Huh? Talia replayed the old woman’s words in her mind. It made no sense.
“What—” does she mean? Talia meant to ask, glancing up at Adam as her throat flared with pain and eroded her words.
Adam broke contact and turned. “This is Abigail, and she can see the future. Or lots of futures, depending on what people decide to do.”
“Can she—” see mine? Talia brought her hand to her chest.
Adam shook his head. No. “She can’t see faery futures.”
But…Talia made a cutting motion with her hand down the front of her body, symbolically halving herself.
“I know,” Adam answered. “You’re half human. Abigail says she still can’t see your future. Apparently, your father’s blood runs a little thicker than your mother’s.”
Can she see yours? Talia gestured to Adam.
“Bits and pieces,” he answered, looking away.
Which “bits and pieces”? Talia wanted to shake him.
Talia’s gaze flew to Abigail, who merely raised an amused brow.
If the woman could see Adam’s future, she had to be able to glimpse something of Talia’s as well. Adam had to be there when she screamed, when Shadowman ended the war. And after? What happened after? Did Adam’s future include her?
“You can stay here for the time being. We’ve prepared a room for you down the hallway. You’ll get used to the noise from downstairs. When you’ve rested and”—Abigail twitched her nose—“cleaned up, it would be nice of you to come downstairs and make an appearance.”
“I don’t think it would be a good idea to show up in a public place,” he said. “I don’t want to tempt fate by allowing a club full of people to see us.”
Talia agreed with him.
“But they’re all here for you.” Abigail looked directly at Talia as she spoke. The force of her statement had Talia stepping back.
“What—” do you mean? Apprehension escalated wildly in Talia’s body, tension flexing the small and large muscles of her aching diaphragm.
“This is no club,” Abigail explained. “This is a celebration. A Death Fete. We gather to celebrate you, Banshee, and your father, Shadowman. We have long recognized that the demon who calls himself the Death Collector is chaos in the making, a disease that threatens the world. The deathless creatures that have roamed New York’s streets finally have the attention of a faery who can do something about them. We celebrate because an end is in sight. We’ve waited many years for this day.”
Talia brought her hands to her heating cheeks. “I—I—” Everyone was waiting for her? Face a roomful of people who knew what she was? Who her father was?
Adam’s arm circled Talia’s waist as he spoke. “If you know so much, see so much, why didn’t you seek out me or Talia before?” His voice was even, but Talia felt the anger he concealed. “You could have stamped out the threat before so much damage was done. So many lives lost.”
“We could have, but my Sight revealed that route held no victory. The only way we could defeat the demon was if you found Talia.” A smile played about Abigail’s mouth.
“Why?” Adam lashed.
Talia could guess. She caught the dart of Abigail’s eyes seeking hers. Abigail held her gaze a fraction of a second, but more than enough time to read Talia’s expression, then sit back with a sense of smug satisfaction. Abigail knew.
Old Talia could never have faced a single wraith, much less the leader of them. But she was different now. The months running from the wraiths, each moment in that burning alley in Arizona, her respite at Segue, the understanding she’d found in Adam—all of it had changed her. Allowed her to function through her fear. To seek answers in spite of her terror. To accept herself and her dark gift. And, remembering Patty’s sacrifice, learn to embrace her fear for something bigger, more important than herself.
Now, if need be, she could scream in the face of an immortal demon.
Apparently Abigail could read faery futures after all.
Adam opened his mouth to ask again, but was cut short when Abigail gasped. Her eyelids flickered as her head fell against the back of the rocking chair. She moaned loud and low.
Adam looked to Zoe. “What’s the matter with her?”
“Another vision,” Zoe answered.
If possible, Abigail seemed to grow even older before Talia’s eyes.
Curious, Talia reached for shadow. The layered veils slipped around her shoulders as her senses sharpened. She didn’t fight the darkness, but let the boundary to the Otherworld flow freely around her. This was, after all, what she was born to do.
“I see a man,” Abigail wailed.
Talia observed Adam as he crouched at Abigail’s chair to catch the clues her vision divulged. Shadows circled him, gathering and rolling off his broad shoulders like a thunderstorm.
“A man searching…” Abigail repeated.
But Abigail was different. Wisps of smoky blackness filtered through her body, collecting in her eyes, sharing space with her spirit.
The woman should be stark raving mad. Perhaps she was, a little.
In the penumbra of Abigail’s shadows, Talia caught a glimpse of her vision.
Yes, the face and body of a man appeared, and he was searching, entering the bottom floor of the building that Adam had once thought safe, but had turned out to be a trap.
A trap.
“Who is it?” Adam asked.
“Custo,” Talia answered. And he was walking right into it.
SIXTEEN
“IT’S Custo,” Talia repeated as she peered into the dense haze of shadow seething around Abigail. Then the image slid away.
“He was supposed to meet me at the loft.” Adam’s voice was thick with controlled emotion.
Talia looked wildly around at the overlapping waves of darkness, trying to recapture the slippery vision of Custo. She let her eyes relax, inhaled the seductive dark wisps that she’d kept at bay all her life, and let them fill her.
Potential futures sparked into existence in her vision, proliferating until there were as many glimmers of “might be” as there were stars in a clear night sky. She noticed how each discrete decision affected another, and another, until choices formed constellations of possibility that had no reference to probability. It was difficult to isolate one person. One event. To index one segment of time. At last she caught a sliver of Custo, a flash of his fair eyes.
Her heartbeat accelerated as she strained to make out his location and what he was doing, but she could only see shimmers of motion and the occasional delayed reflection of his environment. The glint of steel. A wash of vertical concrete. The glitter of the rising sun beyond a tall, wide window, now punctured with fist-size holes.
Talia let the shadows slide on her skin, caressing her face and stroking her body. If she didn’t fight them, if she allowed the strands to insinuate themselves around her limbs, hug her curves and wrap her in darkness, then her sight grew clearer.
Her vision doubled, then tripled. Another Custo approached the loft’s building and surveyed the coded pad at the door. Yet another Custo followed at his heels, taking the sidewalk at a jog. One cut across the street on a diagonal. Another walked to the crosswalk at the corner, just as a car circled the building, Custo in the driver’s seat.
“I don’t get it. Which one is him? Which one is real?” Talia looked to Abigail for clarification.
“None of them is real until he acts,” Abigail answered. “These are just possibilities. And you are only seeing the versions of him that go to this building. There are probably many others who elected not to come. To opt out of this fight.”