It had been that way since Granddad. Only, as I grew, the visions became clearer and happened faster. Sometimes, it only took moments of looking at a person. Other times, it took days. With strangers, it wasn’t so bad. I didn’t claim to be something I was not. I knew there were only so many deaths I could prevent after seeing McKenna Carson die of cancer in fourth grade, five years before she was diagnosed. When I’d told my mom, she’d laughed. She’d called me a dreamer and told me my imagination was out of hand. Two years later, when I wouldn’t give up and had predicted the deaths of six of my peers and two of her estranged relatives, she took me to a shrink.
I’ve been diagnosed with it all. I’ve been called paranoid, delusional, and even psychotic. It’s funny how they threw labels on me, but when I stole a car trying to save a kid from being killed by her stepfather, they ripped them all off. Suddenly, I was sane as hell and facing another round of ‘time out’ at the big house. I could never say I regretted it at all. I didn’t give a fuck what they thought I had. I knew what I saw. I knew my visions were real and that I saved that little girl. I wasn’t about to take that back.
It took four more stops before the sign for Reed Avenue told me my memory had been correct and this was my cue to get off. I nodded at the lucky driver before descending the steps of the bus. I kept my head low and pulled my too-tight sweatshirt down on my wrists and stepped out for the first time in years into open, unsupervised air. And for a moment, it almost felt like death might finally fuck off.
Chapter Two
Violet
“I don’t think this is your best idea.”
I didn’t even bother to look up as I clasped the last buckle on my heels. In fact, Ethel has been all ‘Negative Nancy’ since we left North Carolina. If the stress of being around this many people weren’t enough, she was slowly suffocating me from the inside out.
I untwisted my favorite lipstick, Purple Passions. “You remember, this was your idea, right?” I asked, rubbing my lips together.
Ethel widened her feline eyes. Today she had chosen the form of a cat. We decided it made more sense as we were staying in an extended-stay hotel that didn’t allow dogs, rodents, or reptiles and we wanted to leave the second suite room open just in case our plan worked. Only two people allowed per suite, and cats were not on the naughty list. My pain-in-the-butt demon best-friend had to stay in the form of a feline until we left New York.
She jumped onto the kitchen table, stretching her whole body out—claiming the table as hers. Well, there goes any thought of eating on that table. “When have you ever listened to my ideas?” Her blue eyes got wide for a split-second. “What if the elders see you here?”
“They are all still recovering from Winter Solstice. You know it will be at least six weeks before any of them show their pretty little faces. They gotta sort who became pregnant during the festivities.” I rolled eyes as I put on my thick-ish winter jacket. I participated in the festivities once. Longest six weeks of my life and I swore to myself the day I found out I was not expecting, I would never put myself through that kind of torture again.
“How are you going to pull this off? You look like you just left a honky-tonk, not a parole officer. At the very least, take off the purple hat. Damn it, woman, why the purple?” She yawned and flipped onto her back.
I tensed my shoulders when she cussed. “You know about my resolution, why do you have to tempt me?”
She flipped back over and smiled in the way only a human disguised as a cat could. “I never promised you I would not cuss. That is all on you.”
I shot her my middle finger as I took off my cowboy hat and replaced it with a purple toboggan one. I double checked my coat pocket to make sure his address, my phone, and wallet were all there.
“Here I go. Let’s see if I can go catch us a Death Seer.”
Ethel turned her back to me. “Whatever sinks your ship.”
“What?”
Still facing away from me, “I don’t think you should do this. So, whatever sinks your ship.”
I rolled my eyes again as I opened the door. “The saying is ‘Whatever floats your boat,’ meaning do whatever pleases you. I think you just told me to drown and die.”
I shut the hotel room door as I heard Ethel’s laughter follow me down the hallway.
MY TOES WERE FROZEN. I didn’t know I would need gloves. Even my nose hairs became icicles. Parts of my body were shivering in places that were not designed to shiver. Why people chose to live in frozen air was beyond me.
If the frozen air wasn’t bad enough, the amount of people here amazed me. Back home, I could sit on my porch and hear nothing but nature. Everything was so much louder here. I had to yell at a construction worker just to get directions to Reed Avenue. Granted, he was wearing a suit and sitting on a bench eating. Okay, he wasn’t a construction worker. When he began using my resolution words, I asked him, “Does your Momma know you use words like that?” Tears fell down his cheeks, and I got his whole life story. After the yelling, mistaken identity, and tears, I had officially acquired an escort to Reed Avenue. My new friend said I shouldn’t be on a street like this by myself. Of course, he didn’t know how well I could handle myself. That’s neither here nor there.
I patted his arm and waved goodbye, as a nice tenant held the door for me to the apartment building. I walked up the stairs to the third floor. The higher I walked, the worse the paint. I had to skip a few steps on the stairs because boards were missing. A roach fell on my shoulder as I walked down the hallway indicating the apartment number. This building definitely could use a bit of work.
Two roaches scattered across the door I was supposed to knock on. I looked up to the peeling ceiling and asked myself, why didn’t I wear gloves? I don’t think kicking a door would make a recently released convict trust me. Instead, I took a deep breath, reached out my hand, and tapped the door. One of the roaches fell off the door, onto my hand, and shimmied up my sleeve.
“Ew.” I jerked off my jacket in panic mode, in a desperate attempt to kill the roach.
“I wouldn’t leave your coat on the floor.”
I spun around, and for a split second, my heart stopped. Prison was somehow good for him. He was bigger and had more muscle than his mug shot. He didn’t have the bulky muscle of someone who worked out too much; instead, he was toned enough I could see the outline of his muscles, even in his forearms. His face was still shaved from prison, but his jawline was dark from a shadow growing in. The only reason I recognized him was by his light green eyes. Those eyes popped on the mugshot.
I held my hand out to him, “Violet Hennessey, nice to meet you. I am your Parole Officer, and I need you to come with me.”
He looked down the hallway. He looked at my jacket, but he never once looked me in the eye. I felt my mouth drop open in shock when his eyes stopped moving and settled on my cleavage. I looked down. In the hustle of shaking the roach off, my V-neck sweater shifted to reveal half my bra. For the thousandth time today, I rolled my eyes. I picked my jacket up off the floor and shook it hard, to make sure no bugs got in while it was on the floor.
As soon as my bra exposed cleavage was concealed by my jacket, he dropped his eye contact to my shoes. “I need to you to come with me and check in.”