“I love you, too, Lina.”
Somewhere, Lina was sure she heard the old woman chuckling. She noticed Zack looked up.
Lina gasped. “Did you hear her?” she whispered.
He smiled. “I hear her.”
Lina squealed. “You are my special friend forever!”
Together, they jumped up. Holding hands, they ran down the stairs to the kitchen.
Over the years, Lina eventually stopped hearing the old woman’s voice. By the time she was a teenager, she’d forgotten about her altogether, and barely had any memories of how she and Zack first met. It felt like Zack had been in her life forever.
But Zack still stayed her special friend.
Chapter Nine
Now
Stunned, Lina sat on Baba Yaga’s couch. It felt like she’d sat and listened to Baba Yaga spin her yarn for days. Yet she knew if she wanted to, she could open her physical eyes and find only a few seconds had passed in the van carrying her and her men home from Tampa International.
She stared at the faint, ancient scar etched into her left palm. She knew Zack bore an identical one in his right hand. How in all these years had she never questioned that? And despite all this knowledge, it still felt like she was missing something. Like there were a couple of huge, gaping holes she should be seeing in that tale, but wasn’t.
“In all lives?” Lina asked.
Baba Yaga nodded. “In all lives. Now the threads in your tapestry have merged again, from where they were scattered in the past. You are here, able to face down the threat. Your men will stand strongly beside you.” She smiled. “Even the wolf and his clan.”
Lina felt herself blush despite not really being there. “Brodey, you mean.”
“Yes. And others. Although they do not know it yet.”
Lina had a question she really wanted answered and hoped Baba Yaga would…or could. “When Brodey and I were overcome by the fire at Yellowstone, when I built the ice shell around us? I saw something. A vision or a dream, I don’t know what. I saw him and his brothers find their One. Was that true?”
Baba Yaga nodded. “If you saw it, it is true, or will be. Such are your gifts.”
She let out a deep, relieved sigh. “Then they will be happy?”
“That I cannot guarantee or promise for their future. But in that instance, yes, they will happily mate with their One.”
“Good. They deserve happiness.” There was more, so much more, that she wanted to ask. She now understood why Baba Yaga couldn’t tell her all she knew.
But perhaps…
“You don’t have a problem showing me things that have already happened.”
The other woman tipped her head in curiosity. “Some things, Goddess.”
In a quiet voice, Lina asked, “Can you show me how my parents died?”
Baba Yaga’s gaze narrowed. “I can. But are you sure it’s something you truly wish to see? Things such as that cannot be unseen.”
Lina picked at her cuticles. “I know Edgar killed them. I want to know exactly how. I want to see how someone who pretended to be my friend and care about me all those years could do something like that.”
“You want to fuel your rage.” Her lips curled in a knowing smile. “Do not lie to me. I have seen far too much in my life to be taken in by simple artifice.”
Lina met her gaze. “I want to make sure there’s no way in hell I will ever forget what those bastards are capable of. I want to make sure that I don’t misplace my mercy when the time comes.”
An amused grin crept across Baba Yaga’s face. “My dear, you are wiser than your years.”
They were suddenly standing beside a desolate rural road, just after dusk, but before full dark had settled in. A dense, purple light clung to the landscape. The air felt thick, soupy, still.
A typical August night in Florida, much like the night her parents died.
She turned, studying the area.
It was where her parents died. She knew the road, had struggled for years to take any possible route to avoid driving past the spot.
“How soon?” Lina asked her.
She nodded. “Very soon. We are just observers. We cannot interfere.”
“I understand.” The evening settled around them. “Why can’t I just figure everything out at once if I’m a goddess with all these powers?”
“You cannot harness what you don’t understand. And you are mortal-born. Goddess, yes. Powerful, yes. Omnipotent and omniscient? No. No one being, mortal or not, has all those powers. Only the Goddess of us all, and she’s not about to share her powers, I’m sure.”
“That sucks.”
“Yes, it does. Unfortunately, it is life.”
“So what was that vision I saw first before I came here? Those people on the moor. Who the fuck is Ysimel, anyway? That woman in my vision?”
Baba Yaga smiled. “Information for you to store away for later, Goddess.” Her expression hardened. “Forget nothing.”
They waited. A few minutes later, Lina spotted a large, beat-up, four-door land yacht of a sedan, a huge clunker that looked three feet from being ready for a crusher. It pulled up, turned in at a dirt crossroad, and turned around. It stopped a few yards short of the road, where it couldn’t be seen by any vehicle coming around the turn.
Lina took a deep breath and waited. She knew the driver.
Edgar.
When she saw headlights sweep over the trees lining the curve, she knew it was about to happen. Steeling herself, she watched as Edgar gunned the engine of his car, which weighed at least three times as much as her parents’ small two-door Honda.
Then his back tires kicked up a rooster tail of dirt as he pulled out and hit them at a sharp angle on the driver side, sending the small car rolling.
Lina choked back a sob. Despite her parents’ car being totaled, Edgar’s car was still drivable. He put it in park, got out, and walked over to the Honda, which now lay on its roof in the ditch, crushed against a tree.
That was one thing the FHP could never figure out, how another car could hit them and still get away.
Now, she knew.
Baba Yaga softly spoke in her ear. “Do you wish to go see them?”
She shook her head. “No, this is close enough.”
Edgar stooped down and reached into the driver-side window. After a moment, he nodded and went around to the other side.
She couldn’t help but see as he passed through the beam of his own remaining headlight that his hand was covered with blood.
After checking on her mom, Edgar wiped his hand on the grass, got back in his car, and left.
Lina took a long, shaky breath and slowly let it out again.
“Okay,” she whispered. “I’ve seen en—”
She opened her eyes and found herself in the van with her men. When she looked out the window, she realized they’d driven less than a mile from when she first joined Baba Yaga in Wherever-the-Hell-That-Was-Land.
She closed her eyes again.
When they reached the house, the other men started hauling their bags inside. Zack grabbed Lina’s wrist and arched an inquisitive eyebrow at her.
She let out a sigh. She never could keep anything from him.
No wonder. He’d seen all her moods countless times, throughout many lives. She tipped her head toward the house. He followed her inside, through the house, and out the kitchen to the back patio to what she was beginning to think of as their “talking bench.”
She leaned against him, and he slung an arm around her, pulling her close.
He kissed the top of her head. “Paid a visit to old Baba Yaga, did you?”
“How’d you know?” His insight didn’t even surprise her anymore.
“I felt you check out there in the van for a little while. Did she bring you there, or did you go on your own?”