The Spirit Tree (15 page)

I groaned and sat upright. We had to slow things down. No, I needed to run from the room into a cold shower. Would that raise too many questions or potential hurt feelings?

“What? Wow, okay.” He sat up and ran a hand through his short hair.

“I’m sorry. It’s just—”

“You don’t need to explain. It’s too soon, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.” He turned his head and smiled.

I didn’t feel like smiling or talking. “Thanks.”

He pulled his pants on. “Tessa, it’s okay.”

I nodded, sending up a silent prayer of thanks that I hadn’t shifted and burned the bed to ashes with Aaron in it.

Aaron and I walked into Mae’s house, hand in hand. Bryson glared, and Mae gave us a hard look. She liked Aaron, but something upset her. Did she know what we’d done? My guilt got the better of me. I dropped his hand and moved to the stove to check on the beef stew. I felt like a coward, leaving Aaron by the door, but when it came to my great-grandmother, it was every man for himself.

Mae eased beside me. “Best be careful, Tessa Marie. There are one too many roosters in the henhouse.”

I turned to the two men sitting at the kitchen table. Of course, they’d heard the whisper. Mae couldn’t speak quietly. Tension visibly rose between Bryson and Aaron. I chewed on my lip, trying to think of something to say to smooth things over. In the end, I decided to go with distraction.

“Hope ya’ll are hungry.” I immediately regretted speaking. I didn’t mean to poke the skunk, but Aaron sighed and Bryson glared.

I turned and pulled dishes from the cupboard. Aaron stood and set the table. Not to be outdone, Bryson pulled the bread from the oven. He took his aggression out on the unsuspecting loaf, hacking it into chunks.

I moved to Bryson’s side. “Samuels is meeting us at the victim’s house in about an hour.”

“Us?”

“I need you to come along. I, um, I need to talk to you.” I set my hand on his forearm, and he turned toward me. Although the look he gave me made me shrink back, it didn’t take a PhD to see a healthy dose of hurt beneath his anger.

“Right.” Bryson scooted past me and took the soup kettle from Mae. “Let me help with that. It looks heavy.”

No one spoke during dinner. I picked at my food and pretended not to notice that it tasted like ashes. Dottie and Mae shared a couple of knowing looks but kept their opinions to themselves. Sooner or later they would share those opinions with me. Not a conversation I looked forward to. The men focused their attention on the food. It seemed as though they were competing to see who could eat the most. I hadn’t liked it when they were friendly with each other, but I would have welcomed their teasing.

Mae and Dottie abandoned me in favor of catching the early news. For a couple of soap-opera fans, they sure headed for the hills when drama landed in their kitchen. I filled the sink as Aaron and Bryson cleared the dishes.

“Tessa, you should try to calm down before we see Samuels.” Aaron set his hand on the small of my back. “We’ll clean up.”

Anger rolled off Bryson like heat rising from fresh asphalt. I had to put an end to this, though I didn’t know how. A shower sounded pretty darned good—a few minutes away from the testosterone to clear my mind, but I didn’t want to leave them alone.

“Thanks. I’ll just go change clothes.” I dried my hands and went into my room. The wind picked up outside, and the bottles in the tree clinked together, adding to the melody of the wind chimes. I sat on the bed and stared at my reflection in the mirror. A set of dark eyes stared back from under the brim of a white cowboy hat.

“Bryson!” Paralyzed, I couldn’t tell if it was shock or something more sinister. I couldn’t move. The amulet on my neck cooled, and I remembered the words from Charlie’s book:
“Someone has to move, you have to go. You will go in the dark. You will hide in the day. I send you away, back to where you were. Through paths not walked, with eyes not seeing. I send you. This is said. This will be.”

I continued chanting at the face in the mirror until a hand touched on my shoulder. My words faltered, and I began again. Bryson slid his hand from my shoulder to my neck. The second his skin touched mine, power flared between us. The conjurer’s eyes widened a fraction.

A burning in my gut caused me to stumble over the words. I closed my eyes and began the spell for the third time. Bryson said the words along with me, only in his native tongue. The face in the mirror faded, and I thought it had worked. The mirror shattered, sending glass flying.

“What the hell was that?” Aaron came into the room and took a step forward. “Tessa?”

“I’m all right.” The tone of my voice betrayed me. I trembled as Bryson pressed me against his chest, putting his body between me and the ruined mirror.

“She’s bleeding.” Bryson carefully moved the larger glass shards from my lap and turned them facedown on the bed.

Aaron asked again, “What was that?”

Mae and Dottie stood behind Aaron, both peeking around him to see me. Dottie ducked into the bathroom and returned with a first-aid kit. Mae guided Aaron from the room. Dazed, he followed her to the kitchen.

I met Bryson’s eyes and motioned to the other room. His jaw tensed, and he shook his head. His eyes held an unspoken warning. I frowned and called to Aaron, “It was a ghost, and a pretty angry one.”

“I saw it,” Aaron called from the kitchen.

Bryson nodded his approval and took the first-aid kit from Dottie. “Go rinse off. None of the cuts are deep enough for stitches. I’ll clean up.”

“Aunt Dottie? Will you sit with me in the bathroom?” I felt foolish for asking. “Could you cover the mirror?”

Dottie smiled and smoothed my hair back from my forehead. “Of course.”

I stepped into the shower, with Dottie sitting on the toilet beside me. The quietness between us unsettled me for two reasons. First, I couldn’t help but feel I’d disappointed my aunt. Second, I needed reassurance that the woman on the other side of the curtain was still my aunt and not possessed by a skinwalker.

“Dottie?”

“I’m here, darlin’.”

“Bryson told me it is forbidden for a shifter to date a regular human. Is that true?” I lathered a rose-shaped soap.

“It is.”

I peeked from behind the curtain. “Because of situations like just now?”

Dottie nodded. “I was allowed to marry Charlie because I already knew about shifters. It wasn’t easy being around all that magic. Sometimes I wished I didn’t know what I knew.”

“It’s a lot to take in, human or not.”

“Yes, but you have no choice. It is part of you. He doesn’t have to carry your burden. If you share it with him, he might resent you for it later.”

“I know you’re right, but it doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.” I ducked behind the curtain.

“Tessa, your life will always be filled with danger and secrets. Aaron is a police officer. He won’t be easy to lie to. It’s not easy being a liability to the one you love. I imagine it will be harder for a man like Aaron to accept.”

I wrapped a towel around myself and pulled the curtain back. “You weren’t a liability. Charlie loved you.”

Dottie gave me the same patient smile she had when I was young. She wouldn’t tell me how to live my life directly. Unlike Mae, Dottie offered softer advice. She gave just enough nuggets of wisdom to make me think, and to allow me to sort it out on my own. In times like these, I wanted a more direct approach.

Bryson knocked and called my name. “Tessa, I need to talk to you.”

“Come in.”

Bryson nodded to Dottie before turning to me. “We need to work a spell of forgetting on Aaron. He’s pretty shaken up and asking too many questions.”

“We can do that? Make him forget?” I squeezed my hair in the towel.

“Yup, an hour or two at the most. Any more than that and it gets more complicated.”

An hour or two meant I could erase more than just his memories of the mirror. Was that what Bryson suggested? Could I make Aaron forget about the almost sex? Should I? “I don’t want to mess with his mind.”

“You may not want to, but that is exactly what you’re doing.”

I pressed my lips into a thin line, more frustrated than angry. Once again, I didn’t know what to do.

“The spell book is on your bed, open to the page.” Bryson turned to leave, as if we’d settled the matter.

“Wait. Is it permanent? We do this and he wakes up in my room with no idea how he got there?” I shook my head. “That seems wrong on so many levels.”

Bryson narrowed his eyes and lowered his voice to a growl. “What is wrong is involving an outsider in this battle. You have made him a target.”

“How will taking his memory make him less of a target?”

Dottie cleared her throat. “Bryson is right, Tessa. Take away everything after you stepped into the bedroom.”

“Not earlier?” I spoke before I thought the better of it.

Bryson gave me an unfriendly look. “If there’s something you regret doing, by all means.”

“I’ll give ya’ll some privacy.” Dottie slipped out of the bathroom.

I tightened the towel around my chest and stepped out of the tub. I had to turn sideways to get past Bryson, but still I brushed against him. He hung his head and muttered something under his breath.

I ignored him and threw some clothes on. I pulled my suitcase from under the bed and threw my clothes inside. Once packed, I peeked at myself in a shard of mirrored glass. I had a small cut above my brow. Half an inch lower and I would have needed a trip to the emergency room—I was lucky.

“I’m not okay with messing with his memories. I know it’s a risk, but I’m not going to do it.”

Bryson frowned. “It’s your call.”

“Let me talk to him. If he freaks out, then we’ll do the spell.”

Bryson opened the door and Aaron stepped inside the room. He looked at the ruins of the mirror and tensed. I reached for his hand. “Aaron, it was just a ghost. It happens to me sometimes.”

Aaron asked, “Will that happen at the victim’s house?”

“I don’t know.”

Aaron nodded and looked between me and Bryson. “Were you two speaking Cherokee?”

Were we? I didn’t know I spoke Cherokee. I quirked a brow at Bryson, and he nodded. “It happens when we’re stressed out. Are you feeling better, Aaron?”

“Yeah, sorry about that. It’s not every day you see a ghost.”

Bryson moved to my side and touched my arm, and power flared between us. “We should go.”

The drive over was by far the most uncomfortable fifteen minutes of my life. Aaron followed in his own car, leaving Bryson and me alone.

“You should have done the forgetting spell,” Bryson said.

“He’s fine.”

“We’ll see. If you get excited and shift—”

“I have it under control.” I didn’t believe for a second I had it under control, but I didn’t want to talk about it.

“Deep breathing helps. If you feel yourself slipping, take my hand. I can help.”

“I said I have it under control.”

“I felt your energy change when you and Aaron were at Dottie’s.”

I turned to face him. “What do you mean you
felt
my energy change?”

“You almost lost it.” He pulled into the driveway behind Aaron.

“But I didn’t. I reined it in before I lost control.”

“Try to keep your clothes on around Aaron until you get used to your new powers.” Bryson opened the door.

Samuels stepped out of an unmarked police cruiser when Bryson got out of the car. Aaron grasped Samuels’s shoulder and smiled. Aaron and Samuels had an easy friendship, like mine and Hailey’s. I climbed from the car beside Bryson, and the mood changed. Samuels hooked his thumbs around his front pockets and rocked back on his heels. I expected Bryson to glare. Instead, he grinned. Samuels must have taken the grin as a challenge, because he took a step toward Bryson. Aaron turned and strode to the front door, breaking the tension, but not before Samuels gave me a dirty look.

I whispered to Bryson, “Stop it.”

“I didn’t do anything.” Bryson chuckled under his breath. Evidently, he’d won the standoff. I’d never understand men. All the psychology classes in the world couldn’t explain their behavior.

The entire exchange irritated me. I marched into the house and stopped inside the foyer. To my left was a family room, and to my right was the kitchen. I turned to leave, when Bryson whispered into my ear, “Breathe and focus.”

I nodded and caught Aaron and Samuels staring at us. “Am I allowed to touch things?”

Samuels made a sweeping motion. “Have at it.”

Aaron added, “The scene has been processed. Touch whatever you want.”

Samuels coughed and pulled Aaron into the hall. The two whispered back and forth, their voices too low to make out what they were saying. I guessed I was the topic of conversation.

I took a centering breath and stepped into the kitchen. When nothing happened, I tried to relax. Unsure of how to go about this, I ran my fingertips over the granite countertops and caught bits and pieces of images of the technicians dusting for prints.

I touched the refrigerator door—nothing. From the vision, I knew the killer had opened the cabinet under the sink. I caught a flash of black leather when I touched the knob.

I called to the detectives, “Did he wear gloves?” Their conversation had grown louder, but I’d tuned them out. “Aaron, did you find prints here?”

“No. Not in the kitchen.”

I wrapped my hand around the knob and opened the cabinet door. I saw the killer reach for a garbage bag. I set a box of black heavy-duty trash bags on the counter. The earlier vision had fizzled out after the killer pulled out a trash bag. I turned and touched the hot-water spigot. The reflection in the faucet shifted, and I saw blond hair. With my eyes closed, a distorted face came into my mind. When I reached for the soap, I knew he’d touched it, but I couldn’t read anything more.

“This is frustrating,” I whispered to Bryson as my fingers trailed over the stainless-steel sink. “I keep catching blurry images. Like here, in the sink. I see hair color but can’t make out the features.”

I remembered the mirror in my bedroom, and the nearly perfect reflection in the knife. On a whim, I placed my hand flat against the window above the sink. Images flashed through my mind at a dizzying speed. I grabbed the countertop to keep from losing my balance. “Whoa.”