Page 113 of Seer

The mouth of a water bottle touched my lips and I sipped. That was better.

Is there any pizza left?I was hungry. It must’ve been hours since we ate dinner. Had I put the leftovers in Cal’s fridge? I couldn’t remember. We’d had to leave in a hurry...

I jerked upright, my eyes flying open. Then I cried out and clapped my hand to my neck because it fucking hurt.

Several hands reached out to steady me, but I only wanted Cal’s.

He put one arm around my back and pulled my hand off my neck with the other. “It’s healing,” he said. “You’re going to be fine. Everyone’s fine.”

I stared into Cal’s warm brown eyes and smiled. “Hi.”

His eyes crinkled when he smiled back. “Hi yourself.”

I flinched and ducked when something came at me from overhead.

Cal hugged me tighter. “It’s okay. That’s just Ms. Jackson.”

I stared up at them in amazement. Their giant yellow and black eyes blinked at me, and smoke curled out of their nostrils. They had green scales and gigantic claws and wings. They were beautiful. And terrifying.

I gave them a small wave before looking around. I was sitting on the ground in the Build Barn parking lot, and a bunch of Wonders were standing in a circle staring at me. Fantine wasexamining my neck, and a human was sitting on her other side.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Cal asked.

“Uh, we got out of the car, and there was some fog and... that’s it.” One of the fog monsters must’ve attacked me.

He nodded. “I’m going to try sending you a packet of my memories. We’ll see if it works.”

“Okay.” I felt a little dizzy and like my brain wasn’t working as well as it should.

Here you go.

Now I knew what had happened. I had Cal’s memories. I watched myself fall, felt Cal’s fear and determination fighting the monsters—vampires!—and his confusion over the vampire who’d saved him and captured one of the killers.

I frowned at Cal. “This sucks so much.”

He froze. Everyone around us went still. A wave of confusion-embarrassment-horror-grief came through the connection. “Why? I thought you wanted....”

I wrinkled my nose at him. “I’ll live, Cal. Chill. It’s just....” I heaved a dramatic sigh. “Vampires were supposed to be a human folk tale. They were the only kind of paranormal romance stories I could read without—” I gestured at everyone standing around us. “—picturing people I know.”

Everyone chuckled and relaxed.

“Greg,” Cal said gently. He gave me a hug.

“You give the best hugs.” I laid my head on his shoulder.

“Thanks, but did you get to the end of the memories I gave you?”

I shook my head. “I stopped when the vampire told you what they were.” I closed my eyes and sniffed Cal’s neck.

“Okay. No worries. I’m sorry about your books, though I can introduce you to a really fun series with aliens. Aliens definitely aren’t real.”

I nuzzled my nose into his skin. “Do the aliens have sex? I like the sex parts.”

Cal squeezed me tighter and chuckled. “The aliens have lots of sex, I promise. With tentacles even. But first, why don’t we get you home? We can go over everything else tomorrow.”

“Okay. Let’s order more pizza.”

“Anything you want.”