they would. “That’s what happens when you go into vision without a crystal—you just black out.”
I nodded, and then came the voice.
The most annoying voice ever.
“So you went into a vision?” Nicholas asked. “Without a crystal.”
“Ah, crap.” I didn’t even bother to say it in my head. I lifted Laylen’s hand off of my shoulder and sat up, dizzy and getting a total head rush. I blinked a few times while I waited for the room to stop spinning. “Did I hit my head?” I asked Laylen. “When I blacked out?”
Laylen shook his head. “No, I caught you before you did. You scared the crap out me, though. One minute you were talking, and then next you were falling out of the chair.”
“Nice,” I muttered.
“Nice for you,” Laylen teased. “But do you know how difficult it is to catch falling dead weight.”
I shook my head and got to my feet.
“So you can go into visions without a crystal ball?” Nicholas asked with intrigued.
Nicholas knowing about this was probably not a good thing. “No, I used a crystal ball,” I lied.
“No you didn’t—I’d have known if you had,” he said with a smirk. “But nice try.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”
“So,” Nicholas said, marveling at me as though I was the most fascinating thing he had ever laid eyes on. “You can go into a vision without the help of a crystal…fascinating.”
Even though Alex wasn’t here, I could picture him giving me a twenty minute lecture about my stupid mistake of letting Nicholas know about my uncommon Foreseer ability.
“I guess,” I said, acting like it wasn’t a big deal, when really it was since a Foreseer traveling into visions minus the crystal is a very unheard of—if not completely unheard—thing.
“How long have you known you could do it?” Nicholas asked with way too much interest.
I shrugged. “Not too long.”
Nicholas’s golden-eyed gaze practically burned into me, not in a bad way, but in a good way. Or should I say a bad/good way, because the guy had already shown way too much interest in me, and with the way he was staring at me, I had a feeling that his interest way going to increase. A lot.
“Do you know how rare that is?” Nicholas awed at me.
I gave a shrug “I guess. I mean, Alex said there might be one other guy that could do it.”
Nicholas’s eyes devoured me. “That other guy is Dyvinius’s younger brother, who’s been a Foreseer for a really long time, and comes from a line of many, many powerful Foreseers. He isn’t some girl who just got her Foreseer’s mark only a couple of days ago. Do you know how unlikely it is for anyone to be able to do that…you would have to be…” He trailed off.
“Have to be what?” I asked, dying to hear what came at the end of that. What if Nicholas knew something about my little gift?
“Very powerful,” he finished.
Well, crap. Powerful I was. Or at least I had a lot of power flowing around inside me. But Nicholas was not supposed to know this.
Play it cool, Gemma. “Yeah, well, if I am, then that’s news to me.”
“Really,” he said, and I could tell he wasn’t buying it.
“Yeah, really.” Was all I could think of to say.
“So weren’t you supposed to be bringing back that Ira crystal ball with you?” Laylen interrupted, in an effort to sidetrack Nicholas.
“Yeah,” Nicholas said, his eyes still fixed on me as he patted the pocket of his jeans “I have it.”
“Well, shouldn’t you get to work, then.” Laylen was trying really hard to direct Nicholas’s attention away from me and my power, but Nicholas wasn’t having any part of it. “I mean, I’m sure it’s going to take awhile to train Gemma, or whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing.”
“Maybe…” The way Nicholas was looking at me made me want to crawl under the table and hide. “Maybe not.”
“Regardless of how long it’ll take, I think we should get started now,” I told Nicholas. The sooner the better, at least for my mom’s sake.
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s get started.”
I was quickly catching on that Nicholas had the attention span of a child. We sat down on the living room floor, all Séance-style, sitting cross-legged, facing one another, a regular, violet ribbon crystal ball placed between us as he taught me how to become a “better Foreseer” and control my seeing ability. But it was going to take forever because he kept asking me questions. Questions that