Whispered Visions (Shifters & Seers Book 3) (12 page)

“Maybe I’ll paint myself,” she said, shrugging out from under Alistair’s hand. She walked over to another painting on the wall and pretended to study it intently. Really, she was just trying to put some space between herself and the mutts.

“And how would you paint yourself, Jane? Docile and melancholy like Manet’s Cat Lady? Or a flirting partygoer, like the Renoir Lord Langford suggested?”

Lizzie turned and crossed her hands over her chest. “What is the painting of the French Revolution called? The one with the lady waving the flag over a bunch of dead bodies?”

“
La Liberté guidant le peuple
by Eugene Delacroix?” Alistair guessed.

“Yes,
Liberty Leading the People
.” Her art history knowledge might suck, but her French was on point. “That one. That’s me.”

Alistair chuckled, looking pleased. He thought it was his revolution to be won. But one day this would all be over, and when the smoke cleared, he wouldn’t see his flag flying high above the Shifters and Seers of the world. In fact, Lizzie doubted he would be seeing much at all ever again.

The rain was coming down in earnest when they left the National Gallery. Alistair produced a very stereotypical black umbrella from God-only-knows-where and escorted Lizzie back across Trafalgar Square.

“David won’t be around with the car for at least another thirty minutes,” he said once they’d reached the street. “Are you hungry? There are several pubs around here where we could get something to eat.”

She was famished, but the need for food was eclipsed by something even greater.

“Can we wait in there?” she asked, nodding to the nearest shop.

Alistair didn’t seem enthusiastic, but he ushered her inside nonetheless. Once through the door, Lizzie stopped, closed her eyes, and took in a deep breath. The smell of paper and ink soothed the raw edges of her nerves, making her feel more at home than she had in weeks. She went to the nearest shelf, running her finger along the spines lined up like toy soldiers.

“A bit of a bookworm, are you?”

“A bit,” Lizzie admitted, looking around for the romance section. In a bind, she would read anything at all, but in a store this big, they had to have what truly made her happy. “Do you read?”

Alistair snorted. “No. Never have been a reader. Used to drive my tutors quite mad, but I came by it honestly. My father only ever read
The Telegraph
. Brownlow Manor has a massive library, but I doubt anyone has touched a single one of the books in decades.”

Lizzie stopped mid-step. “You have a library in your house?”

“Yes.”

“Does it have a fireplace?”

“The house is over two hundred years old. Every room has a fireplace.”

“And ladders? Does it have those cool ladders on wheels?”

Alistair’s laughter was loud enough to earn them a few dirty looks.

“I don’t know. Maybe?” His smile was wide and honest. It might have been the first true thing to ever transpire between the two of them. “Would you like to see it someday? I wouldn’t mind taking you in there. You could read every book and throw it away after for all I care.”

“Sounds cool,” Lizzie said, aiming for nonchalance. “If you don’t have time though, it’s no big deal.”

“You’re trying desperately hard to not jump up and down and squeal, aren’t you?”

“Is it that obvious?”

Another of Alistair’s real laughs filled the room. “You, Lizzie Anders, have the worst poker face in the world.”

God, she hoped that wasn’t true. If it was, she and Layne were seriously in trouble.

“Speaking of your tell-all face,” Alistair continued, “you didn’t care for Rashid much, did you?”

Lizzie drifted towards a display of paperbacks. They were all of the dominant, rich boyfriend with issues variety, which wasn’t her normal bread-and-butter, but a good romance novel was a good romance novel. She hadn’t read anything other than Dr. Seuss and Mo Willems in weeks. She would take what she could get.

“He’s an art thief,” she said, stating the obvious. After Rashid finished harassing her, he and Alistair got down to business, and the business at hand was the sale of a piece of art. Alistair was playing middle man, taking a good percentage of the cash exchanging hands. “And he’s creepy. I didn’t like the way he kept looking at me.”

And she especially didn’t like knowing what he planned to do to her if he ever caught her alone without Alistair to play bodyguard.

Alistair put down the book he’d been looking at - the cover giving some not-so-subtle S&M vibes - and gave her his full attention. “Nor did I. We will be having a discussion about that before our next meeting.”

He might has well have bared his fangs and growled, “Mine!”

“What else can you tell me about Rashid?”

Ahhh… Here it was. Her test. She knew it was coming.

“He’s apathetic to your cause. He plays the part, but for him, it’s about the money and the thrill of the steal. His greed and adrenaline addiction are constantly battling for biggest vice.” Both of which caused him to commit some truly horrid crimes. “He’s pretty sure the DaVinci on display isn’t real, and it’s making him wonder if he could pass off a forged Monet to you as the real thing. So if he suddenly starts talking water lilies, I would suggest passing on that particular money-making opportunity.”

Alistair’s finger was tapping out an eager rhythm on his thigh. “You got all of that from one handshake?”

“I was making an effort.”

“And did your effort gather you any additional information?”

She started to say no, but then thought better of it.

“Assuming you already knew he’s a Shifter, no,” she said.

Alistair’s smile could have outshone the sun. Apparently,
that
had been the real test.

“I did,” he said, taking the three books she was holding and tucking them into the crook of his arm. “Rashid is what I believe you would refer to as a ‘lone wolf.’ His parents weren’t associated with any pack, and when they died at a young age, he set off to discover the world on his own. His only interaction with others of his kind has been in fights over the right to exist. Therefore, he holds no allegiance to the supernatural society. He was eager to join up with my father and help supply a steady cash flow for the cause. Although, thanks to you, I now know it’s more about the cash than the cause itself.”

So Rashid thought he could sell out the entire Shifter and Seer population because he had never been part of a pack? What a bunch of bullshit. Lizzie had never been part of a pack until getting recruited. Her parents had been so in love in the beginning they ignored the wishes of their pack and married, despite both of them being promised to someone else. It was a romantic story, or it would have been if it all hadn’t gone to hell eleven years later.

Because they followed their hearts instead of the commands of the Pack Leader, they were kicked out of their pack. It could have been worse. They could have been Banished, but in a moment of grace, the Pack Leader simply told them to leave and never come back. It’s how they ended up in San Diego. Even though there was nothing official to keep another pack from taking them in, no one was willing to accept a couple who had defied their Pack Leader into the fold. So they moved to a city where no one had claimed territory and Lizzie grew up without knowing the stability and comfort that came from being part of a pack.

But despite never knowing another Shifter or Seer other than her parents, Lizzie would have never willingly joined the SHP. Her dislike of the organization wasn’t purely based on her status as a Seer, although that did make it a little more urgent. The main problem with the SHP was their entire agenda boiled down to hatred. Who on earth would support a group who hated another based simply on the way they were born? How was that ever okay?

And she was too logical to buy into Alistair’s one-big-happy-humanity propaganda. She knew what would happen the moment Shifters and Seers were outed. Once their existence was made public, the SHP would be the least of their concerns. Hatred was born out of fear, and what was more frightening than finding out one of the classic movie monsters was real and sitting next to you in Sunday morning worship services?

“How did you find him?” she asked, knowing if she kept thinking about Rashid she wouldn’t be able to keep the disgust off her face.

Alistair picked up a coffee mug with Benedict Cumberbatch and Morgan Freeman on it and added it to the pile of goodies in his arms.

“He approached my father… I think it was five years ago. Six maybe. Either way, he knew my father to be an aristocrat and asked him if he would be interested in an original Pollock for his collection. My father wasn’t really into art, but he asked Rashid to meet with him a week later. He said something about the man intrigued him. I think he might have suspected what Rashid was then, but he couldn’t be certain. However, by the time they met, he was. My father told Rashid he knew exactly what he was and was fully prepared to put him down like a dog if he didn’t do everything he could to assist with the advancement of the Society for Human Preservation.”

“So he joined under duress?” That absolved him slightly in Lizzie’s mind, but not completely.

“Not really,” Alistair said, grabbing a handful of chocolates off a display. “According to the story, Rashid laughed at my father and told him he could kill him seventeen different ways before he could even consider grabbing the gun he had stashed in his coat pocket. But in the end, he joined the cause anyway. As I said, he’s not overly fond of the other Shifters in the world.”

Lizzie snatched the latest Rainbow Rowell book off a shelf, forcing herself to stay in the conversation rather than read the description off the back. Not that she needed to read the description. She’d been waiting on this book for months.

“You said your dad knew Rashid was a Shifter. How? Did he have someone trail him during a full moon?” It was the only reasonable explanation she could come up with, but even that didn’t make sense. Shifters come in varying degrees of dominance, with the most dominant having the strongest senses of smell and hearing. Yet even the least dominant of Shifters would know they were being trailed by a human on the night of a full moon, and if Rashid had survived all the Challenges sure to be thrown his way as a roaming lone wolf, he was far from submissive.

“No, my father just knew,” Alistair said, looking unconfident for the first time in Lizzie’s memory. “I’m not sure how he knew. I think he had a source. He probably meant to tell me at some point, but then he died suddenly last year. I keep expecting someone to reach out to me, but no one has.”

Well, that was a small comfort. Although, if Lizzie ever found out who had been helping the late Viscount, she would make sure they stood trial in front of the Alphas.

“I’m not really surprised,” Alistair continued. “Everyone knows I’m not my father. Some of them appreciate it. They understand my new vision. But there are some that see me as weak. They want a war, even though we could never be victorious.”

Lizzie tried to hide her surprise. She thought Alistair’s ego was big enough to envision himself standing on a mountain of dead Shifters.

“They can’t see how my way is better. If we could just bring everything out in the open, expose the Shifters for the danger they are, then the world could be prepared. The way it is now, it’s like back in the dark ages when they had no idea a storm was coming to devastate their lives until it was upon them. Now we’ve got satellites and weather maps, and we can board up our windows and save ourselves from the worst of the damage. I want SHP to be the satellites. I want us to be the warning system.”

What Alistair thought he was warning humans about was beyond Lizzie. It wasn’t as if Shifters attacked humans and feasted on their internal organs for fun. During her four years in the Alpha Pack, she hadn’t heard of a single Shifter killing a human, even before the regime change. It simply wasn’t done.

“You understand, don’t you, Lizzie? You understand that it’s time for Shifters to be held accountable?”

Accountable for what? Being born different? For having gifts and talents normal humans did not?

And that is when Lizzie finally understood. Alistair was jealous. He was jealous of the power wielded by Shifters. He didn’t hate them because they were different. He hated them because he wasn’t, and because they had captivated his father’s time and attention when he could not.

Lizzie might not understand hatred, but she was on close, intimate terms with jealousy. And it was like the old TV ads used to say, knowing was half the battle. Now all she had to do was figure out how to use that knowledge to free herself and put an end to the SHP once and for all.

Letting her mouth curve into a smile she knew Alistair would misinterpret she said, “I understand.”

Finally, she really, truly did.

“You’re Cinderella.”

Layne plucked the tinfoil tiara off the top of his head.

“No, I’m not.”

Caroline jerked the tiara out of his hands and placed it back on his head and then used her sticky little fingers to brush the hair back from his face. “You’re Cinderella,” she said as if he hadn’t just refused the post, “and I’m Snow White. She’s a princess too, you know.”

“I know who Snow White is, and I know who Cinderella is. Mainly, I know that she’s not me.”

Layne’s patience was running thin. Pari and Lizzie had been gone for thirty-six hours, thirty of which he’d been forced to babysit the world’s most rambunctious three-year-old while stressing out over what might be happening to Lizzie. Was she okay? Had she managed to escape? He didn’t know if he would be more relieved or disappointed to see her walk through the door.

“You’re not playing fair,” Caroline whined when he once again removed the tiara. “Put it back on so you can be Cinderella and say, ‘Oy. Snow White. You look rather lovely in your pretty, pretty dress.’”

“Snow White. You look lovely in your pretty, pretty dress,” he repeated in monotone. Caroline responded by throwing herself on the floor and screaming at the top of her lungs.

“Jesus Christ, Caro. What the hell?”

The sound was so loud and nerve-grating he was on the cusp of doing something stupid, like stuffing her in a garbage can or ripping his ears off.

“You’re. Not. Playing. Right.” Each word was divided by an intake of air to maximize the volume.

Layne knew there was probably some parenting protocol saying you shouldn’t give in to a child’s demands when they were throwing a fit, but he wasn’t a parent and his ears were more sensitive than your average dad. There were only two options, and he decided to go with the one that didn’t involve his eardrums bursting.

“Oh, Snow White, whatever is the matter?” he asked in his best princess voice. He was beyond caring that he actually had a best princess voice. “Did you fall? Or has your evil stepmother poisoned you yet again?”

Caroline stared blankly, but at least she wasn’t screaming.

“It was your stepmother, wasn’t it? She’s given you some horrible poison. Wait here. I have an antidote!”

Pari had very strict rules about Caroline and sugar, but Pari wasn’t there, and this was an emergency. Grabbing a spoon and the jar of Nutella off the counter, he raced back to the little girl, who was now sitting up and sniffling, and offered her a spoonful of the forbidden spread. Within seconds she was back to her normal bossy self.

“Okay, now you have to go prick your finger on one of Lizzie’s knitting needles and fall into a deep sleep. And then the prince will come, fight the dragon, and kiss you back awake.”

“I thought the dragon was part of Sleeping Beauty’s story.”

“It is.”

“I thought I was Cinderella.”

“You are.”

Of course he was.

“Why can’t I be the prince?”

“Because I’m the prince.”

“But you’re a girl.”

“But I want to fight the dragon.”

“But I’m a boy.”

“So?”

“So boys are princes who fights dragons.”

“No!”

The garbage can option was looking more and more appealing.

“Okay, how about a deal? I’ll be the princess if - and only if - you play what I want to play next.”

She agreed, and once he’d received a sticky, chocolate-flavored kiss right on the mouth, he declared Caroline’s turn over.

“My turn,” Layne said, turning a slow circle in the middle of the room. He would have attempted the my-game-is-taking-a-nap trick, but he’d tried that once before and Caroline wasn’t having it. His only hope was to come up with something bearable she would still think of as fun. “How about a camping trip?”

Caroline batted a strand of dirty hair out of her face. She’d been doing that a lot since Madge had disappeared and left him in charge. Pari normally kept her hair in braids and pigtails, but he didn’t know anything about styling a little girl’s hair. The result was no one did anything with it and everything she ate somehow ended up clinging to the long strands.

“What is a camping trip?”

“Camping is when you go out in the woods and sleep in a tent. You know, like that one episode of
Peppa Pig
with the horse who thinks he’s a cowboy.”

“We’re going outside?” Caroline’s eyes were as wide as saucers. She looked as if she might cry.

“Well, not today.”
Or any other day.

Wait. They never went outside. Ever. The only time he’d been out of the apartment was the full moon, and during that time, Caroline had stayed right where she always was.

“Caroline, have you ever been outside?”

“I’m going to go when I get big. I’m going to run fast.”

Once, back when they were friends, Lizzie told Layne there was a small fire of anger constantly burning in his heart. She worried about it, afraid one day something would throw gas on the flames and it would consume him. He never dreamed his great undoing would be a small girl who had never had a chance to feel the wind whip through her hair as she ran with all her might, but as the rage spread throughout his body, clogging up his throat and tightening his fists, he knew Lizzie had been wise to worry. No one could hold this much anger inside themselves.

Just when he thought he might explode, a small hand gripped his. “Layne?” Caroline asked in her little Oliver Twist voice. It was like a bucket of ice water being poured over his rage. Anger still simmered beneath the surface, but at least he could think now.

“I’m going to make you a promise, Care Bear,” he said, sweeping her off the floor and placing her on his shoulders. “I’m going to take you outside, and you and I are going to have a race.”

“Now?”

“Well, no, not now, but soon.” He would make sure of it. He didn’t have a lot of bargaining power, but he would make sure Caroline got to go outside somehow. “But for now, we’re bringing the outside inside.”

“Outside inside?”

“Yep,” Layne said, beginning to pull chairs around the room even as he balanced Caroline on his head. “We’re going to have an indoor camping trip, just like my dad and I used to do on rainy days.”

Caroline leaned over and pulled up on his forehead so she could look at his face. “You have a dad?”

He must have kicked up some dust moving around the chairs. That had to be the reason a lump grew in his throat and his eyes began to burn.

“I did.” His voice was strangled, and he had to clear it more than once before he could continue. “He was very brave, like one of the princes from your movies. He used to make me the best forts ever. They would take over the entire house. It was like a fort village.”

“What’s a fort?”

Layne surveyed the room and did a mental run-through of all the linens. “I’m getting ready to show you,” he said, flipping her off his shoulders and onto her feet.

It took over an hour and every sheet, blanket, and table cloth available to build an elaborate labyrinth that stretched through all the rooms on the girls’ side of the apartment. Caroline declared it her castle, and Layne declared himself an enchanted dragon. They chased each other for what felt like hours and acted out more death scenes than a
Saw
movie. They hadn’t planned on falling asleep, but at some point their energy simply vanished and they curled up together in one of the darker tents on a pile of pillows.

Layne woke with the knowledge someone was watching him. One arm tightened around the little girl snuggled against him while the other went to his pocket where he’d stashed one of the dull steak knives he’d found in a drawer.

“Calm down. It’s just me.”

His eyes opened slowly to reveal Lizzie sitting a few feet away.

“What are you doing?” he asked with a voice made deep by sleep.

Lizzie pointed to the pale blue cloth above their heads. “That’s the sheet from my bed.”

Caroline moved against him and made a whining noise in her throat. He wasn’t sure how long they’d been asleep, but it wasn’t long enough for her to wake up just yet. Caroline needed a good two hour nap every day or she turned into a demon hellbent on destruction. Layne rubbed small circles on her back and made shushing noises until she settled back down.

“We made a fort,” he explained once he was certain Caroline wouldn’t be bothered by their whispered conversation.

“I noticed. It’s quite impressive.”

“I’ll put everything back where it was.”

Lizzie nodded slightly, but didn’t say anything else. She just sat, looking at him. The low ceiling and light dimmed by the sheets made everything feel magical. In that moment, he felt connected to her in a way he hadn’t in years. He wanted her to touch him. Nothing sexual, especially not with a toddler sleeping in his arms, but one of the easy, friendly touches they used to share.

“Lizzie—”

He didn’t know what he was going to say. Probably something embarrassing, like how much he missed her, or how despite everything, she was still his best friend. But fortunately, she cut him off before he could make a fool of himself.

“You did a good job of taking care of her. Pari will be proud.”

“Pari owes me big time,” he said simply because it was expected of him. “Where is she?”

“Sleeping off the drugs. Dr. Patel said she would probably wake up in about an hour.”

As if talking about sleeping had made her own eyelids heavy, Lizzie stretched out on the floor on the other side of Caroline. She was a good two feet away, but the intimacy of laying there with her was enough to make his chest ache.

“How are you awake?” he asked, noticing for the first time that she looked sleepy, but not stoned.

“Alistair took pity on me and my needle phobia. I just got some sleeping pills and a blindfold.” She yawned, a giant, unladylike thing complete with sound effects. “I tried to stay awake and listen for anything that might clue me into where we might be, but I passed out five minutes into the car ride. I’m sorry.”

“Some asshole drugged you and put you in a blindfold. Don’t be sorry. Be pissed.”

One side of her mouth curled up. “Can I be both sorry and pissed?”

“Sorry takes up too much room. Ditch it, and focus on being pissed. Anger is a much stronger motivator than remorse.”

She snorted as her eyes started to slide shut. She looked washed out and brittle, and he didn’t think it was just because of the way the light was filtering through the sheet. The rage he’d felt when Caroline told him she’d never been outside resurfaced.

“Did they hurt you?” he whispered, terrified of the answer. If she said yes, what would he do? Attack the next guy who came through the door? Flip off the security cameras? They’d made him impotent, and that pissed him off more than anything else.

“No. No one touched me.” He heard the part she was leaving out. Someone else had been hurt, and the haunted look in her eyes said she’d seen it happen. One gloved hand reached up to rub her right shoulder. “The worst part happened before I left here,” she said, obviously not wanting to talk about whatever happened.

“The needle?”

A small, self-depracating smile. “The needle. You know how I am.”

He did. He’d once seen her smack a Pack doctor when he administered a flu shot without warning her first.

“They took me to London,” she continued. “I got to ride the Tube and see Trafalgar Square and Big Ben.”

“Sounds like a nice vacation.” The words slipped out, tasting of lemon rinds.

“It was lovely, if you ignored the whole being kidnapped and forced to report on a Shifter who has decided to side with the enemy just so he could turn a profit.”

She spat out the words as if she was offended by them, but Layne knew better than to expect the best out of people. When it came down to a choice between money and the lives of people you don’t know, he fully expected most people to take the money.

“You didn’t run,” he pointed out. He wanted to be angry at her for not escaping, but he was too relieved to have her laying across from him, whole and unharmed.

Lizzie flipped over on her back so she was looking at the cloth ceiling instead of him.

“I told you I wouldn’t.”

“Lizzie—”

“No,” she said. “Don’t. I’m not going to abandon you. Ever. So save your breath.”

He would, but at the moment he didn’t have enough breath to talk, much less an abundance to put back for a rainy day.

“I’m not giving up on you, Layne Hagan,” she said more to herself than him.

Still, he replied. “Why?”

She turned her head to look at him. Unshed tears shone in her eyes. “You know why.
”