Anchor

Chapter Sixteen

Amazing.

That's how I felt.

Freaking a-ma-zing.

Maybe amazing was a bit of a stretch on the reality side of things but it's what it felt like to me. I never knew I could feel this way, like I wasn't a monster.

I'd spent days feeling like a monster.

A killer. A murderer. An assassin.

Right at this moment, finally, I felt something beyond my sadness, disappointment and self-hatred shine through, warming m heart and making my insides feel more alive than they'd ever felt. Warmth spread through my skin, tingling and delightful. I felt the beauty of my gift, as it circled its whispery hands around my heart, bounding me to the singing nature around me, bathing the world in life, breathing new and vivid life into every little plant and flower in the yard.

I turned to Seth and he was smiling at me, squinting at the sunlight, his eyes traveling over the silvery orb that circled me from my gift. "You're not a killer, Zoey. You're a balance. Meant to find equilibrium between life and death."

I let the power die out from my hands like a candle. Slowly, I felt it trickle its way into my chest, washing over my beating heart and dying out gently, like a caress, making it skip a simple beat before resuming its normal rhythm, stronger and warmer than ever before.

I could feel Hayden behind me, somewhere in my immediate proximity, his enthusiasm and intrigue palpable in the air, but I was too focused on Seth and the way his words had intrigued me, enough to relinquish him my undivided attention.

I tilted my head. "What do you mean? How did you know how to do this with my gift?"

His eyes met mine, bluer than ever and shining in the sun like a thousand diamonds. "I know all this because my mother was like you."

I stifled a gasp.

I had been waiting for anything. Anything. But not this. Not what he said. I knew there had to have been more people who could see souls before me. Given the way there could be a lot of people with similar gifts, I always assumed that other soul's seers had existed before and at the same time as me. Sia had told me as much when we became friends at the orphanage. She'd told to me about that woman who could see her that she met at the orphanage and who'd gone insane in a few years.

But I never expected Seth to be the one to prove that to me.

It surprised the hell out of me that Seth was telling me that he knew someone who'd had the same gift as me because I would have expected anything, except that. But, if I was honest, that did explain a lot, mainly the weird talk we had the first time I saw him, the reason why he'd pretended to be a soul, probably to prove that I really was capable of seeing souls and later on, how he knew how to trigger my gift and what it could do.

"Like me?"

He nodded. "She could see ghosts too."

I blinked. "What?!" I breathed out. "How?" I demanded.

He shrugged. "Like you do. She'd been seeing them since she was a kid. It was just something she could do, I guess. She'd been born that way. I grew up hearing her talk to them, whispering about sending them over the Veil, running around the city to help them find closure."

I took a step forward, my brain understanding what he was saying. "You mean that she actually talked to them? She helped them cross over?"

"Yes," he answered calmly. "She used to. But as I grew up, I realized that wasn't the only thing she could do. I'd only heard whispers about it, whenever she talked to my father when they thought I was asleep. But then one night, when I was seven, it was late but I wanted to meet some friends and I decided to sneak out of the house."