as it was.
As we exited the main building and headed for the gym, I looked down into the shiny surface. Brooke dragged me along so I wouldn’t fall on my face. I pretended to concentrate, trying not to focus on the fact that my gray eyes seemed darker than usual and my auburn hair seemed curlier. Curlier? I leaned in for a closer look. Oh, the gods were a cruel and humorless lot. Because that’s what I needed. More curls.
“Does my hair seem curlier to you?”
“Curlier than an ironing board, yes. Curlier than a French poodle, no. Now, concentrate.” She rubbed her hands together to emphasize her enthusiasm. “It’s vision time, baby. We need them now more than ever.”
Even at their height, my prophetic visions hadn’t been terribly useful. What on earth could I gain from looking into a mirror besides lower self-esteem?
“Are you even concentrating?” Brooke asked as I tripped on a pebble. This took coordination. An attribute I lacked in spades. But she believed with every fiber of her being that my visions were the key to everything. According to prophecy, I was supposed to stop an impending war between humans and demons before it ever started, but how I was supposed to manage that, nobody knew. Least of all me.
And why was I even participating in this ridiculous scheme of hers? She knew better than anyone that I either had to be touching the person I was prophesying about, or have touched him at some point in the recent past.
But she was bound and determined to expand my skills, to widen my periphery so I could have visions on the fly. So far, our attempts with the mirror thing had yielded exactly squat. Unless I was touching said fly, nothing happened.
Kind of like now.
After a solid twelve seconds, I gave up. “You know, it would help if I knew what to concentrate on.”
Brooke patted my arm absently, staring into her phone. “Concentrate on concentrating.”
For the love of Starbucks, what the heck did that mean?
I lifted the mirror again. Shook it a little to make sure it was working. Held it at arm’s length. Squinted. Just as I was about to give up entirely, a vision, dark and alluring, materialized behind me. I sucked in a soft breath at the sight even though, admittedly, there was nothing prophetic about it.
Jared Kovach was standing against the wall of the building we’d just left. Watching me. At least he had been until he saw me notice him in the mirror. He turned away the moment our eyes made contact, and the pain that shot through me was quick and unforgiving.
I snapped the compact closed and handed it back to Brooke. “I think it’s broken.”
From my periphery, I noticed Jared start our way, and my stomach clenched in agony. I wanted to run. Instead, I stopped and turned to him. Mostly because he could outrun me. He was wearing his requisite jeans that fit low on his h*ps and a gray T-shirt with a brown bomber jacket thrown over his shoulder. The cloudy day had splashed color across the sky behind him, and hints of oranges, pinks, and purples served as a backdrop to the powerful set of his shoulders, the lean hills and valleys of his arms. Somehow I didn’t think that a coincidence. But his exquisite form only drove home the fact that he was so far out of my league, it was unreal.
He’d come to Riley’s Switch a couple of months ago to do a job. That job was to pop in, take me a few minutes before I was slated to die anyway, then pop back out again. But he’d disobeyed his orders. He’d saved me instead, thus breaking one of the three rules that celestial beings are bound by. Even the powerful Angel of Death. As a result, he was stuck on Earth. Stuck helping me.
The problem was, I fell in love with him. It was hard not to. And he really liked me, if his mouth pressed against mine every chance it got was any indication. But that made my grandparents nervous. They went behind my back and asked him to keep his distance, so keep his distance he had. Out of respect for their wishes and because he couldn’t argue their point, he gave his word that he would act only in the capacity of protector and guardian where I was concerned. Nothing more. Nothing less.
And my heart shattered into a million tiny pieces.
My