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“Where are you?” My tone is gruff from the stinging ache.
“Here,” she whispers.
I whip around and still see nothing but the twinkling lights. I reach out, hoping that even if I can’t see anything, I can feel something. It’s so dark I can’t even see my hand in front of me, only the tiny lights floating by in a rush at my hurried movement.
One catches my eye off in the distance about fifteen feet from me, and I hone in on it. It’s slightly bigger than the rest. I take a step forward, then stop when it begins to grow. It doesn’t get brighter; the luminosity stays the same. It’s just the size that changes. Actually, it looks like the light is dimming the bigger it gets. Like it’s no longer a light, but a fog-like substance.
It stretches longways, getting greater and greater. I start moving toward it, but no matter how many steps I take, the same distance stays between it and me.
Something starts to form in the white haze. I squint, not really sure what it is, because it’s almost transparent now. It’s still growing, but the bigger it gets, the more it loses its solidness.
A face.
I can barely make it out through the white haze, but it’s a woman. Her features become clearer, but the more the face forms, the more it fades as well.
I take a couple of steps forward, then jerk to a halt when I remember it does me no good.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
What in the hell is this shit?
“Lucaaaa….”
The voice whispers again, and I know it’s from the translucent vision, but the lips don’t move.
The face becomes a face and shoulders, then face, shoulders, arms, and torso. Her hair flows around her, moving slowly, like it’s floating in water.
She looks at me, and the stark pain in her eyes almost has me staggering back with the force of it.
I really don’t fucking like that look. And I really don’t fucking know why. I’ve never seen the woman before. She doesn’t even look vaguely familiar. Why in the hell would her pain be my pain?
“Who are you?” I demand.
Again, her lips don’t move, but I still hear the voice inside my head. “Come to me, Luca. I need you.”
Before I have the chance to react to her words, something happens. I tense as swarms of the nearby glowing dust infuse the white mist of the woman. Her crystalline appearance starts to solidify. Her face and the upper half of her body become more visible. Her hair, which up until that point was colorless, is a deep, rich brown. It’s long, flowing to the middle of her back. Her eyes are light brown, but not an ordinary brown. They’re an unusual golden amber. I’m not sure if it’s because of her noncorporeal appearance or if that’s their natural color, but they seem to glow.
More specks of dust penetrate the woman’s form, and the more that rushes in, the brighter she gets.
She lifts her arm, as if reaching out to me, and before it registers what I’m doing, I reach out to her.
When I take a step closer, the light surrounding her shimmers brighter. This time I’m able to shorten the gap between us. I take another step, and it seems to glisten even more. I’m tall, so when I take my next step, there’s only a few feet separating us. But the brightness is now almost too much to bear. I have to squint from the sheer brilliance of it.
There’s only inches between the tips of her fingers and mine now. The pain resting in my chest intensifies the closer I get, but it’s as if there’s a force that’s pushing me toward her. Like if I don’t, the pain would be a thousand times worse. I don’t know why, but something inside me says I must go to her.
I hold my breath as the tip of my middle finger touches the glowing tip of hers. Several things happen at once. A low growl resonates deep in the back of my throat, my fingers curl into a fist and my arm drops to my side, and the fierce pain I was experiencing in my chest turns so excruciating I’d swear my heart is spilling out onto the floor at my feet.
The trifecta of feelings happens because the instant my fingertips touch the woman, her form disintegrates. The thousands of pieces of dust that make up her form fall away into space, leaving me once again in complete blackness.
I tip my head back and an angry, pain-filled roar leaves my lips at the loss of something so important.
CHAPTER ONE
Luca
I STAB THE KEY INTO the back door of Ink Me and shove it open. It hits the cabinet behind the door and something crashes to the floor, pissing me off even more than I already am. I flip the light switch, look around, and find pink shattered glass on the floor. I glare at the shards and silently curse my sister to hell for leaving her shit on the counter after I’ve told her multiple times to put it away.
After kicking the door closed with my boot, I shed my drenched jacket, then grab a hand towel from a cabinet and run it over my head a couple times to soak up some of the water from the torrential downpour outside. Dropping my keys on the counter, I head to the coffeepot. Once the machine starts gurgling, I grab the broom and sweep up the glass, then rest my weight against the counter. I take a minute to rub my temples, the pounding in my head from moments ago finally turning to a dull ache.
