Chapter 3
River
Fate was strange, if not always considerate.
One minute I was lamenting my missing handbag, the next, the universe plopped it right back in my lap along with who I believed was exactly the woman I’d been looking for.
And while I was certainly grateful that my searching hadn’t proved fruitless, I would have appreciated more time to prepare before she turned up at my doorstep.
But there she was, in the flesh, ten minutes after our brief phone call. She wore a tense expression and an old leather jacket, watching me with dark, guarded eyes across the threshold. It was her, the woman from my visions. I was sure of it.
We stared at each other.
Her hair was dark and choppy, cropped short in places like she’d cut it herself—in the dark.
Her navy sweater was frayed under her jacket and under that, her button-up was clasped tightly at her throat.
Protective layers that looked more like makeshift armor than any sort of fashion statement.
Her jeans looked borrowed, too short on her legs, and her loafers looked just about ready to throw in the towel.
Under that perpetual tension in her shoulders, there was a bristling sense of something not quite right with her that I couldn’t put my finger on.
She was short, small, and she kept her shoulders hunched like she wanted to shrink down even further.
Something told me she wasn’t just wary of strangers, but rather the world at large.
Then she cleared her throat. “Uh, hi.” She slid the strap of my bag off her shoulder and held it out like a shield. “I brought your bag.”
I remembered then that staring was rude and snapped on a polite smile. “Hey, thanks! You saved me a midnight trek through the city with this delivery.”
When the woman said nothing back, only held the bag out further, I faltered. Oh, she definitely went through your stuff. She saw everything. Hunter was going to kick my ass.
Just to make sure, I reached for the bag and kept the smile glued to my face. “I can be a real scatterbrain sometimes—good thing I left my number floating around in there. And, uh… hope you didn’t find anything too embarrassing when you were digging?”
The woman raised a brow and I swallowed a wince. Subtle.
“Nope.” I caught the faintest waver in her voice, and she snatched her hand away the moment I had the bag securely in my grasp. “Not much. You should consider clearing out your bag once in a while, though.”
She was lying. Of course she was lying. But if she’d seen the vials of blood at the bottom of my bag then why the hell had she decided to deliver it straight to me? Did she want leverage? Did she know what I was? Was she a…
No. She was human. I could taste her mortality like something sweet on my tongue. And she looked ready to flee if I so much as blinked wrong.
“Yeah, uh. I have a bit of a hoarding problem. If you think this bag is cluttered you should see the rest of my place.” I gestured over my shoulder and contemplated inviting her in.
If we did need her memory wiped, it would make sense to keep her around until Hunter showed up.
But then again, I’d rather find out what her game was first before wiping the entire interaction from her mind.
That and, considering the apprehension etched into her every muscle, I wasn’t sure she’d be willing to set a single foot inside.
Like she’d read my mind, her eyes flicked over my shoulder, scanning the dimly lit foyer beyond.
“So…” I rocked on my heels, hugging the bag to my chest, “did you want anything for your trouble? A… coffee, or I don’t know.” I shrugged, hoping she’d linger long enough for me to get a better read on her.
From the way she hesitated, I wondered if she was thinking the same thing. Then she shook her head, lips thinning to a papercut smile. “No, I'm good. Please don’t worry about it.” She took a small step backward. “Just wanted to make sure you got your bag back.”
I matched her expression, a deferential mask. Why lie about what you found? “In that case, thanks again. Really.”
She bobbed a stiff nod. “Sure.” Her eyes flicked around my face, looking for… what exactly? But she gave me no time to unravel that thread, backing away from the doorway and bowing her head low. “Anyway, I should get going…”
“Wait—” I jolted forward a little too quickly and she flinched away from the movement. Her body leaned away like she was preparing for a sprint, but her feet stayed planted in place. I noticed the tremor in her fingers. “Sorry, I just—I didn’t catch your name.”
When her eyes met mine, they were haunted. That was the only way to describe it. She was looking right at me, but I got the feeling she wasn’t seeing me at all. She opened her mouth, and her voice was a whisper, an echo from somewhere far away. “Laurie.”
“Laurie.” I rolled the name around on my tongue, but it didn’t ring any bells whatsoever. She really was a stranger, connected to me only by a lost handbag and a brief glimpse of a potential future. “I’m River.”
For a moment, she didn’t respond, just stared ahead with unseeing eyes. Then she blinked, shook her head, and offered a small nod in my direction, faint resignation in her tone. “Nice to meet you, River.”
I cleared my throat, unsure of how best to approach my next question. “So… Do you hang around that bar a lot? Where you, um, found my bag?” I tried to sound casual, just curious. Definitely not sussing her out.
Laurie’s eyes narrowed, the corners of her mouth twitching downward. “Sometimes,” she answered slowly. Her voice was cool, but I sensed the same chord of suspicion for me that I felt toward her. “Maybe I’ll see you around there?”
“Maybe you will.” I forced a light laugh and my fingers twitched on the strap of my bag, still uneasy over the notion that she’d discovered more than she admitted to.
Laurie flicked a glance down the street, then pulled her jacket tighter. She gave a stiff shrug. “Anyway, I’ve really gotta go.”
“Right. Uh, sure. Thanks again—for, you know.”
She nodded once, curtly, like she’d used up her daily quota of pleasantries.
I watched her back away, keeping her eyes fastened on mine until her heels hit the sidewalk. Then she turned and strode away down the street, blinking in and out of sight under the glow of the streetlights.
I let out the breath I’d been unable to release while her eyes were fixed on me, and my entire chest felt lighter than it had a second ago.
It was like stepping out of a haze of smoke or collapsing into bed after a long day.
All I’d done was hold a stiff conversation.
So why did my body ache like I’d been hauling boulders around on my shoulders?
It’s her, I realized with a start, it’s Laurie’s presence.
There had been an air of deep discomfort around her, a tumultuous thundercloud hanging over her head. Something that made my intuition prickle. It shouldn’t have been so strange to me. I was in tune with all of my associates' emotions. I could read them all like an open book.
But a stranger? That usually took time and careful sensing. I had to get to know them first.
Laurie had been different. Somehow, despite not knowing her from a bar of soap, I’d felt her conflict. It was all-encompassing, suffocating in its intensity. And it vanished the instant she left my sight, leaving me oddly weightless in the aftermath.
My gaze dropped to the bag at my side—my bag with all its suspicious contents.
If she truly found the vials of blood or the strange trinkets and she recognized their meaning…
Well, that would explain her unease, at least partly.
But that sensation that surrounded her went much deeper.
Like she was carrying a storm inside her head.
Sighing, I turned on my heel and headed back inside. The door clicked shut behind me, and my mind sprinted a mile a minute. What on earth had she gone through to make her so guarded?
I dropped my bag near the entrance, biting the inside of my cheek.
Part of me wanted to run after her, press her for answers, figure out why I’d had a vision that insinuated that our survival hinged entirely on her.
But the rational part of me whispered caution: if she was important, if she was broken and dangerous all at once, I’d need to handle her gently.
No memory wipes, not yet. I had to know more—and hope like hell that I was wrong about her pain. Because I did not want to imagine what she had endured to carry that heavy a burden.
The following morning, bright and early, I holed up in my office at Leyore headquarters and got to work. Which is to say, I ignored the hefty stack of paperwork Maxine had left on my desk and instead let my mind wander.
Perched on a creaking cabinet, one knee propped up and eyes shut tight, I tried to will the familiar flicker of something that I’d channeled so often before—a flash of insight, a blast of premonition, anything that might guide me forward.
The office door was shut, the blinds were drawn, and I was determined to coax out another vision of Laurie from somewhere within the confines of my mind. But every time I tried to zero in on that thread of fate connecting us, I hit a blank wall.
I groaned and let my eyelids flutter open. The office felt claustrophobic. My hair lay loose around my shoulders, and I could feel every strand tickling my neck. I rubbed a hand over my eyes, frustration mounting.
Nothing. The moment I focused my mind on Laurie, the future turned fuzzy. The timelines refused to yield. My typical glimpses—where I'd see fleeting events or a sharp sense of incoming danger—just wouldn’t solidify around her.
It rattled me, enraged me, and left my nerves on edge. Maybe a different position will fix it?
I had just figured out how to balance on my head, toes pointed skyward, when a loud pounding rattled the door. A moment later Jordan burst in, barely sparing a glance at my impromptu yoga session in the middle of the office floor.
“All right, Madame Mysterious, care to explain why you ditched Hunter’s party last night without so much as a heads-up?” She stomped around my desk and plopped down in the swivel chair.
With a stifled sigh, I brought my feet down and pushed myself upright, tottering in a wobbly line while the blood rushed from my head. “Something came up.”
“Oh yeah?” Jordan raised a brow. “You left so fast I thought the building was on fire. What’s going on?”
“Something weird,” I muttered and perched on the edge of the desk. “I had a vision. But I’m not even sure what exactly I saw, or how any of it adds up.”
Jordan eyed Maxine’s untouched paperwork with a smirk before dragging her gaze back to me. “You? Unsure? I never thought I’d see the day.”
I ignored the jab and tapped my temple. “I keep hitting a blank when I try to glean more details. You know how it works. The glimpses come and go. This one points to something important, but the path is murky.”
Jordan shrugged one shoulder, leaning back in the seat.
“Yeah, well, maybe the universe is trying to tell you to chill out. You act like the world’s about to end every time you get a snippet you can’t decipher immediately.
” Her tone was part scolding, part affectionate as she eyed me. “You need a break.”
I snorted and the corner of my mouth quirked up. “I appreciate your professional diagnosis.”
Jordan steepled her fingers. “Look, if it’s crucial, you’ll see more. Right? That’s how your gift works. Or you’ll, I don’t know, get slapped in the face by fate eventually.”
“Maybe.” I shrugged, tracing wood grain patterns on the desk with one finger. “There’s this… person. I don’t know much about her, but I know she’s important somehow.”
Jordan cocked her head to the side. “And you can’t tell if she’s friend or foe?”
“It’s not that…” I speared a hand through my hair. Laurie’s dark, guarded eyes flickered in my mind. “It’s just… no matter how hard I try, how far I look…”
I closed my eyes, and dread was a sharp prickle in my veins. I was missing something. I had to be. Because regardless of the way I bent my body, or emptied my mind—no matter what I did…
“I can’t see her future. There’s nothing there at all.”