He spun to face the Preceptors. “Don’t tell me they were here at the same time.” He felt his eyes heat up. Another sign of his returning magic.
“No,” said Andros quickly, shaking his head. “Her presence is much more faint than his.”
“Bullshit,” Nick hissed. Andros would probably have no way of “sensing” the queen, and Nicholas damn well knew it. He was the one who would sense her.
And Nero would too.
Andros was simply trying to calm him down.
Nick took a slow, deep breath. “Which way did they go?” he asked as calmly as he could. But Minnaea was already pulling out the map and the crystal. Nick paced as she worked, and tried to slow the racing of his heart. He felt a heat in his blood. That was familiar too, and another sign that his strength was being restored.
He faced away from his companions and closed his eyes. There was a beast growing inside him, one very much unlike those sitting nestled in the cores of every other Nightmare. And it was the real Nightmare King.
“They left the alley. Follow me,” said Minnaea.
Nick turned, glanced at Andros, and the two followed her down the alley. A few turns and exits and they were standing on a busy city street. Vehicles sped by, and the mid-morning sun shone like shards of light on the surrounding high-rises.
“The queen went that way and took a cab to here,” she pointed down the street then lifted the map, her finger on a cross-street several miles away. Once Nick memorized the location, she lowered the map and ducked her head a little. At once, Nick could tell she didn’t want to give him the next bit.
“He followed her, didn’t he?” he asked, though it was phrased as a statement more than a question because he already knew it to be true. Minnaea nodded.
Nicholas felt his eyes go red.
“Your majesty, your powers are returning much more rapidly than before,” said Andros. Strangely enough, he sounded oddly saddened by this information.
Nick glanced at him. The emotions in his voice were echoed in his expression. He was troubled. He was preoccupied.
“You don’t want to go back this time,” Nicholas said. He’d figured it out. It was plain as day on his Preceptor’s faces. Everything was changing. Everything was different. It felt like an ending.
But… it also felt very much like a beginning.
Andros took a deep breath and opened his mouth to reply, but Minnaea beat him to it. “No,” she said softly.
Nicholas looked at her now. She wore the same expression. “We both feel it,” she said plainly. “The need to stay. The need to live.” She shrugged helplessly. “We’ve never experienced it before now.”
Nicholas lowered his gaze and forced the red out of his eyes. He needed to think about something and someone other than himself at the moment. His friends were hurting. They were scared, because when the king had his powers back, they would no longer be needed. Every single time it had occurred in the past, they were returned to the dimension from which they came. It was a dimension of waiting, in which they barely existed as more than spirits. He’d never given it enough thought, frankly.
How must they feel to be born only when he died? Knowing their time here on Earth, in the mortal realm, would be so very finite? He should have realized. They’d done so much together. They’d learned to swim, gotten hitched, danced around a bonfire, hunted in the forests of what is now England, climbed mountains – jumped off them. They’d packed more into their multitude of painfully short lives than most humans even dreamed of doing in theirs.
They relished existence. And this time, they were afraid of losing it.
Because this time was the last.
“Damn,” he swore softly, pinching the bridge of his nose. He was glad he had his eyes closed, because Minnaea was probably giving him one hell of a scornful gaze just then. “Let’s find out where they went, find a hotel nearby, book a few suites, and get something to eat. I know of an excellent restaurant,” he said, finally looking up and smiling. “My treat.”
It was time he stopped being a jackass and started putting others before himself. And he did know of an excellent restaurant; he knew of several. All of the information he needed to be Nicholas Wargrave had been flooding steadily into his head since he’d been “born.” And it just so happened that half the exclusive dining spots in Seattle considered Wargrave a VVIP: A very, very important person.
It was a moment before either of them replied, but finally Minnaea’s face relaxed into a grateful smile, and Andros, though appearing a bit nervous about it, nodded just as gratefully. “That sounds good,” he said.
“Yes, it does,” agreed Minnaea.
“Then I shall make the reservations for you, sir,” came a voice from the end of the alley.
Nicholas turned, and Andros and Minnaea flanked him. It was Monroe standing at the alley’s opening, looking dapper and calm as usual, unfazed by anything he may or may not have heard while standing there, miles away from their house.
Andros and Minnaea were stiff beside Nicholas. He could feel their tension. Looks could be deceiving.
But the butler smiled sheepishly, as if he’d been expecting this and was once again unbothered.
“How the hell did you get here, Monroe?” asked Nick.
“Sir, I have been your butler for twenty years. I know your habits by now, and they have never been conventional. I knew that you would need assistance, so I followed in the second jet, as usual.” He straightened, lifting his chin a little. “I am, after all, a gentleman’s gentleman. What good would I be to you if I did not anticipate your needs?”
As Nick’s head spun around everything they’d talked about in the last few minutes – what had been said that might be too revealing – his mouth spoke for him. “Okay… then please make reservations at Canli’s, Monroe.”
“Very good, sir. Nine o’clock?”
“Perfect.”
Monroe smiled proudly, bowed a little, then turned with a straight back and walked to the curb, where a shining black Rolls Royce Phantom limousine awaited. As he approached the street, the driver exited the car and opened the door for him, waiting just as straight-backed as the butler.
Monroe paused and turned back to his master. “Will you be needing a ride, sir?” he called down the alley.
Nicholas could swear he heard the music of a scene in a movie playing somewhere. He smiled and shook his head. “Why not?” he replied. Then he and his most ancient friends followed him down the alley and climbed very professionally into the limo.
Chapter Seven
“I just happened to have my wallet in my jacket pocket along with my phone so I could get it all out easily for TSA,” Addie said softly, speaking into the phone she held to her ear. Rodney was on the other end, listening intently as she filled him in on everything that had happened in the last few hours. It was just after noon, and patrons were beginning to crowd the restaurant. She felt conspicuous in jeans, boots, a simple tee and a leather jacket. They were travel clothes, not dining clothes. She just hoped the fact that they were hoity-toity brands would cover everything else up.
“I had the cab take me to an animal ER and got Hastings stitched up,” she continued. “Then I came here. It was the only hotel with vacancy anywhere nearby that allowed pets.” She was just lucky she was filthy rich. The hotel that happened to have a vacancy and welcomed pets under twenty pounds was the freaking Four Seasons. She’d even managed a suite on the seventh floor. It had an amazing view of Elliott Bay and Puget Sound, and plenty of room for Hastings to run around. Although right now all he wanted to do was sleep due to the painkiller he’d been given by the vet. It turned out she’d been pretty accurate with his age. He was just over two months. A baby, really.
“I can’t even wrap my head around this,” said Rodney on his end of the line. He was quiet for a moment, then said, “You know, I thought I’d seen everything the first time one of your visions turned out to be true. But now….”
“Tell me about it,” she
whispered. Or, rather, talk-whispered. It was too loud in the venue to actually whisper. Plus she was at the bar, and there was a television news station overhead to compete with.
The shit had hit the fan on a paranormal level, and if she’d thought being well and truly psychic was like finding the proverbial ice cube in the desert, this was like learning it was the tip of a sand-buried iceberg.
“You know that line from Hamlet?” she asked, “It’s something like, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ That one?”
“I do,” said Rodney. There was a beat of silence before he added, “And I suppose it’s true.” There was only so much hard evidence an intelligent person could ignore. Rodney sighed, which meant he was trying to get his priorities in order. “I think your best bet is to go shopping for what you need until you can get a flight back that allows for Hastings,” he told her, changing the subject. Now that she’d done what she had come to Seattle to do, there was no need for her to remain there. She could have booked an immediate return flight home, but Hastings posed travel issues.
“Get the concierge on your team,” he said. “It would be faster and easier for you than having me ship anything to you. You can also check in with the airport to see if your luggage ever turned up.”
“Ugh. I’d forgotten about that.”
She was thinking about the luggage when a man across the bar smiled at her suggestively. She turned away a little and wished she could hide. She had never been the social, outgoing type. And she was pretty sure the man was three sheets to the wind. He’d removed a wedding ring, but there was that indentation on his ring finger that gave the absence away, and his cheeks were flushed with alcohol.
“You know,” she told Rodney, trying to forget about the married flirt, “I was thinking I would stay here a while. That other vision I had… I think it might be on the coast somewhere. Remember, there were sea creatures in that mural on the wall. I might as well be closer rather than farther away if anything else comes to me.”
Rodney was quiet as he was obviously considering that. “Okay,” he said slowly, “Then in that case, I’ll book a flight and join you. And Addie, please promise me that in the meantime you won’t go swimming.”
“Okay, deal,” she said and they hung up. She was smiling to herself at his concern when she happened to look up at the television screen behind the bar.
She froze, the blood drained from her face, and her phone slipped from her grip to tumble first to her lap, and then to the floor. Sound faded, replaced by the roar of blood rushing through her head. A reporter was speaking in the center of the screen, but up in the right-hand corner was a terribly familiar picture of a curly brown haired woman with dark brown eyes.
Fffuuuuuuuck….
It was a picture of Adelaide.
Not one of her more flattering pictures, either. It had been taken on a humid day, and her hair was at that awkward too-long and too-short stage. It was everywhere. She had also been sunburned, which was a strange thing for a part Mexican, part African-American, part Irish woman to get, but the truth of the matter was her mother had been dark skinned – half African American, half Mexican. Her father had been all lily-white Irish with black hair and blue eyes. She ended up with her mother’s eyes and her father’s skin and a mixture of their hair. So she sometimes burned in the sun.
Addie couldn’t hear exactly what the reporter was saying, not only because of the noise level in the room but also because of the afore-mentioned roaring in her head. But she had a very good idea of what was being reported. And as she contemplated it, filled with shock and mounting fear, she wondered why the hell it hadn’t occurred to her before that this would happen.
She’d vanished from an airplane. In mid-flight. It really was Journeyman, and now the NSA and Homeland Security were probably all over it. Obviously they were. The picture they’d chosen had been pulled from her Facebook page.
Fuck, fuck, fuck….
She’d used her real name to check into the hotel, and she wasn’t using anything to disguise her appearance. None of this – none of it – had occurred to her because she’d been so intent on taking care of the dog. Adelaide ran a hand through her thick hair and fisted it in her grip. Oh my God… what am I going to do?
Instinct kicked in, and she ducked her head, putting it in her hands to hide her face. Had anyone noticed her? Was anyone watching the screen right now? Should she turn herself in? What would happen if she did? Would they believe her if she told them she’d simply vanished from the plane? At the very least, she would end up on a no-fly list, probably forever.
This is it, she thought. This is the end of any kind of normal life.
Not that she’d had a normal life to begin with, strictly speaking. She was a psychic who went around trying to save the world, sometimes sliding into the role of vigilante to get the job done. Speaking of sliding… she slid off her stool with the limp boned feeling of a ragdoll and bent beside it to pick up her phone. But before her hand could wrap around the phone – another hand was doing so.
“Allow me,” said a deep, accented voice. It was the kind of voice that gave a woman chills and haunted her in the middle of the night as she tossed and turned in her sweat-soaked sheets.
Adelaide froze and stared at the hand. The man’s hand was large and somehow graceful. Could a hand be graceful? Her first impression was that it was capable. Strong.
And then she realized she was thinking like a lunatic. Fear was already wrapped like a lasso around her heart. She had a sinking feeling, and she was probably subconsciously reaching for anything that could distract her from her impending doom.
With the resignation of one who is well aware they were standing before the firing squad, she looked up at the person who picked up her phone.
“Thank you –” she said, but the “u” stuck a little in her throat. The man before her smiled a brilliant white smile, and Addie felt her gut clench. This was perhaps the most beautiful man she had ever seen. Ever. In her whole stupid life.
Of all the bad timing…. Gods, he’s incredible. She’d always had a thing for green eyes.
“Not a problem,” he said in his deep, gorgeous English accent.
Oh, I know what’s going on now, Addie thought crazily. I fell asleep on the plane. I had to. I’ve been wrong this whole time. This was some messed up dream caused by a sudden drop in cabin pressure. Or possibly, she’d taken too much allergy medicine, and the altitude had interacted with it. ‘Cuz there’s no way in hell life could be this mean.
But that was just it. Life was mean. Life was also pain. Just ask the Man in Black.
The stranger straightened, reaching incredible, impossibly well-proportioned heights, and held her phone out to her. “Here you are,” he said.
She numbly took it, and noticed that like an idiot, her hand was shaking.
“You know,” he said softly. “You look terribly familiar.”
Addie’s numbness spread, and she stared at him in dumb silence.
Very slowly, like the scene in a nightmare, the man turned and looked up at the television screen where her face was still plastered like an embarrassing “before” picture. His profile was as perfect as everything else – strong chin, strong shoulders….
“What an inconvenience,” he said conversationally, as if she wasn’t the prime suspect in some sort of homeland security incident. “I imagine you’d very much like for all of this to go away.” He turned back to her, and his brilliant green eyes shone like actual emeralds.
Addie felt helpless in that gaze. Just downright helpless.
“Yes,” she said, her voice weak and distant. “I would.”
Chapter Eight
Nero watched the play of emotion cross the woman’s face. He noticed everything.
He knew her name; could hear it in his head, as any Nightmare would be able to. His powers were stronger than they’d ever been, and they were focused on her as if she were a light in the dark,
and he a moth. But she was also harder to read than any other woman had ever been. Her name, her fear, and her destiny as queen were all he could glean from the lining of her being.
Her name was Adelaide Lane. Like most humans in this day and age, she was a descendant of a multitude of races and cultures, resulting in full, wavy, shining chestnut hair and skin the color of dark honey. It had seen sun recently, which had lent it a bronze glow and a touch of a burn across the apples of her cheeks. A smattering of freckles only slightly darker than her face graced her small nose, and her deep brown eyes were nearly hypnotic. They hinted at secret depths, at a subconscious filled with the wisdom of someone much older.
But right now they were narrowing with suspicion, and her forehead was furrowed with mounting stress. She’d given in to him, just a little. His strength over others was already strong enough to have breached the weakest of her defenses, in her most vulnerable moment. She was tired and overwhelmed. However, she was strong enough to get over her initial weakness very quickly.
“I…” She broke eye contact, which was impressive in and of itself. A Nightmare’s gaze could be as strong as a vampire’s. Few could look away if the Nightmare didn’t will it.
But she did it, pulling her eyes away to look over her shoulder at the television, which had finally switched news stories. Her photograph was no longer showing in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. “I have to go,” she said, placing her fingers to her forehead as if she were confused. And he would imagine she was. He’d just asked her if she wanted this to go away. And she’d just told him “Yes.” He was betting she wasn’t accustomed to being so forthright with perfect strangers, and most certainly not in traumatic situations like this one.
“I understand,” he said smoothly. “But take this. Put it somewhere safe. If you need help, just call.” He handed her a card. It was one of many he’d found in his pocket as he’d learned who he was for this go-around on Earth. Apparently he was a very successful attorney. These were his business cards. And his office was not all that far from the Four Seasons.