Serendipity (Bayou Magic 3)

“Definitely none of your business,” Cash says, earning a glare from his wife.

“Since I don’t know Cash well, I’ll start back a ways.” I wipe my hand over my face and test my shields.

They’re strong.

“I grew up in the coven, just like Lucien.”

“You’re a witch?” Cash asks.

“Not a practicing one, no. Not for a long while, anyway. My gift was always premonitions. I was able to see things before they happened.”

“You could win the lottery with that,” Cash suggests, and I laugh.

“It doesn’t really work that way, unfortunately. It’s more visions of events before they happen. Have you ever had a sense of déjà vu? Like you think to yourself, I’ve done this before.”

“Of course.”

“We all have a little precognition in us,” Lucien says before taking a sip of coffee.

“We’re having coffee?” Daphne demands. “Give me.”

Millie gets to work filling a cup for her sister.

“Precognition is my thing.” I stand, shove my hands into my pockets, and pace the café. “Or, it was. I’ve worked hard to block that part of myself for quite a long time. I was in the Army. Let me just tell you, it sucks ass when you know in advance when your buddies are going to die in action.”

“Jesus,” Cash breathes.

“I built shields, worked a couple of spells. I even spent a whole evening on the phone with Miss Sophia, and she helped me, too. I haven’t seen anything in years.”

“Until recently,” Lucien guesses.

“Until a few months ago,” I agree. “And no matter what I do, I can’t block it. It’s fire and brimstone. Despair. Pain. It’s the scariest shit I’ve ever seen in my damn life, and trust me when I say, I’ve seen some shit.”

“Do you see the outcome?” Millie asks, sounding almost desperate.

“No. And I don’t know if what I’m seeing is what will happen or if it’s what may happen. I asked Miss Sophia about it, and she said it’s not for her to tell me. I don’t know what happened on Halloween night, not exactly. But I can tell you that I was drenched in sweat all evening, couldn’t catch my breath, and then, suddenly, it was just…gone.”

“Fascinating,” Lucien says.

“I know one thing,” I continue. “In every vision, I see Daphne. I see the six of us. And it’s damn frustrating that I don’t know why. I’ve been trying to get Daph to speak to me, but we have…history.”

The woman I love frowns down into her coffee.

“It’s escalating quickly,” Brielle murmurs.

“What is?” I demand. “What in the hell is going on?”

“A battle a millennium in the making,” Lucien informs me. “We’ve done this over many lifetimes—and we’ve always lost.”

For the next hour, the five of them fill me in on apparitions, dead girls, epic fights. A serial killer.

Past lives.

An evil father, who I already knew about. And their mother, escaping the terrors of their scary home in the bayou and healing.

“We’ve defeated him twice before,” Millie finishes. “But not for good. Not forever. We can’t cast him out without the six of us being together.”

“Why didn’t you just call me on Halloween if you knew that was the case?” I demand. “This could be done.”

“It wasn’t time,” Lucien says simply.

“So, what now?” I ask. “How do we find him and defeat him?”

“He hasn’t started manifesting himself yet,” Cash reminds us. “We can’t do anything until he makes the first move.”

My gaze whips to Daphne’s. “You didn’t tell them?”

“Tell us what?” Brielle asks, coming to attention. Daphne just watches me. “Tell us what?” Brielle demands again.

“Something happened at the reception,” Daphne says softly. “I was in the restroom, avoiding G.I. Joe over there.”

I grin and rock back on my heels. If she’s trying to avoid me, it’s because she still feels something.

I can work with that.

“When I walked out of the bathroom and came around the house to the tent where everyone was, it was still. Dead quiet. The guests were facing away from me, but they suddenly turned around to stare at me—and they were all missing their eyes.”

“Jesus,” Cash mutters.

“Oh, Daphne,” Millie says and hurries around the counter to hug her sister. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“Because it was your wedding reception,” Daphne reminds her. “What would you have had me do? Interrupt the fun and say, ‘Oh, by the way, an evil serial killer is terrorizing me today?’”

“Yeah,” Brielle says, nodding. “That’s exactly what you should have said.”

“At the very least,” Lucien adds, “you should have called us all together the next morning so we could talk it through.”

“Well, I came out of it—the trance or whatever—and it didn’t happen again,” Daphne replies.

“But I saw it, too,” I say.

Five pairs of eyes turn to me.

“I was watching for Daphne, and when I saw her stop so abruptly and noticed the fear in her eyes, I looked back, and I saw it, too. And the shittiest thing is, that was one of my visions. But I didn’t know until I was in that exact spot that that’s what I’d seen.”