Page 12

Once I’d gotten home from work, I fed the cats, grabbed a beer, had a smoke, and watched really shitty television. Like mind-numbingly awful programming that I couldn’t stop tuning into. It was dreadful, and I definitely gave my students judgy, glaring expressions whenever someone had the audacity to bring it up during class. That said, Milo forced me to watch the first season with him, and now I hate-binged it in his absence.

“We don’t tell him about that, though.” I cuddled with Charlie, who obviously couldn’t speak but had very expressive eyes that painted quite the telling narrative. “That means no snitching to Milo even if he offers you a million kisses.”

Charlie chirped.

Casually, during one of the most obvious plotlines, I telekinetically waved over the test packets from my bag and started grading them.

Carlie trotted over, whining until I waved a hand to release her treat toys. Milo got them for her. It gave Carlie a bit of a challenge before scarfing down everything.

The show became background static as work enveloped my attention, and I sank into reviewing how my students performed on the practice exams for the Federally Accelerated Practicum. Most of them did decently on the multiple-choice sections, but I’d gathered from their surface thoughts too much of that came down to luck. They couldn’t rely on luck during the actual test, so those that I’d peered on guessing their way through parts of the test received a penalty with a note that explained I fucking knew they didn’t know and if they wanted to argue about it, bring it on.

“Only, I obviously phrased it nicer,” I said to Charlie since he always listened to me when I worked.

He purred in agreement, and I continued making my way through these practice tests.

The written responses for their short answers were harder to gauge. I didn’t know if I was being nitpicky or generous half the time when I jotted a comment of praise or improvement. Mostly improvement because, let’s be honest, they could use it. Their scoring by the FAP panelist would be subjective too, no matter how much those in charge of the testing procedures claimed to stick strictly to the rubric guidelines. Nothing was a hundred percent foolproof, and the FAP had a lot of fucking fools running it.

The clink of dominos smacking against each other rattled in the back of my head.

I bared my teeth, bracing for the clickity clank of gears shifting, my mind bracing for the visions about to spring loose and fuck up my whole life. Only they didn’t do that. Nothing. There was the ding of a bomb about to explode, and then it stopped. I sighed.

“That’s not good.” I squeezed Charlie against my chest, letting the steady purrs he released steal my attention from the potential horrors awaiting me. “It’s fine.”

I took a deep breath and shrugged. I would ignore it. It wasn’t the first bodily check engine light I’d ignored over the years in hopes that things would resolve themselves. It certainly wouldn’t be the last. Besides, no one could help with this. No one except for Milo, and I couldn’t bother him. Even if I wanted to. His mission had him traveling across the country in pursuit of a deadly witch. I needed to deal with this on my own.

These visions would spring loose soon, but it’d be fine. It had to be fine. Everything always worked out. Or it didn’t. Either way, I survived. Or I supposed eventually I wouldn’t. I groaned as I crawled off the couch to my feet while scooping Charlie into my arms because he certainly was in no mood to walk. He had his ‘carry me’ face on, which meant if I abandoned him in the living room to get ready for bed, I’d never hear the end of it. He’d cry all night until I checked on him.

I tossed him on the bed, using a bit of telekinesis to slow his plop onto the pillows so I could brush my teeth in peace and finish my nighttime routine.

Carlie scratched at the bathroom door, demanding the late-night treats I’d forgotten about. She had the look of utter contempt, patience thin and ready to lay siege to all my belongings as I slept. Of course, only if I didn’t pay penance in the form of snacks she’d grown accustomed to.

“This is Milo’s fault.” I dragged my feet from my bedroom and to the kitchen for the special treats she absolutely had to have because she’d been a good girl.

“They’re good for her,” Milo’s voice echoed in my head, the memory of his sweet smile, his puppy dog blue eyes, the irritating batting of his lashes.

He’d gotten her diet-friendly treats, snacks predicted to help with the fact the vet said she was overweight.

“By three pounds.” I side-eyed her, setting a few treats on the countertop. “Might not seem like much, but you’re like a foot long.”

Carlie devoured her treats and shimmied along the countertop before she hopped off and dashed away in preparation for her late-night antics before she would finally settle for bed.

“Me-meow.” Charlie crept at the edge of the hallway, glassy eyes peering out while he hid behind the way.

“I’m coming to bed.” I scooped Charlie up once again and carried him to the bedroom because I’d never hear the end of it if he had to walk himself back.

It didn’t take long for me to fall asleep, drifting into another repetitive dream. Finn’s speech a second time. No deviation from his presentation on the Sisters of Fate, on their psychic supremacy, on the witchy Illuminati conspiracy known as the Celestial Coven.

Part of me wanted to tear loose from the strings; I’d done it unintentionally before. Perhaps I could learn how to change my dreams, turn them into something fun. I’d drag Milo and Finn out of this classroom and run through the empty hallways of Gemini.

Frantic footsteps scampered through the edges of my dream, stealing attention from this memory. Each step beat like a slow drum, a harbinger of the worst about to unfold. The crunch of Caleb’s shoes hitting the ground washed away the sound of Finn’s voice. The further the void vision crept into my line of sight, the more that empty nothingness ate away at the memory. Soon, everything except for Caleb had vanished.

I took a deep, frustrated breath. The void vision was always the first to appear when the visions came loose, so I braced myself for an onslaught of impending images to bombard me. Honestly, it wasn’t simply sightings with these visions. No, I had the luxury of sounds, smells, and sensations of all types.

Would I be able to handle this? Without Milo here, I’d have to navigate the flurry of visions on my own. I knew this was coming. I’d felt it looming for days now, longer really, yet I was still baffled by how I’d sort these bursting visions. I’d have to contain them somehow, ignore them, drown them out before they drowned me.

Fifteen-year-old Caleb ran past me, looking nothing like the kid in my classes now. No, this frantic boy no longer existed, this danger no longer existed, but this goddamn potential future still lingered. Why? Because clearly, the universe was a dickhead. The outdated visions never faded away, always replaying alongside those that were still possible. How Milo handled this, I’d never in a million years understand. If I had his magic, I’d be pissed off all the time seeing useless fucking visions playing on repeat.

I huffed. It was even more annoying knowing Milo managed to smile through his days, considering how this type of shitshow played in his head on a loop. That just aggravated me even more. Irritation actually turned out to be a good thing, a bearable thing, which helped dull the repetition of Caleb sprinting for his life, collapsing to the ground as he died, Kenzo kneeling beside him, furious and removing the enchanted dagger, and Tara somber and filled with so much remorse her ocean of sorrow almost painted the edges of this black abyss.

“Fuck,” I muttered, bracing for an onslaught of impending visions. They’d all appear now. I’d endured the routine of it a few times now, and without Milo around, I’d have to cope with the monstrosities in my mind.

Only the pop of a hundred different visions snapping off simultaneously didn’t happen. Something new brewed at the edges of my mind. A vision that’d lain dormant among the collection. It boiled and sizzled, seared my inner core, twisting my perception of the mind, a place of my making, into a battlefield of carnage.

Rubble. Debris. Smoke. Flames. Chaos. Blood. Destruction. So powerful and palpable that the sheer devastation radiating off it swallowed every other vision entirely, leaving only the ruin of Chicago in its wake.

Silent screams.

Scorched flesh.

Crying corpses.

The city wept crimson tears, raining down the deaths of millions. Not a few unlucky souls but every single person. Maimed and slaughtered and left to rot on the fractured ground that rumbled with furious satisfaction.

I whirled through every corner of the city, every street, every building, every inch of the sky above and the tunnels below. Death. Death. Death. Everywhere and everyone.

Finally, the vision slowed like a rollercoaster inching its way back to the conductor’s station. Here, at the edge of the nightmarish vision, lay twelve bodies.

The fabric of uniformed blazers left burned and ripped. Bloodstained shirts tattered and frayed. Scorched emblems, ruining the golden sheen of Gemini Academy pins.

Yaritza Vargas. Dead. Melanie Dawson. Dead. Jennifer Jung.

Dead. Jamius Watson. Dead. Layla Smythe. Dead.

Carter Howe. Dead. Gael Rios-Vega. Dead. King Clucks.

Dead. Gael Martinez. Dead. Katherine Harris. Dead.

Tara Whitlock. Dead. Kenzo Ito. Dead. Caleb Huxley. Dead.

My entire homeroom coven lay across a sea of corpses, bloody and beaten and broken.

I screamed and shot up, shaking loose from the shadows and limbs that wrapped around my body, my throat. Fingers dug into the scar of my neck and ripped it open, painting blood and pain everywhere.

“No, no, no!” I shouted, gasping and desperate for a single breath.

The attack faded. The limbs that strangled me turned into tangled covers. I took rapid breaths, steadying my erratic pulse before I realized I’d levitated in my sleep. I floated high up off the bed, where both of my cats stared at me from the floor. Their eyes shimmered in the dark of the room.

“Fucking hell,” I muttered, releasing the stress of the nightmare—the vision, actually—and descended to the comfort of my bed. “Bet I gave you two a scare.”

Charlie hopped back in bed, sniffing my sweaty face and then settling back into a comfortable spot on the bed. I hadn’t levitated in my sleep since I was seven or eight. Sleep casting wasn’t unheard of, and my telepathy remained active at all times, but I rarely lost control of my roots. That vision shook me to my very core. Quite literally the core of my abdomen where access to the levitation root lay.

I contemplated contacting Milo, telling him about the vision, but he would’ve already seen it. This was probably another outdated potential future, one he’d resolved years ago. The thousands of visions I’d absorbed from Milo exploded throughout my mind, an eruption of fireworks flickering out too quickly to make sense of but lasting too long to simply ignore. They rattled around my skull, scraping at the insides of my head, tearing everything apart to the foundations of my sanity.

“This can’t be real. It can’t be possible,” I said to myself a few times, repeating it until the truth that this wasn’t possible cemented into my thoughts. Only it didn’t work.

I grabbed a cigarette and tried to calm my shaky nerves. Continuous flashes played in my line of sight, warping my perception of the dark bedroom. Even the cherry ember of my cigarette appeared blurred when the flicker of some fast-passing vision looped by.

“Fuck it.” I snuffed out the smoke and reached for my phone.

Milo answered on the first ring.

“How are you even awake?” I turned the phone to check the time, squinting at the harsh bright light in the darkness of my bedroom.

“What can I say?” He smiled; I felt it in the single breath of his pause. “I had a feeling you might call tonight.”

“Damn clairvoyants,” I said with a breathy huff, also smiling because only Milo would stay up until three in the morning on the off chance I might have a nightmare vision panic attack and need his soothing voice to calm down.

“I had…” I bit my lip, contemplating because the second I asked for clarification on that nightmare, that past vision, that horrible hellish future, I knew it’d consume me. It’d haunt my every waking breath. My every sleeping one, too.

“Visions came loose, and you saw a really bad one.”

“Yes, I saw—”

“An impossible possibility.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can, and I do. That future can never become reality.”

“You don’t know that. You always say things can change from the slightest ripple. We both know the Doppler caused more than ripples when he hurled stones into the lake of potential futures.”

“Fun metaphor, but unlikely it would put that reality back on track.”

“How can you possibly know?” I asked, edge in my voice, barely able to keep from snapping.

“Because I have to be dead in that future. Gone. Poof.” Milo chuckled, keeping the silence of that horrifying realization from fully sinking in. “And I don’t plan on being dead anytime soon. I’ve seen my final curtain call, and it’s fucking fabulous. I’m sure as shit not cashing that ending in for some knockoff warped reality.”

“You’ve seen your death?” I swallowed the lump in my throat. It hadn’t dawned on me, but of course someone with Milo’s magic had seen his own death. He’d seen mine before, the possibility, and prevented it. He saw death every day, so naturally, his would be there too, haunting him.

“I’ve seen like a thousand ish potential deaths for the amazingly awesome Enchanter fucking Evergreen,” Milo said with majestic confidence like he stood on a stage, not as a guild witch but as the captivating magicians of old. Top hat. Twirling cane. Silly cape. And a smile that pulled the audience into a trance. I didn’t need to be connected to Milo to feel that. His voice, his tone, his every breath painted that perception.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Sometimes, they’re funny. Just last week, I saw myself getting taken out from a ham sandwich.” Milo burst into laughter, the type of laughter that drew tears to the edge of his eyes as he stifled the joy. He had a joke in his head that he wished to share, to add, but the mere idea of it made him giggle.

I huffed. This joke was probably not even remotely funny. Folks had a way of building up humor in their own head, it hit the right notes at the right time and then they’d burst at the seams in a laughter fest over something ridiculously dull.

“Could you imagine the irony of me being taken out by swallowing a piece of meat? After all those years of mastering my gag reflex?” Milo had an annoyingly charming hint of humor in his voice, playful and hopeful and wishing to steer me out of the storm of paranoia. “I refuse to go out on a joke of a death. Unless it has a hell of a better punchline.”

I sat quietly, letting Milo’s laughter wash over me, wash away the horror of that vision. I reminded myself Milo was always ready, always here to prevent the worst possible future, refusing to settle for anything other than the best outcomes. That nightmarish future was simply an impossible lie. An illusion cast by a universe who underestimated The Inevitable Future.

“I wish I were there,” Milo said. “But I’ll be there soon.”

“I’m okay.”

“You’re not. And it’s all right to say you’re not.” Milo got really quiet, like he’d held onto those words from a lifetime ago. “I don’t want you sitting there suffering through the rubble of outdated visions when I could do something about it. I should be—”

“Exactly where you are,” I interrupted. “You’re making the brightest possible future, right?”

Milo didn’t respond.

“You’re keeping that carnage from my dream an unattainable reality. You’re making sure no one suffers at the hand of a scary witch with a serious boner of hate for technology.”

Milo burst into laughter. “Boner of hate? What the hell even is that?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged, twisting a bit in bed to let Charlie get cozier. “It sounded like some dumb shit you’d say.”

“Dick.” Milo giggled, incapable of holding in the laughter my absurd comment caused.

It brought pure joy to my thoughts, settling my nerves, easing the tension in my skull, and quieting the visions that’d sprung loose. I wouldn’t be able to neatly stack them in the corner of my mind, out of the way of my daily routine like Milo had done for me, but I could bear this fatigue until Milo’s return. Knowing his absence was only temporary alleviated the panic, the misery, the world that constantly gnawed at my sanity.

“I should be back in Chicago soon,” Milo said. “And then done with the case shortly after that…um, er… I mean, I should be done with the case soon and then back in Chicago after that.”

Milo chuckled, carefree with a hint of force to it. I could always tell when he faked it.

“I think maybe you’ve been up too late,” I said. “You sound too tired for conversation.”

“I think maybe you’re right.” Milo took a deep breath and paused. “If there’s anything you need, please let me know. I’ll do anything I can to—”

“You’ve helped a lot more than you realize.”

The visions sort of bounced around in the background of my thoughts, but I focused on the sound of Milo’s voice, the goals I had for work, the nearby dreams of neighbors. It was as if the visions were merely annoying pop-up ads in my brain. If I could ignore the ads in everyday life, I could certainly ignore the advertisements of potential possibilities.

I snorted at my own warped sense of exhausted humor. “I think maybe I’m too tired for this conversation, too.”

When I wasn’t so tired, I’d tell him about the memory I relived, the one with Finn and the Sisters of Fate. He enjoyed hearing about my memories of us, three guys looking ahead to the future.

Milo and I stayed on the phone, quietly breathing into it and enjoying the silence until we drifted off to sleep.

Because of him, the visions didn’t haunt my slumber. Because of him, I fell into a dream memory of our first official date after we’d gotten back together. Because of him, I spent every second of the night wishing for a lifetime of memories we could share.