Free The Vision by Jessica Sorensen

dangled from the ceiling. They were alive or something.
    Stasha walked slowly toward me, and I opened my mouth to scream, but another vine wrapped around my mouth, silencing any noise from escaping. She knelt down in front of me and leaned into my face.
    “You should know better than to mess with someone like me,” she whispered, pulling off one of her gloves.
    She should know better than to mess with me , I thought, wishing I could say it out loud, but couldn’t because of the vine’s death-grip around my mouth.
    She reached her deathly hand toward me, ready to touch me, ready to kill. Crazy lunatic. How could Alex have dated this nut job?
    I shut my eyes, and formed a mental picture of the beach just outside the beach house, just enough of a distance away that the Praesidium wouldn’t get in my way. I could hear the ocean waves crashing onto the sandy shore. I could see the moon beaming down from the sky. I could feel the salty air kissing against my cheeks.
    “What are you doing?” Stasha asked, her voice muffled.
    I kept my eyes shut, focusing on the picture. “Take me there,” I whispered, and I could almost feel the sand in my toes.
    But then a hand grabbed my arm and I felt nothing but fire.

Chapter 10
    My face smacked against the sand. I scrambled to my feet and ran over to the ocean. My arm was burning up—it had to be on fire. But there were no flames on my skin.
    I dunked my arm into the salty water, expecting relief, but instead getting more pain. I let out a jaw-clenched scream, and ran for the beach house. It hurt so much, I could barely stand it. Was I going to drop dead at any moment?
    I felt around in the dark until I found the kitchen light and flipped it on. I stumbled over to the sink, turned the faucet on, and submerged my arm underneath the cold water. It helped…a little.
    I don’t know how long I stood there, gasping for air, letting the water drench the skin on my arm, as I waited for the pain to subside, but I was guessing it was quite a while.
    Finally, the fiery pain dwindled down, but it left in its place a few olive-green lines that traced across my veins on the lower half of my arm.
    I touched the lines with my finger, pulling a face. I sure hoped it wasn’t permanent.
    I put my locket on and headed for the front door, to go look for a phone so I could call Aislin and tell her I was at the house. But as I went to shut the door behind me, I heard a soft poof .
    I whirled around. A cloud of purple haze swirled through the room, and Alex, Laylen, and Aislin were standing in the center of it. They were all freaked out, eyes wide, mouths agape. Alex was the first to come running up to me, his bright green eyes wide with panic.

    “Are you—are you okay?” he asked, rushing for me. He opened his arms, as if to hug me, but them stop and pulled back.
    I didn’t take it personally. It was a good thing—we had been too touchy-feely already. But my insides tightened with the desire for his arms to be wrapped around me. I wanted him to hug me so badly I could barely stand it.
    “I’m fine.” My voice shook, giving away what I was feeling.
    His eyes were all over me. “What did she do to you?” I held out my arm, showing him the olive-green lines tracing my veins. “Her plants attacked me and then she touched me….you know, you could have warned me about the plants.”
    He cursed under his breath and examined my arm over without actually touching my skin. His gaze was enough, though, to dust a murmur of sparks across my skin. To make them stop, I moved my hand away and took a step back.
    “It’s not permanent, is it?” I asked worriedly.
    Alex bit at his bottom lip. “It is.”
    I shook my head. “Great. Now I’m always going to have a reminder of when your ex-girlfriend tried to kill me.” Something about what I said set something off between the four of us. I don’t know who laughed first, but suddenly we were all laughing hysterically. Maybe it was because we were all