“Thanks Jack, you’re the best.” Emma hugged him, smashing her lunch between them.
New Emma didn’t need a guy. But if she had one, she’d want one like Jack. Or Flint, a little voice sounded in her head until she shut it down. She didn’t want to be jealous of Shiori for having something Emma never would. Daphne too. Daphne who had married a human male who loved her and put up with her bossy ways.
Emma opened the door to the hallway. The smell of fresh paint and construction continued, but this wasn’t the residue of Jack’s shop—it was from the repairs of the fireball damage. The hall was littered with wards. There were so many it was dizzying to look down the hallway. Her phone in her pocket dinged, and she pulled it out.
Flint: How are you doing?
Emma: Just got into the building. Haven’t gotten to the well room yet.
Flint: Let me know if you need anything. I’m at the station next door.
Emma: But you don’t work today.
Flint: Hudson promised me bacon.
Emma: That’s all it takes?
Flint: Yup.
She opened her room. There was a new intercom by the wall, but it was still the blank space it needed to be for her visions. She stowed her coat and lunch box in the hidden panel on the wall. The least distractions possible. The push of a button, and blinds lowered. The ambient lighting turned on.
After a few minutes of yoga to relax herself, Emma took out a notebook and sat lotus style on top of the orange dot in the white room. There were several schools of thought on the orange dot. Some seers sat around it and used it as a focal point to look down at. She sat on top of it like a burner on a stove.
Not a burner. No smoke alarms today.
She did a few mental warm-up exercises and got on with her meditative state. Easy as that, easy like threading a needle in the pitch black. Or herding chickens back into a pen past dusk, or making toddlers go to bed on Christmas Eve. Easy, so easy anyone could do it.
She growled at herself. “Come on, Emma.”
She counted backward from a hundred, then a thousand. And the third time, she did it. It worked. Her mind floated off, and the visions started. But they were clearer than they had ever been before. Harder. Faster. She was getting names and faces. Happy couples and babies she’d never seen.
After fifteen minutes, she stopped and scribbled as much as she could until her hand hurt. This was why most seers had assistants to do the transcribing as quickly as possible before the seer forgot anything. No, she wrote everything down herself.
It was only 10:30. What the heck? Might as well take another go. She’d never gotten this much before. She came out of it and wrote until the pen pushed into her thumb, leaving a depression. Stretching her hands helped, but then she did it again, and at the end of her four sessions, the notebook had twenty pages of names, dates, faces, things, children; it was out of this world what she had accomplished. She stood and paced around the outside of the room, walking the linoleum tile lines like a tightrope walker.
Her stomach let out a growl, and she headed for the cabinet containing her lunch. When she opened it, she found the computer she was supposed to enter all the data into. Data she hadn’t had before. And instead of eating, she started typing. Names, dates, places, colors, descriptions of people, things she’d seen, babies being born.
An hour later, she reached for her phone. She had a few text messages. Shiori, Carter, and Mia were in the building. They’d seen her meditating on the well, and asked when she was available to come down to the other room. Wow, that was three hours ago. She grabbed her lunch and took it to the other room in the building that Carter had refurbished, also hidden with an invisibility spell.
Emma was in a daze from concentrating so hard. She’d never been able to focus this long before. Excitement bubbled through her brain fog, and she had to tell someone about her progress. She didn’t remember walking from her room to Mia’s office, but Mia jumped up from her desk and flung her arms around Emma.
“We’ve been waiting for you.” Mia opened a door, a door that hadn’t been there last week.
Emma pointed to it like Have you seen this? Mia shrugged and then nodded.
Guess you can move mountains quickly, or at least walls, when you’re a billionaire.
Carter and Shiori were sitting in Carter’s specially ordered white leather ergonomic chairs, ones that matched his office downtown. She’d walked into a definite moment. Her boss and her best friend were scowling at Flint while he sat on the heating register.
She wasn’t sure who to be worried for—her friends with Flint’s wolf so close to the surface or Flint with Shiori’s disdainful glare. Her gut told her it was probably herself.
26
Emma had talked about Carter, Shiori, and Daphne like they were craft beer, front-row seats on the fifty-yard line to the Pittsburgh Hounds, and after-hours exclusive tickets to Seven Banners amusement park all rolled together.
They, on the other hand, treated her like a child. And not even a cute cub, but a teenager capable of hurting themselves and the world around them. Daphne especially. Shiori had conferenced her in for the first part of their little chat—a chat the three of them had insisted Emma didn’t need to be present for. Neither Shiori nor Carter left the office to go knock on Emma’s door, and they had called Mia back when she offered to go get Emma.
The longer Flint had sat in the fire station kitchen this morning, the more he’d worried. And when Oak North had gotten back to him, he’d contacted Carter. Carter was working in Hundsburg until they figured out who was behind the attack. Flint had run through the gnarled trees separating the station and school to talk to him. Which led to the frustrating chat he was having when Emma walked in.
Flint wasn’t going to be squeezed out of this. He was in it now. And they weren’t going to push Emma into the background, either. She’d risked her life for Mia and Carter’s company last week, and if they needed someone to remind them of that, well, he was prepared to be that someone.
“Emma, I’m so glad you’re here.” He gestured at the ridiculous chair he’d decided not to sit in. He perched on the heat register instead. Hell, he wanted to pull Emma into his lap. But that wasn’t going to happen. This was her place of work, and at least someone should treat her like she was an adult.
“Emma, can I get you a coffee?” Mia smiled, letting go of Emma.
“That would be fantastic, but I can get it. I’ll be right back.” She spun in a circle.
“I can get it for you.” Mia bounced.
“You don’t mind? Because really I can go get it and have my lunch at the same time. I haven’t eaten anything yet.” She held her hand over her stomach.
Mia slipped out the door. Flint started to stand. He’d packed her a lunch, but she hadn’t eaten it.
“Emma, you have to eat. After what you’ve been through. You know better,” Shiori scolded.
Fuck, he was glad he’d kept his mouth shut.
“What did she say? I can’t hear her. Was that Emma?” Daphne yelled through the speaker phone.
