Talin
I adjusted my black vest for the third time in as many minutes, smoothing the metallic thread that caught the candlelight flickering around Aunt Judy's kitchen table. The material was soft beneath my fingers, familiar, but it felt like armor that night. Not just against the weight of my cousins' stares and the disappointment building in the charged air, but against the vulnerability that came with sitting among people who could see magic but had never seen me. Really seen me.
The vest did more than hide the uneven plane of my chest. It hid the truth of what I was—broken, incomplete, someone who'd been carved away and stitched back together wrong. At least when I was covered like this, I could pretend I was a whole woman.
The coven meeting had been going for forty-seven minutes. I knew because I'd been watching the clock on the wall, counting down the time until I could escape back to my apartment and pretend the knot in my chest would eventually unravel on its own.
"—still no word from the Seattle covens," Angel was saying, her red hair bright against the pale skin of her face as she gestured with her usual dramatic flair. "But last I heard from Emma, Jesse, Shea, Ryan, and Christian were still missing, and they'd heard nothing about their plane other than it never landed and hadn't been found."
Lizzy looked up from her spot across the table, fingers absentmindedly stroking the fat, gray cat curled up in her lap. "I hope they're all okay."
A picture of the plane I saw in my dream flashed in my mind, and I frowned. A plane caught in a gray void.
But no. Surely not.
I almost said something, but changed my mind. Even if I were right, no one would believe it was anything more than a dream without more evidence.
"Which brings us back to the same problem we've had for two weeks," Alice said quietly. Her voice carried the exhausted edge that had become permanent since her twin disappeared. "We have no idea where my brother is or how to get him back."
I shifted in my chair, the words burning in my throat. I had ideas. I had more than ideas. I had dreams and visions that showed fragments of caverns and shadows and blue and red and silver threads that led somewhere important. But every time I'd tried to explain what I was seeing, they looked at me like I was a child playing dress-up in her mother's clothes.
Not a real witch.
Just like I wasn't a real woman.
"We should ask the vampires for help," Angel suggested. "I'm sure Killian has resources we don't?—"
"No." Aunt Judy's voice cut through the kitchen with the authority that had made her High Priestess of our coven for over twenty years. "We handle this within the family. The vampires have their own agenda, and Alex is our responsibility."
"He's also Kenya's mate," Angel argued. "I'd say that makes him the vampire's problem, too."
Judy's blue eyes snapped to my cousin, the corners of her mouth turning down like she'd just sucked on a lemon. It was getting harder and harder for her to keep the separation between our coven and theirs when more than half of us were mated to a vampire.
My fingers found the edge of my vest again, worrying the fabric. I needed to tell them what I'd seen. And if they blew me off, well, at least I'd tried. I cleared my throat and instantly regretted it. But I pressed on.
"I've been having more visions," I said.
The conversation didn't pause. Didn't even slow down.
"—think we should try your blood scrying ritual again," Lizzy was saying to Esme. "Maybe if we asked Kenya to help us? We could try her blood?—"
"I said I've been having visions." Louder that time, but still careful. Still polite. Because that's what I did. I spoke last, spoke quietly, tried not to take up too much space in a family that had never quite known what to do with me.
That time they heard me.
Aunt Judy's bright blue eyes found mine across the table, patient but weary. "Talin, sweetie, we've talked about this. These dreams you're having?—"
"They're not just dreams." The words came out sharper than I intended, and I winced. I lowered my voice back to something softer, more reasonable. "They're not just dreams, Aunt Judy. They're different. I don't know how I know that. I just do. The threads I've been seeing, they're connections between people…and I can see them now. Actually see them."
"Talin," Angel said, her tone gentle in that way that made my teeth clench. "We've all been under a lot of stress since Alex disappeared. Sometimes our minds create patterns where there aren't any?—"
"I'm not imagining this." My hand moved to my vest again, smoothing down fabric that was already perfectly flat. A nervous gesture that I'd picked up somewhere along the line. "There's a blue thread that connects to Alex, and it's being held by something dark. My guess is Marcus. Because there are other threads too. A red one that pulses with urgency, and a silver one that's?—"
I stopped myself before I could mention the silver thread that called to me like a beacon. The one that felt like safety. A calm, ordered harbor in the storm. The one that led to a certain dark-eyed vampire who made my skin hum with an energy I didn't understand every time I saw him.
Lizzy exchanged a look with Aunt Judy. The kind of look that said volumes without a single word spoken.
"Talin," Aunt Judy said carefully, "your great-grandmother had similar experiences after traumatic events. Sometimes our magical sensitivity can manifest as vivid dreams or hallucinations when we're processing grief or fear."
