I stare up at it, the light of day fading too fast to night, the lighthouse, Watchmere, emitting a relentless beam.
“Stay with me, Ivy. What do you see?”
“Watchmere. The light. It’s… fading.”
“Shit. I don’t like the sound of that.”
I blink, trying to reorient myself as the vision fades. My breathing is shallow, the tile under my cheek cold.
I focus on it, the black and white squares I laid in a frenzy of effort designed to blot out the heartache of when Caleb left, of when I broke it off with him for good, knowing the only thing a relationship would bring was our mutual hurt.
“I’m on my way, okay? Fred’s opening the store for me today, my first lesson isn’t until later tonight. I’ll help you get yourself all sorted out.”
“I think something’s wrong, Rose. Something’s wrong with Silverlight Shore.” Even to my ears, my voice sounds weak, and Gunner growls, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
“You just lay there, okay? Gunner, don’t let her get up.”
My familiar throws a heavy arm over my chest, as if I was going to argue with either of them.
Nope, I’m not moving. I don’t want to barf, for one.
For two, the feeling of wrongness, lingering from my vision, is going to keep me down for a while.
I couldn’t move if I wanted to.
Four
By the time Rose unlocks the front door, Gunner’s nudged me up to sitting and is coaching me through deep breathing. There’s a water bottle on the floor next to me, my clever familiar able to open a fridge in the back and bring it over.
My breathing’s back to normal, and I greet Rose with a weary “hey,” that only manages to make her brow crease with concern.
“You look like dog shit.” She glances at Gunner. “No offense.”
Gunner chuffs in response, and I roll my eyes.
“It was a bad one, huh?” Instead of trying to help me up, Rose slides down the cupboard door to sit next to me. She lifts the water bottle, and I take it from her with a grateful nod.
Gunner settles at my feet, and Fig, Rose’s familiar, darts out from a pocket on her purse. The European starling cocks her head at me and makes a strange trill before speaking.
“You need to tell us everything,” the bird says.
Gunner growls softly, and I sigh. “It was a bad one, but it was short. Hazel’s coming home, of that, I’m sure. The other parts… Posey’s shop, that’s obvious.” I give a feeble wave at my now defunct espresso machine. “I think I shorted out a whole bunch of stuff on accident. Posey’s about to have her hands full.”
She’s the town mechanic and a magical mechanism genius, so that’s absolutely self-explanatory.
Rose doesn’t answer, just waits with an expectant expression on her face.
“And?” Fig prompts, fluttering her wings.
That’s Fig for you. Rose would rather last an eternity than press someone on an uncomfortable topic. Fig? Fig’s forever acting as though if she doesn’t know something the minute it’s knowable that she’s been done a grievous bodily harm.
Fig takes “heard it through the grapevine” as a personal insult.
Fig is her own grapevine.
Gunner whines softly, nudging my foot. He doesn’t like to speak around my sisters, not like Fig and their familiars.
I sigh, knowing I need to tell her.
