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  My throat was painfully raw, so I stood up and poured myself a fresh cup of water in a cup that didn’t have holy water previously in it, and greedily drank it down, the coolness soothing my throat. “What the hell happened Winnie?”

  “I don’t know, but you were screaming so loud that the priest was worried someone passing by would hear it, but he was afraid to leave you alone. He had his hand on your head, and like someone flipped a switch, you just stopped and were gone. I seriously thought you had died; your glow went away and everything. Your spirit was on my plane with me. You were like that, completely still. I couldn’t tell if you were breathing or not. The priest put a pillow under your head and covered you with a blanket and went out of the room. I’m guessing it was about twenty minutes before you opened your eyes,” Winnie said in a rush.

  “Why am I wet?” I asked, pulling my sticky clothes away from my body.

  “Sweat,” she said. “It was rolling off you like it was being burned out of you.”

  “That’s about what it felt like,” I said recalling the pain.

  “That’s what what felt like?” the priest asked as he came back in.

  I spun around, sloshing water over his desk as he walked towards me. “Um, that’s what the pain felt like,” I stammered stupidly, trying to gather my thoughts. “Am I clean?”

  Winnie nodded at me, while making a zipping her lips motion, and then it clicked. He had walked in on me talking to Winnie. Damn it, I needed to be more aware of my surroundings.

  “Do you mean is the energy gone?” the priest asked me for clarification.

  “Um yeah,” I mumbled, looking down at my drenched in sweat self. “Clearly I need to go take another shower.”

  “I am not able to see energy like you can, but my assumption is that it is gone. Can you not feel it?” the priest asked, confused.

  I paused, trying to gather my thoughts. I couldn’t feel anything at all. It was like I was numb. I shot a look of fright at Winnie, then quickly looked back to the priest, “I can’t feel anything right now.”

  “Ah,” he said as he wrapped up the rosary in a clean handkerchief, then handed it to me. “I guess that would make sense given what you just went through. From what I saw with my own eyes, which I would have struggled to believe had I not seen it, it felt as though something was expelled from you. There was a violent breeze that bounced around in here until I opened the window.”

  I looked at him blankly, my mind still muddled. “So, it’s just back out there now? I need to go find it and clean up again?”

  “No child, I think it’s gone back to wherever it came from,” the priest explained. “Holy water would have banished it from here.”

  “You mean like an exorcism?” I asked, feeling stupid.

  “In a way. I think a better description would be that you killed the darkness in it, and it just dissipated,” he tried.

  Great, I’m a darkness murderer. “Well thank you for your help. Jeez, that feels like a major understatement. Thank you for keeping me alive,” I tried again, but it still didn’t feel adequate. “Um, just, thank you. For everything. I am eternally grateful,” I said, humbled beyond belief.

  He smiled at me gently, “Child, the pleasure was mine. It was a first for me to witness one of God’s warriors at work. It is I who should be thanking you.”

  I shook my head, “No. That’s not me. Please accept my gratitude,” I said, holding out my hand to him.

  He took it and shook it gently, then shrugged and pulled me into him and gave me a soft hug that warmed my insides. “Go in peace, child.”

  “And also with you,” I responded automatically, surprising myself yet again. He traced the sign of the cross on my forehead with his thumb and then steered me to the door.

  “Not to be rude, but you wore this old man out,” he said lightly and escorted me out of the church, Winnie following behind me in silence.

  “Thank you again, father,” I said gratefully. “Have a good night.”

  He nodded at me once, and then shut and locked the church doors. I headed to my car, eager to get home and shower and climb into bed until I remembered my night wasn’t over and I still needed to find someone to cover for me at work. I got in the car and dug around for my phone and pulled it out, sending a text to my co-workers to see if any of them could cover the office for me, then started the car and headed back home.

  Winnie still hadn’t said anything, and I didn’t know if that was good or bad. I was still shaken up by the whole thing, so I plugged in music for a distraction. I didn’t blast it as loud as I normally do, my ears were still ringing from the noise I had apparently been responsible for. I pulled up at a red light as my phone dinged at me with a text message, saw that one of my co-workers was free to cover the office, and quickly shot off a text to my boss telling him that I had a family emergency I needed to tend to and would be out the rest of the week.

  His acknowledgement and well wishes came through as I was pulling into my garage. I got out of the car and told Winnie, “Okay, I’m off the rest of the week.”

  “This was the most eventful day I’ve had since I’ve been dead,” she said with a straight face. I raised my eyebrow at her and walked into the house.

  “I’m going to go shower again,” I told her as I pulled an electrolyte drink out of the fridge. “You can do your part after I’m done.” She nodded at me and I went to go shower, downing half the drink before I got to my bedroom.

  Well, that was one interesting night,’ Winnie thought to herself. She heard the shower turn on upstairs and made her way up there and laid on Airy’s bed, her eyes closed. Winnie wasn’t sure she could process all that just happened, and she had no idea how Airy was. Plus, she felt bad because she was about to dump more stuff on her, and then invade her head, which she had made clear she didn’t like. Winnie sighed a sigh of defeat.

  She didn’t like to be the one pushing the limits of someone else, even if that someone was an angel, and remarkable even without having that quality. Airy had a pure soul. In a nutshell, she was love and she was life. Trying to shake it all off, she gathered her thoughts about what she was going to tell Airy about this mess Winnie had dragged her into. She had to reveal who the guys were.

  Winnie felt that not telling her who they were was setting her up for failure. She’d be walking blind into something that could get her injured, and that wasn’t fair to her, or the guys. Winnie heard the shower shut off and called out, “Airy I’m on your bed, so unless you want me to see your goodies get dressed before you come out here.”

  Winnie heard Airy laugh, then, “Got it. Thanks.”

  It was amazing Airy could even laugh right now. Winnie was pretty sure for a moment, Airy had died. Winnie sat up and rubbed her eyes, hating herself for a minute for doing this to her. She rationalized it by telling herself Airy would be saving lives, instead of dwelling on the thought that Winnie was being selfish and using Airy to ease her own conscience about moving on.

  Airy came out of the bathroom in a pink tank top style nightgown with cherries on it, and she smothered a laugh, because the style wasn’t Airy at all. Winnie noticed she had her arms crossed over her chest and realized Airy was embarrassed. Winnie kept quiet as Airy plugged her phone in to the charger she had on her nightstand and watched as she pulled out stones from the drawer and placed them near the bed on the nightstand. Curious, she asked, “What’s with the stones?”

  “They radiate an energy to me, like a vibration that I find when my mind is a mess, they soothe it,” Airy explained sheepishly. “I know, cheesy, at least that is what my friends tell me.”

  “I don’t think it’s cheesy,” Winnie said, “whatever helps is worth it.”

  “Thanks,” Airy said as she stacked her pillows, pulled back the blankets and crawled in. “Okay, let me have it, hit me with both barrels.”

  “First, I need you to look up the number for the agency my friend texted you and call it and tell them that you are responding to a posting for an em
path,” Winnie said, her face carefully blank. “Obviously, leave your contact info.”

  Airy narrowed her eyes at Winnie, “I already have a job,” I said, my voice hard.

  Winnie sighed dramatically, “Just do it, Airy.”

  Professional voice on, Winnie listened, “Hello, my name is Airiella Raven, and I’m calling about a job you have available for an empath. Please give me a call,” she said as she recited her phone number and hung up. “Happy?” she said to Winnie.

  “Oh, you know it,” Winnie replied. “So, you know my name, and that I’m dead, and that I had some abilities in life,” Winnie started. Airy nodded. “Well, my abilities were a bit more than I let on, but until you had agreed to help me, I wasn’t sure how much to share with you. The clairvoyance I had was a little different, some specialists called me a seer. I would get visions of things that were destined,” she made air quotes with her fingers, “to happen in the future. Along with that, I could sometimes look at a person and see what their destiny had in store for them. The destiny thing always appeared to be more set-in stone than the visions, but not always. I also had the ability to see aura’s, and read people a little deeper than most, which I think is the minor talent as an empath. But when you combined them all together, I knew things that I shouldn’t really know.”

  “Okay,” Airy drawled out. “Must have made for an interesting childhood.”

  Winnie smiled. “My parents took me at face value, so it wasn’t too bad. I had known two of my friends since I was a young kid. We went to the same schools, and just melded together well. Do you ever watch any of those ghost hunting shows on TV?” she asked Airy, kind of in a side note type of way.

  “Um, yeah. That was an odd question,” Airy replied scrunching her face up.

  “Sorry. Jumping ahead of myself there. One of those friends became my boyfriend, the one I told you about, since about fifth grade on, until about a month before I died. The other one was our best friend. We were always together, throughout everything. Because of my abilities, they knew about so called paranormal things as they related to me. My boyfriend had an interest in the field, and my friend, he had abilities as well, though he kept them well and truly hidden, but I knew. I think because of that, there was a bond between us that always felt strong and unbreakable to me. In a very different way than I had with my boyfriend,” Winnie paused and looked at Airy who was watching her with rapt attention. “Following?”

  “Of course, but do these people have names?” Airy asked.

  “Yes, I was getting there. Jax was my boyfriend, Ronnie, my best friend, well our best friend really,” Winnie paused again to gage Airy’s reaction. She hadn’t made the connection to the show yet. Internally, Winnie sighed in happiness. “During high school—well, ninth grade—we met two others that we had an instant connection with as well, Aedan and Art. Art we all called Smitty, because his last name was Smith,” she explained and watched as Airy had a glimmer or recognition flit across her face, but it passed just as fast.

  “All throughout high school we were together, we all got good grades, we all were good kids for the most part. Ronnie had a pretty rough go of it though, out of all of us. Purely by chance we stumbled on the fact that Aedan was Jax’s half-brother. Their father had an affair no one knew about, and during a science class our instructor was talking about DNA, turns out after a test we submitted came back, they were related. Small world. But that revelation caused some tension between them, and some hard feelings between them and their dad,” Winnie went on.

  “I can only imagine,” Airy said, riveted by the not so exciting story yet. But Winnie enjoyed the attention that was focused on her, it made her feel warm.

  “Ronnie was getting into a lot of fights around that time, but we never really figured out with who, he would just show up battered. He also started drinking heavily, and at the minimum was smoking weed. Smitty was the one who put it together finally, that it was at home that it was happening. I’m just giving you the basics here because it’s not my story to tell. Bottom line, his dad was abusing his mom, cheating, drunk all the time and heavily involved in drugs, which is where we think Ronnie got them from. Being Ronnie, he kept trying to protect his mom and took the brunt of things for a while.”

  “Oh my God,” Airy breathed out, her eyes shining with tears. “Awful for a kid to see happen to a parent.”

  “It was bad,” Winnie agreed. “Smitty mentioned something to us, but Jax took it, and went to a school counselor, who went to the police, who then put together a sting operation to bust the drugs he was peddling. But it lasted for a couple of years. Though not blood, Ronnie was Jax’s brother, and seeing him show up at school beat up and broken inside tore Jax up. Ronnie had started taking martial arts classes and boxing after school, determined to not be a victim,” Winnie continued, staring out into space, remembering.

  “I can understand,” Airy said cryptically, which snapped Winnie back into the now and she squinted at Airy, studying her.

  She kept going, she’d get her answers later. “The rest of our high school years were spent putting Ronnie back together and watching as he became a pretty tough opponent in any ring he chose. But he was still drinking and using. We graduated, and I went to school and became a mental health counselor,” Winnie said wistfully. “I loved it.”

  “Ronnie’s situation influenced that decision?” Airy asked quietly.

  Winnie nodded. “I was good at it too. That was when I started getting the visions that changed everything though. I also noticed that the relationship between me and Jax was strained, and the feelings we once had, weren’t there. If I’m honest with myself he had been pulling away for a while, but I was so occupied with work that I just ignored it. The same way I ignored the feelings that popped up every time I was around Ronnie. Classic love triangle. But wait, dun, dun DUN,” Winnie sang. “There’s a twist. The visions.”

  Airy shifted a bit and rolled on her side while she propped her head up with her arm and watched Winnie. “You had a vision about you and Ronnie?” she asked.

  “Kind of,” Winnie hedged. “I had visions about all of us. I saw the way each of us died, but only mine was one that was imminent. Theirs, I saw they were all older, the age they are now,” she said remorsefully. “Those visions, something about them told me those could be changed, it wasn’t set it in stone, but they all revolved around Jax. Even mine. I kept them a secret from everyone because really, who wants to hear that someone saw their death? I was only twenty-two, but I knew that mine was set in stone. I had a few others as well that seem to be playing out as we speak, but they are becoming a reality much faster than I anticipated,” she exhaled.

  “That’s where I come in,” Airy guessed.

  “Yep, sorry,” Winnie said, her eyes filled with regret. “But I’m jumping ahead again. I kept them secret as long as I could, but with the developing relationship I had with Ronnie, it got harder and harder, because he saw more than I thought he did. He could feel my emotions, he felt the others too, but he always felt mine the strongest. It’s only now I realized that is because he was in love with me,” Winnie’s voice cracked with that statement. She cleared her throat and continued. “Jax was becoming more and more selfish and demanding of everyone. He’d been researching starting up his own investigation company and he just automatically assumed that the rest would join him. Smitty had gone to a tech school and gotten an IT degree, electronics and coding were his thing. Aedan had gone to school and gotten a business degree. Ronnie, well, he was extremely intelligent, but he was still drinking, smoking and fighting in a club to earn money. Granted, he earned a lot, but it didn’t help his disposition.”

  “He’s moody?” Airy asked.

  “No, but he hadn’t really dealt with the fallout from the stuff with his dad, so fighting was his way of letting go of things. He also had a habit of rescuing people he thought needed rescuing,” she smiled wistfully. “He’s got such a good heart.” She closed her eyes and paused again.

&
nbsp; “Winnie,” Airy started, but Winnie cut her off.

  “I’m fine. The weight of the visions started to affect me at work, and even Jax was picking up on it. It finally came to a head with him and he called me out, telling me I was pulling away from him and he thought we needed some space. The truth was we were both pulling away, but it was always easier for him to put the responsibility off on others. Aedan had met Mags, his wife now, and they were getting serious. I’m not sure why that set Jax off so much, but it did. Neither of us told any of the others that him and I were slowly ending things. We still loved each other, but it was in a different way now. I would have spent the rest of my life with him if he had asked before that, but somewhere, even before the visions, I knew he wasn’t the one for me,” she scoffed, “well, I didn’t know that I didn’t have anyone because I wasn’t going to live, but that’s the way things work out sometimes.”

  Airy stood up, her eyes watery, “Excuse me a moment, I need to pee.” She walked into the bathroom and Winnie heard her blow her nose and flush the toilet before she came back out.

  “I’ve come to terms with it Airy, it’s okay,” Winnie said softly. Airy nodded at her, so she went on. “So, no one knew about Jax and I, but Ronnie felt it, because one day when he took me home, he asked me. It was all just too much for me then, and I told him to pull over at a park, and I got out and was swinging. He looked so beautiful sitting there next to me, watching me, that it all just bubbled out. Everything came out in a mad rush, all the visions, I told him everything. Even about you, Airy,” she whispered that last part.

  Airy startled, “What?”

  “I saw you in one of my visions, though I had no idea who you were. I didn’t even know how to start looking for you. Anyway, Ronnie and I got so close that day. I knew I was in love with him, and I knew then he was in love with me. I also knew my time was short. We made the most of it we could, but I couldn’t be sneaking around with Ronnie, so I had to tell Jax. I didn’t tell him about the visions, other than I told him I saw my death. He didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell him. It was a thing we had. Some things were just too much for him to handle. But I also told him about how I was developing feelings for Ronnie, and Jax admitted that he saw it, even understood it. He didn’t like it though. He wanted Ronnie to be the one to tell him, and I couldn’t ever see Ronnie doing that. He’d have felt like he was betraying Jax. We had a good talk that day though, and we left each other on good terms, I am almost a hundred certain we were broken up, but Jax hadn’t really said those exact words,” Winnie’s voice cracked a little then.