The Shadow Prince

chapter fifty-two DAPHNE

“Tonight was fun. Thank you,” I say with a yawn as Haden slides the key card through the door lock. We’d stopped at an ice-cream parlor in the hotel and I’d forced him to try a scoop of mint chocolate chip. Despite his protests at first, he’d gone back for a second helping. “I think you’ve got a sweet tooth.”

He gives me a small smile and pushes open the door.

Garrick is out cold on the couch, Lexie is tucked away in the king room, with the door shut and the TV on a low murmur, and Tobin is asleep, sprawled in the middle of one of the queen-sized beds, with a few empty bottles from the minibar scattered around him. He looks like such a mess that I am happy Haden stopped me from taking that shot at the club. If I’d been able to stomach it, I know I wouldn’t have stopped until I was completely hammered.

Haden pulls the latch on the lock and stands behind me. My arms prickle with static energy as I become aware of the electric current that surrounds him. I also become very aware of the fact that there is only one bed left, and two of us.

I had wanted a distraction when I was in the club, and Haden had given me one—but not in the way he’d expected.

He was the distraction.

He’d known what I wanted—no, needed—before I even knew that I needed it. He’d been in tune with me in the same way I could discern the emotions of others.

A lesser guy would have let me get drunk, maybe even tried to hook up.

But Haden had stopped me from making a mistake, and helped me in the best way possible. What he’d done is unselfish and so surprising that it makes me see him in a new way—and not at all like the person Garrick had tried to convince me he is.

I am aware of Haden in a whole new way.

“Um, wanna flip for the bed?” I cringe, hoping that it didn’t sound as awkward to him as it did to me. “I mean, with a quarter. Not like gymnastics or anything.”

“Thanks for the clarification,” he says from behind me. He’s standing so close, I can feel his breath brushing against my hair. “But I’m all right taking the floor.”

Again with the being selfless.

I don’t argue with him and get my pajamas from my suitcase and change quickly in the bathroom. The awareness that he’s just on the other side of the thin door makes goose bumps prickle up on my skin.

When I return to the bedroom, I find that Haden has made a nest out of the blankets from the closet for himself between the two queen beds. He wears a pair of light cotton pajama pants … and no shirt. I am not sure I have seen someone with such defined abdominal muscles before. He lies on his right side so I can’t see his scars. His eyes are closed, but I know he’s not asleep as I crawl into the empty queen bed. I lie on the side closest to him. I am motionless for a long time, watching him breathe. He’s so still, except for his chest lifting and lowering ever so slightly, that he reminds me of a shadow. As sleep starts to creep into my mind, I relax on my side and let my arm drape over the edge of the bed. My hand dangles a few inches above his mouth. His warm breath sends tingles up my arm. After a moment, I feel his fingers close tentatively around mine.

I don’t pull my hand away.

A cool breeze awakens me the next morning. For a moment, I don’t know where I am until I realize that the cold wind is actually the air-conditioning kicking on. I open my eyes and find that I am lying on my back in the hotel bed.

And Haden is gone.

The blankets he’d used are folded neatly and stacked at the end of my bed. I sit up and look around the room. His duffel is gone, too.

Sunrise peeks in between the curtains. Garrick is lying on the floor next to the couch like he’d rolled off it in the middle of the night, and the door to Lexie’s room is still closed. Tobin moans and rolls over onto his back on the adjacent bed. He holds his hand over his eyes.

“Tobin?” I whisper. “Do you know where Haden went?”

“No,” he moans. “But I heard him leave a couple of hours ago.”

“Oh.”

Where did he go? Why did he go?

Is he having second thoughts about finding this new Oracle?

Has he changed his mind about me?

I thought maybe after last night he might …

Then again, maybe I’d imagined what had happened between us. That new awareness of each other—a connection. Maybe falling asleep with our hands clasped had only been part of a dream?

Or maybe he’s just as freaked out about all of it as I am.

The hotel room door opens and Haden slips back inside, with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He acts like he’s trying to be quiet at first, like he’s slinking back in, but then comes to a halt when he sees me sitting up in bed.

“Oh good, you’re up,” he says, but I can’t tell if he’s happy to see me. That strange sphere of silence surrounds him and his face is devoid of emotion. He holds up a sheet of hotel stationery. “I found her,” he says. “I found the Oracle.”

“What? How?” I ask, practically jumping off the bed.

“I only require four hours of sleep, so I thought I would get started on the day. I used a courtesy phone in the lobby and started calling every S. Smith in the Las Vegas directory like you suggested.…”

“This early in the morning?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?”

“If you’re a normal human being, yes.”

“Oh. That explains why so many people hung up on me.”

“What did you even say? How do you know you’ve found the right Sarah?”

“I said my name was Dax Lord and I was looking for a Sarah Smith who had helped me out with a problem a few years ago. I had no luck until the thirty-second S. Smith. An elderly man answered. He seemed quite happy to have someone to talk to and after he gave me a quite lengthy lecture on his political views concerning fluoridated water, I told him I was looking for a Sarah Smith, and he told me he had a granddaughter by that name, but that she’d been committed to Sunny Ridge Mental Hospital a few years ago. Because she kept claiming to have visions of the future. And then he gave me a health update on each one of his relatives, but I think Sarah sounds like the woman we are looking for. Don’t you think?”

“Uh, yes, definitely worth checking out. But how are we getting into a mental institution?”

“I called Sunny Ridge. I’ve got the address right here.” He waves the paper. “Visiting hours are from eleven a.m. to six p.m. We can go as soon as you want.”

“Do you still want to do this?” I ask. I know he agreed to take me to the Oracle only because he thinks she’ll convince me that there are no other options than to surrender to my so-called destiny. I thought after last night, he might change his mind.…

Haden stares at me for a few seconds, amber rings of fire dancing around his pupils. I wish I could read their meaning.

“Yes,” he finally says, sounding more determined than even I had been when Dax first told us of this option.

I want to ask him what he’ll do if the Oracle doesn’t give him the answer he’s looking for.

“Freaks!” Lexie says, pulling open the door to her room. She’s clad in a hotel robe and has a sleep mask advertising the hotel spa pushed up on her forehead. “Do you realize it’s seven a.m.? On a Sunday morning? Stop yammering right outside my door!”

Haden drops my gaze. “We’ll go as soon as you’re ready.”

I nod, not knowing how long it will take me to ever be ready for this.

“You people realize you’re going to visit a person who is clinically insane in order to find out your future, right?” Lexie says. “I mean, who’s crazier, the person who’s been put in a mental institution or the person who asks that person for advice?”

“The rest of you can always stay in the car,” I reply, ringing the admittance bell at the main entrance to Sunny Ridge. It’s a small, shabby building at the end of a quiet street. Not the place where I would expect to find an Oracle living.

“No way.” Lexie slings her purse over her shoulder. “I so want to see the look on your faces when this so-called ‘Oracle’ starts drooling on your shoes and you all finally realize how gonzo you’ve been acting. I wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

“I’m not missing this, either,” Tobin says. “This Oracle lady had better have some answers about my sister.” He reaches out and rings the bell a second time.

“I wouldn’t mind staying in the car,” Garrick says.

“Not you.” Haden snags him by the back of his collar. “I’m not letting you out of my sight again.” He had caught him trying to use the hotel room’s phone while the rest of us were getting ready to leave. “You might be here unwillingly, but I have a feeling Simon isn’t going to care about that if he finds us,” he had said to Garrick, and ripped the phone out of the wall. Which meant we’d had to go to the hotel buffet for lunch instead of ordering room service. “He’s going to be in an ‘order you to walk off a bridge, ask questions later’ kind of mood, don’t you think?”

“What are you even going to say to get in to see this lady?” Lexie asks. “I doubt they’re going to let a bunch of teenagers stroll into this place.”

“Maybe we can pretend to be a traveling choir or something?” Tobin says. “We sing to the sick.”

Lexie snorts.

There’s a rustle behind the door and it opens. A short, gray-haired woman dressed in scrubs is there.

I fumble to find something to say and almost go with the traveling choir idea, but the woman claps her hands together excitedly. “Oh, you must be Haden and Daphne and the others!” she says. “Sarah has been waiting for you.”