Chapter 1

Ivy P.O.V

When I was little, my grandma told me,

"Ivy, before the sun left us, you could look up and estimate what time it was just by the position of the sun in the sky."

      Holding my breath, I walked out of the subway station into the street and looked up.

All I saw were tall buildings, most of them in need of some love and care, reaching up to thick, dark gray clouds, the same ones that had been a permanent fixture in the sky for my entire nineteen years.

      I wasn't sure why I kept trying.

      Exhaling, I focused on my task, on why I was uptown and not safely behind the gates of the university.

To be honest, I wasn't letting myself think about it too much. Otherwise, I would freeze. I would turn back around and flee. I would go home and pretend everything was all right.

      One measured step in front of the other, I walked from the subway station to the next block. All the while my eyes stared straight ahead, and I breathed through my mouth.

Even then I caught a sniff of the rotting smells of the city; my eyes drifted to the broken sidewalks, to the fallen street lamps, to the dying trees and dry dirt, to the homeless people hiding at the edge of alleys.

  I swallowed the fear building inside me. As far as I knew, this had been a nice neighborhood until a couple of months ago. As nice as a neighborhood could be in this world.

Larger companies and businesses moved out as soon as it started getting bad—poverty and robbers and bats—but not everyone could afford to pack up and move.

Like the psychiatrist I had scheduled an appointment with.

      At first, I pushed my problems aside. I ignored them. But now I couldn't anymore, and this was the only psychiatrist from the over twenty I called who had an appointment available. The others wanted to put me on a wait list at least three months long.

      No, thank you.

      I stopped at a corner and waited for a green light to change. I glanced up at the tall building with a mirror-like exterior across the street, reflecting more buildings and the dark clouds.

There.

Right there was the psychiatrist who would be able to help me with my problem.

      The faint sound of wings flapping echoed through the street, and everyone looked up. Including me. Among the reflection of buildings and dark clouds, I saw the blurred line of a bat cutting through the sky. Thankfully, it disappeared with my next erratic heartbeat.

      These damn bats …

      The people in the street seemed to relax all at once.

      A sigh escaped my lips.

      But the bats weren't the reason I was here, coming to this shady neighborhood after a psychiatrist. I needed help because I had dreams.

      Dreams was the word I used to calm my mind. Visions was a more appropriate term.

      The first one happened right after my arrival in New York nine months ago. At first the visions came once a month or so, but now they assaulted me once a week.

I blacked out every time I had one. I could be cooking, studying, walking down the street, and I would simply zone out.

I saw whatever the vision brought me, then I would wake up as if nothing had happened, as if I had not spent the last thirty seconds or fifteen minutes daydreaming.