The only thing Laura could see happening after that was the bottom of a bottle. A spiral that would be the worst she had ever been down. She’d been so strong lately, keeping up her sobriety even in the face of awful revelations. Nate’s impending death, delivered to her not by a vision but by an ominous shadow that gave frustratingly few details, was one. But Laura had thought of her daughter’s face each time and managed to keep going.
But was this rabbit for Lacey? She couldn’t even be sure herself. There was also the possibility that she’d bought it with Amy in mind. The last time Laura had seen her, she’d been clutching a toy rabbit just like this one. Laura had driven by Governor Fallow’s house a few times, despite the instructions from Rondelle, and found it heavily guarded. He’d employed a couple of bodyguards to stop anyone from entering the home without his permission. Still, there might be a way. Laura pictured herself driving up to the back of the house, somehow, throwing the rabbit over the fence. Or, better: giving it to Amy when her father was finally arrested, and the little girl was free.
The smile that played across Laura’s face at that thought was wiped clean by a sudden stab of pain in her head, so strong she could barely stand it. She gasped out loud at the sign of an incoming vision, a pain she couldn’t control, a pain that warned the vision was going to be about something happening very, very soon—
Laura was floating above the room, looking down. She found herself dropping, like she was suddenly prone to gravity in her visions. With a heart-wrenching jerk she stopped at what might have been her own shoulder level, looking ahead into the room. A room she recognized all too well.
She’d been here in a vision before. She’d been here in person, too. It was Amy’s bedroom at her father’s house. The room where she should have felt safest in all the world, but she didn’t.
She was in there now. Cowering on the bed with her hands over her ears. Laura could only just glimpse her face, red and wet with tears. She was shaking. She had pulled all of her toys in front of her, as if to create a barrier between herself and the rest of the room. Laura’s heart broke, watching her. She was so afraid. So young and yet so afraid. Because she knew what could happen—what would happen, when her father came into the room.
What was she hearing that made her want to cover her ears? Laura tried in frustration to look around, but the vision was out of her control. She could only watch Amy crying, powerless to reach out and comfort her. Even if she could, it wouldn’t matter. This was a vision of the future, not the present. Laura had no physical body here. No ability to interact with or change anything. It was only a window, and she could only look through it.
She found herself turning, her view shifting until she was behind Amy, as if she could move through the wall itself. Now she was looking at the closed door of the room. She realized she was holding her breath, trying not to make a sound. Straining her ears.
And then she heard it.
A heavy footfall—a stomping noise coming up the stairs.
Below her, Amy whimpered. Laura felt like she was hovering above her as a guardian angel, a protective force. But she knew that wasn’t true. Whatever would happen to Amy right now, there was nothing Laura could do about it. Not until the vision was over and she could spring into action in real life.
But there was no way to control the vision. No way to know when it would be over. No way to stop herself from seeing what she was about to see. Even if she wanted to, Laura couldn’t close her eyes now.
The door thundered open, ripping back so quickly it seemed like it would come off its hinges, hitting the wall behind and bouncing back. Framed in the doorway was Amy’s father, Governor Fallow.
Laura felt a scream building inside of her, wanting to tear out of the throat she did not have here. Fallow was angry, his face contorted and twisted into an evil mask. His hands were fists. His body was heaving up and down with ragged, uncontrolled breaths.
Most frighteningly of all, he was covered in blood.
It was splattered and splashed all over him. His face. Great bursts of it on his shirt, once white, the sleeves rolled up messily to the elbows. His fists were awash with it, and Laura saw also that there were tears in his own skin, contributing to the blood. Like he’d punched something hard enough to hurt himself.
Something that had splattered blood up over his forearms, with so much force that it had sprayed far wider and higher as he punched on.
“Amy,” the Governor said, his voice raw and cracking, like he’d already shouted and screamed enough to damage his throat. “Amy, come here.”
She only whimpered and sobbed, her pathetic hiding place belied as much by the noise as by the fact that he could easily see her. Her distress became louder as he walked closer, a deliberate stride that had inexorability written through it.
“Amy, I’m your father. Come over here right now,” he said. His voice was almost strangely calm, though it snapped through the air like the tongue of a whip. Like cracking thunder. So heavy it was inescapable.
Laura didn’t have to see the rest to know what would happen next.
She prayed she wouldn’t have to.
And when the darkness from the edges of her vision flooded in to cover the rest, to cover the approaching form of the Governor, for once she was grateful that she didn’t have to watch it to the end.
Laura gasped for breath, unable to hold back the visceral response the vision brought upon her. She dropped the rabbit she was holding on the floor, her hands flying up to cover her mouth and hold back the bile that wanted to come up her throat. Hot tears stung her eyes.
She’d seen so many people die in her visions, in so many awful ways. She’d seen gunshots, stabbin
gs, strangulations. Innocent people. Even her own father, wasting away in a cancer ward.
But of all the things she had seen, this was the second worst. And the worst thing had driven her so deep into the bottle, she’d spent years clawing her way back up and fighting not to drown.
A drink was the first thing on her mind, even now. It was an immediate, gut-deep response. A desperate need to drown out what she had seen and forget. To never have to think about it again.
But there were two things that stopped Laura from walking right to the nearest store and buying a bottle of the hardest liquor she could find.
The first was that it wouldn’t work. She knew enough now to know that, no matter how far under she buried herself, eventually she would have to come back up. The memories, the nightmares, would still be there waiting for her when she surfaced. And this time, she might not just lose her relationship and her daughter and her home. She could lose the things she had left—her job, Nate, the hope of ever getting Lacey back.