Chapter 2

 

THE CIG TEAM dropped me off at the side of the highway, with my pack, sometime around noon on a freezing January day. The reason I say sometime was that they’d placed a hood over my head to transport me and had dumped me at the side of the road without even taking the hood off.

As I fought with the sack-mask, I could hear a car approach and felt a familiar presence in that vehicle. I grinned. Renee. I released myself from darkness and squinted into the glaring winter sunshine.

The car stopped opposite and I grabbed for my pack, wondering if I should go and join her. Wait, no, was I meant to do some kind of military parade? I’d never quite got all the protocol in “boot camp,” and when you didn’t get protocol, you had to do a forfeit. I had two extra inches of muscle on my arms from all the push-ups.

Renee saved me from my deliberation by getting out of the car. Unlike the bodybuilding berets I’d spent the last few months with, she wasn’t in military fatigues. Nope, Renee was in jeans, a turtle-neck sweater, and bomber jacket. Her blonde hair was shorter than I remembered, kinda funky. She was wearing aviators. Man, she was cool. I looked down at myself still in fatigues. Of all the things to describe how I looked, cool wasn’t it.

“I didn’t get told to wear nothin’ different,” I blurted out as she strolled toward me. I had no idea why I felt so jittery.

Her frown dipped below the ridge of her sunglasses as she prowled up to me. “It’s just not good enough, Lorelei.”

I snapped to attention with her tone and she paraded around me.

“You have scuff marks on your boots, your shirt is hanging out on one side, and what do you call this?” Her hand ruffled through the back of my hair.

I tensed at the sound of her words. It was one thing for Ursula “Grouchy” Frei to give me a dressing-down but Renee doing it was painful. My throat got all dry and my skin sprung a leak. “I . . . Um . . . I—”

“You what?”

I wondered if I’d lost my burdens altogether. I mean, I had felt her coming and I was sure that she had been pleased to see me. Even her aura had started the little light show it performed whenever she was talking to me. Frei had broken my antennae, I was sure of it.

“You look like a mess, Lorelei,” Renee continued when I didn’t—couldn’t—answer. “You think this is a vacation?”

I shook my head.

“You think that the protection corps is the easy option?”

If I did, I sure didn’t now. “No.”

“No?” Renee walked around to stand in front of me. Her glasses bounced the sunlight up into my eyes as she leaned in. “No?” Her frown deepened. “No what, Lorelei?”

Oh, heck . . . what was she again? I shoved my hands in my pockets trying to think.

Renee yanked them back out again.

She folded her arms.

With her eyes hidden, it was like she was wearing a mask. Her stance said she meant business but her aura rippled with pinks and yellows which swirled from her like wispy fingers toward me. Frei had broken me. I was so confused.

“I asked you a question, Lorelei.”

Snapping my eyes to the distance, I bit my lip. “What did you ask again?”

“Drop and give me fifty.” Her voice was so curt, so mean.

I dropped to the ground ready to start push-ups when I heard it: Laughter. Warm, gentle laughter. 

“What did she do to you?” she asked through soft chuckles. Her fingers curled around my bicep as she pulled me to my feet. “Where’s the bad-ass attitude I met way back when?”

She drew her aviators down with her finger. Her nose crinkled up with her laughter.

“You’re not mad?” Was she mad? Wasn’t she? Huh?

Her grey eyes gleamed with amusement. “I thought you figured that out when you were watching my light show.”

“But you were saying . . . you said . . . I mean . . . but . . . the push-ups?” My head hurt.

Her eyes filled with affection, with warmth. She opened her arms and launched herself into me for a hug. “As if I’d ever do such a thing to you, Dimwit.”

The sound of Nan, my grandmother’s, pet name hit like a wave of warmth, vaporizing the tension that had been in place. I’d not even realized how hunched my shoulders had been.

I squeezed Renee back, fighting the urge to cling to her. The pinks and purples filled my vision even as I closed my eyes. Relief palpitated through me. Heck, I’d missed her. “Never leave me with Franken-Frei ever again.”

I felt Renee rumble with laughter before she released me. “Franken-Frei?”

“Yup,” I said with a grin, hoping she wouldn’t notice how mushy I was. “I got everyone calling her it . . . behind her back.”

“I missed you,” Renee said, almost as if she were telling it to herself.

Boy was I glad to hear it. Still, I didn’t trust my voice enough to speak. I could even feel the tears brimming. Clearly, I needed therapy. Well, more therapy.

Her aura waved around like it was doing a happy dance. After a second of silence she shook off whatever thought was in her mind and her aura quietened down. “So, you ready for the real work?”

“Are you going to make me do push-ups?”

Renee squeezed my arm. “Aeron, if I make you do any more physical training, there won’t be clothes to fit you.”

I followed her to the car, stowed my pack, and smiled at the fact she’d already put the seat way back so I could actually get in.

“So, where are we going?” I asked as we set off down the endless strip of road. There was nothing but frosty white on the sparse dirt either side. “And where are we?”

Renee smiled. “Can’t tell you. But it’s going to take a while so just relax.”

I stretched out my legs as much as the space would allow and pulled open the top shirt buttons. Why anyone thought it was smart to look like you were choking, I didn’t know.

“Probably a good idea if you ditch the fatigues,” Renee murmured as she glanced at me. “You have got something else, right?”

“Jeans and a t-shirt,” I said.

“The same pair that I bought you in the summer?”

I looked down at my hands and Renee chuckled, her soft chuckle once more.

“What am I going to do with you, Lorelei?” She grinned at me. “You must be the only woman on the planet who only owns a handful of clothes.”

“Not like there was much point when General-Nit-picker-Frei had me crawling around in mud all day.” I sighed. “You know what happens when I’m in water.”

“She made you do that course?” Renee scowled so much that her glasses slid down a little.

“Made my jaw feel a lot better though,” I said, rubbing my chin.

“You could have drowned!”

I shrugged. Renee had seen my healing in action. It was a weird thing that happened when I stood in running water. It removed all the afflictions from people that were stored up in my hands and it seemed to fix me too. The problem was, it sucked me under. Not a clever thing to do on my own.

“She pulled me out,” I offered. “She was furious though.”

“Yes, you probably messed up her hair.”

I raised an eyebrow at the snarky remark. “Do I detect mutiny?”

“No,” Renee said. “Just realism. It takes her ages to do her hair.”

I stared out at the barren landscape, trying to get some clue as to where we were. No mountains, no foliage, just frosted grasslands and a couple of rocks. If it had been warmer I’d have figured it could be a desert or someplace. I sighed. I didn’t have one iota, it looked like the middle of nowhere. Thank goodness I didn’t have to navigate in my new role as a CIG secret service . . . well . . . whatever I was. What use I was going to be was yet to be revealed to me.

“Have you heard from your mother?”

I turned at Renee’s tentative tone. “Why? What has she done now?”

“She hasn’t done anything,” Renee answered, her eyebrows rising over the rims of her glasses. “I just thought that perhaps she had checked up on her daughter.”

“Ha!”

Renee jumped and flashed me a startled look.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, staring down at my pants. Maybe it was still kinda raw. “Considering I never knew that she existed up until last year, I’d be surprised if she can remember me.”

“Aeron.” Renee squeezed my leg. I looked up to see her gentle smile. “You know her reasons and if you’re going to have to answer to her, you’re going to have to get used to her being in your life.”

“No,” I said. Uh, uh was I getting used to nothing. She abandoned me. She took off and left. I’d done my good daughter routine. “You take the orders and do all the protection stuff. I’m just there to cause chaos.”

“You’re there to use your skills.” Renee slowed the car. She took her glasses off and fixed me with her intense gaze. “You’re an important part of the team.”

“Why?” I knew Renee had missed me but I was nobody special. No doubt my mother had just wanted me out of the way so she could live in Nan’s cabin. “Mommy dearest is the one who sees the future, you protect the person in question—”

“POI,” Renee interjected. “Person of Interest.”

“Yeah, them too,” I said. “And Franken-Frei and the I’m-not-at-liberty-to-say crew figure out what is going to happen and stop it.” I stared out at the sparse nothingness. It seemed to echo how I felt about everything. Lost in a wilderness. “You worked well without me before—”

“We didn’t.” I looked at her and she nodded, her eyes blazing. The rims of her irises caught the light, the edges tinted with cyan. “I mean it, Aeron. We had great intentions but you know better than to place all your assumptions on visions.”

I winced even at the mention of them. I got visions sometimes, all fire and raging infernos burning through into my mind. My mother was welcome to them.

“That’s not the point,” I said, trying to shake off the shiver creeping up my spine. “There’s no real place for me. Sure I may be able to fix you up if you really need it but this,” I motioned to the fatigues, “is never going to work and you know it.”

Her blonde eyebrows dipped, sandy-colored strands of her fringe flopped into her eyes. “Then why are you even trying?”

I sighed. “Because I have to. My mother blackmailed me into it or have you forgotten?” What could I have said? No? My father adored her and had waited his whole life for her to crawl back into town. He needed someone to help raise my half-sisters. It was my fault they had lost their mother. My fault. What could I do?

“You could have said no,” Renee said, her aura darkening.

“If I did that,” I shot back. “I wouldn’t get to see my favorite head shrinker now, would I?”

Renee laughed. “That’s Doctor head shrinker to you.”

When we met, she was undercover as a psychiatrist. Sometimes, she was still that doctor lurking below the surface. Lilia, my mother, was a hero to her and most of the CIG people. For some reason that made Renee want to close the chasm between my mother and I. I’d tried to explain a million times that it wasn’t that I didn’t like Lilia, more that I didn’t know her. She had abandoned me and my dad to go play hero. That made me mad sometimes. I tried not to feel that way but I did. And, I was sick of pretending otherwise.

“Stop it,” I said as Renee’s energy flickered. “If we are meant to end up like an episode of The Waltons, we will.”

As always, my reading Renee made her nervous and her fingers gripped the wheel tighter.

“I forgot how freaky it feels around you.”

I patted her on the hand. I got the flash of where we were and where we were headed. “Well, we got a ten-hour road trip to get you re-acquainted.”

“Hey!” She protested, rubbing her hand from the static shock.

I grinned, relaxing back into the seat. “Missed you too, Doc.” I closed my eyes. “Missed you too.”