The Violet Hour by Whitney A. Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

him back. To explain that She wasn’t me. She was something I fought against. My balance failed me, and I fell to the floor.
    The lights blinked out in MegaWatts.

AFTERSHOCK
    A shiver of panic rocked the crowd. The blackout was real, not part of my vision.
    The lights flickered on again for a second, then pitched us back into darkness. Shrieks. Feet tripping. Panic. I anchored my palms to the floor and pushed myself to sitting. Adam. Where was he? A strobe came on, mixing with the pulses in my brain to create a full-force migraine.
    I looked up and there he was, staring down at me. His face was lit up in bursts of light. The haunted look I saw there told me I was right—he’d seen my vision, heard Her voice. There was an accusation in his eyes. Like I was responsible. Maybe I was. The possibility of us was slipping through my fingers like sand, and every part of me screamed to make it stop.
    Sprinklers went off. Manufactured rain drenched us, raindrops bouncing off the floor. I couldn’t distinguish it from the tears I felt slipping down my chin. The feedback from the abandoned microphone onstage squealed an ear-piercing alarm. It combined with the fading footfalls of the fleeing live-goers like some kind of portent of the world’s end. I stood up and reached out to Adam.
    He flinched, shaking his head like he was emerging from a trance. His face registered disgust. He saw me now for what I truly was: a freak, a menace, someone to stay as far away from as possible. He turned to follow the crowd, running from something more terrifying than whatever had set the alarms howling. Me.
    An overweight boy with his hair dyed in pink checkers grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the exit, yelling at me urgently in Japanese. He didn’t know I couldn’t be saved.
    The boy’s fingers pressed into my arm, forming little indentations there. As he tugged me along behind him, I watched the flesh fall away from his arm in blackened chunks. He turned to me, tears of blood running down his face. The last threads of the vision invading my psyche.
    I wrenched my arm away. The visions were bleeding over into my reality at an alarming rate. It was getting hard to tell what was real and what was not. As the tide of bodies finally swept me onto the street, the cool black air slammed me in the face. Clusters of confused hipsters were pointing and ogling just outside the club.
    I fell to my knees at the curb and heaved into the gutter. When the retching finally subsided, I wiped the wet tendrils of hair from my face and searched the crowd. I had to find Dora.
    Finally, I saw her glasses through the crowd at the same moment she saw me. Relief flooded me as she elbowed her way over, Stubin in tow. There was no sign of Adam or Mercy. I hoped they were safe, or I would never forgive myself. I didn’t know how it had happened, but this disaster was my fault.
    Dora took my hand and pulled me to my feet.
    “Adam?” I wheezed. “Mercy?”
    “Holy Hera in a handbasket! Where the hell have you been? I tried to go back, but the bouncer thugs wouldn’t let me in!” Dora wrestler-hugged me. Stubin shoved his hands in his pockets.
    “I’m happy to see you, too. Now we have to find Adam and Mercy,” I said.
    As if on cue, Mercy Mayer hobbled like a wounded glamazon out of a thicket of punks, ravaged platform heels in hand. She was sobbing and shivering uncontrollably.
    “It was so awful! People were stepping all over my shoes and then the sprinklers turned on and they got all wet and Harlow left me and—” A hiccup interrupted her rant long enough for her to notice we were missing someone. “Where’s Adam?”
    She flung the question at me like an accusation, as if I was keeping him hidden in my pocket only to increase the cruelty of her evening. I looked down at my feet, shame washing over me.
    “He left,” I answered.
    A wounded look flashed across her face. I almost felt sorry for her.
    “Is he okay? Was he hurt?” Her eyes darted around