I See You (Oracle 2) Page 14

  “Yes. And now he won’t,” the sorcerer answered pointedly. I ignored the implication that he was wasting a favor owed to him on Beau and me.

  “And he can help us how?”

  “He’s a United States Marshal.”

  “A U.S. Marshal owes you a favor?”

  “A sorcerer owes me a substantial favor.”

  I thought about this for a while. Adepts had to have jobs, obviously, but I hadn’t had much reason to think about what those jobs might be. Beyond Beau working as a mechanic or Jade running a bakery, I mean. Now Kandy was a physiotherapist and some other guy was a U.S. Marshal.

  “I thought magic didn’t work on humans?”

  “Mind magic such as yours wouldn’t work on a mundane, nor could a mundane be turned into a fully realized werewolf or vampire. But sorcerers can wield other magic. Can’t they?”

  He reached over and deliberately tapped my butterfly tattoo, hard. An electric shock accompanied his assault on my wrist.

  “Care to tell me about the butterfly?”

  “No.”

  He laughed. “We have years and years to discuss such things, oracle. A long and fruitful collaboration. Do you think the pack can train you to wield magic?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Stay in the car.”

  He waited for me to respond. I grunted in acknowledgement.

  Blackwell got out, locking the doors behind him, then sauntered over to the restaurant. The red hatchback zoomed out of the lot, laden with its load of takeout. It blew between the sorcerer and me, tires squealing as it hit the street.

  I watched Blackwell as he pushed open the front door and entered the restaurant. Neither of the diners or the waiter appeared to notice him. He immediately turned right, crossing into the men’s room.

  He didn’t come back out.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  >Why isn’t Kandy answering her cellphone? D.

  I stared for so long at the text message that had popped up on my phone that the oil coating the veggie spring roll I’d been about to eat started burning my fingers. I dropped the roll back into the takeout container, then sucked on my sizzling digits. I’d bought the spring rolls simply to prove to Blackwell that I could come and go from the car if I wished. But once I’d opened the container, I realized I was actually hungry.

  At first, I’d hoped the text was from Beau, but it came from a number I didn’t recognize. Then the ‘D’ tag was a nasty shock to my adrenal gland.

  D for Desmond?

  Was the alpha of the West Coast North American Pack texting me? How did he get my number?

  My phone pinged again. I flinched. I really needed to put it on silent. Yeah, I was twenty turning sixty-five — or at least my fried nerves were.

  >Answer me.

  So yeah, it was Desmond. And I had no idea how to answer him. Lie? Tell the truth? Ignore the message? But if we were all ignoring texts, wouldn’t that confirm that something was wrong? We didn’t need the pack descending on Southaven. Not yet. Not without first understanding what was going on with Beau’s family. And certainly not now that Blackwell was involved.

  The red hatchback zoomed back into the parking lot, drawing my attention away from my phone. As the car stopped by the kitchen door, the driver jumped out to grab more takeout orders.

  Inside the restaurant, Blackwell finally exited the bathroom, glancing back to confirm that the man behind him was keeping pace.

  That didn’t read as kinky at all.

  I checked the time. It was 8:46 p.m. The sorcerer had been gone for twenty-one minutes.

  I applied my thumbs to my phone’s keypad and messaged Desmond back. Just about to go pick her up. I’ll tell her to check her phone.

  The alpha didn’t reply.

  I tucked my phone away and gobbled down one of my spring rolls as the two sorcerers exited the restaurant and crossed toward the sedan.

  The U.S. Marshal was a cowboy — wiry frame, hat, boots, and all. He wore blue jeans paired with an unbuttoned suit jacket, a white dress shirt, and a skinny tie. The badge attached to his belt glinted as he paused to scan the parking lot. And I could see then that he wore a gun in a shoulder holster. I imagined him wearing one at his ankle as well.

  He narrowed his eyes in my direction, then resumed following Blackwell to the car.

  A cowboy sorcerer marshal. Huh.

  I stepped out of the sedan as the two of them approached, yielding the front seat as I noisily crunched on my second spring roll. The rolls were pretty tasty for something I hadn’t really wanted but had bought to spite the sorcerer. As if he could lock me in the car. Sure, I hadn’t wandered back to the bank unaccompanied. But that was just from good sense, not because I was following his orders.

  Blackwell ignored me.

  The marshal held out his hand for me to shake. “Henry Calhoun,” he said, in a heavy but lyrical Southern accent. So maybe the cowboy thing was genuine.

  I eyed him, thinking about dropping my sunglasses to do my intimidation thing. But I couldn’t be bothered.

  “Henry,” I said, as cordial as I was capable of being while wiping greasy fingers on my jeans. “Thank you for helping me.”

  Henry tilted his head to the side. His hair was dark underneath the cowboy hat, which also shaded his cobalt-blue eyes. He wrapped his hand around my outstretched, degreased palm.

  Electricity passed between us.

  “Rochelle Saintpaul,” I offered, using my legal name. Not my birth name.

  “Rochelle,” Henry repeated. “You are not a witch.”

  “No, I’m not.” I smiled, not really knowing why as Henry continued to hold my hand. I instantly liked him. That was weird.

  Henry grinned back at me. “The tattoos are a good disguise.”

  “Are they?”

  “The whole goth thing.”

  “I’m not a goth either.”

  He laughed, finally dropping my hand. Blackwell, who’d been watching our exchange without comment, climbed into the driver’s seat and shut the door behind him.

  Henry Calhoun eyed me. “You keep bad company, Rochelle Saintpaul.”

  I nodded. “Wait until you meet the other two.”

  The marshal laughed again. “Fair enough.”

  He reached over to open the back door of the sedan for me. I settled into the seat, scarfing my last two spring rolls before we’d driven out of the parking lot. I couldn’t help but think that if I was that hungry, Beau must be starving.

  Or maybe not. Because maybe he was dead.

  No.

  I wasn’t going to start letting my mind control me. Beau wasn’t dead, because the coin was still warm. The magic in his blood was an active part of Blackwell’s tracking spell, so if the coin was still tracking him, then he was still alive.

  Right?

  I desperately wanted to confirm my reasoning with Blackwell, but his earlier odd mention of blood magic made me think I should keep my mouth shut about the spell around Henry.

  Instead, I squeezed the coin in my left hand — so firmly that it cut into my palm — and focused my attention on the sorcerers in the front seats.

  The marshal was riding shotgun, which was an ironic position for a cowboy. Or maybe in this case, ‘appropriate’ was a better word.

  Because we were riding to a rescue.

  Right?

  ∞

  We circled the block around the renovated bank, switching directions for a second pass. And, while I desperately sought a glimpse of Beau out the back window, Blackwell and the marshal had a muttered argument about the strength of the shielding on the sedan. Henry snapped blurry pictures of the new guards posted by the reinforced door at the rear. Apparently, he had some photography app on his phone that was good in low light.

  We parked about two blocks away, down a side street where we still had an angled view of the rear of the bank. The houses on either side of us were lit with the glow from their flat-screen TVs.

  “The van’s gone,” I said, unable to k
eep my dismay in check.

  Henry was texting. “Make? Model?”

  “Ford Econoline,” I said, surprised that I could remember. “Medium gray. No rear windows.”

  “Maybe 2008,” Blackwell added. “Larger grill, longer hood. Diesel.”

  Henry continued to text. His phone pinged multiple times as he did so. “Records,” he said, referencing the text message he’d just received. “But no outstanding warrants on the two new guys.” He nodded toward the bruisers loitering by the back door. One of them wore a black cast on one arm.

  “Beau broke that guy’s wrist,” I said proudly. “What idiot asks for a black cast?”

  “A shapeshifter revealed his strength in front of a human?”

  Err, maybe I’d shut up now.

  “Their attackers used force,” Blackwell said. I had filled him in on the details of the kidnapping while we were tracking Beau and Kandy to the bank. “As someone would with a person under the influence of drugs.”

  “They saw their strength and assumed they were in a meth rage?”

  “So I gathered.”

  Blackwell met my gaze in the rearview mirror. I looked away.

  Henry’s phone pinged again. “Shit. I told you the office would question how the hell I got here so quickly.”

  “What will you tell them?” I asked, honestly interested in how a sorcerer worked with humans and technology all day.

  “I backdated the tip. I’ll just say I was on my way and hope no one thinks to double-check.” The marshal looked up from his phone, then pivoted around in his seat to pin me with his cobalt-blue gaze. “Tell me about the drug connection.”

  Neither Blackwell nor I answered.

  “I’m about to execute drug possession and drug trafficking warrants. Drug lords don’t generally go around kidnapping innocent people.”

  He paused, waiting.

  Again, neither of us spoke.

  “I’m going to need to call the local authorities.”

  “But the locals are in Byron’s pocket!” I cried.

  “Byron who? And you know this how?”

  “Blackwell …”

  The marshal turned to look at the sorcerer.

  Blackwell sighed. “It was a guess, based on their open display of fortification and force.”

  “Accusing the locals of being on the take isn’t going to be helpful.”

  “We just need you to occupy the humans while we free the shapeshifters,” Blackwell said.

  “It’s not just a badge,” Henry said stiffly. “And I’m not drug enforcement.”

  “Beau and Kandy aren’t involved,” I said. “But Beau’s family might be into something. We’ve just gotten in the way.”

  “Adepts running what? Meth?”

  Blackwell glanced at me in the rearview mirror. Then he raised his eyebrow, making it my choice as to how much I wanted to tell a U.S. Marshal. Problem was, I didn’t know what — if anything — I needed to be circumspect about.

  “Apparently not,” I mumbled. “Beau and Kandy think it’s something similar, but different. Cy, Beau’s stepdad, was amped up enough that he was faster and stronger than Beau thought he should be.” I kept the tidbits about Cy smelling like Ada’s magic and that Ettie was selling something called crimson bliss to myself, hoping it wasn’t relevant to the current situation.

  The marshal stared at me hard for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Fine. But I’m not covering up any crime.”

  “You won’t have to,” Blackwell said. “You deal with the humans and I’ll deal with the Adepts.”

  “You’re not a member of the League, Blackwell.”

  “And we’re not dealing with sorcerers.”

  Henry pointedly glanced at me over his shoulder. “No?”

  “No,” I said, though I wasn’t actually a hundred percent sure about my magic anymore.

  “Just the pack,” Blackwell said. “They can police themselves.”

  “Let’s hope,” Henry muttered, returning his attention to his phone. “Okay, I think I have enough to go in. Blackwell, you’ll create a distraction out front.”

  “Obviously.”

  “That’ll pull these guys from the back so I don’t have to mess with the door. I’ll head in and arrest everyone on the premises while you look for the shapeshifters. You’ll exit through the rear. I’ll ignore you leaving, then call in the locals to sort out the warrants.”

  “Who do I go in with?” I asked.

  “No,” Henry answered.

  Nothing else. Just ‘no.’

  “She’ll come with me,” Blackwell said.

  “Absolutely not. It’ll be bad enough to have drug dealers yammering about a guy in a dark suit wandering around the place. I’m not exposing a tiny teen covered in distinctive tattoos to this. A teen without offensive magic.”

  “As far as you can tell,” Blackwell said.

  Henry cranked around in his seat, frowning at me. “It’ll be your funeral.”

  I bared my teeth at him, mimicking Kandy’s smile. Though the marshal didn’t flinch, so apparently I didn’t pull it off. “I’m valuable to the sorcerer.”

  Henry snorted. “Good luck with that.”

  Blackwell laughed, then climbed out of the car.

  I followed, wishing I’d worn long sleeves or had a hoodie to throw on over my tank top. I hadn’t really thought about how distinctive my tattoos were. Apparently, I hadn’t planned well for a future of jacking drug dealers.

  ∞

  As we strode through pools of triangular light cast by the streetlights that sporadically illuminated the residential sidewalks, Blackwell tucked his hands casually into the pockets of his dress pants, causing his suit jacket to buckle. Any time before that, I would have thought him completely incapable of marring his appearance. Maybe I didn’t know him as well as I thought.

  I was practically having to jog to match his long stride. It was never this awkward walking next to Beau, even though he was easily four inches taller than the sorcerer.

  The marshal was currently circling one block over in the opposite direction from us so he could approach the bank from the back.

  As soon as I thought Henry was out of earshot, I hissed, “I think the tracking spell on the coin is fading.”

  “Yes, effective but short term, as I said.” Blackwell was systematically scanning the quiet neighborhood as we crossed between a couple of parked cars to the opposite side of the street.

  I wanted to say something pissy back, but I was too jittery and nervous to come up with anything appropriate.

  “So our main concern,” he said, “specifically when figuring out how we’re going to penetrate these defenses, is why hasn’t the werewolf or the shapeshifter freed themselves?”

  “The van is gone. Maybe they’ve been moved to another location?” No matter how rational I was attempting to be, I couldn’t stop the hitch of fear I felt over the idea of Beau being taken again.

  As we left the shadow of the houses to pass alongside the parking lot at the back of the bank, Blackwell glanced down at something hidden in his left hand.

  The van might have been gone, but five cars still remained in the lot. So according to Blackwell’s logic, there was at least one person inside the building. Two guards at each entrance plus one inside equaled five cars. That was as long as the bad guys didn’t prefer to carpool or park on the street.

  “The werewolf is an enforcer of the pack,” Blackwell said. “I’m actually surprised she isn’t the beta. She leaves a trace … leading to the rear entrance of the bank but not back out, based on the fade of the residual.”

  “You have something that traces magic?”

  “Of course. Adepts of a more … animalistic connection to their power don’t take well to captivity.” The sorcerer didn’t appear remotely concerned about the bruisers at the reinforced back door, though they were eyeing us aggressively as we walked by. “They tend to … forget themselves when under stress.”

  The guy whose wrist Beau had bro
ken barely glanced at me, focusing his attention on Blackwell. I probably should have told the sorcerer of the possibility that he might recognize me. Oh, well. Next time.

  “Like Beau in the restaurant?”

  “Admittedly, the boy got caught in the amplifier in that case.”

  “So, your mistake?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” Blackwell’s tone was easy. Amused. He didn’t seem remotely tense.

  “Your point?”

  “There is a reason the pack operates as it does, with such a tight structure and zero tolerance for human-witnessed violence.”

  “Because it happens.”

  “Yet these guards and this building appear undamaged. Which makes me wonder how humans are holding two shapeshifters. Both of them powerful. One of them is young and separated from his chosen mate, whose fate he must be unsure of and concerned about.”

  “So Byron, the drug lord, isn’t human?”

  We turned left around the corner of the building and onto the sidewalk of the main street. So much light was streaming through the front windows of the converted bank that I actually had to squint my eyes even behind my tinted glasses.

  “Perhaps.” Blackwell lowered his voice. The two guards posted by the front entrance were about a dozen feet in front of us, but both were peering down at their phones. The sidewalk was otherwise empty of pedestrians. “Yet I feel no evidence of other Adepts at work here. No wards, no spells.”

  We kept walking, crossing directly in front of the bank and the two guards. Blackwell lifted his hand from his pocket, touched his forehead, and said, “Cheers,” as we passed.

  “Cheers?” I said mockingly. I was wondering when Blackwell was going to get to the distraction part of our mission.

  The sorcerer wrapped his right hand around my forearm, squeezing way too tightly. I instantly leaned my weight away from him and opened my mouth to protest.

  Then a bomb went off behind us.

  I jerked forward, and would have done a face plant onto the sidewalk if Blackwell hadn’t been holding me.

  A sudden wave of pressure boxed my ears, making me so disoriented that I couldn’t find my footing for a second. I managed two more awkward steps before the feeling passed.