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

I shook my head lightly so my tresses wouldn’t get in the way of my vision. I’d been holding my opponent in a staring contest since he’d looked up, and I wasn’t going to lose. “No. Platinum. With three diamond inlays.” I was sure of that; the object of interest was far too heavy to be anything but the dense and valuable metal. And no one would ruin a high-quality band with cheap zirconia fakes. The rocks had to be the real deal.

“Let’s see.” He held out his hand.

“Quote first.”

The man’s gaze narrowed, and his fingers curled in. “Can’t give you an estimate until I appraise it. I need to check the metal and see how many karats we’re talking about here.”

I cocked my head. “No less than three thousand.”

Those squinting eyes snapped wide. “Three thousand?”

“It’s platinum.”

His lips pursed. “Let me see it, and I’ll give you my price.”

“Above three thousand,” I reminded him.

I wouldn’t budge on that. I was lowballing as it was. The ring was probably worth more than that on materials alone, not to mention the craftsmanship — and who knew how priceless in age and provenance it was. Seke was a god after all. It could have been crafted by some Celtic goddess he knew in his Ancient Egypt days... or born from divine power, fabricated in Hell itself. But I couldn’t mention that part, and if I went too high, the dude wouldn’t take it at all. A few grand could get me far from here and tide me over until I found a job; I’d learned to be thrifty.

A thick tongue darted from the man’s dry lips to lick the cracking flesh, eying me. I wasn’t the type to own such fine jewelry to sell, but he wouldn’t care about stolen goods. He was probably gauging whether I was the type of person who might be full of shit, talking out of my ass.

“Take it or leave it,” I pressured.

He shrugged and turned away, feigning indifference. “I’ve never gone above two. Leave it.”

I nodded. “Fine.” I lifted the ring out, swiveled it in my fingers so it glinted in the fluorescent lights. “Your loss.” I called his bluff and shouldered open the door.

“Wait!”

I grinned at my reflection. Got him.

When I left only a few minutes later, my pockets were bulging. I’d divied up the cash into different pockets in case one got picked and to better conceal the lot of it, but I still felt like a target as I headed back toward the motel to crash for the night.

If I was going to be on another long bus ride, I wanted to get a good night’s sleep on Seke’s dime first. Never look a gift horse in the mouth and all that.

Raised voices caught my attention. I continued walking slowly so as not to appear concerned since some fed off of fear. I didn’t alter my trajectory, but all senses slipped down a dark hallway where a man had a woman pressed up against a floral wallpapered wall.

Wait. A hallway?

I glanced down and found fancy, royal-blue carpeting beneath my feet.

Shit. A vision. A vision in the middle of my walk home in a shitty neighborhood? Not good. Without that druid, my powers were running rampant, and I hadn’t yet gotten control of them. Seke and I had still been working on that when he sent me packing.

A moan tugged my attention back to the long corridor dotted with closed doors between me and the couple and beyond. Sconces glowed dully at irregular intervals that failed to properly illuminate the area. In fact, they flickered like candles. The woman’s face was mashed against the wall. The guy at her back was tall and clad in a dark-hued suit that tucked him neatly into the shadows.

He pulled her head back, fingers buried deep in her hair, and slammed her face into the wall with a sickening thunk.

“You think I’m going to believe you have nothing to tell me? You live in exchange for what you offer.” He wrenched her back against his chest, her chin tipped up. She panted, blood leaking down her chin. A spot of it added a bright stain of red to the pink floral wallpaper. His head dipped toward her ear. Though whispered, his next words carried to me. “And if you give me nothing, then you die. Remember that.” His tongue flicked out and lapped up the blood that slid down her cheek, the trail of crimson vanished in its wake. Then, he threw her with the force of a wrecking ball. Bodily, she crashed into the wall and collapsed, sinking to the ground in a boneless heap, unconscious. A streak of red like a sticky slug trail was left behind to mark her slip into oblivion.

A scream crawled up my throat, and though I tried to clamp it down, it slipped from between my shocked lips. I’d gotten better at understanding my urges. But I hadn’t yet figured out how to stop them. The scream that spilled from my dumb mouth didn’t proclaim death. It signaled that that woman’s end was coming. Soon.

“Whoa! Relax, little one. Hush now. You’re awake.”

I reacted, hand slapping something from under my nose. When I blinked my eyes open, my lips snapped shut — fast. There was a gorgeous chestnut-maned beauty leaning over me, a scar slicing down her cheek.

“Smelling salts,” she explained, lifting a small vial up and then tucking it into the cleavage exposed by her armor. “What did you see in your vision?”

Wait. Armor? I twisted, trying to sit up and look around. Was I still in the vision? “I... uhh a woman dying.” My answer was distracted, faint. Where the fuck was I? Who was this chick?

“Ah, careful. You might fall off. That would be a bad tumble.”

Confused, I raised my arms, feeling around me. My heart stuttered as I found nothing on either side. Above my