My heart raced. I squeezed the wooden bench under me. Past and present overlapped, and I couldn’t separate them.
The vision rippled. Then it changed.
Now, Caleb and I faced each other across a round dining table. A votive candle flickered between us. The clink of crystal and the murmur of conversation filled the air. Caleb worea tuxedo, his golden throat smooth above his starched white collar. His black jacket hugged his broad shoulders.
He lifted his wineglass and swirled his red, a knowing look in his sky blue eyes. “You’re drooling, Jesse.”
Fuck, the way he said my name. But he’d never said it in a tuxedo before. The image in the air had never happened.
Not yet.
In the vision, I glanced around, then reached down and adjusted. “Thank god for this tablecloth,” I heard myself mutter.
Caleb laughed, mischief in his eyes. “Should we skip dinner and go straight to the show?”
Confusion clouded my features. “What show?”
Caleb winked.
The vision vanished. Silence fell over the chamber, the only sound the hiss of the torches on the walls.
Nin stumbled backward. A thin line of blood trickled from her nose. She stared at the empty space where the vision had been, her chest heaving.
Around the chamber, the elders sat in stunned silence. Stefanos had gone rigid in his seat. The woman beside him gripped the armrest of the riser.
Caleb sat back in his chair. His eyes were open and bloodshot. Rings of sweat darkened the fabric under his arms. More sweat dampened his temples.
I stood, and no one tried to stop me as I charged down the stairs and pulled him to his feet. He stepped into my arms and buried his face against my shoulder.
“How the hell did you do that?” I asked against his hair.
“I don’t know.” His voice was muffled by my shirt. “I don’t know what I did.”
I pulled back enough to look at him. “You saw the past…and maybe the future.” My heart raced, and awe spread through me. “That’s your gift, Caleb. You’re a seer.”
He stared.
Nin wiped the blood from her nose and looked at her hand. Then she lifted wolf-bright eyes to Caleb. “Seer,” she said, almost as if she spoke to herself.
Stefanos appeared at her side. The other elders left the risers and clustered at the bottom of the steps. All eyes were on Caleb.
He glanced around, looking self-conscious, and I tightened my grip on his arm.
“You’re the first seer in a hundred years,” Stefanos said.
Caleb shot another look at the elders. “Is that good or bad?”
“Seers are rare,” Nin said, recovered from her shock. “Some can only see the past. Others can look into the future. It appears you can do both. The gift manifests across every supernatural species. In some cases, it even shows up in humans.”
Pieces slotted into place in my mind. I looked at Caleb, replaying things I should have caught sooner. The anxiety he’d displayed when I’d tried to leave him in Albany. The desperation that had sent him reaching for his safeword. At the time, I’d assumed it was a fear of abandonment. But it was more than that.
“You wouldn’t let me hunt Ulfrik without you,” I said. “You used your safeword to stop me from leaving you behind.”
He went still. “Yeah, I felt really anxious about it.” His eyes widened, and he made a strangled sound. “Holy shit. I think I saw you get hurt. It was sorealin my head. And I saw Nathan Brooks and Aiden Cross show up to your house a minute before they actually did. I thought it was a dream.”
Nin studied him. “Do you have any witch ancestry in your family?”
He blinked. Then a slow smile spread over his face. “I don’t think so. But that would be hilarious.”
