he only nodded and gestured with his cup for her to continue. “Okay, so these blackouts have always been preceded by vision-reducing headaches.”
“How fast is onset?”
His clinical approach stopped the encroaching panic, forcing her to think past it and answer his questions. “It begins peripherally, narrowing to tunnel vision before I lose sight altogether. I retain the ability to hear for—I’m guessing—approximately two minutes. My heart rate accelerates, but I attribute it to stress. Something in me shifts, like I’m harboring a different...this sounds so crazy.” She shook her head and reached for her coffee cup, taking a scalding gulp.
“Don’t edit this, Kennedy. I need to know exactly what’s happening.” Ethan’s firm voice was more command than request.
“Look, this isn’t easy.” The heat from the cup seeped into her hands as she rolled it back and forth across her palms.
“Keep it clinical. If it’s unexplainable, just do your best.”
She snorted. “What, are you diagnosing me?”
“Consider this a free evaluation.” He bumped her knee with his. “Go on.”
Her voice dipped lower, and Ethan leaned in to listen. “When my hearing begins to fade, it’s as if my will is being superseded by something, and then that entity’s will pushes mine out of its way. I feel it, Ethan. I can tell my consciousness is being forced out of the way, but it’s unstoppable. My will is shoved aside, and then I’m gone. I wake up in the strangest places having done some of the most inappropriate things—dancing nearly topless on a bar top to ‘Tequila’ at a biker bar was my most recent fete.” She paused and looked up to gauge his reaction. When his face remained neutral, she let loose the craziest idea. “I don’t like light anymore. Darkness is more comfortable. I’ve even started living with my drapes closed all the time to avoid sunlight. I know it sounds crazy, but if I step into the shadows? It goes away. Ethan, I’ve got this creepy-ass feeling, like I’ve got some parasite sucking on me.”
He ran his fingers through his hair several times as he considered her. When he finally spoke, his voice was sharp, his words clipped. “You’re losing how much time per episode?”
Kennedy rolled her shoulders, trying to ignore the tension that had snuck back in. “It ranges. This last time was the worst. I lost days.” Her voice trembled and she hated it, hated that whatever was happening was breaking her. She chewed on her bottom lip and looked anywhere but at him. When he touched her knee, she startled and sloshed coffee over the rim of the cup. It coursed down both sides of her hand and she cursed out of habit, hurrying to set the cup down. Mid-motion, she froze and slid her gaze to Ethan. “It doesn’t burn.”
He reached for her hand, taking the cup from her and setting it down before examining her hand. Though slightly pink, the skin was neither burned nor blistered. Ethan looked at her, his face a blank mask. But behind it, she thought she saw both fear and awe.
Taking her hand back, she mopped up the mess the best she could. “What?” she finally demanded. “Why are you staring?”
“Just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
Kennedy kept scrubbing at the table though the mess was long gone. “What makes you think there’s another shoe?”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Kennedy.”
Pausing, she looked around the coffee shop. No one was paying them any attention. Dropping the napkins, she clasped her hands together and leaned forward. “I had a second episode Friday night. It’s never happened before. I was in the cab and then, next thing I know, I’m standing in the hallway on the fourth floor wondering what day it is—today.” She lowered her voice even more. “I don’t know what’s happening, but I have this...this knowledge that I’m going to...” She swallowed hard and jumped when he took her hands.
“That you’re going to what?” he asked, low and hard.
“I’m going to be responsible for a lot of death, Ethan. More than you can imagine.”
Dylan discreetly followed the pair across the lobby and briefly held off following them outside. Not once were they out of his line of sight. They might believe he was as gullible as a spring lamb born yesterday, but he knew the man, Ethan, had been looking to ditch him by sending him for a glass of water for the woman. The woman. She wasn’t simply the woman to him, but rather the foretold woman. Kennedy Jefferson. The key to his survival lay somewhere within her. A hard shudder worked through him, and his fingertips burned. It was reactionary to clinch his hands in order to hide the show of magicks he couldn’t regulate. Simply the thought of her challenged his control. Irritating, that particular tell, and not a small one at that. Made him feel like a fool on a righteous errand.
He watched as the two slipped inside the coffee shop before he stepped outside in silent pursuit. He stood in a group of strangers and waited for the crosswalk sign to turn. A wave of subtle power struck him, faint and scentless. If it had held a smell, or even a flavor, he’d have been able to identify the element to which it was bound, but the wave retreated far too quickly for him to gain a good hold on it.
Dylan moved quickly, undoing his cufflinks and pocketing them. The dirks up his sleeves and the gun at his back needed to be accessible without interference or delay. He hesitated—actually hesitated—outside the little coffee shop. Reconciling assignments where a gods-be-damned woman was the target had always been the hardest for him. But Kennedy Jefferson proved a whole different level of difficult. She’d haunted him for 300 years. Memories so clear they could have been recent versus centuries old swamped him. The goddess Danu’s warning, issued in a dim Scottish cave three centuries ago, rolled about his mind. She had come to him and spoken of finding some immeasurable truth that would save not only mankind but the Druidic race, as well. To fail would result in the release of the imprisoned gods.
He’d pleaded with her, begged for more to go on than that. She’d considered him carefully before issuing him a name. “Begin seeking her in what will be a new world to you, Dylan, for she is the only one who holds the truth. You must find Kennedy Jefferson before all is lost. She has within her the single truth you must reveal and accept.” And then Danu had disappeared.
The light changed, the crowd jostling him hard enough to knock some sense into him. He had no business bandying about with memories no more tangible than fairy tales. Instead, he searched the glass-fronted shop, located his target and shifted directions, slipping down first one side of the building, then around the back and up the other. There were exits fore and aft, as well as a handful of tiny windows. He couldn’t watch them all. Shouldn’t have to, though. She had no idea who he was or why he was here, so she wouldn’t likely run. Not yet, anyway. Not unless Cailleach took the wheel, because that bitch had definitely recognized him.
Another brush of power skated over his skin with blades as sharp as knives. It had to be coming from the woman. No one else could harness that kind of power and keep it secreted, not from the men who’d done the background check on this mission. Hell, Dylan knew things about Kennedy Jefferson she’d likely hate—that her mother committed suicide when Kennedy was thirteen. That her father remarried when Kennedy was twenty-two and died of a massive heart attack last year, just days after her twenty-ninth birthday. That she’d been a combat medic in the army and went to college on the GI bill.
The
