Page 6 of The Second Sight (Wanderlust Emporium Presents, Season One)

Chapter

Five

KASI

Icrashed back to reality with a violent jolt.

The vision of my mother with her glowing brown skin, her familiar yet strange face, but her hair was different.

It was a trick. It wasn’t my mama. There was something off.

Had I really hallucinated? Did I blackout?

Was it the glasses that were still perched on the bridge of my nose?

“Find me,” she had said. “Find your true self first, then find me.”

I shook my head, trying to clear the fog. The alcohol in my system wasn’t helping, but this was more than drunkenness. What I’d seen was too real, too specific.

The bathroom was still empty. I couldn’t be the only woman who had to pee.

Maybe they had another bathroom, and this one no one knew about.

The mirrors above the sinks reflected my face back at me.

Through the readers, everything still possessed that heightened clarity.

I should’ve taken them off. Something wasn’t right about these old glasses, but my hands refused to obey my brain.

My gaze drifted across the bathroom. That’s when I noticed it, a stall door near the back, slightly ajar. A sliver of space that revealed movement inside.

Under normal circumstances, I would have ignored it. Public bathrooms deserved whatever privacy could be managed. But through these lenses, I could see something emanating from that stall. There was a pulsing crimson light that seemed to beat in rhythm with my own racing heart.

My feet carried me forward before my brain could protest. The bass from the club speakers vibrated through the walls, masking the sound of my heels as I approached the partially open door.

I told myself I was checking if someone needed help.

Deep down in some primitive part of me, I already knew I should be running in the opposite direction.

Or at the very least peeing, because that was what I came in here to do.

I peered through the gap in the door, and the world stopped.

Inside the stall stood the handsome blonde man, the one who had been watching me all night.

He wasn’t alone. A young woman was with him, her back pressed against the partition wall, her head lolled to one side like a broken doll’s.

He was bent over her exposed neck. His mouth latched onto her skin like a parasite. What? What in the entire fuck?

Blood. There was blood everywhere. Crimson rivulets trailed down her pale skin, staining the neckline of her sequined top. Through the glasses, the blood seemed to glow with its own inner light, pulsing with life even as it left her body.

I let out a strangled sound that wasn’t quite a gasp but was enough to be heard. The man’s head jerked up, and our eyes met through the gap in the door. Blood, old girl’s blood, coated his lips and chin, dripping obscenely down the front of his expensive-looking black leather jacket.

The woman slumped further, sliding down the partition until she was half-seated on the toilet, unconscious or worse. He didn’t seem to care. His attention was entirely fixed on me now, his expression shifting from surprise to cold calculation in the space of a second.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered, the words barely audible even to my own ears. But he heard me.

I stumbled backward, my brain finally catching up to what my eyes were seeing.

Kasi, you were on the track team in junior high and high school. Run, dumbass. I needed to run. I told myself.

My feet moved and my hands trembled violently as I fumbled for the bathroom door. My coordination was shot to hell by fear and alcohol. The doorknob slipped from my sweaty grasp. Behind me, I heard the stall door creak open fully.

“Don’t,” a dangerous voice commanded.

I didn’t look back. My pulse pounded in my ears, nearly drowning out the music.

Cold sweat broke across my skin as my fingers finally closed around the door handle.

Just as I began to pull it open, a gust of air brushed past me.

It was the only warning before a hand slammed the door shut again with such force that the sound deafened me.

He moved like nothing human. One moment he was by the stall, the next he was pressed against my back, his chest solid as stone against my shoulder blades. The metallic scent of blood filled my nostrils, making my stomach lurch.

“How did you see me?” he demanded. His voice at my ear sent shivers down my spine.

I tried to speak, but only a pathetic whimper escaped my lips. His hand moved from the door to my arm, gripping me with a strength that would leave bruises. He spun me around to face him, and I got my first proper look at what I was dealing with.

He was attractive. Too attractive, fashion model attractive, but in a villainous way.

Now I knew he had been looking at me like a predator earlier.

His whitish-blonde hair fell across his forehead in artful disarray, not perfectly coiffed like before.

His facial features were angular, almost too perfect to be real.

But it was his eyes that held me frozen.

They were wild, hungry and alluring. Blood still stained his full lips, one drop trailing slowly down his chin.

“How. Did. You. See. Me?” Each word was precise and clipped.

I struggled against his grip. “Please,” I gasped. “Let me go.”

His eyes narrowed, focusing on my face. “Answer me!” His voice roared.

Instead of answering, I screamed out loud and desperate. “Help!” but the pounding bass from the club swallowed the sound. No one would hear my cries. No one would come for me.

In a motion too swift to follow, he clamped one hand over my mouth. Then his expression hardened again. “You’ve seen too much.”

Before I could react, he bent and tossed me over his shoulder like I weighed nothing at all. My world tilted sideways, blood rushing to my head as I dangled upside down. I pounded my fists against his back, kicked my legs wildly, but it was like hitting a marble statue. He didn’t even grunt.

He carried me out of the bathroom and down a service corridor I hadn’t noticed before. Kitchen staff looked up as we passed, but their expressions were blank, unseeing. Why weren’t they helping me? Couldn’t they see I was being kidnapped by a lunatic?

I screamed again. My head throbbed. My vision swam from being upside down and from the alcohol still in my system. Where was Brooklyn? Would she even notice I was missing before I was murdered?

He burst through the back exit into the alley behind the club. Like most alleys, it was dark and deserted, lit only by the distant glow of a single faraway streetlamp. I let my present condition sink in. I was alone with a monster, and no one in the world knew where I was.

He tossed me against the brick wall like I weighed nothing. My back collided with the rough surface hard enough to push the air from my lungs. Pain bloomed across my shoulder blades as I struggled to stay upright. My legs threatened to buckle beneath me.

The alley stank of hot garbage. Early June was warped with heat and humidity. Blood— that poor woman’s blood still stained his mouth. It was impossible to miss, even through the glasses still perched on my nose.

This was my chance to flee. With a few feet of space between us, I lunged to the right, desperate to reach the end of the alley, the safety of the crowded street beyond.

I’d taken only two stumbling steps when he materialized in front of me, moving faster than my eyes could track.

His tall frame blocked my exit completely.

“Don’t,” he said. The single word made me pause. “I’d hate to have to hurt you.”

The trembling started in my hands and spread through my entire body until my teeth chattered. Broken bottles littered the pavement. Nothing I could use as a weapon, nothing that would help against whatever the hell he was.

“Who are you?” he demanded, stalking toward me with one measured step, backing me further against the wall. “What are you?”

I pressed myself against the bricks, feeling each rough edge dig into my back through the thin fabric of my dress. A fresh wave of shivers flooded my body. He was too close.

“I’m nobody,” I managed in two words. “It’s my birthday. Please—”

“Not what I asked.” He was super close now, close enough that I could smell the copper tang of blood on his breath. “What are you that you can see through my magic?”

I had no idea what he was talking about. Magic? My mind raced, trying to make sense of what I’d seen. He’d been drinking that woman’s blood. Like a vampire. But vampires weren’t real. They couldn’t be.

“I didn’t see anything,” I lied. “I was just looking for an empty stall. I didn’t see you or anyone else. I swear.”

His eyes narrowed, and his hand shot out, pinning me to the wall with his palm flat against my collarbone. Not choking me but holding me immobile with frightening ease. I could feel my pulse pounding against his fingers.

“You saw me feeding,” he stated flatly, no question in his tone. “You saw through the veil I cast. No normal human can do that.” His gaze dropped to the glasses, then back to my face. “These are not ordinary glasses, are they?”

The distant thump of music from the club was the only sound besides my shallow, panicked breathing. A car horn blared on the street, so close yet impossibly far away. No one would hear me scream. No one would come to help.

“I don’t know what they are,” I admitted, surprised by the truth that spilled from my lips. “I bought them today. From a shop called the Wanderlust Emporium.”

Something flickered across his face. His grip on my collarbone eased slightly, though he didn’t release me.

“The Emporium,” he repeated, his voice softening a fraction. “Moira’s place.”

He knew the shop owner by name? The realization sent a fresh jolt of fear through me. What was happening?

“Please,” I whispered, tears welling in my eyes. “I won’t tell anyone what I saw. Just let me go. I want to go home.”

His free hand moved toward my face, and I flinched, turning my head away. His fingers hovered near the glasses, not quite touching them.

“May I?” he asked with an unexpected courtesy.

When I didn’t answer, paralyzed by fear, he carefully lifted the glasses from my nose. The world immediately dulled around me. Even his face, still handsome, looked more regular handsome, not supernaturally handsome.

He studied the glasses, turning them over in his hands with a delicacy that seemed at odds with the strength I’d witnessed. The blood on his mouth was still visible, though less vivid without the lenses enhancing my vision.

“Ancient craftsmanship,” he murmured, almost to himself. “I haven’t seen these spectacles before.”

While he was distracted, I saw my opportunity. I ducked under his arm and bolted toward the alley entrance, my heart in my throat. I’d made it perhaps six steps when his hand closed around my wrist, yanking me to a halt with enough force to nearly dislocate my shoulder.

Something had changed. His grip, while firm, lacked the bruising intensity from before. When he pulled me back around to face him, his expression had shifted from menacing to curious.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said, his voice softer than before. The glasses dangled from his other hand. “I need to know how you came to possess these. And why they work for you.”

“Work for me?” I repeated, my voice cracking. “I don’t understand any of this. Who are you? What are you?”

A smile curved his bloodstained lips, revealing teeth too white, too perfect and two canines slightly longer than they should have been. “I think you know exactly what I am. The glasses showed you the truth of things, didn’t they?”

“Vampire,” I whispered, the word falling out of my mouth like a mistake.

He inclined his head slightly. “My name is Severin Crackstone. Though some call me Seven.”

A name. He had a name. Somehow that made him more real, more terrifying. “What about that woman in the bathroom?” I asked. “Is she ah, ah, did you kill her?”

“She’ll wake with a headache and no memory of our encounter,” he replied casually. “I rarely kill when I feed. Wasteful and unnecessary.”

The clinical way he spoke of drinking blood made my stomach turn. I swallowed hard against the nausea rising in my throat.

“The spectacles,” he continued, holding them up between us. “Where exactly did you get them?”

“I told you, the Wanderlust Emporium, today. It’s my birthday.

” I don’t know why I kept mentioning that fact, as if it might somehow protect me from harm.

“The woman there, Moira said be careful what you look for. Not all truths are comfortable ones.” I don’t know why I felt the urge to tell him that.

Seven’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Did she, now? And what else did Moira tell you?”

I hesitated, remembering her cryptic words. “Nothing specific. Just that they’d been waiting for me, the glasses.”

That seemed to interest him. His grip on my wrist loosened, though he didn’t release me entirely. “Waiting for you,” he repeated thoughtfully. “Now that is curious.”

The alcohol in my system was wearing off, replaced by fear. Seven noticed my shiver and, in a surprisingly gentlemanly gesture, shrugged out of his leather jacket and draped it over my shoulders, all while maintaining his hold on my wrist.