Chapter 2
Talin
I adjusted my black vest for the third time in as many minutes, smoothing the metallic thread that caught the candlelight flickering around Aunt Judy's kitchen table.
The material was soft beneath my fingers, familiar, but it felt like armor that night.
Not just against the weight of my cousins' stares and the disappointment building in the charged air, but against the vulnerability that came with sitting among people who could see magic but had never seen me. Really seen me.
The vest did more than hide the uneven plane of my chest. It hid the truth of what I was—broken, incomplete, someone who'd been carved away and stitched back together wrong. At least when I was covered like this, I could pretend I was a whole woman.
The coven meeting had been going for forty-seven minutes. I knew because I'd been watching the clock on the wall, counting down the time until I could escape back to my apartment and pretend the knot in my chest would eventually unravel on its own.
"—still no word from the Seattle covens," Angel was saying, her red hair bright against the pale skin of her face as she gestured with her usual dramatic flair.
"But last I heard from Emma, Jesse, Shea, Ryan, and Christian were still missing, and they'd heard nothing about their plane other than it never landed and hadn't been found. "
Lizzy looked up from her spot across the table, fingers absentmindedly stroking the fat, gray cat curled up in her lap. "I hope they're all okay."
A picture of the plane I saw in my dream flashed in my mind, and I frowned. A plane caught in a gray void.
But no. Surely not.
I almost said something, but changed my mind. Even if I were right, no one would believe it was anything more than a dream without more evidence.
"Which brings us back to the same problem we've had for two weeks," Alice said quietly. Her voice carried the exhausted edge that had become permanent since her twin disappeared. "We have no idea where my brother is or how to get him back."
I shifted in my chair, the words burning in my throat.
I had ideas. I had more than ideas. I had dreams and visions that showed fragments of caverns and shadows and blue and red and silver threads that led somewhere important.
But every time I'd tried to explain what I was seeing, they looked at me like I was a child playing dress-up in her mother's clothes.
Not a real witch.
Just like I wasn't a real woman.
"We should ask the vampires for help," Angel suggested. "I'm sure Killian has resources we don't—"
"No." Aunt Judy's voice cut through the kitchen with the authority that had made her High Priestess of our coven for over twenty years. "We handle this within the family. The vampires have their own agenda, and Alex is our responsibility."
"He's also Kenya's mate," Angel argued. "I'd say that makes him the vampire's problem, too."
Judy's blue eyes snapped to my cousin, the corners of her mouth turning down like she'd just sucked on a lemon. It was getting harder and harder for her to keep the separation between our coven and theirs when more than half of us were mated to a vampire.
My fingers found the edge of my vest again, worrying the fabric. I needed to tell them what I'd seen. And if they blew me off, well, at least I'd tried. I cleared my throat and instantly regretted it. But I pressed on.
"I've been having more visions," I said.
The conversation didn't pause. Didn't even slow down.
"—think we should try your blood scrying ritual again," Lizzy was saying to Esme. "Maybe if we asked Kenya to help us? We could try her blood—"
"I said I've been having visions." Louder that time, but still careful. Still polite. Because that's what I did. I spoke last, spoke quietly, tried not to take up too much space in a family that had never quite known what to do with me.
That time they heard me.
Aunt Judy's bright blue eyes found mine across the table, patient but weary. "Talin, sweetie, we've talked about this. These dreams you're having—"
"They're not just dreams." The words came out sharper than I intended, and I winced.
I lowered my voice back to something softer, more reasonable.
"They're not just dreams, Aunt Judy. They're different.
I don't know how I know that. I just do.
The threads I've been seeing, they're connections between people…
and I can see them now. Actually see them. "
"Talin," Angel said, her tone gentle in that way that made my teeth clench. "We've all been under a lot of stress since Alex disappeared. Sometimes our minds create patterns where there aren't any—"
"I'm not imagining this." My hand moved to my vest again, smoothing down fabric that was already perfectly flat.
A nervous gesture that I'd picked up somewhere along the line.
"There's a blue thread that connects to Alex, and it's being held by something dark.
My guess is Marcus. Because there are other threads too.
A red one that pulses with urgency, and a silver one that's—"
I stopped myself before I could mention the silver thread that called to me like a beacon. The one that felt like safety. A calm, ordered harbor in the storm. The one that led to a certain dark-eyed vampire who made my skin hum with an energy I didn't understand every time I saw him.
Lizzy exchanged a look with Aunt Judy. The kind of look that said volumes without a single word spoken.
"Talin," Aunt Judy said carefully, "your great-grandmother had similar experiences after traumatic events. Sometimes our magical sensitivity can manifest as vivid dreams or hallucinations when we're processing grief or fear."
Hallucinations.
The word hit me like a scalpel, precise and cutting.
I felt my cheeks burn, a flush of embarrassment and anger creeping across my skin that made my chest tight.
They thought I was having some kind of breakdown.
They thought I was some fragile little girl who couldn't handle reality, so my brain was creating magical fairy tales to cope.
Just like the doctors thought my pain was psychosomatic until they'd found the tumor growing where my feminine curves should have been developing.
Once again, nobody believed what my body was trying to tell me.
"I'm not hallucinating," I said quietly. "I've done some research. And I think I'm a Threadwalker. And maybe my great-grandmother was, too. "
The silence that followed was worse than their dismissal. It was the kind of silence that came before someone said something they knew would hurt.
"Threadwalking is extremely rare," Aunt Judy said finally. "And it usually manifests in childhood, not—"
"Not in twenty-six-year-old women who should know better?
" The bitterness in my voice surprised even me.
"I know how old I am, Aunt Judy. I also know what I'm seeing.
And I know it's not just some kind of dream or a trauma response.
" I paused as a thought occurred to me. "Maybe it was trying to manifest when I was younger.
And maybe my body rejected this magic back then.
Maybe it poisoned my body, and that's why I got sick. "
Honestly, this wasn't the first time I'd had these kinds of thoughts. But it was the first time I'd said them out loud.
There was a flash of emotion in my aunt's blue eyes, but she said nothing.
"What exactly are you seeing?" Alice asked. Her voice was careful, clinical. Like a doctor humoring a patient.
I took a breath, tried to organize the chaos of images and sensations into something they might believe. "Alex is alive—"
"You've seen him?" Angel asked.
I looked down at the floor. "Not exactly."
"Then how do you know?"
Meeting her eyes across the table, I straightened my spine and tried to sound like I believed what I was saying. "Because I felt him. Through the threads I see. He's being held somewhere that feels like shadows and stone. I think Marcus has him bound, but it's with magic I don't recognize."
"What do you mean?" This time it was Lizzy.
"I mean it's not just djinn magic. I've felt that before, just like the rest of you, and the magic I feel in my visions isn't the same.
It's something older. Hungrier." I paused, gathering courage for the part I knew they'd hate.
"I think I can go deeper and find out more.
And I think there's someone who can help me find him.
Someone whose thread connects to both Alex and Marcus and…
" I paused, then forced myself to say it, "me in ways I don't understand yet. "
"Who?" Lizzy asked.
I adjusted my vest one more time, the gesture buying me a few seconds to decide how much truth I was willing to share. "Elias Noire."
The reaction was immediate and exactly what I'd expected. Angel gestured with one hand toward Judy as if to say, "See?", Lizzy's eyebrows shot up, and Aunt Judy's mouth compressed into a thin line.
"Absolutely not," she said. "I've already said, the vampires are not getting involved in this. We can handle our own family crisis without outside interference."
"But what if we can't?" The question slipped out before I could stop it. "What if Alex dies while we're sitting here arguing about coven politics?"
"Talin." Aunt Judy's voice carried a warning. "You will not go to the vampires behind this coven's back. Is that understood?"
"What if they can help us? What if Elias can help?"
Aunt Judy slammed her hand down on the table, her patience at an end.
"What do vampires know about djinn magic?
Or any magic, for the matter?" Her eyes swept the room, daring anyone to contradict her.
"My answer is no. We're not getting them involved.
Everything we say stays in this room. Is that understood?
" She glanced at Lizzy, Angel, and Esme, waiting for them to nod their agreement before coming back to me.
I nodded, but the agreement felt hollow. Because I could feel it even then, sitting in that warm kitchen surrounded by the people who were supposed to understand me—the pull of that silver thread I'd seen in my visions. It tugged at something deep in my chest, insistent and undeniable.
And it led straight to The Purple Fang.
"I think we should focus on what we can control," Alice said, her soft voice smoothing over the tension. "The blood scrying ritual, contacting the other covens to see if they know anything we don't, researching djinn binding spells—"
My thumb found the tender spot on my wrist where I'd pressed too hard that morning, the small crescent-shaped mark hidden beneath my sleeve. The familiar sting was oddly comforting. At least this pain I controlled. At least this hurt was mine to give and mine to take away.
They kept talking, but I'd stopped listening. Because in the space between heartbeats, between one breath and the next, I felt it again. The shimmer of otherness that came just before the visions hit.
The kitchen dimmed around me, candlelight fading to shadows. Threads of light began to weave through the air. But stronger this time. Clearer.
I could see Alex's thread, that brilliant blue that pulsed with desperate urgency. It stretched across impossible distances, disappearing into a darkness so complete it seemed to swallow light itself. But it was there. He was alive.
I knew he was alive.
And connected to his thread by thin strands of silver was another. Steady, controlled, radiating the kind of calm strength that made the tightness in my chest loosen just slightly. This thread didn't pulse or flicker like the others. It moved with deliberate precision.
It felt like someone who could hold broken pieces together until they remembered how to be whole.
Elias.
The name whispered through my consciousness like a promise. Like the answer to a question I'd been too afraid to ask.
The vision lasted only seconds, but when it faded, I was gripping the edge of the table hard enough to make my knuckles white. My cousins were still talking, still planning strategies that danced around the edges of the real problem without ever touching it.
They didn't believe me. They wouldn't listen. And Alex was running out of time.
"I need some air," I said, standing so abruptly my chair scraped against the tile floor.
"Talin—" Aunt Judy started.
"I'm fine. Just... I need a minute."
I was already moving toward the back door, grabbing my jacket from the hook by the pantry. The night air was a bit of a shock as it hit my face, cool and clean after the suffocating weight of good intentions and gentle dismissal, and I took the first real breath I'd taken since I'd arrived.
I stood on the back porch for a long time, listening to the muffled voices of my family through the kitchen window. They loved me. I knew that. But love didn't always mean understanding, and understanding didn't always mean belief.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a text from Alice.
Are you okay? You seemed upset.
I stared at the screen for a moment, then typed back.
I'm fine. Just tired.
It wasn't entirely a lie. I was tired. Bone-deep, soul-tired from carrying around these visions no one believed and knowing things I couldn't prove.
Tired of being treated like the delicate one, the one who needed protection instead of respect.
Tired of being the broken one, the girl who'd lost pieces of herself and never learned how to function as less than whole.
But more than that, I was tired of being afraid. Afraid my magic would hurt me again. Afraid that if anyone saw the real me—scarred and incomplete and desperate for connection—they'd find me as wanting as I found myself.
The silver thread in my vision was the only thing that felt like possibility.
Like hope. Like maybe, for once, I wouldn't have to face this alone.
And if that meant defying my family's expectations and risking their disapproval, well, then maybe it was time to stop making myself small enough to fit into their comfort zone.
And it led to a vampire who probably wanted nothing to do with me or my chaotic powers.
But that was too bad. Because if my family wouldn't listen to what I was seeing, maybe it was time to find someone who would. I'd already arranged with Killian to meet Elias at The Purple Fang the following night.
The vampire who appeared in my visions as that silver thread of perfect control. The one whose presence, even in my dreams, made the confusion settle into something I could almost understand.
I had no idea what I was going to say to him. Had no idea if he'd believe me or think I was just chasing shadows.
But I had to try.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket and headed for my car, not bothering to go back inside and endure another round of gentle condescension. They'd figure out I was gone eventually.