Page 62 of The Second Sight
Fairies were choking around me. I waited for the burning in my lungs, the choking sensation the others were experiencing, but it didn’t come. The smoke swirled around me, thick enough that I could barely see through it. My breathing remained unaffected.
I didn’t know what to do for the three that had helped me. I just hoped hey weren’t dying. The one fairy said we were kin. I didn’t know them, but I couldn’t bear to lose anyone else.
Around me, the smoke began to dissipate, carried away by the night breeze. Two of the fairies were on the ground, their wings were now retracting into their backs, disappearing beneath their clothing as if they’d never existed. They gasped and coughed, struggling to purge the poisonous gas from their systems.
Yellow wings recovered first. Then black wings pushed herself up to standing with her hands and knees. “The human girl,” she said between coughs. “They took her.”
That human girl was my best friend.
I stood in the middle of the street, surrounded by three weakened fairies, and the shattered glass from Brooklyn’s car. My best friend since sixth grade had been kidnapped by supernatural hunters because of me. Because of what I was. I wanted to cry by my eyes wouldn’t do what my brain ordered.
The one called Kyren managed to sit up, wincing as he massaged his shoulder where his wing had been twisted.
The screech of tires cut through the night, headlights slicing through the lingering smoke. A sleek purple Porsche skidded to a stop at the scene. I knew that car. Seven. He had found me somehow, but he was too late.
Seven was out of the car before the engine died, moving with that inhuman speed that still startled me. Lily emerged from the passenger side more slowly, her face a mask of controlled tension as she surveyed the chaos.
Her eyes darted from the broken glass, the three yumboe, and me in the middle of it all.
“Kasi!” Seven called, his voice was tight with urgency. He reached me in seconds. His eyes scanned me for injuries, relief washing over his features when he found none. “Are you hurt?”
I couldn’t speak. My throat had closed, choked with tears I couldn’t seem to shed. Brooklyn’s face flashed in my mind her head snapping back from Gideon’s blow, her unconscious body thrown into the SUV like trash. My best friend. My ride or die.
Seven pulled me against him, his arms encircling me in a protective embrace. The familiar scent of him filled my senses. Something inside me broke at his touch. The tears came then, soaking into the fabric of his shirt.
“They took her,” I choked out between sobs. “They took Brooklyn.”
His arms tightened around me, one hand cradling the back of my head. “Who?” he asked, though I suspected he already knew the answer.
“Bambara hunters,” Yellow wings answered for me.
“Gideon.” I cried.
Seven looked down at me. “The man from your vision?”
I nodded against his chest, unable to form more words through my grief.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
KASI
Seven’s arms tightened around me. Brooklyn was gone, taken by monsters hunting for fae blood. My blood. If I hadn’t been born half-yumboe, if my mother hadn’t been who she was, Brooklyn would be safe. We’d be delivering peach cobbler to my dad right now. Instead, my best friend was in the hands of killers, and three strange fairies stood around us in the middle of a deserted street.
“Kasi, I’m so sorry,” Seven said, pulling me closer into his embrace. “I should have been here.” His body was rigid with tension as he held me, the muscles in his arms flexed. I could feel the barely controlled fury radiating from him.
He abruptly pulled back, his blue eyes narrowing as they swept over the winged beings standing only a few feet away from us. His jaw clenched, and I felt his body shift, positioning himself slightly in front of me in a protective stance.
“Who the hell are you fairies?” He demanded, his voice a low, dangerous growl that reminded me he was a predator beneath his beautiful exterior.
Lily was already surveying the scene with cold calculation, her eyes lingering on the dead hunter whose blood stained thepavement. She moved to stand beside Seven, creating a wall of vampire between me and the fairies who had just saved my life.
The woman with yellow wings stepped forward. Now that the immediate danger had passed, I could see her clearly. Her skin was so dark it seemed to absorb the moonlight, making the yellow of her eyes even more striking as they glowed in the darkness. Her cornrows were adorned with gold beads. She wore something like battle gear, form-fitting and practical, with elaborate designs etched into what looked like leather armor.
“I am Romeca,” she announced, her voice carrying a slight accent I couldn’t place. “Sister of Theia and aunt of Kasinda, the half-fae.” She gestured toward me. “I sensed my fae kin was in danger and crossed through the fairy realm to warn her.”
I gasped, as recognition crashed over me. “I saw you,” I blurted out. “In the nightclub bathroom mirror. At first, I thought it was my mother, but it was you. You were trying to warn me.”
