Then college came.
I was renting a studio apartment, working overnights stocking at a grocery store, trying to haul Ria out of bed each morning for school, then show to my classes on time. It was pure hell.
One afternoon, a woman showed at my door, saying she knew what I was, and that she wanted my help. Her name was Magdalene—an Angel who worked with the Chambers.
Two teenagers had gone missing, she suspected it was a Demon, and she wanted me to find them. I told her no. I wanted no part in the supernatural world. I was struggling to make it day to day as it was. I couldn’t handle another job, especially one that didn’t pay, and I knew the Chambers didn’t.
She left. But the next morning, she showed at my door again. That time, with a bag.
A bag with fifteen grand inside.
That was enough for me to cover rent for three years on my shit apartment. It was enough to put a down payment on the car I was still driving. It was enough for me to quit the grocery store.
So, I did. I worked that case, found the missing teens, and killed the Demon.
Two weeks later, she showed again. That time, she had ten thousand. That was enough for me to cover the light bill for two years.
The same process repeated until my junior year. By then, I’d made close to two hundred grand working for the Chambers. It wasn’t the usual. They didn’t pay the people working for them. But I worked cases quick, they knew I was struggling, and they made it happen. I wasn’t sure the money was even legit, but no one called the cops for counterfeit bills, so I didn’t really care.
I was able to pay off college, pay cash for my little house, and cover bills until graduation. Along the way, I’d met some other Witches that taught me new things, that gave me more books, that showed me where to find herbs, and I became a better practitioner because of them.
But between all those cases and school, Ria fell further and further to the wayside. She dove into drugs, and then prostitution when she didn’t have the money to support her habit, and I blamed myself for that. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t taking care of her, and she got lost.
I stopped working the cases and focused on her.
Regardless, I wasn’t a stranger to violence and violent wounds. Yet, I was more afraid when I found Declan on that floor than I’d been of any of the other things I’d seen.
Even with all of those Witches I’d met, all the Angels I’d spoken with, all of the things I’d learned, I had never heard of this.
Feeling someone’s pain from a city away? Seeing through their eyes? Hearing through their ears?
I hadn’t cast a binding spell on us. No one else had either; I would’ve felt it.
There was no reason I should’ve been attached this profoundly to a guy I met one day prior. It was a one-night stand. We barely knew one another.
And still, I was in his head without trying. I lived exactly what he had lived.
I didn’t understand.
Neither did Ria.
“But what do you mean?” she whispered at the bathroom sink. “I don’t get it. How did you know he was hurt?”
“I don’t know,” was all I could manage in response, scrubbing beneath my nail with a paper towel.
“You have to know,” she said. “You were just standing there, and then—”
“And then I felt it,” I said. “I felt it, and I saw it.”
She made a face. “Like a vision?”
No, not like a vision. Visions were like watching TV. You see it; you don’t experience it.
“I don’t know either, Ria.” I flicked off the faucet and rubbed my tense, damp hands against my clammy forehead. “I don’t know.”
She nibbled her fingernail, face screwed up in confusion.
I grabbed her hand and tugged it from her mouth. “There’re germs everywhere. Don’t bite your nails.”