16. The Reprise of Stupid Wolf

Once the ritual was complete, my wards strengthened, Mom and Gran on their way, and a frozen pizza consumed, I finally got started painting the interior. My plan was for the walls to be an impressionistic take on the ocean. The wall of windows looking out on the bay would be painted in sea green and foam white. The opposite wall, on the road side of the gallery, would be deep sea indigo and midnight, with small glimmers of bioluminescent jellyfish and sea stars.

Up high on the wall, barely visible, would lurk the gaze of the sea monster tearing the gallery apart. I wanted the walls to be interesting, without taking the focus from the art displayed on them. It was a delicate balance.

I was about four hours in and pleased with the results so far. I kept scrambling down from the scaffold to check the effect from the middle of the gallery. I had to go back over the first section I'd painted when I'd stood back and realized that my brushstrokes were too short. I'd been thinking about Pearl's killer, D with the flashy car. How could I find him, and what did that corridor mean? Would anyone else know or care about my distracted, short brushstrokes? Probably not, but I couldn't handle looking at something I knew was wrong. It didn't look enough like moving water.

I painted over that section using longer, more fluid lines. When I stepped back then, it felt right. I'd been doing ten foot by five foot sections at a time, checking in between each block to make sure the new one flowed with the previous ones. It couldn't look patchy. It had to move like the ocean, ceaseless waves flowing in and out.

Pearl's killer seemed younger. Not as young as Pearl, but maybe midtwenties. He felt entitled, as though it was his right to do with her as he chose. I didn't sense anger or lust so much as joy. Satisfaction.

I was climbing down the scaffold to do a check when my vision began to tunnel and my limbs went weak. Instead of possibly bouncing my head off the concrete floor, I lay down on the plywood platform. As the world went dark, I hoped like hell I didn't roll off.

Growls and snarls fill my head. Paws pounding, pursuing through the thick forest. Declan's wolf stands ready but Logan doesn't step into the circle. He barks, bobs his head, and pads away as the pack descends on Declan, tearing into him. Covered in blood, he fights viciously, but it's too much. On a broken howl, he goes down under almost two dozen wolves, tearing at him with claws and teeth, destroying the one who could have saved them.

The image goes dark and then…

A young girl wakes from a nightmare. Wiping away her tears, she slips from her bed, unsure of who to go to in the night. Her sister is in the bed a few feet away, but this isn't something she wants to talk with Sylvia about. She needs an elder.

Her grandmother is the Crone, the most powerful of the Three on the Corey Council. The girl moves quietly across the room and out the door. Her grandmother and grandfather have rooms at the rear of the house. She avoids the stair that squeaks.

Standing outside the bedroom door, she hesitates. Should she knock?

"Come in, child, and tell me what has you up." The door opens and an old woman with long white hair takes the child's hand and walks her into an adjoining sitting room. The old woman closes the door and sits beside the child.

"What is it, girl?"

In stutters and stops, she tells her grandmother about the nightmare, about a baby that can see the future, can hear thoughts. The baby grows, but is sad and sickly, dark circles under her eyes, patches of hair missing. She wakes screaming in the night and there's nothing to be done to console her.

The babe only lives seven years before she tries to quiet the voices in her head by walking into the ocean.

The grandmother nods, patting the child's hand.

"You've been blessed, Sybil. You will bear a Cassandra wicche. They are very rare and a gift from the Goddess. We must do whatever we can to make her strong. She must live if she is to benefit the family."

Sybil nods, still looking sick and scared.

"Don't worry, child. We'll help. The most important thing—when the time is right—is to find a strong father for her, someone whose gifts match, if not surpass, your own. We must make her powerful enough to survive being a seer."

The image goes dark and then…

A dark, torch-lit stone room, low chanting and heat. My stomach cramps. I want out of this vision now. Head pounding, body sore, the chanting grows louder. Calliope and her demon are going to take me out in a vision. Pulling as hard as I can—

The image goes dark and then…

A man is standing at the top of a dark wooden staircase. Given the proportions of the entry, the art, the antiques, he's in a mansion. He's arguing with someone in the shadows. Shaking his head, one hand cuts through the air. The discussion is over. He turns to descend the stairs and instead goes flying, crumpling at the base, his head at an unnatural angle.

The image goes dark and then…

An older man is walking along the edge of a huge lawn in front of a great house. There are trees between himself and the crashing surf beyond. He checks his watch and again looks for someone. A cigarette flares in the dark. The man goes to the light and is hit in the head with a shovel. His body plummets from the high cliff to the jagged rocks and crashing waves below.

Head pounding, I rolled onto my side. Curled in on myself, I willed my stomach to relax. Please. I didn't want to clean up vomit.

There was a knock at the back door. What time was it? "Declan?" If it was him, he'd hear me.

"Yeah? Everything okay?" Concern was creeping into his voice.

Flicking my fingers, I unlocked the door. I heard it open and close as I tried to right myself. I shouldn't have moved so soon. Declan had just walked into the gallery as I climbed down the last five feet of scaffolding and ran past him for the bathroom. And once again, I was heaving into the toilet while he held my hair and ran his heating pad of a hand up and down my back.

Eyes watering, I mumbled, "Sorry," before my muscles cramped again. Stomach already empty, I was flushing foamy bile and wishing I was in my bed.

He held a warm, damp towel in front of me. I took it, thumping back on my butt while I wiped my face, feeling miserable and cold.

"Come on," he said, pulling me to my feet. "Let's get you into bed."

"Oh, sorry. I can't. I feel too sick."

He paused a moment and then chuffed a laugh. "Not that," he said, picking me up. "You need a soft, warm bed, dark, and a cup of tea. I'm not much of a tea maker, but I can google how to do it." He carried me upstairs, pausing to turn off the bright lights. "Can you lock the doors and lower the shutters?"

I nodded and did so. He was about to place me in my bed when I said, "Wait. Can you put me down?"

He did and I toed off my sneakers and socks before dropping the overalls. I crawled under the sheets in my panties and thermal, curling around my abused stomach.

"I'll get you tea," he said, turning back to the stairs.

"Declan?"

He paused.

"I don't need tea. Can you go into my backpack for the honey bottle? Maybe that can help."

He jogged down the stairs and returned a minute later, pouring water onto his hands, rubbing them together, and then gently caressing my forehead, the back of my neck. Almost immediately, I began to feel a lessening of the pain.

"Thank you." I burst into tears and couldn't stop. I was mortified but had no control over it.

He crouched down, brushing my hair out of the way. His big, warm hand was on my face, wiping away tears. "Tell me what I can do?" He held my hand and waited.

"It's not that," I finally choked out. I held up our joined hands. "It's this." I pulled my sleeve with my free hand, so I could mop my stupid sobbing face. "No one touches me. Ever. Not until you."

He rubbed his thumb over my fingers.

"Do you know that study they did on orphanages in the early 1900s?"

He shook his head.

"They were looking into why the death rate for infants in some orphanages was one hundred percent. I'm sure there were too many babies and not enough nurses. Whatever the case, the nurses were told not to touch the babies. Change them, but then leave them in their cribs. What they found is that babies die without love and affection, without touch. They attributed their deaths in the official paperwork to being hopeless."

He squeezed my hand.

"Hopeless. I used to think that Cassandra wicches died young because of all the horrible things we see and experience, but maybe it's isolation and hopelessness. You'll never understand what a gift it is for me to experience your touch." More tears slipped over my eyelashes.

He kissed my hand and then leaned in and kissed my lips. When he drew back, he stared down at our joined hands. "I don't understand what it is about me that allows me to do this." He kissed my fingers again. "But I'll thank your Goddess until my dying days for it."

Smiling, vision blurry, I said, "She can be your Goddess too."

"I'll take it under advisement."

Blinking away the tears, I looked into his gorgeous, bearded face, his warm brown eyes, and thanked Her for the both of us.

"Oh," I said, suddenly remembering. "Can you grab my phone out of my overalls?"

He kicked off his shoes, found my phone, and handed it to me before moving to the opposite side of the bed and big spooning me.

I pulled his hand under the covers and rested it on my stomach; the cramping began to ease up. "My own personal hot water bottle."

Kissing my shoulder, he slid his other arm under my head. "Was it a bad vision?"

I thought about that. "Yes and no." I woke up my phone. "I need to make this call and then I'll explain."

"Arwyn?" Detective Hernández said.

"Yeah. Listen, I just had a vision. Most of it I understand, but there were two parts that were a repeat of before. I'm worried the deaths are imminent. They felt…more like Pearl and the teacher in the morgue. I could totally be wrong about the connection, but I don't think so."

I heard paper shuffling and then Hernández said, "Go ahead."

I'd already told her some of this after the first vision, but I filled in the details I saw this time. After giving her as much info as I could, I disconnected, placing my phone on the nightstand and curling around Declan's hand again.

"You think those deaths are connected to your cousin?"

I nodded. "There's something about the energy. It felt familiar. Not exact, which bothers me, but really similar." I blew out a breath. "I'm not positive."

I told him about Calliope's curse that was no doubt making me sick right now and then about my mother. When I got to the dream daughter taking her own life, he pulled me in closer, trying to protect both the me that could have been and the me that was.

"Your mother isn't an easy woman, but knowing that would happen unless she found a father strong enough to keep her child alive…" He shook his head.

"Knowing what's expected of you for the benefit of the family, but fearing it," I said.

"And your family basically trying to breed her with the strongest magical man they could find."

I shivered and Declan's hand rubbed back and forth over my stomach.

"It explains a lot about why Mom is the way she is. The sacrifices she had to make to fulfill her role in the family. Meanwhile, I say no for years, even leaving the country, to avoid the Corey Council."

"For good reason," he said. "Look at you now. You're too sick to sit up. And she didn't have it anywhere near as bad as you. She had it hanging over her head for years. Yeah, that sucks. You've been seeing horrible visions since you were a toddler. You have to cover yourself from head to toe so as to not accidentally touch someone and hear their thoughts, relive their trauma. You feel the pain they've felt. You're not just watching horrible things happen. You take the punch, the stab, the hands around your neck. Don't do that to yourself. You wanting to live doesn't make you selfish."

I rolled over and wrapped my arm around him, resting my head on his chest. "Thank you."

I told him about the Alpha challenge I'd seen, about the ambush. He lay silent afterward, staring up through the skylight.

"You can't go," I said. "They're going to kill you."

He rubbed the arm I had wrapped around him but remained silent.

"Declan."

"I heard you and I'm thinking."

"You can't go." I went up on an elbow so I could stare down at him. "This isn't a fair fight. They're going to kill you."

"We'll see." He tried to pull me back down, so I was resting on his chest.

Headache finally gone, I went up on my knees and glared down at him. "No, we will not see. You are not walking into an ambush." I drilled my finger into his chest to make my point.

Wrapping his hand around my finger, he pulled it away, turning it over and rubbing his thumb in circles on my palm. "I appreciate the information. This is what we'd already been thinking. I'll plan accordingly. You do not, however, have the right to tell me what to do." When I opened my mouth to argue, he added, "Just as I can't tell you what to do."

On a huff of annoyance, I slid out of bed and stomped to the bathroom. I needed a minute to pee, strategize, and brush my teeth.