Fated (The Soul Seekers #1)(78)
My eyes go wide, my mouth hangs open and dumb, while my mind replays her words again and again until they begin to make sense. “But you hate those,” I say. “You always say that—”
She flashes a palm, letting me know that’s just the beginning. “And, along with the new gig, we have ourselves some new digs. I’ve rented a two-bedroom apartment in West L.A. But it’s just a temporary arrangement until we can find the right place to buy. I’m considering Venice or maybe even Silver Lake. We’ll look around—see what feels right.”
I stare at her without really seeing—my mind’s too busy trying to catch up with my ears. I have no idea what to say—no idea what to think. Everything she just said stands in direct opposition to everything I thought I knew about her.
“Yep.” She nods, one hand tracing the seam that runs down the side of her black, leather leggings, the other pushing through a chunk of hair that used to be pink but is now bleached platinum to match the surrounding strands. “It’s all taken care of. So go pack up your things so we can get a move on. I’ve got a rental car waiting with a full tank of gas. And for once in my life, jet lag seems to be working for me—I plan to drive through the night.”
She flicks her fingers, gesturing for me to get crackin’, but I just stand before her, rooted in place. “No,” I say, hating how small the word sounded. I chase it with a much stronger chorus of, “Forget it, Jennika. Uh-uh. There’s no way.”
She tilts her head, eyelids squinching as she appraises me. “Is this about the boy?” The tone of her voice implying she’s convinced that it is.
“What? No!” I shake my head, assuring myself it’s not at all about the boy—has nothing to do with Dace. It’s about my duties as a Seeker—something I’m not about to confide to her. For one thing, she’d reject it outright, refuse to believe—wouldn’t even try to understand. For another, she’d fear for my safety, end all negotiations, and insist that I leave. As long as she doesn’t know, there’s still hope—and when she’s acting like this, hope is all I can cling to.
She moves toward me, her face softening along with her tone. “Daire, you can tell me. I get it. Believe me, I do. It’s not like I didn’t see him. It’s not like I’m blind. He’s gorgeous. Exactly what teenage dreams are made of. Falling for a boy like that is easy to do. But make no mistake, a boy like that has heartbreaker written all over him, and the last thing I want is for you to get hurt—or worse.”
I glare, my face a mask of defiance, hating her words. Partly because I don’t want to believe them and partly because I fear that they’re true. “By worse, you mean pregnant? Like when you got knocked up with me at sixteen?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Is that such a bad thing?” She fiddles with the long line of small silver hoops that hang from her multipierced ear—a sure sign she’s searching for just the right words. “Look, Daire, as much as I don’t regret having you—not for one single second—I don’t want you to end up sixteen and pregnant like I did. Is that such a crime?”
I roll my eyes and look away. We’ve had this talk countless times, starting way back when I was too young to hear it and it bordered on wildly inappropriate. “It’s not like that,” I say. “He’s not like that. You’ve got it all wrong.”
But no sooner are the words out when I realize I waltzed straight into her trap. Her eyes widening, lips curling in triumph when she says, “How would you know? I thought you just met him today?”
I turn away. So annoyed I have to fight to keep quiet—keep the storm of angry retorts confined to my head.
“Come on, Daire.” Her voice rings much sterner than the words imply. “Get your stuff, so we can get the heck out of here. Oh, and when you’re done packing, be sure to leave a note for Paloma, thanking her for doing such a stellar job at screwing up as badly with you as she did with your dad.”
“What?” My eyes widen, casting frantically around the room.
But Jennika just shakes her head, brows slanted, lips flattened in fury.
I push away from the counter and race down the hall—the sight of Paloma’s empty bed confirming the worst. “How’d you get in?” I whirl on Jennika, voice filled with panic.
Reading her look of confusion when she glances between the bed and me, saying, “What do you mean? The door was wide open.”
thirty-nine
“I stopped by with Kachina—had just gotten her secured in her stall when I found Paloma collapsed at the table in her office.” Chay meets us at the door of the tiny adobe. His eyes are bloodshot and red-rimmed, tainted with worry. “Looks like she hit her head pretty hard when she went down, which only complicates matters.”
“And so you brought her here?” Jennika plants herself in the entry—hands clutching her hips as she eyeballs the room and everyone in it with a disapproving glare.
But Chay knows how to handle her, which means he ignores her by directing his focus to me. “She’s slipping in and out of consciousness, but every time she wakes up, she asks to see you.”
“Hey, I’ve got a question.” Jennika pipes up, her voice as condescending as the look on her face, insisting on being heard even though no one wants to listen. “Why isn’t she in a hospital? Don’t you think they can help her more than these people can?” She arcs her arm in a wide sweeping motion, indicating the older Native American, who I assume is the medicine man, and his much younger apprentice who sits at a small hand-carved table beside him. “No offense,” she adds, looking at them, but their faces remain stoic, immobile, completely unmoved by her words.