Page 38

Lily

I s it possible to change fate?

That’s the million-dollar question, and so far, that pesky little voice in my head hasn’t answered.

You know, now would be a good time to tell me something useful.

I’m daring it, poking it with a stick, and at this point, on the verge of begging my subconscious to answer me. Annoyingly enough, it stays silent. It’s been a few weeks since I told Luka everything. Since then, I’ve been researching everything I can find about ancient omens and the first recordings of premonitions. Heck, I even looked into superstitions.

Luka took the news better than I expected and dove into the research with me. We’ve spent our study sessions brainstorming ways to break the curse while trying to stay on top of our studies. I feel like the library is basically our home now.

I’ve scoured my family’s book and read it what feels like a hundred times, cover to cover, and I found nothing that can help me.

I groan as I place my head down on a book about the ancient history of omens that the library had. I’ve been here since classes ended this afternoon. I’m exhausted, frustrated, and scared because I don’t know if I can figure this out in time. I’ve had six dreams since that night with Luka, each one more vivid and intense than the last .

I’m terrified that my time is coming to an end. If my grandmother is right—and the dream keeps progressing the way it has—I don’t think I’ll make it to the end of the school year.

I swallow thickly, a hard knot forming in my stomach when I think about leaving this beautiful life I’ve only just started really living. I want to throw up when I think of never seeing Luka again, never hanging out with Stella and Tessa, or never making it to medical school to become a doctor.

I’m worried I won’t have the chance to see those dreams come true.

The chair across from me scrapes against the wooden floors of the library as it slides back. I hear Luka sit, and I smell his woodsy scent. The knot in my stomach unravels now that he’s here.

“I thought you might be here,” he says finally when I don’t lift my head to acknowledge his presence.

I can’t look at him with these dark thoughts swirling in my head. If I do, I might break down in tears, and that doesn’t do us any good. I need to stay strong and focused if I want to find a way to break a family curse that is more than a thousand years old.

“Did you know the Aztecs associated solar eclipses with death? Maybe I should just avoid the next one. You know, find a cave or something, wrap myself in bubble wrap, and tie myself to the rocks so I can’t escape, even if I wanted to. Wait it out. Though it didn’t state whether it was partial or total eclipses they were worried about.”

Do I have to worry about every solar eclipse in every hemisphere? That seems extreme and highly improbable.

“ Lily. Look at me, please,” he pleads. I don’t really feel like picking my head up. My neck is tired, and my head feels too heavy to attempt to lift it.

“ Lily ,” he says a little more firmly, though he’s still gentle.

“What?”

“Why won’t you look at me?” he asks, hurt lacing his voice.

Tears prick at my eyes. “Because if I do, I think I might cry, and I don’t want to do that tonight. ”

I sniffle. I’m close to losing my battle. Everything has been so good between us. He has been so good. I’m worried I’m on the verge of losing him, and that makes me want to cry.

He’s silent for a moment. “Okay. Then tell me something else you learned.”

Facts . I can do facts. “Did you know divination is the art of divining the unseen? For example, the Zande people used it to communicate with the supernatural, even though it’s found throughout history in many different cultures.”

“Like talking to ghosts?”

I finally pick my head up and look at him. Relief swims in his gaze. I shake my head. “No, they believed there were signs from the Gods. They just had to interpret the signs correctly. They read lightning in the sky, the flight path of a flock of birds, and cloud movements to predict all kinds of things. Modern-day examples would be horoscopes or reading the stars.”

“Do you believe in that kind of thing? Being able to look up at the sky and see your future based on the shape of a cloud and which direction it moves in?” he asks, astonished.

I lift one shoulder. “Why not? What makes it any different than being able to see your death years before it actually happens?”

“Babe, I’m sorry. I’m having a hard time following here. Are you suggesting we need to read signs from the universe in order to break the curse and stop your vision?”

His confused eyes search mine. I can see he’s trying, but he hasn’t grown up with this. It’s an even more outlandish idea to him than it is to me, and I can’t blame him. However, I need him to listen to me, to understand. I just don’t know how to do this, and it’s becoming painfully obvious as I confuse the poor man more and more by the second.

“ No . I mean, I don’t know. I haven’t found any clues in the book that would point to using divination as the answer.” My head falls, my hands covering my face for a moment in frustration as I do my best to clear my thoughts. Maybe I can start over.

Though, I’d probably just make it worse .

“Okay, say you’re right about all this. You really do see the future and see your death. Do you think it’s possible to avoid? While I don’t know how much of this I believe, I do know that I trust you. Wholeheartedly. Which means I refuse to risk it. So, do you think we can stop it?”

And just as I expected, the moment my eyes finally drift up to meet his, the tears barely clinging to my lower lash line spill down my cheeks. The fact that he doesn’t believe this but is unwilling to take the risk it might be warms my heart in a way nothing and no one ever has. It tells me right here that he’ll always have my back, no matter what.

Still, I don’t have an answer for him any more than I do for myself. I have no answers to point us in any direction.

I sigh and shake my head as my gaze once again falls to the book. “I don’t know.” Silence fills the space between us as I stare blankly at the pages. After a few moments pass, I look up again. “Are you upset because you worry this thing between us isn’t real? That it’s part of the curse?”

This is my biggest fear. The one that has plagued me for weeks now. It keeps me up at night and haunts my dreams. What if none of it is real?

He thinks for a second, already putting me on edge. “This absolutely knocked me on my ass. And as anyone’s would, my mind instantly ran through all the possibilities, but the answer is that I don’t think for an instant you’d only date me to get close to me because of this, and I don’t think the universe put us together against our will, either. I know this is real. ” He answers with such conviction I feel it down to my core.

A small, sad smile pulls at the corner of my lips. “How do you know?”

He looks off to the side for a moment before his beautiful gray eyes find mine. “Something tells me I would love you no matter where we are in our lives or what crazy situation we find ourselves in. That pull deep in my chest.” He flattens his hand on the center of his chest, patting it gently before rubbing a small circle over his heart. “Anytime I’m away from you for too long or by too much distance, the tug I feel right here would lead me to your doorstep. Whether you were down the street or across the country, it would lead me to you. Hell, maybe there really is something to this universe business because I don’t think I ever had a choice in loving you. You were meant to be mine, and I yours. Curse be damned.”

I have no chance of stopping the tears after that . “I told you I didn’t want to cry, you butthead,” I say in between a sniffle.

He laughs wholeheartedly, his eyes bright with love and affection. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to make the point that I would love you in any universe from now until eternity. You are forever mine.”

A tearful smile breaks loose. My heart lifts at the reminder of what I’ve found with Luka. Unconditional love . “And I’m yours.”

His smile is just as teary as mine. “Now, let me see that book so we can figure this out. Divination or not, there has to be something in it that can help us.”

I sigh. “Not that I’ve been able to find. I’ve scoured every page, and there’s nothing .”

Luka picks up my family’s book, now sitting just to the right of me, and flips it open. He’s quiet as he flips through the old, worn pages. He stops on a few to read the passage more thoroughly while skimming others.

“You know, this is really depressing. Reading about how people die over and over. How they knew exactly what would happen but were unable to stop it. Seeing this, looking through it—it makes it so much more real,” he says solemnly.

I purse my lips. “The nerd part of me finds it fascinating. Reading about how different the ways people have died from one century to the next is kind of cool in a morbid way. Did you know the most common way to die in the sixteenth century was the plague? It’s better known as the Black Death. The 1700’s was smallpox.”

“What about this century?” he asks.

“Heart disease. My ticker is good, I think .” I playfully knock on my chest.

“Don’t play like that.” His gaze zeroes in on my chest and turns even more serious than it was.

I shrug. “Just trying to laugh to keep from crying.”

He shakes his head as he goes back to reading my family’s cursed history. My eyes roam over the shelves of hundreds of medical books. All of them contain a wealth of knowledge, and every single one of them is useless in helping me find the only answer I genuinely need .

My stomach twists at the thought of never stepping foot in my favorite place ever again—at the thought of never being able to open another book again, smelling that unique scent that only belongs to these books and this library. My fingers tremble as I run them over the worn, wooden table we sit at now. I gently touch the scratches caused by overuse.

The more I think about it, the more I realize I’m angry.

I’m angry at my parents and grandmother for not telling me the truth earlier, so I could have more time to figure this out.

At the universe for invoking such a terrible curse on my family.

The fact that I can’t live a long, healthy life full of love, joy, and happiness or even sadness and anger. A life full of the entire spectrum of human emotion.

I’m pissed that I won’t be able to accomplish my goals to become a doctor, marry the man of my dreams, and have kids.

I’m just so mad .

A single tear escapes, trickling down my cheek and dropping onto the wood.

“ Hey , it’ll be okay.” Luka takes my hand from where it lays atop the table and threads our fingers together. The connection helps to calm the chaos in my head, but only barely.

“How can you say that?” I whisper.

“Because I refuse to give up, and you are the smartest, most tenacious person I know. I know you won’t give up, either.”

“It’s not that I’m giving up. It’s that I can’t find anything there that can help me.”

“We have time.”

I shake my head harshly. “You don’t know that. The dream is becoming more frequent and more intense. According to my grandmother, that’s when it happens.”

His brows furrow with worry before his eyes focus back on the book. “There has to be something in here.” He flips through pages, the tension in his shoulder mounting with each flip. He mumbles, “There has to be something here,” to himself as he searches.

I fear there isn’t .

I’m on my own to figure this out, and that feels like an impossible task. I’ve run out of ideas on where to look. There are no living relatives who would have known Emily, so it isn’t like I could track someone down and hear a firsthand account of how she miraculously escaped the Grim Reaper’s clutches.

There’s nothing.

“Holy shit! Have you seen this?”

His voice grows far too loud for the library. Both of us look toward the entrance when we hear Doris hush us. He quickly faces me and turns the book around so I can see it, pointing to a passage listing a time of death.

“Two-fourteen in the afternoon,” I read out loud.

“Exactly!” Then, he flips to another page and points to another passage. “This one died at a house, and the address is…” He trails off, waiting for me to get it.

I lean forward so I can see it better. “It says 214 Wicker Street.”

“Look here.” He turns the page so I can see another entry. “She died on February fourteenth!”

“Two-fourteen.”

“Babe, all of them have some connection to the number two-fourteen. It manifests in different ways, but it’s throughout the book.” He flips from one page to another.

“I always wake up at 2:14 in the morning from the dream. On the dot, every time. ”

“See! There is something here!” he says excitedly.

“How did I miss that?” I ask, astonished that I missed something so important.

“You were probably more focused on the context. My brain works well seeing numbers and patterns, so they stuck out to me.”

“I was definitely more focused on the how and why all of them died instead of the time and place. I figured that wasn’t as important because most of them took place so long ago.”

“The number must mean something significant for it to be in every passage. If we find out the reason, we might be able to figure this out,” he says as he looks up from the book .

“Yeah, but how ?”

“I think you need to talk to Grandma May again. Maybe she knows something.”

His suggestion is at least a starting point. Even if she doesn’t know, maybe she can help me find the answer. “I’ll call her in the morning.”

His smile is full of relief. “Good.”