25. NurtureNature
25
NURTURE OR NATURE
You’re a man like me, tormented with thirst.
— EOGHAN RUA ó SUILLEABHáIN, “FRIEND OF MY HEART”
F ear.
It wasn’t attraction or lust or enjoyment or anything remotely positive that galloped through my system as our mouths touched. All I felt in that brief moment of contact was panic.
Even worse, it wasn’t mine.
And maybe revulsion too, or was it just my imagination? The kiss—if you could call that mildest brush of the lips—was so quick. Jonathan practically flew across the room into a compact crouch, his big green eyes wide and feral as he swore in a language I didn’t recognize.
“Okay. Okay. Whoa.” Still sitting on the rug, I held out my hands, like I was soothing a horse. “Jonathan, I’m sorry. I read the situation wrong.”
He glowered at me. “You certainly fucking did.”
The disgust in his voice made me rise with a scowl. “Hey, there’s no need to be an asshole about it. I was apologizing to be nice, but you said yourself you shouldn’t lie to a seer. And I wasn’t the one staring at my lips like they were Jolly Ranchers.” Maybe I was being stubborn, but I didn’t think I had been that oblivious.
He stood too. “I—I—” He rubbed viciously at his mouth while he stared at mine all over again.
No, I definitely wasn’t mistaken. Which meant something else was bothering him.
And something was bothering me too, I realized. There was something familiar in the kiss, in the raw energy, however fleeting our connection was. As Jonathan continued muttering something about a wrong impression, I turned it over in my head. I obviously hadn’t kissed him before—I hadn’t kissed that many men at all, for that matter, so that wasn’t something that would skip my memory.
His energy was distinct, sure. Layered and complex, as if he had several lifetimes sequestered within him. I remembered that odd sensation from Gran, too…one that I’d always written off as the wisdom of her years. But Jonathan was so young. Not more than a few years older than me.
I licked my lips as if trying to taste the energy again, remember that flash, the brief surge of something . Then I got up and paced around the couch and into the kitchen for want of something to do other than stare at him.
My fingers brushed over the counter, and there it was again.
A current, fine and subtle. Cold as ice and sharp like a razor, cutting into my soul—into my grandmother’s soul—like a blade. And draining her dry.
The shadow.
It was also completely familiar.
My head jerked toward Jonathan, who was now peering out the French doors toward the ocean. “Who are you?”
Jonathan stopped his mumbling. He rubbed his fingers over the cedar trim but didn’t look up. “What do you mean?”
“You—your energy. It’s the same, the same as the shadowed man. Penny’s killer.”
For a second or two, he was a statue, not even moving to breathe. Then he looked up, and those green eyes pinned me into place as he started toward me, so very slowly. Or maybe he was walking toward the exit. “No, Cass, you’re confused. I’m sorry, I truly didn’t mean for you to get the wrong idea. I should be go?—”
He edged around the sofa, and I followed him toward the door on the other side of the counter, matching him step for step. Before he made it to the foyer, I lunged out for his hand.
But he jumped out of reach, back toward the kitchen.
“Just give it,” I ordered. “I’m not going to dig around or try to kiss you again. I want to show you.”
Jonathan’s eyes narrowed as we started to circle the couch. “Show me what?”
I just stretched my fingers over the top, fighting not to recoil at the low growl in his voice. There was another current of fear thrumming through me—mine this time. It wasn’t a conscious fear, at least not until I had made the kind of connection I did between Jonathan and Gran’s killer. No, it was instinctual, the kind that comes in the presence of a predator.
Was I Jonathan’s prey? Was Gran his prey?
I shuddered. Jonathan acknowledged the subtle movement with an equally minor tilt of his head. Slowly, he extended his hand across the couch to me. I tried not to imagine his fingers as claws.
“All right,” he said. “Show me. If you can.”
I touched my fingertips to his. Instead of allowing his thoughts and feelings to flow through me, this time I willed mine into his body and ignored the pulses of his system launching into fight or flight mode. If I was going to figure this out, I needed him to understand.
I opened up my memory of Gran’s asphyxiation and likened it to his energy.
It was easier than at the restaurant. The first time, it was a struggle, trying to let someone in that way. But now it was as if a door had already been opened, and all I had to do was walk through it. Yes, he was able to learn some of my secrets—whatever he thought they were. But right now, maybe I could sneak a look at his impressions and get to the bottom of this before he could lie again.
But as soon as the brief memory emerged, he withdrew his hand. Though not before I confirmed what I had originally thought—something in his energy and the memory’s energy matched.
“Thanks,” he said stiffly. “I see what you mean.”
I glared at him. “You’re not just an innocent, sometimes attorney, sometimes physicist in all of this. You’ve got about five seconds to come clean, or you’re not going to like what I’ll do to you.”
Jonathan’s face had turned several shades whiter after seeing the connection with the shadow. His voice, however, was suddenly full of menace, soft and low. “Is that a threat, Cassandra?”
The sound of my full name in that tone sent a chill down my spine. I willed my voice not to shake but failed miserably. “It’s a promise.”
His shoulders slumped. All signs of menace evaporated. “About bloody time.”
I frowned. “Come again?”
“Penny wondered if there was enough fight in you for this. I’m glad to see there is.” He sighed. “It’s not what you think. You can still trust me.”
I grabbed the back of the couch, and for a split second, a memory of Gran looking at me from the same position when I lied to her about sneaking off the surf floated into my mind. I released my hold. “Just tell me the truth. That kind of energy match is the kind connected through kin. Are you related to that—that monster?”
Jonathan rubbed a hand over his face and up into his hair, making it stick up on one side. “I can’t say for sure because the memory is rather opaque. You didn’t See his face or hear his voice clearly. But…it’s likely that’s…I mean, I suspect that…”
“What?” I snapped. “What do you ‘suspect?’”
Jonathan’s sigh seemed to deflate his entire body. “The man who killed Penny is my father.”
My throat was suddenly parched and turning inside out. I coughed, hacking out my surprise.
“Did you know?”
“Did I know what?”
“Don’t play dumb, Jonathan. Did you know the killer might have been your father? Before I showed you, I mean?”
“I—”
I didn’t let him finish speaking before I sprang again across the couch to grab him—any part of him—to See the answer to my question. He dodged out of reach, but not before my fingers grazed his shoulder. I toppled over the back of the couch and landed on the floor, an awkward pile of arms and legs. Jonathan watched warily from the other side of the kitchen island as I sat up, rubbing my head.
His normal poker face was etched with guilt from what he undoubtedly knew I had Seen in his thoughts.
Yes, he had known from the moment I showed him those memories last night. He might not have been able to identify the killer directly, but he had known of the potential even before arriving here. Why he was masquerading as Gran’s friend was beyond me, but somehow he had gotten into her good graces enough to understand her secrets. Secrets that, as far as I knew, were the reasons why the shadowed man—Jonathan’s father , I realized again with a punch in the gut—would have wanted her dead.
“Get out,” I said as I got up from the floor, trying for quiet menace, but once again unable to conceal the telltale quiver of my voice that would not be hidden.
“Please, Cass, I’m not trying to trick you. I didn’t know it until now. I had no idea who it was until you showed me that vision last night.”
“Bullshit. You had some idea. I just Saw it.”
“Cassandra—”
“Your father kills my grandmother, and you suddenly show up?” I rattled on. “You’re somehow best friends with the woman your closest kin wanted dead? Just how na?ve do you think I am?”
I was on my feet and running around the kitchen island before I even knew what I was doing. I grabbed one of the steak knives out of the wood block next to the stove and held it in front of me, keeping the island between us as Jonathan placed his hands carefully on the counter.
“Please, let’s just take a moment?—”
“Get out, Jonathan.” I waved the knife around even knowing he could turn the steel edge into a noodle.
There was a loud snort. “Believe me, it takes a bit more than a knife to threaten me.”
I scowled at the knife, then tossed it on the counter with the clatter. “I said get out!”
“Cassandra, really.”
“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!” I roared as I raced around the island and shoved him squarely in the chest.
A crack of lighting soared across the sky just above the horizon, and a clap of thunder answered with a boom that shook the house. Rain began to fall, the drops hitting the roof like nails on a tin can, deafening our voices, our breaths, even our thoughts.
I’d Seen his condescension and fear when I had shoved him, but it was all replaced by shock when Jonathan’s limbs obeyed my command. He turned on shoeless heels, opened the front door, and directly into a puddle in the middle of the driveway, standing in half an inch of muddy water in just his socks.
There he looked over his shoulder at me, kiwi-colored eyes wide and disbelieving.
Go , I thought.
It wouldn’t work. Not without direct contact. But nonetheless, he didn’t try to come back. Instead, Jonathan shook his head with something between fear and respect, then got into his car and drove away. I picked up his boots and jacket, still drying on the front porch, and hurled them onto the gravel after him.
A cold line of sweat had broken out over my brow as I closed the door. I slumped onto the rough floorboards and buried my head in my arms, shutting my eyes against the lights of the living room and the storm brewing outside and the confusion taking over my thoughts.
Another bolt of lightning lit up the sky, followed by another bout of thunder rumbling in the distance like it too had been banished by my touch.
It was a reminder of what I’d just done, breaking the cardinal rule of every good seer. I’d turned a mind against itself.
But I had done the right thing in forcing him to leave, hadn’t I? This was someone I needed far, far away from me.
The memory of that connection blazed into my mind’s eye once again, paired with the fear that had followed soon after. Yes, I had done the right thing. I stood and moved into the kitchen to make myself another cup of tea.
The phone rang before I’d even gotten the water on the stove.