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As far as signs go, snow in Virginia in August was a pretty big one. I’d wanted to know if She’d heard me, and I was happy to take this as my sign.
Karma was a tricky thing, and as we pulled up to the sparse clump of trees outside the cave that the vision naga had described, Mike appeared. My heart sank at the sight of him, face pale and head shaking. He waved us down and came to the car at a steady run.
“Uh, Captain, could you step outside?” His eyes darted to me and back to his boss. “So I may speak to you alone?”
The language was so formal, I knew something was wrong.
“What is it?” I demanded.
Ethan and Mike shared a long look.
“Just give us a minute, okay?” Ethan said. He stepped out and followed the detective several feet in front of the car. They kept their backs to the windshield, heads almost touching.
Mike pointed into the tree line and shook his head over and over.
Ethan rubbed his face.
I grabbed the door handle, but one of the problems with doing a ride along in the back seat is that you can’t get out unless someone lets you out. “Dammit all to hell,” I scowled.
Seth reached for me, and I pulled away.
“Hey,” he said. “I didn’t do this, whatever this is. Don’t be pissed at me because we’re stuck in the car. Oh, and we’re two rather talented magick users. Surely, we can figure a way out.”
I looked at him, and then at the door, and back at him. “Of course we can.” I grabbed his hand, pulled his power like a glob of silver cotton candy, and wrapped it around a length of mine. I pushed our combined energies through the door, which let out an audible click.
I pushed against the door, which popped opened, and hit the ground running toward Ethan. “What is it? What happened? Where’s Daniel?”
They sighed in tandem, and with a visible effort, met my eyes.
“Zoë,” Mike started. “You should sit down.”
I drew my hand to my mouth in sudden understanding. “No.”
“Zoë,” Ethan tried. “I’m so sorry.”
I shook my head. “No, don’t you say it! Don’t you say it! Where is he? Where!”
Mike pointed again into the tree line, and I took off before either of them could grab me.
The forest was surprisingly deceptive. From a distance, it looked sparse, but as I ran, there was just... more. Undergrowth pulled at my feet as I pushed my way through. People had gathered ahead, and the knot in my stomach tightened. Gathered people meant dead body. Missing Daniel meant.... I shook the thought from my head.
The snow made the ground, the layers of leaves and mud, particularly slick. My feet slid out from beneath me, my ass hit the ground, and the back of my head found a tree trunk. The wind flew out of me as I tried to cry out in pain, and my first three attempts to get back up failed. I sat there at the base of the tree and wiped angry tears off my cheeks.
Get up, dammit! I tried again, slower despite my need to get to the crime scene. An eternity later, I found my footing.
The guys found me, too.
I raised my hand. “Don’t. I’m going. I have to see it with my own eyes. You can’t stop me, so don’t bother trying. I mean, I guess between the three of you, I could be physically stopped, but if you try it, I will fight you. So just let me go, okay?”
No reply, just sad eyes.
I turned on my heels and walked through the final patch of trees.
Just as in the movies, the crowd simultaneously realized I was there, and they part like the Red Sea, creating a corridor of people leading me toward tragedy. Each head lifted, caught my eyes, and quickly looked away as they stepped backward.
I made my way through the cleared space, and at the end, a blob of red and black lay unmoving.
Damn tears.
Daniel lay so still, his lingering heat melting the fat flakes of the freak snowstorm, like he’d made a snow angel there before he died.
“He’s dead.” The words felt unreal, the voice a trembling, high-pitched wail—an imitation of me. This couldn’t be happening. He was going to open his eyes any second, sit up and tell me that he couldn’t pull this awful prank any longer; I just needed to be patient.
Someone moved closer in my periphery, and I raised a hand. “Don’t. Don’t touch him. Just. Don’t.” The trembling in my voice had worsened, the tenor riding the edge of panic. “Not yet.”
In the back of my head, voices argued, some real, some whispers of my past, but all loudly insistent that my acceptance was crucial, and the sooner the better. Other lives, little lives, depended on me moving forward to save them before they too ended up like this disaster at my feet.
Yet I couldn’t budge from this spot, as if changing anything would break the tenuous grasp I held on reality.
“Zoë,” Mike whispered, cracking the delusion. “Zoë, we’ll give you a minute, but we—”
“I know,” I said without looking. “We have to go.” Red wetness outlined the edge of my beloved’s jacket. “We have to stop the naga. I just need....”
“One minute, Zoë.”
I felt him pull away, felt them all just disappear behind me. The snow fell heavier now, and it was starting to stick to Daniel. With a slow exhale, I stepped closer, eyes catching all the details I hadn’t before: the rip of his breast pocket, the multiple defensive wounds on his hands, the peeking interior lining speckled red, the wet circle around the gash, the unmistakable bite mark on the curve of his neck.
I closed my eyes, counted to ten, and opened them again. “Oh, Daniel.” That strange voice coming out of my mouth sounded so small now.
I brushed the snow from his face with the corner of my sleeve—touching without touching—the little flecks melting on the fabric. Someone had closed his eyes before I arrived, and I wasn’t sure if I was grateful or not.
“What the hell were you thinking, rushing in here alone? What the fuck were you thinking?” I reached out. If I just touched his collar, it wouldn’t be so bad, right? If I smoothed his hair one last time, I’d be okay, right? If I just—
“Don’t, Zoë.”
“Ethan, I have to.”
“No, Zoë, you don’t.” The pace of his words hastened. “We know what happened here. We don’t need you to do this. You don’t need to do this.”
He was wrong, of course. A million reasons raced through my head for why I was going to do this, the one thing that would rock my entire existence, but the greatest reason was love.
No matter all the nastiness, the heartache, the insanity that had gotten us to this place, I still loved Daniel, and that he’d risked his life to get here meant he had still loved me, too. I closed my eyes again, tight against the rush of tears, and pushed down the lump in my throat with a swallow.
I opened my eyes again and let the tears fall.
“Zoë!” Ethan’s large hand engulfed my shoulder just as my fingertips touched Daniel’s cheek.
The forest swallowed me in a swirl of darkness and dancing leaves.
***
Silence. Odd how nothing seemed to breathe in my visions, like I’d stepped into a sliver of time. The entire scene was the same—trees, grass, weird-ass snow—everything except....
“Where’s his body?”
I jumped, hand to chest, and spun around. “By the Goddess, Ethan, what are you doing here?”
He looked at me through a long, slow blink. “Where are we?”
There were no words for it, nothing succinct, so I shrugged and gestured around us. “This is a vision, Ethan. You are smack dab in the middle of a vision, and we’re about to see Daniel die.”
“Well, shit.”
“Indeed.” That sounded like normal me—detached, cold, ready to work.
“Zoë?”
I heard Daniel’s voice behind me, but he was dead. This was a memory; his memory. I hadn’t been present when this happened, and while I was certain the naga had been involved, I had touched him, not a magick object. This interaction was impossible. If I didn’t turn around, if I closed my eyes again, counted to ten again, Ethan and I would slip out of this apparent insanity.
“Zoë, look at me.”
I couldn’t turn around. Eyes open, I stared at Ethan and pleaded with him silently.
“Oh, Zoë.” Daniel’s words held that note of wonder mixed with sadness. He whispered, “Zoë.”
I spun around on my heels. “Stop saying my name!”
The first threads of anger melted away at the sight of him—whole, undamaged. I reached for him, but hesitated. The heat radiating off his skin, and the realness, the confusion, undid me. I sank to the ground and stared up at him through tears. “This isn’t possible.”
His face scrunched up in confusion. “What do you mean?”
I looked at Ethan, gestured wildly at Daniel, mouth opening and closing in my inability to spout... well, anything from my lips.
“You’re dead.” Ethan said to Daniel, matter-of-factly.
I dropped my eyes and pointed at Daniel. “Yes! That. You’re... dead! This....” I swung my arms around in an attempt to visually encompass everything around us. “None of this is real. We’re in a vision. I touched your face, and Ethan touched me, and we’re here. You’re dead!”
As if saying it often enough would change what was unfolding.
Daniel had the courtesy to look confused. “But we’re talking.”
I wanted to strangle him. Instead, I took a leap of faith and threw my arms around him. He was solid, as solid as the lump that caught in my throat as I buried myself in his chest. “Dammit, Daniel, what the hell were you thinking?”
