“Makeup,” Amy said decisively, making Laura smile again. The girls were just repeating things they’d heard or seen without really knowing anything about it. She was sure neither Amy nor Lacey had ever worn a single touch of makeup in all their young lives.
She watched them both, Amy and Lacey, playing together. They really did look like they could be sisters, with their matching blonde hair and blue eyes.
A year ago, Laura had been estranged from her daughter, fighting for custody in the courts, alone and lost. Now she was sitting here with two girls that looked up to her, a new boyfriend – maybe a second chance at a real family. Her eyes misted up.
“Will you do some lipstick on us, Mommy?” Lacey asked, and Laura quickly sniffed, blinking away the tears and smiling.
“Not a chance,” she said, leaning down to kiss Lacey on top of her head. “Maybe when you’re a little older.” She glanced up at Chris to see him watching her with an expression not dissimilar to her own, and she thought that maybe when he swallowed hard, it was to get rid of a lump in his throat.
Laura’s phone buzzed in her pocket, a text alert. She briefly considered ignoring it. After all, this was – well, in a way, it was family time. Considering that she spent almost every weekend here now, maybe it was no surprise that Amy thought of her as a mother figure.
But then Laura knew she might be missing an important message about a case, and she was too much of a believer in her job to ignore it. She slipped the cell phone out of her pocket and checked it quickly, her heart almost stopping in her chest when she saw what it actually was.
“Hey, who wants some real cookies?” she asked.
Chris raised an eyebrow at her as the girls both chorused their predictable me, me, me!. She flashed him an apologetic smile and mouthed the word work while holding up her phone. If he believed that she was out following a lead or answering a call from her boss, he wouldn’t ask many questions. He knew that her work was confidential, after all.
“Alright, I’ll be back soon,” she said, getting up. She felt bad for leaving Chris looking after the girls alone, but… he could handle it. Just for the twenty minutes or so it would take.
She reread the message from Zach as she stepped outside: Can we meet? It’s urgent. She fired off a reply with the name of a nearby café and walked there quickly. She was getting familiar enough with the neighborhood that she knew she could get there and back in a short time, so long as she didn’t linger too long with Zach. As she walked, she ran through options for excuses to get away from him quickly – anything but the truth. She didn’t want to risk Amy’s safety, and she didn’t quite fully trust Zach yet.
She went past a bakery and made a mental note to stop in on the way back so that she wouldn’t forget the fake cause of her departure. It was right next to the café, just a few doors down, a convenient placement that made her thank the stars for a quick moment before heading in.
She grabbed a table at the café and sat anxiously, her leg bouncing up and down as she waited for Zach to appear. She checked her watch. Any longer, and this excuse of hers wasn’t going to hold up to scrutiny…
“Laura,” he said, his tone sounding relieved as he sunk into the chair opposite her. Laura almost jumped; she’d been looking at the time so intently she hadn’t seen him come in. “I’m so glad you could meet me.”
“What’s going on?” Laura asked, getting right to the point. “I don’t have a lot of time. I told them I was going out for cookies.”
Zach nodded. “Right. I’m sorry for interrupting your day. It’s just – the visions.”
Laura leaned forward a little, so they wouldn’t have to raise their voices to a level where someone else could overhear them. “What about them?”
“I’m having… difficulty,” Zach said. “They seem to be getting darker and fuzzier. Like I’m trying to watch a movie through fog. It’s getting harder to see what’s going on and actually understand it. And I don’t think they’re coming as frequently as usual, either.”
Laura paused. “That’s exactly like what’s happening to me,” she said breathlessly.
Could it be that they were… losing their visions?
Was that even possible?
Was that why they had found each other now?
“I don’t understand it,” Zach said. “It’s not like the other times when my visions just faded away for a while. This is different. Dark. It’s like… like the aura of death, just hanging over everything I see.”
Laura’s breath caught. The aura of death. The way it would cloud your vision in real life, dark tendrils like smoke everywhere, poisonous and so thick you thought you’d never get out. He was right. It was exactly like all of her visions were being strangled by that same aura. “What does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” Zach said, and for the first time since she’d met him, he actually sounded scared. Uncertain.
Somehow, that made her feel reassured. Even though it maybe shouldn’t have. She knew, now, that she wasn’t alone in being afraid for the future. In being confused. Just that fact made her feel better able to face whatever was coming.
“We’ll figure it out,” she said. The old man looked so worried and dismayed that she reached out to pat his hand on the table, to make him feel better.
And as she did, a spike of a headache hit her, almost as if the visions had heard their fears and wanted to provide an answer. She took a breath –
She was standing some distance away from them, watching, but everything was dim and confused, tendrils of the vision escaping around the edges and even blurring and distorting what she could see. But she could make out enough to see –
To see Zach on the floor, lying flat on his back, his gray hair standing out like a light in the darkness of the vision. She couldn’t see his face, his expression, but she knew it was him by his shape. His aura, almost.