Kitty drummed her nails on the chair’s steel arm as she sat across from Cassandra in the Alpha Seer’s Hong Kong office. Per usual, Cassandra was dressed in her white blouse–pencil skirt combo, black hair cascading down her back, while Kitty wore a black pantsuit, her blond hair in a tight bun. She watched as Cassandra drew what looked like plans for a Rube Goldberg machine on a piece of paper, head down in quiet concentration. It was hard to break the habit of waiting for a cue to speak, though Kitty knew there wouldn’t be one.
“Delilah is up by six points,” Kitty said. “She’s almost certain to beat Mayor Brest. The good people of Seattle don’t want a mayor who gets his rocks off by wearing diapers and pretending to be a baby. Unfortunately, Delilah also tipped off Valentine to her future Alpha child. She’s spooked, and has stopped seeing Max romantically.”
No reaction from Cassandra. Made sense, given that the Seer already knew exactly what Kitty would say. Still, Kitty had to say it; otherwise, there would be nothing for Cassandra to look into the future to see—the paradox of remembering the future.
“Seems to me Delilah hasn’t lived up to her end of the bargain, if she told Northwalk she’d get Max and Valentine together and then split them up again—”
“Do not kill Delilah,” Cassandra said in her breathy British accent, not looking up from her drawing. “She will be dealt with. In time.”
Kitty tensed against her will. Often it seemed as if Cassandra could read her mind, though she knew the Seer couldn’t. She and Sten would be dead by now if Cassandra or any other member of Northwalk knew their thoughts. We should just kill them, Sten had said. She would if she could. How do you kill someone with perfect recall of the future? The fact that Northwalk still employed them meant they’d never succeed, or Cassandra hadn’t seen fit to warn anyone for reasons only she knew. Though if Kitty had learned anything from a lifetime of manipulating the future at Northwalk’s bidding, it was that anything was possible. Patience was key.
“You must ask,” Cassandra said.
Kitty composed herself, relaxed. “How do you want me to get Max and Valentine together again?”
Cassandra finally looked up from her drawing, put her pen down, threaded her slender fingers together. “Let the gale raze their affected hearts. Then offer the life boat.”
Wait, was what Cassandra meant. That, Kitty could do. She’d been waiting all her life, waiting for the right moment to seize what was hers. It would happen, Cassandra’s failure to see it be damned.
“There is more,” Cassandra said. She never asked questions that weren’t rhetorical; she only made statements.
“The doctors tell me they were able to successfully reverse Max’s vasectomy during the surgery on his bullet wound. Sten’s a good shot.”
Cassandra looked at her drawing, tracing the intricate lines with her fingers. Kitty knew it was part of a machine, something Cassandra was bringing into being before its time.
“So many moving stars,” Cassandra said. “They bleed into each other.” Her ethereal eyes filled with tears that leaked onto the paper. “There shall never be another one.”
Kitty had no idea what Cassandra was talking about. The Seer knew things no one else could understand, things no one should understand. Being able to see everything until the end of the universe wasn’t good for one’s sanity. She didn’t have much time left before she totally lost it. Northwalk was champing at the bit for Max and Val’s Alpha child.
Cassandra looked at Kitty. “Go.”
Kitty stood and walked toward the exit.
“End it, Omega,” Kitty heard Cassandra say behind her. Omega—Cassandra’s designation for Valentine Shepherd. “Save us all.”