Rogue Oracle by Alayna Williams Page B

feeling his heart beating against her back.
    Harry had enough problems of his own. Her dreams were right—he was the one in need of saving. Not her.
    This new twist in her power, these vivid dreams … This was something she’d have to work out on her own.
    S OMETIMES , G ALEN DREAMED OF SLEEPING IN THE ARMS OF A woman.
    He wasn’t alone in those dreams.
    He wondered what it would have been like, to fall asleep beside a woman and wake up to find her still there. Rifling through the memories of Carl and Lena, he had the sense of the two of them whispering in the darkness of train cars, desolate landscapes rushing by outside. They lay twined together like snakes on a caduceus, finding some kind of healing and solace over those foreign miles.
    Galen longed for that, too. That warmth of another human being, connected but separate from his experience. But, to him, the lines always seemed to blur.
    He remembered when he was a teenager, hitchhiking through Belarus. He’d asked to be let out of the car when he’d seen a girl walking through the streets of a muddy town. She was walking down the street in a gray wool coat, long blonde hair loose over her shoulders in waves. Her hat was pulled low over her ears to ward off the early spring chill, but there was something about those eyes when she looked past the car. They were steel-gray, haunted.
    Galen knew that look, that emptiness.
    He slogged through the mud, trying to catch up with her. “Hey!”
    She turned, the mud sucking at her shiny black boots.
    Her eyebrow lifted at him. His heart leapt. Maybe she saw the same thing he saw in her. A spark of something kindred. Something that would keep him warm.
    Galen spread his best smile on his face. “Can I buy you a drink?”
    She looked him up and down, doubtful at the sight of his shabby coat. “You have money for a drink?”
    “Yes.” His fingers clutched a roll of bills in his pocket. He’d robbed the last person who’d given him a ride. “I’ve got plenty of money.”
    She leaned forward, and her breath steamed in his face. It smelled like cinnamon. “You don’t need to buy me a drink.”
    That was okay with him. He wanted warmth. He wanted companionship. Just this once. Even if he had to pay for it.
    The girl led him back to her tiny flat. Galen stood awkwardly inside the threshold, watching her kick the radiator. The paint was peeling off the walls. But everything was orderly. The futon in the center of the room had a newish looking bedspread on it, and the dishes in the broken cabinet were all clean.
    “It’ll warm up in a minute,” she said, sticking her hands under her arms to make small talk. “Where are you from?”
    “Nowhere.”
    The girl’s crimson lips smiled. “Me, too.”
    Heat had begun to creep out of the radiator, plinking as the hot water began to circulate. The girl pulled off her hat and coat. She began to unbutton her blouse. When she turned around, Galen could see that her shoulders were a bit uneven, that the vertebrae of her spine didn’t line up straight. His mouth thinned. She was indeed like him, from nowhere.
    “What’s your name?” he asked.
    “I’m Yeva.” She crossed the room to him in her bra and skirt. Her fingers fluttered up to unfasten his coat. She opened the first two buttons, skipped the missing third, and continued on to the fourth before he answered: “Galen.”
    She looked up at him through her eyelashes. “That’s an odd name.”
    “It was the name of a famous healer.” He felt his mouth turn downward. “My mother had great hopes for me.”
    “You are a doctor, then?”
    “No.” He shook his head. “I’m not anything.”
    She stood up on her tiptoes, pressed her finger to his mouth. “Never say that,” she said, fiercely. “We are all someone.”
    She kissed him then, and she tasted like mulled spices. He sank into the kiss, felt Yeva tugging off his clothes and drawing him down to the futon. His fingers wound in her hair, and he relished the