“I don’t have premonitions,” I said. I knew no one believed me, but it’s my standard line.

They all nodded, humoring me.

“Sure, you don’t,” Koo said. “Sure.”

“Not a one,” Gracie said. “When you suddenly jumped into the lake in your clothes and swam to the center to rescue my grandmother at the exact moment she stood and fell out of the boat a week ago, it was purely coincidence. How funny you were there at the same time!”

That was a wet one.

“Uh, yeah,” Darrell said. “Want some tomatoes? They’re ripe. I’ll bring them over to you and your mom and aunts tonight.”

“Whatever,” Gracie said. “You’re a bit flushed and you’re still panting. Maybe you should run more. For when this happens again.”

“Hey,” Koo said. “I need a scary book. Did you get any super scary books in?”

“And I need a romance,” Mr. Jamon said. “I’ve got a date on Saturday night, and it wouldn’t hurt to take a lesson, right?”

Right. You go, Mr. Jamon, you go.

We all trooped into my bookstore, another friend, O’Dierno Rhys, handing me Ghost, who was unhappy with her disrespectful treatment, but not before the girl and her mother thanked me again and hugged me.

“You came out of nowhere,” the mother said.

“Evie does that,” Gracie said with a lot of enthusiasm. “She can see the future. It’s like she has a crystal ball in her head.”

“I think it’s those pretty gold eyes of hers,” Koo said, slinging an arm around my shoulders, which were beginning to ache from the fall. “Something magical about them.”

I rolled my pretty gold eyes. “No, I can’t see the future.”

Yes, I can.

* * *

I can’t always see the future, but now and then, curse it all, I can.

It’s been a plague my whole life.

I started having premonitions as a kid. I would see the future for someone. Sometimes it was scary, or bad, and sometimes it was wonderful. It led to a whole lot of mental distress and trying to save people, or choosing not to save people, and committing minor crimes along the way, like breaking and entering, trespassing, small robberies, destruction of property, hiding things people owned like their car keys so they couldn’t drive, one time locking my favorite librarian up in her home so she wouldn’t get hit by a train, things of that nature.

All of my tiny criminal acts or legal interventions have been to slow someone down so that the premonition will pass them by. So many times in life an accident hits that if you waited one minute, one, it would have shot past you. I try to make that minute happen. All the crimes were necessary. I don’t regret any of them. I knew what was going to happen to those people—innocent people, often friends, people I loved and cared about—if I didn’t.

That’s the curse of having premonitions: You know what’s upcoming for people.