The dreams came quickly, as they always did.
Carnival music echoed softly through the darkness, and a deep dread
settled in my bones. I looked around, finding no source in the pitch-black
void that surrounded me. But when I turned back, I was face to face with the
fortune teller, who sat cloaked in shadow.
She reached out of the darkness and drew a card. The Wheel.
Her lips moved, but the sound of her voice lagged moments behind. “You
cannot outrun your fate, Savannah. They’re coming for you. Beware the
wheel of fortune. It does not stop. Time is ticking. You need to learn who you
truly are so that you can stop the ones who are coming.”
She’d spoken those words to me before, in another dream, before I’d
known who she was. From before I’d discovered my magic and my life had
become a living nightmare.
The darkness of my dream began spiraling around me, sucking me down
like a whirlpool. My pulse raced. I fought against the pull and staggered
back, and suddenly, I was outside the fortune teller’s tent at the Full Moon
Fair.
The ebony night hung overhead, but the moon and stars were blotted out
by the thousands of floating lights that lit the fairgrounds. I was alone, but
muffled voices chattered and shouted around me like the echoes of ghosts.
I searched for any sign of the monsters who were after me—the rogue
wolves, the demons, and the faceless man. Nothing moved, but I could feel
that they were out there, hunting, drawing close.
Something tugged on my chest. An invisible thread. Instinct called to me.
Find Jaxson.
I ran through the tents into the great empty expanse of the Midway. The
floating Ferris wheel towered over the fair, the only landmark I knew. I ran
toward it, searching, following the string pulling on my breast.
Something moved in the corner of my vision. I stopped and turned,
recognizing him in an instant.