Page 12 of Divine Oaths

Just a few hours ago, we’d been in Gus’s store, bargaining over how much it would cost to look into his future. And now, the death he’d foretold, it had found us both.

CHAPTER FOUR

Thus with a kiss I die

THE NIGHT WAS SOMBER. WITHIN the alleyway, faint lights from the sterile department stores cast haunting shadows around me. I fought back bile, my mind racing, my heart hammering in my chest. And yet, I drew closer to where the body lay.

The glimpse of Westfield’s signature colors was haunting, the final confirmation I needed that it was the Saint James heir lying before me.

I took a step forward and then another, and then another.

A part of me hoped it was someone else. But recognition caught me immediately; the rich, dark brown skin, almost like mine and just like Jojo’s, how it seemed to gleam like stardust across constellations. The tapered fade and the lily emblem on his blazer. But even from one glance at his outstretched hand, I could tell that his fingers weren’t calloused like mine. He’d probably never worked a day in his life. Not the way I had, dishwashing at restaurants to help make rent and having my nails caked with dirt and grime from sweeping floors at Gus’s. Real labor had never brushed this man’s fingertips.

He was the rich Westfield University heir through and through. And now he might be dead.

“Saint James?” I whispered. “Are you all right?” My voice caught in my throat, so I said it again, louder now, as if raising my voice might startle him back into being the pompous elitist I’d met just hours ago.

“Hello?” I whispered again.

But he didn’t answer.

Part of me knew I should leave. The part of me that had survived years under media scrutiny and paranoia as a child star, the part that could recognize a trap, even if it wasn’t paparazzi or an old fan hiding in a corner.

I recalled the shouting match between Jojo and the Westfield heir’s bodyguard. Did Jojo know this man? Were they trying to find him and save him? Or, were they somehow connected to this?

I recoiled at the thought, retching against the side of the dumpster as a wave of nausea overtook me. When the burnt skin of my fingertips touched its cool metal surface, my powers churned in the back of my mind, a vision rippling there, ready to unfold.

A trickle of moonlight beamed off the dumpster, enshrouding everything in either shadow or a soft, milky glow of light. From where I stood, all I could see of him was his slumped head and his left hand resting inside his blazer, like he was searching for something. The pool of blood near him looked disturbingly fresh.

I needed to know what had happened to him. But most of all, I needed to be sure Jojo wasn’t involved. Hot tears pricked my lashes. I closed my eyes, pressed my palms against the surface of the dumpster. And then I channeled my powers.

My view of the present eroded. As it dissipated, in its place emerged my window into the past.

In the vision, I pushed back to roughly ten or fifteen minutes before I had stumbled into the alley. I scanned the area for any sign of the heir while keeping my hand pressed to the dirty dumpster so the vision wouldn’t break.

I’d always hated this part of visions, the waiting. Sometimes the most salient parts of the past played out quickly before me. Other times, it could be hours before anything useful would show up. And now, I was even more impatient than ever. But just as I was about to give up, the Westfield heir emerged from the shadows. In Gus’s shop, and even here with him slumped in the alleyway, I hadn’t let myself admire him fully. But in my vision, under the gleam of the moon, he looked like a painting.

Back when Jojo had been studying for his grad school degree, he, Louisa, and I had gone on a trip to one of the art history museums in DC. The figure paintings there had this magnitude to them, like every brushstroke, every blot of oil pastel and acrylic, had been ordained to be. The Westfield heir was just as graceful and imposing. A tragic marvel caught in the web of manhood. His figure was lean and possessed African features that spoke of kings and tribes from past dynasties, from his sculpted angular jaw and cheekbones to his soft, wide nose and piercing brown eyes.

He arched his brow in a scowl, and I flinched, as if my presence here in the past was an intrusion. But he couldn’t see me. He shouldn’t be able to. Channeling my powers was like peering through a looking glass while time unfolded. And the people in my visions, they weren’t really people anymore. They were no more than actors playing out a scene, all completely unaware that I was witnessing their performance in the present. But even as I channeled my psychic powers, I could feel the weight of the present around me. Cold nipped at my fingertips, and my stomach became a mess of knots.

The heir drew his phone from the breast pocket of his blazer, where a tessellated version of Westfield’s lily flower emblem was hand-stitched. On his wrist, there was that flash of gold again; not a watch, I realized, but a bracelet.

It was the same one I’d found in Jojo’s car.

The realization was stifling, like my world had stopped spinning and the oxygen I breathed didn’t belong to me anymore.

Jojo hadn’t mentioned personally knowing any of the Saint James family from his time at Westfield. And if this man was wearing the bracelet just minutes ago, then Jojo must have…

No.

There had to be an explanation. And the only way to find out was here, in the past. So, I let the vision play out.

The Westfield heir swiped mindlessly on his phone for a bit, before hitting call on a number I couldn’t quite read.

“Hey. I think I’m going to be a little late,” he said. “No. It’s nothing. Just meeting someone.”

Then he reached into his blazer and pulled out a wad of cash, the same stack that he’d flashed at me earlier that day.