“They told me not to say anything,” I said. “But I guess there’s been some stuff going on for a while. Big-picture crime, you know,” I added, hoping her mind would leap to drugs. “And Egan got caught in the cross fire.”
“Wow,” Gracie said.
“I know. Wow.”
“So you’re really opening back up today? Rachel said she was going to open up for business again.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess so.”
“I’ll be there,” she said.
“Great. I’ll buy you a pint.”
“No,” she said. “I mean I’ll come back to work.”
“No way.” I shook my head. “No. Thanks for the offer, but no.”
She managed to look both hurt and confused at the same time, and so help me, I felt bad. Because I wanted her there. I wanted a friend. And even though Gracie hadn’t started out as my friend, I’d claimed her anyway.
“It’s not—” I sighed. “Well, why on earth do you want to come back? I thought you liked your new job.” Alice had arranged for Gracie to interview for a receptionist job, and it had been that job that had taken Gracie out of town the night that Rose was almost sacrificed. Had she been there, it would have been Gracie on that stone tablet and not Rose.
“I do like it,” she said, but she started picking at her cuticles and didn’t look me in the eye.
“But?”
She shrugged. “It’s just paperwork, you know? Paperwork and phones and all the buttons on the phone confuse me, and I don’t like talking on the phone anyway, and it’s not like you go home with tip money, and—”
“Okay, okay,” I said, then realized I was laughing. When, I wondered, was the last time I’d done that? “Okay, but on one condition.”
“Sure. What?”
“Remember that day when we were at lunch? When you saw one of my visions?” That had been a total accident, and thank God Alice had told Gracie about her visions as a kid; otherwise, Gracie probably would have bolted. The vision I’d seen had been enough to make me almost bolt—a girl strapped to a stone table, the victim of a demonic sacrifice. But I hadn’t been able to see the girl. Now I realized I’d been seeing Gracie in a possible future. At the time, I thought I was seeing Alice. Some latent memory in my own mind or something. I hadn’t fully understood how visions worked, and so I hadn’t been vigilant. And because I hadn’t been completely on guard, the demons had taken another sacrifice—they’d taken Rose.
I wasn’t going to let it happen again. Anything hinky in that girl’s head, and she was staying far, far away.
“I want to try it again,” I said.
“What? You want me to see one of your visions?”
“Something like that,” I said.
She dragged her teeth along her lower lip. “You sure?”
“You wanna get hired back at my pub, that’s my condition.”
“It’s kind of a freaky condition.”
“I’m kind of a freaky girl,” I countered, making her laugh.
“Yeah, all right. Whatever.” She held out her hands. “Not any weirder than getting my palm read, right?”
Actually, I thought it was quite a bit weirder, but I didn’t mention that. I just took her hands, looked into her eyes, and waited for the world to pop from color, to red, to gray.
It only took a second. One second before I was fast-forwarding through her head, wishing I’d practiced this trick so that I’d have more control, because right now all I was seeing was Gracie waiting tables and laughing. Gracie flirting with her new boyfriend, Aaron. Gracie dancing. Gracie standing in the rain, her head tilted back, as she laughed and laughed and laughed.
I pulled away, and realized that I was smiling, too. She was safe. I’d known that the future could change—after all, Deacon had seen a vision of me locking the Ninth Gate, and we know how well that vision turned out—but now I knew for certain that for Gracie, at least, it had changed for the better.
“Wow,” she said. “That wasn’t freaky at all.”
“Nope,” I said, happily. “Not freaky at all.” I tilted my head to the side, considering her. “Actually, are you willing to let me try again?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“I want to see if I can go in without you noticing.”
“Yeah? Why?”
I shrugged. “Might be handy.” I didn’t explain about how if I could be Stealth Girl, it would open up a whole new world of possibilities. Like Kiera. And Zane.
And even Deacon.
I leaned back, considering. If he found out, there would be some serious hell to pay. But the idea of being able to get back inside his head—to see the secrets he was working so hard to keep—I couldn’t deny that was seriously tempting.