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The night Rachel spent in jail, Cai spent at home. It was late when he finally got back to the pink house, because he’d been with Danny, Danny and Zoe after they’d left Indigo’s house. What a mess of a confrontation that had turned out to be. What a mess with Alexandria – things between them just kept getting messier and messier. Seeing her had been hard. She’d spent a lot of evenings at his house, eating dinner with his family, the family that was about to be torn apart.
When Cai finally came home, Nonnie had put the girls to bed and was waiting for him. She made hot milky tea and sat at the kitchen table and they talked about Dom. “Nonnie, what are we going to do? Do we tell him? We have to tell him…” His hands were so tight around the mug of tea his fingers burned hot.
“We don’t have to do anything,” Nonnie said firmly, causing a look of pure horror on Cai’s face. “I will speak to Dom. You are my child’s child, and this is not a conversation you should have to bear.”
The look of horror faded a little from Cai’s face, though it remained around his eyes. “What are you going to say?”
Nonnie smiled. “This is not the first conversation we will have had about our own deaths, you know, Cai.”
Cai sniffed, and rubbed his hand under his nose. “But this is… this could really happen.”
“And maybe it is just a warning,” Nonnie said firmly. “And we shall take it a warning because that is the sensible way to take it. And if it is a set-in-stone prediction, we will deal with that as it comes too.”
Cai shook his head in denial. He felt sobs struggling to escape again, and fought to keep them in. Shh,” Nonnie calmed him. “Shh, if it is within my power, no harm will come to you, no heartbreak. Leave it to me. Trust in your old abuela.”
Cai knew he should protest – it felt wrong to sit this out. But he didn’t say a word. He knew Nonnie was protecting him, like he was still a child, much younger than seventeen. But at this moment, Cai wanted to be protected. Cai wanted to pass the responsibility to the adults. Cai wanted Nonnie to work her Nonnie-magic and keep the world spinning on the axis he was used to.
“Te confio, abuela,” he told her. Nonnie took his face in her hands, for just a brief moment, and lay a kiss on his third eye.
~
After that came the time of the doctors. Dom grumbled good-naturedly about it all, as if he was humouring his strange wife. Really though, he was as worried as anyone. He certainly didn’t want to die, but it was a strange thing to believe, that his grandson had predicted his death.
Nonnie had told him about Cai’s visions before, when he first confessed to her that he had them, and Dom believed him because Nonnie believed him. But, it was one thing to believe in visions in the abstract, quite another to apply them to your own life, or death, as it was. So Dom joked about it, and grumbled, and went to his appointments.
He tried not to worry too much when they found a murmur in his heart. “I’m old,” he told Cai, as they sat on Cai’s bed and talked it over. “My heart’s going to murmur. Doesn’t mean I’m going to drop dead next week.”
His doctor was hopeful. They’d caught Dom’s heart valve disease early, and prognosis looked pretty good. A couple of lifestyle changes, a couple of pills, and he should be fine.
Cai was reassured, but only a little, and only until he overheard Nonnie and Dom talking in hushed voices. He couldn’t hear what they were saying - his Spanish was good but he found it was much, much harder to eavesdrop on whispered rapid Spanish than it was in English. He shouldn’t have been eavesdropping at all… it certainly didn’t help him any. Just showed him that his grandparents were more worried about Dom than either of them let on to the children.
Faye and Roe picked up on it all anyway. Faye turned her worry into shouting and slamming doors and sulking, and Roe started to quietly clean up after her, and would get distressed if she started a chore and couldn’t finish it.
Cai met up with Zoe every other day. Zoe came to him, because Cai didn’t want to leave the house, not while Dom was still in it. Like if he was here, he could stop it. Or, if not stop it, then at least call an ambulance. At least be with him. At least save Nonnie from having to find the love of her life dead and alone.
He considered the possibility that something unnatural might happen to Dom. A murderer, or something. And in that case, Cai might be putting himself in danger by staying at home. He imagined Nonnie coming home to find Dom dead and Cai missing. Or maybe Cai was dead too, upstairs. Cai and Faye and Roe… Maybe Dom was the only death he saw, but that didn’t mean it was the only imminent death.
Cai imagined a lot of things. He thought about the funeral every night. He had nasty dreams. He slept less than he needed to, and occasionally forgot to eat. Zoe worried about him, when she came over, but she knew he had good reason to be freaking out, and she didn’t have anything to say to reassure him.
Everyone might die. That was kind of a thing they all just had to live with. But Zoe had more practice at living with this idea than Cai. Zoe, for maybe the first time in her life, was better at coping. But watching Cai fail to cope shook her. Dread didn’t suit him, and she wanted so badly to find a way to make it stop, so he could go back to being Cai, all unshaken faith and optimism.
But how did you stop that? How did you protect people from being wounded by the world? If Zoe knew that, she’d be a lot happier. The only thing she could do was sit with him, bare hands gripped, and try to throw her mind toward the future in the hope that a vision would show her what to do.
Fucking visions – she was so mad at them after what had happened to Rachel. The vision had said: Rachel will be imprisoned somewhere and a demon woman who might be her mother will rip open the cell to find her. And then Rachel had been imprisoned, but only for a night and her dad had gone to collect her and there was no sign of a demon woman at all. What was going on?
Useless, useless visions.
Neither Zoe or Cai had told Danny or Rachel what was going on with Dom. “They can’t do anything,” Cai said, in this worried and listless tone he’d adopted lately. “They’d just worry more. And Danny has enough to worry about with his uncle. Rachel too.”
Zoe wrapped her arms around her legs and nodded, her chin on her knee.
~
Zoe was at Cai’s house when Danny was taken. They were alone in the house, in Cai’s bedroom, bracing themselves to try for another vision. Both their phones beeped at once, perfectly in time.
Then again, a moment later. Zoe reached her phone first, Cai a moment later.
“Shit,” Cai said, as Zoe read her message in silence. “Shit, shit, shit, Zoe – did you-?” Zoe nodded, showing Cai her screen, and the exact same texts from Danny.
Help.
Love you mum so much.
“Shit,” Cai sat down heavily on his bed. Both their phones beeped a third time, and Cai screwed his eyes shut, like denying it would make it stop.
Zoe read out Danny’s final text in a voice that sounded too calm to be real. “It’s Greg. Took my other phone. Please. Drugged.” Her voice started to quaver. Drugged. But she swallowed hard and persevered. “Dark in a van, white. Rough road, don’t know where.” She couldn’t read the last bit aloud. She didn’t want to say it, and watch Cai’s face as she said it. Fuck, he’s coming.
Cai made a horrible noise that was hard for Zoe to listen to. It was almost as bad as hearing Liz crying. People like Liz and Cai shouldn’t sound so upset. It wasn’t allowed.
Cai covered his face with his hands and shook his head, as Zoe called Danny, hoping against hope that somehow he’d pick up. He didn’t, which didn’t surprise her. “This can’t be happening,” Cai said. “This can’t be – it can’t.”
“Cai, it can,” Zoe said, reading Danny’s messages over again.
“Can’t,” Cai said. Zoe squeezed her own eyes shut.
“It is, though. It’s happening.”
Cai shot to his feet, his hands clenched in his hair. “What’d we do? What’d we do?”
“Just calm down!” Zoe snapped. “I’m trying to think!” She should call Peter, or Deirdre? Or Rachel? She hadn’t mentioned Rachel in his messages but that didn’t mean she wasn’t with him.
“White van, a white van,” Cai was not calming down. He was pacing his room, his hands laced behind his neck. “On a rough road, somewhere. We gotta find him.” He grabbed his coat, and the car keys. “Zoe we gotta go.”
“Where?” Zoe reminded him they had no idea what direction Danny might be heading in.
“I don’t know!” Cai grabbed her upper arms. “We’re psychic, we’ll figure it out!”
“We’re pretty useless psychics!” Zoe pointed out, angry at everyone and everything, but mostly herself. Cai choked on whatever he was going to say next and leaned into her, his arms wrapping around her, squeezing her tightly. Zoe froze, tense, as the heat of his face pressed against her bare neck.
Vibrations shuddered through her – and the wall – and a roar and a cr-rr-rac-kk and blinding sunlight seared into her vision.
A demon had torn the metal bars from the stone wall – wherever the vision was, the cell was soon destroyed. A demon woman stood silhouetted against the midday sky – white with clouds but clouds that blinding with their brightness. A demon woman, wings outstretched, stepped through the rubble toward the person who was shuddering in the corner of the cell.
Cai jolted backwards, releasing Zoe who stumbled, and grabbed the corner of his desk for support. “I’m so sorry,” apologies tumbled out of Cai’s mouth. “I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to touch you I’m just freaking out and what was that – are you okay?”
Zoe shook her head. It partially an answer to his question – she wasn’t alright – and partially a dismissal of his concern – she was fine. She had to be fine. “Told you we were useless psychics,” she muttered. “Useless goddamn visions that don’t mean ANYTHING!” She kicked Cai’s chair as hard as she could, and it crashed into his desk then fell backward with a final thud.
Zoe covered her mouth in shock – at her own outburst on top of every other shock she’d had in the last minute and a half. She closed her eyes, even as she heard Cai moving toward her and didn’t open them again till she sensed him standing right in front of her, could hear his breathing, could smell him.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him, his face close to hers, his body too. “Zoe,” he breathed her name. He seemed calmer and more hopeful than he had in the last two weeks, like all it had taken was for Zoe to lose a little of her cool. “Zoe, we’ll figure it out.”
He seemed sure. So sure. Zoe raised one hand and nearly touched his mouth, but stopped herself – she had to avoid bare skin against bare skin. Instead she pressed it against his chest, over his heart, like there was something integral in his heartbeat, something he possessed that she needed. His heart thudded under her palm, the warmth of his skin soaking through the thin layer of his shirt.
Cai gently squeezed his hands around her shoulders, and tilted his head forward so their foreheads were almost touching. But not quite – not close enough to do any… damage.
Zoe narrowed her eyes, and said with all the ferocity she could muster. “We better.”
When Cai finally came home, Nonnie had put the girls to bed and was waiting for him. She made hot milky tea and sat at the kitchen table and they talked about Dom. “Nonnie, what are we going to do? Do we tell him? We have to tell him…” His hands were so tight around the mug of tea his fingers burned hot.
“We don’t have to do anything,” Nonnie said firmly, causing a look of pure horror on Cai’s face. “I will speak to Dom. You are my child’s child, and this is not a conversation you should have to bear.”
The look of horror faded a little from Cai’s face, though it remained around his eyes. “What are you going to say?”
Nonnie smiled. “This is not the first conversation we will have had about our own deaths, you know, Cai.”
Cai sniffed, and rubbed his hand under his nose. “But this is… this could really happen.”
“And maybe it is just a warning,” Nonnie said firmly. “And we shall take it a warning because that is the sensible way to take it. And if it is a set-in-stone prediction, we will deal with that as it comes too.”
Cai shook his head in denial. He felt sobs struggling to escape again, and fought to keep them in. Shh,” Nonnie calmed him. “Shh, if it is within my power, no harm will come to you, no heartbreak. Leave it to me. Trust in your old abuela.”
Cai knew he should protest – it felt wrong to sit this out. But he didn’t say a word. He knew Nonnie was protecting him, like he was still a child, much younger than seventeen. But at this moment, Cai wanted to be protected. Cai wanted to pass the responsibility to the adults. Cai wanted Nonnie to work her Nonnie-magic and keep the world spinning on the axis he was used to.
“Te confio, abuela,” he told her. Nonnie took his face in her hands, for just a brief moment, and lay a kiss on his third eye.
~
After that came the time of the doctors. Dom grumbled good-naturedly about it all, as if he was humouring his strange wife. Really though, he was as worried as anyone. He certainly didn’t want to die, but it was a strange thing to believe, that his grandson had predicted his death.
Nonnie had told him about Cai’s visions before, when he first confessed to her that he had them, and Dom believed him because Nonnie believed him. But, it was one thing to believe in visions in the abstract, quite another to apply them to your own life, or death, as it was. So Dom joked about it, and grumbled, and went to his appointments.
He tried not to worry too much when they found a murmur in his heart. “I’m old,” he told Cai, as they sat on Cai’s bed and talked it over. “My heart’s going to murmur. Doesn’t mean I’m going to drop dead next week.”
His doctor was hopeful. They’d caught Dom’s heart valve disease early, and prognosis looked pretty good. A couple of lifestyle changes, a couple of pills, and he should be fine.
Cai was reassured, but only a little, and only until he overheard Nonnie and Dom talking in hushed voices. He couldn’t hear what they were saying - his Spanish was good but he found it was much, much harder to eavesdrop on whispered rapid Spanish than it was in English. He shouldn’t have been eavesdropping at all… it certainly didn’t help him any. Just showed him that his grandparents were more worried about Dom than either of them let on to the children.
Faye and Roe picked up on it all anyway. Faye turned her worry into shouting and slamming doors and sulking, and Roe started to quietly clean up after her, and would get distressed if she started a chore and couldn’t finish it.
Cai met up with Zoe every other day. Zoe came to him, because Cai didn’t want to leave the house, not while Dom was still in it. Like if he was here, he could stop it. Or, if not stop it, then at least call an ambulance. At least be with him. At least save Nonnie from having to find the love of her life dead and alone.
He considered the possibility that something unnatural might happen to Dom. A murderer, or something. And in that case, Cai might be putting himself in danger by staying at home. He imagined Nonnie coming home to find Dom dead and Cai missing. Or maybe Cai was dead too, upstairs. Cai and Faye and Roe… Maybe Dom was the only death he saw, but that didn’t mean it was the only imminent death.
Cai imagined a lot of things. He thought about the funeral every night. He had nasty dreams. He slept less than he needed to, and occasionally forgot to eat. Zoe worried about him, when she came over, but she knew he had good reason to be freaking out, and she didn’t have anything to say to reassure him.
Everyone might die. That was kind of a thing they all just had to live with. But Zoe had more practice at living with this idea than Cai. Zoe, for maybe the first time in her life, was better at coping. But watching Cai fail to cope shook her. Dread didn’t suit him, and she wanted so badly to find a way to make it stop, so he could go back to being Cai, all unshaken faith and optimism.
But how did you stop that? How did you protect people from being wounded by the world? If Zoe knew that, she’d be a lot happier. The only thing she could do was sit with him, bare hands gripped, and try to throw her mind toward the future in the hope that a vision would show her what to do.
Fucking visions – she was so mad at them after what had happened to Rachel. The vision had said: Rachel will be imprisoned somewhere and a demon woman who might be her mother will rip open the cell to find her. And then Rachel had been imprisoned, but only for a night and her dad had gone to collect her and there was no sign of a demon woman at all. What was going on?
Useless, useless visions.
Neither Zoe or Cai had told Danny or Rachel what was going on with Dom. “They can’t do anything,” Cai said, in this worried and listless tone he’d adopted lately. “They’d just worry more. And Danny has enough to worry about with his uncle. Rachel too.”
Zoe wrapped her arms around her legs and nodded, her chin on her knee.
~
Zoe was at Cai’s house when Danny was taken. They were alone in the house, in Cai’s bedroom, bracing themselves to try for another vision. Both their phones beeped at once, perfectly in time.
Then again, a moment later. Zoe reached her phone first, Cai a moment later.
“Shit,” Cai said, as Zoe read her message in silence. “Shit, shit, shit, Zoe – did you-?” Zoe nodded, showing Cai her screen, and the exact same texts from Danny.
Help.
Love you mum so much.
“Shit,” Cai sat down heavily on his bed. Both their phones beeped a third time, and Cai screwed his eyes shut, like denying it would make it stop.
Zoe read out Danny’s final text in a voice that sounded too calm to be real. “It’s Greg. Took my other phone. Please. Drugged.” Her voice started to quaver. Drugged. But she swallowed hard and persevered. “Dark in a van, white. Rough road, don’t know where.” She couldn’t read the last bit aloud. She didn’t want to say it, and watch Cai’s face as she said it. Fuck, he’s coming.
Cai made a horrible noise that was hard for Zoe to listen to. It was almost as bad as hearing Liz crying. People like Liz and Cai shouldn’t sound so upset. It wasn’t allowed.
Cai covered his face with his hands and shook his head, as Zoe called Danny, hoping against hope that somehow he’d pick up. He didn’t, which didn’t surprise her. “This can’t be happening,” Cai said. “This can’t be – it can’t.”
“Cai, it can,” Zoe said, reading Danny’s messages over again.
“Can’t,” Cai said. Zoe squeezed her own eyes shut.
“It is, though. It’s happening.”
Cai shot to his feet, his hands clenched in his hair. “What’d we do? What’d we do?”
“Just calm down!” Zoe snapped. “I’m trying to think!” She should call Peter, or Deirdre? Or Rachel? She hadn’t mentioned Rachel in his messages but that didn’t mean she wasn’t with him.
“White van, a white van,” Cai was not calming down. He was pacing his room, his hands laced behind his neck. “On a rough road, somewhere. We gotta find him.” He grabbed his coat, and the car keys. “Zoe we gotta go.”
“Where?” Zoe reminded him they had no idea what direction Danny might be heading in.
“I don’t know!” Cai grabbed her upper arms. “We’re psychic, we’ll figure it out!”
“We’re pretty useless psychics!” Zoe pointed out, angry at everyone and everything, but mostly herself. Cai choked on whatever he was going to say next and leaned into her, his arms wrapping around her, squeezing her tightly. Zoe froze, tense, as the heat of his face pressed against her bare neck.
Vibrations shuddered through her – and the wall – and a roar and a cr-rr-rac-kk and blinding sunlight seared into her vision.
A demon had torn the metal bars from the stone wall – wherever the vision was, the cell was soon destroyed. A demon woman stood silhouetted against the midday sky – white with clouds but clouds that blinding with their brightness. A demon woman, wings outstretched, stepped through the rubble toward the person who was shuddering in the corner of the cell.
Cai jolted backwards, releasing Zoe who stumbled, and grabbed the corner of his desk for support. “I’m so sorry,” apologies tumbled out of Cai’s mouth. “I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to touch you I’m just freaking out and what was that – are you okay?”
Zoe shook her head. It partially an answer to his question – she wasn’t alright – and partially a dismissal of his concern – she was fine. She had to be fine. “Told you we were useless psychics,” she muttered. “Useless goddamn visions that don’t mean ANYTHING!” She kicked Cai’s chair as hard as she could, and it crashed into his desk then fell backward with a final thud.
Zoe covered her mouth in shock – at her own outburst on top of every other shock she’d had in the last minute and a half. She closed her eyes, even as she heard Cai moving toward her and didn’t open them again till she sensed him standing right in front of her, could hear his breathing, could smell him.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him, his face close to hers, his body too. “Zoe,” he breathed her name. He seemed calmer and more hopeful than he had in the last two weeks, like all it had taken was for Zoe to lose a little of her cool. “Zoe, we’ll figure it out.”
He seemed sure. So sure. Zoe raised one hand and nearly touched his mouth, but stopped herself – she had to avoid bare skin against bare skin. Instead she pressed it against his chest, over his heart, like there was something integral in his heartbeat, something he possessed that she needed. His heart thudded under her palm, the warmth of his skin soaking through the thin layer of his shirt.
Cai gently squeezed his hands around her shoulders, and tilted his head forward so their foreheads were almost touching. But not quite – not close enough to do any… damage.
Zoe narrowed her eyes, and said with all the ferocity she could muster. “We better.”
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