Changed Time

Chapter Thirty-Five

I'd never been on the other side of a vision. So while Sophie was passed out on the bed, her eyes flicking back and forth under her eyelids, I sat impatiently by her side, bouncing my leg up and down and tapping my fingers restlessly.

"How long has she been under?" I asked Wyatt for the third time.

He checked his watch. "Seven minutes."

My leg started to bounce faster. "I'm never under this long," I said. I stood up and started pacing. "Something isn't right, it shouldn't be taking this long."

"You've never done this before, Drew," Jessie mumbled. "You don't know how long it usually takes."

I stopped and pointed to the unconscious Sophie. "She's like me, maybe not exactly like me, but she's a Visioner." The term felt almost normal on my tongue. "And we don't take this long."

"She's tuned into a Visioner. For all we know, she's getting an entire history lesson of the guy's life." Jessie was making sense, but it was as if my mind wouldn't allow her words to set.

"Jessie's right, Drew." Paige grabbed my hands and tried to get me to look at her. "We don't know how this is supposed to work." I forced myself to meet her eyes. "She'll be fine and when she wakes up, you'll be right there for her." Her eyes fell from mine and she stepped away from me, letting my hands fall to my sides.

I opened my mouth to see those gray irises again, but a gasp and a series of coughs snapped my head to the bed.

"Sophie!" I ran to the bedside and reached for her hand, but she pulled away from me. I tried not to take offense. "What happened, are you alright?"

She pushed herself up to rest her back against the backboard of the bed. Her dark blue eyes were staring straight ahead.

"It so messed up, Drew," she whispered. "Their thoughts, their reasons for what they're doing, it's so freaking messed up." She had tears streaming down her face, but she made no attempt to wipe them. "I didn't just get their thoughts, I got their memories."

"Which one did you tune into?" Wyatt asked.

"Both of them," she said. "I only went for one, but it's as if their connected to each other. You tune into one and you get both."

"What did you see, Sophie?" I coaxed.

"They were fine until the visions started. The visions were like triggers to them, they get off of them, at least the one with the blue eyes does. Shaggy saw it and that's how he got them on his side so easily. They helped him kill a whole group of Visioners."

"The Elite." I nodded.

"After that they were under his wing. Blue Eyes would do anything for him and Green Eyes would do anything for his brother."

"Where are they?" Jessie asked. "I don't care about their past, I want to know where they are, if we need to leave this hotel or not."

"I think they're still in Thorp. I wasn't sure how to control the vision, so I just sort of let it go by itself, and I mostly just got background information."

Jessie sighed loudly. "So you got nothing?" She rolled her eyes and fell onto the chair behind her. "We aren't any closer to the murderers then we were before and for all we know Shaggy could have been tuned into the twins and now he knows we know his secret."

"I don't think Shaggy cares, Jessie," I said. "He wants me to understand him, that's why he tuned into me. I think he's waiting for us to come for him. He knows where we are, he has always known where we are, but it's all a game to him, and he thinks he's on top, and he wants to prolong the game as much as he can."

"So how do we end it?" Sophie asked.

"We play along. He wants us to find him? We'll find him. He's arrogant, cocky. We'll use that against him." I was determined. Shaggy had made it personal when he gave me the vision of Sophie. He was after my friend and there was no way that I was letting him get to her. "He wants us to play."

"We play," Wyatt finished.

They all nodded in agreement.

The game was on.