Chapter Thirteen
HAZEL
“There you go.” I open the gate to the garden entrance so my soaking wet dog doesn’t track water through the shop.
“I vote to make night swims in the river part of our everyday routine,” Skip says.
I smile that he’s speaking words again. “It was nice to cool my feet in the water. I’ll make more time for that. I promise.” I hang Skip’s leash on the hook and head inside to prepare a bowl of kibble for him. I scoop the dog food into the bowl and a vision comes over me.
Jamie lies on a thick bed of pine needles.
He’s in the forest… it’s night and he’s lying on his back, looking up at the full moon over the top of Devil’s Crown.
He’s breathing heavy. Something stirs in the trees.
There’s a low animal shriek. Jamie looks at his hand…
oh my god, he’s bleeding. Something’s wrong with his side.
He’s in pain. He scrabbles to his feet but he’s running out of strength, only manages to get on all fours.
He crawls toward his truck, which is at least a dozen yards away.
The growling grows more fierce, then another animal joins in.
Something about them sounds different somehow—not entirely animal. I have to…
I drop Skip’s bowl. It clangs noisily and rolls round and round as the kibble scatters across the floor.
Jamie’s hurt. “Oh god. No.” I’m confused, trying to make sense of the vision. I thought I misread the one about him being in danger. I thought it was all a means to get us together and that the warning was all in my imagination. I don’t understand.
Skip bumps my leg. “Hazel? What’s wrong?”
“It’s Jamie. I think. I…” I close my eyes and try to conjure the vision again but it’s no use. I have to pull it from memory, but after the ridiculous mistake I made last night, I don’t know what to think. Did I really see him in danger, or am I about to find him in the middle of…?
I argue with myself, trying to rationalize the pull in my gut that tells me something’s very wrong. This isn’t how I felt last night. Last night I got a vision of him and it was alarming, but I didn’t feel this dread. Now that I think about it. I did feel this dread the first time, when I fainted.
Oh my god. “There were two different visions!”
“What does that mean?” Skip asks.
I feel my throat tighten. “It means Jamie’s really in danger.” I grab my car keys and run out the door.
When I arrive at the campsite, everything is dark, but Jamie’s truck is there. I hurry to the cab. His door is open but he isn’t inside. Then I hear a groan from the back of the truck.
“Jamie?” I call out.
“Here!”
I hurry to him. He’s lying in the dirt, exactly as he was in the vision, only this time he’s really in pain. I check his body, knowing exactly where to look. His side has been torn open by something with very sharp claws.
Oh god. “Someone tried to make ribbons out of you. Can you stand?”
He nods and puts an arm over my shoulder. “Cant. Find. Keys.” He breathes the words through gritted teeth.
“We’ll take my car. Don’t worry.”
I belt him into the passenger seat and before I leave I place my hands over his wounds.
I feel the healing magic rising in my belly and pushing out through my fingers.
The energy is warm and the glow is green and gold, which tells me it’s working, but something isn’t right. I can’t stop the bleeding on my own.
I reach into the back seat and grab a denim jacket and press it onto his wound. “Here, hold this. Keep pressure on it.”
Diablo General Hospital sits in the center of town, a thankfully short drive once we’re out of the forest. I pull up to the ER and honk my horn once.
A young female orderly races out, calls for a gurney and some help.
Now that Jamie’s in the hands of the doctors and nurses, I feel like I can finally breathe.
I explain to the nurses what I know, without telling anyone I learned it from a vision, and watch as they wheel him away, unable to deny the crush in my heart as the distance between us grows.
I am still trying to digest the idea that he’s my true love.
How can anyone know that about him—or about me—before we know it for ourselves?
That’s a big knot to untangle about magic and energy and knowing, and I don’t have the bandwidth for that tonight.
I can say that the idea that he’s meant for me feels nice. I like him a great deal and I look forward to spending a lot more time with him, assuming he makes it through this. I drop into a chair in the waiting area and stare at the door they wheeled him through.
“Don’t die. I just found you,” I whisper.
Hours pass and I notice that everyone is tight-lipped about Jamie’s prognosis. I go to the desk and wave one of the nurses over; a girl I know from high school. “Hi, Lara.”
Lara gets up from a computer and comes over to me. “Hey, Hazel. I just checked on Jamie. He’s going to be fine.”
I look over my shoulder and lower my voice. “I noticed the doctors aren’t really talking about what might have attacked him. Have you heard anything?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing official, but tonight’s the full moon. So… they are careful not to speculate until they can speak to… everyone.”
“Everyone?” It takes a moment for her words to become clear. Then it hits me. “Oh god. The full moon. Shifters. I should have warned him to stay away from the lake!” Then another realization dawns. “Have you checked his wounds?”
Lara takes my hand and squeezes it reassuringly. “Yes, we all have. I just checked them again myself. The gashes are pretty deep, but as far as I can tell, he’s only been clawed, no bite marks.”
Relief floods my body. “Thank goodness. Can I go see him?”
“Of course. They just administered a healing compound. So, he’s going to be out of it.”
“I promise I won’t be long. I need to call his grandmother and I want to see him myself before I do that.”
“I understand.” Lara smiles. “Tell Gertie I said hello. Tell her he’s going to be just fine.”
The lights in Jamie’s room have been dimmed to let him sleep.
He’s snoring gently as the healing compound works its magic.
It isn’t widely known, but I know they use a drop of vampire blood to stop heavy bleeding when they need to, and I realize how grateful I am that Jamie is in Diablo Falls.
If he were in a normal hospital… The gashes in his torso are deep enough that he might have bled to death, or had internal bleeding if he hadn’t been found in time.
I move to his side and place my hand in the air a few inches over his wounds.
A strange energy is coming off him and I can’t tell what’s causing it.
I bend to get a closer look at the tears in his skin and I see the edges of the gashes appear to be twinkling in the light.
I take out my phone and shine the flashlight onto the wound and sure enough, the edges of the torn flesh look like they’ve been dipped in blue-green glitter.
“Excuse me.” A nurse leans in the door. “You shouldn’t be in here. Family only.”
I feel like explaining to her that I am his true love and he is mine, but that won’t get me anywhere and I don’t have it in me to fight. “Sorry. I’ll go back to the waiting room.”
I walk outside the hospital so I can use my cell phone and when I pull it out of my bag I see I’ve missed a couple of calls from Gertie. I tap her name and wait for her to answer.
“Hazel! I had a vision. Can you believe Jamie was attacked by a dragon? How’s he doing?”
My back straightens as I process what she just said. “Gertie? What? A dragon?”
She’s breathy with excitement. “Yes! Well, a dragon shifter. I couldn’t believe it myself but since neither of you has seen fit to call me back, I did some research and you won’t believe the things that went on before the dragon shifters were banished from Diablo Falls.”
“Gertie… wait. You sound like you’re happy about this? Jamie could have died.”
“Don’t be silly. You were watching over him.
I knew you’d be there for him. Also, I have a theory about that so-called curse Marissa laid on you.
I don’t think it’s a curse at all. But back to the dragons.
Did you know they have their own special elixirs and spells?
I’ve been trying to tap into the dragon realm for ages…
ever since I ran into that dragon shifter, Rodney, years ago back in Vegas.
Talk about a total scorcher, I still have a scar on my thigh from that man. ”
I listen to the old witch ramble on about dragons and shifters and ancient Diablo Falls history and realize that I’m smiling because if a wise witch like Gertie’s not worried, I have no reason to be either.
Jamie’s going to be okay, and that means we’ll have time to find out if we’re really meant to be together.