Grace shook her head. “I’ll get them,” she offered. “You handled pretty much everything else tonight.”
Anna smiled. “Thanks. Don’t let Tino back there guilt you into a breadstick eating contest. I’ve lost entire afternoons that way.”
Grace grinned and threaded her way through the tables toward the counter. The noise was sharper up here, the kitchen open to view behind a long Formica divider. There was a window for pickup orders, a heat lamp that buzzed and popped, and an ancient cash register that looked like it belonged in a museum.
She waited her turn, and that’s when she noticed the flickering fluorescent fixture directly above the counter. It was less a light and more a strobe, humming and pulsing at erratic intervals. Every few seconds it would shudder, and the light would strobe so hard the whole ceiling seemed to breathe. At first, it was just annoying, but as she watched, she realized the hum had a rhythm. A kind of heartbeat, accelerating.
She looked left, to where the delivery drivers waited by a battered pegboard covered in keys. There was a space heater jammed under the table, red coils glowing, its cord snaking up and disappearing into a surge protector that already hosted a nest of other plugs: the light fixture, the register, a fan, the phone charger, all of it crammed into a single strip. There were paper towels stacked everywhere, a pile of order slips abovethe heater, napkins tucked between canisters, the whole space a shrine to combustibility.
Grace felt the skin on her arms pebble. She could smell the plastic of the space heater, an acrid undercurrent beneath the cheese and tomato sauce. A flash of déjà vu hit her, sharp enough to make her gasp. For a moment, the world shimmered and tilted. She was back in the vision from last night, the one she’d tried to bury: flames, the roar of fire, that feeling of desperate suffocation. And then, superimposed over the present, she saw the fire chief, Rick Dalton, slamming his shoulder against a door, the room filling with black smoke, his face locked in terror and grim determination.
She blinked hard, and the hallucination receded, but the sense of impending disaster didn’t. The light above her crackled again, and she swore she saw a spark leap from the socket. Her breath caught, and for a moment, she wasn’t sure if she was seeing the future or the present. The line at the counter had vanished; she realized she’d been standing there for a full minute. The man at the register asked her what she needed. She sputtered out that she needed boxes, grabbed them, and turned, half-dazed, and hurried back to Anna, who had already stacked the rest of the pizza and was dabbing at a root beer spill. Anna looked up and saw her face.
“Grace, you look like you just saw a ghost,” Anna said, then stopped herself. “Sorry. Poor choice of words.”
Grace put down the boxes, her hands trembling. “This place. The kitchen—” She swallowed. “It’s going to catch fire. I saw it. The heater under the counter, the surge protector. Everything’s going to ignite. Rick Dalton… he tries to get out, but he’s trapped. He’s going to die if we don’t do something.”
Anna’s expression changed in an instant, all humor gone. She leaned in, eyes locked on Grace’s. “Are you sure?”
Grace nodded, the rest of her words tumbling out. “I saw it. The smoke, the fire, Rick—he was inside. He couldn’t get out. It’s the same vision from last night. The one I had after the tree lighting. But I didn’t know where it was until just now.”
Anna was already pulling out her phone. She scrolled through contacts with practiced speed, then hit a button and waited. “Hey, Rick,” she said, her voice suddenly businesslike. “It’s Anna Harper. Listen, I know this is going to sound weird, but you need to get over to Pi’s the Limit right now. There’s a fire hazard in the kitchen. No, I’m not screwing with you. I’m here with Grace Baker. She’s a psychic, remember? She has visions. Yeah. Yeah, she’s sure. It’s one of those surge protector situations. And a space heater. I know, but trust me. Better safe than crispy, right? Thanks, Rick. See you soon.”
She hung up, exhaled, and shot Grace a reassuring smile. “He’s on it,” she said. “Rick doesn’t mess around when it comes to electrical stuff. He’ll have them shut everything down before you can say ‘grease fire.’”
Grace stared at Anna, relief and adrenaline wrestling for dominance in her bloodstream. “You just told him I’m a psychic?”
Anna shrugged, almost sheepish. “I told you, it’s the Hollow. He won’t even blink.” She reached across the table and squeezed Grace’s hand. “You did good. Again. And you didn’t even ruin lunch this time.”
Grace tried to laugh, but the sound came out thin. “I still might. What if—what if I’m wrong?”
“Then you gave the fire department a good story for the bar tonight,” Anna said. “But you’re not wrong. And if you hadn’t said anything, maybe tomorrow we’d be reading about a tragedy instead of leftovers.”
The weight of the morning eased, just a little. Grace let herself breathe, let the warm air and the smell of pizza wraparound her. She looked at Anna, who was already texting the rest of the girls, and realized she had never felt less alone in her life.
Outside, the world was still ice and blue shadow, but in here, with Anna and the noise and the certainty of small-town friendship, Grace found a kind of peace. The visions would keep coming, she knew that now. But at least she wouldn’t have to face them by herself.
They boxed up the rest of the pizza, tipped the server generously, and made for the door. As they left, Grace looked back at the counter, half-expecting to see Rick Dalton already there, barking orders and unplugging cords. Instead, she saw the staff, laughing, none the wiser that disaster had brushed so close.
Anna bumped her shoulder as they stepped outside. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll buy you coffee on the way home. And if you see any more death-visions, just try to hold off until after dessert.”
Grace grinned. “I’ll do my best.”
The snow had started up again, lazy and slow, each flake turning in the light as if it was trying to decide where to land. Grace walked beside Anna, and for the first time since arriving in Holiday Hollow, she didn’t feel like she was running from her past. She was moving forward. One vision at a time.
9
They’d barely made it three stores down from Pi’s the Limit before a fire truck with blue-and-red strobes cut through the lazy snow, engine rumble barely audible over the holiday playlist blaring from outdoor speakers. A crowd had already gathered outside the pizzeria. Nothing drew a crowd in Holiday Hollow like the possibility of mild peril or a day off from school.
Grace and Anna exchanged a look. Anna’s eyes said, “See?” and Grace’s said, “thank you.” They detoured back up the sidewalk, following the steady progression of the chief through the chaos.
Rick Dalton was exactly as Grace remembered from the tree-lighting: big, broad, hair buzzed to an impossible shortness, and a jawline that looked like it could bite through a desk. He was one of those men who would never need to announce himself. His presence just rearranged the atoms in a room to accommodate him.
She watched as he surveyed the pizza place, arms folded over his massive coat, face locked in an expression of controlled exasperation. The owner, an older woman with a teased perm and apron dusted in flour, shadowed him anxiously, offering apologies, then denials, then apologies again. Rick barely saida word, just pointed at the tangle of cords under the counter, then at the surge protector, then at the space heater, then at the ceiling where the light fixture gave a final, dramatic flicker.
After a few minutes, he seemed to reach a verdict, and the tension in the air changed. He shook hands with the owner, her nervous smile now edged with something like relief, and motioned to the two uniformed firefighters to start unplugging things.
Grace and Anna lingered by the window, uncertain whether they were witnesses, accomplices, or simply the first ones to see the movie and now stuck watching the credits roll.
