Page 19

19

I SECURED A TABLE IN THE back corner, away from the door and the watchful eyes of everyone else in Drip. The fact that it was after the breakfast rush and too early for the lunch crowd meant there weren’t many people. The lull was perfect for my upcoming revelation to my friends. Luckily, my parents had left for their own engagement this morning, a previous appointment of sorts that I didn’t ask questions about, which allowed me to sneak out without the passive-aggressive conversations that were the norm these days.

Al was the first to arrive.

They ordered a latte and slid in the seat across from mine. “Hey,” they greeted me.

“Hey.”

“I thought I’d be late,” they said, looking around the shop and not meeting my gaze, the awkwardness between us as thick as the fog this morning on the mountains in the distance. “Our coven had a meeting today that involved only the elders of the council, so I was able to come.”

“I’m glad you did.”

Al kept their head bowed. They traced a scuff on the table. “Yeah. Me too.”

“Your coven sent me a phone.”

Al’s lips twitched. “I told my moms you needed one since your screen was cracked. They must have told the head elder witch.”

“Thanks. Is it…” I hesitated. “Safe to use?”

Al shrugged. “I don’t see why not. The coven isn’t going to listen to your phone calls, if that’s what you’re scared of. And if they wanted to, they’d use a spell instead of a phone.”

Well, that wasn’t comforting. “Ah. Why are they interested in me, anyway? Isn’t divination something a witch can learn?”

Al’s shoulders sagged. They wilted against the high back of their chair. “Seeing the future is one of the most difficult abilities for a witch to master. Even if they did, none of them could grow as powerful as a natural clairvoyant like you. And having your gift in our ranks would make us a powerful coven for a small town, even as powerful as some of the larger covens from the big cities.”

Al leaned forward, their forearms on the table, as if imparting a secret. Their voice dropped below the scattered chatter of the shop. “Can you imagine how awesome it would be to accurately predict the weather and use that to increase the growth of ingredients for potions? Selling potions is one of the main ways our coven makes money. And a verified seer might be able to help our own diviners be more accurate by sharing glimpses.” The more excited they became about the possibilities, the faster they spoke. “The clairvoyant could know how an important meeting would go, which would help us with political maneuvering among the covens. Tensions are high between the eastern covens right now. The New Amsterdam Coven has been trying to absorb the smaller ones, including ours, for years, claiming that it would be best to aggregate power. But if we had a verified seer, that would make us as powerful as them,” they said, tapping the table for emphasis, “if not more , because they aren’t allied with any psychics. We would know how to fight back and keep our coven’s autonomy.”

I gulped. “That sounds like a lot of pressure and responsibility for a teenager.”

Al huffed and flopped back in their seat. “So now you understand,” they muttered.

“I’m sorry. It’s just… a lot to take in.”

Al took a sip of their drink. “Well, be prepared. The last clairvoyant of this area did become part of the local coven, and the elders want to ‘keep the tradition,’ as they said.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. My moms are super stressed, and there are all these meetings.” Al blew out a breath. “It’s been hectic.”

I gripped my iced mocha. “And it’s okay that you’re here?”

“I’m not telling them that I am in contact with you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Oh. Yeah.” I frowned. “Look, are we going to address the weirdness between us or—”

“Hi!” Gemma yelled from the counter, waving, the sparkles in her hair shimmering in the light. “Be there after I get my pie.”

Behind the counter, Val grumbled as she slid open the rack of pie slices.

“Later,” Al said.

“Okay.”

Kaci and Mateo arrived next. Kaci gushed about Val’s hair at the counter while she paid for her and Mateo’s coffees. And Mateo smiled in amusement, then guided Kaci over to the table. Okay, that was four of five.

The last to arrive was Reese. He made a face when he entered and skipped the counter, sauntering to our table and dropping into the seat between me and Gemma. Reese nodded toward Al and Kaci and grunted in Mateo’s direction. Mateo jerked his chin in response.

I rolled my eyes. “Okay. Great. Now everyone is here.”

“Not going to order anything, Reese?” Gemma asked around a mouthful of pie. “I’ll get it for you. As a thank-you for the other day.”

Reese shook his head. “Cross-country season.” He held up a water bottle. “I have to choose my caffeine and sugar carefully.” He sniffed as he looked around. “And nothing that this place serves is worth the extra laps.”

“Good to know,” Val said with a snort as she walked to the table. “Other than the jerk, the rest of you guys okay?”

A chorus of yeses followed.

“Good.” She wiggled her fingers at the group of us. “As long as you buy something, I’m not going to break up whatever weird paranormal D his lips were pale and his brown eyes so wide, they reflected the midmorning sun.

“What?” he whispered.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know it was her. It was my first glimpse. I didn’t even know that was what had happened, that it was a real psychic interlude. Not until the school nurse said it was and Al confirmed. And then I didn’t know if what I saw was even real, that it could come true. Al and I tried to find out who the girl was, and we couldn’t find her in the yearbooks, and she wasn’t a student, and I had no idea why she would be in my glimpse anyway. And when the other glimpses started coming true, were being proven accurate, I knew I had to help her. I knew I had to find the girl, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I did. ”

“Whoa,” Gemma said quietly.

Kaci rubbed Mateo’s shoulders as he quaked silently in his seat.

“Is that why you ran?” Kaci asked, voice soft and sympathetic.

I nodded. “When she opened the door, it completely caught me off guard. I had no idea. Please, Mateo. If I could take it all back, I would. I would never see that glimpse. I wouldn’t—”

“No,” he said, voice raspy but firm. “No.”

I didn’t know what he meant. Did he not believe me? My heart pounded. I scrambled for my backpack and yanked out my sketchbook. I flipped it to the drawing I’d done that first night and slammed it down on the table in the middle. Everyone leaned in.

The sketch was unmistakably Juana. “Look at the date,” I said, pointing to the bottom.

Reese’s throat bobbed. “The day after the fight.”

“I drew that when I couldn’t sleep. But it’s been seared in here,” I said, jamming my fingertip to my temple, “since that day. I see it all the time. When I sleep. When I daydream. When I think about glimpses, this is the video that plays on loop.” I swallowed. “Juana, in a field, covered in blood.”

Mateo’s whole body was a taut line. He looked like he was about to flee or flip the table or punch me. He was a bundle of potential energy ready to release.

“Mateo, please. I am so sorry.”

“No,” he said again, shaking his head. “Don’t be sorry.” His chest heaved. “If you didn’t see it, then we wouldn’t know. And we wouldn’t be able to stop it.”

My stomach was in my throat. “I don’t know if stopping it is possible.” My hands shook. “All the other glimpses have come true. I don’t know if we can prevent the future.”

Judging by the perplexed expressions on everyone’s faces, no one knew the answer to that.

“We have to try,” Kaci said with a firm nod. “We can test your power in some way. Figure out if a glimpse can be changed if the subject is told.”

That surprised me. I was certain it would be Gemma who would be eager to make me a test subject, but Kaci obviously loved Juana almost as much as Mateo did.

“I still don’t know how these powers work, other than I touch someone and then I see the future.”

Gemma gasped. “That’s why you asked me about the video from the fight. To see who touched you to trigger that glimpse. Because they would be the person responsible for hurting Juana.”

“Yeah.” I took another sip of coffee to wet my anxiety-parched throat. “At first I thought the girl must have been in the hallway with us, but when I had the second vision, I saw the basketball court through Dennis’s point of view. So I knew it was the murderer who’d touched me.”

“Well, that’s our list of suspects,” Gemma said. “Whoever was in the hallway at the time of the fight, who could’ve touched Cam.”

“And these are our clues,” Al said, tapping my sketchbook. “Cam wrote down everything he remembered from the glimpse.”

The words were right there in charcoal—the bright moon obscured by clouds, the wet grass, the breeze, the gleaming knife, and the smell of blood and sulfur.

Gemma stood and angled her phone, taking a picture.

“No sharing on social media,” I said quickly.

She nodded. “Yeah. Of course. No sharing.”

“Wait,” Reese said, shaking his head. “Wait. Wait. Wait. I didn’t sign up to be in some kind of teenage detective gang. Real life isn’t a Scooby-Doo episode. Okay? We should tell an adult. Any adult. And let them handle it.” He pointed at the picture. “I mean, look at what you drew. That’s a lot of blood. That’s… terrifying.”

“Okay,” I said. “Which adults should we tell? My parents can’t even look at me right now because they’re freaked out over my newfound abilities. This situation would not help at all.” I pointed at Reese. “Your parents?”

He scoffed. “As you know, the tension between the Sprite Alliance and the Lopez family doesn’t make my parents the best candidates.”

“Great. Then we tell the witches who are preoccupied with trying to get me to ally with them instead of anyone else at this table. Or how about we go to Mateo’s parents, or Juana herself?”

Mateo winced. The tension in his body had eased slightly, but his jaw remained clenched. “No. My parents would automatically blame the sprites. We could tell Juana, but… she’s only just returned and she’s still fragile emotionally. I wouldn’t want her to leave and be out of reach for us to help her if we can. We should find more information first.”

“Shouldn’t we warn her, though?” I asked.

“I’ll tell her,” Mateo said. “If it comes to that, I’ll do it.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “That’s fine. Kaci? Gemma? Any input?”

Gemma held up her hands. “My mother already thinks I’m too enmeshed in the paranormal for a human. She’d flip.”

Kaci swallowed. “My aunt and grandparents only dabble. They wouldn’t know how to help. And I wouldn’t tell anyone else in the Psychic Guild. It’s hard to know who to trust.”

Reese rubbed his hand over his face. “Right. Great. Okay. Scooby gang it is, then.”

Gemma pulled out a notebook from her massive backpack. She clicked a glittery purple unicorn pen and wrote at the top “Project Fix the Future” in a looping script.

“Okay. What should we do first?”

I hugged myself, gripping my elbows with tense, gloved fingers. “Kaci is right. We should see if we can sidestep one of my glimpses.”

Gemma nodded and wrote the first step in a flowing purple script. “Step one: see if one of us can avert a glimpse.”

“And I need more information,” I said, “about how all this works.”

“Adding that as part A of step one. Cam needs more knowledge about the nuances of his powers. Next?”

“We find out who was in the hallway,” Al said, their expression grim.

Gemma nodded. “Adding that as step two. We need to make a list of the people who could’ve touched Cam. And of course that leads right into step three, which is: we need to establish motive and use the clues that Cam provided to narrow down our suspects and the time frame in which this could happen.”

“Step four: we need to protect Juana,” Mateo said. His clawed fingers curled over the edge of the glossy wood table, his sharp fingernails leaving deep furrows with every anxious flex of his hands.

Gemma nodded. “Step five: we need to keep an eye on the factions for anything suspicious.”

“And we need to keep this between ourselves,” Kaci said pointedly.

Gemma sighed but added the addendum. After writing each step, she flipped the page and wrote “Suspects” at the top.

Al smirked. “Well, we know one.” They smiled at Reese. “You were there.”

Reese scowled. “So was Nate. So were Danny and Javi. And Mateo.”

I whipped my head to stare at Mateo as Gemma hastily scribbled names. “I didn’t know you were in the hallway.”

“I sensed Javi was in trouble.”

“You can do that?”

“It’s a werewolf thing.”

Huh. So Mateo had seen me get slammed into the lockers. Great. Nice. Awesome. Not embarrassing at all.

“We can’t accomplish this all today,” Gemma said, setting down her pen. “So we need to break into groups.”

I licked my lips. “I want to accomplish step one as soon as possible. It’ll guide us with the other steps.”

“I’ll help Cam with that,” Kaci said. “Since we’re both psychics. And I’m a member of the Guild. I can arrange for Cam to meet with the members there, who might be able to help provide answers.”

Gemma nodded. “Fine. I had reached out but hadn’t received an answer from them yet. So I’ll leave that to you, but no meetings unless I’m present.”

“Noted.”

“I assume that you all can each keep an eye on your own factions and report back if anything is suspicious? And I have my own network of…” Gemma trailed off; her nose scrunched. “Informants,” she settled on saying.

“You have a spy ring?” Reese asked. “Like, for real?”

“How do you think I know everything?”

He crossed his arms and laughed uncomfortably. “You don’t know everything .”

Gemma cocked her head to the side. “For instance, your real first name is—”

“Fine!” Reese said, panicked. “Fine. Okay. The little freshman with the rainbows has a spy ring.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Unreal.”

“No more unreal than a guy who can control how grass grows,” she shot back.

He huffed. “Point taken.”

“Anyway,” Gemma said, checking her phone for the time, “it’ll be the full-on lunch rush soon. Let’s hash this out.”

Despite the inherent stress of a future-murder investigation, it was freeing, allowing Gemma to take control and organize. She was going to try and find another video of the fight. Reese agreed to write down the names of everyone he’d remembered seeing. Al couldn’t commit to much more than keeping in touch, but at least they weren’t going back to radio silence. Mateo would keep an eye on Juana after school. Since the glimpse had happened at night, we knew she’d be safe during the day. And we all set alerts for weather matching the glimpse on our phones.

We had a plan.

Relief from sharing the burden washed over me. The sting of tears gathered behind my eyes, but thankfully they didn’t fall. Maybe this whole clairvoyant thing wouldn’t be so bad, as long as I had this group around me. But I only had this group because of the glimpses. If I weren’t psychic, would they still want to be friends?

“Cam,” Gemma said, her voice bringing me back. She had the strap of her backpack over one shoulder. “Val’s shift is over, so I’m heading out. See you tomorrow, but text me if you need me. Okay?”

I nodded.

Reese left shortly after Gemma. Then Al, when their moms called. Kaci excused herself, stating her grandmother wanted help in her garden that afternoon.

Which left me and Mateo.

We exited Drip together and stood on the sidewalk next to the bike and broom racks.

“I’m sorry,” I said once again as I spun my lock and unhooked my bike.

Mateo sighed. “It’s not your fault, Cam. Blame the person who is going to do it, not yourself.”

“Yeah.” I ducked my head. “True.” I took a breath. “But I’m also sorry I kind of freaked, then zoned out at Juana’s party. I know I wasn’t the best company.”

Mateo smiled. “It’s understandable. You’ve had a lot going on.”

“Okay, well. I just didn’t want you to think that it was anything you or your family had said or done. It was all”—I made jazz hands—“this.” Then I mentally berated myself for making jazz hands . “Anyway, what little time we’ve hung out, I’ve enjoyed it.”

“Me too.” He knocked a pinecone off the sidewalk with his shoe. “I think we should do it again. Hang out. Just us two.”

My heart stopped. “Uh…” Think, Cam. Answer. Form words. Don’t leave him hanging! Give him something. “Yes!” I coughed. “I agree. We should hang out. More. Again. Just us.”

“Maybe Saturday?”

Was this a date? Had Mateo just asked me on a date? “Yeah. That would be great.”

Mateo beamed. A blush bloomed across his cheekbones. He ran a hand through his thick, dark hair. “Great.”

“Yes. Awesome.”

“Good.”

“Yep.” I laughed. “I should go. I have homework, and despite the chaos, my parents still expect at least decent grades.”

“You can always ask me for help. If you need to.”

I made a finger gun and then rolled my eyes at myself. “Right. Honors student.”

“Right.”

“Okay.”

Wow, we were a couple of dorks. But birds of a feather and all that.

I gripped my handlebars. “See you tomorrow at school.” And to prevent even more awkwardness, I hopped on my bicycle and pedaled off toward my neighborhood. At the first cross street, I paused and glanced over my shoulder. Mateo was standing where I’d left him. He waved. I waved back, laughing, then pushed off and biked home.