Page 19 of A Hunter Cursed
“In the glove compartment,” was his reply. “But I’ll squash you if I try to lean over to get it.”
Since she’d rather not have her skull dented against the steering wheel, Keegan made quick work of straightening up and grabbing the flashlight which was right where he’d said it would be.
Clicking the beam on, she bent back over to have a closer look. Her mouth practically watered. God, he had like an eight-pack. So friggin sexy she could barely stand it. Licking her lips, she mentally scolded herself for losing focus so quickly and got back to the task at hand.
The gray stain marring the taut skin of his abs was shaped like a paint splotch and not overly large. Except for a few pink streaks, evidence of where Jeremiah had scratched, there was no sign of anything concerning. No blisters or bumps, no raised edges, puffiness of swelling.
“Does it hurt?”
“Nope. It just itches, and not even all the time, just once in a while.” Then with a grumble, he added, “At least the smell is gone.”
Pulling his shirt back in place, Keegan clicked off the flashlight, straightened up, and settled back into her own seat to ask curiously, “What did it smell like?”
Jeremiah’s grimace of distaste was almost comical. “Like every bad smell imaginable had been mixed together in an attempt to make something even worse.” He motioned around the interior of the Suburban. “Even my rig stunk. I thought for sure it would take days to air out but I got lucky.”
Keegan frowned. Having now seen the stain, and the absence of any true trauma to his body, her worst fears had been put to rest only to have more fears take their place. A thinning, Destin had called it. A thinning of what? And why hadn’t she insisted at the time that he explain?
Add to that, this thinning had appeared to Jeremiah in a physical manifestation of her vision, right where she had felt the evil. And according to what Jeremiah had just told her, it smelled evil too. What exactly were they dealing with here?
Whatever it was, should her vision hold true, she and Jeremiah were going to be battling it together. It was a small comfort, that she wasn’t alone, but a comfort she’d hold onto with both hands, nonetheless. Still, it would be nice to know what exactly they were potentially facing so that they could better prepare.
A knuckle under her chin urged her to look at Jeremiah.
“We’ll get through this,” he promised resolutely. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.”
She nodded, and then, needing something else to occupy her mind, blurted, “Want to see a trick?”
Angling his body toward Keegan, Jeremiah nodded, his curiosity growing as she once again opened the glove compartment and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. “Is it safe to assume you don’t need this?”
He shook his head. “I threw it in there intending to throw it away once I found a trashcan but forget it was there.”
Keegan nodded and began smoothing out the majority of the wrinkles. She showed him the front and back, making hand gestures like she was giving a stage presentation, then she rolled the paper into a tube, passed her hand over it in a showy flourish, and snapped it out to reveal what looked like a photo.
Jeremiah’s eyes widened as he took the picture from her and inspected it. It was an image of him. He was crouched in the middle of a dark road, his eyes those of his wolf, and a fierce snarl on his face. “That’s amazing,” he uttered, totally awed.
“You were in my vision as well,” she told him. “I saw you, just like that,” she said, motioning to the picture, “before I met you that day at the facility.”
He stared at the picture, shaking his head in disbelief at what had started as a piece of ragged notebook paper. “How did you even do this?” he asked in awe.
She shrugged as if what she had just done was no big deal. “It’s my specialty. I can change just about anything if I focus hard enough, though I’ve never tried somethingreallybig, like transforming a building or something.”
Jeremiah glanced back down at the photo in his hand. “So this isn’t an illusion, then?”
“Nope. Perfectly real.”
“That is…” he trailed off, shaking his head, unable to find the words. Raising his eyes to hers, he said, “You’d put those so-called street magicians to shame.”
“Pshaw.” She grinned and waved her hand. “Those hacks?”
Jeremiah chuckled and Keegan cleared her throat. “I kid, of course. Sleight of hand is a talent that takes years of practice to master, and those that have are truly talented. I was born able to transform objects. I can’t imagine the headaches it must have caused my parents with me always changing things on them.”
Seeing the sadness at the mention of her parents that replaced her earlier levity, Jeremiah quickly changed the subject. “I can do a trick too.”
He was happy to see her melancholy chased away by curiosity as she asked, “You can? Show me.”
Happy to oblige, he let his eyes shift to that of his wolf.
Leaning closer, she grabbed his face between her palms and stared into his eyes. “That is amazing. They really do kind of glow, just like I saw.”
