ball.”

Isolde flicked him an irritated glance, but she completely surprised me by standing and walking back and forth a few times in front of Tristan’s head where it now rested on the table. She eyed him from every angle, then she bent to a crouch and started crawling toward him from the side…and an inch away from him, she lifted her nose and sniffed him. Her head cocked, and she sniffed a few more times before she slowly rose. Tristan’s eyes covertly flicked to her the whole time, watching her carefully. Isolde rounded his face…and whacked him straight on his nose with her tail—a deliberate provocation to play—before she strutted down the table, eyeing the group.

“What it the world,” I muttered in awe, shaking my head. “She hated the Walker Tristan. Not to mention, she hates just about everyone.”

Yep, she almost bit Mr Damon who tried to pet her.

The One chuckled quietly, the sound laid-back. “The bitty furball is your animal of protection. While that’s ironic in itself from her size, she was still spot-on with the Walker Tristan—if she hated him and likes the real one.”

She paused in front of the One.

My brows practically lifted to my hairline as she started the same routine with him as she had Tristan, moving back and forth in front of him. Her teeny eyes slowly evaluated him as he stared back at her—just as quietly—and then she crouched down again. She crept toward his side that was farthest from the table. Isolde ducked at the very edge and sniffed the air, paused, sniffed again…and yapped at him once before placing her tiny head on her paws, watching him.

I blinked, staring wide-eyed as the One slowly lowered his fingers from his mouth while she watched the action carefully. He placed the back of his hand directly in front of her face. Instead of biting him like I thought she would instantly do, she lifted her head a smidgen, the barest bit, and placed the tip of her nose to his pinkie—sniffing him—before she rested her head back on her paws. She acted more like herself, though, when he lifted his hand and purposefully lowered it over her in an obvious attempt to pet her. She showed him her teeth, growling a tad, and he quickly pulled his hand away, two fingers back over his mouth.

She stared at him from her still position.

“Huh,” I breathed. “That’s curious. I wonder if she’s confused.”

Not moving her attention, she growled softly under her breath.

“Guess not,” I murmured, my brows coming together. But my stomach reminded me of something. I again ran my right hand over Tristan’s back, petting him softly, and glanced to Mrs Damon. This Mrs Damon I actually kind of liked. “Since I’m going to be here for a while, and since I stepped out on breakfast this morning…” My eyebrows rose. “I would love something to eat. If I remember correctly, this place has the best French silk pie.”

Her brown eyes twinkled. “That’s one of my favorites, too. I know just the place.” But her lips pinched as she glanced at my clothing. “Before we go out, may I suggest—”

“No. Thank you,” I cut her off but did it gently. “I don’t mind the stares I receive here, dressed as I am. What I do mind is being wrapped in white.”

“Well, I certainly don’t mind if you don’t.”

I stared in surprise, the difference from her Walker on this subject putting me off balance.

She stood and glanced around the table. “Would anyone else care to join us?”

Back from a decent meal, which did include the most delicious French silk pie, with only Mr Damon and Mrs Damon accompanying me—the rest declining for various business reasons—Mr Damon led Isolde and I back into the conference room. I stopped and stared at the pile of luggage in one corner of the office. The One, Reese, and Roselle were already inside the room.

I grumbled, “Isn’t that a little presumptuous?”

“Not at all,” the One murmured quietly, his back to me. He sat on the couch facing the dark windows, appearing to be reading from a book. “I like to be prepared.”

I glanced at Roselle. “Tell me some of that is yours and Reese’s, and not all his?”

Roselle stared back at me, cool and collected. “We’re not friends, Ms Jules, no matter the relationship you may have had with my Walker. You and I have barely said a few sentences to each other, so please don’t imagine to know me.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, watching her face closely. “That was just polite conversation, but it’s good to know the real Roselle has a stick up her ass.” With that, I nodded once and moved around the haughty expression she gave me to peruse the different books at the end of the room. I had only seen a study like this in King Collins’s office. It was weird that he and the One may have something in common.

I found a small, ancient book on Shadows and very carefully pulled it out, delicately opening the creaking front cover, merely to shriek when the damn rickety thing flew into the air when the One’s voice spoke quietly behind me. Breath coming in gasps, I muttered, “Shit.”

I jerked around, my head back, following the soaring book.

But I banged smack into the One, my hands flying to his bare, flexing stomach.

A jolt of stars unlike I had experienced before crashed through my mind, a force I couldn’t pull away from. The tidal wave of power took me under, and the rip-tides twirled me in a rush of recollections incomprehensibly in fast-forward. The first memory was of me, sick and racing into the study to try to convince the Rulers not to make me attend dinner with the other spirits—where I met the Walker Leric. Every subsequent memory or thought, the real and the spelled, I’d had of him or any of the Walkers was crashing through my mind in a breakneck burst. The memories gushed all the way through to breakfast this morning and me arriving at the Temple. Then suddenly the power was gone.

I groaned with illness, my head still spinning, unable to keep my body from going utterly limp. I barely noticed when the One gripped me around the waist, keeping me from falling. His voice was gruff as he barked at someone, “Get back. I’ve got her.”

Feeling ten kinds of nausea from that fucking ride and unable to say a damn thing, I didn’t argue when he gently held me and sat my person on one of the conference room chairs. He placed the left side of my face on the cool marble before releasing me. I kept my eyes shut against the swirling, jumbled mess of vertigo.

But I could still hear their conversation as I inhaled shallow breaths.

“Well?” Roselle asked.

“Everything she told us is true,” the One spewed. I heard the definite menace in his tone that had been absent since I arrived here. “Every goddamn bit of it.” Something shattered in his wake, and he growled, “That mother-fucker is dead.”

“We’ll get him.” Roselle’s voice was instantly soothing, yet clipped and affirmative. “You know we will, so you might want to sit and calm yourself.”

“Christ, Roselle,” he muttered. “I don’t need to be coddled right now. I need a fucking knife in my hand and the bastard’s throat embedded on it.”

“How the hell did this happen?” Reese growled quietly, closer to me and pissed the hell off. “How did we have our essence stolen without any of us knowing?”

Roselle muttered, “We obviously slipped somewhere with distraction or drinking or sex or sleeping, who the fuck knows, but the point is, we became too lax and let a psychopath take a part of us to play with in his own demented time.”

I tried blinking my eyes open, listening to Reese and Roselle argue heatedly about becoming too sloppy in their vigilance. I stared at the bookshelf, blinking repeatedly until the freaking thing stopped spinning on me and the books remained upright. My stomach settled, and I placed my hands on the table, gently pushing myself to sit upright on the chair. The book I had started to look at was in front of me, along with a glass of water. I blinked until my gaze landed on the One’s profile. He stood staring out the dark windows, not participating in the discussion between his commanders.

A hundred foul names to call him rushed through my mind. I said not one.

I sipped from my glass, glaring…but a kernel of respect for the man flared to life.

Because he kind of reminded me of…myself.

His actions were what I would have done were the situation reversed. We were not about to just blindly trust what others said, knowing when to fight dirty, and doing it.

His eyes flicked in my direction, then back to where he stared unseeingly through the window. “Are you feeling better, Ms Jules?”

“Yes.” I took another small sip of my drink.

He made a simple statement on a small growl with no apology. “I like to be prepared.”

“Yes, so you’ve said.” I sat my glass down. “But should you ever do that again, when it’s not warranted, I will hurt you.”

Roselle paused in her speech, glancing at me. “You put your hands on him.”

I tapped my fingers on the table. “I did say warranted, in case you missed that part unless, as well as that stick up your ass, you’ve also got a hearing problem I need to know about?”

She stared for a long moment, and oddly, her lips twitched. “An ass issue is enough without adding the ailment of a hearing problem, don’t you think?”

Unbidden, I huffed with a chuckle. “I’m kind of digging the hot-and-cold vibe you’ve got going on.” I nodded once. “It suits the first in command.”

“Thank you.” Prim words, then she was back to arguing with Reese. They were not really the cutesy couple their Walkers had been.

I flicked a finger at them, asking Mr Damon, “Have they always argued like this?”

His brows lifted with a slight teetering of his head. “Pretty much, yes.”

I hummed quietly then took another drink of water, my stomach completely settled now. I ran my fingers through my hair. “Do I look like I’ve been put through the wringer?”

His lips quirked. “No, although I have heard his power can be…uncontrollable.”

I snorted, placing my glass on the table. “Everyone should try it sometime.”

Dry words. “I think not.”

I did like this man, the One’s real father. “Well, it’s about time to make my call, so if you could quiet the boisterous couple I would appreciate it.”

“Quiet,” the One ordered, again with simple words. “Both of you.”

And beautifully, they both shut up.

“That works, too,” I muttered, letting my Core flare. My eyes glowed as I waved a radiant hand in front of my face. This time I tried what Reese had mentioned, just asking for King Collins. My screen flared neon blue and the sound of familiar voices in the background could be heard. I asked, “King Collins? Are you there?”