Page 38 of The Second Sight
I smiled, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “No. What we just shared is unique.”
She shifted, propping herself up on one elbow to look at me. “Because I’m part fae?”
“Partially,” I admitted. “But more because of who you are. Who we are together. We fit together perfectly. Like it was destined, fated, ordained.”
She seemed to accept this explanation. Then she settled back against my chest. Her fingers traced patterns on my pale skin. Her fingertips followed the contours of muscles that had remained unchanged for centuries. I wondered what she was thinking, this young woman with fae blood, lying in a vampire’s bed. Her world had been irrevocably altered in the span of a single day.
“I know I should be terrified,” she whispered, as if reading my thoughts. “Of you. Of all this.” Her hand made a small gesture, encompassing the room, the mansion, the supernatural world she’d been thrust into. “But instead, I feel alive. More alive than I’ve ever felt.”
I tightened my arm around her, drawing her closer to me. The irony wasn’t lost on me, that a creature who had died centuries ago could make someone feel more alive. I understood what she meant. In my long existence, few moments had felt as vivid, as meaningful, as the hours spent with her. I was drawn to her the minute I saw her at the Fountain of Youth. There was something that drew me in, not just her resemblance to my late wife. Kasi wasn’t the first human I stumbled across that looked like my Basirah. Yet something about Kasi called to me in ways I couldn’t understand.
“Rest,” I told her, pulling the silk sheet over her skin. “We have much to discuss when you wake. About the Yumboe people, about finding your mother. About what happens next.”
She nodded, her eyes already growing heavy with exhaustion. “Promise you’ll be here when I wake up?”
“I promise,” I replied, the weight of those two simple words settling on me like a vow. “I’ll be right here.”
As she drifted into sleep, her breathing deepened and her body grew heavier against mine, I stared up at the ceiling mural I’d commissioned in 1936, a beautiful depiction of night and day in eternal dance. Fitting, I thought, for what was developing between us. Kasi was day to my night, warmth to my cold, life to my death.
And somehow, against all reason and despite all the dangers that surely lay ahead, it felt right. She felt right and she was mine. She was a gift from the god I once believed in.
Chapter
Fifteen
KASI
Ifloated in darkness, my mind drifting through that strange realm between deep sleep and waking. Seven’s sheets felt like warm water against my skin, but my thoughts couldn’t settle into stillness. Images began to form behind my closed eyelids. I saw Chicago at night, but not the Chicago I knew. This version was emptier, darker, almost dystopian in appearance with neon signs blurring into streaks of color that bled like watercolors in rain. Thunder rumbled in the distance. I wasn’t just dreaming. I was seeing something real. Something coming in the future. With my fae background I could now trust my thoughts and my visions.
The city streets stood before me, empty of people but somehow still alive with sound. Tall buildings loomed overhead. I moved without walking, floating down avenues, streets and boulevards I recognized but couldn’t name.
The air felt charged with electricity that raised the hair on my arms. This wasn’t a normal dream. I’d had enough prophetic visions to recognize the difference. There was the hyper-clarity of certain details while others blurred into nothing. I had a sense of watching and participating simultaneously.
A shadow detached itself from the darkness of an alley. A man stepped into the weak glow of a streetlight. His light brown skin caught the artificial light. He was Black like me but not quite like me. The man was handsome in a way that wasn’t welcoming. Something about him triggered an immediate sense of danger in my sleeping mind. He moved with the careful precision of a predator. Each of his steps were deliberate and silent. His eyes scanned the empty street before he continued forward, heading toward a destination only he could see.
I followed without a choice in the matter. I was being pulled along by the current of the dream. We passed through parts of Chicago I’d never visited. The bad neighborhoods with crumbling facades, abandoned lots strewn with debris, burned out buildings where the city had favored neglect over renovation. Places that had not yet been taken over by gentrification.
The man moved faster now, more confident as he entered his territory. When he finally stopped moving, it was at the entrance to what looked like an old factory building. Its brick exterior was stained with decades of industrial grime.
He slipped inside through a door on rusted hinges, and I followed. Inside, the space opened up into a room with high ceilings and exposed steel beams. Moonlight filtered through broken windows, casting eerie shadows across concrete floors. The man, Gideon, my dreaming mind somehow knew his name. He stood waiting, his stance alert with head cocked as if listening.
Heavy footsteps echoed from the darkness at the far end of the room. A figure emerged, tall and imposing, draped in shadows that covered him from plain sight. As he stepped into a sliver of moonlight, I saw his face clearly. His dark skin appeared with features carved with the harshness of ancient stone. But what held my attention, what sent a jolt of recognition throughmy sleeping body, was the scar. The deep, jagged line that ran from just beneath his right eye and down across his cheek to the edge of his chin. The same scar I’d glimpsed in fragments of dreams over the past six years. The scar that was born from that golden blade wielded by my mama.
This was the man who had been hunting my mother in my visions. This was Desmond Moreau. The name I heard in my dreams the day my mother disappeared from my life. A name I vowed never to forget.
Gideon approached him with a careful deference, head slightly bowed but eyes never leaving Desmond’s face. When he reached the scarred man, he leaned in close, lips moving near Desmond’s ear. His voice was barely a whisper, but in the dream, it carried to me with perfect clarity.
“I found a Yumboe descendant living in Chicago.” Gideon growled as he presented Desmond with a thick piece of paper.
This girl? Did they mean me? Even in my dream I couldn’t see the photo Gideon held in his hands.
Desmond’s expression didn’t change, but something shifted in his dead eyes. There was a hunger, a focus that hadn’t been there before.
“Are you sure?” Desmond spoke. his voice was cold like Chicago winters. “The last girl was just a regular human.”
“Yes, my King. I’m sure.”
“Just like you were so sure Theia was in Chicago six years ago.”
