Page 6 of Fanged Embrace
When her eyes met mine, they were haunted. That was the only way to describe it. She was looking right at me, but I got the feeling she wasn’t seeing me at all. She opened her mouth,and her voice was a whisper, an echo from somewhere far away. “Laurie.”
“Laurie.” I rolled the name around on my tongue, but it didn’t ring any bells whatsoever. She really was a stranger, connected to me only by a lost handbag and a brief glimpse of a potential future. “I’m River.”
For a moment, she didn’t respond, just stared ahead with unseeing eyes. Then she blinked, shook her head, and offered a small nod in my direction, faint resignation in her tone. “Nice to meet you, River.”
I cleared my throat, unsure of how best to approach my next question. “So… Do you hang around that bar a lot? Where you, um, found my bag?” I tried to sound casual, just curious. Definitely not sussing her out.
Laurie’s eyes narrowed, the corners of her mouth twitching downward. “Sometimes,” she answered slowly. Her voice was cool, but I sensed the same chord of suspicion for me that I felt toward her. “Maybe I’ll see you around there?”
“Maybe you will.” I forced a light laugh and my fingers twitched on the strap of my bag, still uneasy over the notion that she’d discovered more than she admitted to.
Laurie flicked a glance down the street, then pulled her jacket tighter. She gave a stiff shrug. “Anyway, I’ve really gotta go.”
“Right. Uh, sure. Thanks again—for, you know.”
She nodded once, curtly, like she’d used up her daily quota of pleasantries.
I watched her back away, keeping her eyes fastened on mine until her heels hit the sidewalk. Then she turned and strode away down the street, blinking in and out of sight under the glow of the streetlights.
I let out the breath I’d been unable to release while her eyes were fixed on me, and my entire chest felt lighter than it had a second ago. It was like stepping out of a haze of smoke orcollapsing into bed after a long day. All I’d done was hold a stiff conversation. So why did my body ache like I’d been hauling boulders around on my shoulders?
It’s her,I realized with a start,it’s Laurie’s presence.
There had been an air of deep discomfort around her, a tumultuous thundercloud hanging over her head. Something that made my intuition prickle. It shouldn’t have been so strange to me. I was in tune with all of my associates' emotions. I could read them all like an open book.
But a stranger? That usually took time and careful sensing. I had to get to know them first.
Laurie had been different. Somehow, despite not knowing her from a bar of soap, I’d felt her conflict. It was all-encompassing, suffocating in its intensity. And it vanished the instant she left my sight, leaving me oddly weightless in the aftermath.
My gaze dropped to the bag at my side—my bag with all its suspicious contents. If she truly found the vials of blood or the strange trinkets and she recognized their meaning… Well, that would explain her unease, at least partly. But that sensation that surrounded her went much deeper. Like she was carrying a storm inside her head.
Sighing, I turned on my heel and headed back inside. The door clicked shut behind me, and my mind sprinted a mile a minute. What on earth had she gone through to make her so guarded?
I dropped my bag near the entrance, biting the inside of my cheek. Part of me wanted to run after her, press her for answers, figure out why I’d had a vision that insinuated that our survival hinged entirely on her. But the rational part of me whispered caution: if she was important, if she was broken and dangerous all at once, I’d need to handle her gently.
No memory wipes, not yet. I had to know more—and hope like hell that I was wrong about her pain. Because I did notwant to imagine what she had endured to carry that heavy a burden.
The following morning, bright and early, I holed up in my office at Leyore headquarters and got to work. Which is to say, I ignored the hefty stack of paperwork Maxine had left on my desk and instead let my mind wander.
Perched on a creaking cabinet, one knee propped up and eyes shut tight, I tried to will the familiar flicker ofsomethingthat I’d channeled so often before—a flash of insight, a blast of premonition, anything that might guide me forward.
The office door was shut, the blinds were drawn, and I was determined to coax out another vision of Laurie from somewhere within the confines of my mind. But every time I tried to zero in on that thread of fate connecting us, I hit a blank wall.
I groaned and let my eyelids flutter open. The office felt claustrophobic. My hair lay loose around my shoulders, and I could feel every strand tickling my neck. I rubbed a hand over my eyes, frustration mounting.
Nothing. The moment I focused my mind on Laurie, the future turned fuzzy. The timelines refused to yield. My typical glimpses—where I'd see fleeting events or a sharp sense of incoming danger—just wouldn’t solidify around her.
It rattled me, enraged me, and left my nerves on edge.Maybe a different position will fix it?
I had just figured out how to balance on my head, toes pointed skyward, when a loud pounding rattled the door. A moment later Jordan burst in, barely sparing a glance at my impromptu yoga session in the middle of the office floor.
“All right, Madame Mysterious, care to explain why you ditched Hunter’s party last night without so much as a heads-up?” She stomped around my desk and plopped down in the swivel chair.
With a stifled sigh, I brought my feet down and pushed myself upright, tottering in a wobbly line while the blood rushed from my head. “Something came up.”
“Oh yeah?” Jordan raised a brow. “You left so fast I thought the building was on fire. What’s going on?”
“Something weird,” I muttered and perched on the edge of the desk. “I had a vision. But I’m not even sure what exactly I saw, or how any of it adds up.”
