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I felt the familiar tingling along my skin as the vision started, but the mental image of St. Ailbe’s disappeared.
Everything went dark.
My heartbeat thumped in my ears and I tried to picture anything, but all I saw was black. All I got were feelings. Despair so strong I wanted to curl up in a ball and sob. Pain. It was like my heart was being ripped from my chest. Fear. So much fear. Enough fear to cool my sun-heated skin. My breath whooshed out of me.
Dastien’s weight was suddenly gone as he jerked me up to sit, pulling me from the vision. I blinked at him. The sudden brightness was blinding, but it wasn’t enough to shake me free of the vision. A trickle of dread tiptoed up my spine and I wanted it gone. “What was that?” I asked when I had enough air to talk.
“Your heart. It skipped a beat.” His voice was barely more than a whisper.
“What?” How was that possible? I’d never had anything like that happen before.
My eyes burned and I blinked to keep my tears from falling. I tried to tell myself that the feelings from the vision didn’t mean anything—that it wasn’t some future fate of my friends at St. Ailbe’s—but that was too close to a lie. I’d felt that fear and despair for a reason.
Dastien wiped a hand down his face, not really hiding his fear. “You have your phone here?”
I nodded. I’d been using it for music while reading.
“Are you calling Chris or Claudia?”
I’d been planning on calling Chris, but now that he said Claudia’s name, I wanted to call her, too. She’d have a little more insight on my visions. “Both. But Chris first.” If there wasn’t anything immediately wrong in Texas, then Claudia would be my next call.
“I’m going to get us some food. If Chris says they need our help, just grab the stuff and come back to the house. It’ll take some doing, but we’ll get travel booked and head back.”
“Thank you.” I’d been hoping it wouldn’t come to this. “I wish our honeymoon didn’t have to end so soon.”
“You don’t know that it will yet. And if it has to, then we’ll have plenty of time to come back. This is just the beginning for us. Okay?”
I nodded. “Okay.”
He pulled me against him, squeezing tight. His fear was lingering, making him anxious. He was thinking about how scared he was to leave me alone on the beach.
I’m okay, I said.
No more weird heart things while I’m gone, okay?
I laughed. I’ll do my best. But it wasn’t like I had any control over it.
When he pulled away, I laid back down, focusing on him as he walked back to the beach house. I could feel the sand under his feet. The brush of leaves against his arm as he pushed a shrub out of the way. Hunger was growing in him. My thoughts filled with images of sandwiches, piled high with turkey and avocado.
The water splashed on my toes—drawing me back to my own body—so I got up and scooted our stuff out of reach from the rising tide.
I sat back down on our bright red and blue striped beach towel and dug my phone out of my bag. It took me a few minutes to turn on the data and accept the ten-dollars-per-day fee for international usage, which was basically highway robbery. Even with the fee, data on the beach was slower than anything. Before I called Chris, I figured I should check my email and see if anyone had been trying to reach us.
When my email finally loaded, I groaned. I must’ve gotten over a hundred messages for every day we’d been gone, all of them useless junk—coupons and sales and newsletters from places I didn’t care about. Except for the Above and Beyond newsletter. That one was legit.
I started deleting emails, but then gave up and switched to skimming through to see if there were any from actual people I knew. Eighty-ish emails down, there was an email that caught my eye. The subject was Demon Attacks from cmatthewsntxwwp… C Matthews. Chris.
The chain had five emails in it already. The most recent one dated yesterday.
My thumb shook as I pressed the screen and read his first email.
Tessa! Mr. D said that you were gonna be MIA for a bit. Just in case you’re checking this or see anything, we had a small demon attack last night. No big. Didn’t want you to worry. Talk soon.
That didn’t sound so bad, and there was nothing for a couple days. But then Chris emailed again.
Hey, Tessa.
Adrian and I decided to stay at St. Ailbe’s. There’ve been a few more attacks. Figured Mr. D could use a hand. The reporters have mostly gone, but the Cazadores have more work than they thought now with all the patrolling and whatnot. We’ll let y
