Unless something had gone very, very wrong.
He slid from the bed, dragged on a pair of jeans and looked at Sera. “Want to grab your clothes and hit the bathroom?”
She rose without bothering with clothing, picking up one of her suitcases instead. “Is that Wesley?”
“Yeah.” Julio hesitated, then told her the truth. “If he’s here, it can’t be anything good.”
“I understand.” Naked and wide-eyed, she should have looked vulnerable. But her hands gripped the suitcase and her expression turned stubborn. “I’ll stay in the bathroom if you want me to, but I’d rather know what’s going on.”
“Hell no. Get dressed and come out. Anything he has to tell me, he can do it in front of you.”
Something in her face softened. She crossed the room and rose to her toes to kiss him.
“Thank you.”
A tiny part of him cracked. It wasn’t right that she’d thank him for such a tiny courtesy, but there was no avoiding it. At best, she was used to being treated as someone who needed to be shielded, even to her detriment.
Damned if he’d do it too. The bathroom door closed behind her, and he dragged open the front door and leaned against the peeling paint. “Dade.”
“Mendoza.” Wesley looked like hell, jaw unshaven and eyes dull with exhaustion. He smiled, though, and raised one eyebrow. “I only rate half-dressed, huh?”
“I don’t figure you’ll swoon at the sight of my bare chest.”
“I see you tucked the cute redhead out of sight, though.”
Julio crossed his arms over his chest and stepped back. “She’s getting dressed, but she’ll be out in a minute.”
“Damn. You really were naked.” Wesley walked past him and gave the rumpled bed one curious look before striding to the window. “Not the poshest place ever. I heard you two ran into some trouble.”
“Anna likes to run her mouth.” It wasn’t true, but he had to say something that didn’t have to do with nakedness or the bed and Sera. “What’re you doing in Florida?”
Wesley didn’t answer the question. “Anna doesn’t run her mouth. I called and nagged until she told me you’d had a scuffle and it wasn’t anything you couldn’t handle.”
The man might have been psychic, but he sure the hell wasn’t a mind reader. “I know, Wesley. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” After a moment, the other man turned to perch on the small table. “Something changed. I’ve been having the dreams for a while, but yesterday I had a vision.”
The shower cut on, so Julio settled on the edge of the bed and nodded. “Something certain instead of a possibility?”
“Something likely. Maybe. Other precogs clog the works.” He waved a hand at Julio. “Trying to guess your future is like playing poker when half the deck’s wild. But something big is trying to break through, and Sera’s at the heart of it.”
Julio tensed. “Her ex, or something with the wolves?”
Wesley ran his hands through his hair with a snarl. “I don’t know. Maybe lady luck is mad at me for meddling too much. I see…” He hesitated. “Death. Pain. Apathy. Dominoes falling. Gaps where there should be life. A witch who can shapeshift taking over the Southeast council. Magic exposed. Humans running scared.”
Julio held up a hand. “Wait, back up. A witch who can what?”
“That’s not the important part,” Wesley countered, his frustration clear. “If it’s not that, it’s something else. What matters is that Alec had to go and give everyone hope, and if we lose it before it feels real, everything falls apart.”
“Everything falls apart.” It sounded too much like a proclamation, an abso-fucking-lute state of being. Julio’s mind whirled. “There isn’t much that could knock Alec off course. Just—just Carmen being hurt.”
Wesley leaned forward and jabbed Julio in the shoulder. “Dominoes,” he said again, and pushed.
The realization hit him harder than the sharp poke. “You’re talking about me and Sera.” It was easy to see the progression once he started with Sera—hurt her, and you could hurt him and Franklin. Hurt them, and you hurt Carmen and Alec. It went on and on, a lightning strike that splintered into a hundred forks of pain.
“Another place, another time, it would have been someone else. But in this place at this time…” Wesley dropped his hand. “Something changed yesterday. I don’t know what you two are doing together, but something changed, and you need to promise me, Mendoza. Promise me you’re not going to let her out of your sight, because you’re the wild card. I never see my own future coming, but you can.”
“I promise.” He offered the words because Wesley expected them, and because they were true. “I’ll protect her.”
Wesley glanced toward the bathroom as the shower cut off. “In my dream she had a gun, like the ones Patrick McNamara uses. Silent and untraceable. You should get her one of those.”
Magical weapons. Unseen threats. It made Julio want to bare his teeth and snarl. “Anything else?”
Wesley’s gaze drifted to the bed again. His lips twitched. “It’s already changing. It’s always changing. Everyone thinks I’m the powerful one, but they have no idea how many times a day you use your gift.”
“Yeah,” Julio deadpanned. “My all-powerful, consuming visions.”
“Your goddamn hunches.” Wesley laughed. “Hell, Mendoza, you don’t even know, do you?
Maybe half the time you think it was just whim, or you blame some shapeshifter instinct. Maybe it’s all tangled up together for you. Fate can’t pin you down because the second she does, some part of you knows to go left instead of right, to take the back roads instead of the interstate. Knows to kidnap Franklin Sinclaire’s daughter for a debauched road trip, even though the rest of us would be scared of losing our balls.”
Sera exited the bathroom in a cloud of steam, dressed in jeans and a thin tank top that clung to her damp skin. “For the record, I went willingly. No kidnapping necessary.”
Wesley grinned at her. “Quit flirting with me, Miss Sinclaire. Your boyfriend’ll wrap my spine around my knees.”
Julio’s retort slammed into a dizzy wave of power, silenced by the way the room faded and brightened at the same time. Some hazy bit of the future, slick and evasive, danced before his eyes, but it vanished before he could get anything but the slightest sense of it. Too far away, perhaps, too uncertain. Unformed.
He shook away the vision with a laugh, suddenly certain of at least one thing. “You still need to be worried about the safety of your balls, Wesley. Just…maybe not quite yet.”
Wesley’s eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed. “Wow, that’s more annoying than I realized. You guys must want to punch me all the time.”
Sera grinned. “You’re lucky you’re pretty. Though I doubt that carries much weight with my dad and Alec. Maybe Carmen.”
“Carmen loves him, warts and all.” Julio stepped closer to Sera and quirked a brow at Wesley. “You sticking around?”
“Hell no. I make a damn squeaky third wheel.” He winked at Sera as he pushed off the table.
“Besides, I came all the way down here. It’d be a shame if I didn’t take a look at the local casinos. Maybe my luck’s better in the sunshine state.”
“Don’t call me to get you out of trouble,” Julio warned. He’d be busy anyway, looking up where to find one of those nifty guns Patrick liked to tote around.
Wesley winced. “Yeah, about that. McNeely’s going to be giving you an earful when you get back. But whatever he says, it’s an exaggeration. I didn’t start the brawl, and I really didn’t see who stole the fertility statue.”