Hallucinations.
The word hit me like a scalpel, precise and cutting. I felt my cheeks burn, a flush of embarrassment and anger creeping across my skin that made my chest tight. They thought I was having some kind of breakdown. They thought I was some fragile little girl who couldn't handle reality, so my brain was creating magical fairy tales to cope. Just like the doctors thought my pain was psychosomatic until they'd found the tumor growing where my feminine curves should have been developing.
Once again, nobody believed what my body was trying to tell me.
"I'm not hallucinating," I said quietly. "I've done some research. And I think I'm a Threadwalker. And maybe my great-grandmother was, too. "
The silence that followed was worse than their dismissal. It was the kind of silence that came before someone said something they knew would hurt.
"Threadwalking is extremely rare," Aunt Judy said finally. "And it usually manifests in childhood, not?—"
"Not in twenty-six-year-old women who should know better?" The bitterness in my voice surprised even me. "I know how old I am, Aunt Judy. I also know what I'm seeing. And I know it's not just some kind of dream or a trauma response." I paused as a thought occurred to me. "Maybe it was trying to manifest when I was younger. And maybe my body rejected this magic back then. Maybe it poisoned my body, and that's why I got sick."
Honestly, this wasn't the first time I'd had these kinds of thoughts. But it was the first time I'd said them out loud.
There was a flash of emotion in my aunt's blue eyes, but she said nothing.
"What exactly are you seeing?" Alice asked. Her voice was careful, clinical. Like a doctor humoring a patient.
I took a breath, tried to organize the chaos of images and sensations into something they might believe. "Alex is alive?—"
"You've seen him?" Angel asked.
I looked down at the floor. "Not exactly."
"Then how do you know?"
Meeting her eyes across the table, I straightened my spine and tried to sound like I believed what I was saying. "Because I felt him. Through the threads I see. He's being held somewhere that feels like shadows and stone. I think Marcus has him bound, but it's with magic I don't recognize."
"What do you mean?" This time it was Lizzy.
"I mean it's not just djinn magic. I've felt that before, just like the rest of you, and the magic I feel in my visions isn't the same. It's something older. Hungrier." I paused, gathering courage for the part I knew they'd hate. "I think I can go deeper and find out more. And I think there's someone who can help me find him. Someone whose thread connects to both Alex and Marcus and…" I paused, then forced myself to say it, "me in ways I don't understand yet."
"Who?" Lizzy asked.
I adjusted my vest one more time, the gesture buying me a few seconds to decide how much truth I was willing to share. "Elias Noire."
The reaction was immediate and exactly what I'd expected. Angel gestured with one hand toward Judy as if to say, "See?", Lizzy's eyebrows shot up, and Aunt Judy's mouth compressed into a thin line.
"Absolutely not," she said. "I've already said, the vampires are not getting involved in this. We can handle our own family crisis without outside interference."
"But what if we can't?" The question slipped out before I could stop it. "What if Alex dies while we're sitting here arguing about coven politics?"
"Talin." Aunt Judy's voice carried a warning. "You will not go to the vampires behind this coven's back. Is that understood?"
"What if they can help us? What if Elias can help?"
Aunt Judy slammed her hand down on the table, her patience at an end. "What do vampires know about djinn magic? Or any magic, for the matter?" Her eyes swept the room, daring anyone to contradict her. "My answer is no. We're not getting them involved. Everything we say stays in this room. Is that understood?" She glanced at Lizzy, Angel, and Esme, waiting for them to nod their agreement before coming back to me.
I nodded, but the agreement felt hollow. Because I could feel it even then, sitting in that warm kitchen surrounded by the people who were supposed to understand me—the pull of that silver thread I'd seen in my visions. It tugged at something deep in my chest, insistent and undeniable.
And it led straight to The Purple Fang.
"I think we should focus on what we can control," Alice said, her soft voice smoothing over the tension. "The blood scrying ritual, contacting the other covens to see if they know anything we don't, researching djinn binding spells?—"
My thumb found the tender spot on my wrist where I'd pressed too hard that morning, the small crescent-shaped mark hidden beneath my sleeve. The familiar sting was oddly comforting. At least this pain I controlled. At least this hurt was mine to give and mine to take away.
They kept talking, but I'd stopped listening. Because in the space between heartbeats, between one breath and the next, I felt it again. The shimmer of otherness that came just before the visions hit.
