Witch Eyes (20 page)

Twenty-Eight

“Stay down,” he grunted, keeping his dirt-crusted hand clenched over my mouth. The black car, some kind of foreign model, sped down the street in front of us. It circled around in front of the hotel and pulled up across the street. Right where it had been when I’d first seen it.

“Someone’s curious about what you’re up to,” Drew said, releasing me. I had tiny little branches shoved in all sorts of hard-to-reach places.

“Who is that?” I eyed the car and tried to remember if I’d seen one like it at the Lansings’.

“Don’t know, don’t care. Maybe Boyfriend thinks you’re screwing around on him.”

“Funny how you’re the one who keeps putting your hands on me,” I said as I dragged myself out of the bushes. I focused on the magic around me, drawing it closer. Just in case; I wouldn’t be caught off guard again.

Drew made a clicking sound with his tongue, flashing his eyes at me. “You don’t back down, do you?”

He was just a stupid jock, I reminded myself. Lecturing him about homophobia was a waste of time. “Why were you following me?” I demanded instead.

“Riley seems to think you’re in some trouble. She didn’t say as much, but she wants me to keep an eye out.”

“You attacked me last night!” What was Riley thinking? “What do you care anyway?”

Drew shrugged. “I don’t. But if it’ll piss Gentry off, then why the hell not?” He sniffed at the air, his face screwing up in disgust. “You stink. Cut it out with the mumbo jumbo b
ullshit.”

“
You smell like fire
.” He’d said as much on the bus. “You can really smell it?”

He rolled his eyes. “Do I need to be all silver and four-legged for you to figure it out?”

“You’re not a witch,” I said with only a little certainty. I’d never looked that deeply at him, but changing shape was
n’t something a normal witch could do unless … “You’re a werewol
f
?”

“You sure you’re not some sort of moron?” Drew pointed to a corner of the yard we were near, where two fences met. “I’m not a werewolf. Or did you forget there wasn’t a full moon out the other night?”

He was right. “Then what are you?”

He pulled out a cell phone and flipped it open. “You think the only thing lurking around town is a couple of witches? Don’t be naïve. All sorts of things will line up for the right amount of money. Ask Gentry. If he’ll tell you the truth.”

Of course I knew there was more to the supernatural than just witches and warlocks. John used to tell me bedtime stories of things that really existed. I don’t think creativity was really his strong suit—most of my bedtime stories were true accounts of one nasty or another.

But I’d also never met anything like Drew was talking about.

Drew wasn’t content to let me work it out for myself. “I’m a Shifter. As in shape. Mostly animals, but sometimes other things if I really push myself.”

The only thing I knew about shapeshifting was that there was always something that gave them away. “Your eyes glow when you’re about to change, don’t they? I saw them the other night.”

Drew nodded. “Maybe you’re not all fluff up there.” He leaned up against the wooden fence and tilted his head to the sky. “That’s why they killed my dad. We won’t be tamed.”

“Why are you telling me this now?” If I thought Trey was hard to figure out, then Drew was nearly impossible.

“So you’ll watch yourself. Trey thinks I’m out to get him. He’s not entirely wrong. But he’s a waste of time. He wasn’t any more involved than I was. Cathy and Jay think I’m going to just run along and let them have their war, which you seem to be the poster boy for lately.”

“I’m not. I’ve told them I don’t want any part.”

He glanced at me with hooded eyes. “When’s that ever stopped them before? If they say you’re in—you’re in. Unless you’re planning to take them both on.”

And that’s when I knew. I didn’t matter either. He was feeling me out, to see if I’d help him. “Isn’t that what you’re trying to do?” He could probably snap me in half, but I’d thrown him around a little bit, too. I wasn’t entirely helpless.

“Someone has to step up,” he replied. “I take it that means you’re going to keep pretending you don’t have to pick a side?”

I shook my head. “I’m here for my own reasons. But I don’t think it has anything to do with either one of them, or their feud. Or you.”

He shrugged. “You’re just another tool to them. They’ll use you no matter what you want. They can’t help themselves.”

“You know anything about some big spell they’ve got working over the town?”

He stared at me with a blank expression. “A what?”

“Some sort of spell,” I repeated. “It’s like this giant blanket of shadow pulled across the whole town.” There was no moment of recognition or understanding in his eyes, and my voice went flat. “Never mind. You don’t have any idea what I’m talking about.”

There had to be someone who knew where the shadows I kept seeing had come from. Or why they kept taking the form of an eye. I didn’t know why that was important, just that it was.

Drew couldn’t help me, but he wasn’t my enemy either. At least not yet. I gave him one last look, shook my head, and walked out of the yard.

The black car was dark when I walked past, tinted windows preventing me from seeing inside. I knew they were there, though. And I think they knew I did.

Dawn was still many hours away. I could go back to bed, and try and be ready for school in the morning. The mornings here had been extraordinarily cold for September, a fact that popped into my head as I hit the door.

I glanced back at my stalker and narrowed my eyes. I pictured the motions in my mind, traced them over and over again.

With the early morning frost, or even a decent fogging if they left the car running, they would understand. Letters traced on the glass that wouldn’t appear until I was deeply asleep.

I See You.

¤ ¤ ¤

It was Monday again. A week ago, I’d arrived on a bus. Now I was being pulled in a million different directions.

I left for school early, so by the time Jade called to see if I needed a ride, I was already bumming around the front plaza. “I’ll see you at lunch or something,” I promised. I wanted to find Riley first, and talk to her about what was going on.

She’d spoken to Drew on my behalf, and told him to keep an eye on me. What was that about?

While I waited for her rattling bracelets, I hesitated with my phone still in hand. It couldn’t hurt anything, I reasoned.

I dialed my uncle and held my breath. The phone rang and rang, but neither he nor the answering machine ever picked up.

Almost as soon as I flipped it shut my ringtone went off, and I saw “Jason’s Cell” appear in the little screen. I certainly hadn’t programmed his number into my phone.
But he had hours alone while you were sleeping yesterday to mess with it.
“What?” I demanded, already irritated.

“Stop antagonizing the boys, Braden.” Jason’s voice was cool across the phone with just a hint of distraction. I heard random sounds and static in the background, and quickly figured out he was in a car somewhere.

“The boys?”

I heard him sigh. My fingers tightened around the plastic phone. He sounded just like John. “They’re only there to make sure you’re safe. You seem bound and determined to uncover every viper’s nest in town, don’t you?”

“The car? It’s yours?” I’d assumed it had something to do with Catherine. “Wait, you hired me security? Are you kidding?”

“They’re only there to keep an eye out for you. Stop upsetting them.”

So they’d seen my little display after all. My smile wid
ened. “If that’s all it takes to freak them out, then I’d start looking for a refund.”

Jason didn’t say anything. I waited, checking the phone twice to see if the call had dropped, but he was still there. Just not saying anything.

“I need to talk to you,” I said, finally.

There was only a moment’s pause. “I have meetings all morning. Lunch. One o’clock. I’ll have Lucien call the school and make the arrangements.”

“Fine. Goodbye, Jason.” I hung up the phone before he could say anything back.

By the time the first bell rang, I still hadn’t seen or heard Riley approaching anywhere. Before I knew it, it was time for lunch, and I still hadn’t run into her. Someone dropped off a note from the office, directing me to meet my guardian at the tiny restaurant across the street.

I left the school and saw a small black car parked in the street, a different model than the one I’d seen the night before. This one didn’t have the same tinted windows.

“I’m sorry, we’re closed for a private party,” the manager interjected as I stepped inside.

“He’s with me, Frank.” Jason stood in a corner of the room, staring out the window. He glanced over his shoulder at me, and I was hit again with how much he and Uncle John looked alike.

Frank disappeared into the back, and we were left alone. “You rented out the whole place?” Never mind the fact that it wasn’t very big; even still, that seemed extreme.

“It seemed appropriate. Now what is this all about, Braden?”

I fell into one of the larger booths near Jason and leaned up against the wall with my knees in front of me. “You know something’s going to happen, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question, but a realization. Jason knew a lot more than I did, of that I had no doubt. “That’s why you’ve got people watching me.”

Jason turned away from the window, and I saw the cup of coffee held between his hands. He sat across from me, upright where I was slouched. “I thought I’d see something of myself in you. My hair, or maybe my nose. But I look at you, and all I can see is her.”

I heard the musing softness to his words, and understood something else about my father. “My mother?” He nodded once, almost a sharp jerk of his neck. Whatever else had made him this way, he’d loved her. The regret was there, in his voice and on his face.

“What was she like?” I thirsted for it. Needed to know more. About both of them.

“She was from a family like ours. And like ours, they’d lost their hold on the magic many years ago. Lucien introduced us, when I was just a little older than you are now. By then, things with Catherine had already started to crumble, and when I saw her … ” He trailed off, looking back to the window.

Things with Catherine? “You and Jade’s mom?”

Jason shook his head. “Never anything like that,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I thought, once, that I could love her. But even when things were on better terms, everything was always a struggle. Who was superior, who had more control, and who could achieve more.”

I didn’t care about their history. I wanted to know more about the woman that had died after giving birth to me. “You said before, that she saw things. My mother. Before she died.”

He hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “She felt a darkness … something she thought pursued her. She saw things that sounded like any other nightmare.” He looked out the window, as though he couldn’t look at me while he talked. “Your mother had the magic in her blood, but she had never managed anything but parlor tricks. I had no reason to suspect … ”

“Suspect what?” I didn’t trust myself to say anything more than a few short words. But I had to know more.

“That maybe she’d tapped into your gift, Braden. And she saw that Catherine was going to kill her.”

“She saw the future? That didn’t come from me.” With only one exception, I’d never seen what
would
happen. I only ever saw what
was
happening, or what
had
happened.

“Maybe not yet. But with the right training, who knows what you could do with your gift? We only know the smallest fraction of what your vi
sions entail.”

“Wait … what do you know about the witch eyes?”

He startled, glancing over at me for the first time. Almost as soon as he did, he’d reached into a pocket and put on his own pair of sunglasses. If I had to bet, I’d say it had something to do with the reddening of his eyes. “Witch eyes? Is that what you call them?”

I shrugged. “We had to call them something.”

“Yes, well, Lucien and I have spent the last few years researching everything we could find on Grace Lansing, but I’m afraid there hasn’t been much we could learn. Grace never gave her visions a proper name, and wrote down even less about them. But we were talking about your mother.”

I nodded. Lucien had mentioned some of this before. “So Catherine killed her, thinking it would kill both of us?”

“Yes.”

“And then you went after Catherine’s husband. A partner for a partner?”

He didn’t respond, but neither one of us needed him to. I knew the truth. “You tried to kill him,” I whispered, shaking my head.

“I was a different man then. We, your uncle and I, were raised to believe we were greater than the rest. That their lives meant nothing.” He glanced down at his hands. I saw a golden band still circling his finger. “Now it’s different.”

“So what changed your mind?”

“Almost ten years ago … you would have been seven or eight … I hired a girl. A tiny little witch, wanting to make her mark on the world. I’d lost the chance to train you, but this was almost like my second chance. A student I could teach.”

“What was her name?”

“Adele. A few weeks later Catherine had her own witchling under her wing.” Jason’s hands tightened around the cup. “Things escalated. When they died, we made a truce. I would stop coming after Catherine, and she would do the same.”

Jason waited while Frank, the manager, exited the kitchen, bearing a tray of various subs that he set down between us. After checking to see if we needed anything, he vanished into the back once more. “Catherine’s been planning something for a long time.”

I shook my head in surprise. “And you think Lucien hasn’t been?” He couldn’t be that blind. “Did you know he’s some kind of immortal? Gregory has pictures of Lucien that go back a hundred years. And he’s the same age he is now.”

“The same age he was when I took over the family businesses from my father,” Jason admitted.
He knew?
“Lucien is a very powerful ally, one our family has relied upon for generations. He sees things even you cannot.”