Seeker (Riders #2)
Veronica Rossi
CHAPTER 1
DARYN
You don’t know what anger is until you’ve spent time with a mare in a truly foul mood.
Shadow is livid.
I’ve been back for two days now but she’s still mad at me—and determined to let me know it. Usually I can sense what she’s feeling by intuition. No need for that right now, with the tantrum she’s throwing. Twelve hundred pounds of black mare ripping the earth open with her hooves isn’t exactly tough to read.
As Jode would say if he were here, Shadow’s off her trolley.
She rounds the far side of the enclosure and loops back, breaking into another charge and coming right at me. In the stormy afternoon light she almost looks like a normal horse. If you didn’t know her, you might look past the unusual blackness of her coat and the smoky wisps that trail behind her lean body. You might not even notice that she’s too fast, and just a little too elegant. But the prolonged eye contact she makes with me and the intelligence in her eyes? Total giveaway.
As she closes in, she lowers her head and shows no sign of slowing down. I brace my feet and prepare to jump back behind the fence. Shadow would never hurt me intentionally, but then I never meant to hurt Gideon and Sebastian.
Sometimes you hurt people even when it’s the last thing you want to do.
With only a few feet left between us, she stops suddenly, her hooves gouging the mud, kicking up a wave of wet spatter that flies right at me.
“Wow.” I wipe my face, spitting out bits of mud. “Thanks, girl!”
Her level stare makes it clear she’s in no mood to joke around.
Do you see? Do you see how scared I was when you left me? Do you see how you upset me?
“I know, Shadow. You’re furious and you have every right to be. Tell me all about it. I’m listening.”
I hope she senses how sorry I am. I hated leaving her for a week, knowing how much she’s suffered after we lost Sebastian. She went from being totally confident and calm to sensitive about almost everything. Other people can set her off. So can airplanes and cars. Fortunately there’s almost none of that out here in Wyoming.
I’m the only one she trusts—and I left her. But my road trip to Georgia gave me the answer I needed. After so many months of indecision, I know what I need to do. When you’re putting your life in danger, it’s only right to be positive about it.
I’m positive.
Shadow snorts. I expect her to kick into another rampage but she looks past me just as I hear the screen door bang closed behind me. Turning, I see Isabel. My friend, roommate, mentor, and fellow Seeker steps off the porch of the cabin we’ve been renting.
Home, Daryn.
I’ve been here eight months. You’d think I could call it that by now.
Isabel lifts the edges of her wool poncho to keep them from dragging in the mud as she walks over. She takes her time, choosing her steps around the puddles with care. Iz never rushes through anything. Behind her the line of smoke struggling up from the chimney is erased by a storm gust, only to struggle up again. We’ll get either snow or freezing rain tonight. Again. As far as I can tell, spring in Wyoming is a misnomer.
“This looks promising,” Isabel says. “Have you two made up?” She props her arms on the fence beside me and smiles, her broad cheeks like rising mountains. She has a face for looking into sunsets and windstorms and futures—which she does as a Seeker. Which I used to do too, until everything changed after my epic fail last fall.
“I think we’re getting there.” Shadow has backed up and turned toward the river, striking a pose like we’ll be sketching her, rant concluded for now. I stuff my cold hands into my pockets and make myself ask the question I’ve been holding all day. “What about you? Have you forgiven me?”
I left Isabel for a week, too. She’s not my mother. I didn’t need to ask her permission. But I could’ve run it by her.
“I was never angry with you, Daryn.” Isabel brushes a lock of her hair behind her ear, most of it having already escaped from the bun she swept back before her morning shift at Franklin Ranch, where we both work. She regards me with bright eyes, goldish green at the edges and warm brown at the very center. “I was worried. There’s a big difference. And the note you left helped.”
I wonder how much good it really did. I didn’t tell her where I was going or how long I’d be gone—only that I needed to figure something out. I still haven’t told her anything, but I should. After all she’s done for me, I owe her some answers. As long as they don’t give away too much.
“So…” Where to begin? How far back does my regret extend?
Isabel’s eyebrows lift. “So…?”
“I was on the computer at the ranch about two weeks ago doing some research.”
“Research?”
“On the friends I used to have until I disappointed them horribly? Gideon, Jode, and Marcus? I wanted to see how they’re doing. Whether they’re okay.” And hopefully not as miserable as I am, I add silently. “I came across an announcement. An event where I knew they’d all be, and I couldn’t resist. I had to go see them in, um…” On three, Daryn. One, two, three. “In Georgia.”
Saying it out loud makes it sound even more extreme and I almost wince, but Isabel doesn’t react.
“Why Georgia?” she asks, like she’s not at all surprised that I drove four thousand miles in nine days.
“Marcus enlisted. It was a graduation celebration for him from the Ranger program—the one Gideon was in, too. I knew Gideon and Jode would be there for it. They’d never miss something that important.”
I couldn’t miss it, either. For several reasons.
“And how was it? Did you get a chance to talk through everything? Were they angry with you?”
She knows this is my greatest fear. That Gideon, Marcus, and Jode will blame me for what happened to Sebastian. I mean, I blame me. Why shouldn’t they? It’s a fear that’s kept me immobilized here for more than half a year. That, and no longer having visions to tell me where I’m needed.
Right after the battle against the Kindred, aka my epic fail, they completely stopped. I’ve been totally cut off from the future. Without visions, I’ve felt incomplete. I’ve felt this constant quiet dread, like I’ve forgotten something important. Except it’s not that I can’t remember what I should know. It’s that I can’t foresee it.
“No, they weren’t angry with me.”
“That’s good,” Iz says, brightly.