Page 81 of Dragon Charmed

Ben stood. “After your suggestion to talk to John to see if he could help with my memories, I asked Megan to set up the meeting. Sorry we came without you.”

So Megan wasn’t the only one refereeing this meeting. Tessa stopped herself from continuing her verbal sparring and nodded.

Ben turned to John. “If it wasn’t for Tessa, I wouldn’t have found my way home and we wouldn’t have found Lily.”

John blew out a breath before nodding as well.

“That’s it?” Eric blurted, which earned him an elbow from his wife.

Tessa narrowed her eyes at Eric. “Did you expect pistols at dawn?”

Eric grinned. “Maybe.”

Tessa wagged her finger at him. “Keep it up, and you’ll be back on my list.”

Eric shook his head. “No thanks. I don’t need to be watching over my shoulder for you.”

“Okay, now that we’ve all made nice,” Megan said, which had more than one person rolling their eyes, “let’s get back to the subject. We’ve brought John up to speed on what’s happened.”

Ben motioned for Tessa to take his empty seat, and when she reluctantly walked past him, he whispered, “You’re not hiding your Taser, are you?”

She winked at him as she took a seat. A nonanswer, but she liked to keep him guessing.

“Before we were interrupted”—John glanced at Tessa, who awarded him an evil smile—“we were talking about your memories. I’m wondering if maybe Lily could help you with them?”

Tessa frowned at John. Maybe her verbal ceasefire was too soon. “How? We’re not going to abuse her ability.”

John frowned right back at her. “I would never ask you to take advantage of a child. What I’m saying is that Lily and eventually Bella are conduits of visions. We don’t know if those visions are only of the future.”

“You think she could be seeing events that happened to people in the past?” Eric asked.

“Possibly.”

“If she does see visions from the past, how does that help me?” Ben asked before Tessa was able to ask the same thing.

“Until you met Lily, you would have assumed that an oracle would tell you their visions. But she’s been drawing them instead. What if an oracle could transfer their visions to someone else? And the other possibility to consider is that an oracle may be able to focus on a specific person or place to have a vision about them.”

“Seriously?” Ben said.

John nodded. “I think anything is possible. But if Lily’s abilities develop to that level, I don’t know that it would be at this young age. She might not understand why she’s drawing what she is now. You may want to talk to her about it.” He held up his hand to Tessa. “And not to take advantage of her, but to put her at ease. Has anyone talked to her about her gift?”

“We haven’t really had a conversation about her gift,” Tessa said. “It’s something to consider.” And they should have been considering it before John had to bring it up.

“And the other thing to think about is the duffel bag you were carrying with fifty thousand in cash and my contact information on a slip of paper,” John said.

Ben reached into his pocket and pulled out a paper, unfolded it, and then handed it to John. “Along with the words ‘find Mia White.’ Megan told me that I reached out to you to try and buy the painting. Do you think the money was for you?”

“You were Steve Hampton that time on the phone.” His eyebrow quirked up. “You seem to like aliases.”

Tessa turned toward John and scowled, but he ignored her. “I know you were really trying to get me to sell the painting. Maybe you thought coming in person with some cash might persuade me?”

“Do you remember what I said during our conversation?” Ben said.

“Not verbatim. You introduced yourself and told me you were a friend of Connor, who was appraising the painting for me. You said you wanted to see it and then talk about purchasing it. I told you no. When I asked Connor about you later, he said he didn’t know you.”

Tessa leaned forward. “Who could have given you John’s address and phone number? It’s not like most people know it.”

John nodded. “Right. This cabin is listed under a rental company, and I used an alias with them. I’m not sure how anyone would know I was here without me telling them.”