The Soul Seekers: Horizon (3 page)

“Dace—” Daire squirms toward me again and cups her palm to either side of my face. “I’m sorry. Truly. I didn’t mean it like that. Or, maybe I did—I
don’t know. I just—I feel so off kilter. I can’t shake this sense of foreboding. This deep certainty that things aren’t quite what they seem. I’m convinced El Coyote
is still out there, and Leandro and Cade are just biding their time, licking a few minor wounds, and laying low in an attempt to lure me into a state of complacency . . .”

“Only they’ll never succeed.” I place my hands over hers, and fold them between us. “Because you’re way ahead of them, Santos. Your guard is up, you’re alert
to the signs, and if it turns out you’re right, when they come out swinging, you’ll be ready.”

“Will I?” She tilts her head, studying me with eyes gone red and glittery, while her bottom lip displays the tiniest hint of a quiver.

“Of course you will.” I pull her into my arms. Holding her tightly until her body begins to slacken and yield, and my breath rises and falls in tandem with hers.

With her daily runs and punishing workouts, her strict healthy diet that allows no room for even the smallest indulgence—with her incessant focus on learning Paloma’s craft and
becoming the very best Seeker she can—I sometimes forget just how vulnerable she really is. But here, in my arms, with her skin so soft, and her heart beating gently next to mine, I’m
awash in shame over what a fool I’ve just been.

None of this was ever about me. This entire discussion may have been triggered by the dream, and the certainly hideous memory of my brother forcing a ring onto her finger, but it was never about
my hair.

Never about her mistaking me for Cade.

That was all just a smoke screen for what’s really bothering her.

She misses her grandmother.

She’s wracked with a mountain of grief she insists on keeping tightly in check.

And until she’s able to confront it head-on—it’s my job to provide comfort, along with a safe place to land in the middle of chaos.

I pull her closer until the matching gold keys we wear at our necks as a symbol of our love clink lightly together, as I whisper soft words in her ear. Reminding her that she’s not
alone—we’re in this together. I will never, ever leave her.

“If Paloma was here she could help me see what I’m missing. She was tuned in to everything, never missed a sign. If my
abuela
was here, she would . . .” Daire chokes
back a sob, shuts her eyes tightly against the deluge of tears she refuses to shed.

I bring my palms to her face and press my lips against hers. Whispering, “Hey there, green eyes, it’s going to be okay. Really, I’m here. I’ll always be here. We’ll
get through this together. I promise . . .” Hushing her fears with my kiss, I go about distracting her the best way I can.

This time when I wake it’s in the nest of Dace’s arms cradled snugly around me. His soft, even breath pushing at the side of my cheek.

I turn my head slowly and fill my eyes with the beautiful slumbering sight of him. My gaze trailing over the taught muscles of his chest, the valley of his abdomen, to the soft trail of hair
that leads from the edge of his navel to parts now obscured by the sheet.

He’s so loving, so loyal, so decent and
good,
Ican hardly conceive how I could ever, even in one dream-dazed, delusional moment, mistake him for Cade.

They may be identical on the surface, Dace may have a piece of Cade’s dark soul lodged inside, but that’s where the resemblance ends.

They are nothing alike.

He stirs. Awakened by the weight of my look, he curls his arm tighter and pulls me so close there’s no denying his need is once again matched by my own.

No matter how many times we’re together, no matter how many mornings we wake up like this, it always seems there’s more to discover.

Sometimes I feel like I’ll never uncover the full extent of his mysteries.

The thought makes me smile.

I allow my mind to project into a faraway future. Imagining how we might look with wizened faces and graying hair. Still loving, still laughing, still adoring, still discovering . . .

Though no sooner have the pictures begun to unfold, when I force myself to shake free of the thought.

Dreaming of the future is a frivolous indulgence I cannot afford. Paloma warned me from the start that Seekers are not known for their longevity—and their romantic relationships always end
tragically.

The memory of her words causing an involuntary flinch that prompts Dace to say, “What is it?” He lifts his lids slowly, displaying icy-blue eyes glazed with sleep and desire.

I shake my head and press my lips to his, trailing my fingertips along the column of his throat where I pause on his pulse. Shirking all thoughts of the past along with all wishes for the
future, I settle into the present—the only moment I can ever truly claim for my own.

Dace meets my kiss with warm urgent lips, as my hands grip his shoulders and pull him so close our bodies become a tangle of tongues and limbs pushed urgently together in a desperate bid to be
joined. Until he maneuvers me beneath him in one seamless move and eases himself inside.

We mold and cling, separating for a few excruciatingly delicious moments, only to rejoin so completely there’s no boundary between us. No way to tell where Dace leaves off and I begin.

Our hearts as bound as our flesh, we soar in tandem—pausing for one deliriously heady moment, before falling into a sated, spent heap.

When I open my eyes, Dace is propped on his elbow, his gaze freely roaming my face. “I never get tired of looking at you.”

I bite my lip and grin. Trying not to think about the mascara smudges under my eyes, the sheet creases marking my cheek, my hair lying limp against my forehead. I just smile like I believe it,
and return his adoring look with one of my own. “You know, I think I’m actually beginning to like your new look.” I bring my fingers to his brow, brush the tips against his long
sweep of bangs. “Who knew Lita had such vision?”

He catches my hand in his and looks at me as though he’s about to reply, but instead clamps his lips shut as though he thought better.

“I know what you’re thinking.” I rise onto my elbow, fluff my pillow a bit, and lean back against it. “It took me a while to come around, but I truly do mean it. This new
look really highlights your face. And you know how I feel about your face . . .”

He shakes his head. Shoots me a look that invites further elaboration.

So I drop a few kisses onto his forehead, his chin, his lips to better illustrate. And just like that, I’m lured right back into the magick of him.

But with a full day of training and appointments ahead, I force myself to push away from the bed and follow the haphazard trail of clothes I left on the floor late last night in my rush to be
with him.

“That’s it?” Dace inches his way up the headboard to watch me get dressed. “You just love me and leave me? Is that how this is?”

“Yep.” I retrieve my shorts from the crumpled heap on the floor and sneak a leg in, followed by the other. Performing an exaggerated shimmy as I ease them up over my hips in a move
that is admittedly performed purely for his own viewing pleasure.

“Tease.” He retrieves my bra from under his pillow and flings it at me, chasing the word with a grin.

“You’re the tease.” I catch the bra in my fist and struggle to get the clasp and straps properly situated.

“How do you figure?” He rubs his chin, shoots me a playful look.

“You’re the one who won’t move in with me.”

“Oh. That.” In one fluid move, he’s off the bed and searching for a clean pair of jeans from the folded-up pile in the plastic laundry basket that stands in for a closet. An
attempt to evade a conversation I’m determined to have.

“I really don’t get your resistance,” I say, and not for the first time. “I mean, we’re together pretty much all the time anyway. And if we lived together, I
wouldn’t have to leave here every morning, and you wouldn’t have to work so hard to keep this place going. You know, two birds, one stone.”

His fingers freeze on his zipper as his gaze lifts to meet mine. “How can you say stuff like that?”

“Like what?”

“Two birds, one stone. Sheesh, Daire, you’re guided by Raven. How do you think he’d feel to hear you say that?”

“You changing the subject?”

“Did it work?” He cracks a mischievous grin.

“Not even close.” I frown and pull on my tank top, then sit on the old wooden trunk shoved in one corner and slide my feet into my sneakers.

“Okay, I admit, I’m old fashioned. There are worse crimes, you know.”

“Old fashioned?” I make a sound between a snort and a laugh. “Please.” I roll my eyes, scrape my long, tangled hair back into a ponytail. “Nothing old fashioned
about what we just did.” I nod toward the bed, hoping to glimpse a blush at his cheeks. It’s not often I get to see such a thing.

“I’m old fashioned when it counts. Which means we’re not going to live together because it’s convenient, or saves money, or whatever other reason you want to drum up.
When we do live together, and I fully intend that we will, it’ll be because we’re properly wed.”

“Properly wed?”
I shake my head. Make a face of distaste. Go about adjusting the soft buckskin pouch Paloma gave me, the one that holds the collection of magickal talismans
I earned during my Seeker training, along with the beautiful turquoise heart Dace gave me. “Don’t you think we should maybe graduate from high school first? And then, oh, I don’t
know, go to college, then on to grad school. Rack up a whole slew of impressive degrees, score the job of our dreams, win a ton of promotions, and then, when there are no more summits to scale, we
settle into the fiction that is the happily ever after of holy matrimony?”

Dace shoots me an appraising look, whistles softly under his breath. “Wow, someone has marriage issues.”

“I grew up on movie sets.” I shrug at the memory. “Surrounded by celebrities who were either falling in and out of marriages every ten seconds, or cheating on the spouses they
had with anyone who was willing to bed them. All of which may have left me a tiny bit jaded.”

“A tiny bit?” Dace quirks a brow, pulls a worn, gray V-neck T-shirt over his head. The one that molds to his chest, clings to his abs, and accentuates his biceps, leaving me no
choice but to force my eyes away if I’ve any hope of getting on with my day. “It’s not like I plan on proposing tomorrow, or even next year. Just . . . someday.”

“Fine,” I say. “We’ll deal with your
someday
when we get there.
If
we get there. But I’m warning you—no public displays. No stadium
jumbotron half-time proposal. No hiding the ring at the bottom of my champagne glass. Nothing you’d ever see in a movie or some cheesy reality TV show.”

“So, these are the rules for the proposal you don’t actually want?”

“That’s the starter list. There’s more. Believe me, much more. But until then, I’m afraid you’ll just have to put up with Love ’Em and Leave ’Em Santos,
all because you won’t accept
my proposal
to come live with me, rent free.” I keep my tone light, jokey. Refusing to betray the deeply rooted fear that our future is so
uncertain, we probably shouldn’t tempt it with conversations like this.

Before Paloma died, she gave me a lineage transmission that allowed me to see the kind of things it would’ve taken her many years to teach. Including the tragic story of her past—how
her husband, my grandfather, Alejandro (a Brazilian Jaguar shaman of the highest order), was killed at the hands of the Richters—along with her only child, my dad, Django, when he was still
just a teen. Bestowing me with the breadth of her knowledge and insights in no more than a flash.

I also saw the story of every Seeker who walked before me.

Watched as they all—every last one of them—fell at the hands of Coyote.

So why should I be any different?

Why do I deserve the kind of happily ever after denied to my ancestors?

“Don’t doubt the future, Daire.”

I return to Dace. Surprised to find him standing before me, displaying his uncanny ability to read every shift in my mood. I ease my face into a tight grin, quickly turn away, and riffle through
my bag, mumbling, “How can I not?”

“Because I know something you don’t.”

Just as intended, the words lure me in, coaxing me to face him again. “Oh yeah, and what’s that? Care to share this great wisdom of yours?”

Without the slightest trace of mirth, he places a hand on each of my shoulders, and fixes his gaze intently on mine. “There’s only one force more powerful than evil—”

I blink a few times, drawing a blank on what that might be. Clearly, he’s not referring to me. No Seeker has ever successfully kept evil at bay—or at least not for very long.

“Love.”

I can feel the word as he says it.

Can actually feel the force of it shooting toward me as it rolls off his tongue—emanates from the tips of his fingers. Its ferocity—its urgency—its absolute, undeniable truth
leaving me so startled, I can’t think of a single thing to say in reply.