Fatal Sight (Harbingers Of Death Book 2) by LeAnn Mason (book club reads .TXT) 📕

Jessica was dead. And it was my fault.

I should have been able to see it, to save her. But I hadn’t, and they couldn’t forgive me. I didn’t really blame them. The guilt I piled on myself ate at me too.

No baggage. I wiped a stray tear from my eye.

“No use cryin’ over spilt milk, sugar.” I admonished myself in a weak attempt to mimic the seductive southern drawl.

An older lady with a roller bag gave me a placating smile as we passed in the corridor to the toilets. I returned it with one of my own, all my piercings glinting in the harsh lighting, making sure to give her a proper fright about the ghostly hoodlum in the privy.

The next step in my hoodlum persona would be to get some large, colorful tattoos that were on full display. Those puppies always got reactions, especially when scrawled across a woman’s “puppies”.

“Ha,” the chuff slipped from my mouth as I turned the little circle lock on the peeling stall door in a false sense of security. I needed rest in a real bed; my jokes were getting lame, and my sleep-deprived brain was finding humor where there was none.

I half expected the door to swing open due to crappy latching, and I couldn’t peel my eyes from the lock. Not that I could do anything about it with my pants around my ankles and the loopy fog encircling my brain.

My eyes fuzzed, the silver and blue blurring to a hazy amalgamation, but then, it was gone, disintegrated. Only a scrap of the original barrier still attached to the top hinge remained. But beyond wasn’t the bathroom. And I wasn’t sitting on the porcelain throne.

The door before me now was painted a pale blue with a small frosted glass window above a floral wreath. It was ajar, the wood by the handle splintered. I pushed it open with trepidation and moved into a darkened hallway. I passed a table on which sat a pile of unread mail, a purse, and a keychain. I whipped my eyes away from the name on the envelopes: Liarona Murphy. My heart picked up its pace as did my feet, treading quickly through the disaster of a home.

It looked like an F5 tornado had touched down in the living room of this once pristine home. A tall floor lamp was knocked over, its lightbulbs shattered, glass littering the piece’s corpse like a halo. The couch was sideways, charred black in the center of the formerly forest-green upholstery, its pillows spewing white stuffing like a slain animal spills its entrails.

And there, on the floor, at the end of the granite-topped bar, vacant blue eyes stared up at me.

The older woman’s body was twisted in a very unnatural way, especially her leg and neck. She looked pale, and no blood was obviously pooled, making it seem as if she’d been drained…

The cloying, clawing feeling I was beginning to know too well kicked up as my lungs expanded in preparation for the wail.

I was thrown from the vision and back into the small stall as my scream erupted from deep in my soul. Or it felt like that even though that was a physical impossibility. There was no way my lungs and vocal cords were the origin of the blood-curdling screams I spewed.

I couldn’t hear the herd of terrified people bust into the restroom to come to my rescue, barely made out the pounding on my stall door or the panicked questions of people wanting to know what was wrong; how they could help. All while I sat on the dingy bus station toilet and screamed bloody murder. Literally. Just, not mine.

The commotion roused me back to awareness, and I quickly cleaned myself up and yanked my pants back into place, my voice never letting up. Yet, at least now, if they actually got through the aforementioned flimsy lock, I wouldn’t be caught with my pants down. Literally. That would be hard to recover from emotionally. It might be enough to permanently damage my self-esteem.

I flushed, which seemed to get the attention of the do-gooders. My screams faded then, but I was sure I hadn’t fooled them into thinking it was just the sound of the flush. I didn’t really care. I had bigger problems because I was pretty damn sure that the dead woman in my vision was the very woman I’d come all this way to see. That obscure but ominous knowledge fired adrenaline into my veins, and all thoughts of sleep vanished.

It would make sense that I’d have visions of someone I’m actively looking to find… right?

If I was right, I didn’t have much time: I’d found a druid, but her days on this earth were nearing an end. I didn’t make the mistake of wishing my abilities were more honed, such that I could pinpoint the time of her death, because the whole purpose of this trip was to get rid of these stinking powers. The worry that I’d miss my chance turned my stomach again.

That was happening way too much lately. I’d hoped such bouts of nausea would be a thing of the past once I’d defected from the Harbingers. I’d already reverted to my human way of life in many ways, the first being the nomadic bus-capade. Another being how I handled the homeless asshole who’d tried to mug me at the third station I’d caught a nap at.

I’d wished a solid kick to the groin had been my parting gift to Stone and his pea-sized dog bits. I could picture him rolling around on the floor, howling his pain as I turned and left the dock and the Harbingers far behind. That’s how quitting the Harbingers should’ve gone.

Seke had been teaching me to avoid such tactics with supernaturals. He’d wanted me to instead use small concealable weapons, which I now always carried on my person — tucked into the top of my boot, concealed in