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I stood beneath the wrought iron archway at the entrance of Lafayette Cemetery. The sky was dark, and there weren’t any pedestrians in sight. Nadia appeared between a white Econoline van and an old Jetta. She was the only thing in color. Her hair brown, her skin smooth and tanned. Her jewelry jingled as she walked.
I followed her as she moved through the cemetery with surprising determination. Her jaw was set, and her eyes were pinched at the corners. She moved so fast past the mausoleums that my magic had to skip me forward through the vision to keep up with her, but everything settled down once she reached the witch sector.
Surrounded by her kin, Nadia walked slower. She skimmed her fingers over the names on each crypt she passed. Some held her gaze longer than others, but she kept walking until she found what she was looking for: the ceremonial square in front of the Devereaux mausoleum. The place where I’d found her body.
She paced back and forth, her hands fluttering at her sides like a hummingbird’s wings, pent up magic crackling in her hair like lightning through a cloud. Something had her on edge.
A shadowed figure stepped out from behind the mausoleum on her tenth or eleventh pass. Nadia stopped moving, and her shoulders relaxed.
“There you are,”she said.
Her voice echoed against my eardrums. I winced. Conversations were always hard to hear in visions. Like a square peg being forced through a round hole, living voices always seemed to break down when filtered through the mind of a dead person. The tone just didn’t fit.
The figure didn’t respond to Nadia. Instead, it took a few steps to the side, sticking to the shadows. From what I could tell at a distance, it was a female and about my height. Her hair was long, extending down past her shoulders, and her fingers were tapping a strange staccato rhythm on her thighs. Something about the woman seemed so familiar, but trapped by the limitations of Nadia’s memory, I couldn’t make out her face in the shadows.
“We need to talk,”Nadia said.“When I left your office, I felt something evil, but it wasn’t following me. My vision was wrong. It’s not me who’s in danger—Rebekah, are you even listening to me?”
My heart leapt into my throat, and the woman in the shadows let out a low rumbling chuckle.“I’m sorry, did you say something?”
“What’s wrong with you? I just told you I’d seen a vision of your death, and you're acting like you don’t even care,”Nadia said, her eyes following the woman in front of her.“Rebekah, I’ve never felt anything like the kind of evil that’s coming after you. It’s not good.”
The figure chuckled, taking a step forward.“Oh, I know.”
The shadows pulled away from the figure, revealing her boots, faded jeans, and an old black ACDC tank top. Ice spread across my skin. I recognized those clothes, that leather jacket. My eyes lifted to her face and everything inside me came to a screeching halt. I recognized her features too–her chin, her lips, her eyes. I saw them every time I looked in the mirror. That was my face. Those were my clothes. It was me.
“You’ve been a naughty little psychic, Ms. Lenkova,”said the vision of me. Mirror Me. The distortion from Nadia’s mind made my voice unrecognizable.
“What? Rebekah, what’s going on?”
Mirror Me smiled.“You’ve been spying on things you have no business looking at. You’ve attracted the wrong kind of attention, and I can’t have you spoiling my fun.”
A spiral dagger slid from her sleeve, the silver blade flashing in the moonlight. I blinked and Mirror Me had it buried to the hilt in Nadia’s neck. The pain of the kill lanced through my body, and I doubled over snapping my connection to Nadia’s mind.
I opened my eyes, back inside the morgue, and I couldn’t breathe. Ice had formed like a rock in my throat, blocking the air flow. My knees gave out and I collapsed into a ball on the floor, pressing my forehead into the cool tiles.
“Rebekah!” Shado shouted, trying to pull me over onto my back, but my chest kept heaving. I couldn’t move.
Pinpricks of warm healing energy radiated from her hands, but they slid off my back like melted ice cream. Sticky but ineffectual. Black spots started to swim in my vision. If I didn’t take a full breath soon, I was going to pass out.
The door to the exam room burst open behind me and I heard a crash as Jackson’s face appeared above me. His eyes were bright yellow, and a twin set of canine teeth protruded from his upper lip. He was mid-change, a little less than halfway into his werewolf form.
“Rebekah, breathe,” he demanded. His soft velvet voice mangled by the fangs.
I shook my head, coughing, and clawed at the floor. I needed to ground the energy, to get it out of me. Jackson understood and grabbed me by the shoulders, lifting me to my knees. With gloved hands, he tilted my head to the right, gave me a second to brace myself against a vision and kissed me.
The shock was enough to knock the connection loose, but for a second there was more. For a second, I was kissing my husband, melting against him. Letting his touch sink deep into my bones. For the briefest of seconds it was as if no time had passed at all. He still knew how to touch me, how to hold me.
That second passed and my stomach clenched. Jackson pulled back, and Shado shoved a bucket under my nose as I collapsed, vomiting, on all fours. Jackson pulled the hair back from my face, and everything was quiet save for the sounds of my retching.
When it stopped, I pushed the bucket away and leaned my back against the leg of Shado’s empty exam table. I took a deep breath and met Jackson’s watchful yellow eyes. “Thanks.”
“Thanks?”Shado shrieked, standing over us. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “I will be.”
Jackson cracked his knuckles. “What happened? You were supposed to call me before you came over here.”
“I know,” I said, studying his fingers.“I didn’t want to wait.”
