blinked, a crease forming between her brows. “Do what?”
“Wall me out.”
“I’m not.”
He leaned over to look closely into her eyes. “Yeah. The bricks are going up faster than I thought.” He straightened, fighting the ridiculous urge to grin at her aggrieved glare. He’d rather she be angry than shut off. “Like it or not, we’re partners in this.”
“I know that,” she snapped.
“Good.”
She threw up her hands. “Great.”
They both settled, gazes locked, and damned if heat didn’t flare through him. Gods, he wanted her. A bad idea no matter what angle he looked at it from. Maybe antagonizing her was a bad idea.
“You’re sure?” she asked, breaking his thoughts into fragments. “About this being yours?”
He took a second to pick back up on the conversation. “Yes.”
“Then how would I know that the next vision is going to happen down here?” She turned him by the shoulders, and Alasdair stilled.
He recognized this alley.
Darker than others, full of boxes and piles of trash bags. As a kid, he’d gotten a creepy feeling about it, though he refused to avoid it. And a good thing, too, because—
Eighteen-year-old him came strolling down the street and passed right through current day him, sending a sickening sensation rolling through his stomach. But the memory of himself stopped suddenly, staring into the darkness of the alley. Listening.
Alasdair already knew for what.
…
Delilah had no doubt exactly what came next. The windigo she’d defeated. Horrible creatures, and she’d only ever come across the one. This had been a job she hadn’t contracted out to any of her people, taking it on herself, because of a promise she’d made to a phoenix in exchange for a favor. But what the hell did that have to do with Alasdair?
She peered closer at the boy standing before them. Almost a man, balanced at the beginning of adult life, though his blue eyes had held a sadness that day. Something deeper than what a kid that age should know.
Black hair. Crystal blue eyes. Cut glass jaw. The same aura of total command.
With a silent gasp, she swung her head sharply to stare at Alasdair, picturing him younger, his features not yet as sharp as they were, hair floppier, shoulders not as broad.
“Oh my gods. That was you?”
That had Alasdair snapping his head around to stare at her with eyes narrowed then opening wide on a wave of realization. “What do you mean?”
Before she could answer, a gurgling sound, like someone trying to inhale through water without a snorkel, came from deep in the alley, and the younger version of Alasdair took off, running directly toward danger.
Instead of following, though, Delilah suddenly found herself in the back of the alley, her perspective changed.
Blinking at the suddenness of the transition, she lifted arms clothed differently—a long-sleeved black shirt and skintight pants in a soft, easily maneuverable spandex material. Leather boots on her feet, good for running for a fast escape. She’d worn a black cloak that day, the hood up, hair braided over one shoulder.
I’m inside my own body. Her mother had never done this before. Was she going to relive the moment inside herself?
Where was Alasdair?
Only she didn’t have time to search. That gurgling sound was a man, and the beast at his throat was one of the more gruesome sights she’d encountered in her long life. The thing she was after had already started a fresh kill before she could get there. But if she could stop it now, the human might live.
Gathering her power inside herself, she knew she had only one shot at this before the windigo turned on her. Larger, faster, and with the ability to paralyze its victims with one bite, it could kill her before she could protect herself or escape if she wasn’t careful. She opened her mouth to whisper the words to manifest the power to obliterate the creature. Words taught to her by both her parents.
She lifted her hands, ready to unleash.
“Get off him!” the boy demanded, voice deeper than one would expect from a teenager. More than a hint of the man to come.
Carefully, trying not to draw attention to herself, Delilah stepped back into the shadows.
The windigo, still unaware of her presence, rose from the human it was gnawing on, and the boy’s startlingly blue eyes tracked it up and up and up. Over twelve feet of towering beast. The thing had the head of a deer, antlers spreading wide from the top, but all bone, like staring at a skull bleached white by