Page 479 of Fated to be Enemies

And just once? I’d really like to be wrong.

For curiosity’s sake, I pull my laptop onto the bed, praying I don’t blow up this beautiful piece of equipment. I have a bad habit of frying electrical devices when I’m upset, and watching a mom and daughter get gunned down in their home definitely puts me in the “agitated” column. In fact, this is my fourth laptop this year.

Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath. Once marginally centered, I type the local news site into the browser. Sure enough, the breaking news story is of Victoria Ness, thirty-four, and Vivian Ness, seven, who were gunned down in their University Park home two hours ago. The shooter, Victoria’s estranged husband, then turned the gun on himself.

Figures.

What kind of psychic am I? Well, evidently, I’m the shitty kind. I maybe see ten percent of what I should, and I can’t alter a single second of it. I see what I see, and then I brace myself because it’s going to happen. There’s nothing I can do.

Believe me, I’ve tried.

Just once I’d like to have a vision I could change.

Just once I’d like to see something other than how and when someone will die.

But I know my fate, and sanity just isn’t in the cards for me.

Staring out the huge picture window, I take in the view of the mountain range beyond. The craggy rocks and giant boulders are so vastly different from where I started my life. There are fewer trees here in the subalpine Rockies than in the Pacific Northwest, and the sun shines more days throughout the year. The heat, the sun, the smell of dry earth—all these differences help me breathe when I wake from a new vision.

A new death.

Seeing that blue sky goes a long way to calm me down when I should be rocking in a corner.

Getting out of bed, I immediately rip off the sweat-soaked sheets. It’s a ritual of sorts. A fresh start. A means of washing away a death I can’t change, and the helplessness of another life gone. Snapping the clean sheets on the bed, I begin bracing myself for the total freaking production tonight will be.

I have an art show this evening, and though it’s July in Denver, I’ll be covered from neck to ankles to hide the ink on my skin, wear contacts to cloak the eyes that mark me as what I am, and pray that no one finds me. Yes, it’s Denver, and yes, even grandmothers are inked these days, but it’s the eyes that get people.

As a seer, I was born with the ability to observe events that will come to pass in vivid Technicolor right inside my little noggin. And my eyes? They marked me before I ever had my first vision. My irises are an extraordinarily pale, milky green. Like in old westerns where the elderly guy is blind, and he has those freaky eyes where the iris and pupil nearly blend into the sclera? Yep, that’s what I’ve got going on here.

But my sight is better than most humans. Likely better than most Ethereals, too. But the Ethereal community prefers not to remember we even exist—our presence reminding them that there’s no such thing as a true immortal. Everything dies. Witch or warlock, wraith, or even a meager human, they all perish in the end. And when they do, flames and wings are what you better hope you see.

It’s better than the alternative.

And let’s not get into the fact that sometimes I randomly electrocute people without meaning to. If people weren’t already looking at me funny before—which they are, because my eyes freak people way the hell out—they would after I randomly zapped them.

So I wear contacts when I leave my home, because if I don’t, people assume I’m blind, for one, and they act all awkward and try to help me do stuff or get around. Or numero dos: their faces say they are skeeved way the hell out. Also, when I’m pissed, they kind of, well, glow.

Like an incandescent bulb, glow.

So the fact that I’m different is really fucking obvious and that doesn’t even touch on the flames.

Or the wings.

Hello, my name is Aurelia Constantine, and I am a phoenix.

No offense to Greek mythology, but I’m not a damn bird. I’m a person. I just so happen—on occasion—to burst into flames, have visions, and electrocute people with a shield that I can’t seem to control. Oh, and those wings? Very, very real.

And they’re persnickety little bitches to boot.

My last phase totally ruined my favorite leather jacket. I’ve had that jacket for the past twenty years. They just don’t make leather like they used to. Replacing it was a pain in the ass, and in the end, I had to have it custom made.

Also, I don’t age. Or die. Wait. I take that back. I’ve died. A lot. I just don’t stay dead.

I’ve looked thirty-ish for the last one hundred and fifty years or so. Since I was born about thirty years prior to the aging halt, I’m assuming my kind ages at a normal rate until we reach our bodies’ maturity. Then we stop aging altogether.

Or it could just be me.

I should know all these details for sure, should be knowledgeable about the basic facets of my species, but escaping my Legion at twenty means I was never taught several important aspects of being what I am.

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