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The next moment, she was clamped within his powerful embrace and she could relax, but tears tracked down her cheeks.
Willem’s voice entered her mind softly, Just tell me what you need from me because I can feel how much this is hurting you.
Don’t worry about me. I’m okay, but I’m hearing what the boy is enduring and it’s bad. I just need to stay focused.
For some reason, because of what she said, Willem grew very still. It was strange feeling his strength, yet to experience his vampire stillness at the same time, almost as though he wasn’t there.
Buoyed by his physical proximity, she turned her mind toward the vision, allowing the screams and painful whimpers to return once more.
The vision opened to her and now she saw a room and a man who wore something covering his head but dressed in blue workman’s overalls.
Willem, I see the boy and the killer.
Where are they?
In a room somewhere, but beyond that I have no real sense of the actual location.
Okay. I know this might not make sense, but try moving backward within the vision as though stepping away.
The screams grew louder.
I can’t. I feel as though I’ve reached the limit of my ability, that I can’t do more than this.
She let go of the vision and opened her eyes. Even the aura around Willem had disappeared. “I wasn’t fae enough to do more than just see what was happening. Willem, it was horrible.”
She threw her arms around his neck and held fast. In return, he clasped her hard to his chest.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Why couldn’t I see more than I did?”
Willem stroked a hand up and down her back. “I’m so sorry you had to see that, but Charlotte this is important. Can you describe the location?”
Charlotte released him, striving to think, to recall details of the room, anything that might help. “Just where the boy was being held. Nothing more than that. Absolutely nothing that could identify the place.”
She looked into Willem’s haunted hazel eyes and because of the bond, she once more felt his familiar shame and guilt.
She released his neck. “I get it now. You’re distressed because you survived when all these others didn’t.”
He nodded. “At the very least.” He thrust a hand through his hair. “I know survivor’s guilt is in play, but it’s more than that. I have all this ability, yet I’m powerless to find this monster. Sometimes the rage I feel completely overwhelms me.”
Understanding came to Charlotte as though whispered through her mind from another plane. “But you know exactly what needs to be done, what would change your ability to find this killer, but you’re not willing to do it, even though I would agree in a heartbeat.”
His eyes widened, his jaw tightening. “Because it’s not right, dammit.”
“What do you mean, it’s not right?”
“I’m talking about you and me. You shouldn’t have to see these things or be connected to my work or to me, not like this. No woman should have to live with these kinds of horrors or with the truth of my past.”
“Willem, maybe you’re not seeing the whole picture. What if I’m built for this? Made to look at these kinds of things and not lose myself in them.”
He shook his head, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze.
She approached the difficult subject from another tack. “Answer me this: if we completed the blood rose bond right now, I’d be able to see more, to expand my fae vision, wouldn’t I?”
He shifted away from her a little more, then finally crossed to the empty fireplace, his back to her.
The boy’s fate hung in the balance, yet the wall behind which Willem had just moved might as well have been made of concrete, a foot thick.
Charlotte took a series of very long deep breaths, not to relax, but to try with all her might to just be in the moment. Something needed to happen right now, but she had no idea what. She was too young, too inexperienced in the world and in life to figure this out.
