Chapter3

The money my father had made off Nova and Helios had burned away faster than I expected. The demon’s presence in the basement had thickened by the day, and the number of calls he made at night in his study had only climbed. That demon had been growing—and so had its appetite.

On the evening of the fourth day, Vivian brought someone home.

Marco. Vivian’s boyfriend. In my last life, he had been the one I exposed as a cheating, money-grifting player.

“Hello, sir.” He sat down in the living room, pulled a document from his bag, and placed it on the table. “I’ve got a project. You’ll recoup in a month.”

My father didn’t take it. He glanced at me.

I lowered my eyes to the company name on the papers. My silver eyes had spun on their own for a second. The spot where Marco had signed carried a gray anchor-point—the color of concealment.

My father had been waiting. Vivian stood behind Marco, her gaze pinned to my face.

I set the document down and pressed my temple. “I can’t see it clearly. Something’s in the way.”

“The silver eyes are backfiring. I used them too much these last couple of days.” I picked it up again, stared for a few more seconds, then put it down. “But I didn’t see a break line.”

Not seeing an obvious midstream blowup had been the truth. But I hadn’t said, “You should invest.”

My father tapped the tabletop twice. “Leave the file. I’ll look it over.”

Vivian’s breath eased.

Marco stood to shake my father’s hand. As he passed me on the way out, he dipped his head and looked at me. “Your eyes bothering you?”

“They’re fine.”

He left. My father carried the document into his study, and the door shut. Vivian stood in the living room, staring at the door for a moment before she turned to me.

“What did you see?”

“I didn’t see anything.”

“Then why did you say it was blurry?”

“Because it was blurry.” I lifted my head. “Sis, what did you want me to see?”

She didn’t answer. She turned and went upstairs.

I went back to my room and sat on the edge of the bed. Outside, the sky had dimmed, and smoke drifted from the heater in the neighbor’s yard. My father would bite. Marco’s paperwork looked too perfect, and the gap in my father’s funds had been bigger than it was in my last life—he had fed the demon too hard, too fast, and he couldn’t afford to stop now.

A month later, Roger vanished.

When my father took the call from his assistant, I stood by the window at the far end of the second-floor corridor. I heard the dull crash as he kicked over the coffee table.

“He ran? Thirty million! That was the last cash I could move!”

I went down the stairs. The moment my father saw me, the look in his eyes shifted—from “money tree” to “dead weight.” He crossed the room in two strides and clamped a hand on my shoulder. “Didn’t you say you didn’t see a break line?!”

He yanked me so hard I stumbled forward, my voice shaking. “I—I said I didn’t see… I said the edges were blurry…”

“Blurry?” He flung me aside. “You did it on purpose! You knew he was a con, and you didn’t stop it!”

I hit the wall and didn’t dodge. “Dad, my eyes really hurt that day… you saw it…”

He stared at me for two seconds and didn’t hit me again, but something in his gaze had changed.

Vivian came out of the kitchen with tea in her hands and saw me pressed against the wall. The corner of her mouth curved for a split second. I saw it.

“Dad,” Vivian said as she set the teacup down and walked over, “I told you—she’s been getting less and less accurate lately. After Nova and Helios, nothing was right. Now she’s let our entire base get scammed away.” She turned to me. “Little sister, are those eyes of yours even working anymore?”

I didn’t answer. My father’s fingers tapped the table twice, and he looked up at Vivian.

“I brought someone,” Vivian said, “a specialist who diagnoses silver eyes. He can tell whether they’re still useful.”

My father didn’t object. Vivian pulled the door open, and a man in a dark gray robe walked in. A silver pendant hung at his chest, and three rings gleamed on his fingers. He stepped up to me and lowered his head to stare into my eyes—my silver eyes flared on their own for an instant, and I saw a cold, calculating light flash in his pupils.

He took a step back and turned to my father.

“Half her silver-eye power has dried up. The surface is still there, but the underlying backlash is severe. If this keeps going, she’ll see everything wrong—worse than that, she’ll draw misfortune onto anyone who meets her gaze.”