“Did you find out anything?”
His warm breath tickled my cheek and the side of my neck and I felt the sudden urge to shiver. I turned to answer him and nearly bumped his nose. Our faces were practically touching.
My answer died on my lips when my eyes met his. I was immediately lost in the glowing gold of his irises, hypnotized by the hints of emerald green that encircled his pupils. I’d never been this close to him before, close enough to truly appreciate how amazingly beautiful his eyes actually were.
Holding my gaze, he neither leaned forward nor leaned back. I could feel the heat from his face warm my lips. Without thought, my tongue slipped out to wet them. I watched Trace’s eyes drop to my mouth and saw his pupils dilate before they rose back to mine.
“Tracey, did you bring your uniform home so I could wash it?”
At Rebekah’s question, Trace backed up just a few inches and dropped his head with a sigh.
“Yes, Mom. Don’t I always?”
I fought back a pleased smile. He sounded frustrated—as frustrated as I felt—and that made me giddy for some reason.
“Sorry,” Rebekah mumbled, turning quickly to exit the room.
“We’ll talk later,” Trace assured quietly. Although he leaned back into his space on the couch, he was still closer than what he’d been before he’d whispered in my ear. It seemed that he felt the need to be close to me as much as I felt the need to be close to him and that thrilled my heart.
We watched a popular comedy that I’d actually wanted to see. I was a little disappointed that he hadn’t chosen a scary movie. Although I hated the thought of employing such embarrassing feminine tactics, I would have gladly scooted close to him and hid my face against his shoulder during a scary part. Heck, I would’ve done that during the opening credits if I’d thought I could get away with it.
As it was, I only laughed during the movie when Trace did. I paid so little attention, I didn’t have a clue what was going on, much less if the dialogue was amusing. I didn’t care, though. I could rent it and watch it later. All I wanted from that night was to be close to Trace and enjoy his company.
When the movie was over, rather than being disappointed that the night was about to come to an end, I felt the thrill of excitement humming along my nerve ends like ribbons of electricity. I was already thinking ahead to being alone with Trace in his truck, to the possibility that he might try to kiss me when we arrived at my house. Oh, how I hoped he would try to kiss me! Mentally, I dared anyone to interrupt us again, Brady included.
After ejecting the disc and putting it away, Trace picked up our glasses and reached for the popcorn bowl.
I held it away from him. “I’ll carry it. I want to say goodnight to your Mom anyway,” I explained.
I followed him through the house to the kitchen. Rebekah was sitting at the small table in the corner, her feet curled beneath her in the chair, leafing through a magazine and sipping a cup of what smelled like coffee.
I put the popcorn bowl in the sink and then approached her.
“Thank you so much for having me over. It was very nice to meet you.”
With a big smile, Rebekah stood and enveloped me in a big hug. “It was my pleasure, sweetie. Come back any time.”
I felt that strange heaviness invade my head and limbs again, but it dissipated nearly as soon as it had begun, leaving me feeling a bit confused about the whole thing. I smiled weakly when she released me and stepped back.
I turned around to find Trace. He was standing in the kitchen doorway watching us, waiting for me. For just a moment, a halo of hazy white fluff surrounded his head. I blinked, again feeling as if there was something amiss with my vision.
I noticed a small frown pinching his brows together. He must’ve noticed my difficulty. Without hesitation, he stepped forward, grabbed my hand and said, “Come on. I’ll take you home.” And without further ado, he led me from the kitchen, leaving me to call back over my shoulder to his mother.
“Thanks again, Rebekah.”
She said nothing.
CHAPTER TWELVE
We had just pulled out of the driveway when Trace glanced over at me and spoke. I was a bit surprised by his question, thinking he’d have been most interested in what I had found out from his mother.
“So, what happened in there? In the kitchen. You looked like you were about to hurl.”
“Oh,” I said, shaking my head as I mentally switched gears. “Uh, I don’t really know. I kept seeing these really strange blurry spots and a couple times I just felt kinda funny. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just tired.”
“Hmm,” he grunted, noncommittally. He didn’t seem any more reassured by my explanation than I felt. “Well, did you do any good with your alone time?”
I frowned, dreading bringing up the sensitive subject of Trace’s father’s death.
“Um, she just told me that your father was killed in a hunting accident. That’s pretty much it.”
Trace nodded absently, his eyes pointed straight forward, trained on the road ahead. When he said nothing, I felt the need to end the strained silence, so I continued.
I spoke quietly, gently. “She said that you blame yourself. That you always have. But that it wasn’t your fault.”
“It’s strange the way the human brain works. I can remember more of the
feelings
of what happened than the actual events. I mean like, I can’t remember seeing him actually get shot, but I can remember feeling like he was being taken from me and I should’ve done something to help him, to stop it. I don’t know what. It’s not like I could stop a bullet, but ever since that day, I’ve always just felt…
haunted
by the fact that I should’ve done something. What if I could’ve saved him?”
With that question, Trace looked to me. I quickly lost all ability to focus on the conversation. My eyes were drawn to a fuzzy white cloud about the size of a fist that seemed to hover just above the skin in the center of his forehead.
“What?”
It wasn’t until he spoke that I realized my mouth was slightly ajar. I snapped my teeth together with an audible click, wishing that I had been able to conceal my reaction a little better. I would much rather have had some time to mull over the strange happenings of the night before coming clean about them with Trace. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option, as I was a terrible liar, even more so when cornered.
“What?” I asked almost reflexively, but it was also a completely ineffective stall tactic.
Trace made a frustrated noise. “What are you looking at?”
He reached up to swipe the back of his hand across his forehead, scrubbing in the general vicinity of where I’d been looking. He examined the back of his hand and then looked back at me.
“Did I get it? What was it?”
His action hadn’t disturbed the haze in the slightest. It hadn’t even appeared to shift under his hand, but rather seemed to float over top of it as if his hand wasn’t even there.
My eyes dropped to his. He was waiting expectantly. “Well?”
“No, it’s still there.”
“What is it?”
“I…I, um…I don’t know. It’s like a blurry spot almost.”
“A blurry spot?” he repeated. “Like the other spots you’ve been seeing tonight?”
“Yep.”
“And it’s on my head?”
“Yep.”
Trace leaned to his right and peered into the rearview mirror, no doubt looking for any evidence of what I was seeing. When he resettled back into his seat, he glanced back over at me.
“You still see it?”
“Yep.”
He paused, trying to sound casual even though he looked concerned. “Maybe you
are
tired.”
I nodded, both of us knowing perfectly well that wasn’t the case. “Probably.”
A pensive silence fell between us like a veil, each of us lost in thought about what I could be seeing and what it could mean.
And then I heard the whispering.
I couldn’t stop the gasp that stole past my lips when I realized the implications of what the voices were telling me, what they were teaching me, revealing to me. Well, I guess it was more like all the
possible
implications, as I wasn’t really sure what the implications actually were. There were literally dozens of possibilities.
Unfortunately, once again, Trace was alerted to something I’d much rather have waited to share.
“Peyton? What’s wrong? What is it?”
“Um, nothing. It’s nothing,” I said, smiling over-brightly at him.
He tossed me a look that said he didn’t believe me for one second. “Peyton, you’re a terrible liar. Tell me.”
“Seriously, I’m just…I just thought I…”
“Stop trying. You’re only making it worse. Tell me what’s going on.”
I saw the determination glittering in his eyes. It was there in the firm set of his lips and in the clenched muscle at the corner of his jaw. I sighed in defeat. He wasn’t going to be letting it go any time soon.
“Trace, I think your mother might be a witch.”
His gaze flickered between me and the road twice before he guided the truck onto the shoulder and pushed the gear shift into park. He didn’t turn immediately to me or say anything for what seemed like an eternity. My guess is he was mulling it over.
“Well,” he said, much more calmly than I might’ve expected. “I guess considering what you’ve said about me and Brady, and what we saw in the meadow, nothing should surprise me anymore. I’m just not sure what that means exactly.”
I shrugged. “Neither am I. But there was magic all over those pictures. That’s what I’m seeing.”
“You mean the fuzzy spots?”
I nodded.
“Like the one you see on my forehead?”
Trace’s voice had grown a bit higher in pitch, concern evident.
“Um, yeah.”
He turned to face me fully. “Is it still there?”
I looked. And it was.
“Um, yeah.”
“So you’re saying there’s magic on me? Does that mean she’s doing something to me?”
“I don’t know. All I can tell you is that, to me, that’s what magic looks like. But even now it’s fading. I think I can only see it when I’m close enough to her to sort of experience her power, or the source or whatever.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“That’s something else that I can do since all this started. Like, when I’m close to people with some sort of…ability or whatever you want to call it—whatever it is that makes some of us different—I can almost absorb their power for a while. It’s like I can feel it or it influences me or something. It’s hard to explain.”
“So right now, you can feel what I’m feeling?”
“No. It’s not like that. It’s only when you’re in your…other form. It must have some sort of emotional tie. I’ve seen it most when people are either really angry or something happens to make them really want something.”
One of Trace’s golden brows arched.
“Something they really want? Like some
body
?”