Chapter 24

MAEVE

I"ve never welcomed a vision,but a small elation follows me into this one—elation that doesn"t last long. Everything"s unclear and echoes faintly behind a fog. Have my skills lessened and I"m back to the early days where my mind couldn"t clearly see events?

No. Because those visions were fleeting, and with only sound and sight. This time, the fog touches my skin and a dank smell wraps around me, too. I shove my way forward, as if waving smoke out of the way.

Not smoke. Shadows circling my arms and creating a cloud around me.

My surroundings. I need to know the surroundings.

A glance to my right. A crumbling brick wall arching above us, exposed pipes running alongside. The left—the same, adorned with graffiti. Dim light filters from a darkness ahead of me, and I"m standing on uneven ground strewn with broken bricks and piled refuse; the modern meeting the past. A derelict factory? A tunnel?

I squint, trying to make out more, but the shadows obscure my view, leaving the rest of the area shrouded in darkness.

There"s no noise. I focus on the graffitied wall, looking for clues, but there"s nothing out of the ordinary daubed amongst the multi-coloured sprayed names and tags.

No. There"s something. A black symbol created by spray paint. A rune? Memorise the image, Maeve. Circular. Intersecting lines crossing the circle. Something smaller in the centre. I"m jerked away from my scrutiny by a crash echoing.

I"m somewhere large.

"Maeve!" shouts a voice, and I spin around.

Andrei. His hair is mussed, and face filled with panic, dressed in only a black T-shirt and jeans. Can I touch him through the shadows as I could in the last vision where we interacted? Speak to him?

"What"s happening?" I ask as he rushes to me, stopping short at the edge of the misty barrier. "Where are we?" He drags hair from his face, and my heart dives into my mouth as I see his fingers. "Whose blood is that?"

"I tried," he whispers. "I don"t know what else to do."

"Who"s here?" I say, mind as big a blur as the shadows surrounding me. "All of us?"

In the corner of that mind, something colder than the icy fingers from the shadows creeps through my body to bury into my soul. "Who"s here with us?" I yell again.

"Maeve. Just tell me what I should do. I don"t have time."

The creeping sensation claws into my body, tearing at my heart. "It"s Jamie, isn"t it?" I clutch at Andrei"s wrist. "What happened?"

Andrei stares at me in disbelief. "Have the shadows switched off your brain?" he shouts. "What the fuck do I do? Have you ever discussed what he"d want?"

No.

Oh, god, no.

I plead with the shadows not to clear and reveal more. I don"t want to witness who else might be with Andrei. The shadows coil, soaking up the power, urging me onwards towards information I need but can"t bear to confront.

I stumble backwards as if something crashes through a rib, pulling at my sternum, ripping it away from me. A mind-aching desire to destroy takes hold, as the shadows build.

"Jamie died," I say to Andrei, a statement, not a question.

He doesn"t reply.

Andrei doesn"t need to because speaking those words flings me backwards from the vision and I jerk back to consciousness, eyes snapping open. Tobias, Jamie, and Andrei stand around the bed and I struggle to focus properly as I catch up to my surroundings.

"Pen and paper," I say weakly, rolling onto my side. "Now."

Jamie snatches a pad and pen from the nightstand and thrusts it at me. Attempting to hold on to the fading images, I scrawl a rough sketch of the place I envisioned. I"m frustrated that the memory of the rune fades faster than images of the walls and pipes, and draw the shape over and over until I"m hopeful enough that I"ve got at least something to work with, and for Jamie to research.

My head spins as if I"ve woken up drunk, and I grip onto the bed sheets, determined not to vomit.

"A vision?" asks Tobias gently as he crouches beside me. His palm rests on my forehead, his brow furrowing as he takes hold of the fear.

"What did you see?" asks Jamie and takes the paper from the edge of the bed. "Anything helpful? Gabriella"s location?"

"I don"t know what I saw," I tell them, half-truthfully. "But we need to discover where this place is and never, ever go there unless we"re all together."

* * *

I persuadethe guys to wait until Ash returns from his run before I explain the vision, then curl up in an armchair. I"m barely aware of the room or people, still half-inside the events, as I hang onto images that will fade soon. Tobias and Andrei sit nearby, but we don"t speak.

Jamie already knows.

Is that why he took the paper from me and shut himself away to research the rune shape? Runes. I caught sight of Jamie at his laptop yesterday and he shut the lid, claiming he was looking into Declan"s files. Jamie hasn"t spent this much time on his laptop since the days we searched for my fathers. Now I know why. My bonded witch is researching the shadows.

Ash arrives within the hour, a glow to his face but no perspiration. Do the humans he passes notice this? He"s barely out of breath either and heads straight to the kitchen, then returns with an open bottle of water.

Tobias calls for Jamie and, as he thuds downstairs, Ash pauses and looks warily at us. "What"s up? I never saw or sensed any supes outside. Has one approached the house?"

I curl tighter into a ball and even my breathing.

"No. Maeve had a vision," says Andrei.

"Oh?" Again, Ash remains wary, reading the room as he places his bottle down and takes a seat on the sofa beside Jamie.

"We"ve waited for you to return," Tobias explains to Ash, who nods. "Maeve?"

"Any luck on identifying the rune, Jamie?" I ask.

"Where do I die this time?" he replies, voice flat.

My stomach bottoms out as I meet his eyes. I should"ve told him straightaway, but I didn"t need to. He knew. "I never saw you die, Jamie," I say.

"This place." He taps the scrawled sketch I made. "I die there. You tried to calm your mind when you looked at me, but I"m not stupid. You didn"t have the same spike of panic when you looked at Tobias and Andrei after the vision. Were they in the future you saw?"

I moisten my dry lips. "I only saw Andrei."

"Doing what?" he puts in sharply.

"Speaking to me." I look to Andrei. "You never mentioned the others. And I couldn"t see. My early visions happened inside a fog, and I only caught glimpses. This time, I was in that fog again. An industrial area? Tunnels?"

"Not fog, shadows," says Jamie. "The shadows were with you the whole time. Every vision you"ve had, Maeve."

At their mention, the room drops into quiet, the only sound the humming of the fridge through the open kitchen door.

"I guess..." I say.

"Today"svision proves you"ll connect with the shadows," he says. "That almost makes up for the déjà vu."

"Déjà vu?" asks Ash.

"Y"know, Maeve seeing me die again." He scratches his nose.

"I didn"t see you die, Jamie!" I protest.

"But Andrei told you I was dead," he says.

"No. That"s your interpretation." I take a breath and explain act by act what I witnessed and was part of. The vagueness of Andrei"s words doesn"t help my argument that Jamie doesn"t die. The first visions of Jamie didn"t show a death; the detail came later. He knows that.

Jamie chokes and shakes his head when I"m done. ""Have you ever discussed what he"d want?" It"s bloody obvious what that means. Turning me because I"m dying."

Tobias hasn"t broken the silence that engulfed him the moment Jamie mentioned he"d die, returning to the quiet observer from the group"s early days.

A vision of Jamie dying? It is the early days all over again.

A thought hollows out my heart—is someone"s death a future I can"t change and that"s why Jamie"s threatened again?

"You let me die, that"s what I"d want," he says, looking between Andrei and Tobias. "You don"t risk your vampire blood poisoning and killing me a second time and agonisingly."

"You do know that"s an exaggerated story to prevent vampires from turning witches?" asks Tobias gently. "The witches rarely die."

"Rarely? That"s still a percentage! And I am not living in the dark for the rest of my eternity. Fuck, no. Don"t touch me," he says firmly.

"You might not stay in the dark," continues Tobias.

"What? If I take Andrei"s First-polluted blood?"

"No, Jamie. If we solve the hemia curse."

Jamie frowns, mouth a thin line. "What"s this, Tobias? A vampire recruitment drive?"

I can"t speak, hardly able to breathe. Why are they talking about what to do when Jamie dies and not about stopping his death? I"ve prevented him from dying once and will again. "Jamie won"t die. This is an unnecessary conversation."

Our gazes lock and behind Jamie"s angry determination, the fear I recognise from the early days has returned to his eyes.

"I didn"t see you die, and you won"t die," I press.

"And if you do, I promise nobody will go against your clearly stated wishes," says Tobias.

"I just said Jamie won"t die!" I shout, held back emotion bursting from me. "And stop discussing turning him. Do you want to make things worse?" Tobias"s brows shoot up and I suck in a calming breath. "I"ll work on the vision. Now that I"ve tapped into the magic, I"m confident Jamie can help guide me back there."

"But to where?" asks Andrei. "Where were we?"

"I didn"t sense the First"s presence, and I"m sure I would"ve. This place must link to Gabriella, so that"s where we focus."

Jamie stands, not saying anything else as he leaves the room. Without a word to the others, I follow him into the hallway, the door clicking closed behind us.

"I"ve no choice but to embrace Blackwood magic now," I say quietly.

He pauses and turns. "You agree now you"ve seen something in a vision?"

"No, Jamie. Because last time you tried to protect yourself against death, you turned to Blackwood magic. The magic lives in me, but I don"t know what might happen to you." I draw him into a tight hug. "Don"t use any Blackwood spells without me."

"I won"t need to," he says and holds my shoulders to look at me. "The shadows were with you in your vision. Blackwood magic will protect me. Protect us."

Protect. But Jamie still thinks he might die, otherwise why the outburst to Andrei and Tobias that nobody should turn him?

"I hope you"re right," I whisper, stroking his face. "We practise my visions. Every day. Push until we find something concrete."

"If we can figure out where you were and what that rune is, that"d be a huge help." He kisses my forehead. "I notice you"ve spent a lot of time working with Tobias on mental magic. Any more success with that? We need everything we"ve got."

"I"ve managed to control him a couple of times without Tobias giving me a massive headache in retaliation."

Jamie arches a brow. "I won"t ask what you made him do."

"Jamie!" I shove him in the chest and he laughs, the sound breaking through the wall of tension between us.

He pulls me to him, and our mouths meet in a gentle kiss, one that"s filled with love and understanding, a reminder of who we are. Not just as lovers, but with the subtle flow of magic between bonded witches. Jamie is a part of me, and he"s right—if my vision did show the aftermath of Jamie"s death, there"s no question in my mind that I"ll take every single part of who I am as a witch to protect him.

Lex needs to show me how to control the shadows.