“You’ll be fine.” Chay gently tugged on my hand. “I’ll show you how. As slow as the songs are, you’ll only have to sway.” He pulled me to him. His gaze held mine, expression serious. “Dance with me, Milayna. I want to hold you. Feel you against me. Whatever you’re afraid of, whoever you’re afraid of, I’m here. I’m not letting you go. Please.” He placed his lips against my temple before leading us into the cabin.
His words reached down and wrapped themselves around my heart and, at that moment, I was sure there wasn’t anything I would have denied him. I followed him to the dance area. It was a small room, with large windows giving a view of the water and the lights twinkling on shore. The band played slow instrumentals. The floor was full of couples dancing close, murmuring to each other as they swayed in time to the music.
Chay led me to the small, wooden dance floor and wrapped his arms around my waist. I circled his neck with my arms and breathed him in. We moved to the music, looking at each other, not speaking. It was intimate and sensual, being so close to him. His hands moved slowly up and down my spine, and I threaded my fingers through his silky hair.
“What are you thinking?” he asked quietly.
“That it’s been a perfect day. And that I don’t want tonight to end,” I whispered. “What are you thinking?”
“That I can’t remember when I’ve been this happy.” He ran a finger down the side of my face.
We danced until the boat docked an hour later. We would’ve stayed and ridden again, but we’d been on the last boat ride of the night. The shops on the Waterway were closing. Slowly, the lights were flickering off, taking some of the magic with them.
Chay and I walked hand in hand down the cobblestone lane to the parking garage where Chay’s car was parked when a stabbing pain in my stomach doubled me over. Then my head started to throb.
Not now. Not tonight. Please, just one normal night.
But the feeling didn’t go away. It intensified. The stabbing pain spread like a rash, blanketing my body in unbearable pain that took over my senses until that was all I could focus on. My fingers pushed on my temples, trying to push away the searing pain in my head. I tried to relax and the let the vision take over, but I was in too much pain. I tensed against it.
“You’re having a vision?”
I nodded, still clutching my head. It felt like someone was inside my skull with a blowtorch.
Red light. Water. Woman.
“What do you see?”
I shook my head. The pain was too intense to speak. The twisting in my stomach squeezed the breath from my lungs, and the burning in my head and across my skin was almost unbearable. My vision jumped in time with my heartbeat, which was speeding at an incredible rate.
Water. Blood. Woman.
Concentrating on the images, I tried to block out the pain. I rolled my head and shoulders to relax my neck and back muscles. Chay guided me to a bench and I sat down and bent forward with my arms around my knees, while he gently massaged my shoulders.
Tour bus. Woman. Blood. Bridge.
The images were coming too slow. They weren’t giving me enough information.
“A woman and a tour bus,” I said through clenched teeth. “I don’t know if she is getting on the bus or is already.”
“What does she look like?”
“Brown hair and glasses. She’s wearing a green blouse. That’s all I can see.”
“Okay, what’s the tour bus look like?”
“Like a bus!” I yelled. “Sorry.” I rocked back and forth on the bench, my arms still wrapped around my knees. My stomach felt like it was tied in knots. I could taste the metallic taste of blood in my mouth where I’d bitten my cheek to keep from crying out. Bile rose in the back of my throat, burning it.
There were a lot of tour buses. The Waterway was a huge tourist attraction. The streets were crowded, full of groups of people boarding their buses and strolling down the cobblestone streets to their cars.
Bridge. The woman. Headlights. Squealing tires.
“The bridge. Something is going to happen to her on the bridge.”
Falling. Water bubbles. Blood swirling.
“C’mon.” Chay pulled me off the bench. I stumbled forward. I could feel her falling, feel the sting of the water when she hit it. See the blood swirling, mixed with the air bubbles in the water. I shook off the feelings and followed him.
“I can feel it,” I panted, trying to keep pace with his longer strides. I pushed through the pain of the vision. It was so intense that I wanted to lie down on the cobblestone and curl into myself.
“What?”
“What she’s gonna feel if we can’t find her.”
We ran toward the bridge. I stumbled several times, trying to keep up, when hot, searing pain stabbed through me, stealing my breath.
The sidewalk was crowded, and we were running against the flow of traffic. We were jostled and pushed. Some people looked at us in surprise, and some got angry and yelled for us to slow down. We kept running as fast as we could through the throng of people.