Promises to Keep

chapter 7


“JAY, QUIT IT.”

The sharp words came from a familiar voice and mind just as Jay had steeled himself to reach for the shapeshifter’s hidden psyche.

He drew back carefully from the shapeshifter before standing with a long stretch of his spine and saying, “Hi, Vir. What are you doing here?”

Vireo didn’t bother to answer the question, or to continue addressing Jay in any way. SingleEarth had called him to check on their patient, since he was a practiced mental healer. He didn’t bother to say anything out loud, because he knew that as soon as Jay asked the question, the answers came to mind. Speaking was a waste of time.

After all, they were brothers.

“Careful,” Jay said. “There was another power in her when I first found her. I’m not sure if it was hers, or someone else’s, but it threw me out. Hard.”

Jay spoke out loud because Vireo, despite having worked most of his life to focus his empathic abilities, wasn’t always great at picking up all the details.

Vireo nodded and said, “Thanks,” though he had already focused his attention on his patient and was just waiting for Jay to go away and stop being a distraction.

As Jay turned to leave, he heard Vireo’s mental suggestion: You might want to change your clothes, too.

Oh, right. He was still wearing wrinkled, water-stained tuxedo pants and a dress shirt that had seen better days, and he had never bothered to put his shoes back on after his interrupted nap.

Jay kept a cache of clothes in his car for whenever he ended up somewhere unexpected—which was most of the time. Unless he was hunting, Jay tried not to plan anything more complicated than naps and breakfast, which meant he didn’t maintain an apartment. Even his car was registered in his father’s name. He was willing to rise to the occasion when he needed to do his job, but he refused to join the stable grind of so-called respectable life.

While he was retrieving his duffel bag from his car, he noticed his dead cell phone on the passenger seat. He brought it with him back to his room and plugged it in before he changed.

Once he was comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt under a heavy sweatshirt he wasn’t entirely sure was his, he turned on his phone and dialed into his voice mail.

The first two messages were from Nikolas.

“Marguerite told me she saw you at Kendra’s but that she lost track of you. I wanted to make sure you made it home all right.”

The second message still sounded calm, but the words suggested otherwise. “Jay, I know you well enough to guess that you are likely to forget about your phone, but do me a favor and confirm you’re alive before I need to tell your cousin that you went missing from an event I invited you to.”

The third message was from Sarah herself. “Hi, Jay. This is Sarah. Nikolas just told me you showed up at Kendra’s bash and apparently left with someone called … Xeke? Nikolas assures me this Xeke is as trustworthy as a vamp can be, but you know I want to hear your voice. Call me.”

Sarah had been a Vida witch, which meant she was a vampire hunter born and bred. Jay had never caught the whole story of how she had become a vampire, but it was obvious that her change hadn’t eliminated her natural distrust of most other vampires.

Jay called and left a message with a bloodbond, who informed him that it was just past noon and that Sarah—like any vampire changed barely two months before—was asleep.

Tag, Sarah. You’re it.

With that responsibility attended to, the mystery of the woods needled him like a porcupine quill. His failure to remember where he had found the shapeshifter wasn’t just a matter of his being absentminded. It suggested magic, which would best be investigated by a witch.

Of course, Jay was a witch, but for this he needed someone with a specific skill set.

As Jay crept back into the patient’s room, wishing he didn’t need to ask for his brother’s help, Vireo swore. His attempts weren’t working. Her mind was just too far away, or maybe too well shielded.

Aware that Vireo had a temper, Jay approached with some caution before saying, “Are you sure I can’t help?”

Vireo wanted to say no. He was sure his brother could reach the woman, but Jay had no training as a mental healer. It was kind of like sending a random person with a bullhorn to keep someone from jumping off a roof. Sure, they would be loud enough, but they were just as likely to push the person off the roof as counsel them to safety.

“Can you just tell me if she’s in there at all?” Vireo asked.

“She’s in there, somewhere,” Jay answered. “There’s just something very, very wrong with her.” Realizing that he could approach his problem as an offer to help instead of a request for help, he said, “I think it might be related to the woods where I found her. They were strange, too. But I can’t remember where they were, or where I was, or how I got back here.”

Vireo wasn’t so deaf that he didn’t pick up that when Jay said I can’t remember, he meant a vast-enough failure to indicate a problem.

“Come here,” Vireo said. “Sit in front of me.”

Jay sat cross-legged in front of his brother, who mirrored his position and then reached out to touch fingertips to Jay’s third eye, the spot between the brows where mystics said there was a power center. Jay had never been big on that philosophy; he didn’t bother with power points and—

He yelped as Vireo shocked him with a spike of power, a teasing chastisement in reaction to Jay’s thoughts. Vireo liked power centers, philosophy, and mojo.

“How did you get to the woods?” Vireo asked.

Jay wasn’t being asked to respond out loud. He thought about the party, and the conversation with Xeke. He felt Vireo try to squash a critical thought about his hunter brother offering his throat to a vamp, probably out of an impulse toward professional courtesy.

Jay recalled waking up at Xeke’s and walking into the woods from there.

Why did you go into the woods?

Something called me.

Vireo poked around at that memory a little longer, drawing out anything Jay could remember about the trees and the snowdrifts and even the angle of the moon, before asking how he got to Haven #2.

Jay remembered the car. Putting the shapeshifter in. Wrapping her in the blanket. Wondering what time it was. Leaving the parking lot. Driving down a little road … and being at SingleEarth.

No matter how much pressure Vireo applied, there simply wasn’t anything between the dark, winding road and SingleEarth Haven #2.

“Whatever muddled your mind did a fine job of it,” Vireo said as he withdrew from Jay’s thoughts. And the last thing you need is for your brain to get more scrambled. He asked, “Are you willing to try to reach her again?”

He was still skeptical of letting Jay involve himself with this patient, but anything that had tossed Jay out of the shapeshifter’s mind the first time would be far too powerful for Vireo to fight his way past.

“I can try,” Jay answered. He was a hunter. He frequently risked his neck, when it was called for.

Jay sat beside the sable-skinned shapeshifter and reached toward her.

Empathy was different from telepathy in one simple way: direction.

Telepaths heard thoughts that others projected. Weak telepaths could only hear the thoughts that someone else had the power to focus and put out into the ether. With proper training, many witches and some shapeshifters were able to develop basic telepathy.

Powerful telepathy, the ability to read and speak to others’ minds, was rare among mortals but common among vampires. Mortal blood gave vampires a solid form, but otherwise they—like the elementals who gave them their power—were nothing but raw force given sentience. They were creatures of thought, and so they were masters of that realm.

Because it was conscious, telepathy could be blocked through mental effort. Many individuals learned how to guard against it. Empathy was completely different.

Every creature in the world was somewhat empathic. Emotion and instincts were constantly projected in each creature’s aura. Individuals who could shield their minds from the most powerful telepaths in the world tended to be naked in front of Jay.

Figuratively speaking.

He hadn’t ever had to fight to get into someone’s mind, the way he fought now. It was like the strands kept slipping away from him, hiding.

Where are you? he wondered, dropping his own mental walls in the hope that he could slip into her mind like a drop of water into a pool.

By the time Vireo yelped “Jay!” he was gone, absorbed into a deep, dark forest that received him like a hostile stranger.

Is this a dream? he wondered. The power to walk through others’ dreams was incredibly rare, and beyond even Jay’s abilities. If this isn’t a dream, what is it?

The woods were so dark, he was only vaguely aware of tree trunks around him, the black night pressing in … and something prowling. He couldn’t reach out to the beast mentally because he was already inside someone’s mind, and there wasn’t a separate mind in here to reach for.

When he tried to walk on the forest floor, brambles ripped at his legs.

If this was like a dreamscape, he might be able to control it. Could he go up?

Jay let himself be a bird.

When he did this in the real, waking world, the experience was only mental. He formed a connection to the animal and studied its thought patterns until he could slip into them at will. In this world … he spread white and blue wings and aimed for the tops of the trees.

Something yanked at him, knocking him back down, until his feathers tangled in the brambles. Thorns like daggers pinned him in place, a warning not to move.

The wind whispered to him as he struggled:

Stay still. Stay silent. Stay still. Stay silent. Do not be.

Not be.

Nobody.

Be nobody. Quiet. Silent. Still.

He couldn’t help himself; he struggled, and the brambles savaged his feathers.

Stop fighting! He’ll hear you!

Who is “he”?

The wind went silent.

Jay needed to be something sturdier.

He had to slow down. He had to be so patient. He had to wait and gather his shell.

The turtle fell through the brambles, tossed this way and that, but he hid inside his armor until he hit the ground beneath the lowest spines.

It was cold down here, making him even slower, but that was fine.

The turtle was cautious.

The turtle could wait.

He lumbered, seeking something different in the darkness … but found only deeper darkness, choking night … silence.…