“I know.” I schooled my expression again. “You’ve told me. Can I go do my homework now?”
She drew in a deep breath and nodded, and I steeled myself against the hurt in her eyes. “There’s fruit in the kitchen.”
“Is it in the form of a toaster pastry?” Brooke asked, trying to lighten the mood. She’d walked in after the coast was clear of unwanted sentiment.
“There are those too. Cameron,” Grandma said to him, looking past us into the kitchen, “make sure you get a snack. We’ll see about dinner in a bit.”
He offered a sheepish smile. “Thank you, Mrs. James.”
With a sigh, I shuffled off to bake Cameron a toaster pastry. I wasn’t hungry in the least. My mood had turned as gray as the skies.
“What are you doing?” Brooke whispered to me.
“Making Cameron a snack.”
“At a time like this? We have things to discuss,” she said just as I was maneuvering a cherry pastry out of the toaster oven with a fork. Because I could be reckless when I wanted to be. Danger was my middle name.
“And Cameron has to do a perimeter check,” Brooke said, pulling at my arm.
“I do?” he asked, taking the pastry from me and blowing on it.
“You most certainly do.”
“So, you’re kicking me out of the playhouse?” He grinned at us, at her, then took a huge bite, unconcerned.
While Brooke was dragging me up the stairs, she turned back to him and said, “Of course not. We just have girl stuff to discuss.”
“I thought you had homework.” He said it plenty loud enough for my grandmother to hear. I cringed and glowered at him, but only for a second before I lost sight of him.
“Fingernails,” I said as Brooke whisked me into my bedroom.
A storm had moved in. The wind shook the world around us as rain scratched and clawed across my window in massive waves. And again, all I could think about was the fact that Jared was out in it. I could only pray he found shelter.
“Hurry,” Brooke said as she rummaged through her backpack. “I know you don’t want anyone to know about your new talent, so we have to practice before your bodyguard gets up here.”
She was back and in full force. I thought I’d gained a reprieve from her prodding when I told her what
I was going through with my visions. Apparently not.
I rubbed the underside of my arms. “I wasn’t kidding about the nails. You have a killer grip.”
“We need to explore your new talent.”
“I didn’t really mean that literally.”
“You said yourself, you want to understand this a bit more before we tell anyone.”
“Brooke, I don’t want the visions, remember?”
“But these are safe. You’re only seeing into a picture, into what actually happened when it was being taken. No emotion. No scary dreams afterwards or thoughts of suicide. This will be fun. Now sit,” she said, completely ignoring my exasperation. She brought out a photo wallet as I sat on the end of my bed.
After thumbing through it, she stopped and handed one over. “Okay, see what you can get.”
I made sure to exhale really loudly before I scooted until my back was against my headboard. She did the same on her bed, but she leaned against the wall so she could watch me. Which was only a little uncomfortable. I looked at the picture. It was a shot of Cameron at a lake with his dad. He couldn’t have been more than twelve, his blond hair shorter and his long frame thinner. He had an almost sad expression in his eyes as he posed for the shot. His dad had an arm around his waist, his teeth flashing white against his dark skin, but Cameron’s smile was more reserved, almost cautious.
“Where did you get this?” I asked her.
“Out of Cameron’s truck. He wouldn’t give me a picture, so I stole one.”
“Brooke,” I said, my tone admonishing.
“What? He knows I took it. I grabbed it off his visor and stuffed it into my pocket with him watching me.” She thought back. “He just gave me this odd expression. Like he couldn’t understand why I’d want a picture of him in the first place.”
“He isn’t the most secure guy.”
“True, but the look on his face in that picture has me curious. I just thought you might could see what was going on.”
I was curious now too. Darn it. I filled my lungs and concentrated, imagined the sheer veil. My first attempts at pulling it back failed. The veil slipped through my fingers, the only disturbance a puff of smoke where I’d tried. I stopped, shook my head to clear it, then tried again.
Finally, on the fifth try, the veil solidified and gave way to a ridiculously bright day. I blinked and tried to raise a hand to block out the sun. But it seemed I didn’t have a hand. I wasn’t really there. I had no corporeal manifestation. It was like walking a tightrope a hundred feet off the ground, wanting to grab on to something solid, something stable that wasn’t there.
I focused on the surroundings. Cameron stood at the edge of a lake, the water lapping at his feet, his swimming shorts long and bright. He wore no shirt or shoes as he dipped his toes in the water, splashed them around a bit.
“I’m not sure how this thing works,” Mr. Lusk said.
I looked over to my left. Mr. Lusk was fumbling with a camera. He was so much shorter than Cameron and had dark skin and hair, very at odds with his son’s pale features.
“I think you just push a button.”
He glared up at his son teasingly. Cameron laughed softly, then looked out over the mass of blue. When
I looked back at Mr. Lusk, he was studying him. His face sad and proud at the same time.
“Got it,” he said, balancing the camera on a rock and hurrying to stand beside Cameron. He wrapped an arm around him as Cameron smiled for the shot.
Even as young as he was, he towered over his dad. And they couldn’t have looked less alike if someone had paid them to. While Cameron was tall, lean, and very blond, his dad was average height, stocky, and dark, his skin like leather from working out in the elements for all those years. He was handsome like Cameron, just in a very different way.
Of course, he wasn’t Cameron’s real father. The angel Jophiel was. But he was loyal to his son and supported him in every way.
“I’m so proud of you, son,” he said, waiting for the timer. “Of everything that you are.”
Cameron shifted in discomfort. “Thanks, Dad.”
Just before the timer snapped the shot, Mr. Lusk added, “And so is she.”
Cameron’s smile faded almost completely as his dad put on his best one. Then a light flashed around me and I was back in my bedroom.
I blinked and sucked in a deep breath like I’d just surfaced from a tank of water. Then I put the picture down, feeling like an intruder.
“What?” Brooke said in alarm. “You have to keep trying. You can’t just give up—”
“It worked.”
She stopped. “But, you just now shook your head to try again. Like a microsecond before you put it down. And it worked? You went inside?”
“Yeah. I was there for almost a minute, maybe more.”
She slumped against the wall in thought. “That is too weird. You weren’t—” She glanced up at me, searching for the right words. “—
She took out her journal, the one she kept notes in, and jotted down what was happening. I could only pray no one would ever, ever, ever find that journal. Then again, they’d probably think it was fiction.
“Maybe. I don’t really know.”
“So, what did you see?”
