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The minute Mike touched the scale, we zapped into it like some crazy sitcom with secret portal objects. In truth, we were probably just sitting there in our separate chairs, eyes open, holding that damnable scale between us.
I liked the first option better.
Mike and I were standing at the crime scene in the semi-dark. Well, I was standing. Mike was pacing the clearing, taking it much better than I would’ve expected. I didn’t tandem vision with many people—it only happened when I was tired (check!) and emotionally worn out (check!). I leaned against a tree and watched him acclimate.
He paused and turned toward me. “Where are we?”
“Short answer? We’re in my head. Longer answer? This is a vision created by a memory imprinted on the scale.”
“It’s all so real.” He knelt down and plucked a stray leaf off the ground. “Even the ground. That’s crazy detailed.”
I shrugged. “The human eye processes a lot more than we realize, so a vision is the victim’s true sight. That’s why I can see and hear other people in a vision that I might not necessarily see or hear if I was actually there. If I’m at the same location as where the vision is taking place, the additional data my eyes picked up will be displayed, too. Which is why there’s some sunlight over there—” I pointed past him to the other side of the clearing. “—when it’s clearly nighttime over here.”
I paused to give him a minute to put the pieces together.
“Because when we were out here, it was daytime, but the scale only ‘sees’ the nighttime?”
“Yup, pretty much.” I pushed off the tree. “Want to see what we can find?”
Mike made his way back to me. “Yeah, let’s do that. I’ll show you where they found the scale.”
“Good a place as any to start. Lead the way.”
He looked up at the trees. “Okay, if what you’re saying holds true, we should be in the general area, right? After all, why would it take us anywhere else but where we found it?”
I smiled in spite of myself. “You’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would.”
He took slow steps between the trees. “I’m looking for a knot. CSU said it fell out of a tree with a big knot on the face. Not this one.”
He moved onto the next tree. “Yeah, well, I’m freaking out a little on the inside. I’m in your head, and I’m having a conversation with you. It’s really weird. You remember what I told you before we hopped in here? I trust you. If you’re okay with this, then I’m going to do my best to be okay with it. I’ve seen you do this before, and we’re not getting out of here before the vision is over. Might as well make the best of it.
“Besides, here’s what we were looking for.” He pulled a long line of snakeskin out of the grass.
It was a gorgeous piece of shed. The scales were significantly smaller than the scale we were holding on the other side, but they shined with the same iridescent material. I held it up and tried to catch a little light to be sure. Too dark. “This is the one we have back in the room, right?”
He nodded.
“Remind me to look at this when we get back.”
“Zoë.”
The skin felt silky. I needed to ask the herpetologist about that. “Yeah?”
“Zoë.”
“Yeah, Mike, what is it?” I turned to see him looking up the tree. I followed suit, and even in the darkness a clear silhouette appeared in the branches. “I see it.”
“Do guns work here?”
I shook my head, eyes still on the strange figure. “Um, no, you can’t really affect anything that’s going on here. It would be like shooting your finger at a movie screen.”
“Can you tell what it is?”
I couldn’t. The only reason I could differentiate between the tree and the shadow was the change in the shadow’s lines. Trees were typically jagged, jarred lines in the sky. This guy was a smooth curve of shoulder and hips.
I dropped the molted skin. “Now we wait and see what happened next.”
I ushered him backward until we stood almost in the clearing. “Um, play.”
“Me?”
I gave him a little smile. “No, sorry, not you. Sometimes it helps when I say what I want to happen.” The telltale crunch of leaves had us both turning around. “Remember that this is just a bad home movie. They can’t see us, hear us, or interact with us. They’ll just do their thing until it plays out.”
“No popcorn?”
I shook my head. “Bad, Mike. So bad.”
“Hey, I can’t help it if my coping mechanism for the supernatural is the humor of a twelve–year-old boy.”
The smaller trees swayed and parted to reveal a cloaked figure holding something tight to its chest. The person entered the clearing with great apprehension, looking around several times before leaving the protection of the trees. Whoever it was stood not much taller than me, maybe five six, but stayed hunched over the parcel, so I could only guess at their build. The cloak didn’t help either.
“Do you think he has the baby or the scale?” Mike whispered.
My wolf growled as the figure moved closer. “My money’s on the baby.” She pawed inside my head.
Our mystery guest turned his head, and the cloak fluttered open to show off a curve of shiny scales beneath a well-formed six-pack of abs and complementary pectorals. From the depths of the hood glowed two large, golden eyes edged with blue, with vertical black slits where pupils should’ve been. A long forked tongue slipped out into the night air and back into the cloak in one slow, fluid line—as though he could taste our presence.
As quick as the look had been, we returned to the normal play again, where memory thumbnails didn’t acknowledge our existence.
“Do you see that?” Mike whispered again, as if speaking too loud would betray our presence.
I nodded, but my brain was still processing what I’d seen. Not possible. Not in the almost twenty years I had been able to do this magnificent stunt had anyone in the imprint interacted with me. Had there been someone standing in this spot that we’d overlooked? I glanced behind me and... nothing. I took a step back, just in case I was standing in the same space. Nothing.
Mike saw my concern. “What’s wrong?”
“He shouldn’t have been able to do that. He shouldn’t have been able to see us.”
He neared the tree now, and dropped to one knee, head bowed. The tree shook, and a shadow in its branches leapt to the ground with more grace than I could ever manage. The tree guy stood an easy eight feet tall with the same glowy eyes and scaly happy trail made up of larger scales, like the one we had back at the precinct.
“It is done?”
“It is, O Great One. I bring you proof.” The smaller guy pulled the package from beneath his cloak and offered it over his head with both hands.
His boss picked it up with care and unwrapped it, and the cloth fell back to reveal the still, pallid face of our victim. “She is so little.”
Mike cursed behind me.
The creature touched a cheek with one pale, green finger, unwrapped her further, and traced the open wound. “The humans don’t suspect?”
“No, Master, they do not.”
“Good.” He covered her and handed her back to the minion. “Things are changing. I can taste it in the wind.”
“Should I tell the others?”
‘Others’ meant there were more snake people. Come on, tabletop nerd brain. Nagas. That’s what I wanted. Just great.
The boss shook his head. “No, it isn’t time.”
The Great Naga smiled a wicked, fanged grin and looked over the minion’s head and....
...Right at me.
“Is he looking at you?” Mike asked.
The Great One’s eyes glowed like the minion’s, with the same shimmery gold and dark vertical slits.
I didn’t bother looking over my shoulder. The hair stood up on the back of my neck and on the haunches of my wolf. Well, shit. “Um, yeah, I think he is.”
“Go, little witch.” The boss waved a hand. “We’ll meet soon enough. This chapter is over.”
The edges of the vision began to unravel as though someone had pulled a thread out of a tapestry.
I turned to Mike and grabbed both his hands. “It’s going to kind of feel like we’re in a bubble that’s popping when we come out. It can screw with your equilibrium, so hang on, okay? If you need to vomit, go left, because I’m on your right.”
“Vomit?”
I had no time to explain.
Pop!
