The door flew open and Byron stormed in, a wild look in his eyes. He immediately cupped my jaw and filled my vision. “Breathe, baby.”
“I… I—”
“Don’t try to talk. Just breathe. In and out,” he said softly, his thumbs stroking across my cheeks.
Little by little, breath by breath, the panic subsided, and I felt steady again. “Thank you.”
“My, this one’s a handsome guy. Any chance he has a dead brother?” the woman said as if she were standing right by my ear.
“Shut up,” I whispered.
Byron frowned. “I didn’t say anything.”
Well, this was going to get awkward. “Not you. The spirit in the room with us.”
“I have a name, you know,” she huffed.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “What’s your name?”
“Adela,” she replied. “Adela Hawthorne.”
That was an old coven name, ancient even. The Rowan line was a long one, but it was nothing compared to the history of the Hawthornes.
Byron stared at me with a mix of confusion and curiosity in his eyes. “Any chance you can bring me up to speed?”
“So, Adela here pitched up whilst I was checking out my face and told me that there shouldn’t be a block on my powers which means that either my father fooled DaraorDara has known all along and is in league with my father. Hence the panic attack. How did you know?”
The corner of Byron’s mouth tipped into a smile. “The tether.”
Oh. I hadn’t even realised it was still open. It didn’t seem to take much power to keep in place, it was just there. “Sorry, I’ll close it—”
“Don’t,” he said, grabbing my hand and placing it on his chest. My mark shimmered beneath his skin, a faint purple glow in the low light of the bathroom. “I like being able to feel you and sense what you need. I also like knowing exactly where you are.”
“Stalker,” I chuckled.
“Always and forever, baby,” he replied with a smile. “Now, back to Adela. You can hear her, but you can’t see her?”
“Nope, but it should be easy. Apparently.”
Adela huffed a frustrated sigh, clearly finished with being dismissed on the sidelines. “Your magic is like a bridge, connecting you to the world beyond the living but in order to see it, you need to use a different sight. You’ve probably been aware of it, and if your magic has been suppressed, it’s probably been bleeding through in other ways.”
“Like nightmares and visions?” I asked.
“Most likely. Without all your power, you’ve probably been receiving half a message. An image with no words, words with no pictures or something that just seems garbled and out of sync. Just lean into your hunk of a tether here and look out of the corner of your eye. Find that which shouldn’t be seen.”
I grasped Byron’s hand and held it firmly against my chest. “Okay, let’s see if we can do this.”
“Do what?” He asked, an adorable little frown above his eyes.
I waggled my eyebrows. “See dead people.”
“Cool,” Byron replied, excrement sparking in his eyes.
“You two have a weird dynamic,” Adela muttered by my ear.
She didn’t know the half of it. I drew on my power and pushed some into the tether, and then did what Adela said. I stared deep into Byron’s eyes and then slowly looked towards the left out of the corner of my eye. At first, I didn’t see anything but then, I caught a flash of something. A wisp of a chestnut curl. A spark of violet. A slender shoulder.
The longer I looked, the more I saw, until finally, Adela came into view. “Hi.”