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With a bitterness the rabbit didn’t deserve, Liliana wondered why Janice cared what happened to the wolf-kin she had so callously rejected. “No more questions today. I am tired,” she repeated.
“Can you see me again next week?” Janice asked.
Visions of Pete’s gruesome death consumed every part of Liliana’s mind. Her hands shook as she ran the fabric of her skirt through her fingers again and again. She barely heard the question Janice asked. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Pete would die.
Horribly.
Today.
Face to the corner, the spider seer crouched down, trying to block out the sight of Pete’s staring eyes. Pete’s screaming mouth. Pete’s sunken pale cheeks. She squeezed down in the corner into as tiny a ball as she could and rocked, hands over her first, third, and fourth eyes.
Janice Willoughby left at some point.
The day her parents died, Liliana saw it, even before it happened. She watched her eldest brothers and their children, her father, and her first mother all torn apart. She had seen it like a record stuck in a bloody groove, a slice of time looping again and again uncontrollably through her mind. Blood and death and screams, over and over. The family she loved reduced to meat and blood. At that age, she had not yet divided her mind into compartments to separate each vision and shut out what she didn’t want to see. She couldn’t stop the visions. She was paralyzed by the overwhelming horror. Helpless, useless, trapped in her own mind. Only shutting her mind down completely, going into the blank place where there was no time, could make it stop.
Liliana had only just begun to know the compassionate red wolf. Already she had seen him die twice and seen an assassin murder his strongest protector, the handsome Fae colonel. She felt a surge of unreasoning anger toward Janice. Why had the stupid rabbit woman made her look?
She opened her fourth eyes a tiny slit to look at Janice’s future, half-hoping she would see something awful happen to her. Instead, she saw the rabbit-kin baking batch after batch of cookies, along with the cake she had already promised. With a look of stunned delight, the golden-haired teacher who owned the red wolf’s heart accepted the generous gifts for his bake sale fundraiser.
Janice’s attitude toward the red wolf and his beloved had radically changed. Liliana saw a potential future flicker into uncertain possibility where a deep friendship developed between the rabbit-kin homemaker and the Normal teacher. That possibility hadn’t existed until Liliana spoke to Janice. The rabbit-kin’s path altered, as had her husband Lou’s by extension and their children’s. Liliana now knew the fate of the Willoughby family was intertwined with the fate of the Celtic wolf and his boyfriend. With her advice to Janice, Liliana changed Pete’s future in a small way for the better.
It reminded Liliana that she wasn’t helpless this time, like she’d been when her family was slaughtered. She could change what she saw.
She risked a quick glimpse into the future, but saw the same three ugly deaths, one close in time and nearly certain, one in a few days if the Fae colonel died trying to protect him, and the other waiting to claim the red wolf in less than a year if he somehow escaped the first two.
She had helped a little, but Pete was still going to die.
Liliana stopped rocking and stood up.
Not if she had anything to say about it.
Chapter 11
Towering Enemy
To get from Fayetteville to Raleigh, Liliana had to take an auto-cab. It would cost far more than a simple one-hour ride in a car should, especially now when clean fuel was virtually free and cab drivers were computers that didn’t need salaries, but it was necessary. Liliana could not cram herself into the hollow tube of the bullet train to Raleigh with hundreds of strangers and hope to emerge on the other side still sane, and she had never learned to drive or bought a car—so, a cab.
She wrapped a bright red scarf decorated with sequins around her head where it would cover her fourth eyes. She could open and close them freely that way, and since they saw things that weren’t in front of her, the scarf would not interfere with her vision. She braided her hair with it in the back so it would be out of her way if she had to fight. Then she walked down the busy street in front of her business, looking for a cab going to Raleigh. She didn’t care who it intended to take to Raleigh. Her mission to save Pete was of paramount importance, and time was limited.
She searched for some time as she walked to the nearest busy intersection, then kept walking further toward the center of town. It took nearly half an hour to find a cab. It had just come from the airport in Raleigh, and therefore, it would accept a multicity fare to take her back.
The only problem was that it would be fifteen minutes before it finished dropping off its passenger. Unwilling to wait, Liliana stepped in front of the cab. Its tires squealed only a little. Computer vision, collision sensors, and other recent advances made standing in front of a moving car frequently safter than riding in one.
When the car stopped, Liliana stayed in front of it, following when it tried to back up or go around her.
Finally, the passenger door opened. An angry man in blue jeans with long, black, curly hair got out, shouting at her in what sounded like…Polish, maybe? Slovakian? It had been a long time since Liliana lived in Europe. She not only didn’t understand the words, she wasn’t sure of the language. However, the man’s intention and emotion were very clear as he shouted at Liliana and waved his hands at her to get out of the way.
Once the passenger door was open, the car would not move, so she went around to where the man stood, red in the face from his anger.
With a start, she recognized the man. A bit of black leather collar showed above his shirt despite the long hair mostly covering it. He was the Wolfhound assassin she’d seen in her vision.
She considered killing him right then to prevent the ugly future she’d seen, but they were in the middle of a street in broad daylight. She might have risked it anyway, but a quick peek with her fourth eyes showed her that if he didn’t report his arrival at the hotel, another assassin would be immediately sent.
She couldn’t remove the threat now, but it helped her to know he was a horrible person who killed without mercy on command. She didn’t like inconveniencing anyone by taking their cab, but in the case of this man, she felt zero guilt. He could walk the remaining eight miles to his hotel.
She walked up to him but stepped a few feet away from the car, like she intended to talk to him, and waved him over.
He let go of the car door and stepped toward her to growl and snap unknown obscenities directly into her face.
