Tori Read online

  “I dropped her off here.”

  Vienna’s lips tilted downwards at the corners. “And…”

  “Come on, please just tell me where she went.”

  “No. Not after what you did to her.”

  Damn. He should have expected it. “We needed her help.”

  Vienna shot him the evil eye and went on the offensive. He actually found himself backing up as her long finger poked him in the chest. “Did you ever think about asking her to help?”

  “I did,” he said defensively.

  “In such a way that she understood how bad the situation was?” Vienna asked incredulously.

  He felt the heat rise up his neck. “Maybe she was a little too shocked at seeing me to listen. In fact, she shut me off when she heard me coming.” He glared at her. “She also sent my men walking away.”

  Vienna’s lips quirked in a faint smile, then the humor of the situation brought her into a full-blown laugh. “Oh, that’s great. And she’d only have done that if she considered herself to be in danger—or was pissed off.”

  Devon glanced around and realized the whole restaurant had tuned into the conversation. “Okay. I have a few things to make up to her.” He held out his hands. “I can’t do that if I can’t find her.”

  “I think she has a right to hide if she wants to.”

  “Maybe, but I can’t apologize when she won’t talk to me.”

  “You could try groveling.” She sent him an over-bright smile.

  Like he was going to get any help from this quarter. “Right. Thanks anyway.” With a frustrated look around the room, he turned and stalked back outside. He stood there and wondered what the hell his next step should be, besides going home and grabbing his wheels.

  “Devon?”

  He spun around to see Eddie, the owner of the restaurant, lugging a couple of garbage bags to his bins. “Hey, Eddie.”

  “I heard Vienna and Tori talking about the forest and going underground—”

  Oh shit. Please, no.

  Eddie winced, then lifted his arms and dropped them again. “Honestly, I didn’t hear that much, but…”

  “She doesn’t have wheels.” Devon pondered the situation aloud.

  Eddie cleared his throat. “I’m pretty sure Vienna will be walking home tonight.” He turned around and headed to the back of the restaurant. “Please, don’t tell anyone I told you.”

  “So why did you tell me?”

  Eddie stopped as he was about to go around the wall. He glanced over his shoulder. “’Cause I know what it’s like to love and lose, and know it was brought about by my own stupidity.”

  Ouch.

  Devon opened his mouth to make some sort of retort, but Eddie had left. That was probably a good thing. First things first, he needed to get going.

  He checked the hour.

  And fast.

  Once on the road, Devon let the truck run free. For the last few years, he’d been at Grandfather’s beck and call day and night. Devon was a trained investigator, but Grandfather had paid the bills. Then he’d called in the favor once Devon had graduated. It wasn’t what he’d planned to do with his life, but Grandfather had his own plans. And it was hard to go against family. Especially when everyone in the family worked for the family business.

  Grandfather had taken over his company from his father. He’d been driven to turn the business into an empire. Somewhere along the way, he’d gotten so hard, he forgot how to be human.

  And somewhere along the way, Devon had given up his own dreams.

  As he thought about it, he realized he’d given into Grandfather’s demands and given up his dreams at the same time that Tori had walked out of his life, taking his future with him.

  As a result, he’d buried himself in work. And became one of Grandfather’s right-hand men.

  “Great,” he muttered to himself. “I’m broke, don’t have a place of my own, and I’m not gainfully employed. So what else could go wrong?” Immediately, he wished he could take the words back. Changes were happening, he could tell, and it was up to him to stay afloat.

  It took longer to get to the parking lot than he remembered. He pulled in to find Vienna’s car at the far end, beside the construction trailers. What were those doing here?

  He’d heard rumors, but along with Grandfather’s odd behavior a few days ago, he had no idea what was going on. Grandfather appeared to be back to normal again. Shaking his head, he walked down to her car and realized it was locked, but still warm. So she’d been here an hour or two ago, but no longer.

  There was no way to follow her tracks. He knew several entrances into the caves but had no idea which entrance she’d have used. He randomly selected a wider, beaten-down path. He took a long, careful look at the machines as he passed them. Something very fishy was going on.

  The walk wasn’t easy in good light, but in poor light it was downright treacherous. He had great night vision, and that was his saving grace. However, it would be so much better if his own abilities were fully functioning. He’d have no problem navigating so much of the world if his heightened senses were cooperating.

  He frowned, hating the loss. He also realized that his subsequent behavior was partly due to the loss of his abilities. He hadn’t been himself since the loss. At the time, he’d blamed losing Tori on many things. But what if all of it had to do with the loss of his abilities?

  Like a blind man, he’d lost his sight. Hadn’t known what to do because his instincts were off.

  And he’d stayed that way until he’d gone after her. But he’d gone on Grandfather’s orders—after a year of waffling, a year of attempting to follow his instincts—because they weren’t there to follow.

  Bringing Tori home might have just saved him.

  He hadn’t done well by her, and he wasn’t sure how much of that was the new Devon versus the old, but he was glad that she was in his life again.

  He could make it up to her.

  He would make it up to her.

  He just needed the chance.

  Chapter 11

  Tori studied the forest as she walked, her soul stretching in joy. She was where she belonged. It had devastated her to leave, but thinking it was the only option, she’d run.

  As far and as fast as she could.

  For all the good it did. He’d found her anyway.

  Now, if only he’d come because he wanted to, and not at Grandfather’s orders.

  She couldn’t hold that against him, but neither did he get brownie points.

  And maybe that was the way it should be. She’d sworn off chocolate a year ago.

  She wasn’t about to break that rule for him.

  Why should he be able to step back into her life and act normal when her whole life had been tossed into the wind? And the way he’d brought her back wasn’t exactly moonlight and roses. He’d kidnapped her.

  But you were needed, whispered a voice in her head. And she’d helped. She’d have felt terrible if those people had died because she had escaped before she’d known.

  So in a way, she was grateful for having been there to help and to be given a chance to find out what was happening to her forest.

  And that meant she had to be grateful that she was here on hand. And to Devon for bringing her back.

  In spite of all he’d done to her, in spite of all that Grandfather had done to her, in spite of everything, she’d saved those people. She had come back to figure out what had happened to the forest.

  But helping those people today made her feel good, like her life had purpose, something she’d been missing for the last year. Growing up with Granny, being who she was, it was imperative that they do energy work to keep their systems balanced. While on the run, her energy work had been just to try to stay alive. And she’d not done so well, burning through her resources at an alarming rate. She’d dropped weight she didn’t have to lose.

  She’d always been lean, and now…medical-school skeletons had nothing on her.

  The sun was setting
as she crested over the last field and saw the huge trees waving in the wind. Lord, they were beautiful. She had an affinity for all plants, but the woods and the forests, especially the sacred forests, held a special place in her heart.

  She was a caretaker who’d shirked her duty. And for a man, no less. Or rather, in order to avoid a man. Granny wouldn’t be pleased. Yet, as a stargazer, she’d known so much before it had happened. Tori had tried to throw charts, as had both her sisters. Genesis had a real talent but hadn’t liked the answers. Tori’s charts had contradicted each other, and Granny had said that was the struggle that Tori was going through herself.

  She’d never understood that.

  Celeste had appeared to have inherited the largest of the stargazer talent. But she’d had no joy in the job. Tori had wanted to do well but she hadn’t the patience. Hell, Tori had patience for very little.

  At least back then.

  Now she had no idea. She’d changed.

  Living on the edge, away from all she’d loved…trying to stay under the radar…out of sight of Devon and all he worked with. She’d almost succeeded. Until the robbery.

  Sigh.

  Life just couldn’t be that easy, could it? Not for her. Her sisters seemed to have it all together. But not Tori. She was a mess. The one who’d walked into a bank looking for her last fifty bucks and got caught up in a bank robbery. Celeste would never have let something so messy happen. Genesis, being so nice, probably would have helped the bank robbers while scolding them the whole time.

  No, life was just messy for Tori.

  She trampled through the woods, hearing the dry grass underneath. Devon had said something about the pools being affected, but it would still take time for the woods to be affected as well. The damage would creep from the water to the land, and nobody seemed to know what was going on.

  But Tori knew. She stared at the dry, prune-like branches of the shrubbery around her, the sheer lack of flowers despite the time of year, and realized the problem was way bigger than she’d first imagined. The knotted energy in the woods locking those poor people in place was huge—but the core problem was even bigger.

  She could only imagine what it would be like if Devon was here to help her. But instead of him needing her help, she worried that she might need his help instead.

  He’d always been great at problem solving. Honestly, she’d have thought he could’ve handled that knot mess himself. But he didn’t do energy the same way she did. He read energy. Read the answers to the puzzles that people were keeping secret. He couldn’t do it for everything, couldn’t do it all the time. But he did it enough that most people stopped to listen when he spoke.

  Jessie raced toward her, his voice loud and excited as he chattered away happily.

  No. Not possible. Surely Jessie had made a mistake.

  She spun around and realized no—he hadn’t.

  Devon. “Hell,” she said. “I’ve changed, so why hasn’t my world changed? How damn difficult can it be?”

  *

  “In what way are you different?” Devon stared at her. He heard the frustration, but also the doubt in her voice. The disgust.

  Still, he was different, too, and it was up to him to show her. Since she wouldn’t—or couldn’t—answer him, he spoke up again. “I walked away from Grandfather today. Walked away from everything he represented.”

  A tiny gasp whispered on the breeze. He knew that had to have shocked her. There hadn’t been anything else in his world but Grandfather’s rules, and he’d walked away.

  No one else had done that yet. Except Connor. But his wasn’t as close a family tie. Besides, Grandfather had wanted him gone. Only he hadn’t expected him to join the other side. In this town, there were only two sides. Grandfather’s side, and the rest of the world. He guessed he’d just changed sides, too.

  After a moment, she asked, “How did he take it?”

  He wanted to laugh, but it was hard to find humor in the situation. “Shock. Disbelief and anger.”

  At the contemplative silence, he felt emboldened.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked with interest.

  He laughed dryly. “I came after you.”

  “Why?”

  Ah. There was the million-dollar question. And he didn’t have a great answer.

  He waited a little too long and she snorted. “Right.”

  “I don’t know, Tori,” he said honestly. “It was instinctive. As if having finally made the right decision, I could maybe put my life back on the right track.”

  “Right decision?”

  Soft now, her voice sent shivers down his spine. He studied her under half-closed lids, leaning against the big tree they had stopped under.

  “Yes,” he finally admitted to himself. “Today was the right decision. The decision I should have made a year ago.”

  “I didn’t want you to walk away from everything in your life.”

  “I know that.”

  “I just wanted you to be there for me.”

  “He turned on you because I loved you,” he paused, his voice husky and thick. He cleared his throat. “It’s impossible to see when you are in the middle of the scenario you’re trying to look at.” What could he say but the truth?

  “True. But you had a chance to sort out your priorities and…you did.”

  Dangerous territory. He searched for something less likely to set them off in the wrong direction. “I couldn’t believe it when I found you. I searched for so long, and then yesterday I saw the bank video feed.”

  “Damn. I suppose that robbery was patched to Grandfather?”

  “Not right away, but with the anomaly of that strange woman being escorted out of the bank for no reason, then of course it was. He has fingers into all anomalies related to the paranormal security system for the planet. You’re definitely an anomaly. You know that. All anomalies run through the center.”

  “I hadn’t expected to end up in a bank robbery that day. And to think that’s all it took to have my world come crashing down around me.”

  “Or maybe it was to bring it back in line. When you walked away, things changed.”

  “Not enough.”

  “No. Maybe not. But a lot has changed again. Although I’m not exactly a great prospect with no job.”

  “Like that ever mattered.”

  He smiled. “No. With you, it never did. But I was raised to excel. When I lost my abilities, I needed that focus. I think I’d have gone nuts without that drive. When you left, I wondered if my talent had left with you.”

  She stared at him, at his honesty, in shock.

  “It had been changing in the weeks before you left,” he continued, staring at a spot just behind her. “When you were finally gone, Grandfather tried to tell me how much better off I was. That you hadn’t understood me. I never believed him, but with you gone, it was easier to slide into the path he had planned out for me.”

  Letting her head fall back, and with the setting sun bathing her tired face, she considered the old man and the iron fist he ruled with. “He’s been ruling for a long time. He’s also power-hungry, selfish, and has no concern for the environment around him.”

  “That’s not true,” Devon protested. “He wanted you here to help out his people.”

  She snorted at that. “Sure he did, but why did he send those people into such a dangerous situation as it was?”

  “You could just as easily blame me for that. I was working security.”

  She stared at him. “You sent those people in there?”

  He flushed. “I had no idea it was that bad. None of us did.”

  Chapter 12

  “And that’s just wrong. How could any of you—you in particular—not know?” she asked in shock. And saw the truth in his face. “Because you have none of your senses working, do you? You haven’t just lost some of them, you’ve lost all of them.”

  The pain that whispered across his face made her want to stop digging, leave him to keep his pain buried de
ep. But she couldn’t. This was too important.

  “Didn’t you realize the forest was dying?”

  “No,” he said. “Not until I realized these people were in trouble. I hadn’t been there in months.”

  “It didn’t get that way overnight,” she exclaimed. “It’s been months in the making. Probably the whole year I’ve been gone, in fact.”

  “Did you ever consider that the forest started to die after you left it? After you, a vital energy worker, a vital connection to that forest, left?”

  Silence.

  Slowly, she said, “I hadn’t considered such a thing. It would have to be a coincidence, surely?”

  He peered deep into her eyes. “Why? Are you so unaware of your power?”

  “But I’m not the only one here,” she cried, not liking his suggestion.

  “Ah. You don’t know.”

  She tilted her head, a horrible sense of foreboding filling her. “What don’t I know?”

  “Your sister. Matt? The head of the Paranormal Council, and the Portmans. The black rocks and the damage to the pools?”

  She stared at him in dismay. “I haven’t been able to connect with my sister yet.”

  “Too bad. That’s where you need to start. If you want to figure this all out, that is.”

  Crap. She stared at the forest around them. Her body felt better. Moved better. The adjustment had been natural, easy. Her energy system, charging system, had gratefully shifted back to its normal state. She’d been raised here, so the sense of homecoming was real.

  The energy swarmed around her.

  “Then let’s go find my sister.” She said it naturally, then caught herself. Why had she included him in that discussion?

  She needed to see her sister on her own. It had been a year. A long year. Now, insecurity wove through her at the thought. She needed to apologize to Genesis. And she had no intention of doing that with an audience. She also had to find her first. Was she at her apartment, or at Granny’s place? The latter definitely wasn’t a place to take Devon.

  “It’s late.” She turned back the way she’d come and started walking. “I need to get going.”