Page 14 of Just a Little Wicked (Wicked Sisters #2)

Right. Shit . She scrubbed her hand down her face.

She hated talking about her visions. She’d spent the majority of her life drinking Aunt Rose’s potion to muffle her curse, until it could no longer mask her swelling power.

She still did her best to push the visions down, to avoid them, to blank her mind to prevent them from coming, but they wormed their way through regardless.

She hadn’t told her aunts how strong or how frequent they’d become, or the exhaustive toll it was taking on her.

What was the point? There was nothing they could do about it.

Winter figured that someday she would succumb to her curse entirely and go mad.

She didn’t see how it would be possible to hold onto her sanity another sixty years at this rate.

“Okay.” She exhaled. “What do you want to know?”

“Are your visions sequential? Do you have connecting visions? Do they ever repeat? How far in the future do they stretch? When did they start?”

“Whoa, whoa.” She held up a palm. “You had those locked and loaded.”

He shrugged as he pulled onto the street. The hardware store was ten miles from town, and she was grateful it was a short trip. It put a time limit on the inquisition. “I have a naturally curious mind.”

She consciously relaxed her fists. “Um, okay. Well, my visions manifested slowly when I was a child. Sometimes I’d have a quick flash of what someone else was going to do or say right before it happened, and as I grew older, the visions grew with me.

I saw further into the future. The things that I saw were unpleasant at best.” She looked out the window, blind to the scenery as it blurred past. When she was eight, she’d had a particularly horrific vision of a school shooting—just a flash, a single scene.

She hadn’t been able to figure out where it was going to happen, and then three hours later a school in Virginia had come under fire, six children shredded by bullets.

She’d vomited for days. Even now, knowing she wasn’t responsible, she couldn’t stop blaming herself.

If only she’d glimpsed the school name, or an identifying image.

If only she’d been cleverer at finding something that would have revealed the location.

“I tried to ignore the visions, and after my mother died and Aunt Rose and Aunt Daisy came to take care of us, Aunt Rose’s potion helped a lot.

But as much as the potion suppressed, it couldn’t stop the visions entirely.

It just made them more manageable. When I did have them, I learned not to tell anyone what I saw.

Not because they asked me to keep it to myself, but because I saw the way they flinched when I did share.

I saw the way the light drained from their eyes, and how the knowledge haunted them, too.

No one deserves to hear about unspeakable horrors they can’t stop, day after day. ”

His jaw flexed. “Now I feel like an asshole for making fun of you for being closed-off. Who wouldn’t be if they were shouldering visions of humanity’s worst atrocities?”

“I don’t need your sympathy.”

“Tough shit. You’re getting it.”

She snorted, his response loosening some of the tension in her shoulders.

“The visions are unpredictable, I’m sorry to say.

There is no rhyme or reason to them. Sometimes I see years into the future, other times only minutes, like with the woman choking.

I rarely have visions about the same event.

” Her nails bit into her thighs. “I can’t intervene as much as I want, and not just because of the physical consequences to me when I thwart the intent of my curse.

When I was younger, I tried to stop bad things from happening.

There was this girl on my bus, Kaylee, and I knew her dog was going to get hit by a car.

I told her, and she told her mother. I was brought to see the school counselor for threatening her dog, and that was just the start of my miserable school years.

Whenever I tried to warn someone, a similar scenario would play out, over and over, until I eventually realized that most people can’t be told how to save themselves.

” She shrugged. “If I can physically stop something bad from happening myself, I’ll try, but so often I can’t. ”

He dragged his eyes from the road, their blue depths touching on her for a moment. “You know it’s not your fault, right? You are not singularly responsible for stopping every horrible thing in the world from happening.”

“Rationally I know that, but I’ve been cursed to witness terrible things happening in advance. How can I not feel responsible when I just let them?”

“Maybe some things are meant to happen.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t believe that. I don’t believe a school shooting, or a murder, or starvation are ever meant to happen. That’s not fate; that’s humanity being evil.”

“Have you ever tried using your visions the way nature intended?”

“You mean have I ever used one to facilitate destruction?”

He nodded.

Her hands were trembling, so she dug her nails into her thighs. “I’ve tried everything,” she said quietly. “I thought if I used the visions for evil intent as I’m meant to, that they might lessen. They didn’t.”

She’d acted on her foresight a few times when she was younger, most of it relatively harmless, but when she was a teenager she’d done something that even now made her feel sick.

She’d known a store was going to be robbed in the mall, so she’d driven there, and when the thief fled, she’d pulled the fire alarm.

Not only did he escape, but the chaos frightened hundreds of people.

She’d only done it once, and never again.

It had left her shaken to the core, because something dark within her had relished the small act of evil, and she’d been utterly terrified of feeding the beast ever again.

He made a humming sound as he mulled over what she’d shared.

Afternoon sun slanted through the window, painting his face in gold.

He blinked against the onslaught of light and spun his Red Sox cap around so that the bill shaded his face.

When his hand came back down, it settled on her leg, just above her knee.

Winter was so shocked by the contact that she could only stare at his hand. It was wide, with long, calloused fingers that splayed over her thigh. The heat of his palm soaked into her jeans for the brief moment that she allowed it to stay.

She cleared her throat. “Um, what are you doing?”

He jerked his hand away like he’d been burned. “Shit, sorry. It’s habit.”

“It’s habit to hold all of your passengers’ thighs?”

“Only the pretty ones.”

“You must hold Connor’s thigh a lot.”

He barked out a laugh. “He is a handsome guy. It must run in the family.”

“Has anyone ever pointed out how oversized your ego is?”

“No, I don’t believe they have. Do your visions always precede something horrible happening? Are they always violent?”

It took her a moment to focus back on their conversation, the phantom touch of his palm still lingering on her leg.

“Um, the vast majority of the time, but not always. Occasionally I’ll catch glimpses of neutral things, like stock market changes.

They’re not inherently violent or horrible, but the intent is that I use them for evil. ”

He pulled to the curb just ahead of the hardware store. The shingles of the store were freshly painted sage green, and the wood-burned sign read, “We’ve Nailed It.”

“Too trendy,” she said immediately. “Whoever owns this is young and won’t remember Atlantes.”

“Agreed. The church is across the street. Let’s start there.”

They climbed out of the truck and waited for a minivan to pass, the middle-aged woman gawking out the window at the handsome Viking standing on the street.

Winter wondered if he was recognized wherever he went, and if he loved the attention or if he ever grew tired of it.

If she had to guess, she’d say he basked in every moment.

The church was white, with a tall steeple that punctured the sky.

The massive, chipped red doors were closed and, unfortunately, locked.

Erikson was backpedaling to take a look at the sign on the lawn, when the door swung inward and an older gentleman with graying tufts of hair and a tan polo appeared in front of Winter.

He obviously hadn’t been expecting someone to be standing on the granite steps, and he visibly jolted when he came face-to-face with her.

He pressed his hand to his heart and adjusted his wire-framed glasses. “My goodness, I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone was standing there.”

Winter gave him her nicest smile, but she wasn’t sure she succeeded—he looked more alarmed than charmed. Was she really that rusty? “Hi, we’re looking for the priest.”

“That would be me. My name’s Mike. How can I help you?”

Erikson appeared at her side, his own smile so genuine and disarming that the man instantly eased before a flash of recognition appeared behind his lenses. He snapped his fingers together. “I know you! You’re on that ghosthunter show.”

Erikson nodded and stuck his hand out for a hearty shake. “Erikson Grimm, and this is Winter Celeste. We’re looking for someone in town and we’re hoping you can help us.”

“Is it for the show?”

“No,” Erikson assured him. “It’s a family matter. I’m just along for moral support.”

The priest gave her a friendly smile. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to help, but I can try. Follow me.”

They slipped into the cool, shadowy narthex and followed him to a small office.

After unlocking the door and flipping the lights on, he settled behind a neatly organized desk and interlaced his fingers.

Winter and Erikson took the seats facing the desk, the position making Winter feel like she was visiting the principal’s office.

A small, inset stained glass window scattered red, purple, and blues over the desk and turned the priest’s left arm emerald.

“Well now, I’ve been the priest here for going on thirty years. Who might you be looking for?”

“His name is Atlantes,” Winter said, forcing her body still even though she wanted squirm like she was in trouble. “He graduated from Lubec High School, maybe twelve years ago?” She was so busy studying the colorful splashes of light, that it took her a moment to realize Mike had turned ashen.

“I’m sorry,” he said curtly. “I can’t help you.”