Whispered Visions (Shifters & Seers Book 3) (16 page)

They’d been on enough assignments at this point she knew what he expected out of her. One handshake to get a quick read on their general mood and intent. If there was anything she thought Alistair needed to know before they got down to business, she would excuse herself to the bathroom, and being the gentleman he was, Alistair would show her the way so she could pass him the information. If there was nothing to be warned about ahead of time, she was free to zone out while he did whatever it was he was there to do. Afterwards, he would expect a full report on what she’d Seen during her brief contact, and she would comply… somewhat. He still had no idea the true extent of her powers, and she tried to keep most of the truly damning evidence to herself.

Usually she stayed by his side during the discussions, but she’d already had enough of Rashid. Just being near him made her ill. While Alistair examined documents supposedly authenticating a Warhol Rashid had in his possession, she wandered around the room. Just as Alistair had promised, the pieces in the room were as intriguing as the
Venus
. She couldn’t begin to imagine how the artists made hard rock look like soft skin or gossamer fabric.

Once the negotiations were finally over, Rashid barely had time to suggest Lizzie perform some tawdry act before Alistair escorted her away. Normally he was much calmer and more likely to let her do a bit of sightseeing after one of his meetings, but not this time. He rushed her out of the Louvre and back to the train station as quickly as he’d ushered her in. The urgency must have been an alteration from his original plan, because once they got to the station he had to purchase new tickets for their return trip. He was less than happy when the only ones available were in coach. For a guy who had no problem riding public transportation in London, Alistair was rather particular when it came to first class seating.

Thirty minutes into their return trip home Lizzie decided they were pumping some sort of sleeping gas into train car. They were sitting at a table, Alistair and David facing forward while she road on the other side alone. Pari had once again been left behind, and both men seemed more relaxed with her absent. In fact, David was snoring softly while Alistair drooled onto the headrest. A pair of blond, round-faced travelers had claimed the seats across the aisle, and they too were nodding off, although it seemed entirely possible one of them was passed out drunk.

Lizzie was feeling the tug of sleep as well. She hadn’t had her return trip meds yet - they were saving those until they got to London - but the ones she’d taken that morning were still weighing down her eyelids. She was about to doze off when a man who smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a week came lumbering down the aisle. His foot caught in the strap of one of the blonde’s bags, causing him to grab ahold of Lizzie’s headrest as he tripped. With a muttered foreign curse, he continued on, spilling half of the sleeping girl’s possessions into the aisle.

“Jackass,” Lizzie muttered, bending over to scoop the girl’s belongings off the floor. She haphazardly tossed a stick of lip balm, a wallet, some tissues, and a pack of gum back into the bright pink and yellow tote. She thought that was all until a gleam of metal under Alistair’s seat caught her eye. Bending over, she grabbed a cell phone whose case matched the pattern on the tote. Her hand stilled just inches over the bag.

She had a phone.

She had a phone and no one was awake to watch her use it.

With trembling hands, she woke up the screen and slid the puzzle piece into place. By luck or miracle, there was no lock code. Her heart banged painfully against her ribcage as she typed in the emergency number Joshua made the entire Alpha Pack recite on a regular basis and began typing a message.

“Alive. In Bath.”

Alistair shifted, and without even looking at the phone, Lizzie hit what she hoped was send and dropped it into the bag just before his eyes fluttered open. Her guilt must have been written all over her face, because his eyes immediately narrowed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, pulling himself up to a proper sitting position. He glanced at David, scowling when he realized Lizzie had been completely unsupervised. “Lizzie, tell me you haven’t done something stupid.”

How she wished she could tell him that and mean it. Because it had been stupid. What was the likelihood the girl’s phone had service to the States? And even if it did, the message she typed was nearly indecipherable, even if she had managed to hit the right button to send it. She had just ruined weeks of building up Alistair’s trust with one reckless move.

“I… I don’t know what y-you’re t-t-talking about?”

Of course you don’t. You’re just sweating and talking like Porkie Pig because it’s fun.

Damn. She couldn’t have been any more obvious if she’d said, “Who? Me? Try to send a text to my friends so they would come rescue me?”

Alistair’s eyes roamed around the car, landing on the phone that hadn’t quite made it back into the bag. It sat there, half in and half out, as if to mock her for being so careless.

“Rashid is going to turn on you.” The words were out of her mouth before she could even consider them. “I knew it the moment I touched him, and I should have told you sooner, but—” The tears forming in her eyes were real, even though the story was not. Complete and utter terror always seemed to affect her tear ducts. “He’s a Shifter, and I felt like I would be betraying him. But I’ve been sitting here, thinking about it, and I realized I was betraying you myself by not saying anything.” She used the cloth of her gloves to dab away the moisture in her eyes. “Do you forgive me?”

Alistair sat frozen for a good minute before he took a deep breath, a smile curling at the edges of his mouth.

“Of course I forgive you,” he said smoothly. “I’m sorry I put you in a difficult position, but I’m happy that you made the right decision.”

“He’s been in touch with a German pack.” It was a lie, of course. Once she’d known what to look for, she Saw how much he hated others like them. He was getting a perverse pleasure in aiding in the war waged against the Shifters and Seers. Even his treatment of her had been way of striking back. “When he thinks he’s gathered enough information on you, he’s going to sell it to them.”

The lines bracketing Alistair’s mouth deepened. “Bastard,” he snarled. “I should have known better than to align myself with someone whose only concern is money.” He cranked his neck to either side, the pop from his bones sounding like gunfire. “David,” he said, waking the other man. “I need you to contact Slade.”

David scrubbed a hand over his face. “Do we have a problem?”

Slade. She hadn’t heard the name before, but she doubted a man with a name like that was into floral arrangements. Her gut tightened, realizing for the first time the full extent of what she’d done.

“It seems we are no longer the highest bidder for Rashid’s loyalties,” Alistair said in a voice that carried no further than Lizzie’s ears. “Tell Slade to leave a mess. Make it look like a robbery gone wrong. And then, have him circulate the picture of the body.” His eyes found Lizzie’s across the table. “Make sure everyone knows the price of betrayal.”

“Westley, help me! I’ve fallen in the lightning sand!”

Caroline sank dramatically to the ground, one hand reaching towards where Layne sat on the couch.

“This is your fault, you know,” Pari said, polishing the already gleaming silverware. “You’re the one who insisted on her watching
The Princess Bride
.”

Clasping Caroline’s small hand in his, he flung her up on the couch, where she erupted into a fit of giggles.

“It’s a classic. Every kid has to see it. It’s the law. Anyway, it could be worse. She could’ve fallen in love with the
High School Musical
movies Lizzie made her watch. At least this way there is no singing.”

Pari held a fork up to the light, narrowing her eyes on an invisible blemish. “For your information, I happen to like
High School Musical
, not to mention my daughter has the sweetest singing voice you’ve ever heard. Hearing it would be a great improvement over the two of you breaking everything in sight with your sword fighting.”

At last count, they’d only managed to break one ugly vase and a rather frightening ceramic lamb, which hardly constituted as everything.

“Not to mention,” Pari continued, “I happen to despise
The Princess Bride
. A worse movie has yet to be made.”

“You hate
The Princess Bride
?” Layne said, throwing one hand over his heart. “That’s…” he drew out the word and threw Caroline a wink. “Inconceivable!” they shouted together.

Pari waited until Caroline’s laughter died down to say, “I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” which threw her daughter into another round of giggles. To keep the sound of laughter - and the diversion from worrying about Lizzie - going, Layne started a tickle war. Her shrieks were so loud he almost didn’t hear the locks clicking shut, but the moment he did, they both stopped what they were doing and waited anxiously for the door to open.

Pavlov would have had a field day with what went on in their apartment.

As usual, Alistair didn’t come into the room, but held the door open for Lizzie as she walked through. It was like he was walking her home at the end of a date, complete with vomit-inducing lovey-dovey good-byes. Thankfully, they were all in French this time, so the only part Layne understood was the “au revoir” that proceeded Alistair going away.

“Let me guess,” Layne said once the door had shut firmly behind Lord Asswipe. “You went to Spain.”

“The Louvre,” Lizzie said, slumping onto the other end of the couch. Her eyes were red-rimmed and slightly out of focus. “I got to see the
Venus de Milo
. It was beautiful.”

Caroline scrambled off the couch the moment Alistair was out of sight and was now brandishing an extension off the vacuum like a sword. She made slashing motions at Layne, but at a slight shake of his head, she refocused her energies, letting the Queen Anne chair become her target.

Layne sat up and moved as close to Lizzie as he dared. “What’s wrong? What did he do?”

One pale hand fluttered to her throat.

“I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.” He knew her, maybe even better than he knew himself. At the moment she looked as if the weight of the world was bearing down on her shoulders, attempting to drive her to her knees. Weariness was etched into the lines of her forehead while the air around her buzzed with nerves. “Tell me what he did to you.”

“It’s nothing,” she said again, her voice cracking over the last syllable as she blinked back tears. “He didn’t… It’s nothing.”

Sure. Nothing at all. She was probably shaking like that because it was oh-so-cold in their air-conditionless apartment.

Pari walked in front of him, casting him a quelling look just as he was opening his mouth to ask yet again what that bastard had done to her. The other woman perched on the edge of the coffee table, placing herself directly in front of Lizzie. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. The position lined up their faces, forcing Lizzie to look Pari in the eye.

“Whatever it was,” she said in her thick Scottish accent, “whatever he made you do, it’s not your sin. It’s his.”

Lizzie’s head dropped forward as tears spilled down her cheeks. She gasped out a sob and the sound went straight to Layne’s heart, squeezing it in a vice.

“No, look at me,” Pari commanded. “It’s not your fault.”

“You d-d-don’t understand. I—“

Pari held up a hand. “No. Don’t say it. Don’t give it life. No matter what it was, you did it to survive. You did it for your friend, and for me, and for my wee one. There is no shame in doing what you must to save us all.”

Like anyone, Lizzie had seen her ups and downs in life, but Layne had never seen her this broken before. He wanted to chase down whatever demons were bending her back and weighing down her shoulders, and tear them to shreds.

Instead, he simply sat by and watched as Pari forced Lizzie to drink some hot tea that smelled like a field of weeds before ushering her off to bed. Pari and Caroline soon followed Lizzie’s example, leaving Layne in the dangerous position of being alone with his thoughts.

When he was a kid, he liked to make up grand stories about why he didn’t have a mother. Sometimes she was a spy working undercover for the CIA. Other times, she died protecting him from a masked gunman who was still on the loose. He wasn’t sure if his friends ever believed him, but he tried very hard to believe himself. Having a mom with a dangerous career or one that was dead was much better than having a mom who simply left because she didn’t love him.

Lying to himself about his mom was a child’s game, a coping device. The problem was, he never outgrew it. How many lies had he told about Lizzie over the years? How many times had he called her cold or stuck up? How many times had he referred to her as a pampered princess? He hadn’t meant any of them. He knew better. Lizzie wasn’t cold, stuck up, or pampered. She felt with all her heart, cared about everyone, including people she probably shouldn’t, and worked her ass off trying to prove herself to the Alphas. But he said those things over and over, hoping one day he would believe them.

His mother left before he could even start forming memories. He didn’t even know if it was summer or winter when she took off. But he could remember every tiny detail about the day Lizzie decided he was no longer worth the effort.

She’d been working on controlling her Sight. Like most Seers, she’d developed her powers sometime around middle school, and as she grew, so did they. Talley was working with her, but Lizzie was growing impatient at all the restrictions the older girl put on their sessions together.

“I can’t do anything in fifteen second bursts,” she complained, stomping around the music room at their old den in Romania. He wasn’t sure why they had a music room, and neither he nor Lizzie was particularly musical, but for some reason they always gravitated towards that room when it was just the two of them. Sometimes they would mess around with the instruments, but mostly they just sat and talked under the watchful eyes of unused harps and cellos. “It’s not enough time to really latch onto anything. It’s just noise. Loud. Messy. What am I supposed to do with loud and messy?”

“It’s not always loud and messy,” he reminded her. “Sometimes you figure it out later. You take all that mess and rearrange it until you’ve constructed the core of who a person is. That’s even cooler than what Talley does.”

Lizzie strummed a violin like a guitar. “It might be if I could get the whole thing, but I can only manage little snippets. It’s like getting random sentences of dialogue without having context. I think I could do it if they would let me, but no. We wouldn’t want to actually let little Lizzie fully test her powers. That would be horrible!”

He hadn’t been thinking. If he had, he never would have suggested it. If he would have given it a moment’s thought, he would have realized what she would See. But he was young, stupid, and in love, so he said, “You can practice on me if you want.”

Her hands had been cool on his cheeks. Instead of closing her eyes in concentration, she kept them locked on his. That was the first time he noticed the swirls of amber in her brown eyes. It was like staring into a bottle of his grandfather’s Woodford Reserve.

And then she was kissing him.

He’d never kissed anyone before, so it was awkward and wet, but he didn’t care. Lizzie was kissing him. For a single moment, his life was perfect.

And then she collapsed in his arms.

It took over thirty minutes for Charlie to revive her. Layne reached for her the moment she was fully awake, and for the first time, she recoiled from his touch. The next day, she was wearing gloves and shying away from all human contact. Her behavior was so odd and unLizzie-like, it was several days before he realized she was avoiding him.

It shouldn’t have been shocking, but he felt sucker punched all the same. He thought Lizzie was different, but in the end, she realized the same thing his mother had when he was still in diapers: There was nothing good or worthwhile inside him. His father had tried. Toby Hagan was a man of integrity. He worked hard at being a good father despite having a child who didn’t deserve the effort, but in the end, he walked into the middle of a fight he knew he might never return from and left Layne just as surely as his mother had.

The ironic part was, Lizzie was the one to help him through the debilitating grief he found himself drowning in after his father’s death. He spent the first few months with his grandparents, but then they grew tired of him and handed him off to Charlie and the Alpha Pack. At the time, Lizzie was staying at the Den in Romania. He didn’t meet her until Scout drug the entire Hagan Pack halfway across the world for a Hustings nearly a year after his father died.

He noticed Lizzie immediately. It was hard to miss that hair and all those freckles. But she’d been quiet and he’d been angry at having to be there, so as far as first impressions went, they weren’t spectacular, which is why he was more than a little surprised to find her crawling in his bed that night.

She hadn’t said a word. She just snuggled up behind him and threw an arm over his waist. He didn’t say anything either. He was too freaked out. There was a girl in his bed and she was spooning with him. He would have thought it was a dream except he could definitely feel his heart hammering in his chest.

“Don’t freak out,” she’d finally said. “I’m here to help.”

“Help with what?” he squeaked out in a voice that tended to change its mind mid-sentence about whether it belonged to a small child or an adult.

“That gaping hole in your heart,” she said. “Now, hush. I’m trying to sleep here.”

And she did. She slept in his bed every single night up until the day she Saw what was beyond his tattered heart. Sometimes they would talk, but mostly she just held him. He thought he should be embarrassed to let a girl hold him like he was some sort of baby, but he never was. It felt too good. He hadn’t realized how starved he was for affection until he got a taste of it. And then one day she took it all away. Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to look back on those weeks with anything other than gratitude. He’d been slipping away, bit by bit, every day, until she’d rescued him from the abyss.

Now it was Lizzie who needed rescuing.

The door leading to her set of rooms was less than two yards away, unlocked. He could simply walk through it and into her bedroom and return the favor. He owed it to her. The question was, would she accept what he had to offer?