Her absence was what brought Vin back to reality, snapping the hold that had been clamped onto him, breaking the strings that had turned him into the puppet of…he didn’t know what. He’d never known what. From the very first time he’d been taken over, he’d been clueless as to what it was or what he spoke of or why, of all the people on the planet, it had to be him who chose to bear this terrible burden.

Good God, what was he going to do? He couldn’t function in his business or his life with intrusions like this. And he didn’t want to go back to his years as a young kid when people thought he was crazy.

Besides, this shouldn’t be happening. He’d taken care of this.

Planting his palms onto his knees, his let his head sag on his shoulders, his breathing shallow, his locked elbows all that held him upright.

That was how Jim found him.

“Vin? What’s doing, big man? You got a concussion?”

If only that were the case. He’d so choose a brain hemorrhage over the speaking-in-tongues thing.

Vin forced his eyes over to the other man. And because his mouth evidently wasn’t through with its independent streak, he heard himself say, “Do you believe in demons, Jim?”

The guy frowned. “Excuse me?”

“Demons…”

There was a long pause; then Jim said, “How ’bout we get you home? You don’t look right.”

Jim’s pointed pass on the question was a reminder of the polite way people dealt with the freaky in life. There were a lot of other reactions, though, from Marie-Terese’s taking off at a dead run to outright cruelty—which was what he’d gotten as a kid.

And Jim was right. Home was exactly where he needed to go, but damned if he didn’t want to find Marie-Terese and tell her…what? That between the ages of eleven and seventeen he’d had these “spells” happen to him regularly? That they’d made him lose friends and gotten him labeled a freak and forced him to learn how to fight? That he was sorry she’d gotten scared twice tonight?

More to the point, that she needed to take whatever he’d spoken as the gospel truth and protect herself? Because he was never wrong. Fuck him to hell and back…but whatever he said always happened.

Which was how he knew it was never good news. Later, someone on the periphery, or maybe the person him- or herself, would tell him what he’d said and what it meant. God, how the aftermath of the truth had horrified him. When he’d been young and had scared easier, he would go to his bedroom and shut the door and huddle under the covers, a shaky mess.

Just like he saw dead people, he foretold the future. The bad, bloody, destructive kind.