The Departed

eyes were wide and fixed, staring upward at something he’d never be able to see.
    “Dez,” he snapped out, keeping his voice hard and flat. “Come on, Dez, snap out of it.”
    She only whimpered, huddling back against him, shaking, shuddering. This was bad. Dez wasn’t generally one of his people to get hit like this. It had happened before, but not often. Usually her connections were a lot more peaceful, a fact that he’d always been thankful for. He knew how to bring her out of this, but damn it, he didn’t want to have to do that with her…
    Unaware of the plea in his voice, he whispered, “Come back to me, Dez. Come on, don’t make me do this…”
    She tensed, almost like she was seizing. Squeezing his eyes closed, he gathered her against him and sank to the ground. Fuck—
    Setting his jaw, he pressed his fingers to her neck, tried to pretend he wasn’t stalling. Her pulse was strong and steady against his fingers, her skin warm. And her eyes, those dark brown eyes, were still locked, still fixed on whatever hell she’d lost herself in. Whatever hell she’d stay lost in until he pulled her out, or forced her out.
    Lowering his head, he pressed his brow to hers.
    “Dez…”
    She jerked again, the motions of her body unnatural, harsh and erratic. Her hand came up, almost nailing him in the side of the head. One of his psychics sometimes had what looked like a grand mal seizure with her visions and this was too fucking close. And it was Dez , damn it.
    A strangled, choking sound left her and he swore. Shit, he had to get her out of whatever she was lost in— now .
    As a fist closed around his heart, he lifted his head and stared down at her head. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then, before he could talk himself out of it, he lifted his hand.
    Before he could strike, though, abruptly, she screamed. And then, just like that, her eyes cleared and she sagged against him, gasping for air. Small, broken sounds, almost like sobs, escaped her lips.
    “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God…”
    IT was almost an hour before she could focus enough to think.
    How did some of the others do this? she wondered. Nausea, pain, and grief swirled inside her and she wanted to gouge her eyes out, scrub her brain with bleach— anything that might undo what she’d gone through.
    What that girl had gone through… Oh, God, that poor baby…
    Wrapped up in a blanket, curled in the corner of a couch, she stared down at the glass of whiskey Taylor had pushed into her hand and tried to get her throat to work so she could speak.
    “You ready to talk?”
    She looked up at him and noticed lines of strain fanning out from his eyes. Odd. She’d never seen that on him before. She sipped from the whiskey and distracted herself by looking around. She didn’t recognize where she was—didn’t even remember how they’d gotten there.
    “Where are we?” she asked softly.
    Taylor sighed and came farther into the room. He sat on the ornate coffee table, just inches away from her, elbows braced on his knees. A bitter smile twisted his lips as he looked around the room. “My…home, I guess you’d call it,” he said.
    She blinked. “You…you guess ?” she said.
    “Doesn’t feel like home.” He shrugged. “The manor hasn’t been home to me in a very long time. But it is mine. I don’t live here. I only come here once a year. It was closer than the house where you’re staying, though, and I wanted to get you someplace warm.”
    Then he glanced at the whiskey and added, “And someplace that had something for you to drink. You looked like you needed it.”
    “Yeah,” she murmured faintly. She stared at him for a moment and then shifted her gaze to the room. It was…enormous. She thought of the little, squalid apartment she’d grown up in with her mother, back before the woman had abandoned her. Most of the apartment could have fit in this room. Swallowing, she looked back at Taylor. “Man. I had a feeling you came from money, but this…well. This is a little more opulent than I’d bargained for.”
    “Money doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot, sometimes,” he said brusquely. A bitter smile came and went. “People think it can solve all ills, fix all problems. It doesn’t.”
    He shoved up off the table and moved away, stalking over to the window and staring outside. The stiff set of his shoulders, the rigid line of his back, they spoke of pain. And more, she could feel the pain in him. She wasn’t always