Banishing the Dark (Arcadia Bell #4)(65)

“He didn’t know.”

“Are you sure?”

“He wouldn’t have kept that from me. No reason to. Grandmaster Vega didn’t know, either, or she would’ve said something. After everything we’ve seen over the last week, I think it’s pretty obvious my parents spent a lot of time outside the order’s radar.”

He grunted his agreement.

“The house I saw in the servitor’s upload had a lot of antlers tacked up around the front door. My parents were vegans.”

“Vegan serial killers.”

“They ate that way to keep their bodies pure, not out of respect for animals. My mom believed it kept her Heka reserves sharper. But what I’m saying is that they weren’t hunters. Maybe they were renting that house from someone who hunted, or maybe it was a hunting lodge of some sort. Where do people hunt around here?”

“North of my property, away from the coast.”

“Maybe we can start looking there.”

He nodded and began searching on his laptop, seeing what came up in the way of cabin rentals with nearby hunting. “You wanna take a look at the photos on this rental website and see if you recognize anything?”

I got up and sat on the padded arm of Lon’s chair to study the small photos of the rentals he pulled up. He smelled nice. Not as nice as he’d smelled in the hotel a few nights ago—God, how I wished I had access to that scent knack all the time—but pretty damn good for someone who’d spent a good part of the day riding in a car. And for someone who’d just been super-anxious and twitchy, he was awfully relaxed.

Until I stretched my neck as he turned his head, and my skull butted into his cheek, sending a quick jolt of pain through my head. “Oh, sorry,” I said, chuckling at the awkward contact. “You’re scratchy, by the way.” I ran the backs of my fingers over the golden-brown stubble dusting the lower half of his face.

The contact was shocking.

Not physically. Something else.

It was as if I’d been listening to a radio station that wasn’t quite tuned, and that skin-to-skin contact flipped it to the right frequency. Suddenly, everything was loud and clear. I just didn’t know what I was hearing. Not right away. It sounded like this:

Happy-content-happy-longing-thrill-happy.

I nearly fell off the arm of the chair when I realized what that meant.

“O-o-oh!” I stammered.

“What? Do you recognize this house?” Lon’s eyes widened as I wrapped my hand around his neck to stop him from moving away.

“No, it’s not the house,” I said, sounding mildly delirious.

Surprise-confusion-worry-worry

“What?” he said again, a little louder, trying to wiggle out of my grip.

“I can hear you!” I shouted gleefully.

PANIC-CONFUSION-PANIC.

“You can hear my thoughts?”

“No, I can hear your emotions. Your knack—this is what your knack feels like. Jesus! It’s amazing!”

He jerked out of my grip and stood up, all in one motion. “You can hear me?”

“Well, I could, when we were touching.”

Eyes on me, he set his laptop on a small table next to his chair, nearly missing the table altogether. “You can’t now?”

“A little . . . I think. It’s hard to tell.” I vaulted off the chair to follow him. “Are you panicking?”

“Hell, yeah, I’m panicking. Are you”—he backed away a step—“sure that’s what’s going on with you? Is this like the fork bending and the smelling?”

“Oh, yes. But this is so much better. You never told me how wonderful it is.”

He backed up another step. “It’s not always wonderful.”

“I think I was hearing Jupe on the sofa—I just didn’t realize what was happening. But it’s definitely stronger now. Either that, or I’m just really attuned to you. Can you hear certain people louder than others?”

“Yes.”

I grinned. “Let me just—”

“Hold on, now—”

“—touch you again. Stay still.”

“This isn’t a good idea.”

I stalked him as if he were easy prey. “Why?”

“Because it’s a distraction.”

“Maybe I need one,” I said, sobering up for a moment. “In case you haven’t noticed, life hasn’t been all that good to me lately, and this has been a particularly shitty week.”

His features softened. “Hasn’t been all bad.”

“No, not all bad.” My breath came a little faster. “A couple of highlights come to mind,” I said as I reached for him.

He sidestepped me and hid behind the chair. “Let’s be sensible.”

“Boo. You’re just afraid of me hearing your emotions, and that’s not fair. You get to hear mine all the time. Turnabout’s fair play.”

Indecipherable curses fell from his tightened lips. He glanced around as if he was trying to figure out an escape plan. I took that opportunity to leap onto the chair cushion and grab two fistfuls of his shirt.

“Ahhh,” I said triumphantly as I tipped toward him. “Don’t try to run again, or I’ll have to use my youthful vigor to catch up with your weary old-man bones.”