Binds that Burn: A Werepanther Romance Suspense (Urban Dwellers Book 3) Page 13

  “You will make the time,” Madame Rivaldi demanded. She stuck out her hands, indicating for Nina to put hers into them. “Ultimately, this is all about you. Don’t you want to know your future? Of course, the question is, once you know, will that make you feel better or worse?”

  Nina was going to say something smart, but there was something about the woman’s expression that pulled her in. She slowly reached her arms across the table between them. Madame Rivaldi took her wrists into a tight vice grip. Nina was shocked, and immediately tried to move away, but the woman was much stronger than she looked. She held Nina’s hands firmly down on the table. Then she stared deeply into Nina’s eyes. Nina felt herself returning to a state of calm. Perhaps this fortune telling stuff wasn’t so bad. Perhaps sensing Nina’s resistance was gone, Madame Rivaldi twisted her arms so that her palms faced up, but she did not let go of her grip on Nina’s wrists.

  “You love him.”

  Of all the things that Madame Rivaldi could say to start off this fucked up fortune-telling session, that was not the one that Nina wanted to hear. “I don’t,” she said. She didn’t need to ask who he was. That much was obvious.

  Madame Rivaldi seemed to ignore her as she continued to study Nina’s palms. “You love him, and yet you will run to the ends of the earth to try and get away from him. He hurt you.”

  “That is the irrelevant to this particular situation.” Nina sputtered.

  “Matters of the heart are never irrelevant,” Madame Rivaldi said. “Especially in this case and especially for you.”

  “What does that mean?” Nina asked. She was getting pulled into the horror of it all. Madame Rivaldi was clearly good at what she did. Nina was starting to believe that perhaps she wasn’t a complete quack after all.

  “You must be careful. The one who seeks you is very strong. You are strong, too. You will face great adversity, but if you succeed, you secure the happiness you desire for the rest of your life.”

  “That is the most generic brand of bullshit I’ve ever heard,” Nina said. “If you want to help me, tell me where I can find her.”

  “As I said, if she wants to be found, she will find you.”

  That did not give Nina any kind of satisfaction at all. “She’s staying somewhere or she knows someone or there’s something that you can tell me.”

  Madame Rivaldi leaned back in her chair and let Nina’s wrists go. Nina pulled them back quickly and started to rub them. She wondered if she was going to have bruises there or not. “The one you seek is powerful. You do not go up against her without understanding that.”

  “Blah blah blah blah, yes, I get it. I think she’s a witch, and she’s a shifter. It’s all one big clusterfuck. But that doesn’t change the fact that I need to find her. She is the one who holds everything.”

  A ghost of a smile crossed Madame Rivaldi’s face. “No, she doesn’t. Not even you hold the key to everything. But you know the one who does.”

  Nina looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Eric?”

  A small nod of satisfaction crossed Madame Rivaldi’s face. “Do with this what you will. But I will tell you this. She seeks something. Just like you do. And once she finds it, there will be no stopping her.”

  Nina felt a shiver run down her spine at the finality of the woman’s words. She made it sound like it was a foregone conclusion that Jillian would succeed.

  “Is this whole thing for real? I feel like I am in some kind of messed up movie.”

  Madame Rivaldi leaned forward on the table. Her mouth twisted in a cruel smile. “Only in real life could things be this fucked up. Why do you think I look like this? Why do you think that this happened?”

  Nina remembered something that Eric had said to her in the car. “I don’t believe in fate.”

  Madame Rivaldi’s expression turned to one of boredom. “Then I suppose you should probably leave. You got what you came for. Be sure to pay Penny out front. I expect twice my normal fee for taking you as a walk-in. I expect that Mr. Carmichael can afford it.”

  Nina stood up. One part of her wanted to demand further answers. But she also sensed that she wasn’t going to get anything else out of Madame Rivaldi.

  Nina started to work the pieces of the puzzle in her mind again. Why would Jillian see Madame Rivaldi? What would Jillian want to know from a charlatan fortuneteller? She turned just before leaving the room. “She came to you for the answer to what she was looking for.”

  “She did,” Madame Rivaldi said.

  “Did she find it?”

  “She still seeks,” Madame Rivaldi said.

  “Can you tell me what it is?”

  “What do we all seek? Purpose, a reason for living. Or reason to continue going on living. All of these things wrapped into one. She seeks nothing more than what everyone else in the world seeks.”

  “I don’t understand what that means,” Nina said.

  “And yet what you seek and what she seeks are irrevocably linked. Perhaps you will find it first before it is too late.”

  Nina shook her head. She walked through the hallway and passed back through the beaded curtain. She stopped at Penny’s desk and paid for the transaction with her credit card. Her mind whirled with what she had heard. The whole interaction with Madame Rivaldi had only served to make her more confused with the exception of one thing.

  It was time that she faced the truth of her feelings for Eric. She knew that she was still in love with him even though she hadn’t wanted to admit it. The last few days being in proximity of him had proved to be a very painful reminder of that lie. When she was with him, she couldn’t hide the truth from herself.

  She stepped out onto the sidewalk and noticed that it had gotten darker outside. That seemed unusual. She didn’t think she had been in the house for long. The limo door immediately popped open, and Eric was standing there beside her, anxiously searching her face. “You’ve been in there for two hours. I hope it was good.”

  Nina’s mouth fell open. “Two hours? I’ve only been in there for ten, maybe fifteen minutes tops.”

  Eric shook his head and showed her his watch. Nina looked back at the townhouse. She thought she saw the curtain move in the room in the second floor window. She couldn’t see Madame Rivaldi, but she felt the weight of her eyes nonetheless. She shivered.

  “What did she say?” Eric demanded.

  “Not much. Jillian came here looking for something. But she was really vague about what that thing was,” Nina said. “She wasn’t very helpful.”

  Eric ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “Now what?”

  “I’m tired,” Nina said. “I think that I need time to think.” About the fact that I have never stopped loving you, her mind added.

  Eric shepherded her into the car. She didn’t resist when he put his arm around her shoulders and gently pulled her against him. Then she closed her eyes, and she slipped away into sleep.

  Nina didn’t know how to explain the fact that she knew she was dreaming. She was in a place that seemed fluid. She felt weight enveloping every part of her body. It was the same feeling that she recalled feeling when she was underwater. But she could move through it freely and easily. She let herself go and just enjoyed the motion of not being fully wedded to a time or a place. It seemed simpler here, wherever she was.

  She felt the swaying of her body as she moved along. There were only a few emotions and her mind. She wanted to eat. Then she wanted to sleep. And she would repeat this cycle for the foreseeable future. She might move from place to place, but ultimately, it was just those solitary desires driving her. Life seemed so much simpler here.

  She moved through the darkness, not in any hurry to get anywhere in particular. She saw a flicker of lights off to her right, and it drew her attention. What was that? It pulsed red. It seemed to attract her. Soon, she was moving toward the light. She couldn’t help herself. She was curious, and it felt as if it was a beacon for home.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When Nina woke
up, she didn’t know where she was. The dream had been so unsettling. It was as if there were two people in her head. Then it all came crashing back down on her. The encounter with Jillian. The bite. Her future, if she lived to see it. She could hear the sound of pots and pans being swept around somewhere close by.

  The ceiling above her was unfamiliar, and as she turned her head to take in the room around her, which appeared to be a living room, she saw it wasn’t familiar either. She sat up. She had been lying on a luxuriously plush couch, and her body ached to lay back down. The edges of her thoughts were fuzzy, so things were not crystal clear the way that they usually were. She wondered if the medicine that she had been given was starting to wear off. She had a sinking suspicion that it was.

  She looked over the back of the couch and saw Eric standing there in a small galley style kitchen. He looked as if he had just taken a shower. His hair was still wet, and he wore a simple gray T-shirt and jeans. The casual look wasn’t one that she was used to seeing on Eric. He seemed to favor three-piece suits for all occasions. She’d often wondered if it was his battle armor.

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw her peering at him. “Oh, good. You’re awake. I thought you might be hungry,” he said.

  That was when Nina realized that she could smell the mouth-watering, wafting smell of meat. She was hungry. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. She got up off the couch and wandered into the kitchen. Eric had just pulled a pan out of the oven. It held two large steaks, and both of them were definitely on the bloody side. Her stomach growled.

  Eric must have caught her ravenous look. “There’s plenty more where this came from. I remember my first transition. My parents used to joke that it was like I had a hollow leg. It’s very common.”

  He was trying to make her feel better, normal, as if this kind of thing happened every day. He was trying to make her feel better in the worst possible situation. She had to appreciate that a little bit.

  “I take it we’re at the safe house,” she said. “I don’t know what happened. Apparently meeting Madame Rivaldi took a lot out of me.”

  Eric nodded. “Also not uncommon. My car drew some attention in Foster Heights. There were some pictures that people took and posted up on some social media sites with some pretty unflattering taglines. Kyle has asked me to stay out of sight from this point forward.”

  “That’s going to make any further investigation difficult,” she said. The idea of going it on her own without Eric should have made her happy, but it didn’t. It was as if finally admitting her truth to herself had shifted something inside of her.

  “This whole thing is incredibly messed up,” he said. “Since Jillian appears to be walking and talking, we made some quiet inquiries about if there was a body in the morgue. There isn’t. That is causing a bit of a kerfuffle in the police department. The only good thing about it is that it sounds like that will delay my arraignment.”

  “I don’t understand why she would’ve done that,” Nina said. “Why all the smoke and mirrors?”

  “It was simply to fuck with my IPO,” Eric said. “I don’t see any other reason and the timing was a little bit too convenient. It doesn’t matter if I’m charged anymore, or not. My investors are questioning everything. I’m probably going to have to take a serious look at what to do with my business moving forward. Right now, nobody wants to touch me.”

  He said it matter-of-factly, but Nina understood that this was something that would cut at Eric deeply. He was so interspersed with his business that it was difficult to tell where one stopped and the other began. He had been a workhorse even when she had been with him. He had been determined to make something of himself, and he had. Now it was all being stripped away from him.

  “Why is she doing this?” Nina asked again. She felt like she had been asking the question over and over again.

  “I haven’t been entirely honest with you about what happened the last time I saw Jillian.” Eric put the steak on a plate and motioned for her to sit at the small table next to a window at the back of the room. It appeared to face an alley. Nina looked outside to either end and could see a couple of shadows moving around.

  “Security,” Eric said, noticing her glance. “Dig in while it’s still moderately warm,” he said.

  Nina’s mind was spinning again. She wanted to hear what Eric was going to tell her, but there was something else that she needed to ask him that was far more urgent to her. “How do you live with two voices in your head?”

  Eric looked up at her in surprise. Then his eyes narrowed. “It has made its first contact, hasn’t it?”

  “If by first contact, you mean a weird dream where I felt like there were two voices in my head as we tried to decide what to do next, then yes.” She shuddered, though. This was like the epitome of her nightmare. She remembered Tomas’s screams yelling for ‘it’ to get out of his head, with chilling clarity.

  “It’s okay,” Eric said. He reached across the table and took her hand. She stared at it. It was so much bigger than her own hand. “What happened to your brother doesn’t happen all the time. You need to understand that. He was an anomaly. I’ve seen it happen before too. But you’re strong, Nina. I understand that this isn’t what you wanted, but if it happens, it just means that your life will be different. It doesn’t mean that you have to change who you are to live with it. In time, you might even be able to see that having that other part of you is an asset.”

  Nina wanted to negate his argument out of hand, but she sensed that time was growing shorter for her. The time of the transition was starting to take hold.

  “I understand that what happened with Tomas isn’t how it has to happen,” she said. “But what if there is some type of genetic disposition to that in our family? What if I don’t make it through and go crazy because of something in our genes? Maybe that is why she picked me?”

  Eric sighed heavily. “She picked you because she knows that you are my mate.”

  Nina blinked. It was as if her brain shut off, because she couldn’t quite process the word. “Your mate?”

  Eric scooted closer to her. It appeared as if he wanted to touch her, but he just wasn’t sure how. “I’ve had a chance to talk to both Kyle and Tony. Jillian is unhinged. Everything that she’s been doing is escalating, and she isn’t afraid to pull other people into her game if it will achieve her means. And that means that she’s going to go after the people that we care about. Who else would mean more to the three of us than our mates?”

  “No, I think you need to back up a minute. You just said that you thought I was your mate.” This kind of thing didn’t happen. She felt this overwhelming sense of joy, but at the same time it was tempered with an equal amount of frustration and confusion and anger. “If you thought I was your mate, then why did we break up? Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why…” She couldn’t even form fully functional sentences anymore.

  Eric’s hand squeezed hers. “It doesn’t happen like a strike of lightning. Not all the time, anyways. Sometimes, it’s like a slow burn that builds over time. I think I saw the signs back then, but I wasn’t clear on what they meant. I wasn’t ready to admit to myself or anyone else that I cared about you the way that I did. Plus, you had this experience with your brother that was so horrible and awful that it had a profound impact on you. I didn’t think that you would be able to get over that to accept me for who I was.”

  She saw the truth in his eyes. Eric was ripping off all of his armor and laying himself bare and exposed in front of her. The thought that she wouldn’t be able to accept him was silly and couldn’t be further from the truth. But looking back, especially when they first started dating, she had said some flippant things that could have taken root and caused him to doubt her.

  Nina didn’t know what to say. Everything was coming at her too fast. Too many things were changing at one time. “When I asked her why, Madame Rivaldi said that, in my case, everything has to do with matters of the heart.” She peered up at Eric. “
Is this what she meant?”

  “Yes, that would make sense. Jillian and I were kind of a thing when she disappeared. She was fine, and I liked her, but she had been pushing towards the end about making things more solid. I ignored it because I was a kid, and there was no way in hell that I was going to settle down when I was only eighteen. Plus, I knew without a doubt that she wasn’t my mate. So it didn’t make a lot of sense for me to really think about having a future with her.”

  “So you broke up with her?”

  “Broke up with her is a relative term. I am pretty sure she transformed into some kind of demigod,” Eric said.

  Nina was officially done with all of this. She put her fork and knife down. “Demigod?”

  “I don’t even know if I believe this myself, Nina. It was a fucked up night. We had been drinking, and I had been doing a little bit of recreational drugs, and then Tony pulled out this spell book and read a spell. He used all of our blood to bind it. I didn’t think it worked, but then something happened. Jillian and the other girls were taken. She wanted us to come with her, but we wouldn’t go.”

  “Go where?”

  “The other side? An alternate universe? I don’t know. She was enveloped in a red ball of light. She took the two girls that were there with her. She reached for us to come with her, and we took a step back, and we said no. Before anything else could happen, the ball of light disappeared in a burst of flames. It was like it imploded on itself. We were in the blast path. When we woke up after being unconsciousness, we were covered in blood. We didn’t remember where the blood had come from or what happened the night before. All of those memories just came back a few days ago.”

  There were so many gaps and holes in that story that Nina had no idea where to begin. “So what you’re saying is that you guys cast a spell that turned a girl into something that we’ve never seen before, and then you rejected her.”

  “When you say it like that, it sounds crazy,” Eric said.

  “It definitely sounds like something,” Nina said. “She wanted you to come with her.”