She’d looked at me, looked through me, and seen things I hadn’t even known.

“Let’s braid it,” she’d said, sitting on the couch, and pointing to a spot on the floor between her knees. I’d sat down and her fingers, still nimble for a woman her age, worked steadily through my hair for an hour, maybe more. When she was done, she held up a mirror for me to see.

“This is . . .” I’d touched the swirls and patterns she’d created. “It’s pretty.”

“You’re pretty,” she’d said it like she was reminding me. “And now, your hair reflects who you are.”

I’d looked in the mirror again. “What do you mean?”

She’d traced the patterns, telling me what each represented. “This is your courage,” she’d said, touching the pattern on the right. “And this is your kindness.”

She ran her fingers over the whorls in my hair on the left. “And this is your discernment.” She touched the pattern in the back. “The eyes in the back of your head to see what others miss.”

“And what about this one?” I’d asked, touching the pattern on top.

“That, my beautiful girl,” she’d said, smiling, “is your crown. Your pride. Your self-esteem. The glory of knowing who you are, and that it’s enough. No one has to tell a queen to wear her crown.”

Her words, all the things she told me in this backyard, whisper through the oak trees. Her wisdom flaps in the white sheets pinned to the line and blown by the wind.

Angel’s wings.

I washed the sheets so Kenan and I will have something to sleep on tonight. Last night, we ate from the snacks and sandwiches I brought with me. We talked and laughed.

I cried.

Telling him about the hospital and my mama, I cried, and he held me until we fell asleep on the couch. We’ll leave tomorrow, but we have one more night here alone, and I’m determined we’ll sleep in a bed on clean linens. I’m pulling the last of the sheets from the line and into the laundry basket when strong arms scoop me up from behind and whirl me around.

“Kenan!” I screech and laugh. “Put me down right now.”

He keeps one arm around my waist and uses the other to grab a sheet from the basket, tossing it to the ground.

“I just washed that,” I protest, frowning at him over my shoulder.

“Good.” He lays me down on the soft cotton, looking down at me. “I like clean sheets.”

I reach up to trace the bold planes of his face, the sensuous curve of his mouth, the thick feathering of lashes against his hard cheeks.

“You’re magnificent,” I whisper. “I think in another life you ruled a planet. You were the king of your own galaxy.”

“And in this other life,” he says, the laughter fading from his eyes, “were you my queen?”

In this place where I learned about all the things our eyes ignore, the dimensions teeming with life just beyond the evidence of what we see, I could conjure up our existence together before or the one to come, if that’s a thing. I’m not sure what’s true sometimes.

“I’ll be your queen in this one.”

We stare at one another across centuries, across continents, across time and space, and I actually believe that I would have found him anywhere. There is no place, no spot on the continuum of time that could have hidden this man from me.

He smiles, lifting some of the weight from the moment, and coaxes the hem of my dress up past my knees and over my thighs.

“What are you doing?” I ask, my breath snatched when his fingers caress the inside of my thigh.

“Fucking my queen out in the open,” he breathes in my ear. “How often will I get to do that?”

Dirty things on angel’s wings.

I should resist, but who am I kidding? He presses into the cove between my thighs, and our gasps mingle. Even through my panties and his sweatpants, he’s hot, hard. I’m wet. Ready. He lowers his head, his chin nudging aside the neckline of my dress to worship my nipple with his lips. He slides sure fingers into my panties, and I stretch my neck in unmitigated pleasure. I come in seconds. My eyes drift closed and I bite down on my lip, but my whimpers escape into the air. I fill the backyard with the sounds of my ecstasy.

When I open my eyes, he’s watching me. “I never get tired of seeing you like that.”

His kisses start gentle, soft as clouds on my cheeks, drizzled like raindrops over the bridge of my nose. But then our mouths, our bodies collide like two bolts of lightning in the sky.

You are the storm.

He pushes the dress above my waist and I urge the pants down past his ass. He slots his lean hips between my thighs, and slides my panties aside, entering me in one powerful thrust.

“Home,” he rasps.

He’s big. There’s no denying that, and I have to spread my legs wide to accommodate his body. His cock is thick and hard, and even soaked and stretched, that first thrust knocks the wind from me. Then he eases in deeper until he hits that spot only he seems to have ever found inside me, and I moan. I rock into him, answering the rough, quick motions with the roll of my hips, the tightening of my thighs. My most intimate places put a demand on him.

Deeper. Harder. Faster. More.

Deeper. Harder. Faster. More.

Deeper. Harder. Faster. More.

It’s an imperative rhythm. In the shadow of the tree I always thought was magic, we make our own. A necromancy that’s uniquely ours. In the shadow of the place I thought was safe, I realize it’s not a tree, a city, or a particular place where I find safety. It’s in Kenan’s arms, in the harbor of his love. That’s the safest place I’ve ever known.

I wake with a start.

I don’t know what wrenched me from sleep, but I jerk up like someone’s dumped a bucket of water over my head. My heart clamors behind my ribs, and a thin layer of sweat slathers my skin. The moon illuminates a swathe of the bed, showing me Kenan asleep—peaceful, still. He’s too big for the bed, but there isn’t one in this house large enough to hold him. His feet hang off the edge, and his massive shoulders and chest leave only a sliver of mattress for me. I didn’t mind. I laid on top of him and fell asleep. It was the best rest I’ve had in weeks, until now.

Even though it’s almost October, it’s still warm in the bayou, and we slept with only a sheet covering us. A violent shiver reminds me of my nakedness. There’s a quilt I used to love in MiMi’s old room, so I trip down the hall and open her closet to search for it while the warm night air caresses my skin.

The warm night air.

I check the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom—all warm.

It’s only cold where we slept.

My thoughts riot, an unreasonable panic sending me down the hall at a gallop and stumbling into the bedroom. It’s so abruptly cold, the marked difference in temperature stops me at the threshold. An unnatural chill sprinkles goosebumps over my arms and shoulders, pebbling the sensitive skin around my breasts. I approach the bed slowly, afraid to see if Kenan is still breathing.

He draws in long, even pulls of air that lift and lower his bare chest at regular intervals.

But I know what I feel. I know what this is. I’ve felt it before.

A dozen things MiMi told me, all the things she ever taught me crowd my mind. I mentally sift through the information, discarding the useless, grabbing hold of what I need with desperate hands. I rush through the house, collecting the necessary items. Salt. Candles. I dig around in boxes searching until I have everything I need.

I watch Kenan for hours, I think. I’m not sure. Seated naked at the foot of the bed, I watch over him, willing to call in every cosmic favor, to invoke any saint, to utter any prayer. I’ll beg God not to take him and do whatever is necessary.

My shoulders have grown stiff and my feet are numb by the time he wakes. It’s still dark in the room, but I’m not sure what time. He reaches for me, sliding his hand across the cotton sheets, blindly searching.

I’m right here.

I don’t say it. Fear locks my jaws and ties my tongue in a knot.

“Lotus,” he mutters, squinting and pulling himself up to sit, his shoulders almost as wide as the headboard of the narrow bed I slept in as a girl. He’s a king, a pharaoh, the ruler of my heart. And I’ll fight anything, anyone who tries to take him from me.

I’ll fight death itself.

“Lotus, what the hell is going on?” He sweeps the room with a confused look, taking in the four lit candles strategically placed around the bed at the north, south, east and west. At the salt encircling us.

“What’s all this?” He looks at me, naked and completely still, sitting cross-legged with my hands pressed together between my breasts. “What were you saying?”

“Psalm thirty-five,” I croak, my voice raw from repeating the psalm the protection spell required for so long.

“Why?” He walks on his knees toward me, naked, magnificent. Mine.

Tears sneak past my lashes and jagged breaths fight their way out of my lungs.

“Okay,” Kenan says, his voice hardening. “You tell me right the fuck now what’s going on. Why you’re crying. What’s—”

“It’s death,” I cut in over his building tirade. “It’s here. In this room. I can’t lose you.”

Confusion gives way to frustration as he realizes what I’m saying.

“Lotus, this shit isn’t real,” he says, his words heated. “I hate seeing you upset over superstition and hocus-pocus bullshit people use to control others, to make money off them.”

“No.” I shake my head adamantly. “Yes, there is some of that. I know what you mean, but this isn’t that, Kenan. I know what I feel. I felt it when MiMi died. I felt it when my mother died. I know how death feels, and it’s here.”

I close my eyes because I know he won’t believe what I say next, and I need him to believe me. “It’s here for you.”

He sits on his heels and runs a hand over his face, dropping his head back and contemplating the ceiling before returning his gaze to me. The moon reveals the stark masculine beauty of his features. It reveals his disbelief.