âSheâs a what?â Lazlo Brennan stared at his fellow detectives. Heâd expected a bit of good-natured ribbing on his first day of the job, but this?
âErika Cenov is a psychic,â Detective Rok Skerkis repeated. âBelieve me, Iâm telling you the truth.â
Suppressing a sigh, Lazlo glanced at the perfectly serious expressions on the faces of the three men with whom he was sharing a cup of bad coffee in the police department break room.
âWhy do you say sheâs a psychic?â he asked warily. None of the detectives were shape-shifters or Pack, so he supposed this was their idea of ribbing the new guy. Any minute now, theyâd throw out the punch line and have a good laugh at his expense.
Instead, the other men started talking about Erikaâs dreamsâpremonitions of deathâand a curse.
This last part was what caused him to finally shake his head. âThatâs ridiculous. I dated her in high school. She wasnât a psychic then, or cursed.â
âYouâve been gone ten years,â Rok pointed out. âShe came into her powers when she turned twenty-one.â
Seven years ago. Swallowing a gulp of bitter brew, Lazlo grimaced. He started to wonder if the punch line he was expecting wasnât going to materialize. âAnd you know this how?â
âShe told us,â another detective, James or Jimmy something, chimed in. âSheâs helped us find several missing persons. Unfortunately, they were deceased by the time we located them, but stillâ¦â
âDeceased?â Placing his chipped cup on the table, Lazlo scratched his head, uncomfortable now. This had gone too far, even if he had known them all since high school. âCome on, guys. Enoughâs enough.â
Rok narrowed his eyes. âWe arenât messing with you. Erika dreams and people die. At first we thought she might be a serial killer or something, but we checked her out.â
âShe has the second sight,â another officer put in.
After a decade in New York, heâd forgotten how superstitious the old country could be. Like neighboring Croatia, Teslinko might be a modernized country, but the old ways lingered. Which was why those who were Pack members, like him, had to be very careful not to shape-shift where humans might see. The last time that had happened, several hundred years in the past, the townspeople had panicked. Amid cries of âWerewolves!â theyâd armed themselves with pitchforks and tried to burn the shifters out. Fire was one of only two things that could kill a full-blooded shifter, so several Pack members had perished.
Since then, the Pack took stringent measures to ensure humans had no idea shape-shifters lived in their midst. These days, while some shifters mated with humans, resulting in half-shifter offspring known as Halflings, Lazloâs family did not. They were proud of their pure family line, dating back centuries. His father had often declared that no human would ever learn about shifters from a Brennan.
Considering what Lazlo knew of the supernatural, he considered it ironic that the humans believed in Erika Cenovâs purported abilities and he didnât. Maybe because heâd grown up with her. The down-to-earth girl heâd spent all of his childhood with was about as far from a clairvoyant as one could get. Sheâd been serious, even in high school, grounded in her studies and her love of nature. Psychic mumbo-jumbo hadnât even been a blip on her radar.
When his desk phone rang, Lazlo sat up straight. Finally, his first call as a Teslinko Police Department detective.
Answering, he listened carefully before placing the phone back in its cradle. A missing child. He swore.
âYeah,â Rok said softly. He stood directly in front of Lazloâs desk. âI just got the same call. The captain wants us to go to the parentsâ house. Someone broke in through the window in the middle of the night and stole the kid. Weâve got to find her.â
The dreams had always been the same. Blood and death and destruction, with little variance. Until now. Erika Cenov moved restlessly, trying to force herself to wake, to open her eyes and break the spell.
At last, she bolted upright, her breathing harsh and heavy. Death dreams, though blessedly rare, always felt identical. Though her grandmother had called this a gift, Erika bore it as a curse, this ability to see someone elseâs death. She felt guilty, as if she were to blame. Would the faceless victims have died if she hadnât dreamed it?
But tonightâs dream had been crazy. Sheâd seen her old boyfriend, the one whoâd gotten away with her heart. Lazlo Brennan. Heâd moved from Teslinko to New York right after graduation. And now it appeared his life would come to an end, here in Teslinko. A violent, horrible end. And soon.
Heart pounding, she tried to make sense of her vision. As usual, thereâd been blood and terror andâ¦death. Lazlo had been shot, which was not all that remarkableâsheâd seen that happen to others in her dreams before.