Raintree: Oracle (Raintree 4)

“Hungry?” he asked.

“Starving.” He placed the tray on the bed near her. She looked over and up to him. “You’re wearing pants.” She made that sound like the accusation it was. Damned if she didn’t want him again.

“I make it a point not to cook naked.” He sat on the edge of the bed. Close. Not close enough.

“I suppose you do have to protect yourself.” For a moment she focused on the scar on his chest, a scar that looked nastier by morning light than it had by moonlight. She wanted to ask him about it, but not now. She also wanted to ask him about the amulet at his throat and the leather wristband, but she recognized both as being protective in nature. He had not removed either last night.

The real question was, what did a man like Ryder Duncan need to be protected from?

Echo took a cup of coffee and a piece of toast, leaning over the tray as she took a bite so as not to get crumbs in his bed. She wasn’t shy about being naked in front of him. In fact, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. He didn’t eat, but he did drink a cup of coffee. Maybe he’d eaten downstairs. Once she started eating, she realized that she really was starving.

When she was finished, she leaned away from the tray and asked, “So, do we have to keep this a secret? Do we have to pretend in front of everyone else?”

Ryder gave her question a few seconds of thought before responding. “No. Someone, probably several someones, would know, anyway.”

Of course. “Because this is not an ordinary town.”

“Not at all.”

She should’ve seen it all along, should’ve felt it, but she had not. “Is everyone here...different?”

He hesitated. “Not everyone. There are a few spouses and children who are not gifted.”

“The little girl I saw my first day here!” Echo sat up straighter, on alert. “I saw her again last week when I was walking, and...she told me about fairy forts.” Both memories seemed dreamlike. Were they real? They seemed so, but something was off.

“Sometimes I actually forget about her, and that’s not normal. The memory just fades away. It always comes back, though, like I’m remembering a dream or someone I haven’t seen since I was a child.”

Ryder didn’t say anything, but his jaw got tighter, his eyes more distant.

“She told me I would stay,” Echo continued. “I thought she was a delusion, a fantasy, because she just disappeared. I mean literally disappeared. Cassidy. She said her friends call her Cass but she prefers Cassidy.” She looked up into a stony face. “Do you know her? Surely you know everyone around here, Mayor Duncan.” She smiled. Ryder definitely did not fit her mental image of a small-town mayor.

His hesitation was minor, but she noticed. She noticed everything about him, and had since day one. His voice was perfectly even when he said, “Never heard of her, love. She probably was a delusion, as you say.”

Ryder took the tray and moved it to the top of the dresser by the door. The tray out of the way, he kicked the door shut, gently but firmly, and then he removed his jeans to join her in the bed. The mattress dipped and creaked, and she rolled into him. It was the most natural thing in the world to drift together. He held her close; she held him. Just like that, she dismissed everything from her mind but Ryder.

“Do you know what I dreamed last night?” she whispered.

“No.” His lips found her shoulder and rested there for a long moment.

She sighed in deep contentment. “Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s been days since I had a vision, sleeping or awake.”

“You’ve gone days before without a vision.”

“Yes, but there’s something different this time.”

He threw one long leg over her hip, capturing her in the nicest way. “And what’s that?”

She whispered, truthfully and with joy, “I am not afraid.”

* * *

Walsh paced in his room, a too-small, too-shabby rented room, which was not much more than an hour from Cloughban. He didn’t dare move any closer until it was time. Just a few more days, and he’d never be forced to sleep in such an ordinary place again. He’d have anything and everything he wanted. He was so close. Years of planning, and he was so close he could taste it.

Almost. Almost. It was a shame that Rye Duncan knew his face so well. Walsh wanted to watch every step of his plan; he wanted to be a part of it from beginning to end. When this was all over, would he have the ability to watch without being seen? To be invisible, or to shift into something—or someone—else? He could hardly wait to find out.

He’d be a part of it soon enough. The Raintree woman was a fly in the ointment, but she wasn’t much of a worry. She was a girl of limited powers, despite her surname.

Just a girl, not an oracle to be feared.