CHAPTER FOUR
‡
Tammy couldn’t avoid her family forever. She trudged up from feeding the horses, the goats, and the pig she called The Emperor down in the stables. Lance snuffled at her heels as the afternoon sun plunged toward the Pacific behind her. All the denizens of the barn except her older horse, Caliburn, were rescues of one kind or another. Piglets were very cute, but they did have a nasty tendency to grow into four-hundred-pound pigs. And goats ate anything they could get their teeth on if they were hungry, including wooden fencing. Stupid people shouldn’t be allowed animals. Her mare, Guinevere, had been horribly mistreated. Tammy asked her oldest brother, Kemble, to find out who had done that and ruin his life. Kemble was a great hacker even before he got his power.
He didn’t. He only told her the guy who’d mistreated Guinevere was prosecuted for cruelty to animals and that would have to be enough. He said hatred would poison her soul. Tammy found that hard. Harder since her father had been injured by Morgan. No matter what Kemble said, she hated Morgan and her Clan for what they’d done to the family.
Which was just the problem, wasn’t it?
Her Destiny was a Clan member. Could you love someone and hate them at the same time? Probably. But it was not good for your future mental health.
The sound of laughter echoed from the kitchen as she reached the terrace.
Well, loving and hating her Chosen wouldn’t drive her crazy because she’d just refuse to give in to her Destiny. She’d live without this guy, though she knew the cost. Michael nearly drank himself to death just to kill the pain after his first Destined wife died.
She made her way around to the front of the big old hacienda. She wanted time to get up her courage before she confronted all that laughter. Dr. Tanet was just coming out. She’d taken care of Daddy after he got out of the coma, but she’d become a friend of the family too. She was beautiful, elegant and a really smart woman who did a lot of good. In fact, she was everything Tammy admired, but no longer believed she herself could be.
“Hey, Dr. Tanet.” Lance nosed the doc’s hand and waved his feathery black tail.
“Whoa, what’s wrong?”
Darn. Guess you got to be perceptive when you were a doctor. “Uh, nothing much.”
“Look, your brother’s going to be okay. In fact he’s made a remarkable recovery already.” She gave a tiny frown. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it.” Dr. Tanet didn’t know about the family’s powers. Magic didn’t mesh with modern science for people like Dr. Tanet.
“Thank you for helping him,” Tammy said.
“What about you?”
Tammy shrugged. “Well, the attacks…being cooped up here at The Breakers…” That was reason enough to be depressed. Dr. Tanet would never understand that what put Tammy over the edge was being instantly and irresistibly attracted to one of her family’s persecutors.
“I know.” Dr. Tanet put her hand on Tammy’s forearm and gave it a squeeze. “I hope the police catch those dreadful people and put them in jail.”
“Yeah.” But the system of justice was no match for the Clan.
“You hang in there,” Dr. Tanet said, as one of the security guys brought her car around.
“I will,” Tammy said, with what she hoped was more conviction in her voice than in her heart. “Come on, Lance,” she murmured and the dog followed her solemnly into the house.
She paused in the doorway to the kitchen. They didn’t notice her, thank goodness. Very pregnant Jane, Kemble’s wife, directed the activity in the kitchen. They were making dinner. Her sister Kee and her adopted brother Devin, now married, were the “directees.” Dev put dishes in the dishwasher and Kee was chopping something or other. Her oldest sister, Drew, squeezed orange juice at the breakfast bar with all her usual insouciant sophistication while her husband, Michael, popped the cork on a bottle of champagne. Tammy’s middle brother, Tris, sat at the bar with his spitfire little wife, Maggie. Maggie held the baby, Elizabeth, who seemed to be asleep. Not so Jesse, their five-year-old, who sat in the hallway to the back offices with a tumble of Lego buildings that had apparently just been destroyed by a tyrannosaurus rex, or possibly a robot. Kemble sat with The Parents at the breakfast table. Her mother looked quietly excited. It must be great to feel she was getting her powers back.
And the newest additions to the ranks of couples, Lan and Greta, sat next to her mother. Lan had on one of Daddy’s Chinese silk dressing gowns over a bandaged shoulder, but he seemed pretty alert. Better than the nearly dead Lan they’d brought in last night. Thank God Michael’s emergency medical training had kept Lan alive until they could get him home to Dr. Tanet and Mom. Greta looked tired but happy. Strange to think that an actress who’d starred in a billion-dollar young-adult franchise was the newest member of the Tremaine family. Once Tammy had idolized Gretchen Falk. Now she was just…Greta. Her blond hair stood out among the dark-haired Tremaines. Well, all except for Dev. He was the quintessential blond surfer-boy. Tammy stood out too, for her red hair. Little did they know how different she really was. Traitor? Pitiable? Maybe both.
“Finished with your chores?” Her father was trying to give her cover for her absence.
“Yep. All animals fed. All stalls mucked out. All leather cleaned and oiled.”
“You’d think you’d been away for a month,” Dev called from his position at the sink.
It felt that way.
“Which reminds me,” her mother said, brows drawing together. “I thought we told you to stay home. You could have been killed in Las Vegas! And you without magic.”
Her mother was really winding up until Daddy intervened. “W-water under the b-bridge.”
Her mother sighed. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again, Tamsen Tremaine.”
“Sorry, Mom,” she whispered as she slid onto the padded bench that provided one side of seating at the breakfast table. She didn’t bother to tell her mother that Drew had defended her decision to stow away. Drew had seen her there in a vision.
“Champagne or mimosa?” Michael asked. “We’re about to toast the happy couple.”
“Mimosa, thanks.” She tried to make her voice sound enthusiastic with indifferent success. She’d better distract her mother, who was looking at Tammy closely. “So, uh, Greta, how are you going to make movies now that the Clan knows you and Lan are an item?” That was probably rude. She just said the first thing that came to mind.
“Being a movie star was my mother’s dream. I wanted to study astronomy. I called my agent this afternoon and told him I wasn’t going to take the meeting with Kevin Anderson and Jerry Gold.” She took Lan’s hand surreptitiously under the table.
“You’re giving up a chance to kiss Jimmy DeBrett for my brother? Hard to believe.” That was better. Tammy was pretty sure she sounded a little pink and purple.
“What about me?” Lan asked plaintively. “I’m giving up a chance to crash club stages to play borrowed instruments and live in a rat-infested Hollywood motel, just for Greta.”
“Sounds alluring, I admit,” Greta chuckled. “But you have your music, and enough instruments here to float a ship.”
“Do instruments float ships?” Michael asked with feigned innocence. He was practically the opposite of Drew, a guy who’d made it through hell, not only in Afghanistan, but through his own demons after he’d lost Alice.
“Well, you can study stars from here, too,” Lan said, nuzzling her neck.
“I’d better,” Greta said. “We have less than a week until Galahad comes into alignment.”
Worried looks sprouted around the room.
“We’ll think about that later,” Michael growled and pushed glasses of champagne from the cadre he’d assembled to Tris, who began to distribute them. When everyone was provided with toasting equipment, Tris turned to Kemble.
“Well?”
Kemble made a self-deprecating expression. “Senior, why don’t you give the toast?”
Tammy felt her eyes fill. They all realized Daddy was getting better.
Daddy looked a little shocked then raised his glass. He didn’t try to stand, but that wasn’t necessary. He was still the leader of the family even if he didn’t have a power anymore. “To the newest addition to our family, Gretchen Falk. May my disreputable son grow to deserve her.”
Greta looked acutely embarrassed as everyone said, “Here, here!” and took a gulp of their drink. Lan’s voice was loudest of all.
Greta did stand. Tammy saw her swallow. Her eyes were bright with tears. “Thank you all for being so welcoming. I’m glad to be a part of a wonderful family like this.”
“Even when we’re under siege?” Tammy couldn’t help asking. How were Lan and Greta able to bear the thought of what the future might bring?
“I never had a family who loved each other they way you all do. So, yeah. Even if you’re under siege. Love is rare, and not just in Hollywood. When you have an opportunity to experience it, you have to leap at the chance.” She raised her glass. “To being a Tremaine.”
They all said, “Here, here,” again but it was quieter this time. Tammy saw Michael and Maggie and Jane—all the ones who had married into this dreadful situation, say it with more heartfelt fervor.
Tammy herself was shaken. She wasn’t leaping at the chance to experience love. How could she when her Destiny was a member of the Clan?
*
Dinner was awful. The family made the big, Spanish-style dining room ring with laughter and buzz with conversation though the whole world was crumbling around them. Tammy felt like a ghost, a witness to life but unable to participate in it. When the dishes were cleared, they sat around the dining table and Kemble gave a little cough. “Time to plan our next moves.”
“How can we plan when we don’t know what will happen when Galahad makes the Pentacle?” Tris asked, his frustration obvious.
“We c-can assume s-some things,” Daddy said slowly. They all turned toward him. He had started to contribute little bits to plans and conversations recently, but he hadn’t stepped to the fore like this since the attack two years ago. “The T-talismans are meant to increase the p-power of the m-magic in our g-genes. We’ve all felt th-that effect.”
“True,” Kemble frowned. “If the fourth Talisman is a moment in time, then…”
“One would s-suspect an event would occur at that time,” Daddy finished for him. “It might increase the Talisman’s power, or someone’s p-power exponentially.”
“But what event?” Kee asked, her voice plaintive.
“At l-least we know where it occurs.” What was her father was talking about?
“Where the other three Talismans are?” Tris asked slowly.
Drew blinked. “I guess I can look through source documents for reference to an event connected with the Talismans…” How odd that the Tremaine who could see the future was a history major.
“That’s not what we need, Drew,” Mom said bluntly. “It’s time to use your power.”
Drew blanched at Mom’s words. Tammy did too. Drew’s visions cost her a lot and she couldn’t control them very well.
“We n-need you, honey.” The Parents were putting pressure on Drew to do something that hurt. Things were that desperate?
Drew took a big breath. “I can do that.”
Michael drew his wife’s hand across the bar and squeezed. Tammy always found it hard to imagine him as a hard-ass Special Forces guy. “We’ll go somewhere quiet in a minute.”
Drew nodded, trying not to look daunted.
“We still have the problem of where the Talismans are,” Kemble said chewing his lips. “Lan pretty much collapsed Morgan’s Las Vegas compound.”
“Cue me,” Michael said. He was a Finder. “Let’s see where Morgan took them.” He sat up, though he never let go Drew’s hand. His eyes stopped seeing the room and focused inward. Everyone held their breaths. He had said he saw what he was looking for in a three dimensional grid that could zoom out like you were far above it so you could see distances, or in for minute details. If he knew what they looked like, he could Find lost kids and disaster victims, just like he’d Found Drew when the Clan kidnapped her.
Michael sucked in a breath and came back from wherever it was he saw his grids. “Nothing. I can’t even see Clan members. I bet that guy who can Cloak things is hiding them.”
Kemble looked thoughtful. “If the Talismans have increased his power….”
That was not a happy thought. What other powers had they increased? As Tammy looked around, she saw faltering or fear in many faces.
“L-looks like it’s all on you, D-drew.” Daddy’s face didn’t betray what it cost him to ask his oldest daughter to give herself over to her visions.
“Okay,” Kemble said briskly. “So Drew, you go up where it’s quiet and see if you can get some clues to where they are.”
Drew swallowed and set her jaw. “Will do.”
“Dev and Kee,” he continued. “You’ve got some Latin. Head up to the library and read the transcript that monk made of the lost book on the Chalice. Fresh eyes won’t hurt. Look for references to a moment in time, or pentagram, or stars, something we might have missed before we knew about the constellation forming. Michael, you help Drew. Then I want you to try Finding either Clan members or Talismans every hour or so. They might not be able to hold the Cloak twenty-four-seven. I’ll get in touch with the commanding officer of the Naval Base in Seal Beach. They have a SEAL training program too. Let’s see if I can get some on-call help in case the Clan attacks. I don’t think we’re top of mind for them if they’re preparing for the Pentacle to form, but you never know.” He stopped to take a breath then caught himself. “Greta, can you tell us exactly when the Pentacle will form and how long it will last?”
Greta gave a tiny smile that said she was proud she could help. “On it.”
Tammy looked around. There were doubts, but there was also relief that they were doing something concrete. Kemble was a pretty damn good leader.
“What can I do?” Tris growled.
“Let me just put Elizabeth in her playpen and we can clean up.”
“You’re always so practical,” Tris murmured.
“I want to help too,” Jesse exclaimed from the wreckage of his Lego towers.
“You, big guy, can draw us a map.” Tris swooped down on his young son and lifted him to his shoulder, effortlessly.
“Let me get you some crayons,” Mom said, digging in the chest of drawers at the far end of the breakfast nook.
The Tremaines left the kitchen with purpose, each on their assigned duty.
Tammy felt useless. Nobody wanted help from the baby of the family, who didn’t even have magic to help when the family most needed it.
Right now all she wanted was to escape this display of love. She didn’t belong here anymore. Not that she wouldn’t share their Destiny. Once Morgan got the power of the Pentacle, destroying Tremaines would be at the top of her to-do list. That included Tammy.
*
Michael closed the heavy wood shutters over the windows facing west toward the sinking sun. This was Drew’s room from before they were married. Senior had built them a beautiful house on the estate, but Drew felt safer living in the big old hacienda with the family. It wasn’t a problem for Michael. He wanted to be close if there was an attack. He took off his shirt and tossed it in the general direction of the wicker hamper in the corner and sat to take off his boots.
Drew was in the bathroom showering. She was so keyed up she’d never be able to manage the visions if she let them loose. And he wasn’t going to let her get overcome again. He’d thought once he might lose her to madness and he’d never felt so helpless in his life. But now he had a trick or two up his sleeve. They’d get through it. The funny part was that the visions could sneak in naturally in her day without so much damage. But if she had to call them—when she wanted to see something particular and she had to open herself to the whole lot of them—then the experience could be devastating.
His wife came out of the bathroom in a fluffy terry robe. She didn’t mean it to be sexy. But everything about Drew was sexy, from her willowy curves, her pale and perfect skin, to her luxurious dark hair and the eyes that could be anything from the gray of a foggy morning to the glinting pewter of the ocean when the light was just right. They saw right through him, those eyes. How he’d ever become so…owned, he didn’t know. Genetic destiny, he guessed. He was just grateful to whoever was running things in this world that it had happened to him twice—once with Alice, and after she died, with Drew. He’d won the lottery of second chances there.
“Hey, baby.” He didn’t mean it to come out a growl. Her worried look softened as she walked across the room into his arms. “I think you need a massage, just to relax.”
“Mmmmmm,” she said as she turned her face up and he kissed her pretty damn thoroughly. Hard to believe they’d been married almost ten years. Every day was new with Drew, except now he knew her down to the bottom of his soul, if he had one. His only regret was that he hadn’t been able to give her a child. He knew she wanted one, though she’d never said so explicitly. There was so much going on in the Tremaine world maybe it was just as well. He slipped the robe off her shoulders. He took her in his arms. He always liked the sight of the olive skin of his biceps against her creamy shoulders. She laid her head on his chest.
“I’m dreading this,” she said. “Even if I see something, I don’t always know how to interpret it or when it will happen. This could all be useless and I’ll have let them down.”
“You’ve been pretty fucking useful in the past. Devin and Kee didn’t get out of that horror house in Hollywood without you. And you were the one who figured out that Greta was Lan’s Destiny. You saw where they were, even.”
“Yeah. Neon lights. Could have been anywhere. You Found them in Las Vegas.”
“So, hey, we’re a team.”
She smiled up at him. It was a little smile, but better than nothing. “Yeah. We are.”
“Let me give you a massage.” Michael knew he was a damn good masseur. He’d made it his business to learn Drew’s body.
“Tempter. Only if you’re as naked as I am.”
“On the bed,” he whispered.
She lay down, prone, so he got to look at her delectable derriere as he stripped. And she got to watch him out of the corner of her eye, her gaze heating up. When he was naked, he grabbed some scented oil from the nightstand drawer and turned the lights off, so only the moon lit the room as its light poured in through the window. He got up on the high, four-poster bed. The midnight blue satin quilt was sprinkled with big stars and moons. He straddled her thighs. Just massage, he told his unruly body. We have work to do.
The oil he poured into his hand smelled like exotic spices. She gathered her hair and pulled it to the side so he could get to her shoulders and neck. He felt her muscles loosen. He was getting an erection. He tried to think about other things. She started to make little purring noises. He wasn’t sure she even knew she was doing it.
Damn it. Now he was so hard it was almost painful. Touching Drew. Naked. Not a surprise. As he leaned forward, his erection rubbed against her buttocks.
“I feel that, you know,” she said, her voice liquid and hot.
“Hey, I’m human.” He ran his thumbs up her spine. “And male.”
“We could do something about it,” she murmured, turning under his thighs.
Now came the unfair part. “After.”
“Blackmail,” she accused lazily.
He shrugged. “Is it working?”
She nodded, with a little, wry smile. Just like she wasn’t scared.
“I’ll hold you,” he added.
“I know you will.”
He let her out from between his thighs. What a fool you are, Redmond.
She sat cuddled in against his side. “Don’t let go.” His sophisticated woman, who everyone thought of as a little distant, was trying not to sound frightened.
“Not a chance.” She had to open up and let all the visions in, try to sort through them as they flashed past, grab the ones that looked promising, let the others glide past her. If she went too deep into the river of the future, if she couldn’t hold onto herself…well, he wouldn’t think about that.
She sat, her back straight as he scooted around to surround her with his body. She used to need a pool of water for the visions. But she’d finally realized they were internal, not external, so her job wasn’t to look at water, but into her own mind. He put his arms around her waist like an anchor. He felt exactly the moment she opened to them. She swayed a little. He held her tighter. Her breath came faster.
Just ride it out, baby. Leaf on a stream.
Now her chest heaved. She was making little grunting noises. Her muscles tightened. God, what was happening? She began to shake and heave. Was she having a seizure? Convulsions? “Come back, baby,” he said into her ear, softly, afraid he might push her farther into the flood of the future. This session wasn’t normal. It killed him to think she was hurting herself to help the family, though she’d never back down because of the risk.
But she didn’t come back. Instead the shaking grew and grew. Blood trickled out of her nose and mouth. God, what was this? He hugged her tighter. “Drew, get out of there, now!”
The shaking stopped abruptly. She sagged against him. He rocked her and stroked her lush hair, now damp with sweat. It took him a moment to realize she wasn’t breathing.
“Damn, it, Drew!” He rolled her onto the bed, frantic, and began artificial resuscitation. Pump, pump, pump on her chest. Blow into her mouth while holding her nose. Start over. He’d done this many times but never to one who meant everything to him. He couldn’t lose a soulmate twice. Why didn’t The Breakers have a defibrillator? His thoughts raced. He might break ribs. That didn’t matter. Did she have a blocked airway? Did he dare stop to check? How long had he been doing this? Too long and she’d have brain damage.
“Drew, baby, you gotta come back to me,” he rasped as he pumped her chest once more. He realized he was crying. He bent to blow into her mouth.
She gave a cough.
Thank God. He pulled her up and thumped her back as she coughed again and gasped for breath. He hugged her to his chest, careful not to crush her. He wanted to hold her here forever where she couldn’t be hurt. “You scared me so bad.”
She looked up at him, her gray eyes still far away.
“Are you back, baby?” She’d never had a session where her heart fucking stopped. He was still in shock. But he knew better than to rush her. The dislocation of moving from cascading visions of the future to the solid present made retaining the useful parts of what she’d seen difficult. She had to haul them back across the divide. In this case, maybe the divide was death.
The gray eyes turned up toward him. They glowed almost silver in the moonlight that came in through the window. As she came to herself, she looked more and more frightened.
“Did I hurt you?”
“I…I’m fine. Visions were not good.” Her voice was a hollow rasp.
He leaned back to grab a tissue from the box on the nightstand and wiped the blood from her face. “Do you feel well enough to try and pick out some specifics?” He hated to push her, but the family’s lives were at stake.
She nodded, slowly. “I saw Luc.”
Surprising. “Your half-brother?” They’d only just met Senior’s son by a lover before he’d met Brina. Word had it that Brina had thrown Luc Marrec out of the house. She’d been pretty upset to learn her children weren’t Senior’s first. And that he hadn’t told her he had any. Even if he swore he didn’t know.
Drew nodded. “He was, uh, watching,” she managed. “He’s on a brushy point above some beach. I don’t know the beach.”
“Okay….” What did that mean? Drew didn’t see things unless they were important, though it was easy to misinterpret what she saw.
“Then I saw another man, young. He’s with Tammy on that beach.”
“How could Tammy be anywhere but here at The Breakers? Unless it’s way later, when everything is back to normal.”
“I don’t think so. This part all seems connected, imminent.” She stilled again, as though the visions were echoing as she sorted through the ones she’d claimed. Then every muscle in her body tightened. “There he is again! He’s naked, bleeding. Dead? He’s lying on a slab. Blue light everywhere. And fire.”
“Do you recognize him?”
Drew shook her head slowly. “No. I only see his profile.” She paused. “I see a canyon. It’s full of a rust-colored building. Metal, maybe.”
“Go on.” He could prompt her to help her remember later if she told him now. God forbid she had to do this again because she’d lost the details. Neither of them would likely survive it.
“I see desert. I’ve got my back to the canyon now, I think.”
“What kind of plants? Saguaros?” That could tell them which desert.
She shook her head. “Scraggly bushes. Some of those long spiky cacti that get a flower on the end, and the ones with the stickers that detach and cling to you.”
“Ocotillo, cholla. The bushes are probably creosote.” Pretty standard desert plants. There was a lot of desert in California, Arizona, Nevada, even Mexico. Though seeing no saguaros might rule out the southern Sonora. “Do you see thick trees with clumps of spikey leaves at the end of thick branches?” Those would be Joshua trees, with a pretty defined range.
“N-no. Just feathery ones. Palo Verde, I think.”
So, northern Sonoran desert. Which didn’t help them very much, except that it would be south and west of L.A. and on into Arizona and New Mexico.
Drew had moved on. “Stars. I see stars everywhere. They seem invested with…dread or portent. I just have a feeling something terrible is going to happen.”
That could just be the pressure of knowing they were all careening to a moment when their world was won or lost by a convergence of stars and comets. He hugged her. “I know, baby. I know.” Now to direct her a bit. “Did you see anybody else in the family?”
She moaned and covered her mouth. “There! Tammy again!”
“What about Tammy?” Michael had a really bad feeling about this.
Drew turned her face up. Her eyes, already full of tears, overflowed and sent rivulets down her cheeks. She looked horrified. “Oh, God Michael. She’s dead, lying in the sand.”
“You don’t know she’s dead.” Michael’s personal victory was that his voice didn’t shake. “These visions can be deceiving. You know that.”
“There was blood everywhere.” Drew’s voice was shaking.
“That doesn’t mean she’s dead. It might not even be her blood. She might just have fainted or something.” He tried to keep “grim” out of his expression.
Even as she stared into his eyes, Drew’s own eyes flickered. “Explosion. Big. Fire shooting into a very black night. Silhouettes against it. I can’t see who they are.”
Michael took a breath and just held her. “Tough sledding ahead,” he murmured. “But you don’t know we don’t win through.”
They looked at each other, trying to process. “We can’t tell them, Michael. What if the family doesn’t challenge the Clan because they’re afraid of what happens to Tammy?” Drew asked fretfully. She gripped his arms, her chest heaving. “Then the Clan wins and the world changes and we’re all dead. And then what if they worried for nothing and we could have done something because she isn’t dead. But if we don’t tell them and she dies, they’ll never forgive us. Remember what happened to Father? And I didn’t want to worry them so I didn’t tell them. So they couldn’t stop it.” She couldn’t go on, but collapsed in tears.
Complicated. “Okay. This is going to take some thought. So let’s keep the part about Tammy to ourselves right now. It’s a pretty big burden of secrecy. Can you deal with that?” She’d been almost crazy with guilt after the incident with her father.
She straightened and tried to breathe. “Just while we think what to do.” Then her eyes began to flicker again. Damn it. She’d let in the visions, and now she might not be able to keep them out. She’d lost the control she’d worked so hard for. “The young man again. With Tammy. Fire, but this time it’s different, not so big. Sirens. People. He’s carrying her. I only see him from the back, but it’s him.” She shook herself and looked up at Michael. “Tammy’s going to find her match. Looks like this boy’s the One.”
That was a leap. “He could just be rescuing her.”
“Not the way they were holding onto each other. Trust me. I know the difference between a rescue and ‘cleaving onto one another.’ Poor Tammy. Now is not a good time to find your Destiny. And if…if he’s going to die…”
“You don’t know he was dead either,” he interrupted. “And by the way, it’s not a good time for Jane to be giving birth. It’s not a good time for Jesse and Elizabeth to grow up.” He put his forehead up against hers. “Not a good time for us to be in love, but we are. I wouldn’t have it any other way, no matter what happens in the future.”
“Kiss me.” Drew lifted her face to his. He made sure it was a good one. It was Drew who pulled back. She paused. “I…I don’t think we should tell Tammy about finding her match either. It will just make her crazy.”
“She already has a lot on her plate,” Michael agreed. “I sometimes think she’s the one who’s suffered most with all this.”
“She never had a real adolescence,” Drew murmured.
“And Senior was her whole world. Even now that he’s recovering, she can never go back to thinking her daddy could slay all the dragons.”
Drew gave him a wistful look. “All that shrieking excitement she had at fourteen used to exasperate me. Now I’d give anything if she could feel that way again.”
He had to take Drew’s mind off her situation. And he had to stop her focusing on the visions or she’d never get control. “We’ll think what to do tomorrow. Guess it’s time for me to make good on my promise.”
She gave a rueful smile. “Let’s go tell the others what we can first. Kemble will help us narrow down the desert. Then, I’m going to hold you to that promise, all night long.”
“Stamina. She demands stamina,” he mourned. Somehow, he summoned a wry grin. “Hope I’m up to the task.”
Drew gave him a disgusted look and rose, reaching for her robe. “You’ll manage. You might even like it.”
Oh, he’d like it all right. It wasn’t odd that he loved Drew so much it sometimes almost hurt. What was odd was that she loved him too. He was one lucky asshole.