Chapter 2
I woke the next morning to a loud, insistent knock on the door.
It took me several seconds to remember where I was. The room wasn't at all recognizable now it was day.
For a few startled seconds, I took in the pleasant décor. There was a nice plush cream carpet throughout the large room. There were several wooden dressers and tables, and a TV stand with a modern flat screen TV that was a heck of a lot larger and better than the crappy CRT in my apartment back home.
Trinkets lined the mantelpiece. Carved gemstones, inlaid abalone boxes, painted china. There were a few artful western oil paintings on the walls and the prettiest silk rug I’d ever seen – a green, blue, and pale red cherry blossom pattern that somehow didn’t clutter the room with all its detail.
There was one glaring omission, though. While there were plenty of pictures and plenty of decorative objects, there were no photos of family.
Whoever was outside knocked again.
“Yeah, yeah, hold on,” I grumbled as I staggered off the couch.
I instantly pressed a hand against my upper thigh where the cat had scratched me.
And that… that's when I realized the cat was in exactly the same position it had retreated to last night. It was sitting there on the window sill in the bay window, propped up on the artful French provincial style white and blue cushions. And it was staring at me. Intently. It looked as if it hadn't moved a muscle.
“Well that's creepy,” I muttered to myself as I hooked a right out of the sitting room door, walked down the hall, and reached the door.
I opened it without any attempt to make myself neat and presentable. Because, hey, there was no chance. Not only had I spent the whole night curled up on the couch, but my hair was wet and matted from the storm, and my pants were torn in several places.
I figured it would just be some neighbor here to pay their condolences.
I opened the door and was greeted by a tall, handsome guy frowning down at me. He was handsome in that unconventional way you got sometimes. I'd seen bigger guys, better proportioned, with sparkling eyes and the kind of smiles that could sell everything from underpants to toothpaste.
I'd seen guys with better jaws and stronger features. But there was something about the sheer force of this man’s gaze that was more compelling than any movie star could muster.
I blinked in complete confusion as the guy almost growled at me. “Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Chi,” I answered, suitably startled.
“Where's Joan?” The guy's brows knotted together as he continued to shoot me the kind of look that told me while I found him intriguing and attractive, he thought I was something the cat had dragged in.
I frowned. “Ah… you don't know?” I said carefully. Despite the fact this guy had been a rude prick so far, he clearly didn't know my grandmother was dead.
I was good with surprisingly few situations. Telling a complete stranger a friend was dead was up there with being able to fly a plane.
“Ah… she’s… she’s….”
I continued to fumble over my words, and the guy continued to shoot me the kind of look that told me I had no place invading his field of vision.
He half shoved past me. “Joan? It’s Detective Coulson.”
I stiffened, shoulders riding up high near my ears.
The guy saw it. His gaze darted over and locked on my obvious tension. “Where is Joan?” he asked through a suspicious growl.
I could hardly keep the truth from him any longer. So I cleared my throat and used my most diplomatic voice. “Dead. She's dead.”
You should have seen his eyes – they practically exploded from his head as his suspicion turned to outright rage. “What the hell did you do to her?” He started reaching for something by his hip, and I didn't need to be a genius to figure out it was probably a gun.
I snapped my hands up and flushed so brightly it looked like my cheeks had changed into neon signs. “She died two weeks ago, heart attack. I’m her granddaughter. She left the house to me in the will. I’m meant to go through her stuff.”
“I think I'd know if Joan had died,” the guy snapped.
My hands still in the air, my heart still racing at one million miles an hour, I shook my head. “She really is dead. If you don't believe me, just look up her obituary on your phone. I think there was even a piece about it in your local news.”
Either there was something about my tone, or the sheer look of non-murderous panic in my gaze, because the detective reached a hand into his pocket and plucked out his phone. He did, however, keep his other hand hovering close to the holster strap around his side.
I stood there in total crazy fear as I waited for him to a) find the news piece on his phone, or b) grow bored and shoot me.
Fortunately, he didn't have an itchy trigger finger today.
I watched his features pale in shock as he obviously found the news piece. He even brought a hand up and clamped it over his mouth.
The guy had been nothing but brutal and rude up till this point, but my heart still went out to him.
“Oh… god… I’m… sorry, I had no idea. I've been out of town for a month.”
I still had my hands in the air and shrugged through an empathetic wince. “It's okay.”
With his hand still locked over his mouth in that familiar move all tough guys do when they're trying to swallow their emotions, he offered me a distracted nod again, then frowned at my arms. “You can put them down, ma’am. I'm sorry for the confusion.” He pushed a hand out. “My name is Detective Dave Coulson. I didn't mean to startle you like that. I'm sorry for your loss,” he added in the kind of tone that told anyone he wasn't lying.
My hands dropped, and I tried to look as if I'd lost something too.
An overbearing grandmother who thought my mom and I were frauds and who’d probably given me this house so that I could watch it slip away as I paid her bills?
Yeah. Not a lot of disappointment there.
Just as I caught myself thinking that, I winced.
Never think ill of the dead. That was one of my rules – one of the few moral laws I hadn’t whittled away over the past few years.
The guy obviously couldn't pick up my expression, because he continued shaking his head in sad commiseration. “Your grandmother was an incredible woman.”
“She was?” I asked before I could shut my stupid mouth. “Ah – how did you know her?” I quickly changed the subject as I brought my hand up and rubbed my arm distractedly.
Aiya, I was cold. To the bone. That's what happens when you spend the night sopping wet on a couch. As soon as I was finished with this guy, I had every intention of finding the bath in this megalithic house and crawling into it for the rest of the day.
“I was a client of hers,” the detective said.
My brow scrunched into a confused line. “Client?”
I had no idea what my grandmother had done for a living. My father had never told me.
It was Coulson’s turn to look at me with a scrunched brow. “You don't… ah… know what your grandma did?”
There was something hesitant about the way he said it. The first thing that popped into my mind was that old Joan was a madam of some description. Then again, I doubted a well-kempt detective would admit that to some stranger on the porch.
I shook my head. “I'll be honest with you – it came as a complete surprise to me that she left this house to me. She hated me.”
Crap – overshare! Complete and utter overshare. I'd already told myself on the plane trip over that if I met any of Joan’s friends, I’d pretend to be the dutiful grandchild. I wouldn't let on that she'd been one of the hardest women I'd ever met. I wouldn't let on that she’d pushed my parents away.
But here I was, the first guy I met in town – a guy who happened to be a detective – and I was blowing my deepest secret.
His brow knotted and his eyes glimmered with a hint of suspicion again. “Really?”
I brought my hands up and wafted them around my face as if I were trying to ward off my stupidity. “I mean, I’d only met her a couple of times as a kid,” I clarified with a messy gulp that saw my throat push against my still-damp collar. “She didn't get on with my mother, so I never really had that much to do with her.”
The guy relaxed a little. “Still, sorry to hear of your loss. How long are you planning on staying in town for?”
I had every intention of packing up this house, selling all the contents, and putting it on the market as soon as I could, but I didn't really want to tell the earnest detective that. I pressed a smile over my lips. “I'm not really sure yet.”
“Give the town a chance to grow on you; you'll be surprised,” he said. Then he nodded and smiled. And there it was again. That attractiveness I'd seen when I opened the door on him.
It drew me in as I offered a wide smile of my own. “Thanks. And sorry again. Sorry you had to find out from me.”
“Yeah.” He dropped his gaze, locked a hand on the back of his head, and stared at his polished shoes for a few seconds before offering one final nod. “See you around,” he said, offering a pause for me to fill in my name.
“Chi.”
His lip half-kinked in confusion. “Chi? That’s curious.”
“Ah, it is?”
“It's the name of her cat,” he clarified as he pointed behind me.
I shifted over my shoulder to see that goddamn cat. There it was again, staring at me. Though I usually got along well with cats, I'd never been able to see any great intelligence in them. Sure, they always seemed to know when it was time to be fed, and they were heat-seeking missiles. But the look in this small black cat’s eyes was something else entirely.
Then it struck me – my grandmother had named her cat after me. Did that mean she’d actually known who I was?
I shook my head. As if. My grandmother had probably named her cat after me to piss off my mother.
I offered the detective another smile. “I'm sorry again.”
He turned to go but stopped. He shifted towards me again, his lips pressed flat in a curious smile. “What did you say you did again?”
“Ah, I didn't say. I'm a…” I trailed off.
My mother was proud of her fortune-telling ways. Proud that she'd introduced me to kau cim, or chi chi sticks, at the tender age of four. Proud I’d fallen back on it after I'd lost my jobs. But I knew full well the majority of people thought fortune tellers were complete fakes.
And hey, we were.
I knew some fortune tellers who honestly thought they were helping their patients. Maybe they really could tell the future – or maybe they were just so attuned to people’s emotions that they could offer common-sense advice that their client would otherwise dismiss.
I was one of those fortune tellers who knew full well I was screwing my client over. That’s why I referred to them by the transactional term of client, not patient.
Coulson looked at me pointedly as he waited for me to answer, and I realized with itching disappointment that I had to say something.
“So what do you do?”
“Ah, I am… I am… I'm a fortune teller. You know, cards and palms and things. I work in a restaurant. As kind of an attraction, I suppose…” I started weakly and ended even weaker, my voice garbled and all stuck in my throat.
I expected the stiff-lipped detective to laugh his ass off at me. That, or roll his eyes and walk away. He didn't. He offered me another one of those curious smiles. The kind of smile that drew me all the way in and made me wonder what on earth he was thinking.
“Fortune teller, ha? Just like your grandmother. In that case…” he trailed off as he fumbled with something in his pocket. He drew it out and handed it to me.
It was his card. I accepted it and looked from it to him with a totally justified confused expression. “Ah….”
He gestured towards the card. “I used to hire your grandmother regularly. She helped me with a lot of major cases.” He offered a sad smile. “I’m kind of hoping you can do the same. What’s your number?”
I stood there and blinked at him.
My mother always cautioned that opportunity flies past on the wings of a crane. Catch it, or some other lucky soul will.
He cleared his throat when my pause became far too drawn out and uncomfortable.
“Oh, ah, sorry. Yeah, my number—” I pushed a hand into my pocket to retrieve my card.
I paused.
For so many reasons.
Firstly, my card would be sopping wet, and the 10-year old inkjet printer I’d used with recycled paper would mean my card would be nothing more than a soggy blob of faded ink.
Oh, I also paused because this guy was a friggin detective, for crying out loud. My business card had a clipart cartoon of a woman staring into a crystal ball, that, on closer inspection was too small and looked more like a marble.
“Ah sorry, I got soaked by the rain last night, so my cards got wet. If you have a pen, I can write my number down—”
Before I could finish asking, he plucked a pen from his pocket and handed it to me.
I turned his card over and wrote on the back.
I handed it back to him, and he plucked out another card to give to me.
“Thanks for that. I know your grandmother died recently, and I’m so sorry to hear about your loss. But I…” he winced in that polite way people do when they know they have to ask you something uncomfortable, “I have a case that’s proving impossible to crack. If you’re feeling up to it – and only if you’re feeling up to it,” he stressed seriously, “I’d sure appreciate your help.”
My mind wasn’t working quickly enough, and my hands kept slipping off that proverbial crane’s tail. “Ha? You want me to work for you?”
He paled, obviously thinking I was indignant that he’d asked the question. He put his hands up. “Look, I’m so sorry. It’s too soon. I wouldn’t have asked, but the case is serious—”
“No, no it’s not too soon. You can employ me,” my mother answered. Her words. Her sentiment.
Never turn down work. Especially work that pays.
He relaxed. “Well, how about I give you a chance to settle in? I’ll call you in a couple of days?”
I nodded.
“Great.” With that, Detective Coulson turned away.
I watched him until he walked the down the garden path to the gate and disappeared into a car on the opposite side of the street.
It took until I turned and closed the door before I realized something.
Something seriously important.
“Crap!” I crammed a hand over my mouth. “What did I just agree to?”
That detective wanted me to help him with a case.
This wasn’t some $3 text where I’d tell him to join a dating site and watch out for the color red.
This would have real implications. Mainly for me.
I slapped a hand on my head, and the whiplash sound echoed down the long corridor.
I’d been way too quick to accept his offer.
I yanked up his card and looked at his number, memorizing it as I muttered it under my breath.
If his number came up on my phone, I wouldn’t answer.
It was as easy as that.
And if he came to the house? Ah, heck, I’d just pretend I was too overcome by my grandma’s death to take up the job.
“Sorted,” I told myself firmly.
Now that little drama was managed, my mind turned to something far more shocking.
Joan had been a fortuneteller?
If you believed my father, the reason for their split was that Joan didn't agree with ma’s fortune-telling. She thought it was for charlatans. Snake oil sellers.
People who meddled in other’s destinies for nothing more than money.
Heck, she was right. But she was wrong about one thing – that didn’t make us bad people. I wasn’t solely responsible for fortune-telling. It had existed long before I’d been bo
rn and would continue to exist long after I died.
Fortune-telling was a fact of life. Of the economy. It was human nature that people wanted to find out what would happen next without having to wait around for the future to happen.
Me? I just provided that service, even if that service wasn’t technically fit for purpose. It still provided people with a feeling that they were okay and that everything would work out.
And that? That wasn’t a bad thing.
Which meant I wasn’t a bad person.
Still, Joan had hated fortunetellers, so unless Detective Coulson was playing some cruel game, Joan had been a damn hypocrite.
I went to shove Detective Coulson’s card back in my pocket but shrugged and discarded it in a wastepaper basket instead.
Almost immediately, I felt a prickle crawl up the back of my neck.
I turned to see the cat on the stairs.
It was watching me intently.
Its brow was furrowed, and its almond eyes elongated in a very human expression of withering disappointment.
Cats couldn’t show withering disappointment, though – so it had to be hungry.
“Yeah, yeah – I’ll head to the store after I check out the house.”
I felt its eyes follow me as I pushed past to explore the house.
… I'd never inherited anything. Especially nothing as large as a house. A couple of my friends back in the city had told me that I should stay here. If the house was nice and well-appointed, why not just live in it rent-free and save some money until I figured out what to do with my life?
“Yeah, that's never going to happen,” I told the disembodied voices of my friends as I walked down the long corridor and found the kitchen.
It was pretty, large, too, with an island bench, new appliances, a massive stainless steel fridge, pots and pans arrayed on hooks above the cooker, and a beautiful French-style dresser. Little teapots and cups and hand-painted plates were arranged on the dresser, drawing the eye to their intricate detail.
The whole place was artful, tasteful. And exactly 100 billion miles away from my tiny, scrap of an apartment back in the city, furnished with second hand stuff.
I shifted forward and opened the nearest cupboard, surprised to find it full of baking goods. Back in the way, far distant past, I’d once had a dream of starting up my own bakery. As I methodically shifted through the cupboards, I realized my grandmother had some great gear. Heavy cast-iron Dutch ovens, expensive copper-plated pans, a massive wok that could feed an army, and the best baking gear I'd ever seen.
Once I was finished with the kitchen, I went on to explore the rest of the house. It was just the same. Artful, expensive, decent. I could almost fool myself into thinking she was a nice lady simply from looking through her stuff. Except there was still one massive omission. No family photos. Not one. And as for any photos of me – her only grandchild – it might as well have been that I didn't exist.
I made it through the rest of the house. The three-story building was generous enough that there were ample bedrooms, a massive master bedroom, several bathrooms, a huge library, and quite a few storerooms.
It was around mid-morning when I found the attic. I can't really tell you why I found it. Though I academically understood that all old large Victorian buildings like this had attics because of their steepled roofs, that wasn't the reason I found it. The cat was.
I was standing on the top floor mulling over some trinkets artfully arranged on a credenza when the cat came trotting past. Though it had kept a close watch on me the whole day, as though I was a criminal intent on looting the place, when I'd stopped under the attic, it had started meowing like I’d stepped on its tail. It only stopped meowing after my head jerked back and I saw the opening to the attic. It was one of those built-in ladder ones that you could pull down with a hook. It wasn't properly closed and was open just a bit. There must've been a light on in the attic or something, because a faint glow was filtering out through the gap.
“And what have we here?” I muttered under my breath as I searched around for a pole to pull the stairs down with. I found it in one of the spare bedrooms propped against the wall.
The cat now watched me quietly and intently. Seriously intently. Either the little guy thought I was food, or he wanted me to find out whatever the heck was up there.
“Don't go down that road again,” I admonished myself with a huff. “The cat is just hungry.”
I don't know why, but a knot of nerves formed in my gut as I muscled the hook up to the attic stairs, inserted the pole into the hook and pulled them down.
A loud grating creak echoed through the hallway.
I swear the cat was looking at me with an approving glint in its eye. Hey, maybe this was all a setup, and it planned on locking me up in the attic so it could get revenge for me body-slamming it last night.
Those knots continued to twist around my gut as the stairs clunked to the floor.
“Pull yourself together,” I admonished myself as I took to the stairs lightly.
My mom used to tell me that if you were attuned to the world, you could feel things. Sense histories whenever you entered a new building or traveled to a new city. The strongest energies of all either corresponded to great or terrible things. The more monumental some incident, the more energy surrounded it.
So why the hell did I suddenly get the feeling that this attic would be the most important room I would ever enter in my entire life?
“You're making it up,” I said firmly as I reached the top of the stairs.
… The attic was empty. Or mostly empty. It wasn't full of treasure, wasn't full of heirlooms or old suitcases or stacks of old books. It had a nice enough looking rug, a pretty comfortable leather chair, and an antique table with a wobbly leg.
There was a book on the table. Out of everything in the room, it was the book that caught my attention. It riveted me to the spot as if it had suddenly locked two hands around my cheeks and snapped me into place.
I heard a creak on the stairs and shunted around, heart pounding in my chest as I expected everything from murderers to demons. What I got was the cat. Of course, it was the cat. It rested on the final step and stared at me, its gleaming intelligent eyes locked on mine.
“Man, it's just you. You almost gave me a heart attack,” I muttered, then I admonished myself quickly as I realized that’s exactly what old Joan had died of.
Never joke about the dead.
I turned around, attention settling back on the book. I couldn't help myself. I was compelled by something – some sense that welled up in my gut, spread through my heart, and reached towards the book—
I… couldn’t describe it. It was as if the book called to some part of me that had never been touched before. Some unreachable corner buried deep within my soul.
My heartbeat didn’t quicken, but somehow it became harder, like a drum being pounded with ever-growing force.
Suddenly, I remembered something Joan had said to me once. Maybe it had been at my granddad’s funeral, or maybe I’d just heard it from my mother.
The point was – the saying echoed through my mind with the force of a bellowing blast.
“Follow the path laid out by your heart. Weave together the strands of emotion that grow from your soul and follow them to your greatest destiny.”
You see, according to Joan, each of us has a different set of possible destinies, ranging from good to bad. We get to choose where our life will end up.
You want to be the best possible you? Easy. You don’t have to think. Don’t have to strive. Just follow your heart.
My problem with that? Yeah, your heart beats blood. It doesn’t weave together strands of your destiny. It kind of underpins your circulatory system, so you don’t, you know, die.
Plus, living is about surviving. It’s about making sacrifices. Trading off the good against the bad and getting something in between.
So I fought. Aiya, did I fight that growing compulsion that pulled me towards
the book, that told me wrapped up in the fiber of each page was my destiny.
I fought so hard, in fact, I swore I heard something cracking. Like a muscle under strain snapping, or some metal chain clanking.
Suddenly, someone knocked on the front door.
Don’t ask me how I heard it, considering I was way up in the attic, but I did.
I heard it because I felt every knock on the door. Felt it as if somebody had balled their hand into a fist and drummed it against the center of my forehead.
It was so unexpected that I let out a ridiculously loud yelp.
Whoever was knocking paused. “Everything okay in there?” A loud, husky male voice called out.
A jolt of something shot up my spine. It was almost as if I’d swallowed an explosion. It fired across my back, charged up my arms, powered over my legs, and sank into my heart.
My reaction was so powerful, I crammed a hand over my pounding heart.
… All the good fortune tellers always told their clients that you could feel your future changing. You could sense the moment your life would turn down a radical new path. It was a priming technique. In reality, your future was changing every moment. But if you primed a client to be constantly on the lookout for change, it meant they’d be more attuned to opportunities. They’d start to look at things they’d once glossed over.
I told my clients you could even hear change. Maybe a disembodied voice would echo in your mind. Maybe you’d hear the faint tinkling of a bell.
Me? I heard something growling. “Hey, are you alright in there?” the voice repeated.
Again that electric shock of recognition burst through me.
I don’t know why, but I felt like I knew that voice.
Before the guy could growl again, I took a startled breath, realizing I had to answer. “Ah… I'm fine. Just coming.”
I fumbled forward and threw myself down the stairs. Though the book still had its hooks in me, the voice did, too. In fact, I felt like I was being pulled between them. A puppet suddenly tugged between two puppeteers.
I reached the front door just as somebody was opening it. They slammed it right into me, and the heavy door smacked into my nose.
I spluttered, cramming my hands over my face.
Though I was a downtrodden, out-of-luck, crappy fortune-teller, I wasn’t meek.
So I opened my mouth to shout at the guy.
I stopped.
Abruptly.
I froze – my body grinding to a stop as every single muscle locked into place with a twang.
No, it wasn't the pain pulsing down my nose from where the door had hit me. Nor was it the fact this guy had a seriously long shadow that suddenly cut out the sunshine beyond.
It was the man himself.
In a single second, my mind took him in. Every detail. From his height to his broad shoulders, to his shoulder-length brown hair and his piercing brown gaze.
But that didn’t actually come close to describing how he really looked. Even a photo couldn’t do his presence justice.
He felt like a god. He looked like one, too.
My suddenly confused mind told me that I knew this man. Or at least some part of me did.
I'd never met him – because, hello, I'd remember encountering a demi-god in the flesh. But there was something about him. Something that set off a visceral, powerful reaction that shot through my body and sent biting tingles cascading into my hands and feet as though they were on fire.
The second he saw me was the second a pronounced frown spread his lips and jutted hard into that gorgeous, gorgeous jaw. “Who the hell are you?” he asked in a voice thick with a strong Scottish accent.
Still surprised and with my nose and cheeks smarting, I replied with my hand crammed over my face. “Hmlili.”
The guy frowned all the harder. “No, seriously, who are you?” he demanded. “Where's Joan?”
Oh god. It was happening again. Another weirdly handsome guy had popped up at my front door demanding to see my grandmother.
Except this was different. Powerfully different. About as different in scale as an ant compared to the whole frigging galaxy.
Detective Coulson had been hot, sure.
This man?
I couldn’t begin to understand what my body was doing in his presence. I had no idea if my heart was leaping or shuddering, if my mouth wanted to snap into a smile or a grimace, if the chills racing up and down my back were the first sign of sickness or anticipation.
“Where is Joan?” he demanded.
Though his voice was a growl, there was a distinctly worried edge to it that caught my attention.
And sank my heart.
Despite the insane effect this guy was having on me, I realized what I had to do. Slowly, reverently, I let my hands drop from my face. “Look, I’m very sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Joan McLane is dead—”
At first, the guy didn’t react. Then confusion crumpled his brow as he took a step forward, his shadow somehow growing even longer. “I would know if my future had died.”
Though the guy had a thick accent, he spoke English well. I just couldn’t understand what he was saying.
My grandmother had been his future? It didn’t compute.
Before I could react, he thrust towards me, hooked a strong hand around my arm, and yanked me inside.
I didn’t even have time to scream before he shoved the door closed with the toe of his camel- colored leather boot.
“What-what are you doing? Let me go!” I spluttered, trying to wriggle out of his grip.
Though I bucked and shoved against his fingers, they were unnaturally strong, even taking into account his size.
A wave of dread sank into my stomach, chilling my spine and sinking so hard into my heart it felt like it would explode. “Look, just let me go, please. There’s been some misunderstanding. My grandmother really is dead. She died of a heart attack. They found her in her kitchen. Please, just look it up on your phone.”
The guy suddenly ticked his head to the side, his eyes narrowing and his brow peaking. He looked confused, powerfully confused.
But if I thought his confusion would slow his relentless attack, I was wrong.
He dragged me forward. As he did, he walked past the open sitting room door, and I saw his shadow flit across the rug. For some reason, it seemed longer than an ordinary shadow, broader-chested, better formed. And somehow – some impossible how – I swore I saw a sword at his hip, even though there was nothing there.
My bare feet snagged against the hallway runner, and I stumbled hard against the wall.
The guy didn’t seem to notice or care as we reached the kitchen.
He pulled out one of the chairs with his boot and shoved me into it.
Before I could scuttle forward, sweaty fingers slipping against the edge of the table, he shoved a hand in the back pocket of his chinos and grabbed out a round of electrical tape.
My stomach bottomed out as my heart exploded.
I doubted this guy was an electrician or a handyman.
Which left two other options: he just happened to have gaffer tape on him, or he’d planned this.
He yanked back the tape with his teeth, and in a seriously quick, practiced set of movements, tied my wrists and ankles to the chair.
I was way beyond reasoning with him.
I was way beyond anything other than screaming.
“No one can hear you. These walls are too thick,” he mentioned as he yanked off a short piece of tape and crammed it over my mouth, sticking a few scraps of my fringe in front of my eyes.
I jerked back and forth on the chair, trying to get free, the chair legs screeching over the polished floorboards.
My whole body shook, my fingers and brow were slicked with sweat, and my heart was shuddering so badly I thought I’d die.
I watched as the guy backed up against the island bench and crossed his considerable arms in front of his chest. “Where’s Joan?” His words were choppy, quick, a line o
f sweat collecting across his brow. He still looked confused, but that didn’t detract from his anger – not one little bit.
I shook my head, tears trailing down my cheeks and slipping over the smooth gray surface of the gaffer tape.
I knew my eyes were already wider than they’d ever been. And yet, they grew wider still as the guy swung his arms down and pushed away from the bench, taking a loud step towards me. “Either you tell me where Joan is now, or I start to play mean.”
I screamed behind the tape, the desperate cry completely muffled. More tears cascaded down my pale cheeks as I tried to jerk back on the chair.
“Who do you work for? Fagen? The Lonely King?” He shifted close and slowly got down on one knee, his arm resting on it as he stared up at me. “Coming here was a stupid mistake, fairy.”
… Though there was so much going wrong – though my mind was splitting itself apart with fear – I still did a double take.
Fairy?
This guy had called my grandma his future. Now he thought I was a fictional creature.
What the hell was going on?
He paused, obviously waiting for me to answer. But, just as obviously, I couldn’t answer: I was still gagged, after all.
Did he think I could talk through electrical tape?
I shifted as far back from him as the chair would allow, the muscles of my neck straining and the tape around my wrists catching the fine hairs along my forearms.
He waited there a few more moments then shook his head. It had such definite finality that it was clear he’d just come to some decision.
He rose and loomed above me.
I’d been mugged once. And I’d been followed down alleys a couple of times.
Payback for all my sins, ha?
But this? I’d never faced anything remotely like this.
My heart didn’t just shudder with fear – it felt like it tore itself to shreds.
I watched in horror as he reached a hand towards me.
My brain told me this was it.
My life was over.
This creep would wring my neck and leave me on the cold kitchen floor.
I saw his fingers reach towards my neck. Saw his short nails catching the midday light streaming in through the windows behind the table. Saw the muscles tense and tighten up his wrist and into his large shoulder.
And I snapped.
Or something in me snapped.
It was literally as if something shattered before my eyes.
I saw sparks cascade through my field of vision. Darting, pulsing, bright pricks of white-blue and yellow-gold dancing around the corners of my eyes.
There. Right in the center of my eyes. Right in the middle of my field of vision.
I saw something else.
Something overlaid right on the top of this scene. Like a picture painted over a photo.
I saw the guy reaching for a flip knife in his left pocket.
I didn’t have time to notice that the blade was covered in glowing runes. I didn’t have time to notice the light lick of flame that danced around his fingers and down his palm.
All I could do was react.
In a snap, the image over my vision stopped.
And, in real life, I saw the man reach for something in his pocket.
Don’t ask me how I did it, but I bucked at just the right moment. Something moved through me, controlling me, saving me. I shifted so hard to the side that the chair lost its balance and slammed into the edge of the table, upending it.
It caught the guy’s side, and he slipped, jerking backward.
The knife slipped out of his grip and arced through the air.
I watched it with a frozen heart as it landed on its side and slid down the table.
I used all my strength to haul myself and the chair to the left, aligning myself with the table.
Just at the right moment, I shifted back a little and somehow caught the knife.
I caught the knife because I could see myself doing it. And as I watched, I could do nothing but follow.
Again, in a flash of dancing sparks, I saw an image over reality.
And I followed it. I followed it until the hilt of that glowing knife slipped into my grip.
The guy was picking himself up from behind the table just as I twisted the knife around and cut through the tape tightly wrapped around my wrists. There was the unmistakable ripping sound of tearing plastic. Then my hands were free, and in a deft movement I ripped the tape from my mouth.
I lurched off the chair, throwing my torso free and grabbing the edge of the table just as the guy punched to his feet.
I shoved the table with all my might, and one of its upturned legs caught him right on the knee cap.
His knee buckled and he fell backward, slamming into the floor with a rattling thump that shook every pot and pan arranged above the cooker.
Screaming, breathing with such an erratic, chest-shredding pace it felt like my lungs would explode, I twisted around and slashed at the tape binding my legs.
Then I ran.
Though I wanted to make it to the front door, something told me to head for the stairs instead.
There was a coat rack by the base of the stairs, and I grabbed it as I swung past, shoving it behind me.
The man growled as he caught it and elbowed it aside.
I stumbled up to the second floor.
I screamed.
God did I scream. I screamed at the top of my lungs with every ounce of vocal strength I could muster.
But he was still right behind me.
Still right behind me.
Though I could have headed to any number of rooms on the second floor, I swung around and headed up to the third floor instead.
Only one thing was going through my mind – get to the attic.
If I were fast enough, I’d be able to retract the stairs and lock them somehow.
I could almost see myself reaching the attic. I could almost hear my feet pounding up the steps. I could even smell the slightly musty scent of the air up there….
“Stop,” the guy bellowed from behind.
I screamed in reply.
Finally, finally I reached the third floor. I threw myself at the open attic steps with all my strength. I stumbled but managed to right myself as I reached the bottom step.
“Don’t be an idiot,” the guy snapped.
Maybe he could sense what I was about to do, because I heard him put on a burst of speed.
Desperate – the kind of desperate that scours your chest and leaves you as nothing more than a hollow pulsing ball of adrenaline – I shunted out a hand and snatched a few trinkets off the sideboard beside me. I lobbed them over my shoulder at him.
I heard a few strike him with satisfying thumps, but he did not slow down.
Reaching the stairs, I threw myself up, the old wood creaking as if it was being beaten by an avalanche.
….
I did it. I reached the top.
I fell to the side, sweat-slicked fingers hooking over the lever beside the stairs that would retract them.
I pulled it. I yanked it with all my might.
But he reached the base of the stairs.
And he was stronger than me.
I kicked around on my back, tugging on the lever as hard as I could, muscles straining deep into my chest and down my legs.
With an echoing twang, the mechanism that retracted the stairs broke.
I had seconds to roll over and push to my feet.
He threw himself into the attic, those camel-colored boots kicking up the dust.
I stumbled over the chair, slammed into the table, and grabbed the only thing I could – the book.
I jerked around and brandished the extraordinarily light book.
Despite the fact my mind was exploding in fear, I noticed the book weighed nothing more than a feather.
It looked heavier than a cast-iron pot. And yet, I brandished it with the ease of a pen.
The guy’s eyes bulged
as they locked on the book. “What the hell? How can you pick that up? That’s the family contract – only a seer can pick that up.”
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. My throat was filled with the metallic taste of fear. I still managed to jerk my lips open. “Get back. Get back or I’ll—”
I couldn’t finish my sentence.
I had no weapon other than this deceptively light tome.
I was dead.
Just as true excruciating terror punched through my heart and echoed like a scream in my mind, he put his hands up.
Gone was the anger and hatred from his crystalline brown eyes. His angular jaw wasn’t locked with terrifying tension anymore.
He looked completely thrown. He kept staring from me to the book. “Only Joan could pick that book up—”
“I said get back,” I shrieked, voice so cracked and broken I could barely understand myself.
He put his hands up. “Whoa, calm down.”
“Calm down?!” I screamed, words all cracked and hissing. “You attacked me. Now get out, get out, get out!”
He kept his hands up, his fingers spread wide as his eyes opened to match them.
Every scrap of anger was gone from his expression. Only complete wonder and confusion remained. “You… you’re the next McLane seer.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Now just get out. Get out!” I continued to hold the book high, fingers so stiff against the leather cover, I could have bored holes through it to the yellowed pages beneath.
He didn’t shift his hands from the surrender-position. Nor did he tear his eyes off me. “If you can pick up that book, then the curse has transferred to you. So Joan must be….” He didn’t finish. He couldn’t. A wash of genuine sadness fell down his face until his lips drooped, his cheeks slackened, and his eyes were touched with tears.
Yes, this guy had just chased me around with a knife. Yes, my body was still frazzled by the adrenaline of the fight. But no, I couldn’t stop my usually hardened heart from suddenly softening with compassion.
Though he kept one hand raised, the other trembled as he locked it against his brow. “I forgot that, too,” he mumbled to himself.
“What?”
He shook his head and returned his attention to me. Slowly he let his hands drop. “I’m not here to hurt you, Miss McLane.”
“Bullshit,” I replied, holding the book even higher.
But a strange thing was happening. The longer I held that deceptively light tome, the lighter I began to feel. For something invisible and indescribable was shifting through it and into me.
Magic.
My destiny, in fact.
I blinked my eyes as they suddenly felt heavy like someone had tied rocks to my eyelashes.
Far in the distance, I heard something. It didn’t come from the room. Not from the floor below, not from the yard outside.
No, it came from beyond that.
I heard wind rustling through leaves, felt someone standing beside me. They reached out a hand, and I saw a flash of their palm – bloodied, carved with an eye in the middle.
They pressed it against my forehead.
And I, Chi McLane, blacked out.
Just as my body crumpled, and I fell backward towards the desk, the man moved.
I felt him wrap his arms around me, felt him yank me back before I could hit my head on the corner of the desk.
I had just one second to realize one fact – the man’s arms were reassuringly warm and strong as they closed around me.
Then?
I lost consciousness.
I would be a different person when I awoke. For this was the moment when I, Chi McLane, serial liar and fake fortune-teller, would change forever.