The Wake Up (The Seers Book 1)

by Angela Panayotopulos

  Then she forced herself to register the reality of the sweater pressed against her cheek. The crispness of a white lab coat against her hands. The warmth of a man’s embrace.

  She pulled away.

  A doctor. Younger than the one in the elevator, but no more familiar. Tall, lean-faced, and square-jawed. He peered worriedly into her face.

  “You okay?”

  The million dollar question. Lexi stared at him.

  “Say something,” he demanded.

  To him? What did you say to someone who dripped with sex appeal? Add that he was one of the handful of men in the world who could make a clean-shaven head and chinstrap look really ridiculously good-looking. A six-foot blond bombshell would have trouble holding this one’s attention. Dr. Dominic Lazaro read the badge pinned to his shirt pocket. Chris Daughtry’s doppelganger wore his confidence as he wore his coat; Lexi couldn’t imagine a more perfect fit. She blinked, wondering if he’d disappear.

  He didn’t. Not yet, anyway.

  “Your lab coat,” she blurted. Smudges of her mascara tarnished it like scorch marks. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s seen worse.” He grinned and crossed his arms across his chest—arms Lexi had thrown herself into like an airhead—and the muscles under those rolled-up sleeves rippled. She could only imagine what hid beneath the black cashmere sweater and blue jeans showing through his white coat. “What’s your name?”

  “Um.”

  The grin widened. “And where were you headed to in such a hurry, Miss Um?”

  It was a ludicrous situation. Lexi had just witnessed a man in an elevator grappling for his life. Somewhere in this decaying hospital, her mother lay comatose. Yet all Lexi could see were these eyes gazing at her with a color stolen from storm-tousled seas.

  Ludicrous. The tiny logical part of her brain nodded its head and applauded the use of that adjective.

  But goodness, he’d just asked her something again. Her ears were short-circuiting. Or her brain. Lexi’s face burned. I’m going stupid on him. It was a Southern phrase, so well worded; when you fell for someone, people said it “brought out the stupid” in you.

  Dominic glanced down the hall, then back at her. He raised an eyebrow in interest. In strained patience, Lexi corrected herself. Of course, because he was a doctor; he had places to be and lives to save. And who was she? A visitor with a troubled past and a broken family. A girl who used make-up as a survival kit. A lonely human who wrote to invisible friends in a journal. Lexi told her pattering heart to shut the hell up.

  Then she turned and fled.

  13 / Swallows & Butterflies

  “There are no happy endings. Endings are the saddest part,

  so just give me a happy middle and a very happy start.”

  –Shel Silverstein

  A few weeks later, Lexi collided with him on the stairs after leaving her mother’s ward. She’d nearly ceased thinking about him. She’d wanted to stop thinking about him. He wasn’t the sort of person you interacted with and fluttered away from; he was the type of man you fell for. People got hurt when they got attached to other people, because people always left or were taken away. Falling in love, therefore, was just a set-up for inevitable failure.

  Lexi knew all this. But logic is fallacy when it spars with instinct. So she fell anyway.

  Dominic was jogging up; Lexi was jogging down. People huddled on the steps against the walls, sharing blankets and stories and canteens of coffee. They hushed and raised their heads at the white flicker of Dominic’s coat. He wasn’t really a practicing surgeon quite yet—Lexi had asked for him once, boldly, at the hospital’s reception kiosk, and they’d told her he was a first-year resident who took his role and his outfit very seriously—but the patients didn’t know that. They leaned towards him like lepers reaching for Jesus.

  He ignored them.

  There was a folder tucked beneath one arm, a stethoscope slung around his neck. He half-turned to apologize after he jostled the person rushing downstairs. Lexi’s face glanced back at him. She tripped and caught herself against the railing.

  “You again,” he said.

  “Me,” she agreed.

  He paused, two steps above her. “Where are you going?”

  “I was on my way out.” She swallowed. “Listen, about last time. I was worried about my mom, she’s in a coma. I know I made a scene back there.”

  He smiled then. “Actually, I might have been a bit abrupt. What if I made it up to you?”

  “Oh, but… you weren’t…”

  “Are you free later?”

  The butterflies erupted in Lexi’s stomach. “Later?”

  “I have a break between rotations in two hours. You like coffee?” He fished his phone out of his pocket, gesturing towards her as he began to turn away and continue up the stairs. “Of course you do. What’s your number?”

  He’d walked a few steps by the time Lexi’s brain sputtered back to life. She practically yelled it up at him, the numbers rebounding off the stairwell. Dominic didn’t look back over his shoulder. He raised the hand that held his phone to acknowledge he’d typed in her digits.

  People stared as she skipped her way downstairs. She didn’t mind.

  The butterflies were performing circus tricks now, flying through hoops of fire. Lexi had read about infatuation once. Some writer had doused the romantic notion of winged insects. He’d said the funny feeling was simply the motion of common sense fleeing the body. It made more sense, in a world where few things did. Lexi smiled, reveling in the feeling.

  One floor down, Death crept through a crack of ripped plastic. It wandered around the halls and stopped at a door, poking its head into the room and then slipping closer to the bed. The man with the swallow tattoo raised his head from the pillow, sensing change. Death cocked its head at him and smiled, though the man couldn’t see.

  “Helen?” the man whispered. “I’ve missed you.”

  Death lowered its head and stole his last breath with a kiss.

  14 / Fallen

  “He’s raised on the edge of the Devil’s backbone,

  Oh I just wanna take him home.”

  -The Civil Wars, Devil’s Backbone

  Lexi woke to the sound of buzzing. It took her a moment to ground herself. One hand extended from the bedsheets and grappled for her phone. She sat up in bed with a groan. What idiot called in the middle of the night? And what time was it anyway?

  “Good morning,” a male voice murmured in her ear.

  “Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding me.” She peered around the moonlit room, then lowered the phone from her ear to check the display screen. Her roommate hadn’t returned, but Lexi had grown used to Becky’s partying ways; she wasn’t expecting her before sunrise. “It’s 5 a.m.”

  “Good, you keep up with the times. I can’t stand people who fiddle with their clocks. You know, changing their phones so they’re always five minutes ahead of the rest of us. How eccentric can you get?”

  I do that sometimes, Lexi mused. She nearly cracked her jaw yawning. “Dom, did you need something? It’s ridiculously early.”

  “Or ridiculously late, if you’re an insomniac,” he said. “Be ready in fifteen minutes, okay? Wear something warm. And sneakers.”

  Lexi snorted in disbelief. Before she could open her mouth to retort, he’d hung up on her. She closed her eyes and snapped her flip phone shut, falling back onto her pillow.

  Because of course he was kidding.

  . . .

  Fifteen minutes later—exactly fifteen, by God; Lexi checked her phone—the loud rapping on her door roused her once more. Her heart skipped a beat until she recalled Dominic’s call. She hadn’t dreamed it.

  And he hadn’t been kidding.

  She tumbled out of bed and made her way to the door. Dominic’s scruffy face grinned back at her through the peephole. “Maniac,” she whispered, and opened the door.

  “Really?” His scowl at finding her still in her pajama tank-top and shorts—as if
she was the one waking him before the crack of dawn for God-knows-what—was replaced with a low whistle that told her exactly what he thought of her outfit. “Well, okay. I can work with that.”

  She leaned against the doorframe, unwilling to step aside, not ready to give up the boundaries. Fully dressed and grinning as if he could read her mind, he stared back at her. Are you insane, woman? a small voice in her mind was yelling. Grab your wits about you and invite the man in! Another part of her brain went over and sat on the voice, squashing it. I am your wits, that part informed her, and I beg you to be reasonable.

  “It’s good to see you,” Lexi admitted. Her cheeks warmed. “What are you doing here?”

  “All those text messages about me coming to steal you away? You thought I wouldn’t actually give in to the temptation?” He slipped through the doorway, paying his toll with a wink. “Just got off a night shift at Nova. Couldn’t get you off my mind.”

  “Um, 5 a.m.,” she tried again, turning to watch him as he strode through her dorm room and yanked the blanket from her bed. “You know that’s when normal people are still asleep?”

  Dominic turned back to her. Before she could resist, he’d unfurled the blanket and wrapped it around her. He tugged the ends and Lexi gasped, snug as a caterpillar in a cocoon. He picked up her blanketed body in his arms and kissed her, the sweet heat of his lips evaporating her half-hearted protests.

  “Who said we were normal?” he whispered into her mouth. “And where are your sneakers?”

  . . .

  In the two months she’d known him, Dominic had confiscated her weekends. He wooed her with drinks and candle-lit dinners. He ensorcelled her during movies—horror flicks, preferably, because they made her crave a shoulder to hide against. He worried her with his lunatic driving, his violent reflexes, and his brooding spells. Yet he could electrify her with a scrape of his fingers. He could blow her mind with a flick of his tongue.

  And he made her wonder, sometimes, if she’d ever felt this alive before she’d met him.

  He set her in the passenger’s seat of his silver Audi, tucked the blanket around her, and strapped on her seatbelt before she could insist on it. After he opened his own door and flung himself behind the wheel, he leaned over and kissed her again. She smiled, feeling the excitement dousing her drowsiness. He gunned the engine, switched on the headlights, and plunged them into a predawn world.

  Lexi should have been afraid, but she wasn’t. The same unpredictability that frightened her was that which lured her.

  She didn’t know how long they raced, listening to a CD of epic movie soundtracks, one of Dominic’s hands caressing her thigh, the other maneuvering the wheel. As silvery light spilled into the sky, she noted that the city had disappeared and the suburbs were sparse. The road snaked through forests and fields, undulating endlessly towards the east.

  She dropped her eyes, studying one fraying corner of the blanket still wrapped cozily around her. She heard the wind screaming beyond the reflection-less windows, hers cracked open, felt the chill of the night nipping her exposed flesh. With her head ducked, she stared at Dominic, his dark face taut with concentration as he navigated his car, his intentions unclear but promising.

  It was thrilling to have someone care for you this much. Someone who showed up even when you didn’t know you wanted them. Someone who appeared to patch up the emptiness inside you so magically.

  Dominic glanced over and pulled a strand of her hair. “You’ll want to wake up for this, angel.”

  Lexi gasped as they rounded the last hill. It was a sight she hadn’t seen for years. The sea sprawled before them, a restless beast of quivering waves and black-blue blood. Beyond and above the water, the golden sun splurged up like molten rock. Dominic killed the engine.

  He took off his shoes. She didn’t bother putting on her sneakers. She took his outstretched hand and let him lead her down the deserted boardwalk. A few feet from the water’s edge he stopped and stripped off his jacket and his shirt, immune to the cold, never taking his eyes from her face. She raised her arms and held the blanket aloft behind her, like a red cloth wing that fluttered in the wind. He stepped forward until his chest touched her breasts and his lips crushed hers, and she lowered her arms to shield them both.

  One-winged angels, she thought. Perhaps that is what love makes us. To fly, we have to embrace each other.

  15 / Pieces

  “Hello, America.

  Do you want to play a game?”

  –Jigsaw (2004)

  In May, Lexi graduated with a double major in Creative Writing and Accounting. Pappou drove up unannounced for the day of the ceremony, bringing Sophia and the wolves along with him. The surprise brought Lexi to tears—partly because they came and partially because the rest of her family could not. She went through the motions and happily agreed when Pappou offered to treat them to dinner at a local Greek restaurant. She cradled the two wolves close, hugged Sophia as tightly as she could, and—seeing her grandfather scratching his nose—steeled herself for bad news.

  The three of them chose a corner table, the two wolves sitting beneath it at their feet, on their best behavior because Lexi had told them the owner was doing them a tremendous favor in letting them in. Pappou kept scratching his nose. That was his tell. And indeed, after a hearty meal of pastichio and right after the waitress brought them their choices of dessert—galaktobouriko for Pappou, kataifi for Lexi, and two scoops of chocolate ice-cream for Sophia—he shared his tidings.

  “Your Yiayia Marina has offered to house you girls out North,” he said. He forked and re-forked the galaktobouriko, refusing to meet their eyes. “She lives in a nice neighborhood in Quebec and has found a middle school that Sophia can attend nearby. She offered to pay for the classes and books. Your other Pappou left her a fortune before he passed away. And she has a couple friends in accounting who could easily pull some strings, Lexi. You don’t have to worry about job-hunt—”

  “No.”

  Her grandfather looked up at the roughness of her voice. “What?”

  “I agree that Sophia should go. It’s safer. And Yiayia and our cousins will adore her. But I’m not going.”

  “Don’t be unreasonable. You said it yourself: it’s safer. They’re family—”

  “You’re family. Mom is here, and so is Dad.” And Dominic, she thought, but it didn’t seem wise to mention a boyfriend in light of her grandfather’s already bristling beard. And Yin and Yang. She reached under the table instinctively; Yang raised his head to nuzzle her palm. “I don’t want to come back to South Astoria. But I’m not leaving Virginia.”

  “Your mother wouldn’t know,” Pappou replied. “And your father wouldn’t mind. This is your chance for a new start, tsoupi mou.”

  Lexi made a pained noise, but she did not retaliate. Pappou meant to persuade, not to hurt. He spoke the bitter truth; it was her choice, in turn, to refuse to accept it. Mom will wake up. Dad will get out. “Are you going?”

  “I’m an old man, child. I’ve lived my life. I fare well enough in my own corner of the world. I will stay, and I can care for the wolves.”

  Lexi had stayed on campus, given free lodging due to orphan status, and Pappou had rented out half the house to make ends meet. He’d kept two rooms for himself, Sophia, and the wolves. With Sophia away, he’d likely keep just one. Perhaps it hurt too much to sell the house where his two granddaughters were born and raised—as much as it hurt Lexi to live in it, surely. Perhaps he, too, harbored hopes that Elias and Anastasia would soon return, and would want to find themselves back home when they did.

  Pappou scratched his nose.

  “One for you and one for me,” Lexi countered with a wry smile. She glanced down at the black wolf that had poked enough of his graying snout from under the tablecloth to rest it against her thigh. “I’ve been working, I’ve got money. I’ll find a landlord who doesn’t mind pets.”

  Sophia’s big brown eyes flitted back and forth and stared at each of them as they spok
e. A mustache of chocolate framed her upper lip. “Yiayia is sweet,” she said. Yin’s ears perked up at Sophia’s voice; the she-wolf nestled closer to her favorite human’s feet.

  “Yes she is.” Lexi embraced her sister and kissed her brow. “And so are you. You’ll love it in Canada. It’s got ski resorts and pancakes with maple syrup and lots of Christmas trees and really nice people everywhere.”

  Sophia’s lower lip began to wobble. “I want you to come.”

  “We’ll visit,” Lexi lied. “And Pappou and I will take care of the wolves meanwhile. Anyway, I need you to go make some friends first. Clear the way, roll out the red carpet, all that jazz.” She bopped her little sister on the nose and made a face. “You know I’m horribly shy and I hate talking to boys. We good?”

  Sophia grinned. “We good.” The lip no longer wobbled.

  Lexi looked back at Pappou, her gaze firm and uncompromising. “We good,” she confirmed, and stabbed the last bite of her kataifi.

  . . .

  Lexi persuaded an accounting firm in D.C. to hire her during a college job fair. She found a tiny apartment near her old campus, one that didn’t mind pets. She checked off the “Dog” box on the lease agreement, and one weekend drove back from South Astoria with a wolf riding shotgun in the red pick-up. She made sure the landlord never saw Yang.

  Her favorite haunt remained the Tzami. Armed with Yang and a satchel full of writing material, she frequented her sanctuary whenever she had time, always taking care not to be seen on the way there. Her breathing only eased once she closed the door behind her. Here she could shed her backpack and her fears. Her friends filled the tables with their stories, their games, their laughter. Lexi had learned that the most powerful drug for a human was another fellow human. She did her best to get a daily dose of many.

  George retired. He released his reign over the Tzami and moved to Michigan to pursue a Master’s degree. Lexi missed her friend’s familiar accent, his welcoming smile, and his generous refills of coffee and raki. She hoped he was doing well and would also find, someday, someone to make his heart smile.