I let my eyes search her scrawling on the walls. When I looked back at Caleb, he was watching me carefully. “You okay, baby?”
I nodded. “This could have been me…so easily.”
He gulped painfully. “I would have never let them do this to you.”
“I know that. But there was no one there to save her. And now, there’s no one there to save those people from the Watsons. No one but us. That has to be a reason I got the vision. Maybe…maybe they’re going to expose us to a ton of humans or something.” I ran my finger along the words on the bricks. “I don’t know the whys; I just know that we have to do this.”
He engulfed me from behind, his arms around me, his face next to mine on my shoulder. “I’m always with you, whatever you choose to do.” He leaned in. “You’re the boss, remember?” he said into my ear.
I started to relax, lean into him, when he stiffened.
“What in holy hell is that?” he whispered and let me go gently to move forward, his eyes glued to something on the wall. I saw in his mind the word “Ava” was what he was fixated on. But how was that possible?
“Caleb?” I asked, my voice quivered in the air between us.
He looked back at me and held out his hand. “Come here.” I took it and he pulled me in front of him. “Baby…look.”
There, in the midst of all that gibberish was an infinity symbol made of names. Maggie, Caleb, Kyle, Lynne, Bish, Jen, Haddock, Heather. And then in the middle of all those names was Ava's, her name practically touching another name I’d never heard and didn’t know anyone by that name—Seth.
Who’s Seth?
I looked up at Caleb over my shoulder. I don’t know. But why are our names on this wall, Caleb? Ashlyn didn’t know us. Why is our daughter’s name in the middle of these names like that?
He pulled my wrist up, running his thumb over my infinity mark on my tattoo. “I knew it had to mean something.”
“Maggie,” we heard behind us and we both turned to find Ashlyn. I gasped, unable to stop it. “Maggie,” she said again and shook her head in a way that showed her distress. “Oh, Maggie. I’m trying to warn you, but you’re not listening.”
“I’m listening,” I promised her. Now that I knew Ava had something to do with this, there wasn’t a Virtuoso member or rule or law that was going to stand in my way of getting to that Watson compound if that was what I was supposed to do. “Please, Ashlyn.”
I went and stood right in front of her ethereal form. She still scratched and rubbed at her arms, just like she had in the visions I used to have of her, back when I first came to stay here as the Visionary before Caleb and I were even married. She looked up at me and then at the wall. She walked to it and pressed her ridged fingers to the middle where Ava's name was and said, "Danger. Danger, Visionary."
Caleb was freaking out, but afraid to speak—afraid to scare her away, so he let me do all the talking.
"What danger? With my daughter? With Ava?"
"You can't see it," she murmured and shook her head harder. She took her nails and slammed them to the wall, digging them deep, and scraped them across the names, Ava's name was almost completely gone. Caleb pulled me back as I gasped. Ashlyn swung around to look at us once more. "Visionary, you know what you saw, you know what has to be done. There's danger. Go, now!"
She disappeared into a wisp of smoke, but the scratch over our daughter's name remained.
"Oh, God. Ava, no," Caleb growled behind me as he took my hand and tugged me to follow him.
We ran. We didn't stop again until we were standing in the doorway of Gran's room, looking at our son and daughter as they played Scrabble with her on the floor. Caleb scooped Ava up and kissed her forehead, murmuring that it was all right. But Ava hadn't known anything was