We moved to the bar. Seeing the girl from my visions up close sent a surge of electricity through me. I was looking at a dead woman.
Her brown hair tussled in a heap and her emerald eyes stared back at mine. For a second I caught the flash of something in her gaze. Recognition.
But I couldn't see the hair. All I could see was how it was matted to her face with blood, her emerald eyes staring but cold.
This is the part where you say hello, Joshua's voice whispered in my mind.
"I'm Magnus," My voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom if a well, my hand outstretched.
"Layla." She said. Her hand didn't come up to meet mine. She just watched me with unsettling stillness.
"I was wondering if you were going to say hello. You've been staring at me for a while. Do I have something on my face or are you just really bad at this?"
The bass, the music and people all faded to the back of my mind for a moment. Even Joshua screaming ouch at her remark inside my head was ignored. In its place was the heavy sounds of the tsunami of snow hitting the shore.
"You're late." I blurted out. Smooth talker.
Shut up!
"Oh am I? I had no idea I was expecting someone." She still had that stillness, her eyes boring into mine. Watching and calculating.
"For the end." I blurted out. I had no idea why I said that, but it felt important. Like something I was meant to do.
I was meant to be at this bar.
Meant to go with an idiot brother.
Meant to see her.
And I was right. Her eyes went wide, pupils expanding.
"Sixteen days, twenty three hours, fifty five minutes and fourth seconds." She mummured.
And In that moment. The entire world went silent. There was no bar, no music, no people.
Just the two of us.
"you know."
The silence shattered. The bass of the speakers returned with a vengeance, and Joshua's voice buzzed in the back of my mind.
Hello? Earth to Magnus?
Catherine was staring at us, her smile fading into confused suspicion. "Have you guys already met?"
Layla didn't seem to hear. She moved before you could blink, her hand clamping unto mine like a steel vice—the warmth of it spreading all over.
"We need to talk." She hissed, hurrying me along through the pool of dancers, towards the exit. I turned back to see Joshua still smiling like an idiot.
It had begun to rain, a slight drizzle washing through the city. The weather couldn't seem to make up it's mind. Manhattan was a mess of neon lights and wet asphalt all around us but for the first time in years....it felt quite.
Layla let go of my hand as if it had burned hers. She whirled around, her green eyes staring.
"Who are you?"
The words to reply stuck in my throat.
"Why have you been haunting me? Why are you in my head?" She asked, her voice jagged and shaking.
"Haunting you?" I leaned back against the brick wall of the alley. "We just met?"
She stabbed a finger into my chest,hard enough to hurt.
"Don't." One word. Sharp.
Then quieter, almost pleading: "Don't lie to me like I'm stupid."
Her hand stayed there, trembling.
"I've spent a week trying not to sleep. Because every time I do..." Her voice cracked. She hated it. Hated me for hearing it.
"...I watch you die. Not fast. Not clean. You just… crack. Like ice under too much weight. And the world keeps freezing behind you."
She swallowed.
"So tell me why I keep seeing it. Tell me why it feels like I already mourned you."
The air in my lungs turned to lead.
She sees me die?
My mind recoiled. In my nightmare, I was the one kneeling on the Statue of Liberty, holding her cooling body while the world drowned in blood. But in hers... I was the one who dies.
She didn't know. She didn't see the frost beginning to crawl up the brickwork behind me or realize that the "chill" making her shiver was coming from my skin. To her, I was just some rich guy in a three-thousand-dollar suit who happened to be the star of her nightmares.
Layla reached up, her fingers trembling as if she wasn't sure I was real. I watched them approach,small, warm, and dangerous, before I flinched, my back hitting the cold brickwork. She pulled back, her green eyes still searching mine for the truth.
"I can't say why we're having these visions, Layla," I admitted, my voice low. "I can't offer an explanation for the blood or the countdown."
"But they're not just dreams," she pressed, her voice a whisper. "You know that as well as I do."
"I do." I turned to the mouth of the alley, where the lights of Manhattan blurred into the rain. "And I intend to find out who is pulling the strings."
"How?"
The heavy steel door beside us shrieked open. Catherine emerged, the muffled thump of the club's bass spilling out behind her.
"Layla! It's almost time," she hissed, checking her watch.
Layla looked at her own wrist, and her face went from haunted to terrified in a heartbeat. "Shit. He's going to kill me."
She didn't say goodbye. she just turned and bolted back inside, Catherine following her like a shadow. I followed instinctively, my mind still stuck on the double sided visions
"If he finds out you left your room, we're dead," Catherine's voice echoed in the hallway. "We have five minutes to get back, and your sedan isn't going to make it through New Yorks traffic in five minutes."
"Aren't you a little old for a curfew?" I blurted out. She looked well over twenty—the kind of age where "Father" usually loses his grip.
Catherine stopped, turning to look at me with an expression that was halfway between pity and a grimmace.
"It's not a curfew, Magnus," she said, her voice dropping as she dropped the 'bubbly' act. "It's a debut. And I... " She turned to Layla, "well, I might have accidentally invited the Sterling brothers to your father's private gala. Which starts in exactly twenty minutes."
Layla's eyes went wide open in disbelief, she turned to me and then to Catherine. "Did you just say Sterling?"