You Will Be Mine (New Horizon Book 3)

Chapter 29: Matt

“It might help me if you think about your grandparents, what you know of your mom, or anything like that,” I instruct Jeannie from where I sit directly across from her in a twin to her own chair.

We’re in her bedroom, privately as she requested. It wouldn’t have mattered if there was anyone around watching this or not, no one sees what I see unless I allow them to. But that’s not the important part. If she’s more comfortable with no one else around, then that’s how we’ll do this.

The less extraneous stuff she has on her mind, the better, especially since I have a feeling I’m going to have to dig. She can’t exactly conjure up the memories from when she was an infant on her own.

“But all I really need you to do is sit there,” I go on explaining. “You can move, and you can even talk, but the closer you are, the stronger my connection to your memories will be. I will warn you, though, that what you’ll see from me can be a bit unsettling. My eyes will glaze over with a silvery covering, and I’m not going to be responsive once I start going into your mind. But feel free to talk to me anyway if it helps you feel more comfortable.”

“Okay,” she says somewhat uncertainly, in a way that reminds me of when I first told her of werewolves.

Simple acceptance. She’s so much more compliant than my own children that sometimes it stuns me. No fighting? She’s just going to do what I say? I’m definitely not complaining, but sometimes I do wonder what goes on in her head that she would never dare speak aloud. I also wonder if I’m about to find out.

“Ready?” I ask her, meeting her eyes. Mage wouldn’t be my first thought if I didn't already know, but they’re definitely unique.

She nods, staring back at me in that way that gets Eli a bit riled up. I’ve since learned that it’s because he can sense her trying to connect with him, and though he’s curious about her magic and we now know that connecting with her can be soothing, it’s also a little unsettling. Only our mate is supposed to be able to do that, and this girl isn’t even a werewolf.

I try to focus on her pupils and not let myself get distracted by all the flecks and specks of interesting colors in her eyes, but those are what seem to draw me in the most. It doesn’t take long before I’m feeling the familiar sensation of leaving my physical awareness behind and diving into a mind.

Even though I told her to try to be thinking about her family, it’s Gabe I find at the surface. I’m tempted to stay there and figure out what’s going on between the two of them, but it’s not my business, so I try to hurry through there. It’s hard to push through, and I get glimpses of far more than I should, but I finally manage to uncover another focus and take myself deeper, finding her grandpa next. Good, I can use him to guide me to where I need to go.

This memory is interesting, though, and potentially useful for our purposes. Jeannie looks to be about 12 or 13, and her grandpa is much more the way I remember him than how he looked the last time I saw him.

-

‘That was too close,’ the grandfather scolds the girl. ‘You can’t be letting yourself get distracted like that. When I say hide, you hide. Understand?’

‘I didn’t hear you,’ she explains. ‘I was washing and counting the apples like you said. The water was loud.’

‘I need to install some sort of signal,’ he mutters, seeming to be lost in thought for a moment. ‘A light I can flash. When you see it, you hide. That sound good?’

‘Yes, I think that will work,’ she agrees.

-

Now I’m wondering what happened that has him so worked up, so I follow the memory back just a little bit further. I see my old blue truck pulling in the driveway, one that I haven’t driven in years. It’s me, Gabe, and Garrett this time. Judging by their hairstyles, it was when they were about 18 or 19.

-

The truck doors slam, and the grandfather looks up in a panic.

‘Hide, Jeannie,’ he calls to his granddaughter working on the other side of the wooden half-wall. She’s working at the utility tub with a hose, and has large baskets of fruit all around her.

‘Jeannie,’ he hisses, panicking when he realizes she isn’t responding. The men are approaching the barn now, and she finally comes around from the other side.

‘You need to hide, now!’ he whispers, hoping that the men can’t hear him.

‘Good afternoon, fellas,’ he calls out to his customers, stepping ahead of his granddaughter to hopefully block their view of her.

But one of them gets a good look at the girl. He even locks eyes with her for a second, smiling at her when he sees her nervous expression. He isn’t sure why, but the sight of her has his wolf stirring around restlessly for the first time in days. It’s surprising because the wolf, whose name he doesn’t even know, usually ignores everything going on around him, especially girls and women.

But to his disappointment, the girl scurries away, heading out the back of the barn and out of sight, only a few quick flashes of her long, dark ponytail in view before she’s gone entirely.

-

That must have been the day her grandfather told me about, when he saw Gabe looking at her in a way that worried him. Somehow, not even being a werewolf, her grandfather knew what it meant that my grown son was looking at his young granddaughter with such interest. Even I didn’t notice, and not much gets past me. Gabe didn’t recognize what it meant either, nor did he ever tell any of us about it.

I also never realized what a difficult relationship he has endured with Simon all these years. He always said that his wolf would only share his name with his mate, and even just lingering there in that memory for a split-second, I’m beginning to understand why.

But that’s not why I’m here. I’m glad to know it, but I need to follow her grandfather back further. And yet, as I’m trying to go back, the man brings me forward instead. I know because Jeannie looks older all of a sudden, and her hair has the purple hues in it like it does now. She sits at the kitchen table while her grandparents have a hushed discussion in an adjacent room.

-

‘You know what it means as well as I do,’ the grandfather tells his wife, his expression serious and somber. ‘All the hoping and praying in the world can’t change the truth sitting right in front of us. She’s like her mother, simple as that.’

‘She can’t be,’ the grandmother protests. ‘I won’t accept it. We can’t lose her too.’

‘Well, we can’t do much to prevent it either.’

‘I’ll dye it back. Then if one of the mages comes, they won’t be able to tell,’ his wife tries to argue. ‘She’s not like Julia. Her eyes don’t glow, and her hair is still black underneath. I think we can hide it.’

‘I think mages can tell one of their own kind regardless of how she looks.’

‘No, she’s not the same. There are no sparks shooting out of her fingers, no explosion of power. Nothing that they can track.’

‘If she has an intended, he’ll still sense her.’

‘You said she has a mate. She can’t have a mate and an intended. There’s no one coming for her. I know it. Just keep her away from those werewolves, and she’ll be fine. I’ll take care of the hair.’

In the meantime, the girl sits alone at the table, watching the timer on the oven which tells when her cake will be done. The cake she made herself because her grandmother has been too preoccupied worrying about her stupid hair. She doesn’t know why they won’t believe her that she didn’t do anything to it. Where would she even have gotten the dye? They never let her leave.

She hears the outside door slam, and looks up to see that her grandparents have left the house. They didn’t say where they were going, but she has a pit of dread in her gut telling her that it has something to do with her. Something she won’t like.

‘Happy sweet sixteen. Your grandparents officially hate you,’ she thinks to herself.

-

Maybe I’m not following the grandfather. Maybe I’m following Jeannie’s own thoughts about what might potentially be related to her family’s history. She’s doing a decent job so far. I haven’t even had to dig.

I don’t know what an “intended” is, but if it’s something related to mages, I know who to ask. It sounds an awful lot like an “intended mate” which is something I do know about. It’s like having a betrothed that you’re promised to, although in this case, it kind of sounds like it has something to do with magic.

I also just learned a heck of a lot about her mother, Julia. I’d say that her being a mage is confirmed now, and it sounds like she might even be a witch from their description of her. Now I’m wondering about Jeannie’s father, because if her mother was a witch, then it must be him that Jeannie’s unique traits come from.

I try to encourage the grandfather to take me back in time again, and he does to a point. I watch a few other memories play, mostly those from the few times her grandparents told her little bits and pieces about her mother. Nothing all that useful, and most of it sounds like the same story Jeannie already told us.

There is one, though, where her grandmother shows a young Jeannie a small lock box that she’s putting under her bed.

-

‘This is where I keep my memories of your mother,’ the grandmother explains to the little girl. ‘Most of the time, I can’t stand looking at them because it’s too painful to remember the daughter I lost, but sometimes I can’t bear not seeing her face. That’s when I come here.’

She opens the box and shows the girl the pictures and letters inside.

‘Do you want to see what she looked like?’ she asks the girl, who nods eagerly.

The grandmother picks up a small photo of a young woman with chestnut hair and bright blue eyes. Other than her coloring, the little girl bears a striking resemblance to her.

‘That’s the last photo we ever took of her, at her sixteenth birthday party, which we held the weekend before she turned sixteen.’

‘And then she left,’ the little girl completes the story she’s heard before. ‘The man came and took her.’

‘Yes he did, and that’s why we work so hard to keep you safe.’

The grandmother lets the girl admire the photo for another little while before she takes it from her and tucks it back into the box, using a small key to lock it up. Then she gets down on the floor and pushes the box back under the bed, where it stays most of the time.

-

I can’t help wondering if that box was among the belongings that Jeannie packed up from her grandparents’ house and put into storage. That could just be wishful thinking, though. If she’d found that box, she would have gone through it by now. For someone who has so little to connect her to her mother, she’d cherish every little scrap she can get her hands on.

Jeannie keeps getting younger and younger the further back I go, so I know I must be getting closer. I follow the trail of memories about her grandparents until she is no older than preschool age, and then she’s a toddler, and then a baby. I’m so close. I know I’m almost there, and it’s exciting because Jeannie appears to have been a particularly observant infant.

I know I can’t expect much from a newborn because their senses aren’t even all that astute, but there has to be something I can work with. All I need is one foggy glimpse of her mother’s face, and I can take it from there, especially if Julia is still alive.

But once I get close to the point I’m aiming for, some sort of barrier I’ve never encountered before slams down and forces me out of her mind. It’s a full sensory overload for me – an intense flash of bright light riddled with white noise, and it feels like my mind makes physical contact with it, like it actually shoved me out of there and electrocuted me in the process.

I realize I’m screaming out loud when I finally come to my senses, and Jeannie is standing over me, holding her forehead to mine and her hands on the back of my neck. My head is killing me, and I feel exhausted and hungover, worse than I’ve ever experienced from any alcohol, even as a human. But even though every instinct is telling me to push her away because her touch is only going to make it worse, I don’t.

She’s reaching out to Eli, I recognize a moment later, and whatever she’s doing is soothing him. The pain is fading some, and my mental focus is slowly returning.

“How are you doing that?” I finally ask her once I’ve caught my breath and my senses have returned a bit.

“I don’t fully know. But I can sense that Eli is hurt, and I think I’m healing him,” she answers softly, sounding confused and uncertain despite being the one controlling whatever is happening. “I’ve done this before with injured birds, but I can’t seem to heal people. Humans, I mean. Trust me, I tried.”

Her grandpa, I’m assuming. Poor girl.

“That doesn’t usually happen?” she wonders, pulling away from me and returning to her chair in front of me.

To her credit, I feel almost normal. Incredibly tired, even though using my ability doesn’t usually drain me, but considering the fact that I think I just triggered some sort of spell or something, I’m not so bad off. Not as bad as I could have been, anyway.

“No, nothing like that has ever happened to me,” I answer her honestly, though I hope she doesn’t blame herself for it. I doubt she had anything to do with it. “But I suspect that someone wanted to protect the very memories that I’m after. I think I triggered a trap that was left there in case anyone tried to do anything like what I just tried to do. Whatever you witnessed as an infant, I don’t have the kind of power or abilities it will require to get through.”

“Oh,” she says quietly, sighing with the weight of her disappointment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that would happen.”

“I know,” I assure her. “I could feel you helping me, though. I don’t know if you were doing that on purpose, or if your will is just stronger than most and you were only doing as I asked and thinking of your grandparents and family. Either way, I did learn some things from your other memories.”

“But you’re tired, and probably need a nap. I felt it.”

“I am,” I can’t help smiling at her, appreciating that her concern for me seems to outweigh her desire to learn her family’s secrets. “I’d also like to consult with Clarice about some of the things I saw, so I’ll see what I can do about arranging a meeting with her soon, even if we have to go to Silver Crescent to do it.”

“I’d like that,” she says, her worry turning into a hopeful smile. Good. I like that better.

“And Jeannie?” I add, already kicking myself for what I’m about to say. I shouldn’t get involved. It’s technically an invasion of her privacy.

But she gives me a curious look that tells me to go on, and I can’t seem to help myself.

“This thing with you and Gabe …” I consider just stopping right there when I see the pained, worried look on her face. But no, it’s already too late.

“If you need someone to talk to, I am available, though I understand that it might be uncomfortable for you. And you’re right that Stella isn’t a great choice. She’s a good listener, but terrible at keeping secrets. You’re also right that it’s Garrett you can count on for that, but …”

I glance up at her again, remembering all the complicated, conflicted emotions swirling through her, and decide that I’ve already involved myself too much. It’s her life, and my boys are grown men as well. They can all make their own decisions, and I’ve already butted in too much.

“Never mind. That’s all I’ll say, other than to remind you that you have a place here, no matter what you decide.”

She looks conflicted, nervously playing with her hands as she figures out what to say, but eventually she settles on just giving me a slight nod.

“Thank you,” she says softly.

I get the sense that I haven’t helped her with her dilemma in the least. She’s probably mostly just weirded out that I was just browsing around in her head.

“And thank you for trying to figure things out for me,” she adds.

“You’re welcome,” I tell her warmly.

Then I stand from my chair, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze as I pass by her on my way out. I really do need that nap. I suppose it’s good that I already called in to have my classes covered for today because I don’t think I’ll be making it into work anytime soon.

Whoever left that barrier in her mind was not messing around, which is a good clue that whatever secrets are hidden in her past might be far greater than any of us predicted. But I promised her grandfather that we’d protect her, and that’s exactly what I aim to do. Instead of persuading me to back off, that barrier has only made me more determined than ever to get to the bottom of this mystery.