Page 75 of Wild Scottish Beauty

My mouth fell open as I looked around the room, which now resembled a doctor’s office. A compact, curvy woman, with thick curling hair, dusky skin, and warm brown eyes gaped at a man in a lab coat, an expression of horror on her face.

“Cancer?” the woman whispered, bringing a trembling hand to her mouth.

“I’m so sorry to give you this news. Yes, ovarian cancer.”

“How, um, how long? How far is it?” The woman ran a finger over a cross on a chain at her neck.

“It’s stage four.” The doctor cleared his throat.

“Out of?—”

“Four stages.”

“Oh.” Tears filled the woman’s eyes.

“I wish you would have come to me withyour symptoms sooner.” The doctor reached out and squeezed the woman’s arm. “But we’re going to fight this.”

The kitchen snapped back into focus, with Lia’s hand on my shoulder, concern on her face.

“Whoa, are you okay? It looked like you were in a trance.”

“I…” I gulped, seeing the same brown eyes in Lia’s face as the woman in my vision. This must be about her mother. Oh hell, what was I going to say? I swallowed, trying to collect my thoughts, and something cool and metal slid from my fingers to the floor.

“Meow,” Calvin said, flashing an image into my head of me helping Lia, hugging her. I looked to the floor to see what had fallen from my hand and found Calvin batting a necklace around.

“Oh, my locket.” Lia bent, picking up a heart-shaped locket that had inexplicably just been resting in my hand, and secured it back around her neck. “My mother gave this to me.”

My heart hammered, and my thoughts scrambled as I tried to make sense of my vision. Was this something that I should share with Lia? What if her mother already knew and wasn’t telling her? What if this was something that was too personal for me to say?

Calvin sunk his claws into my ankle.

“Ow,” I gasped, glaring down at him.

“Willow…is that my mom?” Lia leaned forward, narrowing her eyes at the picture I’d drawn of her mom, worry on her face, clutching her necklace in her hand.

Shit.

“Um, jeez, Lia, I don’t know how to say this.”

“Just say it. What’s going on here? She’s upset.” Lia tapped the screen.

“So, you know how I’ve figured out that I might be able to see the future?” We’d talked about my magick in the car the night before, and Lia had seemed pretty stoked about my powers.

“You just had a vision, didn’t you? That’s where you disappeared to, wasn’t it?” Worry furrowed Lia’s brow. “About my mother? Just tell me. Give it to me straight.”

“I had a vision of her in a doctor’s office. He told her she had stage four ovarian cancer and said if only she’d come in sooner.”

“No.” Lia’s fists clenched, and she paced the room, shaking her head. “No, no, no.”

“I’m sorry. It might not be true. I’m new to this.”

“You’re sure that’s what you heard?” A sheen of tears coated Lia’s eyes when she looked over her shoulder at me.

“Positive.”

“Okay.” Lia blew out a breath, nodding her head. “Right. Okay. We’ve got this. We’ll handle it. You said this was from the future…so, we could jump on this now, right?”

“Um, I think so? I’m sorry, I wish I knew more. I just got that flash.” I wished I coulddomore, but that was all I had to offer.

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