“Stop squirming,” I said. “This is what you came here for.”
“It tickles.”
I snorted. “Your life is fraught with inconvenience.”
Henry chuckled, causing his chest to shift underneath my careful henna application. Again.
“Don’t make me hurt you,” I snarled, only half-joking.
“I bet you say that to all the sorcerers.”
“Only the good guys.”
“I’m not sure you’re the best judge of that, Rochelle.”
“Yeah?” I kept my attention glued to the fine line I was adding to a henna design I was painting on Henry’s chest. “And what does that say about you?”
Henry didn’t answer. I flicked my gaze from the pale skin of his left pec to his piercing cobalt-blue eyes, countering his judgemental silence with a sneer. He broke eye contact with me almost immediately.
I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to be gazing into the weirdly pale-gray eyes of a diminutive oracle either. Especially not one who was currently hunched over me with her nose only inches from my bare chest.
I returned my attention to the henna tattoo. It was my third attempt since January at finding an image or symbol that would help Henry not only tame the wolf within him — stopping him from transforming at all — but also harness the strength and agility that came from being bitten by a werewolf … and surviving that bite.
I still thought it was an exercise in futility.
But, believing that I was capable of somehow imbuing my magic into the tattoos I sketched, Henry thought differently.
And as such, the newly-returned-to-active-duty US Marshal had flown all the way northwest from Arlington County, Virginia, to Summerland, British Columbia, where Beau and I were currently located. This was Henry’s second trip to Summerland. He was only staying for a couple of days. Hence the reason I had my ass planted on the lime-green kitchen table of the Brave and my feet on either side of Henry, who was seated on one of the cushioned dinette bench seats only two hours after his arrival.
I rolled my neck but didn’t take my eyes off the rich mahogany-red lines of the half-rendered image occupying the left upper third of Henry’s chest. I’d added a coiled pair of handcuffs constructed out of barbed wire all around the clawed wolf paw I’d designed for my second attempt, which I’d hennaed on Henry last May. But the design had failed to stop his transformation under the influence of the full moon. We had to start over every time he transformed into his half-man/half-beast form, because the shifter magic overrode any mark I made. I wasn’t exactly sure why I’d added the image of the cuffs this time. But it felt like the right next step.
My applicator cone was almost empty. I was still learning how to apply the henna smoothly, and found it got especially tricky when the cone wasn’t full. But when I reached blindly for the second applicator I’d prepped, I knocked it across the table toward the open window. The Brave was parked in the middle of a grove of apple trees. Though the orchard grass was slowly dying in the heat of June, the trees were swathed with lush green leaves and immature fruit.
Henry reached for the applicator, risking smearing the wet henna on his chest. Again.
“I’ve got it,” I snapped, leaning sideways and picking up the second cone without looking.
Henry hissed excitedly under his breath. I frowned at him, pulling my attention away from the design unfolding across his chest and following his gaze to my right.
The black ivy tattoo that normally curled around my right arm in a full sleeve was currently — and impossibly — projected about six inches away from my hand. The hand with which I would have sworn I’d grabbed the applicator. But it was the ivy, rather than my fingers, that were holding the second henna cone.
I blinked. Then I blinked again. I was fairly certain I wasn’t having a vision, both because no white mist obscured my sight and because Henry could apparently see the disembodied tattoo as well.
“New trick?” the marshal whispered, as if he was afraid of breaking the spell. Or, rather, of interrupting the magic I was involuntarily wielding.
“Brand spanking new,” I murmured, rotating the palm of my hand upward. The ivy curled back around my arm, depositing the cone applicator in my open hand before becoming inert once more.
“Do it again,” Henry said.
I laughed, quick and heavy on the snark. I wanted to lose it. I wanted to scramble off the dinette and burrow into the well-worn sheets neatly smoothed over the mattress in the back of the Brave. I wanted to hide away. To ignore and deny the constantly changing landscape of my life.
Instead, I ignored the uncertainty and the fear trickling down my spine as I turned my attention back to the temporary tattoo, applying all my focus and the second cone of henna to the final lines of the intricate wolf paw I had been refining for Henry since he’d requested the tattoo almost a year ago.
I’d spent some time with Jade Godfrey — aka the dowser, aka the alchemist, aka the dragon slayer — five months ago. Not by choice, of course.
Jade laughed. A lot. She laughed at everything she couldn’t control. Not lightly or offishly, but in acknowledgement that she couldn’t control it. And she survived.
I wasn’t going to develop a chocolate or cupcake obsession that I didn’t have the funds to support. But I could co-opt her other coping mechanism. Jade laughed, so I tried to laugh.
“So the butterfly, the skeleton key, and now the ivy can all move independently?” Henry asked.
I nodded, adding a final curve to a claw before shifting back and letting my eyes go out of focus while I contemplated the design. I was still learning to trust my instincts when it came to wielding my oracle magic. Soft focus and patience helped me tap into those instincts.
“Blackwell was right,” the marshal said.
“Blackwell was right about what?” I’d involuntarily clenched my toes, so I forced myself to relax my feet on the orange-and-brown fabric of the bench. I hadn’t seen or heard from the sorcerer in five months. The mere mention of his name put me on edge.
“That the tattoos are your version of artifacts,” Henry said. “Also possibly a form of personal shielding. One that makes people overlook you. Though you always stood out to me. Sorcerers generally channel their power through magical objects, touchstones, and the like.”
“Like your handcuffs? Or Blackwell’s amulet?”
Henry nodded. “Witches pull magic from the earth, channeling it through themselves.” He shuddered as if the idea unsettled him. “Sometimes they use written spells, like a sorcerer. But often it’s about intention rather than exact words. A sorcerer needs a focus. Always.”
“Except I’m not a sorcerer.” Trying to not think too much about it, I bent over Henry’s chest again, allowing whatever will guided my hand to move me. I added a few more lines to the henna-sketched image, including extra points on the barbed wire and a crosshatched detail on the chain links that connected the two halves of the handcuffs.
“Yeah. Magic doesn’t usually combine. An Adept inherits magic from one of their parents. Similar to dominant or recessive traits. With necromancy, it’s even more specific, with only female children inheriting.”
Necromancers. Great. That wasn’t creepy at all. Though, after two and a half years, nothing about the Adept world really fazed me anymore.
“Which is why Beau is a shapeshifter like his mother and not a spellcaster like his dad.”
“Also slightly unusual, though I’m not well-versed in shapeshifter lore. Tigers are a rare form of shapeshifting. Wolves are most numerous. So I would have assumed the trait was recessive, but I guess not.”
“But I’m an oracle. And also some sort of sorcerer.”
“Apparently.”
I lifted my gaze to meet Henry’s. He didn’t look away this time. “And you think that’s why Blackwell is interested in me.”
“I guess that depends on how much he knew about you before you met.”
“Well, since I didn’t even know magic existed then, I’d say he didn’t know much. Other than whatever the sketches he bought told him. That I was an oracle of some sort.”
“Fair enough.” Henry’s Southern drawl thickened as it always did when he forced himself to be polite.
I smirked at him, then dropped my gaze to the tattoo again. I wanted badly to change the subject.
“Did you shave again?”
“I waxed.”
“You should think about laser.”
“Once you commit to a design and actually ink it, I’m hoping I can keep the chest hair.”
I nodded. “Very manly.”
Henry snorted, then silence fell between us. We’d spent hours like this, both here in Summerland and earlier in Portland, over the last six months or so. But Henry never complained about how long it was taking me to figure out the design, or how long I fiddled with each application.
“Question is, though,” the sorcerer murmured, apparently not content to leave things be, “why isn’t Blackwell training with you?”
I met his cobalt gaze for a brief moment. Then I swung myself off the table and slid standing to the floor. I crossed to pull a bottle of lemon juice out of the tiny fridge a couple of steps over on the other side of the RV. “I haven’t heard from him.”
Henry shifted up off the bench seat, stretching. Then he reached for the cowboy hat resting on the counter to my far right. “And why is that?”
I shrugged, adding lemon juice to a small bowl of sugar and cloves already measured out on the countertop.
“Since when?” Henry ran his fingers along the brim of his hat, then set it in its rightful place on his dark-haired head.
“Since Westport.” I carefully stirred the lemon juice into the sugar, making a thin but sticky paste.
“That’s odd.”
I looked over at Henry, deliberately and casually shrugging one shoulder as if it didn’t bother me in the least that I’d been pretty much abandoned by Blackwell. Okay, ‘abandoned’ might be a strong word. But what else was I supposed to think after, like, twenty unanswered text messages?
“So … you haven’t seen him?” Henry was referring to my visions, not my actual sight.
“I didn’t say that.”
“So he’s still alive?”
“As far as I know.”
“Perhaps for the best.”
“Survival usually is.”
Henry snorted. “You know what I mean.”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t interested in discussing Blackwell with anyone. I wasn’t interested in having friends in general, but Henry apparently had other ideas.
“You want to dry that in the sun?” I asked. “So I can do multiple applications of the lemon juice quickly?” Keeping the henna design moist to prolong its drying helped it adhere as darkly as possible to the skin. Once it was dry, rubbing it off carefully rather than washing it, then coating the design in oil kept it from fading too quickly.
“Sure. Just let me hit the head first.” Henry crossed toward the bathroom tucked behind the driver’s seat at the front of the Brave.
“Good thing you put on your hat,” I said, attempting to tease him. “You never know what might happen while on the toilet.”
The marshal flashed me a grin that had gotten much, much toothier since he’d been bitten by Kandy. “You never do know.”
After three applications of the lemon-and-clove mixture, Henry lay for a while in the sun to let the henna tattoo fully dry. He was sprawled out by our cheap resin patio table on one of a set of matching chairs. Beau had purchased the set from a thrift store just after we got into town. While he rested, I made potato salad. Even chilled, the hardboiled eggs didn’t peel easily, but their ragged edges were barely noticeable once they were chopped and covered in mayo, sour cream, green onion, and paprika.
We’d been in the town of Summerland since the end of March. Because I was Canadian, I couldn’t stay in the US for more than six months, though I’d pushed that requirement between the crap with Beau’s family and the short leash the pack liked to keep us on. Beau and I had been planning a slow trip up north to the Yukon and Northwest Territories, but when we asked permission from the West Coast North American Pack to leave their US territory, Desmond had other ideas about what we should do while we were spending time across the border.
Being indebted to the pack had put a seriously tight tether on my need to be as free as possible.
Still, our current surroundings were idyllic, even far from the American west coast I’d fallen in love with. We were helping the Thompson family open a CSA orchard — community supported agriculture — along with a bed and breakfast. Eddie and Leanne were members of the West Coast North American Pack, as were their eleven-year-old twins. They had inherited the five-acre property we were currently camped on from an uncle the previous year.
When I was done making the salad, Henry wandered back to his cottage to grab a cold six-pack. His newly built, self-contained vacation rental suite was situated between a stand of slowly ripening yellow, greengage, and early Italian plum trees, and a smaller mixed grove of peaches, nectarines, and apricots that filled the front yard of the property’s main house.
I locked the Brave behind me, taking a circuitous route through the apple orchard toward the driveway, then down to the lakefront beach.
Usually, the pack preferred to keep its members close to — if not actually in — Portland, where it was based. But the Thompsons were a special case. First, there was the potential for the property — revenue-wise and as a base of operation in BC away from the lower mainland and Vancouver Island where the witches held territory. And second, the twins were an anomaly, not unlike me. They hadn’t inherited the shapeshifting abilities from just one of their parents. Leanne was a werewolf, and Eddie was a coyote shifter. But the twins were thought to be a mix of both species, even though they were too young to have transformed yet. Apparently, werewolf senses were honed enough to scent the twins’ burgeoning magic. Crossbreeds of wolf and coyote were supposedly common enough in the real world. The Eastern coyote was a wolf hybrid that ranged all along the east coast of the US and Canada. But such things complicated the rigid structure of the pack. So the Thompsons had relocated to Summerland with the blessing and financial backing of Portland, putting the twins out of sight. Though not out of mind.
I paused underneath one of my favorite apple trees, peering up through the screen of leaves at its immature fruit. The trees in the older section of the orchard had lower boughs that arched just over my head, and upper branches that rose up well over twenty feet off the ground. Eddie was planting semidwarf fruit trees in the expanded and reclaimed sections of the property. Those ten-to-fifteen-foot-high varieties were easier to pick, and were cultivated to yield more fruit than full-sized trees.
Since we’d first arrived at the property, I’d been checking on the fruit every day. Eddie still wasn’t entirely sure which varieties of apple were growing in this section of the orchard. He thought they were probably McIntosh, mixed with Gravenstein, Jonagold, Fuji, and Cox’s Orange Pippin. But he hadn’t actually been on the property since he was a boy. I had gone online to investigate all the apples he’d mentioned, and had been diligently looking for signs to distinguish one tree from another as they bloomed, then fruited.
I didn’t miss the significance of our current campsite. I had a thing for apples. I’d teased Beau about agreeing to Desmond’s ‘commission’ because of the location. But, all joking aside, I was fairly certain my thoughtful boyfriend figured that keeping me calm and centered would help with my oracle magic. So he had pretty much made sure I was surrounded by one of my most favorite things in the world, day in and day out. Which at least partially made up for the pack ordering us here to help the Thompsons’ transition.
Well, Beau was helping, anyway. He was doing a ton of landscaping work and heavy lifting, while I fielded requests from the occasional random Adepts who showed up at the door of the Brave with little or no notice. Most of those were vetted by the pack, so it wasn’t clear why they couldn’t give me more of a heads-up. I also kept my Etsy shop as updated as possible. Most of my sketches still sold within forty-eight hours of listing. And not all of them to Blackwell. Actually, as far as I could tell from shipping addresses, the sorcerer hadn’t purchased a single charcoal from any of my updates since January. Since the last time I’d seen him, in Westport with Jade.
Blackwell had stepped back from my life. Way back. And I knew why, but I wasn’t sure there was anything else I could have done at the time to prevent it. I sketched what my magic willed me to see. And when Jade Godfrey had abruptly appeared in Westport, Washington, needing to find the path that would lead her to the kidnapped far seer, I’d shown her what I’d seen, which had gotten Blackwell involved.
And though the sorcerer had survived — according to the brief glimpses I’d had of him since then — his silence led me to believe it hadn’t ended well.
Blackwell wasn’t the forgiving or charitable type. He preferred that his investments were secure and firmly indebted to him, and to him alone. I had crossed that line by intentionally bringing him and Jade together, and risking his health and safety by doing so. Though I had no doubt the sorcerer would seek me out again the second it was profitable for him to do so.
Speaking of profit that had nothing to do with actual money, whenever an Adept showed up to request a ‘seeing’ from me, they always brought an offering. As if I was some sort of agent for an ancient deity. It was seriously weird, but I was fairly certain it was the proper way of things. One of those rituals that helped Adept life run smoothly. And I wasn’t rude enough to turn any offering down.
But I didn’t ask any questions either.
I just did my job as an oracle.
Because if that wasn’t what I was meant to do, they wouldn’t have shown up at the door to the Brave in the first place.
Yes.
I believed.
I believed I was an arm or hand of destiny. Or maybe just one set of eyes among many other sets, including my actual mentor, the far seer of the guardians.
I hadn’t seen Chi Wen in months either, though that wasn’t at all unusual. According to Kandy, who Beau kept in text contact with, everyone who had been meant to survive whatever quest I’d helped them with last January still walked the earth, including the far seer. Sometimes the green-haired werewolf was as oblique as my mentor. But since I had no intention of getting involved any more than I already had, I didn’t bother asking anything more beyond verifying that Kandy, Jade, Drake, and Chi Wen were okay.
Plus, magic was meant to be wielded. I felt that as a fundamental truth — that to deny the oracle magic would be to deny an important part of myself. Maybe even my soul. If I’d believed in that sort of thing. But higher powers and all that were out of my scope.
The seeings I did for my so-called clients were eclectic, and I didn’t put any real effort into analyzing those visions beyond the time it took to share them, and to occasionally sketch some aspect of what I saw that drew my attention. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if I was seeing the future at all. Maybe some Adepts needed clarity about the past.
The eggs I’d just used in the potato salad had come from chickens that were one of the offerings I’d received. They were a gift from a witch who had found me just a few days after we’d hooked up the Brave in the Thompsons’ orchard. Four twelve-week-old pullets and a cockerel. Westphalian deathlayers, they were called. An exceedingly rare dual-purpose breed with gorgeous black-and-white feathers and vibrant red combs. Deathlayers were so-named because they laid eggs their entire lives, which — I had figured out via Google — was unusual. The dual-purpose part meant they were good for meat and eggs.
But no matter how insanely cool it might be to own animals called deathlayers, I’d had no idea what to do with the box of chicks. Fortunately, Leanne had gleefully taken to them, and we’d set up temporary housing for the birds in the garage of the main house while Beau built them a coop. The pullets had come into lay at the beginning of May, producing large white eggs. Leanne was planning on trying to hatch some chicks in the late fall, after the harvest was done and all the people who were members of the CSA orchard had their shares fulfilled. With the grand opening of the B&B scheduled for Canada Day, the new venture would have been up and running for four months by then.
Hatching chicks seemed crazy complicated according to my hastily compiled Internet research, but if Leanne wanted to give it a try, then good for her. I was just surprised at how attached I’d gotten to the birds. A pet that laid eggs was pretty cool.
Actually, any pet was seriously cool to someone who’d lost count of how many foster homes and temporary placements she’d been subjected to since becoming an orphan at birth.
My necklace with its huge raw diamond was the only thing I had that tied me to any sense of the family I was supposed to have been born into. The only thing that tied me to my mother — Jane Hawthorne, the Oracle of Philadelphia. And I only knew her name, title, and place of residence courtesy of the far seer. By the length of the necklace’s thick rose-gold chain, it was an easy guess that she’d been much taller than my five-foot-three-inch stature, but I had no other idea of what she’d looked like. No sense of whether she’d shared my pale-gray eyes. Or if her hair had slowly turned white in her early twenties as mine was doing. It wouldn’t even hold the jet-black dye I preferred for more than forty-eight hours.
Nor did I have any idea why my mother had been in Vancouver the day she’d died from injuries sustained in a car accident right before I was born.
I hadn’t stayed more than a couple of months in one place since my nineteenth birthday, though moving on quickly wasn’t always by choice. But after three months, the orchard, the surrounding five acres, and the beach along Okanagan Lake were starting to feel … well, not like home, but normal. Even comfortably habitual.
I glanced up at the main house as I crossed into the section of the orchard dedicated to mature pear trees. The freshly painted, brown-sided rancher was perched two-thirds of the way up the property, which rose in a gradual slope from the main road.
Eddie Thompson was a brilliant gardener. The beds situated behind the house were already teeming with fresh lettuce, spinach, and peas. Tomatoes, zucchini, and cantaloupes were growing as well.
Leanne was the cook. She wanted the ‘breakfast’ part of the Thompson B&B to stand out. Summerland was a well-established tourist destination, so making a name against all the other B&Bs in the area was key. Though I had a feeling the Thompsons’ guests would have a very ‘Adept’ vibe about them, and that the pack would specifically be sending a lot of business this way.
The ‘bed’ part of the B&B consisted of six brand-new cottages, ranging from four-hundred-square-foot single-room suites — like Henry’s cottage — to the six-hundred-square-foot two-bedroom unit situated up near the top of the property in the cherry tree grove. Only five had been built so far, though. The Brave was occupying the sixth spot, whose concrete pad Beau had immediately claimed when we arrived.
I had also reserved the cottage nearest us for my friends Gary and Tess, who were arriving in a couple of days for the B&B’s unofficial opening. It had a great view of the lake. The other three cottages were at the base of the property among the plum trees, in the middle of the acreage among the pear trees, and Henry’s cottage near the stone fruit grove. Two of the four empty cottages were still in the final stages of construction, needing some paint, hardware, and light fixtures.
I changed course to walk between fifteen-foot pear trees that bore tags marking them as Bartlett, Bosc, and Flemish Beauty. Crossing slightly uphill underneath their already fruit-laden boughs, I caught a glimpse of my deathlayers. Technically, I was supposed to be heading down to the beach with my potato salad offering in hand for the communal barbecue Beau had planned for Henry’s arrival, but I always checked on the chickens a few times a day. I liked the routine.
As I rounded the brown-sided chicken coop on my way to the wire-mesh run, the oracle magic hit me without warning.
My sight was whitewashed between one step and the next. My heart rate instantly spiked. I inhaled slowly and steadily, pulling oxygen into my lungs, then visualizing it running through my bloodstream and into my brain.
The whiteout in my mind’s eye shifted, resolving into a thick fog I recognized. It was what sometimes marked out a vision as being particularly intense. I was still getting accustomed to the process, though. On top of dealing with the actual substance of my visions, it was a daunting task to glean and catalogue as much information as I could about my magic.
A few steps to my right, the rooster uttered a sharp cry, calling his hens to him. Wings flapped and talons scraped on the wooden ramps as the flock retreated into the safety of the coop.
I’d frightened them.
Or, rather, my reaction to the magic moving through the earth underneath my feet, channeling through my limbs, and settling into my brain made them wary.
Only I could feel and see this particular energy. Oracle power.
I tugged my necklace out from underneath my T-shirt. Wrapping my left hand around the large raw diamond, I whispered, “I’m here. I see. Show me.”
The fog in my mind thinned, fading until it was a fine mist around the edges of my sight.
I was still in the orchard, among the fruit trees.
For a moment, I thought the vision had dispersed without showing me anything. Sometimes I got minor blips that way, like precursors to something bigger. As if the magic wanted or needed me primed.
Then I realized that the quality of the light was wrong and bright moonlight, not sunlight, was filtering through the deeply shadowed trees. I turned, scanning the trees in their careful rows. Nothing moved. I couldn’t hear anything other than the soft comforting chatter of the chickens in their coop. Though the visions didn’t always come with audio.
“Okay,” I whispered. “I see.”
The canopy of leaves above me was lush and green, the fruit well-formed and nearly ripe. Cherries. Not apples or pears or plums. The branches and trunks of the trees were thicker. Taller. I was presumably in the upper part of the property among the Bing, Rainier, and Skeena cultivars, and it looked to be the same season. But I had no idea whether the moment the magic wanted me to see was going to happen next week or a year from now.
Something shifted in the deep shadows. A spike of terror blossomed at the base of my skull, and I chided myself for it. It was a vision. Nothing could hurt me here.
In fact, the entire point of my visions was to stop bad things from happening. Well, usually.
But something was wrong — something felt off — about the darkening shadows on the trunk of the nearest tree. They were too dark, their edges too well defined. And they were too high up along that trunk.
If I’d been sketching the cherry grove by moonlight, I would have softened and shaded the pockets of darkness along the base of the trees. But this shadow leeched out around the front of one tree’s smooth bark, and for a moment, I could have sworn I saw it suck all the vitality from that tree to leave only a gray, deadened husk behind.
“Not a shadow,” I whispered. My brain screamed to comprehend what I was seeing. Pain seared through my temples.
The not-a-shadow had eyes. Crimson red slits burned within the darkness. A sharp-clawed, black-scaled, four-fingered hand grasped the tree trunk. It was as if the shadow was pulling itself into existence, manifesting within the orchard.
Not a shadow, though.
A demon.
The rooster crowed somewhere behind me, and I stumbled back from the creature as it appeared. My back hit the chicken coop and I collapsed to the ground. The rooster crowed a second time, fiercely claiming his territory.
The sound steadied me.
The visions were mine, and under my control. I wasn’t going to run away from the darkness clawing into the reality unfolding in my mind.
“Rochelle?” a soft, childish voice asked.
The vision dissipated as quickly as it had hit. Though it left my actual sight hazy, I could see a towheaded eleven-year-old boy before me. He was grasping the Tupperware container that held my potato salad as if it might be precious treasure, presumably picked up along the path to the coop.
“Calvin.” I tried to smile, conscious of the fact that I wasn’t quite ready to stand.
“You dropped this,” he said, squaring his shoulders and lifting his chin with a hint of fierceness. Though it was only June, his skin was already tanned a light golden brown.
My smile came easier. The steel wire mesh that surrounded the bottom of the coop and the run was cutting into my back, so I stood, finding that my legs held me without trouble. Apparently, my weakness was just a state of mind.
I brushed off my jeans. My necklace swung forward as I did so, capturing Calvin’s attention.
His nostrils flared, scenting my oracle magic. His well-washed blue jean shorts were ragged around his knees, his T-shirt had been abandoned somewhere, and his green sneakers were covered in sand. I could smell the pineapple-and-coconut-scented sunscreen that had been applied so liberally it left streaks across his bare chest and arms. He’d been at the beach.
“Did Beau send you to fetch me?” I asked.
Calvin nodded without speaking.
I stepped forward, holding my hands out for the potato salad.
“I’ll carry it,” he said. “That’s proper, right?”
“Sure.”
He darted ahead of me toward the driveway that cut up from the road to the main house. Not sure if I was going to need to draw or not, I followed at a more sedate pace. I always had a sketchbook with me, but I preferred to work in the Brave. Out of sight of questioning eyes.
Calvin paused at the side of the drive, glancing back at me. He scuffed his sneaker in the gravel that edged the recently laid pavement.
I closed the space between us.
The child muttered something, but with his chin practically pressed to his chest, I didn’t catch his actual words.
“Sorry?”
“Did you see something?” His voice was pitched just loud enough for me to hear him.
“Yes.”
He nodded, then dared to tilt his head sideways to look at me. His gaze fell somewhere in the vicinity of my eyes, though it was doubtful whether he could see them through my bug-eyed white-framed sunglasses.
“Something bad?”
“I’m not sure yet.” I wasn’t going to lie to him.
“Something about us? Something about Krista?” His twin sister.
“I didn’t see her. Or anyone in particular, actually.”
He nodded. Then with his duty as the ten-minute-older twin satisfied, he took off down the drive to the main road that ran alongside the lake.
Shapeshifters might be brave by nature. Even foolhardy. But even so, having an oracle living in their apple orchard was bound to trigger all sorts of territorial responses.
The entire family was wary around me.
But they adored Beau.
And who wouldn’t?
Okanagan Lake was so large that the uninitiated might easily mistake it for an inlet or a bay of some adjacent sea. In the late afternoon light, the blue of the water was vibrant, almost blinding to my sensitive eyes. The landscape surrounding the lake consisted of gently rolling hills that were turning golden brown in the heat of early summer. Though according to the locals, it had been a slightly cooler year so far, and we’d been hit by an unexpected downpour the previous day. The breeze rustling through the surrounding grassland and across the sandy beach was dry despite the size of the lake, though, and was doing a great job of tangling my wedge-cropped hair.
Three cities occupied the shores of Okanagan Lake along its eighty-plus-mile length — Vernon at its northern tip, Penticton in the south, and Kelowna about a forty-minute drive north of us. In addition to Summerland, a number of other smaller communities also spread along the lakeshore.
Much of this area was wine country, and vineyard after vineyard had ousted heritage farms and orchards over the last two decades. The growing conditions along the lake were supposedly perfect for dry whites and a complex, ever-evolving Pinot Noir. Not that I’d ever tasted either. But it was pretty much all the predominately white, well-aged population of Summerland talked about, even at Tim Hortons or IGA. Both of which were within walking distance. Along with four different wineries, of course.
And not that I had any particular problem with older white people. Tess and Gary were two of my only friends, and they fell into that category. But Beau, with his gorgeous mocha skin and deep Southern accent, and I, with my Asian-shaped eyes and dual arm-sleeve tattoos, didn’t inspire much chumminess from the neighbors.
But that was all cool, because I was seriously lacking in the small-talk-conversation department anyway.
Standing on the edge of the beach, I could see for literally miles in all directions. The first time we’d wandered down from the house and dipped our toes in the water, Beau had grunted in pleasure and proclaimed the landscape ‘perfect for spying danger from a long way off.’ The grassy hills surrounding the lake were only occasionally punctuated by sagebrush and scattered ponderosa pine trees.
All the area needed to really pull off the look was cowboys, cattle, and First Nations tribes, but I knew that such things had long been shoved way, way back into the annals of history. Those days had been conquered three times, in fact — first by the gradual settlement that had followed the early days of the fur trade and the gold rush, then by the orchards that had dominated the area by the 1950s, and now by the wineries.
And the conquerors always rewrote history, right? That was more than a rote saying for me these days. I’d seen it.
That was what happened when you hung around with really powerful people, even if you weren’t the one doing the rewriting. Even if you were simply a tool that the people with the power used.
I shook off the inappropriately timed thought.
No one controlled me. No person, at least. I made choices. I was master of my own fate.
Well, as far as I knew. Because I was actually blind to my own future.
So, yeah. I’d spent some time on Google researching the area. Beau had the Wi-Fi installed the day after we set up the Brave.
I tugged my sneakers off one at a time before stepping onto the hot, dry sand. Calvin was already shoeless, apparently well adapted to the heat, and racing ahead of me. A dozen or so feet away, where the sand became harder packed, Beau and Leanne were fussing over the half-lit coals of a massive portable grill.
Calvin tossed the potato salad in the general direction of his dark-blond mother. Leanne caught the offering without turning her attention away from the grill. Apparently, werewolf reflexes were an asset when raising children.
The boy veered off, sprinting to the water’s edge to join his twin sister and his father, Eddie, who were paddling around in two large inner tubes.
Beau looked up, catching my gaze. His dark aquamarine eyes were brilliant against his sun-darkened skin. A lazy grin spread across his face, and my heart pinched. It was always this way when I hadn’t seen him for even a few hours. I’d always thought people in love were supposed to get used to each other, or even bored, as months and then years rolled past. Familiarity faded into contempt, didn’t it? But it didn’t. I didn’t. We didn’t.
I might actually love Beau more than I had thirty seconds before. I wasn’t sure how I contained all that emotion every day, but I did.
I smiled back at him as he paced toward me, meeting me halfway across the beach. I lifted up on my tiptoes to accept a chaste kiss. The loose sand was warm underneath my feet, comforting now rather than uncomfortable.
“Watch out for Ogopogo!” Calvin shrieked, evoking the serpentine monster that supposedly inhabited Okanagan Lake. He surged out of the water and attempted to knock his father off his tube.
Grinning even wider, Beau slung his arm over my shoulder as he turned around to observe the scene unfolding at the edge of the lake. More delighted shrieking and laughter exploded as Krista dove off her inner tube, then popped up on Eddie’s far side. Wearing a light-blue bathing suit underneath green swim trunks, she was Calvin’s exact twin except for her longer hair and slighter stature. United against their father, the two colluded to dethrone him.
I ran my hand down Beau’s forearm in a slow caress, knowing that at any minute, the preteens would be calling for reinforcements and he would answer their summons.
“You had a vision,” Beau said, flicking his gaze away from the happy family for a second. He could most likely smell the oracle magic still lingering around me.
“I did. But I’ve got nothing to report. Not yet.”
“You don’t need to draw?”
“Not yet.”
“Beau!” Krista was standing knee deep in the lake, her hands on her nonexistent hips as she delightedly shrieked her second champion’s name. She beckoned to him, each of her wrists boasting a half-dozen colored plastic bracelets, each one representing a charity the eleven-year-old actively represented.
Beau tugged off his bright-green T-shirt and pressed it into my hands before jogging over to join the group thrashing in the water. When he was in waist deep, he turned back, offering me a wink and a saucy grin before he dove into the lake.
I could watch Beau running shirtless on a beach all day. And keep watching when he returned all dripping wet, then threw himself down on a towel next to —
Henry cleared his throat behind me.
I spun, glaring at him.
He tipped his cowboy hat in my direction, then wandered over to Leanne and the barbecue. He was carrying the six-pack of beer, and had changed his blue T-shirt for a dark-green short-sleeved cotton shirt. I would have thought a cowboy would look out of place on a beach, but he didn’t. But then, Henry was one of those people who seemed to just fit in anywhere and everywhere, like Beau and Jade Godfrey. The rest of us had to be comfortable on the periphery, or in the shadows.
A flash of my vision in the cherry grove wiped the late-afternoon sun-drenched scenery away.
I was suddenly starkly cold, watching a shadow that wasn’t a shadow move among the fruit trees. Or, as best as I could figure, rip its way into our world through the fruit trees, from wherever demons originated.
A rooster crowed. Its cry was a mournful sound I’d never heard the deathlayer rooster make.
Then Henry laughed.
I was back on the beach.
Correction.
I hadn’t left.
It had been a long time since a simple vision had distracted me so much that it made me lose touch with reality.
Beau was shoulder deep in the water with a towheaded, chortling twin over each shoulder. He was looking back, watching me. Concerned, but trying to not draw attention my way.
I shook my head slightly, assuring him I was okay. Then I willed myself to move toward Leanne and Henry.
No point in losing it until there was something to lose it over.
Like the fact that the grill was smothered in chunky, gag-worthy hotdogs. That was definitely something I was going to have to take exception to.