“What?”
“Every now and then you stare at me, tense up, and get this awful look in your eyes.” Her eyebrows lifted.
“Are you seeing something bad in my future? If so, I’d like to know. I can take it.”
“No. I stil can’t see your future.” His hands flexed at his sides. “I just realized I can’t see Alex’s either.”
She nodded, but her gaze didn’t waver. “Could you ever?”
“Yeah, although . . . it was fuzzy. Like a television screen on the blink. Sometimes the picture was clear; sometimes there was nothing but static.” He forked his fingers through his hair, hating the truth. There was a lot of shit he could handle, but this was one thing he’d never be able to accept. “It’s like that with my partner Selina, too, but not with Alex anymore.”
“So now you can’t see him either.” She shifted, settling more comfortably against the countertop.
“No,” he growled. “Not at al . It’s just blank.”
“Why?” He could almost see the scientist’s wheels spinning, running experimental scenarios in her head.
The woman had to test everything. Him, his control, herself, her abilities, the world around her. “You’re this amazing clairvoyant, even Luca sounded in awe of your skil s, so why are some people blank and some not? What makes your sight go on the fritz like that?”
“It’s complicated.” He swal owed and let his chin drop to his chest. “The last person I couldn’t see anything with was my wife. Before her, my best friend growing up. Before him, my parents.”
“So, people who are important to you in some way.” Her eyes narrowed, her head tilting as she considered. “Or people who become important.”
“Yeah. The one and only vision I ever had of my wife was the first time I touched her. I shook her hand to introduce myself and got this flash of our wedding, where it would be, how she would look, how I would feel.
Just this one single moment that burned into my brain.” One he’d done everything in his power to make come true. Good thing she’d been a scattered artist with no desire to ever plan anything, because most women he’d ever heard of would have balked at his control ing every aspect of their wedding. He’d just known he had to have that moment, that vision, that feeling.
Now, it felt like a different person had been married to her, loved her. He wasn’t that man anymore, young and with just enough cocky idealism left to think he could save the world. He suppressed a snort. He didn’t even want to be that man anymore. Turning away from Chloe, he stared blindly at an ugly watercolor print hanging on the wal .
“Something bad happened to her, didn’t it?” Her voice was soft, undemanding. He didn’t have to answer her if he didn’t want to. He sensed she wouldn’t press the issue. So, why would he tel her anything? He hadn’t spoken to anyone about this since . . . ever. Maybe it was the exhaustion that made him answer, maybe it was some heretofore unrevealed need to connect, maybe it was just Chloe and what she did to him.
“Yeah. Something bad.” Him. He had happened to his wife. If he’d walked away that first day, if he’d never shaken her hand, she might be alive and wel today. The thought was a punch to the stomach, even to this day. “It’s worse than that.”
“Worse than something bad happening?”
“I can’t—I can’t even remember her face anymore.” Guilt dragged vicious claws down his flesh. She’d died because she was his wife, and a decade later he couldn’t even recal what she had looked like. Ten years was nothing in a Magickal’s five centuries-long life. If they survived to a natural death. His wife hadn’t gotten that chance.
“What?” Chloe’s arms looped around his waist, and her body warmed his back as she rested her cheek between his shoulder blades.
He swal owed. “My wife. I can’t remember her face. If I focus on most people, I can see every detail of their lives, from the day they were born to the day they’l die. Al the possibilities. I can see them as clearly as if I were standing there with them.” He closed his eyes. “It’s not like that with the people who’l have the biggest impact on my life. And her face has faded from my mind until I have to concentrate to remember it.
Even then, it’s blurry, like one of those grainy old photographs.”
Her lips brushed over his back. “I’m sorry.”
Just that. He could feel her sympathy radiating from her, seeping into his skin, but she didn’t coddle or fuss, didn’t demand to know more, didn’t ask questions. She just held him the way he’d never let anyone hold him since his family died. Not for comfort or solace or need. He kept the world at arm’s length, and he liked it that way.
He’d had sex since his wife’s death; he’d even had a relationship or two, but he’d always ended things before it got too deep. He’d always been able to foresee that it wouldn’t go too deep. A humorless smile curved his lips that the one woman who appealed to him most was the only one who tried to run when things got intense. Not that she could push him away even if she wanted to in their current situation, but she didn’t demand more than he was wil ing to give.
The problem was she didn’t have to demand it, did she? He’d already given up his entire life for her, given everything for her. Cold clutched at his bel y, twisting inside him, but he couldn’t deny the thought. He was always honest with himself about who he was and what he wanted. He made no excuses to himself or anyone else about what he was. Most of the time, he was a cynical bastard, the product of his life and circumstances. But with Chloe, he dared to hope . . . for far too many things, most of which he didn’t even want to acknowledge.
“What was her name?” Chloe linked her fingers together on his chest, dragging his attention back to a story he didn’t want to tel .
“Laura.” He sighed. Everything tangled up inside him. The past, the present, the future. Things that he saw so clearly for other people, but not with himself.
Her fingers moved in reassuring circles on his chest. “That’s a nice name.”
“She was a nice girl.” True, and not even close to the whole picture of who she’d been.
“Can you tel me what happened to her?”
He didn’t want to. Gods, but he didn’t. Not when the ugliness of it was etched into his mind, the memories that he couldn’t forget. But since Chloe had had the guts to tel him her worst nightmare, he couldn’t deny her the same. “She died.”
Chloe just waited, her arms secure around his waist. It was easier not looking her in the eyes, not having to see the expression on her face when he told her the truth. “We lived in Chicago—I grew up there. I was a new detective assigned to their MTF Violent Crimes Unit. It was one of my first cases.” One he hadn’t had the experience to handle, though he hadn’t realized it at the time. He cleared his throat, pushed out the words that would revolt the average person. “A real bitch, too. A serial kil er was targeting Magickal women, sexual y assaulting them with wands, and then stabbing them to death with knives from their own kitchens.”
“Wands?” She stirred against his back, her arms tightening.
He could hear the surprise in her voice. Only little kids first learning magic used wands as a focusing tool.
An adult Magickal would never need one, and wouldn’t want to be that indiscreet anyway. “Yeah. Wands.”
“That’s sick.”
“Yeah.” But he’d seen worse since then, much worse. At the time, it had horrified him, added another cal us to his already scarred soul. “We arrested a guy who met the profile, had no alibis, and knew way too much about the crime scenes to be uninvolved.”
“And the wands?” Her fingers bal ed in his T-shirt, but she didn’t recoil. He had a feeling the stubborn witch was going to stand there for as long as he wanted to keep talking, no matter how bad it got.