Page 33 of Wonder
Jackson held out a bottle of water and a piece of cheese. She looked between us frantically. “Whoareyou?” She scooted around so she was sitting upright on the cushions.
I could’ve slapped myself. “Yeah, sorry. I’m Reno Torres. I’m the acting District Monitor for South Texas.” She relaxed slightly. “This is Jackson.” They held out the water and cheese again, and she hesitantly took both. “Oh, and your roommate’s on her way over here. I found her number in your phone.” I picked it up off the ottoman next to me and offered it to her. Except she didn’t have any free hands, so I set it on the couch cushion by her hip.
I explained about the vampires as she ate the cheese and drank the water. “Stay around other people while you’re in town, and you’ll be fine.”
“Um, I think I’ll be going home tomorrow. Maybe tonight.” She touched her neck.
Jackson looked up, and we heard a car door slam outside. Thank fuck, the roommate was here.
Fortunately Jackson didn’t seem disturbed that the roommate was in her mid-twenties, instead of being a small child as I’d been heavily implying to them earlier. In my defense, she did have a pretty high-pitched voice, and compared to me—hell, more compared to Jackson, Nicky, and Simon—she was a baby.
The two women were gone within five minutes, both of them making plans to leave town as soon as they could.
I went back into the living room to relax on the couch for a minute. I wanted to take a shower, but it seemed like too much effort right then. Jackson had moved to the corner of the sectional and was staring toward the back door.
I was debating whether pushing the button to activate the recliner and make the footrest pop up would be a bad idea or not when Greg came out of the guest bedroom.
“Hey, how’s Cal?”
“Better. He doesn’t have a concussion anymore.” He glanced around. “Is Meg gone?”
“Yeah. Her roommate picked her up. She’s pretty freaked out.”
“I bet.” He dropped down onto the ottoman where I’d been sitting earlier, then he gazed at me with a solemn expression.“I’m taking Cal home. He and I—we’re not fighters. I can’t risk him again.”
I sat up so I could reach out and grasp his shoulder. “I understand. I’m sure he feels the same way about you.”
I sat back and he rolled his eyes with a grin. “There may have been some swearing.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Cal said tomorrow after he’s rested up he’ll try to call a vision every couple of hours. He thinks he’ll be able to reach this distance because he’s directly interacted with the vampires.”
I raised my eyebrows. Cal’s bonding with Greg meant his Seer abilities were much stronger than mine, but he was talking about over two hundred miles. “Has he had a vision that far away before?”
Greg shook his head. “No, but Delphia and Edgar are out of the country, so he’s all we’ve got unless you have a spontaneous vision.”
“Out of the country?” Delphia was Greg’s mother, and Edgar was his great uncle. They were the only other Seers in Texas besides me and Cal, and both worked at TWIST, a Wonder rescue organization outside of San Antonio.
He nodded. “Now that they hired someone to manage TWIST, Mom’s doing all the fun stuff she missed out on all those years she was running the show. She booked a river cruise in Europe, and Uncle Edgar and Aunt Bettina decided to go with her.”
“Good for them.”
He leaned forward. “If it turns out Cal can’t call visions for you, we’ll find out how long it would take Mom and Edgar to come home.”
I made a face. “I hate to ask that of them. Let’s see what Cal can do when he feels up to it. We’ll talk more tomorrow. Maybe we’ll get a clue or something by then. Hell, I’m a fucking private investigator. You’d think I could find a couple of measly vampires.”
He snorted. “Find a couple of measly vampires who can turn into fog and fly away? I don’t think any detective is that good.”
I rubbed my face. “Either way, let’s talk tomorrow and see where things stand, okay?”
“Okay.” He stood up and turned to Jackson. “Do you and Nicky want to come to Bent Oak with me and Cal?”
They shook their head. “No. We are needed here.”
Shane came in from the backyard. “Hey, I talked to the Hunters.” He waved his phone in the air. “To no one’s surprise, when they finally showed up at the park, they didn’t find any evidence of where the vampires had gone.”
I refrained from sighing, but Greg was right. Finding the vampires was almost impossible right now.
“Dominic did say they’re assigning some Hunters here to stay outside the house around the clock.”
I ran my hands over my face but nodded. It made sense. We hadn’t even looked to see if we’d been followed by suspicious clouds of fog when we’d left the park, and it was well within the distance Simon had told us the vampires could travel in their mist form.
