Annie and Fia (Mind Games 0.50)

“I just heard her talking to you.”

“Oh, right, nagging. Yes, that counts. I feel so loved! Best aunt ever.”

“Fia, I—”

Light bursts around me and I’m falling, everything around me dizzy with motion and images. I feel sick watching them but I can’t close my eyes.

Oh no, not again, not again!

I wait to hear my parents’ voices, but everything is different. I’m inside—a house? I don’t know whose. I don’t know how I got here, or if I’m even really here at all. I can’t feel myself. All I can do is watch, the same as before.

A girl—maybe my age?—with hair so light it’s almost colorless, backs into the hallway, something on her face so immediate and overwhelming I instantly recognize it as terror.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers over and over, her eyes glued to the dirty-looking carpet beneath her feet.

“Sorry? You’re sorry? I’ll show you sorry,” a man growls. He looms over everything; I can’t see anything else, and I know why she’s scared because I’m terrified. I want out of here, there’s too much to see, my brain is going to explode, and then—

He raises his arm and slaps her across the face. She barely cringes, stumbling a bit but not doing anything to defend herself. Fight! I want to scream. Run away!

Then he hits her again and she loses her balance, trying and failing to grab for a railing at the top of a flight of stairs. She falls.

“Annie? Annie! What’s wrong? Annie!”

I roll over the side of the bed and throw up onto the floor, my head still spinning an

d my eyes aching with the memory of sight.

“You were having a seizure or something. I’m going to call nine-one-one.” Fia moves but I reach out and grab her arm, squeezing it.

“I know his voice. How do I know his voice?”

“You’re not making any sense!”

It hits me with another wave of nausea. I know his voice because I’ve been in that house. I’ve ridden in a car with him.

“What color is Bella’s hair?” I ask.

“Tell me what’s going on! You’re hurting my arm!”

“Just answer me!”

“Blond! Really light blond.”

“White?” I whisper.

“Yeah, almost.”

“I saw her. Like I saw Mom and Dad. I saw her, Fia! She’s in trouble! We have to go help her. Her dad . . .”

“No,” Fia says, all hesitation gone from her voice.

“You don’t understand, I saw—”

“No! I told you it was a bad idea to be her friend, and this is an even worse idea. Don’t you remember the newspaper story?”

I cringe. Heather had been so freaked out by my hysterics, she told the local newspaper that I’d predicted my parents’ death. But the thing is, if I hadn’t seen it, if they hadn’t been coming home early for me because of the panicked phone call . . .

Everything would be different.