Page 2 of Zero Happily Ever Afters

A pitter-patter of frantic footsteps scampering in the distance pulled my attention. Of course they did. The universe loved to steal shining moments from me at any chance it had to take them.

I huffed hard enough that it almost roused me from my sleep, but the weight of this goddamn vision held me down and ensured I had the displeasure of watching it unfold.

Caleb ran toward me, carrying a black void of nothingness that ate away at all the scenery of my dreamscape. The sunlight faded. The academy crumbled to pieces. Finn and Milo vanished in a breath.

Each step carried the weight of death. Caleb’s sweaty face engrained itself in my mind, his frantic expression, the muddy snow-white hair from a bad dye job he’d gotten as a first-year student. When he winced in pain, silently shouting in the darkness, I rolled my eyes. Figuratively. Maybe literally. All I knew was by the time he’d hit the shadowed ground and Kenzo stood beside him, retrieving the bloody dagger embedded in his back to show to Tara, who’d also appeared in the void vision, I’d lost all interest.

This damn premonition of the future haunted me for months on end, but I’d somehow helped in averting it. Unfortunately, whether Milo’s visions were prevented or ended up cementing into reality, the vision itself never faded away. I mean, this was clearly my students during their first year at fifteen. It wasn’t possible for this specific vision to happen anymore.

It was a terrible fucking magic, and since I had the misfortune of absorbing tens of thousands of Milo’s clairvoyant musings of potential outcomes when we shared a kiss last year, that meant I had to deal with these visions regularly. Everything Milo did to store them in a less inconvenient place within my mind was only temporary. The tethers holding the visions at bay often snapped, and I was always greeted with the void vision,one I’d now had the misfortune of seeing close to a hundred times over.

Even as I sighed with annoyance, the damn thing replayed on a loop five more times. It just kept reminding me of what could’ve been.

I understood that with so many visions stored in my mind, they were bound to wriggle loose and flood my thoughts, but I didn’t understand why the void vision always had to pop out first. It came to me like a harbinger of ill tidings, bringing with it a cluster fuck of countless other visions.

One by one, they clouded the darkness surrounding the void vision. My mind became a collection of puzzles where each piece stemmed from a different work of art. Sightings of burning buildings. Images of bloody battles. Singing in the rain for surprising days off. Dancing at the club with a nauseous stomach—damn sandwich. Clammy hands as I approached a podium, clearing my throat. A trophy so close to my grasp, I’d finally achieved accolades for my inventions. Dogs barking and chasing a familiar up a tree. Fiends everywhere, feasting on traces of magic before exploding into wisps of fluttering white light. Magic cast with precision during exams. Magic cast carelessly during a case. City streets erupting as destruction swept through Chicago. People honked, cursing the construction they knew was bound to start soon, yet blamed the lazy bastards fixing the roads for why they’d be late to work.

Every vision burst through my mind so quickly, I barely grasped the fleeting sights. Some of them felt like they belonged to me, like these outcomes could be mine, but none of these visions held my story. No, it was merely an awful way of perceiving the future for Milo. Some of his visions were over the shoulder of those he observed, like catching a short film. But others…others pulled him into the driver’s seat, peering through the eyes of the would-be could-be person in question.

I had no idea how Milo made sense of any of those visions, sorted them from urgent to mundane, figured out which potentials were outdated and which could still come to pass.

“Such an exhausting fucking headache,” I grumbled, groggy and finally waking from the dreadful lack of sleep. Sleep had almost found me, allowing me to feel well-rested while locked in a dream, yet those damn visions stole away any semblance of rest I’d found.

“Bad dream?” Milo asked with a yawn, rolling over from his corner of the bed where Charlie had forced him after wedging himself between us at two in the morning. His hind feet were stretched far, jabbed into Milo’s back to maintain a proper distance that Charlie approved of.

Charlie chirped when I rubbed the orange fluff on his face. Carlie chirped too, my fat little tabby cat sitting at the edge of the bed with doe eyes of desperation. She wanted food and pretended to be sweet. Another minute and she’d be rubbing against my feet. Another two minutes and she’d be biting them. Three minutes and the claws would come out.

Still, I struggled to gain my composure. Between the blobs of orange representing my cats, the bright inferno of sunlight piercing through my bedroom window, and the countless visions still swimming through my head, it was any wonder I hadn’t passed out. Okay, passing out would be a reward, something that allowed me to sleep, even if restless.

“Well?” Milo asked again, scratching his facial scruff. He’d been stretched so thin making a thousand different arrangements on short notice that he’d barely had time to rest, let alone focus on grooming habits.

I liked the five o’clock shadow, though. I also liked his curly, blond hair, which I could only ever truly run my fingers through first thing in the morning before he tossed in a ton of product to establish the Enchanter Evergreen look.

“Maybe he needs a new look,” I whispered.

“Dodging my question.” Milo smiled with tightly closed eyes, the goofy type of grin like a dog enjoying pets as I massaged his scalp.

“The visions came loose again,” I answered Milo’s question.

He responded by brushing the sleep from his eyes, an action that proved a most difficult battle. The war on a good night’s rest plagued us both. And guilt pinched at me, stealing the bit of sleep Milo had left before starting his next big case. A case that’d be unlike any other. A case that’d change everything. A case that’d steal him from me. Even if only for a few weeks. I didn’t like it.

“Lemme see what I can do.” Milo wrapped his arms around me. They were so much bigger than mine, firm and powerful, carrying the weight of the world and all his love for me.

“I gotta learn how to do this on my own.” I pulled away, almost as reluctantly as Carlie would whenever I picked her up and held her captive with affection.

Milo smirked, scooting closer and sending Charlie trotting to the edge of the bed to join his sister. He meowed in protest, furious to have his sleep and cuddle pillow taken from him.

“You don’t have to learn today.”

“I have to learn soon. I mean, you’re leaving today, so now is basically—”

“Is basically,” Milo interrupted. “Is basically the perfect time for a last-minute tune-up on the creaky floorboards of your brain.”

I huffed, which only invited Milo to scoot closer. Telekinetically, he pulled out an enchantment he’d bought specifically for diving into my mind with ease. Gently, he placed the symbol on my shoulder. I shuddered at the warm vibrance radiating off the magic, magic that merged Milo and me intoa unified consciousness. He pressed his forehead against mine and then tumbled into my mind.

Here we stood, surrounded by messy, shattered visions floating around my inner core, shimmering and blaring and doing everything they could to steal my attention to the urgency of their potential future.

“This shouldn’t take too long.”

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