That wasn’t supposed to happen in a vision either. What if it hit her?

Before she had fully formed the intention, she grabbed the edge of the magic cloth and yanked. Stones flew around the kitchen, breaking the pattern.

The vision shattered so hard it left her head aching, or maybe that was an echo from the psychic attack the man had flung at her. He vanished, along with the landscape. The lightning bolt never landed, although the image remained burned into her retina.

Her heartbeat galloped like a runaway horse while adrenaline pounded through her veins. As her vision cleared, she pressed shaking fingers against equally unsteady lips and looked around the familiar landscape of her apartment, taking in each detail in an effort to ground herself.

What the royal fuck was that? She had never experienced anything like that, and she had been practicing magic for as long as she could remember. Had the vision been so vivid it simply overwhelmed her sense of her immediate physical reality?

It couldn’t have been real.

Could it?

Her head said no, but her gut said yes. He had behaved exactly as though he had seen her. She had sensed his Power, felt the attack flare toward her like a thrown spear. Her gut had no doubt that if that spear had hit, it would have injured her, perhaps severely.

What did it mean?

It took several breaths for her to regain her composure enough to leave. A dull throbbing took up residence behind her eyes. She strode into her bedroom, opened the small closet safe, pulled out her gun, and tucked it into the concealed-carry pocket of her purse. As she left the bedroom, she glanced one last time at her percolator with a deep sense of bitterness.

Man, she chose wrong.

She should have had that cup of coffee.

Change, the wind whispered. New information is coming.

No duh. Message received, loud and clear.

Sophie’s heels clicked on the hot city pavement. With one hand, she traced the outline of the Glock tucked into the concealed-carry pocket. As she paused, she studied the nearby shops and traffic.

The surrounding scene looked placid and normal, a prosperous neighborhood basking in the southern California sun. There was no immediate, impending violence, nor any danger.

But both were close somehow, like a mass of dark clouds towering on the horizon, and they felt… complex. The warning on the wind wasn’t about some random drive-by shooting or liquor-store holdup. It carried too much weight, too much history.

Settling her psychic barriers firmly into place, she continued down the sidewalk until she arrived at her destination. As she pushed through the glass door, she took in the details of the restaurant.

The place was upscale. Located a few blocks from Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, the interior was decorated with polished natural wood, gleaming metal, and large pieces of strategically placed, high-end art. It looked too good to be true, an elegant façade that hid something rotten underneath.

But she was just being cranky. The rune reading had left her unsettled and on edge. When she thought of the psychic attack that had been directed at her, her palms grew clammy and her heart started racing again. If that lightning bolt had hit, it could have killed her.

The image of the man haunted her, like Death shadowing a dying woman’s footsteps—that glimpse of the hard male face, with dark, predatory eyes and a shock of black hair falling onto a strong forehead. His face had been handsome with an inhuman beauty but entirely ruthless, his mouth hard as if cut from stone, his expression chiseled with something that looked like an ancient, settled hatred.

Or hunger.

She still felt the tremendous shock of connection from when their eyes had met. It had jarred her out of herself so that she felt displaced and ungrounded. The normal irritations of navigating through LA traffic didn’t touch her. Her feet did not seem to quite make contact with the pavement. She was not sure she was entirely housed in her own body. Even her caffeine headache felt as if it belonged to someone else.

Because of the unknown male’s attack, she had broken the vision off too early. She hadn’t had the chance to harvest enough information. Since the reading turned out to be incomplete and unsatisfactory, she had no idea if it was attached to her lunch meeting, to the imminent change she sensed on the wind, or the hint of impending danger.

Everything might very well be related, but it might not. So far, all she had were fragments of messages, and she didn’t know how or even if they fit together. As a result, tension knotted the muscles between her shoulders and she studied everything with wary eyes.

For the meeting, she had slipped on a flowing, sleeveless linen pantsuit, undyed, the cuffs of the slacks ending above the ankle and showing off her slender feet in strappy-looking sandals that were, nevertheless, still sturdy enough to sprint in.

She had accessorized with chunky teal-colored jewelry layered over a few magic-sensitive silver pieces that she had spelled with protections and charms. The magic tinkled pleasantly to her inner ear, the jewelry shifting along her skin.

As she paused by the hostess stand, a beautiful woman dressed in a chic outfit walked up. The woman carried a pile of menus and looked bored.

“Do you have a reservation?” the woman asked, looking down Sophie’s figure in frank assessment.

The hostess’s expression was cool and calculating. Sophie wasn’t quite sure if she had passed muster.

Fuck you. I put on makeup. I look like a million bucks.

“I don’t know.” She glanced over the crowded tables. “I’m meeting someone.”

“What is the name?”

“Kathryn Shaw.”

The hostess checked the computer screen, and her expression changed. In a much friendlier voice, she said, “Very good. Please follow me.”

Kathryn Shaw’s name had clearly pushed Sophie over some invisible line into acceptability. Mouth tilting in a sour slant, she followed the hostess to a quiet booth located in a corner where a woman waited.

As Sophie and the hostess approached, the woman slid to her feet with cool, liquid grace. Smiling, she held out her hand. “Sophie Ross? How nice to meet you.”

“Dr. Shaw.” As they shook hands, Sophie sized up the other woman quickly and without being as obvious as the hostess had been.

Kathryn Shaw was not quite what she had expected. The other woman was lightly tanned and had a tall, fine-boned figure, golden-brown hair that streamed in an elegant straight fall to her shoulders, large intelligent eyes, and the kind of poise that came from education, money, and knowing her worth in the world. She had good, sensitive hands, a firm grip, and immaculately tended fingernails. A hint of Power, well contained and as honed as a scalpel, clung to her figure like an expensive perfume.

Kathryn’s cool, sleek sophistication was almost the antithesis of Sophie, who stood several inches shorter. Sophie’s pale skin never tanned, her body tended to curve at breasts and hips, and her thick black hair had a mind of its own.

After trying one short, disastrous haircut that made her look like a twelve-year-old with cowlicks, she had learned to keep her hair long enough so the weight straightened out some of the unruliness. That way she could at least braid or pin it out of the way.

At the moment, the knot at the nape of her neck had loosened as she had walked from the car to the restaurant, and it now fell in loose waves down her back. Her fingernails were no-nonsense and not nearly as well tended as the other woman’s. She had clipped them herself yesterday.